The Listener Read online

  Chapter Two

  The voice, he could no longer hear the voice, and now the static seemed somehow faint, far-off. Above him, a brilliant sun gleamed yet it was not the bright orange face of Sol that was life itself, but a sun strangely steeped in the ultra-violet, and jagged were the arcs of the rounded orb. In front of him, a corridor unfolded, vacant and vast and cast in the purple hue that emanated from the strange sun.

  The static grew fainter, becoming a hush in the hollow background where dark crude shadows danced in anonymity. Where was he? The long corridor stretched out even further with each small step that he took, becoming an endless plateau through which he moved, bathed in the dim, indigo light. His movement was hindered, weighted down, as though he moved underwater through a strange, uncertain sea.

  He remembered the voice again—Tracy’s voice. Then suddenly the images of the past few days played out before him, recreated on an eerie stage lit by the hovering sun. One by one, the images flashed like a slideshow: him tearing out of the parking lot with the van, Tracy’s jeep flipping over the guardrail, her lifeless body bloodied as he cradled her, the sound of the ambulance, the casket, the funeral, the newspaper headline, the static—and then, the voice.

  She’s dead. Tracy’s dead. Am I dead too? If not, why can’t I wake up?

  In the background where the shadows danced, he could see brief streaks of light that ran quickly away from the shadows. The images had stopped now, now that he recalled the last few events of his conscious mind. He remembered hearing another female voice, the one that kept crying out his name. He’d heard her only seconds ago.

  Leah...yes...Leah. Was she crying because he was dead?

  Another flash of memory depicted him hearing the voices during the desperate search for Tracy that began on the highway and soon ended on the rural back roads with another life lost to the infamous Shadow Valley Curve. It was the voices that had led him in that direction. One of the voices was his grandfather, the others were varied: men, women, older, younger. They were the voices of the dead that he’d heard all of his life, except for one—one of them was alive!

  It was the boy. He knew he recognized the voice of the boy that night, but there was no time to think during the desperate race to save Tracy. He hadn’t told the others about it afterward, but the boy he’d heard was alive, a living being, not a soul that had passed on as Sidney was used to hearing. Sidney listened to the dead, but this boy was alive, and he recognized the voice!

  Memory: a boy of about ten, reddish hair, freckles, a much younger rendition of Sidney’s ability. But this boy’s ability, powerfully strong for his age, hears not only the dead, but the living.

  The Listener...just like me, only...

  The boy was one of the child psychics he’d studied in his research. His mother had brought him to the society for help.

  Memory: A young woman, early thirties, strawberry-blond hair, big brown eyes, frightened by her son’s ability. He saw her desperate frustration once again...

  “I don’t understand him. I don’t understand it!”

  He saw the boy at an older age...twelve? Obviously, Sidney had mentored the boy so why couldn’t he remember his name. He had recalled the name that night during the chase, but now it was gone. He hadn’t told the others, but it was the boy who found Tracy. It was Sidney who had been too late.

  The images had passed quickly, and this strange state of conscious unconsciousness began to change, somehow altering itself from the slow motion void of which he had quickly become accustomed. The width of the vast corridor was shrinking, closing him in, trapping him in a state of motionlessness as now his legs would not move. He seemed somehow weightless, watching shapes float away, and the streaks of bright light that had intermingled now overpowered the fleeing shadows.

  The indigo light grew pale in the presence of a blinding white luminescence. Was this the final exit? But, he wasn’t finished. What about the boy? He had to tell them about the boy... He could hear voices, soft, but coming closer along with the light. Then suddenly the white light exploded, and the presence of another realm stretched out before him.

  * * * *

  The beaming hot-white of the overhead surgical lamp now illuminated the patient, showing the twisted face of his trauma with full and perfect disclosure. The side of his head had been shaved, revealing a light shade of purple to his scalp where the bleeding of the brain persisted. Dr. Greg Talbot’s goal was to stop that persistence in hopes that Sidney Pratt would walk out of this hospital alive.

