The Listener

by Christopher Carrolli

  It wasn’t the only thing he’d found when he woke; there was also a tray on a cart at the foot of his bed. The French toast, bacon, and hash browns told him for a fact that it was morning. He didn’t want to eat, eyeing the tray skeptically, apprehensive that it might be drugged or even poisoned; but it certainly didn’t smell like it. He tasted tiny bites at first, and the relief his stomach growled caused him to wolf down the remaining breakfast.

  He waited. It wasn’t drugged, and definitely not poisoned.

  Now he stared at the blankness of the screen, wondering what it was for, and suddenly a flash of gray light and a beeping sound brought the screen to life. Lines of static passed quickly to reveal a man’s face on the screen. The man was middle-aged with dark hair streaked with gray at his temples.

  “Hello, Ryan,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve guessed who I am by now. After all, you’ve heard me loud and clear with your wondrous ear, haven’t you?”

  Ryan recognized the voice in an instant. The name of the man he so urgently tried to warn Dylan and the others of lingered on his tongue, but he couldn’t think of it. He was slow to remember, trying to gather his thoughts and put them back in the right order.

  “Allow me to introduce myself, Ryan. I am Hadley—Roman Hadley. I am your host for the time that you’re here. I’m sure we will become fast friends. You see, Ryan, no one is going to hurt you, least of all, me. That is not why you were brought here, and I apologize for the roughness, but there was no other way.”

  A brief pause passed between them as Ryan thought of what to say.

  “What do you want with me?” His lips moved, but he wasn’t sure if his voice had come out loud enough.

  “I assure you Ryan, no one is going to hurt you,” Hadley’s voice was dismissive. “You are here so that we may study you, and your ability. You see, Ryan, I am also a clairaudient, like you. I am also aware that you overheard my conversation from a distance. My, what an extreme capability you possess my young friend, and how clumsy am I?”

  His laughter, meant to buddy the boy, was lost on him.

  “That’s the thing, Ryan,” Hadley continued. “I never really got the chance to understand my ability; I mean, there were those who studied me, but I never got the opportunity to fully understand my ability at a young age. I had to learn and understand as I went along with it, and soon, I got older. Of course, I came from a different time. So, you see, I’m still learning and finding out.

  “You, on the other hand, are being given the chance that I never had. I am giving you the opportunity to fully understand what you have, to be able to utilize it to the best of your ability.”

  “So, you kidnapped me?”

  “It may seem that way to you now, my friend, but you must understand that there are those who still shun people like us. There is still a need to keep our studies hidden. Ryan, if you wanted to explore your ability to its fullest, you would be discouraged, frowned upon, isolated; the rest of the world would react the same way your mother did. I am giving you the chance to fully understand, to master what you have so that it won’t control you anymore.”

  Hadley hit a note as Ryan thought of the voices when he tried to play his video games, coaching him, distracting him, stealing the fun away.

  “But you were out to get Sidney, and you couldn’t get him, so you took me instead. I heard you!”

  “That’s not true, Ryan. I have studied Sidney Pratt’s ability, but Sidney is limited in his clairaudience; he only hears the dead, not the living, remotely, like you and I do.”

  “Yes, he can,” Ryan protested. “He heard me the night that girl was killed.”

  Hadley dismissed it with a closing of his eyes and a shaking of his head, though he knew it to be true.

  “But not as well as you and I, Ryan,” he said. “The thing about us is that our minds are more in touch with our telepathic side. That means you and I are both telepaths. Sidney cannot begin to understand or teach you what you need to know completely. Ryan, Sidney is in the hospital because something triggered inside his brain whenever he had a clairaudient moment. It had caused seizures and later, a cerebral hemorrhage. That is because he is unaware of how to manage and understand what he has.”

  The outright lie had caused the tears to well up in Ryan’s eyes.

  “I will help you understand, Ryan. I promise.”

  “I want my mother! Where is she?”

