The Listener

by Christopher Carrolli

  * * * *

  Sidney sat up in bed as Dylan and Brett had just left his room. Dr. Talbot had called his rate of recovery astounding, but continued to warn against stress. That is why Sidney didn’t tell him what he had just told Dylan and Brett, that he was still hearing Ryan...

  “Without getting upset, Sid, what has Ryan said?” Dylan had asked the question calmly with Sidney understanding that it was crucial to finding Ryan.

  “He keeps calling my name,” Sidney said. “He mentions Hadley, but nothing else. I’m not so sure he understands or knows where he is. There was one other word he mentioned: testing.”

  “Hadley is obviously testing the extent of his abilities,” Brett said.

  “Yeah, but where? Sid, we are going to come back tonight in case you hear anything else. In the meantime, we have to tell this to Agent Wiley, after we retrieve Leah from Susan’s office.” Dylan stepped backwards to the door as he spoke.

  Sidney looked up curiously.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, she’s fine,” Dylan said, as he and Brett left the room.

  Now, Sidney couldn’t help but recall Tracy’s ominous words that the voices he’d heard in the journey would be familiar for a reason. It was a clue, something that he was subconsciously aware of, but had inadvertently buried. He thought back to everything he’d seen during the journey, but it was the episode inside Susan’s office when he was a boy that kept coming back to him like a boomerang.

  What was so specific about that day? He thought about Mark, the lost love of Susan’s life. He heard the voice again in his memory...

  “Call her Suzy Q; and tell her that Mark loves her...”

  He kept hearing it over and over, and something was not only familiar, but significant about that voice. He hadn’t realized it before, but the voice was like Ryan’s, which would mean...the voice was alive, not dead!

  How could it be? Susan mentioned Mark being killed in Vietnam. Was it possible that he was still alive? But if Mark was alive, like Ryan had been, why was his voice so acutely familiar? He hadn’t heard it since that day—or had he?

  Mark’s voice repeated in his mind, and then suddenly he heard the same voice in a different context, using words he’d heard spoken to him before...

  “I can’t begin to tell you, Sidney, how impressed I am with the team’s research and accomplishments. Keep up the good work...”

  Then the dialogue of a more recent instance interrupted.

  “I am truly sorry for the loss of Tracy Kimball, Sidney. You all did the best you could...no one is to blame...”

  The different words, spoken by the same voice, jumbled together.

  “Suzy Q...can’t begin to tell you...Tracy Kimball...”

  Sidney felt something like electricity flow through him at the realization that was dawning, a revelation that came to him in the peaceful, quiet confines of his room. It can’t be, he thought, but the voices of Mark and Roman Hadley were undeniably the same!

  The heat of panic started to stifle him, and he exhaled in a long, dramatic release. He had to do something, learning by now to trust his intuitions. It didn’t matter if he was wrong. Ryan’s life was at stake, but if Roman Hadley and Mark was the same person, he had to tell Susan first...

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ursula’s eye peeked covertly from behind the curtain that draped the diner’s picture window overlooking the parking lot. She scanned with caution as far as her eye could see, but failed to see the maroon Sedan anywhere. She pulled her craning head away from the window as Ed trudged back in from outside.

  “There’s no maroon Sedan out there, Ursie,” he said. “You wanna tell me what you got yourself wrapped up in now, or do I have to clear all of my customers out of here? Have you been freaking people out again, like that time you repeated that couple’s private conversation about you to their faces?”

  She hadn’t liked their comments about her, thinking back. They’d been rude, saying she was slow, which she wasn’t, and whispered opinions on how it was a shame that her ass didn’t match her face as far as assets went. Before giving them their check, she showed them the extent of what she could do, even if she had been all the way in the kitchen. They’d left without paying.

  She sighed before she answered, wishing this dilemma would equal by comparison.

  “No, Ed, but I think there may be trouble,” she said, assuring him not to call the police, that Wiley was on his way over.

  Ed stared at her silently, then ran over to the window and gazed out—no Sedan.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone followed you,” he said, but she knew that Sedan was right behind her when she turned for the parking lot. It had to be waiting...somewhere.

  Ed looked behind him, relieved that no one was staring, and escorted her to his office.

  “I want you to wait for Wiley in here,” he said. “If someone did follow you, I don’t want any trouble, Ursula.”

  She agreed and sat in his office, waiting, thinking on how much of a target she had been for Hadley. She hadn’t realized, at first that the man was a telepath, capable of getting inside people’s minds. He had telepathically sniffed out her interest in the paranormal society, after he, a complete stranger, listened to her thoughts. He then sought her out as another clairaudient, expecting to use her to help him commit a criminal act.

  The money had dangled in front of her, and she had snatched it out of his hands as though it were Halloween candy. How stupid, gullible, and desperate she had been. Now her only hope was that she could lead Wiley to the kid, and explain that she had no idea; then maybe, they wouldn’t charge her as an accessory...

  * * * *

  Wiley couldn’t believe the phone call he’d received moments ago. The waitress down at Ed’s knew where to find Ryan Quinn; how the hell was that possible? He knew who she was; she’d waited on him most of the time, since he usually sat at his preferred table if available. He always forgot her name—Ursula. So, how the hell does a young girl like Ursula get mixed up in this?

