The Listener Read online

  No one broke the silence, and an eternity passed in only seconds.

  “Look, I’m not even sure I believe this, okay,” she said, frustrated. “I don’t know what else to do. I mean, how can my son be crazy? He predicted his father’s death as it happened. I don’t know what to make of it all. I wasn’t raised to believe in any of this, and I don’t know how my son became the way he is, but I know one thing, he didn’t get it from me!”

  What she had said was not the entire truth, and she’d kept her head down, her eyes averted. Then, it was Leah Leeds who asked the next question.

  “Annie,” she said, and at that moment, Annie felt the brusque tension between them.

  “Were you also involved in Ian’s drug activity?”

  She noticed the other investigators look at each other, surprised and perturbed by their colleague’s interjection.

  “No,” she said, curtly. “I was not.”

  Then why did you stay with him, knowing that you had a child to protect?

  This thought went through her own mind; she could only imagine how quickly it went through that of her detractor’s.

  Sidney Pratt had interrupted the tension, explaining to her that her son was a clairaudient or what was called in earlier times, a “listener.” Other modern terms included words like “channeler,” and “medium,” but the term referred to one who possessed the psychic ability to hear those who had passed on, as he put it. Sidney was cursed, in her opinion, with this ability as well. He’d summarized his life story for her, not that it helped, in fact, it scared her even more for her son’s fate.

  They had asked about other instances after his father’s death. She was reluctant to describe them. Raised in a strong, religious family, she was taught that even discussing this type of thing was a taboo. And what if after she told them, they carted Ryan off to who knows where? She didn’t know these people.

  She would soon relent, telling them about Ryan’s knowledge of one of her high school friends, who had died in a boating accident while vacationing in Florida. Ryan would have had no way of knowing any of it. There was also the elderly neighbor across the street; the one Ryan claimed would die soon because his late wife was coming for him. The man was dead three days later.

  None of them was surprised.

  “So, Annie, if you’re not a total believer in psychic abilities, why did you seek us out?” It was Dylan, the leader of the team, who had asked.

  “Because they have a name for people who hear voices,” she said, emphasizing, her voice rising. “My son is not crazy!”

  “Then you came to the right place,” Brett said. “We can help Ryan.”

  They had agreed to a number of sessions with Ryan alone and several with both of them together. She gave her consent and signed all the papers, but the sessions went unfinished. They were teaching Ryan how to use and to live with this “ability.” That was not what she had in mind; she was hoping that they would help him to suppress it.

  “But, Annie, Ryan is not a normal kid.” She would not let her son be a Guinea pig.

  She insisted that Ryan dissuade himself from acknowledging this ability, and try to live a normal life. At some point, he realized just how scared she really was, so he complied. That’s how they had lived for the past two years, with no mention of it, until the past week when a young woman, a friend of Sidney Pratt’s, was killed in an accident. The headlines were everywhere. Ryan swore he’d heard the whole thing, and that Sidney was somehow in danger afterward.

  The naked past she’d tried to clothe was stripped bare again.

  In some strange way, she could understand the reaction the Leeds girl had toward her. Subconsciously, she was putting herself before her son, and Leah had picked up on it. She went there asking for their help and at the same time, expressed her disbelief, her irritation, and worst of all, her fear. She didn’t blame her, but that’s what they didn’t understand...her fear, and why.

  The smell of the searing chicken roused her out of the reminiscence. She noticed her dark brown eyes in the translucent glass of the microwave-range, yet another trait Ryan had not picked up from her. He somehow got his Dad’s eyes, those sage green eyes that somehow dominated over hers. But that’s not all that Ryan had inherited from his father, and from that fact, fear had spoken loudly.

  * * * *

  “Ryan!” She called out to him as she normally did when dinner was ready. There was no answer. She called out again as she walked into the living room, then glanced out the front door, seeing he was not on the front porch.

