It was 3 AM, Valentine’s Day morning when the hum first started to rattle my brain. The sound was like somebody left their vibrator on the pulse setting, only the vibrator was the size of a truck and buried ten stories beneath my bedroom by tenacious dwarves. At first I just rolled over and thought, what the hell is that? I even looked out the window to see if someone was idling their engine by the abandoned office complex across the street.
Nope. Our Illinois town was its usual, lifeless self.
I gave up on sleep by 5 AM and put on a pot of coffee, then smoked a bowl in my bathrobe out on the balcony and flipped through a book of Diane Arbus portraits.
Normally I’d have gone back to bed – my mornings are usually free, since I teach afternoon photography at Waubonsee Community College. But just my luck – we had an AM department meeting that did not go well. First we argued over exhibition budgets, then we spent two hours debating who’s leaving Chinese takeout in the staff fridge. Lucille from English, we know it’s you.
As if that slice of insomnia pie wasn’t enough, I had a date that night. On VALENTINES DAY. Great idea, Abby, right? I thought it would be better than spending Valentines at home with my cat Catherine Hepburn and a glass of wine. Yeah, I’m an idiot, and my date’s job was to remind me of it.
First, he promised to treat me to drinks but forgot his wallet. Then he regaled me with his conspiracy theories on how viruses are engineered by reptilian aliens.
I should have told him about the hum. He’d have LOVED it. But silly me, I thought I was better than that.
Sigh.
We had boring sex, except he asked me to bark for him when I came. Needless to say, I didn’t bark and I was never paid back for dinner.
#
So it was a shitty Valentine’s Day. I’ll add it to one of my lists.
This should be the end of the story, but the hum was there again Wednesday night.
I woke up, heard it humming away, and shambled to my balcony to light a cigarette and stare into the night. Catherine Hepburn joined me, and we meowed angrily at the universe together. Out there in the cold, you could hear the snowflakes falling on the frozen wasteland of Aurora like dust settling on its post-industrial grave.
Yet something was making that noise. That hum. You would think at least one Karen would be screaming from her balcony and calling the building manager. I picked up my camera, snapped a photo of the scene, and posted it to my blog with this angry rant.
Then, I went back to bed, where I imagined mole people trying to maneuver their giant vibrator away now that Valentine’s Day was over. Wishful thinking, I know.
#
Soon, I fell into a bad pattern:
- Waking up at 3 to the sound of the hum
- Smoking on the porch
- Pretending it would go away and trying to sleep
- Giving up, drinking coffee
- Arguing with students all day
- Repeat
Sometimes I wonder how I got myself into this: teaching at a dead end Illinois community college when the dream was to live in New York. You know, to be part of the art scene.
Of course, I know what happened. I ignored my mom’s advice, majored in fine arts, and thanked God when I actually got a job.
#
The following weekend, I found a spark of hope. I was grading compositions in my office over a glass of wine, trying to make sense of freshman portraits of rotting shacks and sagging mushrooms.
The next thing I knew, it was 7 AM and I’d amassed a puddle of drool on a blurry photo of a dog. Whoops! That kid’s getting an A.
And hey, it was the best sleep I’d had since V-Day. Two wins in one.
I went home Tuesday night, but the hum was still there waiting, so on Wednesday I slept in the office again. I made sure the other faculty were gone, smoked a bowl out in the dingy sculpture park behind the art building, and tried to call my old friend Krista to chat. She didn’t answer. They never do once they have kids.
So of course, I returned to my glamorous kid free life of drinking wine alone and sleeping in my office.
#
The pain in my neck was the first hint that office living was not a long term solution. I thought about chatting someone up at Web Tavern, or riding into Chicago to talk my way into a show. I’d get drunk and do a line in the women’s bathroom, then maybe pass out at my new friend’s place while my car got towed. Classic Abigail.
But outside it was well below freezing and the snow was falling again, layering on top of last week’s misery like icing on a cheap slice of Kroger cake. A normal person might have called a neighbor, turned the night into a snowpocalypse party. But who has friends anymore in this post-pandemic era? Who even knows their neighbors?
So it was just me, a bottle of Barefoot, and reruns on Netflix until the hum started again.
When it did, I muted the TV and stared into space to listen. Somewhere nearby, someone was having a snow party. But I barely heard the laughs, barely registered the spilled drinks and squeals of laughter.
The hum was throbbing again and it wasn’t even late. Had it changed, or had I?
I sipped my pink Moscato, let my nails dig into my crusty couch cushions, then got up and shoved my arms into my leather jacket. I was going to find the source. And when I did, man, their manager was getting a call.
#
Outside, the snow was blowing hard, piling up in waves like sand dunes deep in the Sahara, though we have abandoned factories instead of pyramids. Dig deep enough and you might even find the fossils of my sanity.
