Long-Term Effects
by David August
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Exhausted, the judge waited for some reaction but found that he could hear no one else breathing besides himself. He brushed the palms of his hands over his eyes to wipe away his tears.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he was not in his own bedroom, but back in the hotel room. All the sheets were scattered on the floor, and through the window he could see the sun beginning to rise.
He didn’t go to work. He called in sick, and as luck would have it, he didn’t have to sit in open court that day. But he had to turn off his cell phone because his assistant kept calling him. The judge could tell by the tone of the messages that the young man was worried about him. The thought that the assistant might think he was weak annoyed him no end.
He knew he had some amphetamine-mixed salts around the house from when he had been working on his Ph.D. five years earlier, but he had to go all over the house looking for them. When he finally found them, he took two pills on the spot, even though the drug was past its expiration date, and washed them down with half a pot of coffee. The trembling in his hands that followed was not as frightening to him as the possibility of falling asleep.
While looking for the pills, he discovered in the medicine cabinet some brand-new N95 masks like the ones he and his wife had used during the pandemic. He had forgotten they still had them in the house, and in a rage he tore them apart, not stopping until he had shredded them all. It felt good to release the anger he had held in after so many sleepless nights.
When night came, he was well awake, but just to be sure, he took a few more pills and settled down in front of the TV, determined to stay up all night. He couldn’t imagine the ghost, if it was really a ghost and not him losing his mind, appearing there in the bright living room while a silly movie was playing.
He checked the time and it was just after midnight. He thought about using the remote to switch to another program and the next thing he knew he was in a dark room. He didn’t notice any transition, but he could tell he was back in his bedroom. As he began to cry softly, he refused to look at the clock again, knowing what the screen would show.
Within seconds he heard the dead voice ask, as if their conversation the night before had never ended, “Why did you silence their voices?”
With an effort to keep his panic under control, the judge said, “What will it take to get rid of you?”
“My husband remarried last month,” the voice said. “My daughter has a new mother and she will never have any memories of me. She was just too little. I don’t know how I know, I can’t see her anymore. It is as it should be, but it still hurts. It hurts all the time.”
“Last month...” the judge intoned. He silently asked the question, “There was something else that happened last month, wasn’t there?” Yes, he was sure of it, some news he had read online. Something about a local politician promoting her book, bragging about all the things she had supposedly done for the people during the pandemic.
Before he could recall his feelings about such news, the voice changed to a wet, rattling sound reminiscent of a dying patient. After several minutes like this, the question came: “Why did you do it?”
Feeling himself backed into a corner, the judge replied, “Look, I sympathize with your loss. I really do. It was a difficult decision, but it was not in the public interest to keep the schools closed for so many months. The children were suffering, most of them couldn’t study properly at home. Their learning needs weren’t being met.”
“But the union never demanded that the school be closed indefinitely. They asked that security measures be maintained.”
“What you don’t realize,” the judge said in exasperation, “is that all of this would take too damn long. Staff would have to be hired and trained, the school’s windows would have to be changed, and that alone would require an expensive renovation. The school district is always on a tight budget; they just didn’t have the money. The parents were fighting to get the schools reopened immediately. Politicians, too. What was I supposed to do?”
“You could have ruled against the union,” the voice replied, “after mentioning what the witnesses said. Why did you never bring them up? Why silence their voices?”
“Are we doing this again? Why is this so important to you? Look, over a million people died during the pandemic. You were not the only one, so you are not so special!”
Realizing what he had just said, and fearing the ghost’s wrath, he added hastily, not taking the time to consider his words, “What do you want me to say? That I was a coward? All right, I was a coward. There, are you happy now?”
The voice made no immediate response to this confession, leaving him to choke on what he had spilled. He struggled to continue more carefully, “I didn’t mention the witnesses because I couldn’t make a proper decision based on what they said. I was under a lot of pressure. There were all these problems at the school, with the cleanup and everything, but the public interest demanded otherwise. Dwelling on what they said would only complicate the situation. So was I happy about it? No, I wasn’t. Do I wish I had done things differently? Yes. But the decision was still the right one.”
“So this pressure led you to change your judgment?” the voice pressed.
