“Distant Signals”, by Adam Golaski

1.

On Valentine’s Day Lem’s boss says, “I’m sure you know already”—slaps Lem on the back—“you’re laid off.” Lem is stunned. “You’ve contributed so much. You’ll find work lickety-split. I’ll write you a stellar letter of recommendation.” Lem, numb, asks no questions.

Home, he weeps—what was the point of the all the effort? He writes a list of assets. He contemplates the demoralizing job search, the demoralizing explaining (“I was laid off, not fired”). He weeps. He lives in a studio apartment. He’s single—since a break-up about which he’s still dizzy. He’s forty-two. He considers a visit to his parents but they won’t offer comfort—so, no. How could he know, a month later, his parents will die?

Of covid-19. Contracted from the in-home nurse. Local politicians debate mask-mandates and stay-at-home orders. Lem moves to his parents’ house—his house. The house and all what’s in it his inheritance. Stellar recommendation or no, work prospects are near-nil; and now—the economy? His parents bought the house outright in 1979; it’s worth seven times what they paid. He’ll sell and won’t need a job. Meanwhile, he’ll ride out the pandemic in this house where he grew up.

2.

Located between a Christmas tree farm and a cranberry bog; across the lane stands a long-ago shuttered church and an overgrown churchyard. Tumbledown farmer’s walls, marshy fields of clumped tussocks and cattails. The house is hidden by a coppice of pine and holly and oak that ring around a vernal pond. The backyard, delimited by a split-rail fence, is devoid of lawn—but sand and dandelion. Beyond, marshes. Bits of seashell are embedded in the drive.

Two storeys, steep roof, chimney. Brick steps terminate at the pale blue front door (fitted with a polished-brass, crab-shaped doorknocker); pale blue shutters against weather-worn, unpainted shingle-siding. The back door opens onto a deck. The house, it’s charming.

3.

Brown paper grocery bags on the Formica. A slanted band of orange light falls across white magnolia-patterned wallpaper. Black head of lettuce, Tupperware full of furry white mold. Last leftovers. The pantry is adequately stocked. Lem tests the phone mounted to the wall—dial tone. The clock is stopped—a corroded “double A.”

Beneath translucent dust covers, Mom’s P.C. A drawer full of three-inch diskettes. Mom’s recording equipment re-boxed in its original packaging. Lem never heard Mom make music; he has a dim memory of a television commercial for a local electronics store his parents took credit for—“We made that,” Dad said. “Listen,” Mom said. Lem can’t quite summon the melody. He stands in his mother’s study until it’s so dark he needs to flip the wall-switch. Lem considers the Casio and the four-track, thinks to unpack it all, tinker with toys he was never allowed to touch. He hasn’t the will—neither to spite his (dead) parents or to figure out how thirty-year-old tech works or to learn anything new.

The television, high-end (circa 1992), is connected to a VCR. Lem resists the urge to touch the power button—it’s analog, good only for video. He’ll watch a fire instead: starts a fire in the fireplace with crumpled newspaper. Firewood stacked on the hearth, thoroughly dried. He breaks up a spider’s web when he removes a few sticks, allows the web’s maker, a white spider, to scurry to the bottom of the pile, where it can begin another web. As a boy, if not outside or “glued to the tube,” he whiled his childhood in front of the fire, arranging green-plastic Army men into formation. Once, perversely, he tossed his favorite soldier onto the fire to watch it blacken and wither. The fireplace, he’d often thought, is like a T.V. The fire and the shadows it casts, a show.

Distant Signals. He hasn’t thought of it since…. Distant Signals terrified young Lem. At school, he’d asked his classmates if they’d seen it, “That show, Distant Signals, it’s on Friday nights.” His classmates had not seen it, nor were they interested. His parents insisted he watch Distant Signals. He begged his parents to sit with him when it was on, but they never did. He watched Distant Signals all alone.

There’s no wifi in the house; he’s not sure he remembers how dial-up works and his laptop certainly hasn’t a suitable jack. He has his phone. He searches “Distant Signals.” This yields information about railway semaphores, “stopping high speed traffic safely,” the Satellite Television Extension & Localism Act Reauthorization law, and etc.— but Lem finds nothing about the T.V. show.

An article about global toilet paper shortages pops up. He bought four rolls at the grocery store—enough? He finds the house well-provisioned: in the upstairs hall linen closet are several packages of toilet paper (dyed blue to match the bathroom tile).