  Hadley assured him that Annie was fine and went on to tell him that he wouldn’t be here long, to think of it as a vacation. He would be returned home to his mother, soon.

  “When we meet in person, Ryan, very soon, I want you to be comfortable with me. I want you to relax and take a small test of your abilities. It’s simple; in fact, you get to rest while you’re listening. Then I want you to explain what you heard, the best way you know how. I will see you soon my friend...until then...”

  Ryan sat in awe as the screen went blank once again.

  * * * *

  He sat back in the chair in his bunker and sighed, relieved that part was over. He thought about one of the last things he’d told the boy, about being returned to his mother soon. This double-edged sword worked well in his favor, as the group would assume it was a lie meant for the boy to believe, a catch to keep him complying and hoping. In fact, Ryan would be going home, as soon as he could make his break and contact her.

  She was on the society’s board of directors now; she would understand him. She would help Ryan. Whatever happened to him at this point, he didn’t care; he just wanted out.

  * * * *

  Right now, he felt trapped, caged, and almost wild, but the man hadn’t been the monster he’d expected. Ryan felt sure that he was not here to help him; he was helping himself in some way. The man said they were going to meet in person, soon. He hoped that meant that he’d be able to leave this room.

  Thoughts of his mother, Sidney, as well as his father, ran rampant through his head. He heard his father’s voice just before the damp cloth over his mouth snuffed him out, and they grabbed him. There had been silence since then. He listened, engaging with his mind, and the tears burst forth again as he could not hear his father, not since he was brought here.

  He continued to reach out to his father, but it was fruitless. He tightened his eyes in fierce determination, concentrating with his soul rather than his mind. In silence, he called out to the one person he knew could hear him...

  “Sidney, hear me. Help me! Hadley! Help me!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Three days had passed since the surgery, and already he felt more like his old self. It was too bad it wasn’t enough to let him out of this hospital, but they did move him from ICU to his own room. The bandages were still wrapped around his head, and he lay in the peacefulness of his own room, looking somewhat better than before; the pain in his head had subsided, leaving only a slight numbness to the side of his face. Something drove him out of eons of sleep during the night, this time louder and more real, rousing him from a restful recovery.

  He had heard the voice loud and clear...“Sidney, hear me. Help me! Hadley!”

  The loud mental cry for help was the clapping hand that stirred him in bed, and with a start, he opened his eyes. It was Ryan; what was wrong with him, and why had he mentioned Roman Hadley? He knew something was going on and that they were definitely keeping something from him.

  Susan, Dylan, even Leah, all of them acted strangely when they were here, and now it was time for him to find out why. He would ask them to come to his room, immediately. The nurse arrived within seconds of Sidney pressing the call button.

  “Tell Dr. Logan and my friends to get here, right now!” Even the troubled look on her face as she turned away told him exactly what he’d already suspected: something had happened while he lingered near death.

  * * * *

  “He’s waiting for us,” Susan said, as the team arrived in the hospital lobby.

  “And I told you this would happen,” Dylan said. “I assure you, h
e knows.”

  “Ryan must be calling out to him,” Brett said. “Sidney may have heard him. Ryan spoke to him the night of the accident, and he’s probably doing it again.”

  “Don’t you all think Agent Wiley should be here?” Leah asked. “He did want to be notified if Sidney mentioned hearing Ryan.”

  “First, let’s find out for ourselves if that is what’s happened.” Then, Susan relented. “We may as well face it: Sidney is going to have to be told. I, along with Dr. Talbot, was hoping for a little more time, but I guess there isn’t any.”

  Minutes later, they phoned Wiley from Susan’s office to tell him what was happening, and from there, walked to Sidney’s room. They saw the expression on his face as they entered.

  “So, which one of you is going to tell me the truth, because I know something has happened.” He stared at them with suspicion, seeing the relief on their faces that he was pulling through, though he was still extremely weak. He wouldn’t let them distract him. “Where’s Ryan? What has happened?”