I stood there shivering as the wind tore through my leather garments, and I listened to the hiss of ice crystals, the gusts of the wind, and the vibrations underneath them.
I barely noticed when a couple stumbled drunkenly past me and said hi. I must have looked like a nut, because they ran upstairs looking scared.
The hum undulated like the heartbeat of a buried Lovecraftian God. I tread down the unshoveled walk and tried to follow it, but I couldn’t tell if it was stronger by the abandoned office complex, or down the road by the stoplight. I paced back and forth through the snow, my legs aching, and even though the vibrations ebbed and flowed, they never went away.
#
I woke up hungover and red-eyed to my phone vibrating on my bed stand.
“Ugh. Hello?”
“Yeah, hi Abby, this is Carl.”
Yeah, he’s the art department chair.
“Hi Carl. What’s up?” I could hear him frown.
“The janitor called. He said you’ve been sleeping in your office?”
“What? When?” I rubbed a hand against my dry eyes.
“And he found a wine bottle in the trashcan.”
“Oh God, who complained? It was Lucille from English, wasn’t it?”
“Abby, you know the rules about drinking on campus.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s only for teenagers and the unhoused. I messed up Carl. Sorry. I’m going through some stuff.”
“Abby, just between you and me, maybe it’s time to look for other opportunities. You know, in the city somewhere? They say Loyola is hiring.”
“Yeah, maybe I should join the local improv group and check into some meetings down at First Baptist. Is that where this is going?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
I wanted to slam the phone, but instead I fumbled the off button and threw it at my couch, where the still fading voice explained my last paycheck would show up in the mail.
#
Unemployment wasn’t bad at first, but by Thursday I was bored out of my mind and the hum was still there, seemingly louder every night.
Hum. You. Hum. Have. Hum. No. Hum. Life
My days became a blur. I applied for unemployment, pretended to look for jobs, and damaged my brain with social media. At night I drank wine, took edibles, binged old documentaries, and researched the hum.
You might think that I’m some lone weirdo, but 2-4% of people report hearing something like the hum, and some of them say that hums are localized. The most famous are in Taos New Mexico, West Seattle, and Auckland New Zealand. Weirdly, some only seem to have a 10 mile radius. This means there’s a source. A measurable cause.
So there was hope.
I put a whole blog post together about it, and then it hit me. I brought up google maps, checked the legend in the corner, and zoomed in on Aurora.
You know what’s within 10 miles of my house?
Lederman National Laboratory.
#
You’re probably thinking, Wait, there’s a giant laboratory next door and that wasn’t your first guess?
Yes, people are always making jokes about how it might create a black hole and suck the town in. But the tone of the jokes are usually like, Hah, wouldn’t that be a relief?
Yes, they have an atom smasher, and yeah it collides tiny stuff to create all sorts of arcane nonsense. But a week of late night research left me with a pair of bloodshot eyes and doubts to match:
- First, the atom smasher isn’t even close to state of the art. Basically, it’s been running for decades and I’m just now hearing things.
- Second, the place is half nature preserve. They have bison, prairie dogs, and a bunch of endangered species living there, and the animals love it. If there’s some sort of harmful vibration, the animals prefer it to the rest of Aurora.
After a few days of digging, I walked to the northeast side of town to investigate in person. It was cold and late, and the roads were abandoned as the tumbling flurries made everything quiet.
But there behind it all was that pulsating hum, growing louder and louder as I got closer, until I finally came up to the lab’s fence, which was tall and lined with barbed wire. I rode another mile down the icy street, photographing the pine trees and warning signs that hid the secrets inside. Eventually I came to a gate guarded by armed security.
My dull nails dug into my palms, chipped lacquer and all, and I almost screamed into the night. There was nothing else I could do.
#
When I couldn’t sleep that night, I wrote my next blog post: 8 Weird Facts about the L-Lab and then posted it on NextDoor. Well, OK, I started by joining NextDoor, because who needs that nonsense?
Soon I got a whole host of responses and they all had their own theories, complaints, and jokes. Most thought it was the trucking depot down the road, which was right next to the lab. Others blamed Gen Z for blasting their music too loudly. When I brought up the lab, I was lectured on how it’s been in Aurora for 75 years, how it creates jobs and the kids all go there on field trips. Essentially, blahblahblah, you’re a crazy lady.
I wanted to scream..
But a few people agreed with me, and they had an important point: if I was going to tackle this thing, I needed proof.
I rode back to the lab Monday night and took a bunch of recordings on my phone beside the fence. Then I biked home and listened in my room. Problem: it was hard to make out the sound in the video. At least I was exhausted. I gave up and lay down, but I didn’t have a restful night. Instead, I dreamt of a blue-skinned demon sleeping beneath the lab and its heart pumping blood through our city.
