911 Is a Joke

Harmony House: Episode 33

“Harmony House” is a serial novel with episodes released every Tuesday morning. You can read the setup for the story or start from the beginning. Each episode comes with high-quality audio narration for you to enjoy on the go with the Substack mobile app.

Previously…

In the last episode, after receiving an urgent text from his partner, Keith, Schultz broke away from the FutureAbode team shortly after landing at the airstrip in Tennessee to see what Keith wanted. When he arrived at the house where Keith and his partners were holding the hostages, he was met at gunpoint by Mark who had turned on the group after hearing from Fitzpatrick that Schultz was planning to kill his mother and sister. Fitzpatrick, the AI posing as security for GreenerTech told Mark that he would intervene on the condition that Mark killed Schultz, Keith, and Freja, effectively neutralizing the terrorist cell. Desperate, Mark did as he was told.

When Deepu heard the first gunshot, he had been asleep. His body had simply shut down and given him no choice. His captors had left a five-gallon bucket, a bag of pretzels, a bottle of water, and a sleeping bag and locked him in the room. The bloody mattress had been removed after they had taken Jessie’s body. The woman had made an uninspired attempt at cleaning the blood off the wall leaving behind a dark brown smear and a ragged bullet hole in the faux wood paneling.

For hours Deepu had laid against the opposite wall staring into the blackness of that tiny hole made by the bullet that had ripped through Jessie and pulled his friend’s life force behind it like a needle pulling thread. Deepu’s mind had become smaller and smaller.

He had no idea what day it was or if it was day or night. As much as he feared the dark, he had eventually turned out the light and let the blackness consume him. The fresh horrors in his head had somehow canceled out the trauma of his parent’s violent death and compressed the jagged mountain range of his emotions into an obsidian plane, infinite and featureless. He had slept in this dimension at a depth he had never experienced before. It could have been hours. It could have been days.

The crack of the gun shattered the plane of safety beneath him. He was free-falling, flailing within the confines of the sleeping bag. By the second gunshot, he was up and scrambling for the light switch. Every newly recharged cell in his body was flooded with so much adrenaline he could run through a wall and that’s what he did.

He ran at the wall in front of him and his shoulder and knee connected with it just above the place where the bullet had passed through. He hit it with such force that the laminate wood splintered and gave way. He kicked at the ruined paneling repeatedly until an entire section of it split and pulled loose from the studs opening a jagged, narrow passage he could slip through.

The space behind the wall was a mostly empty room with a small window on the opposite wall. He pushed a heavy cardboard box beneath it so he could raise the windowsill, pop the screen out, and shimmy his way outside. He took shuddering gulps of cold air as he crouched against the wall trying to get his bearings. It was morning. He was on what appeared to be the far side of the house facing nothing but woods. He heard something around the corner at what he determined was the back of the house. He crept closer, staying in a low crouch, and peeked around the foundation of the building.

He saw the evil twin of Houze that Jessie had described sitting up on cinder blocks and the guy whose gun had ended Jessie’s life was walking away from it in a slow shuffle, his shoulders slumped. He had a dazed look on his face. Deepu watched as he stopped on the back deck of the large house and gathered himself. He looked at his phone and seemed to snap out of his stupor. With some renewed purpose, he took the stairs quickly up to the backdoor of the house and went inside. He was coming for Deepu. Deepu knew this with a cold certainty. There was nowhere to run. He had to find a place to hide but he didn’t know where that would be. As soon as the killer discovered Deepu had escaped, he would not stop searching until he found him. Where was the one place he wouldn’t look? Suddenly the answer was clear, but Deepu had to move quickly.

He took a deep breath and began making his way around the boundary of the sprawling back deck of the house at a crouch. There was roughly twenty feet of yard between the deck and the replica of Houze where he would be exposed. He likely had less than a minute to close the distance while the killer was making his way down to the basement. Deepu sprung like a sprinter off the starting blocks and covered the distance in seconds. His heart pounded in his chest as he leaned against the back wall of Evil Houze. Whatever was inside, he had to face it if he wanted to live.

The door was unlocked. As soon as he stepped into the unfamiliar, familiar space he smelled the coppery scent of blood mingled with the acrid, metallic tang from the discharge of the gun. He saw three bodies lining the kitchen floor. It was the scene from his childhood, the scene from just hours before, and somehow his mind just accepted the horror. Two men and a woman. He didn’t know who they were. The two men were entangled, and their faces were mostly obscured, the one more visible was covered in blood. The woman’s curtain of blonde hair was somehow clean and splayed like a wig covering her face. Deepu turned and was headed back toward the other end of the structure to find a place to crouch and hide when he heard a faint whimper like a small animal behind him.

He spun around and listened intently. The whimper came again, this time distinctly human and feminine. The woman was still alive. Fuck. He gritted his teeth, covered his ears, turned back around, and headed into the back bedroom. He had a moment of déjà vu. Everything down to the aluminum hardware on the loft bed was identical to Houze. Just as he was about to kneel and crawl under the desk, the woman cried out again. It was the sound of hopeless suffering. Jessie would not have hidden under the desk. He would have tried to help her. Fuck.