  He was not in his bedroom when she went upstairs to check. She ran back downstairs and called out to an empty basement.

  “Ryan!” Still no answer met hers, and the vacant, lifeless, sound of being alone assaulted her ears. He wouldn’t go to a friend’s house without telling her, so she called his cell phone—no Ryan. It went straight to voicemail. What began as concern turned to panic and soon gave way to anger. She knew full and well where he’d gone. He’d begged her to take him to the hospital to see Sidney when he didn’t even know that he was there.

  No doubt, he’d walked to the hospital. The inevitable had finally confronted her; she had wondered how long it would take. Her face was fuming a soft red as she snatched her car keys from the kitchen counter.

  * * * *

  The walk to the hospital was longer than he anticipated. He had been walking at least fifteen minutes, and even with the hospital’s heliport in plain view, he still had another five minutes to go. He realized that he should have waited until after dinner to leave, but darkness came early this time of year, and that would have been too late. Mom was cooking, and when she was done, she would notice him gone. He had turned his cell off, but he would hear her wrath one way or another.

  She will be furious about me sneaking out of the house and leaving without telling her, but once she sees Sidney in the hospital, she’ll realize that I was telling the truth and not imagining the whole thing. She would also rave about the distance and walking alone, but he knew how to disarm her. He enjoyed walking; it cleared his head and often made the voices disappear for a while.

  Either way, he had to get to Sidney and the team to tell them about this Hadley guy. If Ryan was right, he was coming for him. In his mind, he kept replaying the ominous phone call that he’d “overhead.” He knew the team would believe him, especially after they heard the whole story.

  As he neared the hospital, he was thankful to have a few minutes to himself just walking, letting the voices subside, and allowing his head to clear enough that he could think. He’d been thinking about his father lately, but then again, he always thought about him. The night his father died would be the one event in Ryan’s life that he would never forget as long as he lived, and he would never forget his voice.

  He had been shaken from sleep by the sound of that voice.

  “Ryan!” He’d called out in desperation. He’d heard the fear in his father’s voice, real and almost childlike. His father, tall, strong, burly, was not afraid of anything. Nothing would ever scare Dad, Ryan had thought. But the unmistakable sounds of fright and panic in Dad’s voice had shaken that faith and scared all reason from him. Why did he call out to me that night? He thought, and then guessed he’d never know.

  Then, there was the sound of the gunshot. He knew it was a gunshot because it was just like on TV: loud, hollow, and echoing. When he told his mother, she called it a nightmare. He’d had many nightmares before, but none that involved his parents. But, somehow he knew, deep down inside of him, that his Dad was dead. When his mother told him the next day that the nightmare was real, that’s when the voices began. Soon after, he’d met Sidney and the gang.

  Now he had to get to them, and he could hear the hospital’s automatic front doors opening and closing as visitors entered only feet away. He had made it, feeling a sense of relief as the automatic doors opened for him. He would inquire at the front desk and ask about Sidney Pratt.

  Chapter Four

&n
bsp; Roman Hadley was comfortably situated in the leather armchair behind his long mahogany desk cluttered with files, papers, and other debris. The phone call he’d just finished reverberated through his mind.

  “Obviously, Sidney Pratt is no longer an option,” he’d said to the voice on the other end. “What kind of situation Sidney will be facing when he wakes, if he does, is anyone’s guess? He may no longer retain his psychic abilities, or it could be even worse.

  “But there is another option. About two years ago, Sidney studied the case of a young boy, who was immediately pronounced as clairaudient. This boy, Ryan Quinn, was discovered by the team to be strongly enabled of ‘remote hearing.’ He picked up an entire conversation in another room—verbatim. I read about it in the brief file they’d kept on him. Soon after, his mother halted the sessions.

