"You Pull And I Shall Push"

It all started when I found the notebook. The phone calls, the e-mails, everything. It wasn't even that big a deal when I found it. It wasn't ghastly or ghoulish, or dripping blood. In fact, it was green. It wasn't lodged in a wall, or laying in the hall of a haunted mansion, or anything like that. It was just sitting there, propped up against a trash can outside an old thrift store. I was curious, so I picked it up and started flipping through it.

It was filled with strange drawings, and crude diagrams. It looked like something from a Sci-Fi channel horror flick, and I figured that's all it was. Some high school kid liked horror movies, and had a habit of doodling in study hall. He, or, too be fair, she, had filled the book, and tossed it in the general direction of the trash. Case closed.

I was about to throw it into the can when a certain page caught my eye. "You Pull and I Shall Push" is all it said, followed by a string of bizarre lines that my eye didn't want to follow. The words alone interested me, because they sounded vaguely familiar. I had read or heard that somewhere, I was sure of it. Coupled as they were with those lines, my journalistic curiosity was piqued. I tucked the notebook in my messenger bag, stashing it to read later, when I got back to my apartment.

Everything was fine as I went about my day as usual, stopping in at the World Enquirer office to turn in the first draft of my story on the florida marshland "Lizardmen." It was purely standard fare, some first hand accounts from the simple men and women who lived there, and a few vague scientific explanations. In short, nothing that hadn't already been covered dozens of times since 1978.

I wasn't really a beleiver in the whole 'ghosts and goblins' aspect of my job, but I liked working for the Enquirer because it was a steady paycheck and I got to fabricate almost everything I wrote. Most journalists get in trouble for that sort of thing, but my boss encouraged it. "If you don't have the facts, make them up" is what he used to say.

After that I headed out and did some shopping, ate my dinner at a restaraunt, and, short of the boring deatails, found myself reading a notebook in front of my computer at eleven o'clock at night. It really was an interesting read, and the more I read, the deeper my stomach sank. This is an excerpt, just to give you a general idea of what I'm talking about.

There's a warehouse on short street where certain surgeries are done. People go in with big noses or big guts or bags under their eyes. When they come out, they carry their guts in garbage bags, their noses in tupperware containers or their eyes in glass jars. But the fact of the matter is, they come out alive. In peices, but alive. Look in the window sometime, late at night, and you'll see the pools of blood, the piles a fly-covered intestine. If you're lucky, you'll catch a glimpse of the surgeon, and if you're unlucky, you'll see what I saw, and what countless others have seen before me. You'll see that he has no eyes, no nose, no skin. You'll see exactly what he is, and it will make you want to puke, and scream, and run, in whichever order you like. The thing is, though, that even if you don't see the surgeon, he always sees you.

See what I mean? I still wasn't thinking anything was wrong with the book, though. The author, maybe, but not the book. What can a book do anyway? Give you a papercut? I tossed it into a drawer and got back to work.

Two weeks later, I was out on an assignment, over four hundred miles away from where I found the notebook, when I had the first encounter that set off the alarms in the back of my head and made my stomach roll. I got a call from my boss at the hotel I was staying at, and he told me that they'd set up an interveiw with a well known ghost specialist, and that I was to meet him at his house.

I arrived at the address I had been given over the phone and made my way across the overgrown lawn to the front porch. The paint was chipped, and peeling, and it looked as though the whole house could use a new coat, or several. In a few spots, huge chunks of ash gray wood peeked out at me. This is great, I thought, This just sets the mood for a ghost peice.

An old man answered the door, and when I asked he confirmed that he was indeed the man I was to interveiw. I'm not going to give you his name. He has no more answers for you then he did for me, and I wouldn't want hordes of desperate men and women beating his door down in any case. I already warned you it wouldn't be easy.

The old man was dressed in faded jeans and a worn out flannel shirt. Coupled with the stubble on his cheeks, he looked like Wolverine's out of work uncle. He was polite enough, but I could see he was uncormfortable giving this interveiw. I didn't mind. Most people are uncomfortable being interveiwed by anyone from the World Enquirer. They never knew how they'd look in the end.

