The HUM: The complete novel

by Michael Christopher Carter

  She watched as each person in the queue in front of her was given a plastic cup of water, and a smaller cup of medication. They tipped the small one into their mouths, swallowed whatever medication was their individual prescription, and opened their mouths again for inspection, to check they’d actually swallowed the contents. The next person in the queue then took their place at the serving hatch.

  Carys had contrived to save her medication. She couldn’t be caught with it in her mouth, so she had worked hard on a different plan: concealing the tablets in her throat without swallowing them completely. She could then retrieve them in her room and save them.

  She struggled at first. Not swallowing them completely proved incredibly difficult. Her attempts at regurgitation were more like simply vomiting; luckily, something she found easy to explain away. Many of the medications caused nausea as a side effect. But she had to get better, she couldn’t arouse suspicion or her plan would never work.

  Practicing with harder pieces of food and confectionary from the vending machine, she grew steadily proficient and soon found she was able to save her pills. The bounty wasn’t as intact as the sweets, due to their propensity to dissolve upon contact with liquid. They tasted foul, but Carys hid it well. Upon regurgitating, they weren’t perfect, but they were good enough.

  She hollowed out part of the inside of her shoe, creating a small hole covered by the lining and, her feet, when she wore them. The first reusable harvest was a bit misshapen and soggy but it soon dried.

  Day by day she swallowed, regurgitated, dried, and stored her medication for use at a future date. It became necessary to hollow the inside of her other shoe too, dispersing the tablets evenly to enable her to walk normally.

  She began to feel absolutely dreadful. Any of the information pamphlets in the medicine boxes would have advised her strictly against stopping taking her medication suddenly. As well as the likely return of symptoms, there was the withdrawal. Quitting an entire cocktail of interacting medication cold turkey would only ever end badly.

  Terrible flu aches and excruciating headaches beleaguered her daily. And she couldn’t even wallow in her pain; lock herself in her room and pray it would pass soon because she had to keep up the pretence at normalcy.

  An ironic smile almost reached her impassive lips when she passed off her headaches as migraine, and received additional pills in her little pot to combat them.

  Every day she would queue, and every day she would half-swallow her tablets. Once her mouth was checked, she would take her time, but not too much, and saunter unsuspiciously back to her room.

  The sickness, flu aches and thumping headaches symptoms didn’t get better for ages. Her self-served sacrifice was almost unbearable, but Carys took pride in it, using it as another form of self-harm as it moved her ever-closer to her purpose.

  It began to wear off. The nausea went first, and then the headaches became merely painful rather than excruciating. She left her room, and sought company for the first time in a while. It was, if she’d considered, quite unlike her. If she’d given it any thought, she would have been aware of feeling rather odd.

  Compelled, but also reluctant to find any of the patients she knew, she wondered if she should make acquaintance with any new patients she might find. Nerves at her uncharacteristic conviviality made her almost turn round and go straight back to her room.

  Her breath was taken away by what she saw down the corridor. Legs buckling, she stumbled on, determined not to let her frailty stop her getting to him. It was over. It was all over, now. Ebe had come for her. She called out to him.

  “Ebe, Ebe!” she ran as fast as her aching limbs allowed. He turned and without calling back, ran towards her. Carys couldn’t believe it. She had hoped and wished for this day. Things must have gone well in Alaska. He had said, hadn’t he, that he was building a portal and when ‘they’ were here he would be back for her?

  She’d always been petrified of what they would do. But thinking back over her life, despite the terror, and their disregard for her feelings, had it really been bad? They had planned out her life, but it had been good in places, hadn’t it?

  And Ebe. He could have been the bastard son of a rapist, which she supposed he still was, but he was special. He was so special.

  She’d almost reached him, when he simply was no longer there. Turning her head every which way, she couldn’t understand where he’d gone.

  “Ebe? Ebe!” she shouted. Wait. She can’t have imagined it, because here was Geraint too. “Dad!” she cried. But then, he too melted into the ether right in front of her. She spun round, baffled. Where was Ebe? Where was her dad? Where were they? Where? Where?

  “Is everything okay, Carys?” She thought she recognised one of the nurse’s voice behind her. Turning to tell her, no, everything was definitely not alright, she broke into a tearful grin. “Mum!” she beamed, as she stood smiling before her. “I thought you had died.”