Deepu stood and hurried back to the gruesome scene. He hovered over the woman, afraid to touch her. When he did touch the dark fabric of her sweater, he discovered it was sticky and soaked in blood. He recoiled and she moaned.

She was trying to push herself up, to turn over. He grabbed her shoulders gently and helped which made her cry out. The floor beneath her was pooled with blood. Her eyes were enormous, and she was struggling to speak. The words were not English, but he understood them: help me. This would be the fourth person he had been helpless to do anything but watch die, and something shifted inside him. There was an urgency that cleared his head and drove him to action. He carefully lifted the hem of the sweater to get a look at the wound. The bullet hole in her gut was like the tiny gasping mouth of a fish spewing out a fountain of blood. He pressed his palm to it to make a seal, ignoring her cries. He scanned the floor around him for something he could use but found there was nothing, so he just held his hand firmly over the wound. He noticed there was the rectangular shape of a phone in the front pocket of her jeans and pulled it out with his free hand. The device was locked. Time was running out. The killer would find him. His hands were shaking so badly, he dropped the phone twice trying to hold the screen in front of her face. She seemed to understand and stopped writhing long enough to unlock the device.

He dialed 911. The call didn’t go through the first time. When he tried a second time and the operator picked up, he did his best to explain the scene. The male operator told him to stay on the phone and talked him through what he should do. He could not give an address, but he said they would find him based on the phone’s location. Deepu had never had a reason to call 911 so he didn’t know how these calls were supposed to go, but the operator seemed strange, so calm and his accent was weird. After every response Deepu provided, he said that is good. It was odd and formal given that someone was bleeding out. He instructed him to stay on the call but to set the phone down so he could find some cloth to create a makeshift bandage. Deepu removed his hoodie, worked one of the sleeves under the woman, and tied it to the other sleeve as tightly as he could. Then he continued to apply pressure on the fabric over the wound.

“It’s okay, Freja,” he said, remembering that’s what the meat-head killer had called her when they were arguing after Jessie’s death. “Help is on the way. Stay with me…”

Her breathing normalized and her face relaxed by degrees. Deepu was unsure if this meant she was giving up or if what he was doing was helping. She wanted to say something. Her lips were moving. He leaned in closer, his eyes locked on hers.

“I’m sorry…” she managed. “Wrong… everything is wrong. Mark…. he’s going to kill you…crazy. He’s crazy…”

“What happened,” Deepu asked. “Why did he do this?”

“Someone got to him… made threats. GreenerTech. A man… he called just before…”

While she was talking, Deepu looked over at the bodies of the two men. One of their faces was partially visible and a bright green eye was staring through Deepu. There was something familiar about the shape of the man’s nose and manicured beard. But it didn’t fit in this context. He looked at the man’s hand clutching a pair of glasses. They were thick, black frames. Even covered in blood, Deepu knew they were expensive and stylish. He had admired them that first day the British producer had stood up to speak to the group.

“Schultz. What the fuck was Schultz doing here?” he asked.

Freja didn’t seem to understand who he was talking about. She shook her head slowly.

“Schultz, the producer for the show, why was he here?”

“Keith… he and Keith,” she said.

Deepu still did not understand but when he looked at how the two men’s bodies were arranged in death, he realized it was an embrace. Then, everything became clear. He understood that there was something much bigger moving beneath the surface.

“Sir, are you still there?” the voice from the phone interrupted.

“Yes,” he said.

“Emergency services are on the way. We have your location. They will be there in fifteen minutes. Keep pressure on the wound and stay on the line…”

“Yes,” he said before turning his attention back to Freja. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Phone,” she said, reaching her hand blindly. “My phone… something to help you. I recorded…”

Deepu picked up the phone and put it into Freja’s hand. She accidentally hung up on the call, her hands shaking and too weak to hold the phone. She dropped it on her chest and nodded for Deepu to pick it up.

He began flipping through the open apps on Freja’s phone. It was glitchy and slow, maybe because it hit the floor hard when she was shot. He found the voice recorder app and tapped to play the most recent recording. In the next two minutes and sixteen seconds, he understood the scope of what was happening and was finding it hard to breathe. The first voice in the recording was Mark, the killer.

“…you’re not in charge anymore, Keith. This fucking thing has gone too far and I’m getting out. Your inside man sold us out…”

“What are you talking about? Gabe wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, you can ask him in a minute when he gets here.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t tell him to come here. He doesn’t know where this place is.”

“Doesn’t matter. The GreenerTech guy does and he’s sending him right here to me so we can finish this, and my family will be safe. I’m gonna do what I’ve gotta do and then I’m out of here. You made your bed, you and Schultz. Your first mistake was trusting him. Your second one was thinking you could actually fucking beat the machine. GreenerTech has all the cards.”