  “Scalpel,” Talbot instructed. The sharp silver gleam of the scalpel cut a glint before their eyes that constantly kept the surgical team aware of the instrument’s power, a power to save and heal, but one false move could end and destroy.

  A slight stream of blood surrounded the scalpel as Greg Talbot sliced into Sidney’s scalp, his first strategic move to save his patient. Somewhere inside, on some uncertain level, Sidney experienced the brightness of the light, the pain of the incision, and a new realm of unconscious thoughts, memories, and dreams.

  Talbot often wondered what transpired inside the comatose minds of his patients, especially this patient, one with a powerful psychic ability.

  Chapter Three

  Ryan threw the X-Box controller across his computer desk in frustration. What was the point in playing when the voices kept whispering what moves to make and ultimately beat the system? Besides, he was too worried about Sidney right now, and his mother wouldn’t listen when he told her Sidney was in trouble.

  When he saw the story on the news about Sidney’s friend, the girl who went over the cliff, he tried to tell her then that he’d heard Sidney searching for her, and that the girl was in danger. She dismissed him. She didn’t understand about the voices; she never did, and she never would.

  Ryan had heard everything: the panic in all of their voices, Sidney screaming that they had to find her, the shouting back and forth as to which direction to drive. Shortly after, he’d heard that girl writhing in her own vomit. That’s when he interceded, concentrating and channeling into Sidney’s mind because one of the voices had whispered the words “short cut.” Then came the sounds he would never forget: brakes screeching so loudly in his mind that the piercing sound caused him a slight headache, the repetitive crash of crushing metal and shattering glass, over and over again, and his beloved friend screaming out like he’d never heard anyone scream before.

  “But, Ryan, how could you have heard Sidney?” she asked. “Sidney is alive, remember?” She had even called the university to ask Sidney Pratt to call. “You see, he is going to call when he can. He was not in the accident.”

  She did not understand, and he could not explain. He didn’t just hear the dead. That’s why he wanted Sidney, but Sidney was in danger. He was not in the car accident, but something else had happened, and Ryan could hear it all.

  He could hear him moaning and writhing in pain, and something about Sidney’s voice was different; it was somehow weaker. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but it was Sidney’s head, something was wrong inside his head.

  It was two years ago when Sidney had explained it all to him that he was not limited to hearing the voices of the dead, but could also hear the living. Sidney failed to explain all of this to his mother because she refused to go any further in the study. She’d heard enough. She had learned to live with the fact that her son could hear the dead. It was more than she could handle, but she dealt with it. The end result was that Ryan would never fully understand his psychic capabilities; when she had ended the sessions, she had ended his right to understand.

  Most often when he would attend his sessions with Sidney and the others at the university, his mother would leave for a while and come back to get him in a few hours. It gave them the chance to study him alone. The last time he was there the four investigators went into another room, an empty one next door to Room 208. They told him to relax and when they returned, he was to repeat anything that had popped into his “mental ear,” dur
ing the time they were gone.

  They closed the door behind them, and the room was silent except for the soft hum of the air conditioner. He stared around the room at all the equipment that fascinated him. The giant screen was huge so he failed to understand the point of all the other screens that hung from the walls, side by side. The various desktop PCs, the odd-looking machines, the gadgets and huge speakers, filled Ryan with a curiosity that sparked a thousand questions.

  Suddenly words formed, and voices spoke inside his mind like a far-off radio. Sidney had explained that the rooms were soundproof and what that meant. There was no one in the room, but Ryan’s young, sage green eyes searched around anyway—he was alone. They’d told him not to resist the voices, and this time he didn’t; he’d recognized them clearly...

  * * * *

  “Well, guys, he’s what’s called a clairaudient,” Sidney said in Room 209.

  “Which means what, exactly?” Dylan had wanted Sidney’s expert opinion. After all, it was his area of expertise.