#
I listened to the recording again on Tuesday and convinced myself the hum was there, albeit quietly. I posted online and most of the neighbors were not having it. Basically, I had a video of a fence, some pine trees, and a little low frequency noise. Big whup.
Somehow I had to get closer. Find an actual building, robot, or death ray that was causing it. But how?
I painted my nails bright blue, smoked a joint, and grumbled to Catherine about it. We would find an answer.
As I plotted, I started noticing the hum during the day, too. It had been there all along, but unnoticed while I worked at school. My eyes grew dark circles and my face hurt from rubbing them. I looked like a meth addict. Hell, I felt like a meth addict, especially when I drank too much coffee during my midnight internet binges.
Soon, I was applying to the cafes because I spent enough time there to collect a paycheck anyway. When mom called to give me her monthly lecture about life choices, I actually had some good news for once. Dark Energy Coffee had hired me! The wages weren’t much worse than being an adjunct, either, though I had to sell my car and buy a bike instead.
The hum seemed to subside around that time as I busied myself making lattes and americanos, chatting about photography, and collecting tips. I should have been happy. Instead I made mistakes.
Mistake #1: riding my bike around in the evening to scope out the lab and the brutalist concrete buildings looming in the distance.
Mistake #2: explaining to my coworkers what I was actually doing on my evening rides. They, too, thought I was crazy. And you know what? Maybe they were right.
#
By March, I’d formulated a plan.
Step 1 came on a windy Wednesday night. It was unseasonably warm as I rode into the twilight – a rare 54 degree evening. I had my camera and a small pack of equipment on my back, and looked very much like a scavenger weirdo from a post-apocalyptic movie.
For my ingress, I’d picked a patch of fence far from the guards, and under a burned out streetlight. I dragged a heavy pair of pruning shears out of my army surplus bag and clipped fence links, making a weak spot I could slip through. Nearly pissed myself when headlights appeared down the road, too.
After another minute’s work, I had made a de facto gate in a C shape. The edges raked my clothes as I dragged myself and my bike inside, under the pine trees. From there, I pulled out my digital camera and a spectrum meter I’d bought. By walking, changing direction, and watching the amplitude of the spiky sound waves on the meter’s screen I could get a sense of where the hum was coming from.
I started inward through the thick trees and over old logs, crossed two open roads, and turned back into the woods again, along a nature trail indicated on my map. It was intensely dark without the city lights, though the stars shone overhead.
In the distance, I could see the lab’s glass towers looming, and I knew I still had to get closer. As I crunched down the trail, I thought of all the steps that had brought me there: the bad dates, the sleeplessness, the blogging, getting fired, the online research, my new job and bike, and finally this. I was doing something with my life after all. Stick that in your wine glass, mom.
When I came to the edge of the trees, the sound waves displayed on my camera were more intense than ever before.
Around me, wind blew in the brown grass and the hum throbbed like it was overly excited.
The nearest building was dark and shaped like a huge concrete funnel. I started taking a video to post on my blog. It was proof, but of what?
“We’re getting close,” I whispered, as dark doors came into sight. I reached out to test a handle and I swear I could feel vibrations come off of it. Just as I was about to yank on it, a spotlight blasted from behind me and a voice shouted out.
“Stay where you are and drop the camera. You are trespassing inside a federal research facility.”
I would never see that camera.
#
Of course, I tried to explain myself to the cops. Tried to tell them about the sound I’d recorded. Tried to get them to listen, but what do you think they did? Yeah, they pushed me into the squad car and radioed in to say they found the crazy lady who snuck in. And now I have legally mandated therapy.
The hum was still there, of course. I tried to get them to listen, but they just laughed.
Yet as we drove off, out of the lab gates and down the road, I saw something. Something that changed everything.
Two other people were walking down the road, not far from where I’d been, and one was holding their head while the other was holding a microphone. With my cell phone, I snapped a photo of them with the lab in the background.
As I pressed my hands to the car’s cold window, I watched them fade into the distance. But then I knew – knew I wasn’t alone.
You’ve probably seen the photo: the two disturbed walkers on my book cover.
The book is Step 2.
Step 3: I’m going to find them, and we’re going to expose the lab and expose the hum together, and no one is going to stop us. Step 4 is exposure. Exposure of the lab’s demons and dark experiments. Exposure of the rotting underbelly of our decaying industrial civilization.
It’s coming and I hope you’re ready.
About the Author
Ryan Walraven is a writer and physicist who lives in Oakland with his wife and two cats, Jiffy and Nyx. He has had stories published with TL;DR Press, Bandit Fiction, and Mystic Mind Magazine, and poetry with Dipity and Hobo Camp Review. He is the founder of Strange Quark Press.
