Nightscript : Volume 8 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chthonic Matter
Published: 2022-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

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Sam Dawson has been quietly writing (and sometimes illustrating) stories for 25 years now. By trade a journalist, his collection, Pariah & Others Stories, was published last year by Supernatural Tales.

The Change

Justin A. Burnett

Everyone had already begun to whisper about the conversation by the time Harl saw it happening. Concord and Gabel were in the doorway at the front of the processing room. It was toward the end of the shift and the sunlight was diminishing, masking Concord and Gabel with shadows that rendered their gestures obscure. Gabel was crying, and Concord kept folding and unfolding his hands, as if he were explaining something of great importance. By the time Harl had stopped to watch, frozen midway to his desk holding a rack of specimens, Gabel was steadying herself against the wall with one hand, the other twisted desperately in the cuff of Concord’s lab coat. Her breath came in rushed staccato bursts while his was calm, undetectable even, as if what he said was rehearsed.

Everyone knew about Gabel by then, but they weren’t thinking about that now. The conversation momentarily eclipsed the general interest in her private scandals, even if, for no reason that anyone could recall, no one attempted to get close enough to eavesdrop. Just a few more feet and Harl himself would’ve been within earshot, a fact that plagued him later, as if his failure to intervene had resulted in something terrible.

But nothing terrible happened—quite the opposite. Gabel kept wiping away the tears and smiling, and everyone could tell that the smile was genuine and heartfelt and not at all the kind that would accompany tears of embarrassment or shame. If Concord’s words produced a desired result, he betrayed no indication of the fact. His features, always stern through the workday, seemed more severe than ever, perhaps even angry. Gabel’s tears softened nothing in him, but she shed them all the same, and happily.

At last, after what seemed an impossible stretch of time, Concord stopped speaking, straightened his lab coat, and returned to his desk. Gabel’s gaze followed him dreamily from the doorway, and before the spell that had fallen across the room had time to dissolve, she receded into the shadows toward the front of the office. It was so quiet in the processing area that everyone heard the front door open then close behind her.

Over the next few days, when it became clear that Gabel wasn’t returning to work, her absence began to reverberate throughout the pathology lab. For a short time, several employees insisted that Gabel was sorely missed. Twice, when Harl managed to carefully drift into the vicinity of a conversation, he overheard that Gabel no longer responded to phone calls or messages over social media. It was difficult for Harl to imagine that no one associated Gabel’s vanishing with her conversation with Concord, but if any connection was made, it wasn’t mentioned. Nor did anyone appear willing to question Concord himself. Harl could hardly blame them, for Concord seemed to grow ever more cold and remote, his dark scowl sealing him against the curiosity of his coworkers.

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