He sat me down in a fairly spacious sitting room, and offered me a coffee or a beer. I took the beer, and he sat down opposite me. I turned on the tape recorder, my favorite tool, and just like that, the interveiw began.

I asked him simple, basic questions at first, trying to get him to loosen up a bit. Things like "So, you beleive in ghosts?", and "How many have you seen?" featured largely. After a bit, when I had him talking enough to pull a few quotes out of him, I started to ask him some questions about the subject of my article, and my real reason for coming there.

He was polite, and kind, giving me as many details as he could. Electronic Voice Phenomena, commonly called EVP, is a strange occurence that happens when a recorder is fed "white noise", such as static from a radio or another recorder. Sometimes, there will be an aberration in the recording below or above the normal human hearing range. When amplified, the aberration is revealed to be a voice, saying any number of things. About six out of ten recordings are threatening, and about six in a hundred are personal. I include this information only for completeness, and as a guide of what not to try.

I asked him if he had any recordings handy, and he replied that, as a matter of fact, he did. We went into his study, and sat down at his desk. Right in front of us sat a reel to reel recorder, and he adjusted a few switches and pressed play. We waited patiently for a few minutes, and then, somewhere above a whisper, we heard just one line. "You pull and I shall push."

My stomach was doing back flips. I remembered that line from the notebook I had found and left lying in my desk drawer. I asked him to replay it, and when he did I swear the voice changed. But this time, that was not all we heard. After that one line played, we heard a strange click and then a serious of harshly murmured words. He spent a few minutes adjusting the set, and then played it back. This is what it said, in it's complete form.

You pull and I shall push. Why? All the king's horses and all the king's men and all that is now and all that is gone and all that's to come and everything under the sun.

I looked at him for a minute, and tried to make a joke about crazy ghosts, but the oneliner died on my lips when another, third voice came from the speakers. This was neither garbled nor out of our hearing range. It was a sweet voice, much like that of a little girl, and it sang softly from the machine. After a few moments, it stopped, and then said this:

Do you dream of black nights without moon or stars?

And with that the reel ended. We played it back several times, and each time we got nothing but static, not even the original recording. With a lump in my throat I asked him if that had ever happened before. The experienced ghost hunter, the man who made a living looking for things most sane people run from, had real terror in his eyes when he looked at me, licked his lips and said that was the first time in over fifty years he'd heard of anything like it, and certainly the first time he had experienced it.

And when it comes to ghosts, first times are never good.

Two days later I was back in my apartment, again reading the notebook. I looked, but the only line that I saw from our brush with the supernatural was that same "You pull and I shall push." I was about to give up, throw the book away in disgust, when I happened to filp it over. There, on the back, written in a red marker, were the words "I dream of black nights without moon or stars. I dream of ways to break these hallowed bars."

Even as the chill ran down my spine, I recognized the words. These same words were from an interveiw I had done, an interveiw with one of the alleged "Spring Point Witches" when the group was finally arrested and put in jail. These were her words, written in red ink on the back of a notebook, four years after her death. I remembered one other thing, too. I remember the last thing she said to me when they were leading me out of the room.

"They'll be in touch."

A sharp 'ding' filled the room, and I glanced at my computer. The mail icon on my taskbar was blinking, and I tentativly reached for the mouse. Clicking on the icon, I brought the new message up on the desktop. It was short, but it sent new chills racing through my back.

We are your eyes.

Over the next few weeks, I got only a few more e-mails like this, the most notable of them being the first, and the last. I won't tell you about that last one yet, but don't fret. I already do enough of that for all of us.

Three days passed, and I was going out of my mind. My local informant, a sort of supernatural guru who lives above the nearby horror-movier theatre, filled me in a bit on the notebook's doodles. Most of them came from the supposed Necronomicon, a book of spells made famous by H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. The manuscript these came from was one made not long ago, and is available for purchase in almost any book store. Again, a hint on something you won't need to buy.

