Page 52 of In Her Wake
The typewriter sounds grew louder, more insistent.The rhythm had a frantic quality now, as if whoever—or whatever—was typing had been seized by urgency or inspiration.The clatter echoed, multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Jenna’s dreamscape shifted again.The forest thinned, and before her stood a small cabin constructed of rough-hewn logs darkened by age and weather.A thin wisp of smoke curled from a stone chimney, disappearing into the uncertain sky.Near the front door, an axe was embedded in a stump, a neat pile of split firewood stacked against the cabin wall.The scene would have been mundane, even picturesque, if not for that persistent clacking of typewriter keys from inside.
The vultures still circled overhead, but now they seemed fixed in place, as if painted onto the sky rather than flying through it.Their shadows, however, moved independently across the ground, sliding over the cabin and through the trees.
Jenna approached the door, her footsteps making no sound despite the carpet of dry leaves that now covered the ground.The typing continued unabated—click-clack-click-clack-ding—a rhythm as steady as a metronome.She raised her hand and knocked firmly against the weathered wood.
No response came, just the uninterrupted sound of keys striking paper.Whoever was typing either couldn’t hear her or was choosing to ignore her presence.She knocked again, louder this time, but the typing never faltered.
“Hello?”she called, her voice sounding thin and insubstantial against the solid reality of the cabin.“Is anyone there?”
The typewriter continued its relentless pace.Jenna reached for the wrought iron door handle, half-expecting it to be locked, but then she realized the door was slightly ajar.It swung inward on silent hinges, revealing the cabin’s sparse interior—a single room containing a small potbellied stove, a narrow cot pushed against one wall, and a simple wooden table placed directly beneath the room’s only window.
At the table sat a figure that made Jenna’s breath catch in her throat.It wasn’t human—not exactly.It was a mannequin like those she’d seen in Liza Sewell’s studio.Its unclothed body had the articulated joints of a museum-quality display figure, the kind used for historical exhibits.Its fully jointed hands moved across the keys of an ancient typewriter, striking each one with force.A stack of typed pages rose beside it.
But it was the mannequin’s head that truly unsettled her.Unlike those in the other cases, this one had no face at all—just a smooth, blank oval where features should have been.No eyes to see the keys, no mouth to speak, yet its fingers found each letter without hesitation, and the papers kept filling up with words she couldn’t read from where she stood.
“Excuse me,” Jenna said softly, uncertain if the figure could hear or understand.
Without turning or pausing in its typing, the mannequin responded in a voice like gravel dragged across weathered boards.“Go away.I’m busy.”
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, not from the featureless head but from the air itself.Jenna took a step closer, drawn by curiosity and the strange certainty that this encounter mattered.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said.“But I need to ask you something.”
The typing stopped abruptly.The mannequin’s hands froze above the keys, as if caught mid-word.Slowly, with a creaking of joints that sounded painful, it turned toward her.Though it had no eyes, Jenna felt its attention fix on her with unnerving intensity.
“Sheriff Graves,” it said, surprise evident in its rough voice.“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“You know me?”
The mannequin's head tilted slightly, a too-human gesture from its inhuman form."Of course, I know you.We've met before.I'm surprised you don't remember me."
Jenna searched her memory, trying to place this strange entity within the context of her waking life, but found nothing.“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“It doesn’t matter,” the mannequin interrupted, turning back to the typewriter.“You won’t remember this conversation when you wake up anyway.”
“What are you typing?”Jenna asked, moving around to try to see the pages, but the words seemed to blur whenever she looked directly at them.
The mannequin’s shoulders lifted in what might have been a shrug.“I wish I knew.I thought I was finished with this kind of thing for good.Thought I could settle down to a solitary life out here in the woods.But somebody had other plans for me.”
“What do you mean?Who is ‘somebody’?”
The faceless head turned toward her again, and though it had no mouth, Jenna could have sworn it smiled—a cold, joyless expression felt rather than seen.
“Somebody thought he was doing me a favor by putting me in this situation,” the mannequin said.“He told me I was his first.The irony is that I thought we had a lot in common, he and I.He told me what he believed.He’s a philosopher, you see.Like me, he’s had enough of the human race.He talked about euthanasia.And happiness.”
"Euthanasia?Happiness?"Jenna repeated the words, sending a shiver down her spine."What does that mean?"
“If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it to you.Still, I’ve got to admit he made at least some sense to me.This is a cruel world, and as an ancient philosopher once said, the greatest blessing is never to have been born.But I sure as hell wasn’t ready to leave this world, cruel though it may be.”
The figure continued typing.
“Who are you?”she asked again, more urgently this time.“Please, it’s important.”
The mannequin’s hands stilled on the keys.“You met me once, Sheriff Graves.Just once.I was different then.Had a face, for one thing.”It gestured toward its blank visage with one perfectly articulated hand.“Now I’m just waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
