William Meikle: The Hole

The hum started just after midnight.

The first person to notice was Fred Grant. He heard it initially just as he left The Roadside, and to start with he just put it down to a particularly heavy truck somewhere nearby on the highway; a low drone, distant but slowly getting louder. He paid it no mind, for truck noise in itself wasn’t unusual in these parts. The highway was a through route to larger towns and cities to the south, and the bar was a popular stopping spot for trucks from all over the East Coast, at least during the hours it was open.

Fred took a piss in the parking lot while giving the booze time to see if he was able to walk, having to do a little drunken dance to maintain his balance, then another to avoid squirting himself in the pants leg. He stuck a smoke in the corner of his mouth, got it lit on the third attempt, and headed off in the general direction of home.

The hum persisted, and seemed to keep pace with him as he made his way through town. He noticed it, vaguely, like a bee buzzing nearby on a summer day, but he’d had too much beer to consider its persistence strange. His mind, what little of it that was still active after the booze, was more concerned with walking in a straight line and reaching his bed before he collapsed.

The town was quiet… the town was almost always quiet. True, the area around the trailer park could get boisterous in summer during barbecue and beer season, but now that winter was approaching folks tended to stay indoors when dark fell and the temperature took a tumble. There wasn’t any frost on the ground yet, but it surely wasn’t far off. But indoors, at least in his place, wasn’t anywhere that Fred wanted to be. Too much time alone meant too much thinking, and that just led to trouble. At least among other folks he could lose himself for a while, and shut down the clamor in his head.

He hadn’t gone out with the intention of getting wasted, but one beer had led to another. Then a winning run on the pool table netted him a hundred bucks to blow on hard liquor and after a few JDs nothing much seemed to matter beyond getting more inside him. He had a vague memory of Tony telling him he’d had enough, and being too drunk to argue. The hit of fresh air on top of the booze guaranteed that oblivion wasn’t going to be too far off. He should have felt remorse, even shame at the state he’d got himself into, but lately his give-a-fuck meter had been broken, and he wasn’t planning to get it fixed anytime soon.

The hum was still there as he walked round the side of his trailer, and when he stumbled and almost fell trying to get his key from his trouser pocket, the walls vibrated noticeably under the hand he put out to steady himself. The booze haze lifted enough to lend him the merest twitch of curiosity; just enough to make him stand still and listen.

It sounded less like a truck now, more like heavy machinery, the hum mixed with a grinding vibration that he felt through his shoes and in his jaw, where it threatened to rattle his teeth. It came from nowhere and everywhere. He turned full circle but could not pinpoint any obvious directionality; there was no indication of a source. And he wasn’t curious enough to wander off looking for one.

He got the key in the lock on the third attempt, almost fell up the first step, and hauled himself into the trailer. As he headed for the bottle of rye in the kitchen he felt the hum again, throbbing just underfoot, but when he fell into his chair and turned on the television, the vibration dwindled and faded into the background.

He promptly forgot all about it as he topped his booze level back up to maximum.

I drink to forget. Forget what? I don’t remember.

But the trouble was, he did remember, and whatever booze he’d got inside him tonight, it still wasn’t enough. When he closed his eyes, he saw the accident replaying again; the headlights picking out the deer, the slow-motion panic as he realized he couldn’t swerve far enough to miss it. He could still hear the sickening thud as the animal suddenly disappeared from view and the trees rushed forward to meet the car, too fast to avoid. Once again he heard the crunch of metal and felt glass on his arms and in his face as the windscreen shattered and fell on him. He tried to get out of the vehicle, tried to flee the scene, but he was trapped in the seat, stuck there until they found him. Again. He had a record. Again. And he lost his job. Again.

He sat in the chair, staring at the television without a clue as to what he was watching, smoking a succession of cigarettes and chugging more whiskey. And finally, he’d had enough. The empty bottle fell to the floor, and Fred fell into a stupor.

In the morning he woke up, groaned, and dragged his hangover to the washroom. Small furry animals had slept in his mouth, his guts roiled, and a small man with a jackhammer had taken up residence behind his right eye. He stood over the urinal, concentrating on not throwing up.

The things we do for love.

Something red at the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned, looking at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. At first he couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at, his addled brain struggling to process the facts. He put a hand up, tentatively, and prodded the red area where it was at its most intense, at his nose and lips. His fingers touched sticky, coagulated blood.

He’d suffered a nosebleed in the night; so severe that his shirt was soaked red from neck to belt.

Janet Dickson barely had time to open the door in the morning before the office space she rather grandly called The Surgery started to fill up. Most mornings she’d see one or two walk-in patients this early, and then have time for a leisurely coffee and a bagel before starting her scheduled appointments at ten.

Normally she’d see a maximum of twenty patients a day, but twice that number had already filed into the waiting room, and more cars were arriving outside every minute. It was already obvious that her schedule for the day was no more than a forlorn hope, and that she had to steel herself for not only dealing with the walk-ins, but also explaining to those who already had appointments that she wouldn’t be able to honor the agreement.

I need a receptionist.

She laughed at the thought. She barely made enough money to pay her own bills. The town just wasn’t big enough to warrant hiring more staff. It was normally too quiet. That was why she’d come here. A year in a big-city hospital dealing with every ailment modern civilization could throw at her had burned out most of her idealism, but she still thought she could make a difference, somewhere quieter… somewhere slower. She had thought she’d chosen the perfect town, with a low crime rate, healthy outdoor lifestyles, and just enough elderly and children to keep her busy. Most of the time she had a relaxed and stress-free day.

Except for today.

“Try to form a queue,” she shouted above the hubbub. “I’ll get to you all eventually. And if anybody wants to go for a coffee, I’ll have a large latte.”

That got her a laugh and at least broke some of the tension in the room. But it was obvious that something had the townsfolk spooked.

She heard about the hum from her second patient. On a normal visiting day Ellen Simmons would have been first in line, first with the gossip, and usually with a different complaint from the one she’d protested long and loud about on her last visit. Today the older woman had to play second fiddle to Jim McClay, and she was none too happy about having to wait the extra two minutes.