"It Sees Me"

I still can’t shake the unseasonable late-August chill half-way into our first listen of the tape. We huddle together on the brown couch, straining to decipher the garbled words swimming with pre-digital static on the magnetic tape. Most of it’s unintelligible, but what we can make out scares the devil out of us. Though no one says so, I’m sure we’re all glad to be in the room together, all three of us.

The man whose voice we’re struggling to comprehend is a friend of a friend; still alive, retired, I think I remember someone saying, living out in Arizona with family. The voice is scratchy, hoarse, what a nervous breakdown must sound like. Every now and then the psychologist, the second voice on the tape, utters reassuring comments and brings our friend back to a certain relative level of peace.

There’s a star, the man says, a big one, bigger than Venus (that implies he knows his astronomy). He has the Chevy’s window rolled down, his arm straddling the door, cigarette burning between his knuckles. His wife lays in the backseat, sleeping. She had too much to drink at the party they had left forty-five minutes earlier.

Aha! you say – they were drinking. Yes, she was. But she wasn’t the one we’re listening to hypnotized on the tape. He’s a teetotaler, and had notarized affidavits to that effect somewhere.

He notices the star through the trees. Bright, like a searchlight. Then, after changing radio channels, finding nothing of interest, and shutting it off, he turns off of Route 32 East and drives north onto Allen Road.

The star follows him.

That’s odd, he explains to us, via the tape. Quite odd. Perhaps he was mistaken and it wasn’t a star. Probably a helicopter because if it was moving – and it had to be – it was moving too slow to be an airplane.

Wait! He has binoculars in the trunk.

Here the tape static overpowers any dialogue between the man and the psychologist. My friend lights up her third cigarette of the past half-hour, my other colleague takes advantage of the noisy interlude to refill his drink. I lean forward, fighting to make sense out of the uncomfortable hiss. Then, I am shocked to hear the the sound of a man crying.

The psychologist’s soothing voice comes back in, sharply, as the static inexplicably fades. “Now, now … you are safe here in my office. Safe. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can hurt you.”

But though the man is physically in the psychologist’s office, for all purposes he’s still living on that New Hampshire Road. Panic fills his voice; pity swells up in me.

“No, no, no” the man keeps repeating. Occassionally he strings a short sentence or phrase together: “It sees me” “coming down now” “that’s strange – can’t move” “oh my God …”

This goes on for a full minute. The psychologist no longer sounds soothing; he sounds scared. Scared like we are now. No one of us can take his eyes off the spinning wheels of the tape player. The man’s voice fills our ears – desperation, fear, despair.

“No, no, no,” he screams … they see him, and they take him. He’s regressed now to a child, babbling for his mother. His screams warble, then, maintaining intensity, he tears his vocal chords to a grating whisper, yet the pleading and the panic keeps on going –

My friend switches off the tape player, then stubs out her cigarette with a trembling hand. “It’s legit,” she mumbles.

I arch my eyebrows, glance over to our colleague. He nods without making eye contact with me.

Okay, I decide. We’re off to Arizona.

I can’t sleep that night.

“It sees me.”