Strangers Among Us

How Objects Behave on the Edge of a Black Hole-2

Maggie tucked the notebook into her bag, slipping her feet into the shoes abandoned during the flight. They’d be landing soon.

Once she’d gathered her bags, Maggie took a cab straight to SWAN. Connor Barston met her in the lobby himself. Maggie still had his business card tucked in her pocket. The way he stepped forward, hand out, ready to shake, pushed her guard up. The tight expression around his mouth and eyes didn’t help him.

“I don’t need the full tour. Just show me where my sister worked.” Maggie ignored his out-stretched hand.

Barston faltered, but his smile came back too quickly. It was an effort for Maggie not to grin, watching the complicated contortions of Barston’s expression.

“Follow me.” Barston pivoted.

Maggie followed him to a hallway filled with identical doors. One bore Jan’s name, and Barston unlocked it without stepping out of the way.

“I’ll be fine from here. Thank you.” Maggie pasted on her sweetest smile, making sure to show teeth.

Barston actually stepped back a pace, and Maggie saved herself from laughing by stepping around him into the tiny office and pulling the door closed. Jan’s office was made smaller by book shelves lining two walls. An old-fashioned wooden desk dominated, topped by an old-fashioned computer surrounded by precarious stacks of paper.

At least they had one thing in common.

A corner of Maggie’s mouth lifted, but the familiarity didn’t last. Aside from physical paper, there was nothing else here to link her to Jan. No photographs on the walls, no personal effects at all, nothing to accidentally remind Jan she had a life outside this sterile building.

A sense of absence, of disassociation, haunted the whole room. But more than that, something felt specifically missing. Maggie’s gaze settled on the corner of Jan’s desk—a space conspicuously clear of paper.

The puzzle box.

Alone in the room, Maggie snorted a laugh. She had no evidence Jan had even kept the puzzle box, let alone brought it to work. Except the empty space at the corner of Jan’s desk seemed to call for it. The box belonged there, like a pulled tooth.

Maggie opened desk drawers. Old-fashioned paper files, no sign of their Gran’s gift. Supplies: pens, highlighters, paperclips. They both still liked to write by hand. Maggie quelled an impulse to reach for her bag and pull out the notebook. She quelled the urge to touch the back of her neck. Breathe. Stay calm. In and out.

She leaned against Jan’s desk. Her hand brushed the mouse, another old fashioned touch, waking the computer screen. It wasn’t even password locked. Maggie blinked, surprised. Maybe Barston had been in there before her, snooping around. Either way, the computer was open to her now. Maggie sat.

Sound files littered the desktop, all like the one Jan had sent her, but with different dates. Pulse tripping, Maggie chose one at random to play. Like the file Jan had sent her, it reminded Maggie of a whalesong, but less musical. Something bent and warped out of true. Something hauntingly familiar she couldn’t place.

She turned the computer’s speakers all the way up. The sound reverberated inside her skin, shivering her ribcage, pressing a hand to her lower back. Her jaw ached.

Maggie tapped the patch clinging to her skin—restless, tracing its edges. She played the next file, and the next. Her skin itched. There was something there, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Not yet. Why the hell had Jan sent her the file? What did she expect Maggie to understand?

Maggie clicked on the next file. A video popped up. She hadn’t even noticed the different file type, but Jan’s face filled the screen.

Tired. Shadows bruised Jan’s eyes—stubborn no matter how the light hit them—and lines etched the corners of her mouth. She looked like a woman who’d accepted death, but still walked, talked and breathed.

Jan’s ghost recurring—pale, washed out, and stretched thin somehow. But this ghost’s eyes weren’t as kind. They weren’t cruel, just weary. This Jan hurt, through and through, but rather than turning that pain against the world, she held it all inside.

A tremor started near Maggie’s feet. She leaned back in Jan’s chair, crossing her arms around her body, holding herself in, letting the video play.

“The sound showed up right after we fired up the collider for the first time.”

On screen, Jan was framed by her office, sitting in the same chair where Maggie sat now.

“I wish we could call it a result, but there isn’t anything conclusive to link the sound to the collider start-up.”

Jan leaned forward. Though the webcam didn’t show her arm, it was clear she’d opened one of the sound files. The sound washed through the speakers, doubly ghosted, a recording of a recording.

“We’ve captured three instances of the sound so far. There’s no clear pattern. It could be a glitch in the equipment. It could be a flaw in the structure of the collider itself.”

Maggie flinched. But Jan’s words weren’t directed at her. For once. They were simply the words of a frustrated scientist running out of time.

“So far, nothing we’ve done has predictably caused the sound to manifest. Maybe it has nothing to do with the collider. It could be pure coincidence. f**k it. Maybe the goddamn building is haunted.”

The recording cut off. Maggie let out a breath. She counted the files labeled sequentially on Jan’s computer—thirteen in all. Plus one more video file.

Maggie played it. More of Jan’s frustration. She nearly closed the last video without letting it play out, but Jan’s words stopped her.

“The only theory I’ve been able to come up with . . .”

The recorded ghost of Jan paused, swallowing, then shook her head.

“I’m not going to rehash it. There’s no point.”

