We Are All Completely Fine by Darryl Gregory Page A

apartment. Hadn’t even tried to run. But there were other people out there, people listening to the whispers.
    Martin shouldn’t have told the dwellers that this was their place now. He shouldn’t have invited them in. He lay on his back, watching the room’s single window, and hoped that they hadn’t noticed that he’d returned.
    At the next meeting, Martin sat in his usual spot, waiting. Stan complained about nurses creeping around on the second floor of his house where he didn’t go anymore, going through his things, looking for valuables. Then Barbara talked about an apartment where she went at night to do photography or painting or something. These people had houses on top of houses. Harrison probably kept summer homes on each coast.
    Greta, once again, sat there saying nothing.
    “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Barbara was saying. “I know I’d be safer at home with my husband. We have an excellent alarm system. But it’s only in the studio that I feel safe.”
    “Safe from what?” Jan asked.
    “The Scrimshander,” Barbara said.
    “But he’s dead,” Greta said. She looked at Harrison. “It’s in the books. Lub stabbed him through the heart with a harpoon.”
    Barbara looked shaken. “Is that true?”
    “You can’t trust what’s in the books,” Harrison said.
    “Amen,” Stan said.
    “But in this case,” Harrison said. “Yes, he’s dead. I saw it myself. And it wasn’t a harpoon through the heart—that’s the kiddie version. We cut off his head and burned it.”
    “But he’s not human,” Barbara said. “He could come back.”
    Stan said, “You want him to come back.”
    “Of course not!” Barbara said.
    “Not really come back,” the old man said. “But just to end the waiting. I’m always waiting. Sometimes I think I’m still up there in the nets, the boy running his fingers through my hair, waiting for the Weavers to take me down for the next treatment.”
    “Stan,” Harrison said. “Let Barbara finish.”
    Barbara was staring straight ahead—in Greta’s direction, but Martin thought that she wasn’t seeing anyone in the room. “He carved pictures into me,” Barbara said. “The last thing he said to me was, ‘I left you a message.’” She inhaled shakily and seemed to come to herself. “But if he’s dead, who’s going to tell me what he drew?”
    “How about x-rays?” Harrison asked. “MRIs?”
    “X-rays don’t show the surface of the bone,” Barbara said. “MRIs don’t work either. Ultrasound gets close, but it won’t show the fine marks.”
    No one had any more ideas. Greta said nothing—of course.
    Then Jan said, “Tell us more about the apartment, Barbara. Why do you think you feel safer there?”
    Barbara started talking about some kind of bathtub. Martin watched the clock on his frames, wondering how long it would take them to finally talk about Greta. She glowed in his peripheral vision. He thought he was going to scream. Then he took off his frames.
    Barbara stopped talking. He’d jerked in his seat, and the legs had loudly scraped the floor.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. He put the glasses back on.
    “What is it?” Jan asked.
    When he’d taken off the frames, he’d glanced at Greta, and she was still glowing. He could still see the fire behind her eyes. That should have been impossible.
    Jan said, “I’ve been getting the feeling that you had something to say, Martin. Did you want to say something to Barbara?”
    Not to Barbara, he thought. “Please. Go on,” he said.
    “It’s okay,” Barbara said. “Say what’s on your mind.”
    That flash of Greta’s true nature, without the filter of the software, had thrown him off. It took him a moment to realize that this was the moment to speak he’d been waiting for.
    “I feel like we’re being judged,” Martin said. He’d thought about this sentence for a while. That “we” was strategically placed. This wasn’t about him, he was saying; this was about the group being