Other than that, he wasn't able to give me any information I didn't already know. On that fourth day, though, I was going to get a few answers I'd rather not have.

I came home from the office, a box of stuff under my arm. I had just cleaned out my desk and expected to be unemployed within two weeks. I tossed the stuff onto my couch, my keys onto the coffee table, and my coat on the back of a chair. I must have walked past the phone six times in the next hour, but did not once hear it ring. On my last pass, though, I noticed the message button blinking. When I checked the time, it said that the call came in at 6:15, ten minutes after I got home. Not thinking much about it and expecting a phone call from my boss telling me not to quit anyway, I went ahead and pushed the button.

"Hello, Jimmy. Are you named? Do you dream of black nights without moon or stars? Do you know who I am, Jimmy? Do you want to know whose notebook that is? Have you gone down Short Street yet? Have you been unlucky, Jimmy? I'll tell you what; You pull and I shall push."

The voice was silky, almost seductive, but under the smooth cover, it was edged with a promise. A promise of terrible things, of fear and pain. Worst of all, I recognized a certain quality that froze me in place. It was my voice.

Breifly, I panicked, ripping the phone from the wall and throwing it the length of my hallway. When I calmed down, I picked it up, plugged it back in, and searched for the message on the tape. Like the one in the old man's house, there was no trace of it left. Just the faint static sound you can find on any blank tape.

I decided then that I would go down Short Street and find this warehouse. I steeled myself and gathered my courage, because I knew that if I didn't figure out this mystery soon, I really would lose my mind. But then, I was already half conviced that I already had.

It was raining softly, and lightning flashed in the distance. The full moon drifted in and out of the heavy, black clouds clustered low on the horizon. In short, it was the perfect setting for a horror movie. In a classic example of the American sense of humor, Short Street turned out to be the longest street in town. The warehouse was easy enough to find, though. It was the only standing building along that stretch of road. All the rest were just blackened rubble. Presumably, one of the warehouses had caught fire, and the rest went up with it. I haven't checked the records, and since I haven't told you where I lived, neither shall you.

I trotted across the pavement scared out of my wits. If I hadn't just gone in a gas station, I would have peed myself right there. I didn't know what I would find, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to either. But, I'm a journalist, and true to my nature I couldn't stay out. Not and still be me.

What I found when I hoisted myself up to a window was not what I was expecting at all. There was no blood, no squirming subject of horrible testing, no eyeless, skinless cadavar carving up his patients. There were a lot of boxes, and few forklifts sitting there, engines off. There was even an old man, dressed in a security gaurd uniform leaning against a rack, drinking coffee. But nothing described in the notebook was there.

I dropped down unsatisfied. There were dozens of reasons why I didn't see anything, while the author of the notebook did. It may have been another warehouse nearby that was lost to the fire, a warehouse on a different Short Street in a different town, or he may have even made it up. I was inclined to beleive none of them, because that itching feeling in the back of my head told me something wasn't right.

And, as usual, the itch did not fail me. When I got back behind the wheel of my car, I happened to glance into my passenger seat. Sitting there was a box of papers, all of them neatly organised in seperate folders. I pulled one folder out of the box and flipped through it. It contained several papers, each tagged with a date and a title. "The Mannequin in the Closet", "Grandpa's Favorite Chair", "The Bloodstained Butcher", and "The China Doll" were just a few. I quickly read through one, and discovered that each was a seperate entry in a sort of investigative journal. They were horror stories someone had proven true.

I looked up then, and if I hadn't, I never would have seen it sitting there. It was a man, in his early twenties, with sandy brown hair and a handsome, if somewhat pale, face. It was dressed in a pair of loose jeans, a button down shirt, and a light carhart jacket. It was holding a glass jar in one hand, and holding back it's bangs with the other. Where it's eyes should have been were only bloody, glistening holes. It's gray eyes, and though I couldn't see them, I knew they would be gray, floated in the jar. I knew it's eyes would be gray because I knew they would be the same color as mine.

