The Sound

by James Sperl

  Valentina fidgeted. “Once I got my head together and realized I made a mistake, I tried to find you all, but I couldn't find my way back. I remembered that you were going to Ashland, so I just started walking. I hooked up with some people and got rides here and there, but once I got to Ashland, I didn't know where to go.” She started to reach for her tea but changed her mind. “Some people I met told me about this place, so I figured it was as good as any. I...I actually hoped you'd be here.”

  “Well, I hope it goes without saying that I'm thrilled to see you.”

  Clarissa's heart overflowed with happiness, but if Valentina felt the same way, she didn't show it. Her eyes drooped with sadness, and her entire frame slumped. She had trouble making eye contact, and when Clarissa took her hands, she felt tugs of resistance before Valentina finally relented. She supposed her friend could have been feeling shame or embarrassment over what happened—and maybe she should—but they needed to move beyond her actions and focus more on what had caused it. Clarissa addressed the elephant in the room.

  “And...your problem?” she said. “The Rage?”

  Valentina straightened. “I'm done with it.”

  Clarissa narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “For real. Once I realized what it was doing to me, what it had cost me, I got rid of everything I had left.” Valentina inhaled a contemplative breath. “I'm not going to lie—it's really fucking hard, but I'm doing it. I don't want to touch that stuff ever again.”

  Clarissa nodded. She wanted to believe her friend. She really did. And maybe Valentina was telling the truth, but it was Clarissa's understanding that addicts and users rarely if ever quit cold turkey and succeeded. A slip back into previously destructive habits always seemed to follow a claim that a person was clean, with hollow promises and vows thrown out like empty water bottles—things that accumulated yet contained nothing.

  But Clarissa didn't want to shut Valentina down so soon after reuniting with her. She had been her friend for a very long time. If nothing else, she owed Valentina the benefit of the doubt. If she fell again, Clarissa would be there to pick her up, but it wouldn't be without copious amounts of tough love. In the meantime, she needed to be supportive and show understanding, even if every word out of Valentina's mouth felt like a lie.

  “Val, I'm so proud of you. I hope you mean what you say.”

  “Well, I do.” Valentina looked around distractedly before finding Clarissa again. “And the others?”

  “Everyone's here and doing fine. We've all got jobs, and we're settling in, though not without a bit of adjustment.”

  Valentina chuckled mildly. “Yeah. Jobs. They gave me that whole spiel too.”

  “I know. It's weird at first. But there's a strange symmetry to how this place works. I'm not sure I'm totally on board just yet, but other than the sleeping arrangements, it hasn't been that bad.”

  A young couple passed by the table. Valentina seemed to wait until they were out of earshot before she spoke.

  “And Rosenstein?”

  Clarissa would have loved nothing more than to tell Valentina what she and the others had learned—what she alone had done not more than an hour ago—but sharing progress on Rosenstein with her felt premature. She and her friend had just begun the process of reconnecting. Clarissa didn't want to bog down their reunion with theories and speculation. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure she trusted Valentina.

  “We're still working on it,” she said. “Though we're pretty sure we're in the right place.”

  “Yeah? What did you find out?”

  Girl, you have no idea.

  Clarissa pushed back from the table. “Another time. Right now, we should get some sleep. There're some people who'll want to see you in the morning.”

  The subsequent drop in Valentina's shoulders was accompanied by a lung-emptying sigh. “Are you so sure about that?”

  “Positive. Everyone felt terrible about what happened. Even Andrew.”

  Valentina smirked. “I'm not so sure I believe that. He's never liked me.”

  “That's not true. Andrew's just a particular sort of person who expects people to be accountable for their actions, or at the very least own up to the fact that they made a mistake. And let's be honest, you haven't really done either since the beginning.”

  Valentina seemed to consider this. “Maybe you're right. I just don't want to cause any more problems.”

  “You won't,” Clarissa said, standing. She held out her hand. “Beyond all improbabilities, the new you has arrived here in New Framingham. Now you have the opportunity to show everyone who that is. So come on.”