  But he was elated at what she had told him. If it were true, he might even be able to get Ryan home, where he belonged, today. What if today was the day that after all these years, the Bureau would finally crack this group? And it would all be because of the quiet young waitress named Ursula, who poured his coffee and served him BLT’s.

  Incredible, but he knew something was about to break; though he had to move fast, silently admitting to himself that if Ursula was right, and she was followed, she might just disappear before he got there. He was hurriedly throwing his coat on and gathering the blueprints from his desk, deciding to bring them to the diner. First, he would sit with Ursula and listen to her story, and then he would call for backup so she could lead him there. He was about to leave his office when his cell phone rang; it was Leah Leeds.

  He answered then stopped in his tracks when she spoke...

  “Agent Wiley, I may know where to find Ryan!”

  “What?” Wiley stopped and stared, stumped and listening to the uncanny.

  “I’ve seen Ian Quinn, tonight, here in Dr. Logan’s office.”

  He remembered that the young woman he was speaking to was a seer, a medium of sorts, saw the dead like Pratt heard them. The reaction of being pressed for time was dispelled as he pulled an extra chair beneath him and sat.

  “He showed me an entranceway, a tunnel-like structure down by the old railroad tracks. I remember those tracks from when I was a kid; they’re retired now, and they run through the old mining part of town. I heard there is some kind of underground facility somewhere near there, today.”

  Wiley remembered from childhood also. His instinct had been right again, right here in town, not in plain sight, but underground. He knew it.

  “Leah, I want you to listen,” he said. “I just received a call from someone who may also know where Ryan is, hopefully because she’s seen him. I’m to meet her at Ed’s Diner, now. Would you, Dr. Logan, and the team meet me there?”

&
nbsp; Leah anxiously agreed, and as the call ended, Wiley was out the door.

  * * * *

  Dylan and Brett arrived outside of Susan’s office, meeting the two women as they were leaving in haste. Leah described for them what had taken place only minutes before.

  “Wiley wants to meet us all at the diner,” Susan said. “We were just coming to get you. There’s no time to fill Sidney in, right now. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

  “We can all go in the van,” Dylan said. “I’ll drive.”

  They were on their way to the elevators when a nurse met them in the corridor.

  “Dr. Logan,” she said. “Sidney Pratt wants to see you, now. He says it’s urgent.”

  “Right now?” Susan said. “Tell him I will be in to see him as soon as I get back.”

  “I’m afraid he’s not going to like that, Doctor. He told me to make sure you didn’t leave the hospital without seeing him.” The nurse’s tone implied that her patient was in need to see the shrink, which worked on Susan, who sighed in frustration.

  “Damn! All right, I’m coming,” she said, then turned to the team. “You’re all going to have to go without me. I’ll meet you all when I get there, and tell Wiley that I won’t be long, that it concerns Sidney.”

  Brett offered to stay and ride along with her, to which she declined, and then the investigators disappeared behind the elevator doors. Susan walked to Sidney’s room, the concern and wonder etched upon her face.

  He looked up at her when she entered, but it was concern on his face that stared back at her.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked, as he motioned her to the chair by his bedside.

  He asked where the others were, hoping for privacy, and his eyebrows rose when she explained everything to him.

  “So, you picked an odd time to see me,” she said. “I was about to leave with them. Wiley asked that I be there.”

  “I think you need to be here,” he said. “There’s something we need to discuss.”

  Sidney detailed more about the journey and Tracy’s words, of which she’d already known what little he’d told previously.

  “I wanted to ask you to tell me more about Mark,” he said.

  “Mark?” She asked, taken aback. “Sidney, you called me back here at the most crucial time to ask me about Mark?”

  “This is important,” he said. “You wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Mark was a listener wasn’t he?” Her eyes shifted to the floor, her silence serving as the answer he’d already figured. “That explains why you were so eager, so focused on studying me when I was a kid. It was not my ability that stirred your interest in parapsychology; it was Mark’s. When he spoke to me that day in your office, I reconnected you to him.”

  “Yes, you did,” she said. “And yes, he was a clairaudient. I never had the chance to tell you that, Sidney, since everything that happened to Tracy, then to you...”

  “I know,” he said. “You must have been absolutely devastated when he was killed.” Something about the way Sidney spoke told her that he’d arrived at his reason for asking these questions, as though he were fishing for info. She glanced over at him.

  “I never said he was killed, Sidney,” she said. “He was reported as MIA for many years, over the course of which, I assumed he was killed, especially after you heard him. And after forty-some odd years...”

  Fear overshadowed Sidney’s eyes like a darkening eclipse, and the straightforward stare of his rounded orbs alarmed and interrupted her.

  “Sidney, what is it?”

  * * * *

  He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell her what he had to tell her, but he felt almost positive that Mark was Roman Hadley. If it was true, Susan could stop all of this and see to it that Ryan came home.

