by Spencer Baum
“I want you to stay where you are, Kevin,” Cassandra said.
Kevin fumbled to get the crystal and his cell phone near each other again so he could see what was happening. What he saw in the light made him quiver. Cassandra had stepped closer into view, and Kevin could see that she wasn’t riding on an ant. Cassandra was the ant. From the waist up, she was human, the same Cassandra he had known for years, wearing the same black sweater she always wore. But where her legs should have begun, her body broke into a sleek, black, six-legged armored and segmented monster.
“Leave him alone!” Kevin’s dad shouted.
The ants at the front of the line screamed and piled into each other.
“Stop it girl!” Cassandra shrieked, and Jackie flew off her feet, soaring through the air to the back of the atrium, where she smashed into a wall of rock.
“No!” yelled Kevin.
“Silence!” Cassandra screamed, her voice booming beyond a sound made by any human, filling the cavern and shaking the walls.
“You will not move,” Cassandra commanded. “This silly game of chase is over.”
Kevin jumped up and lunged in Jackie’s direction, but giant ants swarmed around to flank him, the nearest opening its jaws and hissing in Kevin’s face. The creature’s breath was like poison. It stank of fumes, the same that once filled the air near the explosion site, the same he smelled on Cassandra’s person the night before. Kevin’s lungs felt like they were on fire. He keeled over and inhaled the air nearest the ground, quenching the burn inside with a gasp of stale air and dirt. As his senses came back to him, he realized he was surrounded. The crystal was gone.
“Now this is a nice specimen,” Cassandra said, turning the crystal over in her hands, inspecting every side of it.
Kevin said nothing.
“Your father is fine, Kevin. Your little girlfriend will be fine. Just play nice with me so I don’t have to hurt you.”
“What do you want?” said Kevin.
“You already know. You were just speaking of it. The locked door. I want you to open it for me. Your father has failed. I was very disappointed. The best Hearer in Turquoise, my best methods of persuasion, and still we could not get to The Source.”
Kevin’s mind searched for a way out of this. There was none. The demons were all around him, one with its jaws clamped around his dad’s waist. He listened for sounds of Jackie. She was at the far end of the cave, lying quiet on the ground, breathing but unconscious.
“Benjamin, I think it’s time your son and his friend came clean,” Cassandra said. “Something happened to these children yesterday, Kevin in particular. Can you not hear it, Benjamin?”
“I hear nothing but the sound of your evil,” said Kevin’s dad.
“Yes, yes, here we are, Benjamin, the greatest moment of your life, and you’ve gone deaf. Kevin, you’ll be interested to know that, for the entire time you and I have been acquainted, I was convinced your father was the key. I arrived in Turquoise twenty years ago and found myself stymied by this contraption of the termites. They guard the source not only with their soldiers, who you can see are no match for my army, but also with a door I cannot open, with some power I cannot break. So I began looking for help. I made my ants wait in mountain forests while I searched for a way to break through. I found the Hearers, and your father, the most talented Hearer of all.
“What’s strange about this story, Kevin, is that you, now a Hearer yourself, always thought your father was crazy, or at least that’s how you played.”
“I never thought he was crazy,” Kevin said.
“How sweet, but no matter. For all these years, you were the child of the most talented Hearer in Turquoise, and seemed to pay your old man’s talent no mind at all, which was good for you. It kept you out of sight. It kept you safe, unlike your meddling mother.”
“What does my mother have to do with this?”
“Your mother, bless her heart, could have done anything she chose with her life. Unfortunately, she chose to study the work of Peter Gerrard, and as she neared the end, she was getting too close to Gerrard’s secrets. I couldn’t have my best Hearer learn the truth from his own wife. He might have wanted to use his gifts to unlock the power in The Source and have it all to himself.”
“You killed my mother,” Kevin said, his soul seething with a rage to match the hum all around him.
“Of course I killed your mother, Kevin. She was too skilled of a hiker to just fall to her death. I pushed her.”
“You evil, terrible witch!” shouted Kevin’s dad.