Guest room (Lem’s childhood bedroom), hall bathroom, aforementioned linen closet, parents’ bedroom, attic. Basement. Lem supposes he’ll sleep in his parents’ room—the “master”; it’s big, there’s a bathroom and glass doors that open onto a deck—but he won’t sleep in it now. Wash the bedclothes, empty the dressers and the closet, remove objets d’art—masks, fetishes, animal skins, hand-woven tapestries, jars of dirt, the mounted cat (“your mother’s favorite cat who died shortly after you were born”), a case of glass eyes, guns (for display only), etc. As a boy, Lem did not go into his parents’ room. He looked into it from the threshold as you look into a room roped off in a museum. There’s no bed in the guest room. Or any furniture. It’s empty. Except—the closet. Five cardboard boxes marked “tapes.”

Stare into the fire. Listen to the wood burn. Smell wood smoke. Lem sleeps on the couch in the living room. Wakes only once—embers glow in the fireplace. No lights from outside. No traffic. He’s not in the city but home. It’s windy—a gust enlivens the embers, swirls ash against the screen, and wails like the ghost in a children’s Halloween program.

4.

Aimless, Lem drifts across the lane to the churchyard. He tests a marker with his foot—he thinks, If I topple it, do I desecrate?

 He spots green. Plastic. A toy soldier?—it’s only a bottle-cap. Sprite.

Along the lane a woman walks her dog. Lem dons the painter’s mask he found in the basement; he’ll stay “socially distant”—a phrase already banal. The dog yips—a chipmunk. The woman’s mask is a scarf, wrapped several times around her head—how can she see? She doesn’t see Lem; Lem notes that the dog’s leash is not a leash but a white laptop power cord.

A wet snow falls—the temperature just at freezing.

Lem collects logs from the woodpile.

Once a fire’s lit, he meanders the downstairs; pauses at the basement door, puts his ear to it as often he did when he was a boy. He hears only the furnace. He opens the basement door. Finds the switch and snaps on the light. Descends to the last step. Water heater, gas furnace, breaker box; a long worktable beneath a window—where he found the painter’s mask. He’s been down multiple times since he inherited the house, but still it feels electric. The verboten basement.

Yet, it’s ordinary. Poured cement floor. A tidy pile of boxes raised off the floor by wheeled palettes, stacked to the beams. These he’ll go through, eventually. When it’s warm enough to prop open the bunker doors that open to the backyard.

Upstairs in the kitchen, he sets the kettle on the stovetop to boil. Finds an old tin of orange pekoe. While he waits, he scrolls through his contacts and impulsively texts “How are you doing?” to his ex-girlfriend. He regrets it—he promised himself he’d be cool and not try to contact her (because he wasn’t cool when she dumped him). But, as he pours water into the glass teapot (with the stainless-steel strainer at its core), she calls.

“Lem,” she says. “I heard.”

You guess she means your parents, but,

“They fired you. That sucks.”

“Well, no. I was let go.”

“So, what are you doing?”

“My parents died.”

She’s quiet; Lem closes his eyes and listens a moment. She says, “Both?” Adds, “Sorry.” And, “They were old?”

“Yes, but they might’ve gone on for another decade.” To name the cause of their death strikes Lem as gauche—but why? What is gauche is the relief he feels now that his parents are dead.

She guesses the cause; this, Lem realizes, makes his parents’ death topical—his ex is thrilled; she attempts to tamp down her enthusiasm, but gives herself away when she says, “I wish I’d known them.”

“They were strange,” Lem says. “You wouldn’t have liked my parents.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Lem asks, “How about you? What are you doing?”

“Oh, the same, but, at home. It’s a mess. Lem? I need to go, but call me soon, okay? You’re traumatized. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll call.”

“When?”

“And, Lem. Now, today—apply for unemployment. Don’t be proud.” 

Lem pours a cup of tea. Mulls his ex’s advice. At the end of their last call she told him to “give it a month or two” before he called again. Now, maybe, she’ll reconsider? She misses him? She used to complain that “you never open up”—maybe he just did? He’s hopeful.

