Age of Power 1: Legacy (19 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I don’t remember what
happened next. I didn’t hear anything else Kular said. I barely remembered my
mom laughing at something my dad had said and then calling out to me. I didn’t
move, didn’t say anything. My mom called to me again, but when I didn’t answer
her, she walked over. Seeing the look on my face, she worriedly took the phone
from my hand.

As
she talked, all I could do was stare dumbly. Nothing registered. Then my mom’s
expression changed. Her eyes widened with shock, and her voice caught in her
throat. Tears started flowing down her face. I backed away as she hung up. She
was crying. I couldn’t. No…no, there had to have been a mistake. Something was
wrong. Something was horribly wrong. I backed away, unable to find my voice.

She
came over to me as she said, “Mark, Brand died of an aneurysm last night…”

Inside,
I froze, even as she pulled me to her. She said, “Come here, baby…come here…let
it out…”

The
world slipped away. I was there, but it passed me by. Over the next few
lifetimes, which others called days, we saw Brand's family. I wished I hadn’t.
Jim was utterly devastated. He’d lost Kyle, and now Brand. Karla was the only
thing keeping him from losing his sanity.

I
didn’t know what to say. Touching his shoulder was the only comfort that I
could give. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he squeezed my hand in return.
I remembered that. I remembered the tears in his eyes. And all I could do was
just nod like a stupid idiot. My world again slipped away, and nothing stuck in
my memory.

They
held the funeral the next Tuesday. I didn’t say anything. All I did was move
around and mechanically do the things I was supposed to do. I acted sad. At the
funeral, I looked at him and saw a body. But it wasn’t Brand, not to me. It was
just a dead body in a coffin.

The
funeral just slipped by without registering
.  
The
weather warmed up, and it didn’t matter. We went through the services, the
talks, and the reception. I just wandered around as Jim and Karla stiffly
accepted condolences. My brother was dead. And I wasn’t sure what that meant.
Nothing was important to me.

After
that, it was over, and I went home. The only thing that got me out of the house
again was the legal problems with Nathan’s death. As far as the police was
concerned, the deathbed confessions ended the case. And aside from the hyped up
hearing, I hadn’t had any sonic flare-ups in my voice. And honestly, I didn’t
care whether the power was gone or not. But then something came along to remind
me that this wasn’t over.

I
was in my candlelit room, listening to an industrial music band called Dybuk,
when I heard a very strange sound. Given the heavy beat of the music, I ignored
the odd sound at first. Since the memorial, my hearing picked up on so many
things that I was getting used to it all. Wind, creaking houses, cars driving
by, people talking; they were louder for me, but I could—and did—learn to block
them out.

But
I couldn’t ignore the off-kilter stuff that came up. It’s normal; people 
were distracted
 by changes in sounds all too often.
Stereos with a heavy bass could distract a person as they drove past a car.
Low-flying airplanes or jet engines could disrupt a train of thought. It was
all in how the mind flowed. As for what was distracting me now, I kept hearing
a strange repetitive thumping. And each time I tried to listen for it, the noise
would fall to silence. With the first couple of times after I first heard it, I
simply went back to listening to music. But every time I would begin to fall
back into the music, the fast thumping would return.

Finally,
it was enough to pull me out of the deep funk and go in search of the source.
Grabbing my coat, I went upstairs and told my parents I was going out for a
walk. They were surprised, but my mom was happy that I was getting out. Well,
I’d still be downstairs listening to heavy bass music if it hadn’t been for
this. But knowing my parents, I suspected they would have come to my room and
pushed me to go out if this sound hadn’t bothered me enough to do it myself.

Once
outside, I didn’t actually go anywhere. Instead, I stood in the driveway to see
if I could gauge where this sound was coming from. Quieting my breathing, I
listened. 
Wind, cars in the distance, people talking
inside the house…my mom inviting the Housemans over tomorrow for a game and
dinner…

I
shook my head. I didn’t want to see Brand’s parents. I didn’t want to deal with
how I was feeling about the loss of my friend. I had to admit that I was using
this odd noise to do something to break away from the grief and pain. And
getting away from that helped me begin to understand that noise surrounded us
all the time. It’s just that people tended to ignore it. People focused on what
was important at the time, and usually, noise went into the background of the
mind. Now, for me, the noise was the focus. That meant that I had to listen to all
the surrounding noise, just as I had at the memorial.

Small
rustles against the ground, engines starting, footsteps on sidewalks, shoveling
slushy snow, grumbling man, 
mud
 sloshing…
 thump—thump—thump—thump… 
Hello!

Lifting
my head, I ran down to the road as I continued to hear the fast beat. Looking
beyond the highway past our house, I could hear the fast thumps against the
ground. Slowly, I began to isolate the sound and listen for that one repeating
pitch of the noise. It didn’t work out that way. I grabbed my head when pain
spiked. The tree-filled hills to the west wavered in my sight as white noise
smashed into my brain.

Slowly,
I got it back under control. It helped when I used the sound of the wind
blowing through the trees to focus on. Riverlite was in the crook of a valley
where old glaciers had cut into the earth as they’d retreated. Torn ground
became tree-filled hills curving around the west side of Riverlite. A forest
spread across hills of varying heights.

I
realized that the thumping was coming from the hills, leading me to the north.
Dirt roads spread throughout the hills to the edge of the rift
valley. I ran across the highway, following the sound. It wasn’t easy to do. I
kept losing the sound amid all the white noise hitting my ears. But whatever
the source, it was repeating enough for me to get a rough direction.

