The Hum

The Hum

By Rachael Adkins

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Rachael Adkins

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1

I didn’t need to look at the clock to know it was five in the morning. The hum always came at the same time, starting from somewhere within myself; a resonance that made every cell in my body sing me awake. It was a feeling like none I’d ever had, euphoric, and at this point in my life extremely welcome and very nearly life-saving.

For a moment I lay there, relishing the happiness that engulfed me. I’d been having these…episodes… for eight nights now, and every night the feeling would cease to exist the moment I focused on it. As much as I wanted to capture it, I was afraid that it would vanish as soon as I attempted to do just that, and so I allowed myself a few minutes of blissful sensation before the desire to find it became too overwhelming.

Finally giving in to the temptation of locating it, I lifted my blanket back and stepped onto the floor. Immediately I sensed that the happy feeling that was flowing through my veins came from somewhere outside the house, and if I could find it I could have it all, and then every amount of pain I’ve ever felt would be erased forever.

Slowly I made my way to the door of my room and let my hand rest on the knob. The feeling was still with me, and I sighed with relief. This had been the point where it had faded into nonexistence on the first night, and I was pleased to know that at least this wasn’t a cycle. I wouldn’t get closer and closer until I was finally thrown back to the beginning. Tonight I would find it.

I crept down the stairs, careful not to wake my parents, although I knew they would stay asleep no matter what kind of noise I made. The joyous sound inside me was getting stronger, and I wondered how I was the only one who could hear it.

I reached for the dead bolt on the front door, knowing this was where it ended last night, and a little afraid that maybe this was as near as I was allowed to get. Somehow I found the strength to turn the knob, though, and when I pulled open the door the wave of pleasure that engulfed me was so strong that I dropped to my knees.

Finally, I composed myself and stood, knowing that once I reached it, I would become it, and there could be nothing better than not only feeling euphoric, but being euphoria itself.

Crossing the threshold, I stood on the weathered front porch and looked to the left, knowing that it would be waiting for me beside the maple tree. At once I bounded to the tree, the crisp smell of autumn leaves under my bare feet sweeter than it had ever been. After only a few steps, I stopped, awestruck at the most beautiful sight I had ever beheld. Floating face high to me was a perfect glowing sphere. It was as if the sun and the moon had combined and intensified, making it impossible to distinguish the difference between the two. It was a glittering yellow, yet somehow a glowing silver at the same time, and it was pulsating without actually moving. I wanted to reach for it, but intuitively knew I couldn’t. For reasons I couldn’t understand, I knew my touch would cripple this extraordinary magnum opus.

Somehow I became aware that it was pulling its energy back from me, and my euphoria slowly faded into the hum it was before I was lured outside. I was a little disappointed that the exhilaration had to go, but glad it let me keep the hum, which made me feel as if I were a tuning fork.

Knowing what I was supposed to do next, I cleared my throat. Why are you here?

It answered me then, not with a voice, but inside of me, as if it had rewired all of my nerves to understand its own Morse code. It is time to awaken.

My eyes flew open just before my dad tapped his knuckles against my bedroom door.

You up yet Gabs?

My pulse was racing from the dream I’d just had, and I inhaled deeply through my nose before I could answer. Yeah, Dad.

I heard the familiar creak in front of my door as he walked down the hallway toward the stairs that led to the kitchen. It was always Dad who woke me up. No matter how many times my mother swore she was going to get herself together in the morning, I knew she wouldn’t. Not that she didn’t want to.

Up until eight days ago I knew what it was like to wake up in the morning and have him be the first thought. I knew she was agonizing over losing him, and so I was patient, forgiving, and understanding when she fell through with her promises of getting better.

Devon, my twin brother, will have been gone for a year tomorrow. His disappearance was nothing short of devastating to my family. There were no leads, no evidence of foul play, nothing anyone, including his closest friends, could think of as to why he would have gone away. It was almost as if he never existed in the first place, which was partly why I’d been in his room a little over a week ago.

I needed a good look around, not only at the posters on his walls, or the pile of CD’s that were stacked neatly on his dresser. I needed something more than that, something he created, maybe, just to prove to myself that he really did exist once. I opened his closet first, just to see if maybe the clothes that were hanging there still had his smell. At the very end of his small length of clothes hung his leather jacket. He had outgrown it about a year before he came up missing, and I put it on. The sleeves landed just beyond my fingertips, putting into perspective just how big he was. I wasn’t sure if my mother would be upset if she saw me in it or not, so I wadded it up and snuck it across the hall to my room before she could see it. After quietly shutting the door, I slipped the jacket on while standing in front of the mirror.