To apply for unemployment is difficult on a phone, but still there’s no wifi (service providers are overwhelmed with requests), so the phone is Lem’s only option. He inputs basic information—what he knows about himself without checking his c.v. or his bank account—then quits. The simple arithmetic involved in calculating what was his weekly income and hours worked, combined with the growing sense that the questions are redundant in order to catch him in a lie, makes him paranoid; looking up his former employer’s website to get the mailing address and phone number makes him sad.

5.

Toss the bottle cap into the fire.

6.

Five cardboard boxes marked “tapes.” Lem, on his knees in the guest room closet, opens a box. Cloudy-plastic cases adorned with foil stickers (“Videopros,” “Zodie’s Video”). Prerecorded movies (the kind of cinematic miscellany people accrued purchasing tapes from sale bins) and homemade tapes. Eyeball a few titles, written in your father’s hand: “Arm’s Electronics spot,” “Kendall’s spot,” “Bar’s T.V. & Appliances spot,” etc.—commercials your parents shot. Lem carries the opened box down to the living room. Watches the ad for Bar’s T.V. & Appliances. A man with a moustache dashes from T.V. to T.V., from receiver to receiver, speaker to speaker, etc., ecstatic. A bell rings whenever the man touches a product and a “low, low” price appears. Abruptly, the scene changes: a boy sits on a carpet. He wears enormous, beige headphones plugged into a stereo and (lamely) plays air guitar. Since only the boy can hear music during this ten-second sequence, the sound the wale of the boy’s corduroy pants makes as the boy’s knees rub together is clearly audible. Another abrupt cut—to an exterior shot of Bar’s T.V. & Appliances, filmed at night, with the store’s street address and seven-digit phone number superimposed. A lonely scene. Lem watches the Kendall’s ad. (Lem remembers Kendall’s. His mother shopped at Kendall’s; he would stay in the car. He was forbidden to touch the gearshift, the radio dials, the vents, or the climate control buttons, but he could sit in the driver’s seat and grip the steering wheel. He’d pull out the ash tray. He’d push the cigarette lighter and wait for it to pop. Once, he pulled it from the dash and touched the glowing rings to the palm of his hand—the smell of his seared skin was sweet; the pain, wild.) A woman takes her son with her into Kendall’s. It’s a dress shop. Bells above the door tinkle. A pretty clerk greets the woman. The clerk leads the woman into the store, whispers to the woman, and shows the woman dresses. The son trails behind, distracted (frightened?—his expression is difficult to interpret) by the mannequins that wink at him. Cut to the woman as she steps out into the sunshine. A broad smile, a new (yellow) dress, with shopping bags (one red, one blue). The woman declares, “At Kendall’s, I’m liberated!” Lem removes all the tapes from the box. Decides to watch a flick his father dubbed from the T.V.—My Side of the Mountain. It made a big impression on Lem when he was a boy. At night, Lem would lie awake and imagine he was, like Sam (the boy in the movie), trapped in a hollowed-out tree, buried alive by snow. Lem would think how to get out before he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. This fantasy put Lem into a panic; he’d tell himself, I am in my bed and I am not in any danger. The problem with this mantra was he did not wholly believe it to be true.

Lem pops popcorn over the fire. Eats it plain. Mindlessly shoves handfuls into his face as he watches Sam survive in the Catskills.

Lem’s mind wanders. He thinks about the boy in the Kendall’s commercial and about the boy in the Bar’s ad. The same boy? Sure, maybe—a local actor his parents used in more than one commercial.

He ejects My Side of the Mountain, inserts the Arm’s Electronics tape.

A pair of silent church bells are suspended above a snowy hill. Superimposed, “An Xmas gift from Arm’s Electronics” (the words vibrate). Cut to a living room, decorated for Christmas. Silver balls and colored lights on the tree. A man and two children (a girl and boy) sit on the floor, smiling, cheering, “wow”-ing— preoccupied with hand-held video games. “Before Christmas,” says a woman, “they said they were bored.” She smiles. “But then I found Arm’s incredible selection of electronic games.” She gestures toward the girl: “She’s exploring—” the image distorts; Lem gets ready to pop the tape before it becomes entangled in the VCR, but the video resumes normal play— “…he’s rescuing a fair maiden—” close-up of the boy rapturously engaged with a hand-held game— “…alien chase game he can do space battle by himself or—” a shot of the man and the boy facing each other, a small tabletop game between them— “with an opponent.” The woman clears her throat and addresses her family, “There are more gifts if anyone’s interested.” She is ignored. As the scene fades, a booming, male voice declares, “Fascinating electronic games.” Bells ring, fade, and a map locating Arm’s Electronics appears.

