The phone rang.
After a pause, it rang again.
“Come on,” I murmured. “Pick up.”
A click startled my ears. My heart lifted...
But only in the pause before my mother’s antique answering machine switched on, playing a message so old I’d memorized it before high school.
“...We’re not at home right now.” Mom’s voice sang out the words like small bells. “...So pleeease leave a message after the tone...BEEP!” She laughed. “Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes!”#p#分页标题#e#
“Dork,” I muttered, out of habit.
The message machine beeped.
Terian gazed in fascination at the metallic box on the tile counter.
He hadn’t known such machines still existed. It was like looking at an old linotype machine, or a working trebuchet and its pile of stones, waiting to be flung over a castle wall. The phone stopped its high-pitched trill and shuddered to life. Silence wafted after the initial message, but from the static, Terian knew it hadn’t finished.
“...Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes...”
The machine let out a loud, atonal bleep.
Terian’s new body, still unfamiliar in passing glimpses on reflective surfaces, tensed in excitement. After all, he knew who wasn’t calling. The Seven as well as the Org watched the house and its single occupant, so they might even know he was inside by now, but Terian didn’t mind that, either.
He wanted Dehgoies to know exactly where he was.
The background sound of children’s voices rose, and he glanced at the television monitor. Small faces pressed close to the likely-illegal camera, laughing and screaming in delight as that cheerful tune began to sing-song out of bow-shaped lips smeared with white and blue frosting.
“Happy biiiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday, dear Al—”
“Mom?” A voice emerged, panicked but low. “Mom, are you there? Pick up! Please pick up! I don’t have much time!”
Terian blinked. Voices came to him in this body sometimes. They sang to him, like the children in the metal box...but this voice sounded real.
Could it be real?
A little girl ran into the room even as Terian thought it, this one neither trapped behind glass nor a hallucination. Paint covered her small hands, and matted her dark hair in clumps. Her bare feet poked out from under a tattered purple dress, scratched and stained from play. A stuffed white rabbit dangled from her sticky fingers, and red had bled into the velvet fur.
Terian waved at her to be silent as he pointed at the machine.
“Mom?” the voice from the machine said.
The girl froze, staring at the box on the counter.
Excitement slid through Terian’s skin, a liquid heat, shared between himself and the girl. He wasn’t hallucinating the voice. She was right there, on the other side of the line. He could simply lift the receiver, speak with her...
“Mom! Please...pick up!”
A symphony lived in that voice. Physical imprints could be so endlessly fascinating, like motes of dust, each containing a singular world. Terian winked at the little girl, who took another step towards the machine.
He held up a hand, warning her.
“Crap,” the voice said dully. “Of all the times for you to actually be out of your cave.” Another silence came and went. “Mom, listen. I can’t tell you where I am. I’m not dead or in a ditch. And I’m not a freaking terrorist, okay? I’m with a friend. He’s helping me figure things out...”
Terian’s smile widened.
“...I’ll be home as soon as I can. Tell Jon and Cass...well, tell them I’m okay. And I miss them. I love you, Mom. Tell them that, too.”
Terian grinned, hearing the ups and downs in her voice as her moods shifted from reassurance to fear and back again. She’d called to reassure her mother, but she’d also hoped to reassure herself. Terian chuckled again.
Dehgoies didn’t know where she was, he was sure of it. Perhaps by now she’d learned more effective means of distracting him, too.
From the wall, a moan redirected both Terians’ focus.
Red lines and small handprints snaked across sun-faded wallpaper, running in places, like rusting metal. Whenever two of Terian’s bodies shared physical proximity they tended to share traits. The doc had said this personality configuration would be creative, and she hadn’t been wrong. At the foot of the same wall, another groan grew audible, meeting the voice still coming out of the answering machine.
“...and Mom?” The voice hesitated. “Don’t let any strangers in the house, okay?”
The little girl giggled. The stuffed white bunny bounced against her chest.
“...There are some people after me, and...well, it would be better if you could just go to Grandma’s for awhile. Or Aunt Carol’s. Please? Just do what I—”