I shoved my hands in the pockets, my fingertips brushing against a folded piece of paper that lay curled up in the corner. I held it in my hand a moment, hoping that it wasn’t a girl’s phone number or a class schedule. I needed it to be something he had written himself, anything - as long as it proved my brother lived and breathed and made a mark on this world. I pulled it from the deep pocket and unfolded it carefully so I wouldn’t tear it. On the middle of the page was a hand drawn symbol - an infinity sign surrounded by a ring of fire.

I examined the yellowed paper carefully, wondering what connection this design had with my brother. Was it his own creation, or was it something he’d seen and tried to reproduce while suffering through some boring lecture at school?

For some reason, I couldn’t let the matter of the eerie symbol rest. Questions were gnawing at me, and I finally gave in to my curiosity and booted up my computer. I typed in its description in the search bar and selected the image icon. It took a while, but I finally found a very similar rendition. Shock seized me as I read the caption under the picture.

‘Lucifer’s noose: known as the symbol of one of the oldest satanic cults in history. Predates the birth of Christ.’ It was the symbol of an ancient satanic cult.

What was Devon doing with it? Perhaps it was a mistake. He could have picked it up anywhere. There were always a few people at our high school who claimed to be involved in such things, but no one ever took them seriously. It was possible that one of these hooligans could have dropped the drawing in the hallway at school, and Devon just happened to be the one to pick it up. He was always very talented at drawing; it most definitely would have piqued his interest.

Slowly I started to breathe again. I knew Devon could never be involved in something as twisted as a cult, but then again, rumor had it that sometimes these groups didn’t take no for an answer. The worst case scenario would be that whoever drew this symbol could be involved in his kidnapping. With this thought, anxiety overtook me.

The smart thing to do would be to tell my parents and let them handle it, but with my mother being so devastated and my father trying to forget that he ever had a son to begin with, an accusation like this could only bring back the pain. I decided to do a little more investigating before I alerted them to something so serious without enough evidence.

That evening, after I washed the dishes and my parents sat down in front of the

television to pretend they were watching it, I quietly slipped into Devon’s room, hoping to find something - anything - that would clue me in on exactly why he had that drawing in his pocket. It was a long shot since the entire house, garage, and both vehicles had already been searched in the initial investigation, but the police had missed the drawing, after all, so I told myself that it was possible that they’d missed other clues that could lead us to my brother’s whereabouts.

I honestly didn’t know what my parents would say to me had they found me snooping through Devon’s things, and I didn’t want to find out. I figured I had about half an hour before one of them got up from the couch; the television was tuned to a sitcom that I was praying could hold their attention. Trying to be as quick as possible, I decided not to bother with the obvious hiding places; I knew Devon hadn’t hidden anything under his bed since he was about five. I knew of one great hiding spot he’d used regularly - we used it many times as we were growing up to hide various things in from our parents- but I wasn’t sure if I should waste my time looking there. If he was hiding something from me, I doubted if he’d put it in a place I was familiar with. Unless…he wanted me to find it. Or, I shuddered at the thought, he was so far gone that he didn’t care who found it -whatever it could be.

Like I said, Devon hadn’t hidden anything under his bed since he was about five, but he did hide things in it. Well, sort of. His headboard had thick, wooden posts with a large ball on top. When he was younger he discovered that if you shimmied the ball a little, it would come off, and the post it sat on had a cavity big enough to hide small objects in. Even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t hide anything in there that he didn’t want me to find, I hurried over to the post and wriggled the ball off. I almost yelped when I looked into the cavity and found a slender, wooden box about the size of a cigar. With trembling hands I pulled it out. For such a small box it was heavy, which surprised me. It looked ancient, like it was so old it was nearly petrified, but the shape it was in didn’t concern me in the least. What had me shaking was the symbol that was carved on the top: Lucifer’s Noose.

My heart was hammering so hard in my chest I had to sit just to calm myself down. I breathed through my nose, willing myself to get a grip. This didn’t have to mean anything, I repeated over and over to myself. I decided to take the box to my room to investigate it further.