Aside from looking like any boy dressed and groomed in the mid-1980s, like Lem himself in the mid-1980s, the boy is familiar. Yes, he’s the actor from the other ads, but that’s not it.

Lem puts on My Side of the Mountain and contemplates nebulous familiarities.

7.

For instance, waking in the middle of the night, T.V. set to static, tape in the VCR automatically rewound, VCR off, weird shadows on the wall, wind in the flue, swirls of ash, intimation of wrongness.

Lem methodically checks door-locks and window-latches. He doesn’t go down into the basement, but confirms the bunker doors are padlocked by going into the backyard (he stares up at a pine; its branches move in the wind and shine like the fur coat of an ermine). The door to his parents’ room is shut, the attic trap is up, the closet doors in the guest room are open.

He’ll pick a movie that’ll lull him back to sleep.

He finds a tape labeled “Distant Signals, ep. 3.”

More—episode one and, mixed in with sealed, blank videocassettes, episode fourteen.

Sleep? Lem brews coffee, sets a fire, ejects My Side of the Mountain. By the VCR clock, it’s minutes shy of three in the morning. Lem is afraid. Insert the first episode of Distant Signals.

Montage of fields, bogs, marshland, a sapling bent by ferocious wind, inky clouds, seashore, a boulder, and a hill—all shot at night. “Distant Signals” appears in front of the hill. No music, just sounds. Wind. Crack of a big tree branch. Crickets and frogs. Faintly, a bell. Lem’s skin prickles.

A boy—yes! the same boy from the commercials—addresses the camera.

“Lamb is dead.”

He holds Lamb in his hands: Lamb is a stuffed animal toy, a white lamb with rose-colored eyes. With a spade, the boy digs a neat, rectangular grave. Above the boy is a basement window. A rectangle, too. Outside, it’s night but there’s light—from the moon? Enough to illuminate the boy, Lamb, and the grave. He places Lamb in the grave. Pushes dirt (with his bare hands) over Lamb.

The boy whispers, “I buried Lamb last night, too.”

Cut.

The boy sleeps beside the grave. Our attention is drawn above the boy, to the basement window. What’s outside is occluded by a shape. Bigger than the window. The shape cries out.

Close-up: The boy’s face. His eyes open. He weeps. The camera draws back, reveals Lamb, filthy, on the boy’s chest.

Although it’s still dark, the boy sits up and declares, “It’s morning.”

He acknowledges an off-camera cue with a nod. Says, “It’s nighttime.”

On his knees, he digs another grave for Lamb. A deep hole. We can’t see to the bottom.

Cut.

The boy sleeps. The shape at the window cries out; the window shatters; the boy screams. Wool—masses of raw wool—pours into the basement, covers the boy, and fills the scene. The boy’s screams are muffled, his struggle with the wool, lost.

Morning—actual morning. Sunlight picks up shards of glass. A man, his back to the camera, stands hip-deep in the neat grave he digs for the boy.

Cut to an empty parking lot, filmed at night. Lem is reminded of the Bar’s T.V. & Appliances’ parking lot. One and the same? Credits appear, scroll from the top of the screen down.

Eject episode one; insert episode three.

The montage, the bell, then:

Close up of a slot car track—two race cars, one blue, one red—zip past. The camera draws back—a boy operates the cars. He’s in an unfinished basement. It’s sunlit. Two rectangular windows, high in the cement wall, propped open (just a hair). On a worktable against the wall are a row of paint cans. Bright, primary-color drips from the rim of each. Cardboard boxes are stacked in a corner. There’s a plastic sink for mops and a clothes washer. The boy’s slot car set on a low, plywood table. It’s a terrific set, with figure eights, an upper deck, glow-in-the-dark guardrails, a glow-in-the-dark wavy stretch of track, and a jump.

Lem is delighted—he remembers this episode. Or, at least, he remembers the boy’s slot car set. He wanted a set like it, but when he’d asked his parents they replied, “You don’t want that. It’s dangerous. A child died. The electricity can jump out.”

The boy looks up from his track, alert. The cars stop. The boy has heard a noise.

Lem remembers this moment too—how scared he’d felt for the boy.

The boy, “Hello?”

