Contagious

“Just... do what I asked, you'll be fine. Don't cause trouble,” Charlie told him. 

Rocco nodded. Charlie rolled up his car window and was gone. Charlie had given him a leather bag bursting at the stitches with papers and files and god knows what else. Charlie'd swatted his hand every time he tried to take a peek inside. Alone on the curb, Rocco's intestines knotted with anxiety. He felt like a kid on the first day of school-- Alone and terrified, no trace of excitement..

From his pocket, he removed a scrap of paper. He saw that Charlie had hastily drawn a small map on its lined surface. All Rocco needed were street names, but he appreciated it. He began to walk the outlined path. Down Acorn street, he smiled, this was the part of the city with the old cobblestones. He watched his feet as he walked, crunching over leaves and counting stones. Street sign after street sign, he began to wonder why Charlie hadn't just dropped him off at the place itself. He felt another worried tug in his guts.

With every step, there was a new nervous pain or twitch, until, he realized, his mouth dry and eyes wide, he came to a stop at the end of the map. If his heart could still beat, he imagined it would sound something like a drum roll. He gulped and looked up. 

He knew this area, it was nice.Beacon Hill was the kind of place he dreamed about living in when he was a kid. 'Why here?' He wondered.'What's here?'

He checked the scrap and read an address, when he looked back up, he spotted it in brass numbers on the side of an old brick townhouse. Vines of ivy that hadn't been green in ages covered its facade like cobwebs. It was a story or two taller than most of the other houses on the street, with empty gray windows. The very top, smaller, with its rusty metal balcony, looked like it'd been an afterthought.  He stood under shelter of an orange-leafed tree in front and stared. He had come here, now what?

He turned the note over in his hands, Charlie had not written any further instructions. He sighed, balled the paper up and shoved it back in his coat pocket. He walked, shoulders tucked in tight and hunched over, trying to shield himself, though he wasn't sure exactly, from what. As he reached out to knock, he faltered.  Unpleasant memories of past set-ups assailed him and he took a step back. He shook his head. If he could trust anything more than his gut, it was Charlie, and Charlie wouldn't set him up.

He walked forward and turned the doorknob. When it resisted, he began to knock. 

Once, twice, no reply. Three, four times, he counted to himself. At knock ten, he considered leaving. Knocks fifteen through twenty three were uncountable, he was pounding now. He thought about calling Charlie, telling him no one was home, maybe another day, maybe send someone else. 

As a final effort, he tried the doorknob again. This time, it twisted easily and the house opened itself up with no effort at all. With just a nudge of his fingertips, he gently pushed it open all the way. He squinted in the sudden darkness of the home's entry and stepped inside. Despite the twisting of dread in his stomach, he let his hand glide against the stair rail as he started up through the house. He didn't take note of much. It was empty, just peeling wallpaper and lonely chairs pushed off into corners, covered in dust. 

He heard a voice from the top of the stairs, and sounds of movement.

He quickened his pace and forced a weary smile as he replied, “Hey, uh, I think I have something for you.” He patted the leather bag Charlie had left in his care and pushed on up the stairs. He came to a sudden stop in front of a door which he hadn't noticed until just then. Something about it made it feel somehow unreal. It looked wrong, it wasn't even sitting all the way back from a step, but jutting out at him, like a picture in a pop-up book. He squinted and reached forward, expecting his hand to pass through it. It reminded him of the pictures his mind created on bad nights. Still, reaching out, he could feel it, hard, solid wood under his palm.

He knocked slowly, dragging his knuckles against the door before picking his hand up to knock again.

“D-Delivery?” He said in a voice that cracked and sounded shaky to his own ears.

He feared touching the doorknob, that if he touched it, it would turn with gentle ease like the last. He feared the door, this heavy wooden door, would swing open on its own. His mouth was dry and he licked the corner of his lips anxiously. He knocked again.

“Delivery.” He repeated, this time sounding desperate.

The doorknob twisted and the door creaked. He'd never so much as brushed the brassy old knob. 

He called out one final time, “Hello?” but didn't expect a reply. He didn't know what was lurking beyond the door. He hoped, like before, it would open to a dusty empty room. He knew, as he'd been told many times before, that doors could be opened by drafts in old houses like this. That didn't mean he believed it.

“Hello?” a voice echoed back to him, it sounded first like his own, then seemed to buzz and flicker like it was stuck between the stations on a radio. “Hello?” it repeated, coming in much more clearly now. It sounded like an old woman.  He peered nervously around the door, inside it burst with sunlight. Clouds of dust suspended in mid-air, glittered everywhere the sunlight hit. The walls were papered like the rest of the house, floral and fading. As his eyes scanned the room, he noticed many things, but never the source of the voice from just before. His eyes finally settled on an old threadbare chair near the window, facing away from him. He adjusted his grip on the bag and cleared his throat. 