  Flinging her arms around her, she hugged her close. Something was horribly wrong. It didn’t feel right. It felt uncomfortable.

  Pulling away to look at her mum, wondering if she might be hurting her, she was left holding an ashen faced nurse.

  “Why did you think I had died?” she asked, more than a little disconcerted by this notably violent patient expressing surprise at her being alive.

  “Where’s my mum?” Carys said, shoving the nurse away, but by now she was beginning to realise what had happened. She should have expected it.

  That was the other downside of stopping her medication. Once the aches got better, the very reason her medication was being given to her in the first place became all too obvious. The figures she knew were not there, reared their ugly heads again.

  She found herself dodging aliens in the corridor. And she spoke to Ebe a few times again before realising he was a hallucination. Her dad, and her mum too, she saw, but was by then realising the falsity of her experience. Treating them as she had always treated the Amish man and the Rebecca: she ignored them.

  Despite recognising that they were all hallucinations it always started the same way. Her heart would leap and fill with hope, only to be dashed as Carys’s remembered it wasn’t real. The crushing sadness which overwhelmed every false hope was becoming unendurable

  Apart from hallucinations, she was suffering other symptoms too. Her general anxiety was high. Someone would recognise why she was so odd soon, wouldn’t they? It must occur to one of them before much longer that her medication wasn’t doing its job.

  She must have enough to implement her plan, but she hadn’t quite given up hope. In a desperate, hurried manner, she approached the nurses again and asked for help, but her request to contact Ebe was met with dubious enthusiasm. They said they’d look into any developments and get back to her. She asked daily or more, but was told to be patient. Give it time, they insisted.

  Time passed until it felt like an eternity. So much time she could bear it no longer. She couldn’t give it forever. It was so awful here. Every day was a struggle not to lash out. She couldn’t wait any more. She had to take control.

  And so it was, with manic thoughts racing through her troubled mind she took action.

  She had help. She wouldn’t do it without encouragement. The Amish man, on his own, not with the Rebecca this time, had been around in the corner of her eye for days. He knew when to strike to get the best effect. He was a figment of her own creation after all.

  “He ain’t never coming back,” he drawled “Him or your daddy. They’re gonna leave you in here to rot. They might come for you though. The funny little ones ‘n their bright lights. They might well be coming for you, real soon.”

  “Shut up!” Carys hissed. To the man and to herself. She shook her head in an attempt to regain her composure. “Just shut up. You’re not even real.”

  “At least I’m here. I’m always here,” he said. “I know what’ll help too. You just take them tablets you been savin,’ and it’ll all go away. It’ll be fine. I prom
ise.”

  She walked down the corridor mumbling for him to go away, but he wouldn’t. He told her the nurses were getting suspicious. They knew about her not taking her medicine and they would stop her. Then she’d be at the mercy of them. She shuddered.

  “Have you heard that humming noise?” he hissed menacingly. “Because I have!”

  Carys hadn’t, which meant she knew the Amish man couldn’t have done either. Unless, she’d heard it and blocked it out; and he knew. Of course! That was it.

  “They’ll stop you, Carees. You godda do it now. Right now, Carees.” She nodded but she was afraid. “Don’t you worry none. I’ll help you. Come on.”

  Carys didn’t know how far she would go with it, but she’d accommodate him for now to shut him up. Grabbing water from the vending machine, she slinked back to her room and removed her shoes. Placing them carefully on the bed she sat beside them and stared.

  Sighing, she picked one up and fiddled with the hole in the lining. The bounty was tricky to release, but once it started coming out, it was a cascade. She was stunned at the quantity of pills that fell out onto her bed sheets. Emptying the other shoe, she gazed at the mountain of misery, the colours of all the different pills ironically jolly.

  She stared at them for a while before reaching out for the bottle on her bedside table, unscrewing the lid.

  “That’s it. It’ll all be alright when you’re done. Hell! I’ll even leave you in peace,” he laughed heartily. It all seemed like such a good idea. Tranquillity. Freedom from her heartache. Freedom from… this.

  She looked down at the hoard on her bed sheet.

  “Go on!” he gestured, smiling at her. She looked one more time. There were so many. So, so many tablets of different shapes and sizes and colours.

  She must have not been taking her medication for months.

  And then, she took them all at once.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  A New Clarity

  As soon as she had swallowed the last one, she regretted it.