  “It means he is an extremely powerful listener, probably even more capable than I. This kid doesn’t just hear the dead, he hears the living as well.”

  “He’s capable of remote hearing?” Leah asked the question with a gasp of astonishment, and they all felt the slight ripple of shock at the newest discovery. Sidney nodded his head.

  “And that’s what we’re testing, right now, I take it?” It was Brett’s voice.

  “Yes,” Sidney said. “Leah, come up with a password.”

  “A password?” she asked.

  “Yes, you know a word that tells us whether he passed or failed.”

  Leah rolled her eyes upward in thought.

  “Listener,” she said, picking the obvious.

  “Great, let’s go back inside.”

  The investigators walked back to Room 208, entered calmly, and sat down at the table with their young guest. They knew their eyes beheld a prodigy, but to what extent was uncertain. Since he was a listener, it would be Sidney who would have to determine that.

  They had empathized with Ryan, as well as the plight of his young mother who left him here. Being endowed with a powerful psychic ability at such an early age was in many ways a curse. No one knew this better than Sidney and Leah.

  “So, Ryan, I’m sure you know what we just did, right?” Sidney got right to the point, and Ryan nodded his head.

  “Then, Ryan, what is the password?” Sidney asked the question as the four sat waiting, pulses racing, yet knowing.

  Ryan looked at the four anxious faces in front of him and answered.

  “Listener...”

  Their eyes grew wide, and focused on each other.

  * * * *

  That was two years ago when he was ten. Now that he was twelve, the voices came more frequently, and he could tell who was dead and who was alive. It was a difference in sound. One sound was abrupt, out of nowhere; the other had always been there, though unspoken before. Then sometimes the dead spoke all at once, overwhelming him with overlapping words to the point where he wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Sidney understood; Sidney could help him control it.

  That’s why he had to get to him; they could help each other. Ryan could hear Sidney’s voice; it sounded as though he were trapped, lost somewhere and unsure how to come back. He also heard the voices of the others, Sidney’s friends. The blond girl, Leah, she kept pleading for Sidney to come back, but where had he gone?

  Yet there was another voice that Ryan didn’t understand, and that’s why he had to move fast to find Sidney and the others. The man, the man was alive, speaking on the phone. He’d heard bits and pieces.

  “Sidney Pratt...no longer an option...there is another...the boy...we’ve got to find him...I’m telling you, I heard him myself!”

  Every sense of knowing that stirred inside him told Ryan that the man was talking about him. The man, he was a listener too, and he was listening now. Ryan heard the man’s name spoken—Hadley. He wasn’t a good man; he was a bad man, and the others didn’t know everything about him. If he was right, the man was coming for him. He had to get to Sidney and the others fast.

  His first instinct was to catch a bus to the university, but they weren’t there. Ryan had figured that out when he’d listened with his mental ear as Leah cried for Sidney to come back, and in that distant background he’d heard a voice on an intercom, like in a hospital...

  “Dr. Talbot to the ER, STAT...Dr. Talbot to the ER, STAT...”

  The hospital, Sidney was in the hospital. He may not have been in the accident, but he was there because of his head. Ryan knew it; he could hear it. Sidney had to be at University Hospital, which was a fifteen-minute walk from Ryan’s house. He could make it, but he had to slip down the stairs and through the front door without his mother seeing him. Even if she didn’t, she would notice that he was gone within an hour. It didn’t matter. He had to find the investigators and fast. His mother just wouldn’t understand.

  Step by step he silently crept down the staircase of the modest two-story, three-bedroom house. His tiptoes arched down on the carpet barely made a sound. He spotted his mother from behind in the kitchen. Thankfully, she’d left the front door open; it was a cool, late afternoon in October. The clamor she made in the kitchen covered the sound of the creaking screen door as he slipped out into the dusk.

