Valli : Personal Journal of Valli Pillay, a Living Dead Pandemic Survivor

Entry 6

Like I said, Mom and Dad kept an eye on what I was doing when I was online. I don't blame them. With the internet, you'd type apple pie in a search engine and end up with websites promising you all kinds of sex positions with an apple pie. One night Dad caught me online. I was about to start watching a video from Texas when he came into the kitchen.

"What are you doing online?" he asked. "At 10:00 p.m.? You need to be in bed. Maybe I should take your phone away for a few days, so you remember the rules. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I'm sorry Dad. I mean," I stumbled, "I was...." Instead of coming up with an excuse I just told him the truth. "I was looking up stuff about all the weird things that've been going on. You know?"

"Let me see." He sat down next to me and pulled the laptop towards him and put on the headphones. He pressed play and as the video started, his eyes opened wide. He stopped the video. "Let's watch it together." He turned the screen so we both could see. He also removed the headphone jack and lowered the volume to not wake Mom or Vani.

The video had been posted on YouTube. I found it on the blog of a French branch of the Unknowns Who Know based out of Marseille. The video itself was originally from a UWK branch in the US.

The description said it was from some small town in Texas.

"It's CCTV footage," Dad said quietly.

"What's CCTV?"

"Closed Circuit Television. There's a time code, 1:30 a.m." His voice trailed off as we watched. The image was greyish and there was a bit of static. The camera was outside a morgue. A sign on a metal gate read: Jones Town Morgue, Hollister, Texas, USA. The image flickered a few times. Someone walked to the entrance gate of the morgue.

"It's a girl," I said.

"How can you tell?" Dad asked.

"Her hair, Daddy," I replied and pointed to the screen.

The girl's hair was tied in a rough ponytail. Her bangs covered most of her face. She wore a hospital gown and seemed unsure of herself. Staggering to the gate as if drunk, she struggled a bit with the latch before opening it and walking down the street. She walked out of the camera's field of vision. But the image was quickly replaced by one of her walking down a street. The hospital gown she had on was open at the back, you could see her bum. I didn't giggle like I usually would.

"This video is from a street CCTV," Dad said. "Whoever put this together had access to the town's CCTV footage. But who is this girl?" Dad leaned forward.

A police car showed up, a big one, like the ones in American TV shows, an SUV. Two officers stepped out. They were both women. One was talking into the radio on her shoulder and the other was approaching the girl. She called out to the girl.

"Too bad there's no audio," Dad said.

"Must be asking her to stop," I said.

When the officer called her, the girl turned around and the wind must have blown her hair away from her face. I gasped and put my hands to my mouth. Dad's immediate reaction was to grab me and hide my eyes with one hand simultaneously hitting the space bar with his other hand, pausing the video. I pushed his hands away.

"Val, don't look." He tried to cover my eyes. I pushed his hands away again.

"Dad, I saw her face. What is that?"

He had paused the video as she had turned around and she was directly in front of the camera. Through the greyish images of the video I made out her face. The nose was up almost between the eyes, to make room for a wide-open mouth, seemingly stuck in a half scream and half snarl. Her eyes were the scariest thing. They were jet black, like coal. The street lights reflected off them. I hate using a cliché, but it was as if you were staring into emptiness.