A figure emerges from behind the stack of boxes. It’s short. It’s covered in shaggy blankets. Although it has a face, the boy can’t look at it; instead, he is compelled to look only at the polished black stone on its forehead. The figure says, “I bring you wisdom.”

The figure says, “Who sees freedom and not terror wanders forever.”

The boy says, “Mother won’t let me go.”

The figure says, “Speech is weariness.”

The room darkens. The boy looks to the windows. There’s thunder.

The figure says, “Look.”

The boy looks out. “Oh!” he says. All the trees are red. The weeds are red. Aloe plants leak red.

The boy grows faint, staggers from the window, stumbles against the plywood table, and falls onto his slot car track. The figure rapidly shuffles from its corner. It leans over the boy, gurgles, and spews (from its mouth?) a viscous, red substance onto the boy. The substance sizzles. The figure sucks up the goo. Only bones are left behind.

An odd, comic gesture: The figure picks up (with what?) the slot-car controllers and races the cars around the track.

Roll credits.

It’s 4 am. Birds call: Lem hears mourning doves, sparrows, a jay—the calls become too numerous to parse. Raucous. That episode—Lem remembers the impression it made. The black stone on the forehead of the figure and the red world outside the basement windows. (He wrote, on the back cover of his school notebooks, “Speech is weariness.” What did it mean? It didn’t matter. It captivated him. He thought it might refer to the burden of social expectations. He didn’t think it could mean that words, rather than liberating ideas, smother thought and imprison the transmitter and the receiver.)

Lem wonders why his parents were so insistent he watch the show and then it dawns on him: did his parents work on the Distant Signals show? He rewinds the credits. His parents’ names do not appear. Of course not. It’s possible, Lem thinks, that Distant Signals was otherwise important to his parents. An influence on their work. He never thought of his parents as artists (they made local T.V. ads!) but his parents may have felt otherwise. Did his parents insist Lem watch Distant Signals in an attempt to share something of their inner lives? Were Lem’s parents not as cold as he remembers them?

Sleepily, Lem considers his parents: how uncommunicative they were, how anti-social, how restrictive and controlling, how strange. Wonders if they weren’t so strange—if it was his fault he didn’t understand them. He decides not to watch episode 14 yet—he’ll first look in the house for earlier episodes.

8.

Also forbidden is the attic. Was forbidden. The attic belongs to Lem, now. Yet, he hasn’t so much as peeked.

Lem hooks the loop of string and pulls down; unfolds the ladder and ascends.

The attic—it’s totally empty.

Careful not to bump his head on a crossbeam, Lem walks to one of the fan-shaped windows that looks out onto the lane, over the church’s peak, and across the marshes.

His phone vibrates.

His ex!

She’s crying. “I went to Angelo’s.”

Angelo’s is the little grocery near his ex’s apartment.

She says, “No one followed the arrows, people got too close, not six feet apart, people didn’t wear masks or wore a mask under their nose or wore it around their necks. I wore kitchen gloves and a mask and painter’s goggles over my glasses and my glasses fogged up so I couldn’t see. There’s no flour! I’m freaking out. I’m in the car. I’m freaking out.”

“You’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’ll feel better when get home. I’m going to go home, strip, shower, do laundry, and sign up for grocery delivery.” She hesitates. She’s calm. “What about you?”

“I’m fine. You won’t believe what I found. Remember that T.V. show I told you about? The show you’d never heard of even though you watched a million hours of T.V. when you were a kid?”

“What are you talking about? Do you have enough food?”

“Yes.”

“Did you apply for unemployment? I want to know you’re okay.”

“I am. I’m fine. I’m trying to tell you, I found video tapes. Copies of Distant Signals.”

“Online? Why is this important?”

“No. In my parents’ house. I’m in my parents’ house.”

She suddenly sounds less annoyed: “I didn’t know you’re at your parents’. Cleaning it out? That’s sad. I’d help, but, you know—.”

Lem’s first thought is that “you know” refers to the breakup, but quickly realizes “you know” means the lockdown. He says, “You could come. Quarantine in the guest room. You’d finally get to watch Distant Signals. I have flour. Why not?”

“No, Lem. First of all, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Distant Signals. I told you. The T.V. show that frightened me when I was little. It’s still frightening. You can watch it and we can talk about it. I’m looking for more tapes now.”

“Lem. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And we’re over, Lem, remember? We’re not shacking up during a pandemic. That’s not what I want. I’m glad you’re okay. Don’t call me.” She ends the call.