  “What have I done!” she said out loud. She knew of course. She knew with a clarity that was needle sharp. The second she swallowed the last tablet she knew everything. Like coming out of a trance at the click of the hypnotists fingers.

  That amount of tablets would kill her, and quick. She wanted to live. Why had she wanted to die? Because she hadn’t heard from Ebe? Because her mum had died? Because it was so terrible here?

  If it was so awful, why was she not making the most of the treatments on offer so she could leave? She didn’t need Marco to sign her out if she was well. If she could prove that she was okay, they would have no option but to release her. It was what they wanted too, wasn’t it? She’d been a fool.

  Did she want to die to get away from the creatures that had plagued her life? Maybe, but she couldn’t. She had to live. For Ebe. How would he feel if he came back for her and she’d done that? And her dad! Returning from his trip to find he’d lost his daughter as well as his wife, he wouldn’t cope. It wouldn’t be just her she was killing, it would be all of them.

  But she had done that hadn’t she? She had just swallowed months’ worth of medicine in one sitting, and was just counting down the minutes until she passed.

  No! She wouldn’t let it happen. The tablets hadn’t been digested yet. She would go and tell the nurses. They’d know what to do. She couldn’t be the first patient to take an overdose. It’s probably a common occurrence.

  As she rushed from her room, her thoughts continued. She was afraid of the alien creatures. A fear that consumed her. The Amish man had known that mention of the hum would push her to the edge. As she had begun to realise when she thought she was seeing her son, nothing bad happened really. Nothing she took from day to day. No injuries or scars. Just the fear of them.

  According to Marco they had controlled her entire life. They had done their best to put her back as she was, hadn’t they? They tried to wipe her memory and leave her as she had been before. And wasn’t everybody’s life mapped out by a higher force?

  And she was not alone. Plenty of testimonies on television concurred with her, including well-known celebrities. She thought about Marco’s metamorphosis, and shuddered. It was real wasn’t it? It was too easy to dismiss it all as her neurosis, but she wasn’t alone in that either.

  Were she and her mother just crazy people who imagined aliens and saw UFO’s and had their husband turn reptilian, or were they sensitive to the frequencies others were not?

  How many people were abducted every day by aliens, only to have their memory wiped and returned to normal? It could be everyone couldn’t it, she thought as she neared the nurses’ station.

  Ebe was going to help them come. He seemed to know it would be good. Maybe he was right. Maybe 2022 would be a new age of Utopia. She needed to be alive for that.

  And if he was wrong? If it wasn’t a Utopia? If it was Armageddon? Well, Ebe and her dad would know and leave her safe.

  They might need her. She would get better for them. She would do the CBT therapy and the DBT therapy and the whatever else therapy, and she would get better.

  Reaching the nurses, she spoke to one sitting at the desk who had noticed her approach. Reluctant to engage in whatever ridiculous request Carys might be about to make, she kept her eyes down and carried on reading her magazine. Until Carys spoke.

  “I’ve just taken an overdose,” she announced calmly. “A big one.” The nurse stared up at her. The gravity sinking in.

  “I don’t want to die, so could you help me please?”

  Carys watched as the chain reaction of furious activity began. It appeared to Carys that it was happening in slow motion.

  She was sure she would be okay now. She gladly took the black sooty drink they gave her and something else, and nodded her compliance that an ambulance should be called.

  She’d live, and she would get well again. And if a Utopia was reached when they came, Ebe and her dad would come and get her. And if it was not as Ebe hoped. If it was as she had always feared? She would leave it up to them to decide.

  Maybe, she would be better off staying where she was.

  The End

  I hope you enjoyed this book. You can write your own review, buy copies of Michael’s other titles, and connect with Michael on Facebook or at his official site:

  http://www.michaelchristophercarter.co.uk/

  About the Author

  The beautiful Pembrokeshire Coast National Park provides the inspiration for Michael's novels, giving a real sense of life in South Wales.

  A former top performing direct sales consultant from the leafy suburbs of England, Michael was brought up a Catholic with a burgeoning interest in alternative, New Age spirituality; leading him to attain Reiki Master status in 1999.

  It's from this unique perspective that he now indulges his one true passion of writing, producing paranormal novels which delight the seeker whilst paying homage to the sceptic. Described as 'paranormal tales of the unexpected'; they won't be like anything you've read before.

  Connect with Michael, and direct any queries to info@michaelchristophercarter.co.uk.