  Susan said that first, he needed to sit back and relax, that she had to obtain permission from Talbot just to tell him what she was about to tell him. Then, Dylan interceded...

  “It should be on us to tell him,” he said to Susan. “Let me start from the beginning.” She shrugged and sat back.

  Dylan told Sidney about how Ryan came to the hospital to see him when he was in surgery, having heard with his clairaudient ear that something was wrong.

  “He came into the lounge, adamant that he’d heard a conversation, a plot to kidnap him. He swore that the name he heard was Hadley.”

  Sidney’s face melted at what he was hearing. Dylan continued...

  “He said something about Hadley calling him a far more powerful clairaudient than Sidney Pratt, and that he wanted to study him and his ability. When Ryan came here, he was serious, scared; he knew things that he would have no way of knowing, Sid.”

  “We told Ryan that we would protect him,” Brett volunteered. “We failed at that. His mother followed him here, but when Ryan went to the men’s room, he was abducted out of this hospital, right under our watch.”

  Brett’s voice wavered and creaked.

  “Hadley has disappeared,” Leah said. “And we have every reason to believe that he has Ryan, right now.

  “It turns out that our friend, Roman Hadley, is part of some underground, psychic rogue group that broke away from the FBI’s remote psychic studies years ago. They are committing espionage, and Hadley is the front man; he was never with the FBI. Apparently, he has been listening to you, to us, the whole time, Sid. He has been studying you from afar, hoping that you might be the protégé that was needed for this group, but he discovered the file on Ryan, and he found a better candidate.

  “He infiltrated the society to get to you, Sidney.” Leah’s voice was gentle, regretful.

  “I know,” he said, with a searching stare across his face and a squint of wonder in his eyes. “I don’t know how, but somehow, I’ve always suspected him of something.”

  Then, Sidney snapped out of his brief pause.

  “I have heard Ryan. I heard him last night, and also faintly, the night before. I heard him the night of the accident. That’s what I never had a chance to tell you all. It was Ryan’s voice I heard, directing me where to go. I couldn’t figure it out because something was different about the voice; he wasn’t dead. I couldn’t identify the voice at first, but then it came to me while I was dreaming, or dying, or whatever it was that was happening to me. You’ll never believe where I’ve been.”

  He relayed to them all of the scenes he’d endured, telling them about the strange purple sun, then the bright, brilliant luminance that suddenly surrounded him. He told them about his grandfather, and how he called his being there a ‘journey,’ and that it was not his time. The scenes of his life had flashed by him, as though he was watching a movie, and he described the process in detail, as well as what he saw. He’d seen his life with his parents, the sessions with Susan, the incident in her office, moving to college, meeting and joining the team, but it was hard to recall everything.

  He explained that when he woke, he asked for Ryan because Ryan had been there, staring at him, and that’s when he remembered the boy’s name and who he was, realizing that he’d heard a boy that night who was not a spirit.

  “Then, Tracy confirmed it for me,” he said, waiting for their responses.

  “Tracy, Tracy Kimball?” Susan had learned long ago not to doubt Sidney, but still, her voice remained skeptical.

  He told how, as he was about to meet Leah in the parking lot, the pains in his head had become unbearable. He noticed the blood coming from his nose and ears as the static on the main TV screen in Room 208 grew harsh and vociferous. The voice coming from the screen—another pipeline connection and it was Tracy, calling his name. He had no knowledge of what came next, except the blackness, draping down like a stage curtain in the dark.

  “I saw her when I was there,” he said. “She was with David; they were together, peaceful, happy. She told me that it wasn’t my fault, that she had caused what happened to her, just like you said, Susan. She said there was nothing I could have done.”

  Susan hung on every word, her interest keen and unbroken. Leah was recording with her cell camera, and Brett was taking notes, documenting. All of it would go into Sidney’s file because there was the chance that the more time went on, the less Sidney would remember.