“Yes. No! It was the only possible decision, I tell you. I also had to think about the appellate judges, the politicians, the guys at the club, even my neighbors. They all wanted the same thing. Everyone was sick and tired of the lockdown, of the kids’ staying home all day. I would have been torn to shreds on social media if I had chosen otherwise. If that makes me a coward, so be it, but I did it for the greater good.”
He waited a few seconds, wondering if he had pushed too far, and when there was no response, he dared to say, “That’s it, I’m done talking. Now go. Please go and never come back.”
The low rattling that had been going on stopped at his words and there was silence. But instead of feeling relieved like he had on the other nights when the ghost had left him, he felt goosebumps all over his body. This was not the silence of an empty room, it was the complete absence of any sound. He couldn’t even hear himself breathing.
The whole universe seemed to hang in anticipation, and then there was a cry. Not just one voice screaming, but thousands of them in utter despair, the agony of those condemned to oblivion. It was madness beyond belief, unbridled, and the judge felt his mind slipping away.
He blinked once and thought he saw himself sprawled on the living room floor, mumbling unintelligible words. The TV was still on, but the sun was shining. He blinked again and found himself back in the bedroom at night. Fortunately, the howling had stopped, but the judge knew he would never recover from what he had heard. All the medicine in the world could not help him now, yet he felt strangely calm.
As if nothing had happened, as if the gates of the abyss had not just been thrown open, the flat voice returned. “Yes, you were a coward. But that is not the only reason.”
His resistance was exhausted. With an empty mind, the judge couldn’t come up with any new excuses. Unbeknownst to him, his arrogance had been stripped away, his hubris crushed and forgotten. He readily agreed with the voice, “No, it’s not.” Tired of running from whatever came his way, he was resigned to accepting it.
“So why did we have to be silenced?”
Weeping now, when only a minute before he felt he had no more tears to shed, the judge said, “I was glad it was you and not me. I didn’t care that you died; no, I just didn’t think about it. I kept thinking, why can’t this stupid lawyer just let it go? Everyone was trying to forget, why was he keeping this thing alive? So I did everyone a favor. I filed it away and moved on. Thousands of people died, and I could be next, my wife could be next. I didn’t want to be reminded of that.” After a pause between hiccups, he relented, “I still don’t. I still don’t.”
Nothing came in response to his words. The voice did not acknowledge his final confession, frustrating his longing for release or punishment. His eyelids felt heavy; he couldn’t keep them open. He crawled into bed and rested in the fetal position. His last conscious thought was whether he would ever wake up again. He was not afraid, just curious in an almost detached way. Within moments, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
The unconscious man lay on the bed in the middle of the night, defenseless, surrounded by shadows on all sides. Only his soft breathing could be heard, though something stirred the air in the room. Then the trial was over. A verdict was reached and announced in silence.
The judge’s wife came home at noon and called out for her husband, but there was no answer. She had received a message from him saying he had a cold and was staying home, but that was two days ago, and he hadn’t returned her calls.
This kind of behavior was so out of character for him that she decided to move up her return home by a day and leave the symposium. She told herself she was exaggerating, but she couldn’t help but feel that there was something disturbing about his continued silence.
She looked for him in the living room, where the TV was still on, adding to her anxiety. She searched the library and the kitchen, calling his name as she went. Finding no one, she rushed upstairs and went straight to the bedroom.
She found her husband lying motionless in bed. Despite the open window, she was struck by how quiet the room was. Like the grave, was the thought that came to her. For a moment, she was certain he was dead. She crept closer, her legs shaking, until she heard him snort softly and saw his chest rise and fall with his breathing.
With a sigh of relief, she sat down next to him without disturbing his sleep, intending to check his forehead for a fever. Immediately, she was startled again, this time by the look on his face, or rather the fact that she could not make out his features, only his eyes and eyebrows.
It took her a few seconds to process what she saw. He was sleeping, peacefully it seemed, with a new N95 mask over his face.
*
* *
Author’s note: Most of the facts about the civil case cited in this story happened in real life. The judge’s being haunted by a ghost or, perhaps, a guilty conscience, is probably just wishful thinking.
Copyright © 2025 by David August