  “I’m telling you, this kid is a powerful listener with an ability that’s a little more substantial than Sidney Pratt’s. Unlike Sidney, he is not limited to hearing the dead. Ryan can hear the dead and the living. Where Sidney hears words, sounds, ghost voices, Ryan hears sentences and live conversations. In his life, Sidney has only caught brief spoken words of living voices. Though he may not know it yet, Ryan was one of those voices; he called out to Sidney during the search for the Kimball girl.”

  “Is it possible that the child is also some form of developed telepath?” The voice on the other end was a calm, collected, monotone flow evoking strategy.

  “Yes. He is still a child, which means his psychic abilities remain at their peak. We have got to find him! He could be the key to unlocking the power behind this project. I’m telling you, I heard him myself!”

  The last emphatic statement that Roman Hadley nearly shouted needed no explanation to the voice on the other end as he slammed his private cell shut. He himself had once been a tremendously gifted clairaudient, possessing the ability of remote hearing since childhood. But now, at the age of sixty, time had eroded and erased the strange capability down to a random minimum, a fact he had never understood. He remained enabled enough to keep tabs on his closely watched team of investigators, especially Sidney Pratt, and the thoughts and sounds of Ryan Quinn were as clear as a ringing bell.

  Though his clairaudient ear was fading, his telepathic mind remained strong. But the project needed fresh blood, a younger, newer listener, one at a psychic peak; a powerfully gifted listener like Ryan could be developed into a psychic genius. From his private, clandestine office, he glanced at his aged reflection in the immaculate picture window that overlooked the famous steel city.

  The wisps of gray that streaked his black hair had turned it to a shade of salt and pepper, and his eyes now seemed a faded blue, as time had also eroded the prominent features that had once made him handsome. His rough, rugged, countenance stared helplessly back, a time-beaten and withered contrast from the young soldier once called into action to fight a war his friends were deeming wrong, unjust...

  The height of Vietnam and the tumult of 1969 had been everywhere. War was ongoing, coffins came home endlessly, many of which belonged to friends he’d grown up with since childhood. Drugs, sex, freedom, the feminist movement, the counter-culture, the riots, all of it still flashed through his mind. All of it was a chapter told long ago, a life once lived, but not forgotten.

  It was his eighteenth birthday when his number matched one of many drawn in the draft call. He would never forget the look on her face when the civil service announcer called his number exactly as it was printed on the card; she looked like the world had ended for her. He remembered the way his heart sank deep into his chest, and his legs quivered as all their plans were cancelled by the fast drawing hand of fate.

  “We’ll go to Canada,” she’d said, grabbing onto his shirtsleeve, but he knew that would be pointless. Living a life of refuge for an indefinite period of time, even after the war was over, taking her away from her plans, her dreams, her career, her family, was not what he’d wanted for her. Besides, it wouldn’t be that long; Nixon was about to end this debacle...soon. Where Johnson had failed, Nixon would succeed, and everyone would be coming home. He would be back, and they would start all over, at least that’s what he’d thought.

  He’d been deployed to the South of Vietnam where fierce, mortal firefights bloodied the deep green of the Mangrove jungles. The Mekong Delta still lived in his mind with the finest of sharpened recollection: the endless green, the vast land populated with thatched-roof straw huts from which peeping heads peered out in fear and curiosity, the daily explosions, the sneak attacks, the gunfire, the blood, the cries.

  There was the time he’d been helping to repair a bridge of its sections that had begun to fall away, when the deafness overcame him. It could have been a side effect of the battle sounds to his hearing, but lately he couldn’t tell. He glanced around him as voices that didn’t belong began to speak. Young male voices spoke in their native Vietnamese, which he didn’t understand, but he did recognize the word for attack—tan cong.

  “Sergeant!” He turned and yelled directly to his task-sergeant superior. “Incoming! Incoming—they’re about to attack us!”

  The puzzled look on the sergeant’s face prompted the surge of panic that snapped inside of him. He didn’t understand; none of them understood about the voices he’d lived with his entire life. He’d never mentioned his psychic abilities to any of them, especially when they’d interviewed him. It was something he never discussed; he was brought up to believe that taboo was not to be mentioned, and exploration was out of the question.