  “Then she told me about Ryan. She said he was in danger, and that I had to help him. She knew everything, and in life, she didn’t even know Ryan.” Sidney thought for a moment, his eyes staring off in fatigued curiosity.

  “What is it Sidney?” Susan asked.

  “There was something else she told me; it was strange. She said to remember the voices that were familiar to me in the journey, to remember what I’d heard, that it was important, somehow.”

  “What do you think she meant by that?” Susan asked, and Sidney thought for a moment. The look on his face was of someone trying to grasp a dangling object just out of reach. He sighed in exasperation, giving up.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t figure out what it is. It’s there, yet it isn’t there.”

  “Well, don’t stress on it, now,” Susan said. “Talbot would have my head if you had a setback.” She eased him backward into the bed, fixing the pillow behind him, making sure he was comfortable.

  It was then that Agent Wiley whisked into the room. He nodded to Susan and the others, then stared at the person he had come to see, Sidney Pratt, who looked up at him curiously. Susan quickly made the introductions.

  “Agent Wiley, this is Sidney Pratt; Sidney, this is Agent Wiley of the FBI. He is investigating Hadley and conducting the search for Ryan.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Sidney, though under unfortunate circumstances.” Wiley spoke quickly, avoiding any delays in what he needed to say. “As Dr. Logan has told you, I am investigating what happened to Ryan Quinn. Now, Sidney, I have read the file on you, kept by your investigative society; I have also read the file on Ryan Quinn. I am familiar with the both of you, the extent of your abilities, and the difference in your abilities.

  Wiley assured Sidney of his familiarity in subjects such as clairaudience and remote viewing. He detailed his experience investigating the rogue group, whom he gave Sidney a full explanation of, as well as their activities and intentions. Then, Wiley circled in on his central point.

  “Sidney, I need to know, have you been hearing the voice of Ryan Quinn?”

  The sound of the question caused all to recognize the magnitude of the situation, instilling an instant, silent shock through the room.

  “Yes. I have heard him twice,” Sidney said. “His voice was faint the night before, but he kept calling, ‘Sidney.’ Last night, he spoke more clearly in my mind. I heard him say the name ‘Hadley’ and the word ‘help’ a few times. I just finished telling the team that I heard Ryan the night of our frie
nd’s accident; he told me in which direction to look for her. He is the only living voice I have ever heard.”

  Sidney looked at Agent Wiley, wondering if, despite all of his “research,” he was able to understand what he was about to tell him, wondering if there was anything that would surprise him.

  “Most of the people that I chat with on a daily basis...are dead.” The slightest hint that Sidney’s humor had returned caused hands to quickly hide cracking smiles.

  “Tell me about your experience studying Ryan two years ago.”

  “What you’ve read is all of it,” Sidney said, then proceeded to tell him about the sessions with Ryan. He’d heard the dead much like he had, proving it with concrete details regarding Sidney’s grandfather. Then, during a test, Ryan picked up every word the four of them had spoken privately in another room. It was that day they discovered that Ryan had wielded a remote hearing ability with a razor sharp tenacity.

  They had concluded that Ryan was also telepathic, and that is what scared Annie, causing her to halt the sessions. Sidney could never manage to get through to her.

  “Yes, she explained it all,” Wiley said, and Susan filled in the details of Annie’s episode when Ryan went missing. Wiley then turned to Sidney and asked him the next question with the sharpness of a reporter. “Did Ryan sound hurt to you in any way?”

  “He didn’t sound hurt,” Sidney said. “He sounded scared.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.” Wiley told Sidney about how the rogue group, and Hadley, was not interested in hurting Ryan, only using him. “That’s the one thing that is going to work in our favor, but we have to move fast, especially if I’m right about Hadley, there may be a showdown between him and the group. That would place Ryan right in middle.”

  “So, let me get this straight, if I may,” Sidney said. “Hadley was originally interested in me as a subject, and then when he realized I wasn’t telepathic, he went through our files and found Ryan? So, Ryan was chosen in my place?”