I
Peter Hague was surrounded by something that he had not experienced in years beyond memory, something that he had wanted ever since some time in June of 1982. This thing he had longed for but didn't dare hope for lest he go out of his mind in misery. It was a thing that money couldn't buy him; it was a thing that couldn't have been given to him except due to a little twist in fate that went by the name of Captain Trips.
That thing that he longed for was complete and total silence.
He married his wife in a pleasant little outdoor ceremony here in his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi during the summer of 1982. The sun was shining and the temperature was just right, it was as though God himself had decided to shine down upon the soon to be mister and missus Hague. It was a happy day.
Which was just as well, because he didn't have all that many happy ones after that. All too quickly the new husband found that the little quirks and idiosyncrasies that seem so charming to a couple dating could be downright grating after marriage. Chief among Peter Hague's complaints was the fact that his wife Georgia would Never…Stop…Talking.
It was incessant, from sunup to sundown every day she would talk about this and that, often about nothing at all. She would comment on the weather, on politics, on the weeds growing in the neighbor's yard, on the weeds growing in their own yard, she would talk about the scorch marks left on a tortilla after taking it off of the griddle; Peter, look at this tortilla, doesn't the mark on it look just like Nevada?
He had laughingly wondered while they were dating whether or not his dear girlfriend had ever had any thought that she didn't immediately vocalize. Now after twenty years of marriage he was damned sure that she had not. Sometimes it got so bad that he just imagined her as a huge, overgrown mosquito that was whining in the most irritating way possible right in his ear. Sometimes it was so bad that he was sure that he would be driven insane.
All of this might not have been so bad except for the fact that Peter's favorite pastime was to sit in a large and comfortable chair with a good book in his lap. He could lose himself inside of a good story for hours, the real world around him fading away. Unfortunately for him, he was a very easily distracted fellow and was not able to read except in complete, or near complete silence.
Peter was certain that he had not read more than two pages in peace in twenty years.
During those passing seasons he had been beaten down. What had started as anxiety attacks and one hell of a painful peptic ulcer slowly settled down to a reluctant acceptance of his lot in life. The Hague family was devoutly Catholic. The Hague family did not get divorces.
So rather than completely lose his mind and commit suicide, or strangle his wife to death out of sheer desperation (An act that he was absolutely sure she would talk through until the final gasp of air departed through her incessantly flapping mouth.); Peter instead just learned to deal with it; acceptance did for him what all the Zantac in the world couldn't. He politely listened to all of his wife's irrelevant stories and meaningless ravings without complaint. In fact, he was so good at it that he seriously doubted if she had ever known how absolutely unhappy his predicament made him.
When Georgia Hague started to get sick early in the third week of June, she thought it was just a mild case of the flu. This didn't make her stupid, even her doctor thought it was a minor case of the flu. She was never neglected; her husband took care of her and doted upon her as she grew gradually worse and worse, talking all the way.
And then when she died on the afternoon of the 21st, her husband cried bitterly; because deep down, despite her failings, Peter Hague really did love his wife. He had her sent to the mortuary where despite a "heavier than normal workload" (the funeral director dramatically understated); he would have Georgia embalmed and ready for the funeral by the weekend.
Feeling numb and overwhelmed; Peter drove home and just sat in his chair, looking out the window in shock. He was so used to spending all of his free time listening to his wife's droning that now that she was gone, he didn't have any idea what he should be doing with his time. Worse, it took him almost an hour to figure out that that almost deafening roar in his ears wasn't a sound at all, but rather the complete lack of it.
The shock eventually wore off though, and he started to realize how much he enjoyed that lack of sound. He thought back into his hazy memories to a time that he would spend countless hours within this mystifying silence, doing nothing but reading book after book. And after getting himself a snack and a glass of ice water, he did something that he hadn't done in a very, very long time. Peter walked up to a bookcase and picked up the copy of A Tale of Two Cities that he had abandoned out of frustration twenty years ago.
IIIt didn't take Peter long to regain his affection for the written word; and by the time dinner rolled around, he had already work his way through almost two hundred pages. Once again he found himself out of his drab and purgatorial life and suddenly he was plunged into Charles Dickens' epic novel about the French Revolution. He honestly didn't think he could be any happier.
For more than a day and a half Peter sat in that chair chewing his way through page after page of the book, completely oblivious to the world around him. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he was aware of the sounds of ambulances, sirens and general unrest coming from the world outside his house. But that world was irrelevant to him, the only unrest he was conscious of was that which was occurring in the 18th century France that dwelled in his imagination.