Lem is stunned; loudly sobs but quickly pulls himself together—he remembers why he’s in the attic.

9.

Although Lem intends to claim his parents’ bedroom as his own, he hasn’t yet; hasn’t even opened the door since he arrived two weeks ago. He opens the door. There’s a television and a VCR set up so the T.V. can be watched from bed. He’s anxious, as he pulls out an under-the-bed drawer, that he’ll find pornography, but all that’s in the drawer are neatly folded sweaters. The dresser is similarly tame. Nary a negligee or lacy panty—only clean, white underclothes. Utter sartorial normalcy. Incongruous with the witchy décor.

There’s a closet.

He puts his hand on the doorknob, breaks into a sweat, his heart beats fast, he twists the doorknob, opens the door wide, and feels foolish. Suits and dresses hang inside, shoeboxes are stacked on the floor and, in fact, contain shoes. From hooks screwed into the walls hang pocketbooks, belts, and a pair of binoculars. There’s a shelf over the closet rod; he reaches up, finds a blue coffee can. What’s in it rattles. He pulls off the yellow lid and finds teeth.

He doesn’t look too closely. His baby teeth?

He isn’t looking for teeth. Sets the can on the floor. I’ll deal with it later, he thinks.

10.

Episodes seven and eight of Distant Signals are on a single video cassette in a cardboard sleeve.

Lem finds the tape in the study, mixed in with a set of workout tapes—tapes his mother and father watched daily for a long time (when they exercised in the living room in front of the T.V., Lem was not allowed to participate; he’d once tried to join in—it looked like his parents were having fun!—but he was angrily banished to the backyard. Later, his mother explained, “These exercises are not for little boys. Do you want to tear your muscles?”).

To watch Distant Signals at midday, cheery sunlight on the wall behind the couch, doesn’t feel quite right, but Lem isn’t going to wait. What else is he going to do? When he shimmies the tape from its sleeve, an index card drops out: it’s a Distant Signals episode checklist. It’s typewritten—Lem recognizes the typeface as that of the bright red IBM Selectric III his parents owned. Fourteen episodes, each a one-word title followed by the unnecessary “ep.” So, “1. Burial ep.,” “2. Sump ep.,” “3. Shaman ep.,” etc., all the way through to “14. Last ep.” Lem pondered the titles of episodes as-of-yet un(re)watched—what’s a “sump”? (He looks it up on his phone: “a pit or reservoir serving as a drain or receptacle for liquids.”) The episodes he’s about to watch are “7. Bird ep.” and “8. Tree ep.”

He heard it’s good for an old tape to fast-forward it and then rewind it, so he fast-forwards and rewinds it.

The Distant Signals theme/montage and bell (the sound of the bell stretches into the opening scene of episode seven), then:

A boy (the same actor—he looks hollow-eyed and haggard) stands at a workbench with his back to us. He’s in a basement (the same basement?). Daylight streams in through an open window. The boy is hard at work with a small hammer, tapping small, shiny, zinc nails into the roof of a birdhouse. Pots of paint sit on a shelf above the workbench. He selects a color—paints the birdhouse a bright, glossy blue. Carefully, the boy sets the birdhouse down on the workbench to dry.

We see the boy at the window. He stands on a cinderblock, on his tip-toes.

He turns, then steps down from the cinderblock when he hears a noise from inside the birdhouse.

A scrawny, unhealthy bird emerges. It flies a wobbly spiral to a clothes line suspended above a clothes-washer. From its perch, it squawks.

It’s horrible. Hidden in the bird’s squawking is a tone that triggers a pang in Lem’s groin—he doubles over, reaches for the remote control, and mutes the T.V.

The boy covers his ears. The bird continues to make its wretched noise until the boy, incensed, swats at the bird and it falls to the floor, stunned.

Lem releases the mute.

The boy pants—or is it the bird? Is it Lem?

The boy, with difficulty, picks up the cinderblock from beneath the window and drops it on the bird. He lifts the block and we’re shown a close-up of the crushed bird—slimy guts, flattened beak.

The image slowly fades to black.

A scream and—

the screen is filled with the image of the boy, his body mangled like the bird’s. Lem jumps to his feet, utterly shocked. The image looks real… and then it doesn’t. The blood is candy-red, the guts are ropes, the flattened face is obviously latex.

