Can You Hear Them&;#063;
By williemeikle
- 725 reads
The noise came again just as Jim Reagan reached the edge of the
field - the same high singing as before.
He tried to peer though the growing gloom of dusk, but all he could
see was an expanse of whiteness - a completely snow covered
landscape.
"Probably a fox" he told himself, but deep down, even though he would
never admit it, he knew that no fox was capable of making that noise.
Something was trying to get past his mental filters - something from
his childhood - but it wasn't getting through. Not yet.
He made a note in his book that the south fence needed repairing again
and was just turning back towards the house when someone spoke.
Can you hear them?
He turned, wondering how a person could have got so close without him
noticing, but there was no one within sight, and the only tracks in the
snow were his own.
Two minutes later he was standing in the hallway of his cottage, his
breath coming in hot steaming gasps, his boots shedding compacted snow
onto the hardwood floor.
"It was jist a wee bit o' wind" he whispered, and indeed, as if to
counterpoint his thought, a gust whistled through the eaves of the
cottage. But he knew that it wasn't the same thing. Not by a long
way.
He left his notebook and pencil on the telephone stand in the hall and
headed for the drinks cabinet. It took two large glasses of whisky for
his mind to turn the memory of the voice into something more resembling
a breeze, but even then it still nagged, still lodged way down deep in
a place he didn't want to remember.
He tried to settle, but the television was broadcasting its usual
inanities and the radio reception was so bad that he was forced to
switch it off after a while. He sat at the window, watching a storm
build up, until it got too dark to see. And even then he sat, watching
his reflection for long minutes before drawing the curtains and closing
himself in.
Silence settled around him.
Eventually the wind dropped and, apart from his trusty, wheezing,
generator there was only the soft patter of snow on the window. Soon he
began to hear rhythms in the noise, the weather sending him a coded
signal of danger which he was only just unable to decipher.
"Music," he muttered aloud, needing to break the silence. "That's what
I need. Something good and loud."
He rummaged around in a box of old tapes discarded by his wife, his
ex-wife, when she left. He put on a compilation of pop songs from a
happier time and let the mindless mania wash over him.
For nearly half an hour he managed to lose himself in the intricacies
of police work in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct while the music washed
around him. He had even found himself singing along at one point, but
then a drum beat kicked in that he didn't recognise.
Twin guitars started to wail, then the vocal began, a vocal whose
first phrase was echoed by another, deeper voice in his left ear.
Can you hear them, singing their songs
If you listen, they'll soon be a throng
He was up and out of the chair before the voice could continue and
switched the player off by pulling the plug out at the mains so that
the song died on a slow, ever deepening, chord. For long seconds he
stood there, the plug in his hand, his heart pounding its own drumbeat
in his ears. He half expected to turn and find that he was not alone in
the room, but there was only a spilled glass of whisky and a book
beside his chair.
"You're getting daft in your auld age." he said, and almost managed a
smile as he realised that talking to himself was probably the first
sign that he was right.. But when he caught a glimpse of himself in the
mirror over the mantle he knew that he was only fooling himself.
Haggard eyes stared blankly back from sunken, blackened sockets. And
that was when his mental filters dropped.
It was the eyes that did it - the same, dark blue eyes that his father
had, the same eyes that had twinkled on a long ago night when stars
filled the sky.
Jim had been twelve, and a vessel ready to be filled with
wonderment.
"They're oot there," his father said. "Watching us. They come on quiet
nichts jist tae see what we're up to. If ye jist haud yer wheest for a
bit ye'll hear their wee voices singing ."
They sat there together, father and son, in the quiet dark
"Can ye hear them?" the older man whispered, and Jim tried, he really
did, but there was only the wind in the trees.
"Never mind," his dad said. "They'll be back. They always come
back."
Jim stood, staring deep into the mirror, hoping to read meaning in the
eyes, trying to connect with the boy he had been, but no illumination
was forthcoming. Maybe if Isobel had still been around she might have
given some insight, but he refused to let his thoughts drift that way -
one year wallowing in self pity hadn't brought her back and he was
damned if he was going to go on wishing the rest of his life
away.
He dragged his tired body off to bed and was asleep almost as soon as
his head rested on the pillow.
The reverberations of some unrepeated noise startled him into
wakefulness. His room was hazily lit by moonlight and for long minutes
he watched the lazy crawl of shadows across the ceiling. Far off in the
night a cow lowed, and it was only then that he realised that his
generator had stopped, its ever present clunk and hum suddenly
silent.
"Bloody thing can wait till the morning" he said, but he knew it would
be too late by then. The outside temperature would already be well
below freezing, and it would still be dropping. He knew from bitter
experience that the house would be one big block of ice before dawn if
he didn't get down to the cellar and kick start the machine.
It was only when he got out of bed that he realised just how quiet the
night was. He pulled the curtains back and stared out of the window,
out across the bare expanse of snow to the forest beyond. The sight
that met him almost stopped his heart.
Out there, just at the top of the tree line, a shimmering, dancing
rainbow of lights hovered among the trees, illuminating the canopy with
a cold steel blue that pulsed and quivered as if alive.
A voice whispered in his left ear
Can you hear them?
And this time he could. At first it was little more than a whisper,
but it grew into a chorus of high pitched chanting unlike anything he'd
ever encountered. To start with there were no words, just a formless
wall of sound, but then patterns began to form and the melody slowed to
an air, a lullaby that he almost remembered from childhood.
He stepped back as the lights flashed once, brightly, and, pulling the
curtains shut, fought off the urge to get back in to bed and huddle
under the covers. His first priority was the generator. Strange lights
in the woods would just have to wait - if he didn't get the generator
fixed he was going to be a prime candidate for hypothermia.
His fingers were slow to respond to his brain's commands as he fumbled
with the buttons of his cardigan and his shoe laces proved impossible
to manipulate. Silence had returned by the time he was fully dressed
and when he pulled back the curtains all he could see was the dark
shadow of the forest and the moonlight on the snow.
"Definitely goin' daft in the heid," he muttered to himself, and put
it to the back of his mind. He realised that there was a lot of detail
back there now, things that he'd have to confront later, but for now he
had to get to the generator.
The hallway was in darkness as he came down the stairs and the only
sound was the squeak of his shoes on the old wooden boards. It was as
he reached the bottom step that the hallway seemed to explode in
bright, almost blinding, light, and the accompanying singing echoed
loudly in his ears, a steadily rising chorus that threatened to lift
off the top of his head.
Can you hear them? his father's voice cackled in his ear.
Through the glass panes of the door Jim could see movement: thin,
almost skeletal, long-limbed and big headed, they cavorted and danced
just beyond the doorstep.
Their song was enticing, promising happy days in golden fields and
dancing under the moon. Isobel would have understood - she would have
gone with them. But not Jim. Jim had responsibilities .Jim was made of
sterner stuff. He wouldn't run away on a whim.
He picked up the only weapon available to him as the door rattled on
its hinges and the voice in his head echoed in a loop.
Can you hear them?
Can you hear them?
Can you hear them?
It was the village postman who found him two days later. He had
trudged all the way up to the house, leaving huge gouges in the deep,
unbroken snow. When Jim didn't answer his knock he lifted the letterbox
and peered through.
The sight sent him running and it was big Sandy McPherson, the local
bobby, who actually broke open the locked door.
At first they thought it was a heart attack that had got the big
farmer, but when they turned him over they found the true reason.
The last inch of a pencil protruded from his left ear, almost
imperceptible amid the pool of congealed blood. Crumpled up in his left
hand they found a note, but they would never understand its
meaning.
There was only one word.
No.
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