  “Sergeant, they’re about to attack us from the west side—I heard it! You don’t understand—I heard it!”

  The look on the young sergeant’s face turned to curiosity, almost accepting of the assertion, but it was too late. The sounds of explosion and gunfire had erupted everywhere. The bridge had imploded, crumbling under a burst of orange flames that suddenly swallowed it. Around him, his fellow troops twisted and twined, battered and beaten by the barrages of gunfire that riddled their bodies. Many had hit the ground in time, firing back at unseen enemies safely hidden by the surrounding foliage.

  His task-sergeant had grabbed him by the shoulders, and in an instant, threw the both of their bodies over the side of a small hill near the bridge. Once they took cover, the sergeant began radioing then drew fire on the invisible attackers. The battle lasted almost eight minutes, and he could still taste the sulfur of smoke and ammunition as it had choked and blinded him that day. Seven of his fellow troops were killed, fifteen were wounded.

  Late that night, he was awakened from his bunker and told not to make a sound. Two soldiers waited while he dressed and stood at attention, groggy and mystified.

  “You’re wanted. We’ve been told to escort you.”

  What was happening? Was he being sent home? Did they think he was responsible for what had occurred? He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He only tried to warn them, but how was he going to explain knowing?

  As soon as they were outside of the barracks, one soldier held him in place, the other blindfolded him, wrapping and tying the fold tightly just above his ears. The fear was yet another explosion, though this one inside of him. Once his heart began beating again, it pounded, and breathing became harder as his lungs quivered in his chest.

  “Just a precaution, that’s all.” The soldier who tied the blindfold, not much older than he was, tried to reassure him.

  “So, obviously, I’m not going to headquarters...”

  The soldiers didn’t answer him.

  Now the vibes of fear churned, causing a shudder through his body. The sweat poured down his face, nearly soaking the blindfold. He could feel some dark, ominous force about to change his life forever, and he was right.

  * * * *

  The first thing he was able to recognize was the downward drop of an elevator, and when it opened, feeling the coolness of the air around him, a quick change from the July heat. Underground, he thought. He focused and tried to listen with his ability,
yet could hear nothing. His ability seemed to evade him in times when he could have used it.

  He heard the elevator doors close behind him with a heavy clank and could see increasing light as each layer of the blindfold was unraveled. The light was a dim, dingy basement glow that cast shadows upon the dank and darkened walls.

  “This way,” the soldier said, turning him to the left. He was instructed to walk in front of them down a long, underground corridor. All around him, he could see doors that contained security light panels. He tried to listen beyond each door, but dead stillness had greeted his mental ear, as though nothing dwelled in this vast sub-terrain except the silence of well-kept secrets and the muted past of histories long fulfilled.

  “This one.” The soldier’s words were few and limited as he motioned him to a door on the right-hand side of the corridor. “You’re expected. Just press the red button to enter.”

  As soon as his finger pushed the bright, glowing red button, the door to the room drew back sideways in an electric hiss that seemed almost futuristic. Strange. He entered the small room that housed a metal table with three metal chairs, two on one side, and one on the other. A large, opaque, glass window stretched across the back wall, cloaking and hiding what or whoever watched beyond it, another ominous feeling he couldn’t ignore.

  A man in his late forties with dark hair slicked back sat at the small interrogation table. He had never seen him before; he didn’t even look military, but something was top-notch about him. He looked up from the file he was reading and spoke.

  “Welcome, Private. Please, have a seat.”

  The man’s voice was calm, inviting, and friendly, and invitation to be at ease.

  “I am Agent Foster; FBI.” His young eyes grew wide at the mention, but the man made a dismissive motion with a shake of his head and the quick close of his eyes. “We understand that you were part of the unit that was hit by the sneak attack today?”