“I'll uh, just leave this here.” Rocco said.  He dropped the bag and it landed with the plop in the silence of the room. He took a step backwards, watching the chair until he was behind the door again. He and looked into darkness. The stairs that he could see ended just beyond his feet, but seemed, at the same time, to lead endlessly into the dark.  

The same radio static voice flickered in and out, switching rapidly through tones and vocalizations and replied to him, “Let me see what it is,” in what sounded like a flat mimicry of human speech.  

Rocco spun back around with his eyes shut tight, and prayed silently that the chair would still be facing the window, that nothing would have risen from it. He feared nothing his brain could devise would be more horrifying than what was looking out from that chair over Acorn st. A wrong step. His feet went out from under him. He collapsed hard on the dusty wooden floor and scrambled backwards on his behind.

“I-I don't needa know what's in the bag, all's I know it's for you, you're supposed'ta have it so please-” 

He winced, opening his eyes slowly to the room.

He thought he saw Charlie for a moment. A pale and thin man stood beside the chair, handsome, with a kind, if not somewhat concerned expression. Rocco sighed and relaxed his muscles at the sight of him. The man blinked and his features faded into static. His form twitching and flickering, elongated and distorted. Limbs bending and contorting, it collapsed on itself in an instant, into a small, petite old woman who looked like she could have been the owner of the first voice he heard. 

“You have an active imagination, don't you?” the old woman spoke, in the radio scanner voice. 

“F-Fuck that,” Rocco quaked. “What are you?”  His eyes bulged, unblinking, as the squat, white haired old woman tottered towards the bag.

“How do you see me right now?” the radio voice asked him, its wrinkled old face uncomfortably close to his own. He noticed then that the voice didn't seem to really be coming from anywhere near the mouth of the old woman whose lips moved slightly out of time with its words. 

“Ol' lady,” Rocco replied, gulping.

It made a sort of hum, then a sound like clucking its tongue. The old woman's grey eyes looked him over and it picked up the bag, its weight seemingly nothing to the feeble looking shape it took. “I wonder why that is,” it said conversationally. It unzipped the bag and made a small noise of amusement. It lifted the bag high above her head and turning it upside down, gave it a shake. A large, dark shape shook free and fell to the ground with a loud wet plop. 

“What are you?” Rocco repeated. 

“Any explanation I could offer you would be useless,” It replied, its voice became more human, though distinctly flat and a perfect medium pitch that he couldn't place as male or female. “Do you know what this is?” it said, its form slowly changing again. It became taller again, now resembling more the man he saw first. Its features shifted into place and its lips seemed to imitate a smile as it picked the dark object off the floor.

Rocco briskly shook his head from side to side, eyeing the man, whatever it was, with uncertainty. 

“Delivery is all it is, I don't know nothin'” Rocco said. 

The man unwrapped the object and turned it around to face him. It was a head, though he wasn't quite sure whose. It had deep cavernous wrinkles like a shar-pei and thin lips that curled inwards. If it wasn't so obviously a decapitated head, Rocco would've simply described his face as “corpse-like”. He bit his lower lip, trying to place a name. He didn't know if he'd ever met the man before.

Rocco shrugged and uncomfortably replied, “Sorry, Never been too great with faces.” 

There was a short burst of laughter from the man and from everywhere else Rocco could possibly imagine. Rocco's lip curled into a nervous half smile as he chuckled quietly. Then it hummed and inspected the head.

“I take it you weren't of very much importance to him, then,”  it said. He had become much more human in the time since opening the bag. 

“Who uh...” Rocco started, then stopped, wondering if he was allowed to know. Asking questions wasn't one of the things Charlie told him he was allowed to do when he got inside.

“Your old boss, I should think,” the voice said. “Pietro Foscari. Miserable old bastard.” 

Rocco felt his jaw open involuntarily and he stared with intensity at the head. He blinked hard and tilted his head, unaware of his still open hanging mouth. The Pietro Foscari? THE Pietro Foscari? He was practically screaming the question inside of his head. He'd always referred to him as old man Foscari but he never imagined the man was actually a living corpse. It was surreal to see him for the first time, without a body underneath him, no less.

“I'm right, of course,” the man continued. “Tell whoever sent you that I appreciate the gift.” 

Rocco nodded and then padded himself for  the bag which he'd already forgotten had been overturned onto the floor. “There's uh...” then he remembered, and pointed to it across the floor. “Papers, there's papers in there.” his lips kept moving mindlessly, “contracts...agreements...something...I don't... know.” he conceded. 

“How do I look now?” it asked. “I'm always curious.” 

Rocco chewed on his words carefully and produced an unoffensive “Nice,” as he watched the features on the young man's face flicker about like they were being lost to static on a tv. His strange smile grew wider.

Rocco rose to his feet hesitantly. And looking back towards the stairs, remembered the deep darkness from before. “Can I...?”