I
ran off the highway onto Wallingford Road. A two-lane stretch, it curved around
Riverlite heading from the highway to Main Street. I started jogging on the
right side of the road, listening for the one sound amidst the chaos. It wasn’t
easy. When I ran past the town’s power plant on the edge of town, the smell of
whatever they had put in the natural gas pipes that fed into the plant distracted
me.

Although
it was a good use of nearby gas pockets, it wasn’t helping me focus on one
sense over everything else. Then I ran into something worse. On the other side
of the road was one of the old city dumps. I never did understand why anyone
would put a dump so close to town. But they had. Soon enough, though, I moved
beyond the odor.

Picking
up the strange sound, I found that I could barely hear it. The thump was soft,
distant. I grunted the intermittence of the thumping against the other noise.
Repeatedly I would find the sound and then lose it to some new distraction. A
farm dealership with running tractors, a loud wedding party, cars honking on
their way past, and even the sound of a mini-bike—they all caused me to lose
focus on that thumping.

But
I lost the sound altogether when I got too close to the traffic on Main Street.
With a sigh, I crossed the street and stood at the corner of a road near a
Casey’s, a gas station and convenience store. After a moment of hearing only
the traffic, I knew that I’d lost it.

Dude,
you “lost it” a long time ago!

I
smiled, remembering Brand making that joke once. We had been standing here, on
this corner, and we had been trying to decide what to do for fun. Usually, we
would go to the town swimming pool just across the river, or we would hang out
underneath the train trestle that crossed it. That day, I’d suggested that we
should just go all the way to the valley park on the other side of the hills. A
long walk, but the scenery was worth it. 
But not to
Brand; that was when he’d told me that I had lost it.

I
realized just then that, for the first time since his death, I was smiling at
something about Brand. And I was doing it without getting a lump in my throat.
I realized that the distraction had definitely done something to break my
depression. Before my mind could lead back to the fact of his death, though,
the mysterious sound returned. But now, what had been thumping
against soft ground had changed into hard, smacking impacts against
asphalt.

I
looked in the direction the thumps were coming from when the repetitious noise
increased in frequency. However, looking past Main Street’s bridge, I saw only
cars on the road, each with their own low thrum of engine sounds. But none of
them created the repetitious sound I was following. But then, my gaze followed
one car as it turned on Culbertson Avenue, near the swimming pool. At the
corner, something moved—a blur of some kind. I blinked, and it was gone.

I
cocked my head, continuing to look, and after a moment, I shrugged it off. I
heard the thumps moving to the north, then shifting eastward. Somewhere along
the way, the sound had crossed the river. For a moment, even the sound of the
traffic next to me couldn’t block it out. Whatever it was, the sound was
fast—very fast. I glanced at the clock on my cell phone to see that it had
traveled six miles in less than a couple minutes. That is, if I was right about
where it had started.

Keeping
my focus on what I was hearing, I began to follow it in the same direction it
was going. I moved at a brisk pace, but I knew that, whatever it was, the sound
was moving back and forth to the east and north, as though it were going along
streets in the neighborhood. From its speed going through the town, I wondered
if I were hearing a motorcycle, bored out so that it gave off that sound.

I
shook off the idea. Growing up with the Housemans and Brand’s love of car and
motorcycles gave me a familiarity with the noise of cycle engines. This was no
engine. I had to stop listening when I passed a lumberyard. Naturally, saws
were running.

Following
all 
that
 noise started giving me a headache.
It stopped me for a moment. And, with the loss of focus, the thumping faded
into the background noise. It snapped me back to reality, and I realized how
stupid I was acting. I had no idea how far I could push things. Good exercise
for the talent, yes, but how long could I go before it damaged something
inside? So it was a good thing that I stopped when I ran into something that
ruined my concentration altogether. And it had nothing to do with sound.

I
saw that I was walking past the still closed Kerrington Hardware Store. In the
months since the Day, I’d heard that Brett Kerrington had stayed down south to
retire. 
Fine by me.
 The store could burn
down, for all I cared. I shoved back the bad memories and crossed the street
near a used car dealership.

Passing
Celia’s Café, I ignored the sounds of clinking dishes and silverware. Just
then, I heard the rapid thumps again. This time they echoed faintly off the
buildings, but it was close enough that I thought I might see the source of the
sound. Then I noticed something else as I looked around at the people. They
weren’t reacting to the sound.

I
looked across the street and saw a couple teenagers walking into a store. They
passed one guy coming out of a barbershop. He stopped, put his baseball cap on,
and waved at another couple going into a flower store. Others were getting in
and out of cars, and vehicles were driving on Main Street. And not one
person was reacting to or looking for any odd noises.

I
continued to look around until a movement out of the corner of my eye drew my
attention to the top of the United Bank building. I looked, and I saw a
woman in a black and purple leather outfit with a hood and facemask. It was an
odd outfit, and that an odd place for anyone to be, period. But before I could
get a closer look, she pulled back out of sight. I let the unusual sight go
when the sound came again. This time, for a moment, it sounded like the sound
of someone running on pavement. But it was moving at such a high speed that it
confused me. It took me a moment before I realized that it was closing in
towards me.

Without
watching where I was going, I ran down the sidewalk, looking for the source of
the sound. Crossing the street to Library Square, I saw nothing. I moved toward
the building with increasing annoyance over the mystery of that sound. And
mystery was definitely not my favorite genre.