I snuck back to my room quickly, shutting the door behind me, and threw the box onto my bed. It bounced a couple of times before sinking into the brown and aqua patterned comforter, the symbol glaring back at me in defiance. My hands trembled slightly as I sat down beside it, and at once my head was throbbing behind my left temple.

Instinctively I covered my eye with the palm of my hand and clasped at the pain with my fingers. Damn, I muttered to myself. I started getting headaches the day Devon went missing, but they started easing up within the last four months. Now my headache was back with a vengeance, and made worse by catching me off-guard. I breathed through my nose, preparing to battle it. When I finally had a grasp on my determination to go on despite it, I picked up the box to examine it closer.

I had always known Devon was artistic, but I had to stare at the intricateness of his carving in awe. Had I not seen the symbol on that piece of paper beforehand, I would never have looked twice at it on the box. It was carved into the wood with such precision that it looked as if it was done in the manufacturing process, sent through a machine and stamped there before it was packaged and shipped to the nearest knick-knack shop.

I traced the infinity sign with my index finger. It was like an elongated number eight that toppled over on its side, graceful and elegant. The halo of fire that surrounded it, however, could not be mistaken for anything other than sinister. Although it too was meticulous in the extreme, there was nothing soothing about it. It almost seemed like it was mocking the infinity sign, ensnaring it inside a confine of wrath. Examining it closely, I realized there was no latch or hinge on the box. Was it even a box at all? Or was it nothing more than a trinket? I held it up to my ear and shook it, but I didn’t hear anything in it. Not knowing what else to make of it, and satisfied now that it was impossible that something could be hidden inside of it, I tossed it on my bed and decided to forget about it for the time being.

The box missed my pillow and landed hard against the wrought iron designs of my head board. Crap, I muttered, sure that this would pull my parents from their reverie. I heard them mumble something to each other downstairs, but a few moments passed and I knew they were not going to make any attempt to leave the comfort of their couch.

I reached behind my bed, feeling my way down the wall to get the box. I felt something hard and cool, and pulled it out to look at it. It was a piece of the box, the menacing emblem against my palm. I flattened myself against the floor then, sticking my head under the bed, to see where it had gone. Reaching my hand across the thick carpeting, I felt something thin and cold against my fingers. Afraid of touching it before

I actually saw what it was, I bounded downstairs to grab a flashlight.

To my surprise, both of my parents were looking at me, interest blazing in their eyes.

What are you up to Gabrielle? My mother was trying her best to act casual, but I knew that she was really asking, ‘What was all that noise about?’

Oh nothing. I just need to grab the flashlight.

What do you need a flashlight for? My dad asked. He wasn’t one to care about being nonchalant. I should have considered this before being so truthful, I guessed, but it would have been too obvious a lie if I told them something different then went upstairs carrying a flashlight.

Oh. Well I dropped something behind my bed.

He looked at me, expecting more.

A… coffee mug. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t busted into a thousand pieces or something before I reached for it and sliced my hand open. What kind of lie was this? A coffee mug? I decided that in the future I should come up with a lie before being put on the spot.

A coffee mug? My mother reiterated my thought. Since when do you drink coffee?

I shrugged, not knowing what to say, then turned on the spot and ran to the junk drawer in the kitchen to grab the flashlight. Once again I could hear my parents mumbling to one another in hushed voices, and when I tried to avoid them on my way to the stairs, my dad stopped me.

Gabby, just a minute.

I could feel my face heat up and hoped that after a year of steadily ignoring me they would have forgotten how that meant I was anxious. I turned. Yeah, Dad?

How did a coffee mug just fall behind your bed?

Crap, crap, crap, I thought. I was no good at lying. Besides my obvious lack of creativity, which everyone knew was the first prerequisite of a good lie, my body was always determined to rat me out. My hands and knees started shaking, my brow furrowed, and little beads of perspiration threatened my hair line.

"It didn’t just fall, Dad. I was setting my alarm clock and I knocked it off the stand. It hit the headboard pretty hard - didn’t you hear it?" I hoped this last statement would convince him it was plausible. Instead, my first statement was what caught his attention.

Why would you be setting your alarm clock? You get up at the same time every morning don’t you?