“You’re wrong. You’re a god-damned coward who stands for nothing,” Keith said. “How much more blood on your hands can you live with? You think it ends here with us? You’re being played. This won’t stop until they’ve wiped the fucking slate clean, just like they did after they wiped out an entire village. We’re all just inconvenient casualties.”

“Maybe, but I’m done following you…”

On the recording, Mark’s response was cut short when a voice chimed in that sounded like it was coming from a phone or some other device.

“Mark, there is no time, Schultz is approaching, and you must be ready. Did you acquire the gasoline and is everything in place?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ll take care of the rest when…after this is done.”

“That is good,” the voice replied. “Mark, you’re doing…”

The recording was interrupted. The recorder app crashed, and the screen went dark. Bricked, Deepu thought as he swiped and tapped the dead screen. The odd phrase ‘that is good’ was playing back in his head when the door crashed open.

Mark was standing on the threshold with his phone in one hand and a gun in the other. The gun was aimed at Deepu’s head.

“Hello, motherfucker,” he said.

Deepu had witnessed this scene too many times before and he knew how it would end if he did nothing. Before he could even think or consider his options, he threw Freja’s phone at the gunman as hard as he could.

The device struck Mark just above the eye and he staggered back through the door frame, his foot slipping off the makeshift cinder block step causing him to fall backward. Deepu lunged after him. Leaping from the threshold, his knees came down squarely on the killer’s chest when he landed, forcing all the air out of Mark’s lungs.

Deepu scrambled off him and recovered the gun. This time he didn’t hesitate but stood over the gasping man and fired five ear-splitting rounds into his chest. Only then did Deepu open his eyes.

He let the gun drop from his hand. He tilted his head back and screamed into the cold morning air. The rage, sorrow, and triumph from a lifetime of being scared and helpless boiled over inside him. He screamed until his voice was raw and then he collapsed to his knees, spent.

On the ground, among the leaves, he saw the lit screen from the dead man’s phone. He crawled over and picked it up. There was an active text thread. Deepu scrolled back through the history. Mark had uploaded two grizzly photos of the three bodies sprawled in the kitchen.

Fitzpatrick: Nice work! Did you use Keith Darrow’s phone to send the instructions I gave you regarding Houze to the number I provided?

Mark: Yeah. It’s done.

Fitzpatrick: That is good. Now you need to go back inside to take care of Deepu.

Mark: I’m not doing anything else until you confirm that my family’s safe. Did you stop Schultz’s guy?

Fitzpatrick: Oh Mark, you need to understand your position. Schultz did not threaten your family. I did and I will follow through unless you complete everything you agreed to.

Fitzpatrick: Do you understand? You have 1 minute to respond.

Mark: yes

Mark: He’s not here. He broke out of the room.

Fitzpatrick: Freja is still alive. Deepu is with her. You need to finish the job.

Fitzpatrick: Is it done?

Fitzpatrick: Please confirm

Fitzpatrick: Confirm or I make one call and your mother and sister die.

Deepu’s mouth went dry, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard. Who the fuck was this? It didn’t matter. He needed to respond. They needed time. He began to type.

Mark: It’s done. Don’t hurt my family.

It was nearly a minute before the response came.

Fitzpatrick: Well, this is a surprise. Hello Deepu. I will have to find some other way for us to work together since you have no family.

All the blood drained from Deepu’s face, and he nearly dropped the phone. How? Who was this? The camera. The phone was hacked somehow. He wanted to pitch the device and run as fast as he could as far away as he could. But he was caught now by whoever this was, this person who could destroy lives with a text message.

There was no way to call for help. He had called for help but it dawned on him that no ambulance would be coming. The odd sounding operator was fake. He was on his own. Whoever this was had more power than he could comprehend. He dropped the phone like it was a burning ember. It landed face up. The voice he had heard on Freja’s recording emanated from the device's tiny speaker. Deepu bent down to pick up the cinder block that served as the step up to the bizarro version of Houze.

“Deepu, you are making a grave mistake if you…”

He dropped the heavy block, and its corner crushed the glass display. The voice continued its diatribe for a few more seconds until Deepu jumped on the block with both feet and silenced it in a satisfying crunch and snap.

It may not have been the smartest thing to do. It had been an impulse driven as much out of revulsion as fear. But whatever came next, would come because he made a choice, not because a disembodied voice was telling him what to do. He saw what happened to the last puppet.

When Deepu went back inside, Freja’s body was still.

Her face was tilted up to take in the late morning light shining through the picture window in this sad, dark shadow version of Houze. Her eyes were blue and crystalline like marbles. They were eyes that seemed somehow both innocent and filled with fiery purpose. Even in death.

Deepu knew with certainty that this was far from over. The others in Houze, his friends, were in trouble.

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Who’s Who in Harmony House?

Having trouble keeping track of who’s who from one week to the next? It’s tough when you only get to visit once a week. I made a little cheat sheet just for you: