The Call of the Void

"You must get this one a lot: I thought I was dreaming."

EXCERPT FROM INTERVIEW LOG 408-001-B
Interviewed: B. Kondraki
Interviewer: Dr. E. L████

L████: Start with why you were at the scene, why don’t you?

Kondraki: …Right. Right.

Kondraki: So I’m from Illinois, near St. Louis. In 1985 I dropped out of college, and since then I've been going south, one way or another, living day to day. Actually, when you picked me up, I was backtracking a little, going to Santarém. I was planning to get there the next day.

L████: What were you doing there?

Kondraki: I was picking someone up. My— well, my partner, but not in the way you think. She’s been with me since Colombia, we met on the flight across the Darién Gap. She's there seeing friends. We were gonna head west after, for the mountains.

L████: So you weren’t at all aware of the string of appearances on the road you chose to take?

Kondraki: I was just passing through, honest. I wish I could tell you I’d taken a different route if I’d known but, truthfully… it would’ve tempted me more. I love that kind of thing, always have.

Kondraki: No, I’ve never heard of the Global Occult Coalition. I figured he was with you guys, somehow, judging by the way he seemed to know than me about what was going on.

L████: When did you meet him?

Kondraki: That afternoon, at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere, somewhere. Said he was going north, too, and I figured I’d take him along for a bit.

L████: You weren’t at all suspicious? He hardly looked like a hitchhiker.

Kondraki: I was missing some company, I guess. It’s rare to meet an English speaker out here, though I still can’t tell you if he was British or American, from his accent. And y'know, I guess I thought it was a little cool, the way he was acting all mysterious. Give me a break.

L████: It didn’t shake out too well for you, did it? If I may be so frank.

Kondraki: That depends on how you look at it. If not for him, would I be here talking to you?

L████: I suppose not.

L████: The GOC deserter you were with, we have to give him this: We thought the same thing he did, that it must be a reality warper. We’d been looking for it for the past few weeks.

Kondraki: Is that what he meant when he called it a “Green”?

L████: How did you know none of it was real, anyway?

Kondraki: There were a couple of things – how quiet everything was, first of all. During the crash everything happened too fast for me to really pay attention, and the ferris wheel would’ve been quiet anyway, but the harvester should’ve made a noise. And when it chased us to the pit — what was it, anyway, an old mine?

L████: An old silver mine, yes. We'd found three bodies at the bottom of it, by that point.

Kondraki: Neat. Well, when it chased us there, I thought, why try to throw us down there, if it can just kill us outright? It didn’t make sense.

L████: So you risked your life on a hunch?

Kondraki: That’s not quite right. Truthfully — You must get this one a lot — I thought I was dreaming.

The record won’t show it — how could it? — but I told a lie, just one: I knew I wasn't dreaming.

It starts like this: I am thirteen years old and me and Alicja are in the creek behind the house, sickly green in the light under the water’s surface, and it occurs to me, quite subtly, like it's second nature: I could just stay under, hold my breath until the world goes black. I imagine my funeral, at some vague point in the future. They dress me in a black suit, like the one they did during Alicja and my Bar Mitzvah, and they stuff my cheeks with cotton the way they do to corpses so they don't look dead. But I do look dead, like I'm made of wax. And I’m beautiful like that, I’m loved.

I have to surface eventually, of course. But I can never shake the feeling.

We grow up, and Alicja resembles Mom more and more every day, even before she tells me she's a girl. I never come to resemble Dad, or any adult human being I know. I'm torn between the urge to follow Alicja anywhere she goes, the way I’ve always done, and my inability to do so, so eventually I leave. The further I get from home, the more expensive the calls there get, and quietly, guiltily, I'm relieved by it. It gets easy to pretend I won't have to go back, eventually.

All this to excuse myself. To illustrate why what comes next is so utterly irresistible.

Kondraki: So that brings us here. The rest you know.

L████: Thanks for your cooperation. This has been insightful.

Kondraki: No problem, ma’am. What happens next? Do you have to kill me now?

L████: Thankfully, no. Standard procedure would be to selectively remove your memories of the incident, make you think you suffered an entirely ordinary car crash, and then release you somewhere inconspicuous. But-

Kondraki: But?

L████: Well, while that option isn’t off the table, there’s an alternative. I would like to offer you a job.

Closing Statement: PoI-GOC0854 is to be held for questioning at Site-█. B. Kondraki is to be equipped with an implantable tracking device and temporarily released to attend to personal matters. He is to report to a Foundation safehouse located in Santarém, BR until █/█/1990, at the latest.