Well, hell, here I go again, I thought before perjuring myself once more. I… have to get up a half-hour earlier tomorrow. April can’t pick me up for school so I thought I’d catch the bus instead. I was making things worse with every word. Now I was going to have to call April to tell her not to pick me up, then I was going to have to get up at five-thirty in the morning just to catch the stupid bus where I would be the only senior in a world of immature underclassmen.

This seemed to satisfy my dad. He scrunched his nose and said, You can take my car if you want. Bob won’t mind to pick me up for work; he’s always trying to get me to go to breakfast with him and the other guys. I can catch a ride home with him too.

I sighed with relief. Lie accepted, bus travel thwarted. Thanks, Dad. I meant it sincerely, although I did feel guilty about the lie.

Yeah, well, maybe I’ll see what I can do about getting you a car, he said, his eyes finally traveling toward the television again. Can’t believe the thought never crossed my mind before now. He mumbled his last statement to himself, and I knew I was off the hook.

Back in my room, I shined the flashlight under my bed, illuminating the chilly object that spilled from the secret cavity of the box. A glint of gold caught my eye, and I could just make out the shape of a key. I reached for it, and when I touched it, the texture was not at all what I expected.

I held it in front of my face, absentmindedly shining the flashlight on it for a moment. I turned off the light and stared at it, awe pulsating throughout me.

The key looked as if it were made of a metal I had never seen. It was golden in color, but only slightly. It was the same width and length of any normal key, but much heavier. I closed my hand around it and shut my eyes, trying to get a feel of how heavy it was. I estimated that it weighed about the same as a roll of pennies.

I flipped the key over in my hand, eyes still shut, and felt along the length of it with my thumb. There were tiny bumps all along it, smooth like glass. On the face of the key I could feel a smooth oval. I looked down at it, the gems shiny now from my inadvertent polishing. The shaft of the key was encrusted with what looked like onyx, intricately lining the indentations that led to the bottom. The oval on the face was a gem I didn’t recognize, the color a mixture of ruby and amber. In the center of the unknown gem was the symbol again, etched beneath the surface.

My hands started trembling uncontrollably then, and the headache that was brewing behind my left eye seemed to explode, sending shrapnel throughout the rest of my head. I clutched my head in agony, the pain so terrible it trapped my voice in my throat, rendering me mute. I’m not sure when I blacked out, but the next thing I remembered was feeling the hum.

I reached over to turn off my alarm clock before it sounded. I wasn’t quite sure why my dad had suddenly started waking me up every morning, but I was sure it had something to do with my mom. The screeching sound of my alarm was probably starting to get to her, and I knew my dad would have preferred to let her sleep.

Ugh, I thought, seeing the time. Why must he insist on getting me up before six?

I rolled out of bed against my most heartfelt wishes, and slogged toward the bathroom, considering the outcome of my dream as I showered.

Now that I reached the source of the hum, would the dreams continue? What else could happen if they did? Was it possible that the beautiful orb would absorb me? I had to laugh at myself for that last thought. I’ve always had crazy dreams, but somehow this one seemed quite logical to me. Absorption didn’t quite fit.

The shower perked me up, and since I had some extra time, I decided to put on a little makeup. I lined my blue eyes with black liner, careful not to overdo it. There was a fine line between looking sophisticated and looking easy, and since I didn’t consider myself either, I applied somewhere between a lot and just enough. I brushed on just a small amount of blush; having never mastered the technique, I was always afraid that I would transform myself into a clown. My lips always seemed too dark, so instead of lipstick I used a cream-colored gloss that tasted like French Vanilla. I’d always had fair colored skin, (which I got from my mother - Dad and Devon seemed to have a perpetual tan), and I was certain that I would look ghostly with even a hint of lipstick. Finally, I blow-dried my thin, dark hair, and swept the sides back, holding them in place with a couple of bobby pins. When I was finished, I gave my face a thorough examination in the mirror, and immediately thought the time I’d spent trying to make myself decent was wasted - no amount of primping could hide the dark circles that had taken over my face since Devon went missing.

My dad yelled at me from the kitchen, pulling me from my thoughts. Gabby, there’s coffee if you want a cup!

This was our new morning ritual. We had a cup of coffee together, and then I would grab my book bag, give him a peck on the cheek, and remind him to pass it along to Mom. But this morning was different. This morning he decided we should have an actual conversation. No wonder he woke me up so early.

Hey, Gabs, I was just wondering if you needed a new dress or something, he said, leaving me completely confused.

