Read Online Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala by Rick Hautala - Free Book Online

That means it’s not coming from inside the house. It’s gotta be out here somewhere. It’s like it’s coming from the ground or the sky or something.”
    “Now you’re being ridiculous,” he said. He took a breath and, leaning close, stared into her eyes. “I’ll call the electric company and maybe the phone company. It’s gotta be a problem with the wires.”
    “Sure,” Beth said, not sounding at all convinced.
    “They must have equipment to, you know, locate the source.”
    She forced a smile and wiped her nose on her bathrobe sleeve. Then, without another word, she turned and walked back into the house. Dave watched her go, knowing that she didn’t believe it was an electrical wire problem.
    By the time he left for work, he wasn’t sure he believed it, either.
    * * *
    Over the next few days, things got worse.
    A lot worse.
    Like a sore in your mouth you can’t stop probing with your tongue, Dave found himself poised and listening for the sound all the time, trying to detect its source. Once he was aware of it, he couldn’t help but hear it. He was growing desperate to locate it and analyze it. His work at the office suffered. Jeff Stewart, his boss, commented on how distracted he was. At first he said with amusement on how Dave didn’t seem to be “quite there,” but that his comments changed to concern and, finally, exasperation.
    But Dave couldn’t help but notice that everyone else in the office seemed to be a bit distracted, too, and as the day wore on, more and more irritable. This would make sense, he thought, if everyone was sleeping as poorly as he was. It had taken him hours to fall asleep last night, and once he was out, the noise still permeated his dreams. He woke up a dozen or more times and just lay there staring up at the ceiling as he listened to the low, steady hum just at the edge of hearing. He knew Beth was lying awake next to him, but they didn’t talk. Every attempt at conversation ended with one of them snapping at the other.
    Over the next few days, more and more people began to hear the hum. Sales of white-noise machines, soundproofing materials, and environmental sound CDs went through the roof. People turned their TVs and radios up loud in a futile effort to block out the hum, further irritating their neighbors who were already on edge.
    Dave’s commute to work quickly became a crash course in Type-A driving techniques. One morning, he was trapped for over an hour behind a sixty-five-car pileup on the Schuylkill Expressway that had turned into a demolition derby. It took nearly the entire city police force and an army of tow trucks to break up the melee. After that, Dave kept to backstreets going to and from work.
    Schools began canceling soccer and football games as soccer-mom brawls and riots in the stands became increasingly frequent and intense. Shoving matches broke out in ticket lines and grocery checkout lanes. Neighborhood feuds and other violent incidents escalated, filling the newspaper, TV news, and internet sites with lurid reports. As the week wore on, road rage morphed into drive-by shootings. Gang warfare was waged openly, and police brutality was more often applauded than prosecuted. The slightest provocation caused near-riots in public. The media reported that the hum—and the rise in aggressive behavior—was now a global phenomenon.
    “It’s only a matter of time before some third-world countries start tossing nukes at each other,” Dave muttered one morning at the office staff meeting.
    Mike from Purchasing glared at him.
    “Who died and made you Mr. Know-It-All, huh?” he snarled.
    “Jesus, Mike, don’t be such an asshole,” Dave snapped back. “I was just—”
    “All right. That’s enough,” Jeff said. “This isn’t kindergarten. Let’s try to be professional here, okay?”
    “Professional, schmessional,” Mike grumbled. “Who gives a rat’s ass anymore, anyway?”
    “I said that’s enough .” Jeff thumped the conference table