Outside, the sirens and gunshots slowly dwindled away as the world began spiraling in on its climax. And inside Peter's head, the Reign of Terror played itself out toward it's own eventual climax.
There was something though, a sound that started out almost imperceptible. It was definitely far too quiet to intrude on the wall of solitude that Peter Hague had built around his mind, keeping in the world of literary excellence in his head and keeping out the things that didn't matter…which was pretty much everything.
The sound grew louder though; and by the time Charles Darnay began his final walk up to the guillotine, it had grown loud enough to pierce through the mental barrier that Mr. Hague had erected around himself. He sat bolt upright, turning his head from side to side in an attempt to zero the noise's location.
It was shrill and disconcerting, and reminded him all too much of his deceased wife. It actually reminded him of a very loud mosquito, a mosquito whose sound had been modified by an electric guitar's wah-wah pedal. He couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed it before; it was a sound that made his eyes want to water and his mouth to pucker up.
He slowly stood up, thoughts of the Bastille and the lamentable Lucie Manette quickly fading from his mind. He dropped the book into his chair and walked through the house and out of the screen door to the back porch. The sound was even louder out there and was coming from somewhere in the swamp directly behind his property.
Peter looked around, hoping that maybe it wasn't just him, hoping that maybe one or two of his neighbors were outside looking around maybe whispering amongst themselves; Good God, what is that noise? But everything appeared to be deserted, there wasn't anyone outside checking on the state of affairs, no cars driving up and down the street.
What has happened? Peter Hague thought. Where has everyone gone?
The only noise apart from the awful whining was the leaves rustling in the trees. Just the trees; no birds were singing in their branches. There wasn't even the sound of insects droning in the early summer heat and humidity. If the trees knew the answers to his questions, they didn't offer it.
He walked off of his property and into the swamp, feeling the spongy earth beneath his bare feet. He had briefly considered going back to the house to get his shoes, he had no interest in pulling leeches out from beneath his toes, to say nothing of having to run from any alligator he might encounter in the swamps. But he decided against it, the quicker he figured out what it was making that noise, the quicker he could deal with it and get back to his story.
It had occurred to him that he might just be losing his mind. Without the sound of his wife's omnipresent banter, what passed for the brain of Pete Hague had simply snapped and he was inventing a new and irritating sound to fill the void left by the old and irritating one.
He tried to dismiss this thought as he wandered further and further into the swamp, if he was going crazy then he had no desire to think about it. He froze in place once, like a cat about to spring, when he heard the low and deep rumbling of an alligator somewhere close by. He relaxed and kept moving again once he was certain that it was nowhere near him. And more importantly, it was moving in the other direction.
He had walked only a few steps further and froze when he caught sight of what was making the racket. It was like nothing he had ever seen, there was a pool of something lying on the ground, no bigger than the circumference of a bicycle tire. It was green and luminescent, it almost appeared to be swelling and writhing in front of him.
He had seen peat fires before and that was originally what he had thought this was, but it couldn't be. For one there was no smoke, nothing to give any sign that something was combusting right in front of his eyes. But even if there was, no fire gave off a sound like that.
The pitch of the sound increased slightly for a moment and he was suddenly aware that, while he still didn't like the sound, he no longer found it to be quite as irritating as it was only a few moments before. In fact, while the noise still reminded him of his wife, it suddenly made him start to remember her good qualities. He remembered her singing in church; he remembered the lovely and almost heart-breakingly beautiful voice that she had.
Peter stood there mesmerized by the green glow, he thought it was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen in his life but somehow he couldn't quiet force himself to take his eyes off of it. And that sound, it seemed almost like it was beckoning to him, that it was calling him to come closer. And perhaps it was.
Join us, Peter Hague. It almost seemed to speak to him. Join us and live in the wonderful silence of nothingness forever. This world is fading and the thinny will welcome you into its arm. Join us, Peter Hague.
"Oh yes" Peter mumbled, his slackened face staring at the green glow with longing now instead of revulsion. He found himself stepping forward, one foot after another in dream-like daze. The thinny's song promised him everything that he could possibly want, it promised him endless solitude. It promised him his dead wife.
In his last moments, Peter regained some clarity, albeit too late. Just as he fell forward through the rift in reality he realized that there was nothing there but oblivion. His last thought was of Charles Darnay walking to his death, just as willingly as he had walked into his own.
