by Dan Hawley
Samantha’s eyes widened and her face turned fierce. “Are you kidding me, Jason?” she hissed. “You must be kidding me. I’m in a mental institution right now.”
“What!?” Jason said indignantly.
Samantha paused to take a deep, shuddering breath. “You didn’t even ask me how MY appointment went, Jason. You didn’t even ask about the baby.” Jason’s eyes dropped to the floor. “That’s because it’s all about you, Jay. But you’re so self-involved you don’t even see how selfish you really are.”
There was a finality to her voice. Jason stood staring at the floor, his hands shaking and his lips trembling.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What? What doesn’t matter?”
Jason’s trembling voice found strength and resolve. “We can make another goddamn baby Sam! But I’m losing my mind here. I can’t get that back. Miscarriage of the fucking brain, Sam!”
The anger and fury drained from Samantha’s face and was replaced by loathing and disgust.
“Fuck you, Jason,” she said, and then turned towards the bedroom. “You son of a bitch.”
Jason stared after her until she disappeared into the room, slamming the door behind her.
He paused a moment, letting the events settle, and then walked to the closed door. Behind it, he could hear Samantha’s loud, fitful sobs. His mouth hardened into a thin line as her crying fueled his resentment and the burning fire in his belly.
Jason busted into the room to see Samantha sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from the door. She jumped a little, startled by the loud noise, but didn’t turn around. Jason stood and stared at her back, breathing heavily with his fists clenched. Finally, he went to the closet, grabbed a spare pillow and a thin blanket, and rushed back out the door, closing it hard behind himself. He stormed over to the couch, threw down the blanket and pillow, and turned off the apartment lights. He crawled under the blanket and stared straight up at the dark ceiling.
His anger was still bubbling, his heart still pumping heavy blood that made his temples throb. He looked down and over at the coffee table where the white box sat.
“Damnit,” he said and sat up.
Jason grabbed the box and flipped open the top. He pulled out the contents and used the flashlight on his cellphone to read the instructions. It looked easy enough from the diagram, he thought.
He really just wanted to curl up and get some rest, but he needed the doctor to help. And the only way the doctor was going to help was with the data from this stupid machine.
Jason hung the small electronic box around his neck, where it rested on his solar plexus. He found the electrode heads and attached them to his face where the diagram instructed. Next, he plugged the wires into the box and flicked the switch.
A red and green LED bulb flashed slowly on the face of the box.
“Guess that’s it.”
Jason took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He lay down and pulled the blanket up to his chest, staring at the ceiling again. The blood that pounded on his eardrums began to relent as he relaxed into his pillow. He closed his eyes, and as the deafening sound abated, it was replaced by the distant sounds of sobbing, and just behind that: the hum.
* * *
Samantha’s hard, uncontrollable sobs began to diminish into soft, whimpering breaths. She sat on the edge of the bed as tears steadily rolled down her face. She sniffed and wiped at her hot, wet face with the sleeve of her robe. With a shuddering sigh she stood up and went to the bathroom. She grabbed a roll of toilet paper, making sure not to look at herself in the mirror, and headed back to her bed. Her breath came and went in a steadying rhythm, and her eyes began to dry. She wiped her face with a wad of toilet paper and blew her nose while staring out the window. The night sky was dark with thick clouds, and the ocean’s surface rough from a north wind.
A few fat raindrops smacked against the glass at an unsettling, sporadic tempo.
Samantha lifted up her legs, deposited them beneath the blanket, and lay down. She picked up her phone from the nightstand and punched in her password. She stared at her conversation with her mother as the smacking of raindrops against the windows quickened. She wanted to ask for help. To tell them everything. But her fingers paused, unable to type.
What could they do? she wondered.
Nothing right now; they would just worry. Samantha shut the screen off, replaced the phone on the tabletop, and turned out the light. She would call tomorrow when she’s had some rest.
Samantha lay back and listened to the hypnotic beating of the rain against the glass. Her tight muscles relaxed as the sound soothed her. Suddenly very aware of her exhaustion, Samantha’s heavy eyes closed.
Then—something woke her up. Her eyes jerked open. How long had she been asleep? Had she even slept? The rain was still beating against the window. Her muscles tightened as she lay completely still, looking over at the door. A shape was standing in the doorway, strange red and green lights blinking madly on its chest. It just stood there, its shoulders heaving up and down, up and down. Time passed at a crawl as she watched the shadow watching her. Her heart quickened, and her hands and feet went numb, pricked by invisible needles. Samantha fought to keep her breath steady and calm, pretending to be asleep.
Finally, the figure twitched and began to move towards her. She shut her eyes. The couch is not good for sleeping, she thought. Jason is just coming to bed. The thought relaxed her some as she listened to Jason walk quietly across the floor to stand beside the bed. Samantha felt the weight of his body lie down beside her as she continued to focus on her breath.
Slow and steady. She didn’t want him to know she was awake. She didn’t want to talk. Not right now, anyway. She needed sleep to regain her strength and shake the clouds from her mind so she could talk some sense into Jason.