The video ended. Maggie stared at the screen. Rehash what? She spent the next few hours searching through Jan’s computer. There weren’t any other videos. If Jan had made other recordings, they weren’t here.

Maggie yanked open the desk drawers again, stacking Jan’s files atop the already dangerous piles. All that remained in the last drawer was a yellow legal pad and an old hand-held tape recorder. Jan definitely liked her antiques.

The recorder was empty. If Jan had used it to make other recordings, where were the tapes? A faint indentation remained on the notepad, words pressed into the paper before the top sheet was ripped off. Maggie traced her finger over the lines, thin as a scar. Holding the paper into the light and relying on touch, she could just make out the words—The Mythology of Black Holes.

Fuck. Another cryptic clue from Jan. More words, leading nowhere. If her sister could just make sense, for once.

Maggie tossed the legal pad. It skimmed over the precarious piles, taking several folders with it as it tumbled to the floor. Maggie’s head ached. The absence where the puzzle box should’ve been continued to glare.

Fuck it. Even now, even after death, Jan tormented her.

Maggie spoke aloud to the empty room. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”

September 7, 2017

Maggie lifted her hair away from the back of her neck. The electric razor buzzed in her other hand. She pressed it against her skin, made the buzz shiver through her skull. Honey-dark strands of hair hit the floor, curling like parentheses against the white tile.

Maggie set the razor down and ran fingers over the notch of stubble. The hair would grow back. The doctors would have to shave her again before the patch went in; Dr. Parsons had told her they’d treat the follicles in the spot to keep the hair from growing back. For now, she wanted to test the sensation, one tiny thing she could control on the cusp of everything changing.

The bristles felt strange and familiar at the same time. In another three weeks, the patch Dr. Parsons had prescribed would cover the spot—scarcely an inch wide, clever wires buried beneath her skin to monitor any changes and delivering a slow, steady release of chemicals. Schizoaffective—just like her mother before her, and her mother’s mother before that.

“You’re not special.”

Startled, Maggie turned, dropping her hair over the shaved spot. The razor clattered to the floor. Jan stood in the doorway, her arms crossed. Her sister’s eyes were hard. Maggie sorted responses, ticking them off like a mantra to bring her pulse back in line:

Shut up.

Fuck off.

Don’t tell mom.

I know.

Nothing she could say would help. Jan had already made up her mind. She’d decided Maggie’s silences, when she couldn’t figure out what to say that wouldn’t make Jan mad, meant she was stuck up. She’d decided Maggie trying to stay out of her way, avoiding conflict, sticking close to Mom and Gran, meant the three of them were part of a secret club that didn’t include Jan.

“Leave me alone.” Maggie kept her voice quiet, even. It didn’t matter what she said; Jan would hate her either way.

She stepped forward and Jan stepped back, flinching. As if Maggie had ever hurt her, or shown even the slightest inclination to violence. Maggie closed the bathroom door.

“What the f**k?” Jan slapped the wood as Maggie leaned against it, holding it closed.

Each blow shook the door, and Maggie’s body with it.

“f**k you then.” Jan gave the door a final kick. Maggie heard their bedroom door slam across the hall.

Maggie sat on the closed toilet lid, legs shaking. After a moment, she reached for her backpack. The orange plastic pill bottle rattled as she pulled it out. Three more weeks and she’d never have to take a pill again. Last chance.

She tipped today’s dosage into her palm, then let it fall into the sink with a soft clatter, running water to wash it down the drain.

She waited, watching.

“Come on,” Maggie whispered. “Where are you?”

For the past week, she’d been throwing her pills down the sink and the toilet. But Jan’s ghost hadn’t returned. Maggie dug her nails into her skin. The space behind her eyes prickled.

Only the frantic, sick, panicky feeling had returned. Only the feeling of a void trying to open beneath her had returned. But not Jan’s ghost.

The unease picked at the edges, worsened by adrenaline. She hated it. Hated f*****g with her medicine. But she had to. Because, what if Jan’s ghost was real? What if the doctor was wrong? Just because her mother and grandmother were sick, it didn’t mean Maggie was sick, too.

Maybe the ghost was real. Maybe opening the box hadn’t been her fault. A mistake. Jan hated her for no reason. Not because Maggie was a bad person.

She squeezed her eyes closed. She imagined shaving off the rest of her hair. She imagined taking one of the pink plastic safety razors from the bathtub and opening a thin line on her skin. Something to help her concentrate. Something to hold the panic at bay.

She opened her eyes. The bathroom shone back at her—scrubbed clean corners, gleaming white tiles. Empty. No ghost. Maggie slammed a fist into the towel rack, and it clattered to the floor.

Tears, not just from the hollow behind her eyes. A hole—lined like a geode with jagged crystalline growth—stood in place of her heart and lungs. Breath turned into a ragged sob. There wasn’t enough air.

Maggie reached into her bag again. Her vision smeared. She pulled out a battered notebook, writing on the first blank line: September 7, 2017—Six years, eight months, thirteen days. I am not being haunted by my sister’s ghost.

A wordless yell twisted through her. She flung the notebook across the floor, ink-lined pages fluttering.

A tentative footstep in the hall, but no knock followed. The sound didn’t come again.

Maggie crawled into the tub. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and pressed her spine against the ceramic.