What? Why would I need a new dress? I guess the shock on my face was a little embarrassing to him, because he went slightly pink around the ears at my reaction.

Well, I mean, isn’t the Homecoming dance coming up? Bob said something yesterday about having to buy Gina a dress, and I just meant that, well, you can ask for a dress you know. I don’t expect you to go in an old skirt or anything. He was looking into his coffee cup, his brows furrowed.

Oh. Homecoming. When was the Homecoming dance? How did I miss that? I really haven’t given any thought to Homecoming. I don’t think I’m going.

Dad looked at me, an expression of confusion on his face. "What do you mean you don’t think you’re going?"

I rolled my eyes. "Dad, you don’t just go to the Homecoming dance. You have to have a date." How embarrassing. Did I really need to be having the ‘boys don’t notice me’ conversation with my own father?

Oh. Well if anything changes just let me know. Like I said, it wouldn’t be a big deal to get you a dress. I know they can be expensive, but that’s not the issue. Gina’s really looking forward to it. Bob says it’s all she’s been talking about for the last two weeks-

I cut him off. When did Gina find enough time to crawl out from under a guy long enough to tell her dad all about a dance? It was rude, and I knew it, but if I had to stand around listening to what a perfect daughter Gina Kupfner was it was bound to come out.

Gabby! What has gotten into you? As soon as he said it, I could tell he wished he hadn’t. And just like any other time something went wrong, he pretended it never happened. Here. He handed me the keys to his car. Bob’s going to be here in about five minutes, and you’re going to be late if you don’t get a move on.

When I pulled into my parking space at school twenty minutes later, April raced to meet me at my door. I had to laugh at her expression. Her eyes were open wide with a mixture of excitement and anger; I could tell that one part of her was dying to tell me something, and the other part was really frustrated at having to hold it in so long - I was ten minutes late.

She was so jumpy I had to roll my window down to let her spill it while I grabbed by bag from the passenger seat. I knew if I made her wait another second she would probably just attempt to bust her head through the glass to get to me. Seriously, Gabby, can’t you get to school on time without me? I’ve been dying to tell you something since I got here and now we’ve only got another five minutes until the bell rings!

I shook my head. So why are you wasting those oh-so-precious five minutes yelling at me?

Honestly, I don’t know how April and I manage to be best friends at all. We are polar opposites and undoubtedly always will be. April is beautiful. She has waist-length blonde hair - the good kind; it can hold curl during hurricane force winds and can stay pin straight no matter what the humidity. She’s five-six, slender, and has the figure of a swimsuit model. She’s also the chattiest person I know, and everyone at school loves her - faculty and staff included.

I finally made it out of my dad’s car, nearly taking April’s right thumb off when I shut the door. Well, I was just talking to Travis, and he said Curtis told him he was thinking about asking you out! She jumped toward me with jazz hands, her mouth open in a huge smile.

What?! I started walking for the school, April hopping to catch up, looking crestfallen with my unenthusiastic attitude.

Yeah! He really wanted to ask you to Homecoming, but he figured since the two of you really don’t know each other that well it would probably be awkward, so he’s going to see if you’ll go out with him after school first. I looked at her with confusion. You know, so by the time the dance comes around, you’ll have a few things to talk about.

So he wants to try me out first? I didn’t hide anger well. I could already feel the heat crawling up my neck.

For crying out loud, Gabby. Don’t you think you’d rather get to know him a little before getting all dressed up just to be staring at your feet at the dance? Because that’s exactly what you’ll do. You’ll be all shy and refuse to dance with him and the two of you won’t even talk at all. Don’t you think it would be better to get that out of the way beforehand? April was talking a mile a minute, but even though it was hard to keep up I kind of got what she was saying.

Yeah, I suppose so. A smile started creeping across my face, which made me furious with myself. He is kind of cute I guess, now that I’ve actually pictured him in my head.

So you’re going out with him then! She started jumping up and down, clapping her hands, and I suddenly wished I carried a straight jacket in my back pocket - I would have put April in it just then.

The bell rang before I was prepared for it, scattering students in all directions, and before rushing off to Government, I made a mental note to tell April about the conversation I had with my dad this morning the next time I saw her.

But just as I was forcing myself through a large crowd of students, my thoughts went blank. I suddenly became aware that the hum was with me. The closer I got to Mr. Enoch’s classroom,