Samantha’s thoughts were interrupted by Jason’s touch. His hand brushed her arm as he shifted his weight. Samantha stiffened once more. Jason slowly flipped his leg over her hips, straddling her and then allowing his weight to settle onto her. Samantha froze, her mind racing.
He wants sex? she thought. Right now. That’s what he’s thinking about?
Her eyes opened in slits, just enough to see the dark body above her, the green and red lights blinking offensively. Her eyelids opened further as her sight adjusted to the darkness. Her focus went from the blinking box up his chest, past his heaving shoulders, to his face. Cold and blank. Just like his eyes. She was expecting him to be looking at her, but he wasn’t. He was staring into the nothingness above her head. A single tear escaped her eye as hot panic boiled in her guts.
“Ja—“
At once, his hands were around her neck. Her eyes shot open in terror. His eyes were staring into hers now. Dark blue and menacing. Samantha pushed and struggled against his body. She grabbed at his wrists and tried to work them apart. But he only squeezed harder. A large vein pulsed in his forehead as his heart pumped thick, hot blood through his body.
“Please,” Sam gasped, “Jason.”
His lips curled upwards into a maniacal grin. Samantha grabbed at the grin, pushing against his face. He was too strong, and she was weakening—white spots flashed across her field of vision. In a final, desperate move, she dug her nails into the side of his face and pulled down as hard as she could. Jason screamed in pain. He released his grip on her neck and grabbed his own face, writhing in pain.
Samantha coughed and gasped for breath. Her throat cried out in agony as she gulped in precious lungsful of air.
“You bitch!” he screamed as he looked at the blood on his hands. Samantha felt a surge of powerful energy as she bucked Jason off her hips and onto the floor with a thud. She sprang up quickly and ran to the bathroom, closing and locking the door.
She rubbed her throat, red from trauma, and walked backward until her knees hit the toilet bowl. She sat down, not taking her eyes off the door. She could hear Jason cursing and moving around in the bedroom. Samantha jumped as he smashed
something against the wall, something wooden. She thought of her nightstand. She thought of her phone that was left there. She was trapped, shaking, and alone.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM against the door.
“I’m gonna kill you, you bitch!” Jason yelled from the other side.
BOOM! once more.
“You’re dead!”
Suddenly the banging stopped, and she heard Jason move to the office. Samantha’s blood turned to ice. Hyperventilating with tears streaming down her face, she looked hopelessly around the small bathroom for something, anything she could use as a weapon. She grabbed the toilet brush and held it up. “Fuck!” she yelled. “Help!!”
She jumped into the shower and slammed her fists against the wall.
“Please! Help me! Please!!”
Samantha banged again, so hard that one of her wrists cracked and sent an explosion of pain up to her head. She screamed in a mix of terror and agony.
She jumped out of the shower, opened the cupboards under the sink, and began throwing makeup and toiletries out with big sweeps of her arms until she saw it.
She grabbed the small but heavy pipe from under the sink.
BOOM! against the door again. Samantha jumped and fell back against the wall. The sound of something hitting the door. Wood on wood. Again.
CRACK!
The door split open just wide enough for the butt of a shotgun to come through. Jason pulled the stock from the door and bent over to look in. His eyes were crazed, and his maniacal grin only wider. Samantha shrieked at the sight of this man that looked nothing like her lover.
“Jason stop! Please Jay!” she cried.
His face disappeared from the hole.
“Oh I’ll stop alright,” he hissed. “As soon as I get my hands around that pretty little neck of yours again.” Jason reached through the hole in the door and grabbed for the handle. Samantha lifted the pipe without pause and brought it down as hard as she could on Jason’s grasping hand. The sound of pounded meat and cracking bone rang out in the bathroom.
“Aaarrghhh!” Jason screamed in painful anger. “Fuck! You fucking bitch!”
He slammed his good hand against the door. “Francine’s gonna cut you in half!”
The brightly polished shotgun barrels appeared through the hole in the door. Samantha gasped and fell backward onto the floor, dropping the pipe with a clang.
“Are you fucking ready, bitch!?”
The shotgun bobbed around in the hole.
“Get ready to meet your fucking maker, you bi—“ The silver barrel disappeared from the hole as Samantha heard a loud thud. She stared at the hole, her breath coming in sharp, frantic spurts that stabbed her throat like daggers.
She listened intently for any clue about what had happened, but all she could hear was her own breath and beating heart in her temples.
“Sam?” a voice finally broke through. “Samantha, are you in there? Are you ok?”
“Chester,” she said dumbly. “Chester!?”
Feelings of relief washed over her as she began to sob. She made herself get up off the floor and opened the door, suddenly exhausted and acutely aware of every scratch and bruise.
“Sam,” Chester said with apologetic eyes. Beneath him lay Jason, unconscious from the baseball bat in Chester’s hand.
“Are you ok?” he asked, knowing that she, in fact, was not. Movement at the front door made Samantha look over. Their neighbors were standing there: the woman and the strange little boy. Samantha stared at them dumbly as the woman turned to usher the boy away. “Wait!” Samantha croaked.
The woman paused and looked back as Samantha half ran to the door. She stopped when she reached the woman. She grabbed on to the door frame in an effort to hold herself up as she wheezed and gasped for breath.