“Now, now, Benjamin,” said Cassandra. “Let’s all remain calm. If Kevin just does what I ask of him, Courtney’s death won’t be in vain.”
“I’m not helping you,” said Kevin. “I won’t open the lock. You’ll have to kill me first.”
“We’ll see about that, but it’s nice to hear you think you can do it. It was because of you that I delayed your father’s trip here by a day. The night before last, he and I had a long conversation at your house. That night he led me to believe he was ready to break through, so my army blasted open the side of the termite mound. But even as we made our march to the center, preparing for glorious battle, I sensed something significant outside. A powerful change in the hum. Someone was tapping into The Source in a significant way. It was you and your friends, Kevin.
“You and your friends came just in time. You came near enough to the cave that I could hear you, and I was astonished at what I heard. I called off the attack specifically to learn more about you. What happened to you Kevin? A few days ago, you were a perfectly normal boy. Now the hum sings in you and your friends like nothing I’ve ever heard.”
Kevin stood still, and silent.
“You might as well talk to me. I know so much of your story already. You broke into my house. Your friend stole my newspaper. You met with Lou Sweeney. You told my life’s story to Turquoise in an ill-conceived broadcast. Were it not for that broadcast, we might have been able to reach an understanding. I really wanted to learn about you, Kevin. I wanted to know how a soft, boring young man wakes up one morning with powers to equal my own. I would still like to know. I would like to know how you came across this crystal, which is the most lovely I’ve ever seen.”
Cassandra held up the crystal. “Clearly, it has unique properties,” she said. “Kevin, where did you get this?”
Kevin still said nothing.
“You’re not so eager to speak now. But earlier today, you and your friends had no qualms about telling the world my dearest secrets! You and that foul radio announcer broadcast a picture of me, of my old home town, for all to see, and did it in such a way that I couldn’t shut it down. You and I could have taken our time, learned about each other, learned how we might share in the treasure locked inside this mountain, and come down from the mountain as one. Instead, you and Sweeney chose to spread your lies. Gretchen Brinkley is dead, young man! The colony lives on! The colony thrives, and you angered it. We could not let that broadcast continue. Sweeney has been enough trouble for too long already. The colony went after you. I didn’t expect you to survive, so I went back to the original plan, and took your father.
“He disappointed me. We tried several methods of persuasion, but your father cannot break through. Now it is your turn to try.
“I will ask you one time only. Unlock The Source for me. Reveal the treasure inside.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I am not a patient woman, Kevin.”
Cassandra closed her eyes, and his dad screamed in pain. Kevin turned to see a giant ant, removing its barbed stinger from his dad’s stomach.
“Dad? What have you done? Dad!”
“Your father has only been given a small dose of poison,” Cassandra said. “He will live for ten more minutes. I have no intention of saving him, no matter what you do, but perhaps you’d like to try your luck at it yourself. The Source is more powerful than you or me or all of us together. There is more than enough life force
there to save your father, save your little friend, even to save your town.
Save my town?
“Don’t you go thinking for a minute that a noble stand and your own death will leave the innocents unharmed,” said Cassandra. “No matter what happens in here today between you, me, your father and The Source, we cannot let Sweeney’s little infomercial stand. There are too many Hearers in Turquoise, too many skeptical minds.”
She snapped her fingers twice and the entire brigade of demons backed away, their legs rumbling in unison. The atrium filled with the horrible sound of a horde on the move, a sound that had chased Kevin through Lou’s failed ant trap and into the underground caves.
“The army moves,” Cassandra said. “Turquoise is about to go the way of Shuberville.
“So here we are, Kevin. You, me, your dying father, and your little girlfriend.”
Kevin looked back to Jackie, still lying against the back wall, still unconscious.
“I’ve already told you she’ll be fine,” said Cassandra. “And when she wakes up, you’ll have her unique and impressive powers at your disposal. Let me lay out your choices for you. You can run, and I will kill you. You can fight, and I will kill you. You can break the spell, and reveal The Source. Either you or I will be the recipient of its awesome power. If it is you, you can save your father, your girlfriend, and maybe all of Turquoise if you hurry.
“So, what do you choose? You have only minutes before people begin to die.”
Kevin looked to his dad. Once held in a demon’s jaws, now he lay on the ground, weak and unable to move, his eyes barely open.
Kevin leaned down and touched the tree stump.
“A wise choice,” said Cassandra.
Chapter 20
The vibration inside the stump came from deep below. It brought forth component sounds inside the hum. Standing in the darkness, The Demon Queen watching over him, his dad’s life slipping away, Kevin closed his eyes and listened.
He heard the malice his dad and Peter Gerrard had described. He recognized it now. Termites. Guardian monsters who had no desire to share what was inside. They didn’t want people to listen, and they sent warning sounds of anger to stave them off.
He heard rage. It belonged to Cassandra, and loomed in the hum because she stood so close and was so powerful a presence.
He heard himself. His own sound was a bright trumpet, holding a note. It had blended in all this time but now made itself known. He could sense that this was important. He was going to change the sounds around him, and he needed to hold onto his own sound while he did.
He heard flutes. They reminded him of his mother’s safe, and how he had followed their call and trusted that doing so would open the lock.
He heard brilliance. A radiant sound, deeper than all the others, with his hand on the stump, Kevin understood. This sound, the “bright” sound his father heard, the “noble” sound described by Gerrard -- it was The Source, the beginning of the hum, a channel through which all the other sounds flowed. The way through this lock was within this brilliant sound. There was a power in it that could not be contained.
Inside all of this was yet another sound. A swirling, moving noise that chased itself. Kevin’s brain followed it, focused on it, and soon this sound drowned out the others. His eyes were still closed, his hand was still on the stump, but his mind was leaving. He was being carried away on the hum in a strange reversal of the normal course. The hum led people from all over the world towards Turquoise Mountain, but this sound was taking Kevin out of it. His mind flew from the caves, over the mountainside, past the demon horde marching into Turquoise, over Turquoise High School, down Jefferson Avenue...
He opened his eyes. His hand was on the stump, but it was the stump of a fallen elm in the middle of Blackstone Park. A man stood on the other side.
“Welcome back,” the man said.
He was a slim man, with long arms, long legs, and tangled black hair. His face was sunworn, thick as leather. He wore a beige shirt, beige pants, and black boots.
“You’re Peter Gerrard,” said Kevin.
“I am.”
“Have I found the treasure?” asked Kevin.
“What do you think?”
Kevin looked around. The sky was blue. The air was quiet. The hum was quiet.
“No,” he said.
Gerrard nodded. “You haven’t defeated the lock, but you’ve taken an important step. You have found yourself in the hum, and have chosen to follow the hum to me.”
“Are you alive?” Kevin asked.
“In a sense.”
“Are you real?”
“My presence and this setting are only in your mind, but our conversation is very real. We are speaking through the hum.”
“What do you mean?”
“The stump in Turquoise Mountain, just like the stump here, in the park, is all that remains of a once great tree,” Gerrard said. “The tree and its inhabitants were connected to The Source, just as you are, just as your father is.”
“When I touched the tree,” Kevin said. “Only I could feel the vibration.”
“You are gifted, Kevin Browne. Most cannot sense the larger universe around them like you do. Most people cannot hear.”
“But I couldn’t hear anything until--”
Gerrard held up his hand. “You had never listened,” he said. “The sap only enhanced who you already were. At any time, had you chosen to listen, you would have heard with or without its help.”
“I’ve always been a Hearer?” Kevin asked.
Gerrard nodded.
“What is the sap?”
“It is The Source,” said Gerrard. “It is the treasure that brought me and countless others to Turquoise.”
“But why was it in that elm tree?”