I was looking in a mirror.

The next time I had a conscious thought, I was sitting on the corner of the bed in my room, staring at my sneakers in the corner. I couldn't remember how I got home, or how my sneakers had ended up on the floor, or where the scratch on my ribs had come from. None of that seemed very important, at all. All that seemed important was to roll under my covers and sleep.

Two days later I finally worked up the will to check my e-mail. As I walked slowly into my study, I noticed the box of files sitting on the chair next to mine. I was nervous, but by this point I was ready for any boogey men that might come for me. At this point, I wanted the boogey men to come. It would have ended the waiting, and god did I want the waiting to end.

So I sat down in front of my eternally running computer, clicked on the flashing mail icon, and sat back, waiting. It took only a second for the message to come up on screen.

Pick up the phone.

I didn't hesitate to do as it said. I already told you, I wanted it to end, I wanted it to all go away. I would have jumped off the empire state building and freed the kangaroos in the zoo if that's what it wanted. I picked up the phone, and after a second or two of dialtone, the voice started speaking again. It's comments were fractured, but I've faithfully written them down for you.

You should seek water, because there's a hole in the bucket.

Can you feel the world slipping away?

Here all hopes and dreams are fed into machines that feed on vacant eyes.

The hand that rocks the cradle, is a cage in search of a bird.

Do you understand, Jimmy?

"No!," I answered truthfully. "Why the hell are you doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this? You shouldn't be able to do this! You're not real! Crazy ghosts aren't real! You're just static and dialtone!" I was shouting by this point, and I have no doubt my neighbors thought I was absolutely crazy. That's alright. So did I.

Is that what you beleive, Jimmy?

The voice had grown cold, the threat of a terrible fate in it's voice bleeding more toward a promise. This was the first straight sentence I had heard from it, and the words chilled me to the bone.

We are more than static and dialtone, Jimmy. We are more than your ghosts. Go ahead, look in the box. Read the article you know is there. Read it, Jimmy.

It took me only a minute to find it after I dropped the phone to the floor. It was there, along with a few others that made my stomach clench with fear and recognition.

"You Pull and I Shall Push"

26-Oct-95

I've come to realize there are no answers, only more questions. Finding the truth is not a reasonable goal. The best you can hope for is some sense of how much you don't know. And that's what I've got to tell you. You think you're searching for hidden truths. But you will never find the truth. You won't. The closer you look, the more you realize the peices of the puzzle don't fit. It's a maze without an exit, and the door you entered isn't there anymore. I know it goes against every instinct you have, but If you want to survive, make peace with the knowlege that you will never find the truth. The more peices you find, less of the puzzle makes sense. The best you can hope to do is record what details you can, and wonder at them. Each shadow conceals only more shadows.

But you are my son. If anyone can make it, you can Jimmy.

I slowly put down the papers. I sank into the chair. My father had disapeared years ago. He had just up and left one day, taking nothing with him. This article was written in the same way he used to write, in the same easy, flowing script. Still, something nagged at the back of my mind. At first I couldn't place it, but then it clicked. I picked up the phone and waited patiently. I didn't have to, because the voice was there in seconds.

Who am I, Jimmy?

"Static and dialtone." I said before hanging up the phone. Three hours later I got in my car with a suitcase full of clothes and an old typewriter. I called my office, told them I was staying on, but would be sending my stories in through undisclosed locations. I didn't take a computer, or a cell phone, and I didn't turn on the radio. To this day I still don't. If I keep moving, maybe I can avoid Them. But then, can a crazy person ever escape the voices?

I don't know, or care. But I couldn't help but sit there, my hand on the key in the ignition, and stare. I shouldn't have gone back. I know that, but I'm a journalist. I couldn't go against my nature. Not and still be me. I went back upstairs, and grabbed the box of files. Maybe I'd check them out. Maybe not. Maybe I'd even add to the box. I didn't know, or care. On my way out, I happened to glance at my computer. A message flashed on screen, blinking in and out in huge letters that filled the monitor.

We'll be in touch