“Did you call Chester?”
The woman nodded.
Samantha took another labored breath.
“Did you call the police?”
The woman shook her head.
“Why not?”
Samantha’s squinting, confused eyes followed the woman’s gaze down to the long sleeves of her dark shirt. The woman pulled the material back to reveal her forearms, scarred with thin lines. There were fresh wounds also, Samantha observed, covered by reddening gauze. Samantha’s shocked eyes looked back up at the woman’s face.
“What happened? Who did this?”
The woman allowed her sleeves to drop once more as she reached a hand around the boy’s shoulders.
“Him?”
The woman nodded.
“But why?”
“I don’t know why.” The woman’s Irish accent was thick in Samantha’s ears.
“Stuart is a fine young lad.”
The boy looked up at the woman with tired, remorseful eyes.
“But something changed in him when we moved here. Just small, attitude issues at first—talking back and being moody. He wasn’t sleeping well and started doing the strangest things at night. I woke up a few times to find him standing against the wall. Just standing there with his ear pressed up against it. At first I thought he was trying to eavesdrop on our neighbors, but when I called out to give him hell, I woke him up and he must have been confused and frightened, so he lashed out and got me pretty good.” The woman gestured at her forearms.
“I took him to see the sleep doctor, hoping that we could fix his sleep, which would perhaps fix his other problems too.”
The woman looked down at Stuart as she caressed his shaggy brown hair.
“But when the lift opened tonight and I saw the man from the sleep clinic looking so crazed and frightened, something clicked. And when you exited on the same floor as us, I knew. I knew it was not Stuart’s fault. It was this place. There is something wrong with this place and it is ruining us!”
Samantha remembered Chester’s story about the couple who had lived in the apartment before she and Jason. How they seemed so in love and ended up hating each other. She thought about the parallels between how Jason and the boy changed, slowly, when they moved in here. But what caused it? Samantha thought. Surely it had to be the hum, but how, and why? What the hell was it?
“Is he ok?”
Samantha’s thoughts were broken by the woman’s question. Sam looked back to where the woman was staring.
“Physically? I think so.”
The weight of the situation suddenly struck Samantha and her eyes filled with liquid. She began to sob, staring at Jason’s limp body. The woman placed a warm hand on Samantha’s back and rubbed soothingly.
“You’re going to be alright.”
Samantha turned and threw herself into the arms of her neighbor, tears running down her cheeks.
“You’ll be ok,” the woman repeated softly. “But you need to get out.”
The woman grabbed Samantha’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length.
“You must get out. Get him away from this wretched place. Leave as soon as you can, alright?” Samantha wiped her eyes and nodded. “Alright.”
EPILOGUE
THE ROAD HOME
Samantha read the sign—Welcome to Idaho—as she drove past on the I-90 headed east. It would be a long drive home, but the further she got from Seattle and the apartment with the evil hum, the better she felt.
She put the window down a crack and breathed in the fresh mountain air. The road through Spokane Valley and the mountains was gorgeous. The sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky and looked like it would stay that way until they reached Missoula in a few hours.
Sam looked over at Jason. He was sleeping soundly in his seat, half reclined, a thin pillow under his head.
Initially she thought Chester had killed him the night before. Jason looked dead when she opened the broken bathroom door to see him lying in a heap, bleeding from his head. But shortly after speaking with the woman at the door, Jason had groaned and stirred on the floor. He grasped for his head and pulled himself up to a kneel. He pulled back a wet, warm hand and looked at the blood in confus
ed horror.
“What happened?” he mumbled, wincing at the pain. Jason looked away from his crimson hand and saw Francine lying by the door. His dazed eyes looked up at the hole.
Realization dawned on his face as he looked up at Samantha, who was glaring at him, terrified and angry.
“What did I do!?” Jason gasped.
“You don’t remember?” Chester asked as he eyed Jason with suspicion. Jason’s eyes went from Sam to Chester and back to Sam.
“It’s…foggy. I don’t.” His eyes dropped to the floor, and he began crying. Samantha knelt beside him and put her arm around his shuddering shoulders.
“What the fuck is wrong with me, Sam?” he cried. “Did I try to hurt you?”
He looked up and saw the red lines on Samantha’s throat that were beginning to turn purple and swell. His eyes widened.
“Oh shit, Sam. Babe. Did I do that!?” he asked in shocked horror as he stared into her eyes. “I couldn’t have, no way, I…”
“It’s ok,” she whispered. “It wasn’t you, Jay, not really.”
He continued to weep as his tears mingled with the dark blood, now beginning to clot where Samantha had scratched him.
“This place is evil, Jay. We have to get out. Now.”
Her voice was calm and firm, but Jason needed no convincing.
“Can we leave right now?” he asked meekly.
“Soon, sweety,” she cooed. “Let’s get you cleaned up first.”
Samantha grabbed the paper cup from the middle console and took a long drink. She put it back down and allowed herself to feel a small pang of guilt. She shouldn’t be drinking caffeine, but there were a couple hundred more miles to drive, and she felt like she hadn’t slept in days. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. Her thoughts shifted back to the night before as she zoned out on the road ahead.