Roll credits, pause tape before episode eight begins. Lem stands, paces the room, sits. Eyes the cassette labeled “Distant Signals, ep. 14.” Starts the tape. Distant Signals theme, etc.; episode eight begins:

A boy moves a box in a basement. Behind the box is a rectangular patch of hard-packed, dirt floor. A sapling grows in the dirt. The boy touches the sapling and is instantly transformed into a reptile-boy. His eyes are yellow, his skin scaly green, his tongue forked. He rushes around the basement, spitting and clawing at the walls.

Cut to: A human head, set in an aluminum paint tray. Its neck oozes blood. The head’s eyes blink; it rolls its eyes and whispers, “I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you.”

Cut to: Reptile-boy claws at window casing and hisses, “I can’t get out.”

Cut to:  A mysterious, shadowy figure emerges from a corner of the basement, unseen by the reptile-boy. The figure carries a syringe. Visible in the barrel of the syringe is a silver liquid. The figure sticks the reptile-boy with the needle and depresses the plunger. The reptile-boy collapses to the floor beneath the window. He transforms back into a boy. The figure says, “You cannot get out.” The boy’s flesh bubbles and the boy screams. Lem’s thumb hovers over the mute button but the boy’s scream is replaced by the tolling of church bells. Then the boy bursts and foamy blood pours onto the floor.

Cut to: The sapling.

Roll credits.

When Lem first saw the “Tree” episode (seated alone on this couch when he was no more than ten years old) he didn’t think much about the boy’s metamorphosis or the mysterious figure’s murderous intervention. Instead, he fixated on the decapitated head. During the night, awake in his bed, Lem traced the outline of the head on the ceiling. He believed he could hear it whisper, “I want to kiss you.” During the night, no matter how frightened Lem felt, he never went to his parents for comfort.

11.

A moth lands on a glue-trap Lem’s parents placed in the pantry. Nevertheless this precaution against pests, all the flour in the house is infested with eggs and larvae.  

12.

There’s space behind the stacked boxes in the basement. Quite a lot of space. The stack of boxes, on wheeled palettes, rolls smoothly; a loop of rope, tucked beneath the palette, serves as a handle. He pulls the stack toward him.

No trove of Tutankhamen. A window, exactly like the window above the worktable, covered with a sheet of plywood. Easily removed with a hammer’s claw. A tabletop, big as a twin mattress, lies on the floor. Not easily moved. He’ll risk a hernia some other day.

Lem opens the windows and props up the bunker doors that open to the backyard. The weather’s fair. He watches a cloud. It occurs to him he hasn’t set foot outside in days. He walks the perimeter of the backyard; feels the rough lichen that grows on the split-rail fence, toes clumps of weed.

A military helicopter abruptly appears in the sky, outrageously loud though far-off, beyond the marshes. Lem feels surveilled; hustles back to the basement.

He finds video equipment, sound equipment, lighting equipment, cables, an Amiga computer, etc. He finds a box of neatly folded child-sized clothes. Presumably, from his own childhood. Kept for sentimental reasons? His parents were not sentimental people.

He finds a Tyco “Zero Gravity Cliff Hangers” slot car set and a Tyco “Turbo Racing with Nite Glow” slot car set, both repackaged in their original boxes. Gifts purchased for him, but never given?

He removes the Turbo Racing set from its box and assembles, as per the instructions, a “basic oval” track on the tabletop. Plugs the yellow controllers into the terminal track and the “power pack” into a nearby outlet. Careful to fit the guide pin into the track slot, he sets the blue, then the red car onto the course. He runs the blue car, slowing for curves, pushing it as fast as it’ll go on straightaways. As the blue car laps the course (the red car, dormant) he can no longer delude himself; he is certain his parents did not buy this toy as a gift but as a prop for the show that they made in this basement.

13.

Lem watches the last episode of Distant Signals.

He knows now whose teeth his parents kept (keep) in their bedroom closet and he knows how the teeth were extracted.

14.

Hidden beneath the tabletop in the basement, in a shallow pit, is the rest of the show. Master tapes, costumes, props, and the boy. Missing since 1986. Abducted by Lem’s parents. An actor. A stand-in.

For all of quarantine, Lem stays-at-home and watches Distant Signals. Studies each episode in the hope of learning what went wrong. Helicopters fly low. Food rots. Thousands of people die every day.