The man shrugged. “Oh, that. Just walk.” Rocco peered beyond the doorway, like before, it was nothing but black. “It does that. It's the house,” it explained. Rocco stared back at him, he had no reason to trust what it'd said. “You fear me,” the voice spoke. The man wore an expression of concern but the voice remained dry and empty.

Rocco continued to stare into the darkness, but nodded.  

“Then you are wiser than you look.”

“No,” he replied, simply. Things like 'Any idiot would be scared of that,' or 'you're a fucking nightmare' climbed up the back of Rocco's throat, but he coughed, and swallowed them down. 

“Do you still want to know who I am?” the voice asked, and the man, holding the decapitated mafioso's remains in his arms, gently, were it a small animal, walked back to the chair and seated himself. 

“Not really,” Rocco lied. “I did what I was told. Now I oughta leave.”  

The voice crackled as it hummed again, the shape of a man or anything beyond the chair seemed to vanish from the room. “Send my condolences to the eldest Foscari, and my thanks,” it said, as its parting.

Rocco nodded again and started down the stairs. Step by step, the darkness seemed to grow and change. In places it became a profound solid black so dark it felt like someone had blindfolded him and shoved his head in a bag. In others sections, the darkness took the form of it a thick grey cloud, permeating everything, darkness not so much in absence of light but in absence of vision. He stepped off another ledge and the ground beneath his feet felt more stable, more solid. He stomped forward to confirm it and disrupted the pile woven rug near the entryway.  

When he looked around, the room was the same as before, abandoned, but in a human sort of way. The peeling wallpaper was a comfort. He looked back up at the stairs behind him, they led off to a landing, and then to another set of stairs. He wondered for a second which set of stairs truly existed in this building, but decided ultimately, it didn't much matter.

Through the windows by the door, it was still light outside, but a different kind of light. Instead of the warm sunshine of afternoon it looked more like blue light of dawn. The time made no difference, eager to get out of the house, he flung the door open wide, and slammed it closed behind him. He bounded down the stoop and was on Acorn street again, where things made sense.  

Outside, the sun was rising in the sky, while the moon, on its way out, still did its best to illuminate the street with its pale glow. Across the street, a black, boxy, classic car waited, and so did the man inside. As Rocco approached, the engine started humming and the headlights blinked on. 

“How long have you been waiting?” Rocco asked, letting himself into the passenger side. 

Charlie glanced at his phone before casting it aside and placing his hands on the wheel. He was smoking. “About 29 hours, 16 minutes.” Charlie said around his cigarette.

Rocco laughed and made himself comfortable in the car, before he noticed Charlie's expression, devoid of any humor. He rustled his fingers against one another and turned his gaze to the window. The sunlight picked up as the car rolled slowly over the cobblestone and turned down the corner. 

Charlie glanced at Rocco for a moment then returned his eyes to the road. Rocco recognized that look. “What happened in there?” There was worry in his voice. 

Rocco sighed and shrugged, putting on his most carefree expression, hoping to put Charlie's worries to rest. “I don't know, really. Not much, yanno? Oh, ya didn't tell me Foscari's head was in that bag by the way. You shoulda, I dunno, prepared me for it or somethin'.”

The car came to a screeching halt. “WHAT was in the bag?” Charlie looked over, eyes wide, his jaw clenched. The he turned back to the windshield and the car moved again. “Well... I guess that makes sense.” he said, speaking more to himself than Rocco. “Did he say anything?” Charlie asked.

Rocco thought. Part of his brain was still wrestling with the idea that somehow, without him knowing, nearly 30 hours had passed in what felt like 20 minutes inside that house. He struggled to recall, beyond the darkness and the monster, anything specific. “He said a lotta stuff. We talked a bit.”

“Anything important?”

“He said...” he concentrated to remember the exact words. “He said, 'Tell-' no, 'Send my condolences to the oldest Foscari.'” his voice trailed off. “Something like that.”

Charlie's grip on the steering wheel eased and he relaxed his shoulders. “Did he say anything else?”

“He asked me if I was a'scared of him,” 

“Were you?”

“Like you wouldn't fuckin' believe,” Rocco replied. 

Charlie nodded.

For a few minutes the car filled with nothing but silence and the occasional click of Charlie's blinker before Rocco recalled a bit more and spoke again. In a quiet voice, he said, “Yanno, he was an old woman, for a bit.”
He thought about the stairs and its voice like it was stuck between stations, constantly flickering from channel to channel. “What was he, it, whatever, anyway?” 

“Evil,” Charlie replied. “It's evil.”

He asked no further questions. For reasons he couldn't fully understand, that was all he really needed to hear. 

“Evil can be anything,” Charlie explained, taking Rocco's silence for confusion. “See-” he opened his mouth to say more, but shot another fleeting glance to Rocco and closed it instead. “Anyway, I'm glad you're safe.”