  “When I saw the visions as I was dying, that moment in your office was one of the events in my life that was played out over again, very distinctly. It was as if I was living it all over again. I heard Mark’s voice, just as I had that day. And Susan, I realized that his voice was familiar to me, not at the time it happened, but later, as though I’d heard it again in my life.”

  She stared at him with confusion that made him want to tell her faster; he sighed and lowered his head for a moment to think.

  “The voice kept playing over and over to me. I did hear that voice again in my life, but I never identified it. I had only heard Mark one time and only a few words. Tracy told me during the journey that I would figure it out, and I have.”

  She leaned in closer to him, hell bent to hear what he would say.

  “Susan, the voice of Mark is the same as Roman Hadley’s.”

  The poise of her face sank as tense muscles melted away. She watched him, speechlessly unnerved.

  “When I heard Ryan’s voice; it was different. That’s when I realized that Ryan was alive, that I’d heard a living person from a distance. I had never done that before, at least, I thought I hadn’t. In my life, I’d only heard the dead, until the night I heard Ryan. I didn’t realize there was another time, long before that one. The Mark that I heard in your office was alive, just like Ryan; I know that now. His voice is the same as Roman Hadley’s.”

  He watched her slowly rise from the chair with her face lost in frozen confusion, a look of sneaking, silent, fleeting madness.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

  The words slipped from her in slow gasps of astonishment.

  “He has been dead for years! There is no way, no way in Hell that he would have gone all this time without contacting me! Mark could never, never—”

  “Susan, please trust me,” he interrupted. “You have to find Ryan because I can’t leave here. You have to be objective; you are now the one who holds the key. You have to figure this out! If I’m wrong, I will forever apologize to you, but I’m not, and I don’t think you believe I am, either.”

  She stood at the foot of his bed, weakened in helpless abandon. Denial, shock, and her widened eyes and quivering lips displayed the hurt he knew was twisting inside her.

  “Susan, please wake up. Do something! You have to save Ryan. Go find Mark, but please be careful.”

  The pleading sound of his voice and the hurt he felt for her right now made him realize how much this woman meant to him.

  “Go, Susan, now, before it’s too late!”

  The tears streamed down her face as she turned and ran from his room.

  He wept for her, but he knew she would be all right. Susan Logan was tough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ed was waiting for Wiley, and as soon as he walked through the door, he led him back to his small office where Ursula was waiting. The young waitress that he remembered well lowered her head in relief at the sight of him. Wiley assured them that unmarked, undercover agents were surrounding the diner in different locations, incase Ursula had been followed. Ed left them alone in his office.

  “Now, Ursula, let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “You said that you know where Ryan Quinn is, correct?”

  She was nodding her head before he ever finished the question.

  “I didn’t know, I swear to God, I didn’t!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, calming her, “like I said...from the beginning. I think we can help each other, here, Ursula. You need to trust me, right now, all right?”

  She nodded her head again and took a deep breath.

  “I am a clairaudient, Agent Wiley,” she said. “I have been for most of my life; it is an inherited trait that runs wild in my family. I attend the university, and for a while, I’d been thinking of inquiring into its paranormal investigative society. It was something I kept putting off, you know—I felt really weird about it, about myself, and my ability. One day last week, I almost stopped there, but I passed it up, walked to my car, and left.

  “Then a few days later, this limousine approached me as I was walking on campus, and this guy—he knew about
me, knew what I could do, knew about my thoughts. To make a long story short, he offered me money to be part of what he called ‘psychic’ or ‘paranormal’ research, something or other. He was a clairaudient also, and he spooked me when I realized that, that day, he’d heard my thoughts about approaching the society, as if he was listening, watching.

  “But still, I was desperate for the money. I agreed, but I swear I had no idea what he was really doing.”

  “You’re doing great, Ursula,” he said. “Look, I know this guy you’re talking about. His name is Roman Hadley; am I right?”

  Her mouth opened in a mixture of surprise and relief.

  “So, you know?”

  “We’ve been tracking him and his group for years, and Ursula, you are the first known person to have seen Roman Hadley; you should be extremely proud of yourself.”

  “He introduced himself as one of the university’s benefactors,” she said, then went on to describe him after Wiley asked. “Medium height, dark hair with streaks of gray at the temples, you know, salt and pepper, dark eyes, handsome man, actually, but creepy, very creepy.”

  She went on to detail how she was instructed to attend to the subject; one of her duties was bringing him his tray. She’d assumed that the subject was a grown man, having entered the research facility on a voluntary basis, until she discovered that it was a boy of about twelve. Yesterday, she’d realized that the boy had been kidnapped and that Hadley was, in fact, a telepath.

  “When I confronted him, he threatened to make me look like an accomplice.”

  She told how she’d decided to try to rescue Ryan, as well as herself, from the underground nightmare; she described the notes, then the phone calls from people who she’d assumed were his superiors, and how Hadley started to become nervous.

  “That’s what I want to know, Ursula. Did you ever see anyone else there, while you were there?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and needing no time to think. “Only the two guards, Hadley, and the boy.”

  “Only two guards?” He asked, incredulously. “You never saw anyone else there? Anyone ever come to the compound, maybe someone you’ve forgotten?”