I shook the envelope. An audiocassette fell out and clattered onto the table.
Black, no label or markings on either side.
I examined the padded envelope. My name and address had been typed on a white sticker. No zip code. No return address either. The postmark was four days old, recorded at the Terminal Annex.
Curious I took the tape into the living room, slipped it into the deck, and sank back onto the old leather couch.
Click. A stretch of static-fuzzed nothing started me wondering if this was some sort of practical joke.
Then a shock of noise killed that theory and made my chest tighten.
A human voice. Screaming.
Howling.
Male. Hoarse. Loud. Wet-as if gargling in pain.
Unbearable pain. A terrible incoherence that went on and on as I sat there, too surprised to move.
A throat-ripping howling interspersed with trapped-animal panting.
Heavy breathing.
Then more screams-louder. Ear-clapping expulsions that had no shape or meaning. .. like the soundtrack from the rancid core of a nightmare.
I pictured a torture chamber, shrieking black mouths, convulsing bodies.
The howling bore through my head. I strained to make out words amid the torrent but heard only the pain.
Louder.
I leaped up to turn down the volume on the machine. Found it already set low.
I started to turn it off, but before I could, the screaming died.
More static-quiet.
Then a new voice.
Soft. High-pitched. Nasal.
A child’s voice: Bad love. Bad love.
Don’t give me the bad love.
Child’s timbre-but with no childish lilt.
Unnaturally flat-robotlike.
Bad love. Bad love.
Don’t give me the bad love. ..
Repeating it. Three times. Four.
A chant, Druidish and mournful-so oddly metallic.
Almost like a prayer.
Bad love. Bad love. ..
No. Too hollow for prayer-too faithless.
Idolatrous.
A prayer for the dead.
By the dead.
I turned the recorder off. My fingers were stiff from clenching, my heart thumped, and my mouth was dry.
Coffee smells drew me to the kitchen. I filled a cup, returned to the living room, and rewound the tape. When the spool filled, I turned the volume to near inaudible and pressed PLAY. My gUt knotted in anticipation. Then the screams came on.
Even that soft, it was hideous.
Someone being hurt.
Then the child’s chant again, even worse in replay. The robotic drone conjured a gray face, sunken eyes, a small mouth barely moving.
Bad love. Bad love. ..
What had been done to strip the voice so completely of emotion?
I’d heard that kind of voice before-on the terminal wards, in holding cells and shelters.
Bad love. ..
The phrase was vaguely familiar, but why?
I sat there for a long time, trying to remember, letting my coffee go cold and untouched. Finally I got up, ejected the tape, and took it into the library.
Down into the desk drawer, next to Ruthanne’s file.
Dr. Delaware’s Black Museum.
My heart was still chopping away. The screams and chants replayed themselves in my mind.
The house felt too empty. Robin was not due back from Oakland till Thursday.
At least she hadn’t been home to hear it.
Old protective instincts.
During our years together I’d worked hard at shielding her from the uglier aspects of my work. Eventually, I realized I’d erected the barrier higher than it needed to be and had been trying to let her in more.
But not this. No need for her to hear this.
I sank lower into my desk chair, wondering what the damned thing meant.
Bad love. .. what should I do about it?
A sick joke?
The child’s voice. ..
Bad love. .. I knew I’d heard the phrase before. I repeated it out loud, trying to trigger a memory. But the words just hovered, chattering like bats.
A psychological phrase? Something out of a textbook?
It did have a psychoanalytic ring.
Why had the tape been sent to me?
Stupid question. I’d never been able to answer it for anyone else.
Bad love. .. most likely something orthodox Freudian. Melanie Klein had theorized about good breasts and bad breastsperhaps there was someone out there with a sick sense of humor and a side interest in neoFreudian theory.