  Valentina tentatively took Clarissa's hand. Her skin felt even more rough and calloused than Clarissa's, which was a far cry from Palmolive soft.

  “Where're we going?”

  “For now? To get some shut-eye. It's been a long night, and I have a feeling tomorrow will be an even longer day.”

  Clarissa led Valentina from the bookstore to the Sleep Zone. They talked and reminisced along the way, the unlikelihood of how the moment came to be seeming to slip away by the second. It was great to be back in the company of her friend, despite her problems, but even as Clarissa celebrated Valentina's return, she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that ate at her subconscious. Something didn't add up. Had her jaunt through a nightmarish dreamland made her hypersensitive?

  Still, for all they talked about, not once did Valentina or Clarissa ask the other person what should have been the first and most prominent question: Where had each been coming from at two o'clock in the morning?

  CHAPTER 60

  The excitement surrounding Valentina's grand return was short-lived. Everyone reacted with smiles and good cheer as expected—Andrew even offered a barely there grin to accompany his “welcome back”—but enthusiasm dwindled like fire in an oxygen-less room when no one could account for Rachel's whereabouts.

  “So no one's seen her?” Clarissa said, concern replacing delight.

  “She wasn't with you?” said Cesare, who stood suddenly from the table where he had been sitting to scan the crowd.

  Clarissa looked up at him. “Why would she be with me? Weren't you two together last night?”

  “We tried to get spaces together. But when her number came up, they only had one available. She was dead tired, so I told her to take it and that I'd wait for the next one and catch up with her in the morning to check on Nonna.” He exhaled anxiously. “I just figured we missed each other.”

  Jon, who was the most thrilled to see Valentina, and who had been holding her hand since she sat down beside him, said, “So was Cesare the last to see her?” He passed his eyes over the group.

  “No,” said Andrew, who finished eating a segment of orange. “I saw her early this morning. Around four-thirty or so.”

  Cesare fixed on Andrew. “Four-thirty? What was she doing up at four-thirty?”

  Andrew shrugged ahead of his response. “Not sure. I didn't speak with her. She was across the lot, but from what I could tell, it looked like she was heading for the bathrooms.”

  In a shrewd bit of planning, the designers of New Framingham had seen fit to acquire a veritable army of Porta Potties from a local supplier to accommodate the swelling population of the community. But the sheer number of toilets—and their accompanying odor—prevented the designers from placing them inside the Sleep Zone's guarded perimeter. Instead, they had been situated along Shopper's World's eastern exterior, which meant that anytime someone needed to use the facilities they had to leave the relative safety of the Sleep Zone and exit through the checkpoint. The out of sight, out of mind reasoning succeeded only so long as a person didn't suffer from middle-of-the-night bladder or intestinal issues.

  “Did she come back?” Cesare said, alarm rising in his voice.

  Andrew gathered pieces of spent peel. “If she did, I didn't see her.”

  Cesare's expression sank to a new level of distress.

  Evan, who had been listening quietly, lea
ned forward. “What time was she supposed to meet you?”

  Cesare checked his watch. “About forty minutes ago.” He huffed and looked around again. “I don't like this. Something's wrong.”

  “Could she have gotten up early and gone somewhere?” Valentina suggested to blank stares. “Maybe she wasn't able to get back to sleep, so she gave up trying and went to one of the stores. She could be stuck in a line at Lowe's or something.”

  Clarissa placed a hand on Valentina's forearm. “It's certainly possible, Val.” She turned to Andrew. “Andrew, are you sure you didn't see her later?”

  “Positive,” he said. “I only caught a passing glance. I didn't think anything of it at the time. Besides, by then I was so tired, I just wanted to go to bed.”

  Clarissa cocked her head at him. The use of “by then” raised a flag. Andrew had been aloof this morning, uncharacteristically so, even for him. Clarissa had been riding so high in the clouds since her run-in with Valentina that she hadn't stopped to consider his behavior, but now that she had, she was convinced something strange was afoot.

