Installation 33: Sounds From the Underground previous
The Museum was plagued by the sounds of deep sorrow. The first report came from Sigrid Danforth, who complained to facilities maintenance she was unable to work due to a “constant moaning” coming through the walls. Then Lars Auerbach asked that someone come to his office to listen for what sounded like a wounded animal trapped in the building’s ventilation system.
“I can’t work,” he complained. “Thinking there’s a dog down there with a broken leg.”
“It’s nothing,” Ken Miller, Chief Technician, said. “We were testing the air cooling system over the weekend. Things shift and settle.”
“Listen to it!” Lars said. “It’s not the sound of things shifting or settling. That’s misery coming through the ducts.”
Ken crouched by the vent in Lars’s office and even shined his flashlight into it, although that did little more than illuminate the metal shaft. There was the sound, from far below, of someone or something crying, growling, keening. It was clearly the sound of intense pain softened by nothing and no one. Ken stood up and shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Wait and see if it quits.”
“Don’t you think you should go and check it out?” Lars asked.
“I suppose,” Ken said. “After lunch.”
“It’s a ghost,” Mary Ellen Hightower said in the staff room as she ate a bowl of blueberries and organic yogurt. “The ghost of a museum worker from the 1980s. Didn’t you know a man hung himself in Storage Room C? He weeps tears of blood.”
“We should go down there,” Penn Bradley said without looking up from the latest issue of Art News.
“No,” Phoebe said. “We shouldn’t. It could be dangerous.”
“I didn’t know there was a Storage Room C,” Sigrid said. “Where is that?”
“I assume somewhere near Storage Room A and B,” Penn said.
“Storage Room B is off limits to unauthorized employees,” Phoebe said.
Next to her, Karl laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” Phoebe said, talking loudly so as to be heard over a fresh set of wails spiraling up from the depths of the building. “I’m not. I think we need to be respectful of the rules, as laid out in the Employee Handbook.”
“Storage is locked,” Pennn said. “We’d have to get someone to unlock it for us.”
“Well, then, it’s settled,” Phoebe said. “None of us have time for that.”
Karl gave her a strange look. She stood, sweeping up her copy of Vogue and the remnants of her lunch.
“I have to get back to work,” she said.
“Good luck,” Mary Ellen said. “I can’t concentrate. It reminds me of when I told my ex-husband I was leaving him and not paying off any more of his student loans.”
“This goddamn crying is giving me a migraine,” Carlotta said. “Someone should get a gun and go down there and put whatever it is out of its misery.”
“Right,” Phoebe said, keeping her eyes on her computer screen.
Phoebe was nervous. All day she had alternated between sweating and feeling chilled to the bone as the crying and carrying on continued. Not even crawling up on her desk and closing the vent had lessened the noise. Across the room, Fern sat with her hands poised motionless over her keyboard, a cardigan sweater draped over her thin shoulders.
“Are you OK, Fern?” Phoebe asked. “Too cold? Too hot?”
“It’s him,” Fern said. “Its my masked attacker.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “It’s a raccoon caught in a vent. Maintenance will take care of it.”
“He’s coming for me,” Fern said. “I see him everywhere. In my dreams, behind every vending machine.”
“Fern,” Phoebe said. “That’s all over now.”
“It will never be over,” Fern said, looking much like a ship rat going down in a storm. “I’m marked.”
“Can I get you something?” Phoebe asked. “A coffee?”
“The only thing that will make me feel better is winning my lawsuit,” Fern said. “So I never have to work again.”
At 3:00 in the afternoon, it stopped. As suddenly as it had come on, the crying and wailing ended. At her desk, Phoebe looked up. The silence was deafening. Fern started to type. Phoebe got up and went into the hallway. From other offices, she heard people cheering the end of the racket. But there was something in the air, an electricity or a thin haze of danger. Phoebe stood and waited in the hallway, surrounded by white walls and beige carpeting, lit by flickering fluorescents.
The Phantom was all cried out. He had no more tears. He was hungry, thirsty, tired. He’d had enough. Bitches bit his lip and made it bleed. Bitches led him on, making him think if he just helped them, he could win them. Bitches. Who could figure them out? He had his piano, his artifacts, his beloved Storage Room B. But he didn’t have Phoebe. He wanted Phoebe. He wanted his bitch. He rolled himself into the tapestry that served as a blanket to think and then to sleep. In his dreams, Phoebe came to him in a white dress, riding a unicorn. Beautiful Phoebe, Queen of Underground Storage. If she wouldn’t come to him, he would bring her there.