  * * * *

  Annie Quinn stood at the stove making fried chicken; it was her son’s favorite. She had been doing everything lately to be more encompassed in his life: making his favorite meals, going to the movies, doing things together, anything to keep his mind off Sidney Pratt and those paranormal investigators.

  It was difficult enough having to endure her son’s unexplainable psychic abilities, but to have him studied under a microscope and watching them hone his “gift” to become the main focus of his life was definitely not what she had wanted. She wanted her son to go to school, play soccer, play video games, get married one day, but for now, she just wanted him to be a normal kid. She would never forget what Sidney Pratt had said to her...

  “But, Annie, Ryan is not a normal kid.”

  That’s when she stopped the sessions altogether. She thought of all this as she flipped the browning chicken in the pan, her long, strawberry-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. It was difficult, having to explain in detail the first instance in which Ryan had displayed this strange ability. She hated rehashing what had happened that night; she still wasn’t even sure she believed it. She had chalked the whole thing up to some strange coincidence, an eerie déjà vu that occurs in times of trauma, just something that happens...

  “What coincidence ‘just happened’?” It had been the blond girl, Leah, who had asked that question with just the slightest hint of what was either intolerance, or disapproval. She paid it no mind as she reluctantly explained.

  “Ryan’s father was murdered,” she said, and a dead silence had descended upon the room. Thankfully, Ryan had not been with her for that session. The four investigators had asked to see her alone, and now they waited for her to continue.

  “The night it happened, Ryan woke up screaming for his father. Ian, Ryan’s father, was not home yet; he was out.” She looked over at them, hoping to convey the meaning of her last few words. She and Ian were married not so much out of love, but because she got pregnant, and many nights he’d left her and their son alone while he stayed out partying, boozing, carousing. They had stayed together in a broken marriage for Ryan’s sake.

  “I ran into his room, and he was awake in bed screaming. He grabbed a hold of me and pleaded with me that his father had been shot; he’d heard it. I tried desperately to convince him that he had been dreaming, that it was nothing more than a nightmare, but he was unyielding. He kept repeating that he’d heard his father arguing with someone, and soon after, he’d heard a gunshot; then, he said Ian was calling him.

  “This was the first time. He managed to fall back to sleep, after I had convinced him that his father was
still out, working overtime, and that he would be home soon.

  “‘But Mom, I heard him!’”

  “He said this to me with this certainty, this conviction that I had never seen before. It rattled me inside. I laid on the living room couch, unable to fall asleep the rest of the night, and it was about four in the morning when there was a knock at the front door. As I neared the door, my heart was both pounding and stopping. What Ryan had said was echoing through my mind.

  “It was two police officers, coming to tell me that Ian had been shot in the alley behind Marty’s Tavern. There had been a dispute over drugs, and from what they had gathered, Ian had been at the forefront of the episode. Obviously, they didn’t have the whole story yet, but I could think of nothing else but whatever it was that stirred Ryan from his sleep only hours before, causing him to launch into the tirade that he did. I was speechless, frozen, and I recall the officers taking me by the shoulders and sitting me back down on the couch.

  “What in God’s name was I supposed to tell my son when he woke in the morning, that his nightmare was real, but not to worry, Daddy had gone to heaven? Nothing was real to me anymore at that point. They started asking me questions. Was I aware of the extent of Ian’s habits? Whom he was dealing with? I wasn’t listening; it was as if I couldn’t hear them. I kept hearing Ryan’s outburst earlier and kept touching everything around me to make sure it was real. It didn’t seem real, but it was.

  “They assumed that my state of shock was a result of Ian’s death, but if they only knew. They decided to come back later at a more appropriate time when I could answer questions. They knew I had to wake my son and tell him, a task for which I was completely unprepared.

  “When he woke, I did the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. From then on, my son talked of hearing voices, some he says are dead, and sometimes he hears neighbors, people at the other end of the phone before they call, and other things I can’t explain. He still hears Ian from time to time, and when he does it drives me crazy.”