  “Is everything okay, Andrew?” Clarissa asked. “You seem preoccupied.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you do. You seem, I don't know...like you're deep in thought about something.”

  “Well, there's a lot to think about.”

  Clarissa studied him. He had been short all morning. Not rude, necessarily, but no one could accuse him of being verbose. He wouldn't look at her, and he was unusually restless. It took her a moment to assemble all the pieces, but once she finally puzzled it out, the truth hit her like a lightning bolt to the chest.

  Son of a...

  “You went over there, didn't you?”

  Andrew snapped his head up. It was in his eyes: guilty as charged.

  “After everything we talked about? Jesus, Andrew, I thought we agreed to hold off on that?”

  “No,” Andrew corrected. “You agreed. I just acquiesced to stop talking about it. We needed to know. And now we do.”

  Jon let go of Valentina's hand. “Wait, you went over to the Boston Scientific building? Alone?”

  Andrew abandoned any semblance of ignorance. “It's Rosenstein. They're there. They're here. There's no question in my mind now.”

  Clarissa fumed. “Goddammit, Andrew.”

  Andrew ignored her. “The place was heavily guarded. Mercs or commandos patrolling the perimeter. Lots of coverage. What could they be protecting if not Rosenstein?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “You could've been captured or killed.”

  “But I wasn't.” Andrew found Clarissa's eyes. “I stayed well back but got close enough so I could see what I needed to. We had to know, Clarissa. I hope you understand that.”

  “Did you see anything else?” Jon asked.

  Andrew looked around before answering. “While I was there, a white, paneled van backed up to a pair of doors and offloaded something. I couldn't see the cargo, but the van shook with whatever they were unloading.”

  Clarissa silently cursed Andrew, even though she knew he was right. They needed to know for sure. It didn't make what he did sit with her any better, but who was she to criticize? She was just as guilty of conducting her own covert operation. In fact, her entire plan this morning had been to tell everyone what happened last night. In light of Andrew's coerced confession, now seemed like a good time to come clean.

  “I learned something last night too,” she said. All eyes shot to her. “You're probably not going to like what I'm about to say, but, like Andrew, I had to know. And now we do.”

  Clarissa inhaled a preparatory breath then launched into her late night dream experiment. She told of the drug she had used and how she came by it. She mentioned Donna's connection and how she believed as Andrew did: Rosenstein was definitely here. She watched faces contort from curious frowns to masks of horror as she detailed every terrifying thing that happened in the Nothing Place, from the kinetic ribbons of light to the monsters to her encounter with a terrified, voiceless woman. When she finished, she was met with stunned silence. From everyone, that was, except Andrew.

  “What in the fuck were you thinking!” he barked. “Are you kidding me? I...And you're giving me shit about looking at a building? Christ, you're unbelievable.”

  “Look, Andrew, I know, okay?” she began. “It was colossally stupid. But I knew the risks going in.”

  “No. You thought you knew the risks. You weren't just stupid, you were goddamned lucky. If those kids hadn't shown up when they did—”

  “I know, all right? I know. I was an idiot. I'm a hypocrite and a fool—I'm whatever you want to call me—but let's get all the name-calling and finger-pointing out of the way so we can get to the heart of the matter, which is what do we do now that we know about Rosenstein's magic little pill?”

  Jon reached for Clarissa's hand. “What you did was both exceptionally brave and incredibly careless, but I'm glad as hell you're all right.” Clarissa squeezed his hand. “She's right, though. If this drug does what she says it does, then I think it's pretty clear at this point that Rosenstein is culling unwitting participants from New Framingham to use as guinea pigs for whatever's going on in that building.”

  “But I think we do know what's going on in that building, don't we?” Cesare said. “Everything Kaplinsky told us they were experimenting with—from dream control to projected nightmares to the wormhole responsible for causing that godawful sound—is happening. If they're to blame for the Sound, then they're going to throw everything they've got against the wall to see what sticks to try to fix it, and that includes using people, willing or otherwise.”