“Because a colony of termites in that tree discovered it, just as another colony of termites discovered it thousands of years ago on the land that is now Turquoise Mountain. The termites in Blackstone Park were more primitive than the ones who made Turquoise Mountain, and had not yet learned what to do with their discovery or how to secure it from others, others like you. But they would have evolved, given time. Their time to learn and grow in The Source was cut short that day, because another was present, another who wanted you to find it.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Your mother. She made the elm fall. She exposed the sap inside.”
“My mother?”
“Do you think it is coincidence that a butterfly flew from your mother’s resting place in the mountain all the way to Blackstone Park, and landed on the elm with the weight of an elephant, just as you arrived?”
“Where is she? Can I speak with her?”
“You would need to find her in the hum. You found me because you and I are close now. You need only open the door, and you’ll find me waiting on the other side.”
“I don’t know if I should. The Demon Queen wants inside. She wants The Source to herself.”
“We are ready for her.”
We?
“How do I open the door?”
“I think you already know.”
“Follow The Source.”
“Yes, but even your tremendous gifts aren’t strong enough to open it all the way. You’ll need an amplifier. You have one already.”
“The crystal,” said Kevin.
“Your first discovery as a Hearer,” said Gerrard. “The termites bring relics of The Source with them when they travel to and from their hole. In the crystal you have found one, a piece of The Source itself, dried and solidified over time. The crystal can complete the connection. Listen to the sound. Amplify it with the crystal. Find your way through.”
Kevin felt himself being pulled back into the cavern. The clarity of Blackstone Park in the daytime was fading, and soon he saw only darkness. He was in the cave, touching the stump. He opened his eyes.
“I need the crystal,” he said to Cassandra.
“If you have a trick in mind, I’ll kill y
ou on the spot, and we all will lose,” she said
“No tricks,” said Kevin. “I need the crystal to open this door.”
Cassandra gave it to him.
Holding the crystal in his left hand, he pressed his right against the stump, and listened again. He picked out the brightness, the sound of the treasure. He listened to it, letting its sound fill his ears. He listened until everything else was gone, except a lonely trumpet, holding a note deep in the distance.
He placed the crystal in the stump, laying it gently in the center hole, just as he had done in his dream. Instantly, the brightness grew. The sound became sharp, loud, louder still, now filling Kevin’s head and crowding out his thoughts. He focused on it. He pulled it into the cave, into their world.
The air itself seemed to vibrate on the soundwaves. He saw Jackie, dazed but awake on the far side of the cave, looking on with confusion. He saw his dad, lying still on the ground. He saw Cassandra, her eyes red with lust.
The vibrations in the air reached to the ground. The floor began to shake, the dirt and rocks began to rumble. Kevin felt like he was hallucinating, like the waves of the hum were distorting everything he saw, but a closer look revealed something different. The ground wasn’t rumbling with sound waves. It was coming to life.
All around him, the rocks and the dirt sprouted legs, bodies, and heads, scurrying familiar forms. The floor of the cavern was becoming a carpet of bugs.
Cassandra hissed, and flashed her red eyes at Kevin. The creatures on the ground were termites.
They funneled together, and moved to the center of the atrium, an inverse lava flow of bugs, moving from all directions up and onto the tree stump.
They clamored on top of each other, and on top again. They were building a column, a tower of termites, holding the crystal aloft as they grew. The tower became a swirling mass, the termites flying through the air as if caught in a whirlwind. The swirling mass began to take shape. Two arms, two legs, a head…
With a deafening screech, Cassandra charged at the mass of termites. The column broke apart and regrouped around her, swarming as her hideous shape, half woman half ant, thrashed and hissed and bit inside it. She swallowed mouthfuls of termites, opening her mouth between bites to scream, and her scream shook the walls of the cavern and knocked Kevin off his feet. More termites appeared from the earth and joined the foray. A spinning storm became a human shape became a monstrous termite became a swarm again. It surrounded Cassandra, closing in on her from all sides, until Kevin couldn’t see Cassandra’s shape at all. A final scream from inside the mass, and Cassandra’s sound was silenced. The swarm dissipated, millions of tiny bugs flying in separate directions, leaving a patch of empty air above the stump. Cassandra was gone.