HUM by Dan Hawley (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📕

for some time—and straightened himself up in the plastic red chair. Cobwebs and faint memories of a forgotten dream cleared from his mind as a short man in a white lab coat stood over him.

“You should save that for the tests, Jason.”

Dr. Luu’s eyes squinted against the raised cheeks of the smile that hid behind his mask.

“All is well?” the doctor asked.

“Yes, sorry. Nodded off there,” Jason said, mildly embarrassed.

“Happens all the time, not to worry. Now, please join me in my office.”

Dr. Luu turned and headed towards the door beside the receptionist’s desk. Jason shook his head slightly and stood up. The woman and the child were gone. He wondered how long he had been asleep.

As the two men entered Dr. Luu’s office, the doctor gestured for Jason to sit and closed the door. The checkered tiles clicked as their footsteps fell. The room was bright and minimalist. In the middle of the room was a chrome-legged desk with a white top. Two chrome-legged chairs faced the desk. The seats were black, not red as Jason half expected. He took a seat in the one on his right. Dr. Luu went around the desk and sat down in his modern, ergonomic, high-backed chair. He wiggled the mouse to wake up his sleeping computer. It came alive with a flicker of the screen. Jason rubbed his palms on his knees as he sat, looking around the sterile-looking room.

The walls were a crisp white; its only adornments several diplomas and awards.

Dr. Luu looked up at Jason and then at the framed documents on the wall beside him.

“Oh, those? Those are to hopefully put you at ease more than an obvious boast about me,” he chuckled. Jason allowed himself to relax into the chair. The diplomas and accolades did help after all; good to know this doctor wasn’t some quack.

Dr. Luu typed for a moment, then looked from the screen to Jason.

Slipping on his clear-rimmed glasses, Dr. Luu observed his new patient.

“You look tired.”

Jason noticed that he didn’t feel insulted, likely because a doctor had said it. Dr. Luu had an accent, but his English was excellent, and he spoke loudly and with purpose through the white surgical mask.

Jason fumbled with how to begin. So much had happened in the last three months. Enough to fill three years, he thought. His time in Seattle seemed to have crept along, deadly slow and mundane until sporadic sparks of insanity woke him from his slumber. Yet the three months had also passed so quickly. In what seemed like an instant, he had gone from starting a new, exciting life to sitting in a cold, bright doctor’s office trying to explain how fucked up he was. He shook his head.

“It’s ok, Jason,” the doctor said, obviously aware of Jason’s struggle to find the right words. “Just start where you can.”

“Truth is, Doc; it’s hard to know where to start. I mean, when I moved in with Sam—that’s my girlfriend—three years ago or whatever, she brought up that I talked in my sleep. She said that I sometimes moved around a bit; like I elbowed her once, all herky-jerky in my sleep. It came up in conversation with my dad, and he said I’d been doing that since I was a kid. Nothing to worry about.”

Jason paused, cleared his throat, and then continued.

“Dad said he does it, and his dad did it before him. I didn’t think about it much. And it didn’t seem to bother Sam, before.”

Dr. Luu quietly typed as Jason spoke.

“Then we moved here, and I dunno. It got worse. Like a lot worse.”

Jason’s pace quickened.

“I move stuff in my sleep. All the stuff on top of my nightstand ends up inside my nightstand. Oh, and I sleepwalk now, I guess. Sometimes I wake up on the floor in the bedroom or the bathroom. And I don’t remember how I got there.”

Jason stared at his hands as he described the time he fell asleep in his office in the middle of the day and then woke up, mid sleepwalk, to see Samantha staring at him with fear in her eyes. Jason paused, then opened his mouth as if to speak again and stopped. He decided to omit the most recent disturbance during which he had apparently sleep-cleaned his gun. That was not something Jason was ready to accept or discuss. He wasn’t sure how the good doctor might react. He might label him insane on the spot and in need of padded walls.

“She said I do it all the time now. She says I stand beside the wall with my ear up against it, listening, I guess.”

Dr. Luu stopped typing.

“Listening?”

Jason looked up at the doctor and then away, embarrassed. His cheeks flushed and tiny beads of sweat began to form on his forehead. His beard felt itchy and dry.

“Well, listening, I guess. To the hum.”

Dr. Luu listened intently while Jason spoke. He touched on his relationship with his father and how his mother left them when he was a child. He discussed the stress of moving. The new job, new apartment, new city, and the fear and unknown of the pandemic. Jason went on about the stifling lockdown and its negative effect on his relationship with Samantha.

He told the doctor how they had wanted to get away to explore some of the beautiful scenery Washington state had to offer. And how they had happened upon a waking nightmare when they all but witnessed the murder of that poor hiker up in the mountains.

He described the gnawing, relentless hum as if it were something alive. Something that knew its own evil nature and basked in the triumph of its exquisite torture.

The doctor interjected here and there to ask a question but mostly let Jason vomit words all over the office. Dr. Luu’s fingers tapped frantically on the keyboard to capture the words and record them on the screen.

Jason finally finished. He realized he was now sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning forward.