  “So if Rosenstein is taking people,” Evan jumped in, “what are they doing with them?”

  Andrew rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Based on what Clarissa told us, that's becoming more evident.” Everyone looked at him uncertainly. “The woman. The one Clarissa saw in her dream. My guess is that she was from here.”

  Jon frowned. “What makes you think that? From what Clarissa described, this...staging area or whatever you want to call it, sounds infinite. That woman could be from anywhere in the world.”

  “Possibly. But I don't think so.” Andrew looked at Clarissa. “What was it you said she mouthed to you? 'Is this the place?'”

  “Yeah. And that she didn't want to be there anymore.”

  “Right. To me, that sounds like awareness, as if she knew she was supposed to be going somewhere specific but didn't know what to expect. If she was just a random person, I don't think she would've had that level of cognizance. I think that poor woman was sent there, and probably against her will.”

  “Yeah, but to do what?” Evan asked.

  Andrew held up his palms. “That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? I don't think Rosenstein has the first clue how to undo what they've done, so they just keep sending people into this staging area on exploratory missions hoping to find something.”

  Valentina knitted her brows. “But wouldn't that mean some people come back from that place and some don't?”

  Andrew lifted his shoulders. “It certainly seems like it.”

  “All right,” Jon said. “So what do we think happens to the ones that don't get snatched up by one of those creatures and do find their way back?”

  “My guess is that they'll keep getting sent back in until they can find some information that leads to a way to stop it.”

  “Or until they don't come back,” Clarissa said.

  “Most likely.”

  Clarissa shook her head. “But certainly others have seen that weird light and got close to it like me. Somebody has to have found something or at least come up with an idea on how to make it stop.” She hugged herself, the thought of that cold, lonely place dredging up recent memories. “I mean, I've only been there one time under the influence of that drug, and in that single visit, I saw a light and the machines that seemed to power it. If I could discover that much so quickly, wouldn't Rosenstein have more comprehensiv
e info from all of the people they've sent?”

  “One would think so,” Jon said. “But there are lots of factors to consider, not the least of which is that you chose to go in there. You weren't forced. Maybe that plays a role in how the mind functions in that place.”

  Jon may have had a point. In her first minutes in the Nothing Place, Clarissa had struggled to get her bearings. She remembered all too well how she'd had to mentally prod herself for the reason she came to be in such a dank, dark world. If the mind wasn't prepared to accept what it saw and experienced, the result could be catastrophic.

  “And I'll tell you all this,” Jon added. “I've only been on the security force for a day, but in that brief time, I've been able to get my hands on what passes for missing person reports in here.”

  “You've actually seen them?” Andrew said, leaning forward.

  “A handful. But there were plenty more I didn't get the chance to look at. A lot more.”

  Clarissa bugged her eyes. “And?”

  “Well, let's just say there wasn't much in the way of an investigation done for many of them. Most just listed the person's name and the day they were reported missing with very few details given beyond that. If someone was ever found again, it sure wasn't recorded.” Jon thought about this. “I think the level of complicity in this place goes far deeper than we think.”

  Clarissa permitted the silence that followed, which was profound. This was uncharted territory on many levels. Not only were she and the others contending with an otherworldly entity, whose motivations they hadn't the first clue to understanding, but it appeared they were up against a domestic enemy as well, only this one concealed itself in sheep's wool.

  Andrew shot to his feet so fast it caused several people to jump.

  “What is it, Andrew?” Clarissa said.

  He only stared at the ground, his expression grave. “No,” he said to himself. “No, it...”

  Everyone exchanged glances.

  “Andrew?” Jon said, slowly rising.

  Andrew's face had become dire yet informed. On an instinctual level, Clarissa knew what he would say even before he said it, but it weakened her knees nonetheless when he confessed: