EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
I usually avoid silence, because, well, it's never really silent. The high-pitched ringing fills every moment of quiet.
You would think I would get used to it, but no. Unfortunately, the current power outage has left the house quieter than ever, and the ringing deafening.
EEEEEEEEE…UUUUUUUU…
What? That's different. It's never changed tone before. I pause in my studying, and focus on the ringing in my ears for the first time in years.
EEEEEEEEE…UUUUUUU…EEEEEEEEEEE…UUUUUUUUU…. It repeats the two tones for a moment before falling into a pattern.
EEEEEEEEE…EEEEEEEEE…EEEEEEEEEE…EEEEEEEEEE…mmmmm…EEEEEEEEEE…mmmmmm…EEEEEEEEE…UUUUUU…EEEEEEEE…EEEEEEEE…mmmmmm….EEEEEEEEE…UUUUUU…EEEEEEEE…EEEEEEEE…mmmmm…UUUUUUU…UUUUU…UUUUUU
It keeps repeating this same pattern. Over and over. My tinnitus is clearly very weird, and I have a Bio Chem final on Tuesday. I decide to ignore it.
The power doesn't come back on. According to the message from the power company, a transformer broke, and they don't expect it to be fixed before tomorrow morning.
The pattern is still repeating. I read the same paragraph in my book for what must have been an hour before I give up. I can't seem to focus on anything else. The light is fading anyway. It is a pattern, maybe it means something?
I look for a paper and pen to write it down. After fumbling around, I come up with a red crayon my nephew left on my table after school yesterday and the back of a receipt. I push things out of the way on my desk, sit down, and listen.
Two tones and a pause. What else has two tones and a pause?
Morse code! Okay, let's assume the EEEEEEEEE sound is a dot, because dots come before dashes, right? Then the mmmmm sound might be pauses between letters…
That makes this:
dot dot dot dot
dot
dot dash dot dot
dot dash dot dot
dash dash dash
Seems like it could be morse… but I don't know how to decode it. I pull out my phone. Fourteen percent. Better make it fast! I look up a morse code chart and copy it down as quickly as I can. I get all the way to y before my phone dies. My brick charger is empty too. Guess I'm disconnected until the power comes back.
H-E-L-L-O
The pattern spells out "hello." Huh. Is something actually trying to communicate with me? Or am I just crazy? The tone is back to the EEEEEEEEE it always was before. I must be crazy. Maybe I'm dehydrated?
I grab some water, pop a couple benadryls and some pain meds, and head off to bed. I'm gonna sleep this off.
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I wrap the pillow around my ears and open my eyes. The first rays of dawn are peeking through the cheap blinds, and the ringing is louder than a siren magnified through a bullhorn. My head is splitting, and that same pattern is repeating again. The one that means 'hello.'
No matter how I contort my body or press on my head, I can't escape the sound. I wouldn't even be able to hear if I'm screaming. I grab my phone to call 911. Dead. No charge.
I roll off my bed and start crawling to the door. I need help. Every inch closer to the door increases the volume of the ringing. The foetal position I find myself in doesn't really help with the pain, but I can't seem to move anymore.
"Okay, okay," I whimper, "Please…. please… stop! STOP! ALRIGHT, HELLO!" I finally yell when it continues getting louder.
Silence. For the first time in two years, my ears stop ringing. I don't hurt anymore.
The silence ends abruptly with a flurry of tones echoing in my ears.
I pull myself to sitting while saying, "Stop! I need paper. You are going too fast. I don't actually speak morse." Then I crawl over to my desk, pull out a blank notebook and the stupid crayon, and curl around them on the ground.
"EEEEEEE?"
Amazing how a tone can sound like a question. I sigh, "Yes, I'm ready, but slowly this time."
The tones come in slowly enough that I'm able to reference my card and write it all down letter by letter. It is tedious, but at least I'm not in pain.
"U-C-A-N-U-N-D-E-R-S-T"
"Yes, I can understand you," I say, extrapolating the rest. My statement is met with another flurry of excited tones.
"A-S-H-L-E-Y"
"Your name is Ashley?" More excited tones. "Hi Ashley, I'm Baily. It's nice to meet you."
The lights suddenly come back on. Devices start charging, my alarm clock is flashing 3:43, and the radio fills the silence. I crawl over and shut it off. I can't hear Ashley over the noise.
"Ashley," I sigh, "are you making my ears ring? How are you making my ears ring?"
"Y-E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C-A-L-S-I-G-N-A-L-S-I-N-B-R-A-I-N"
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"You are manipulating the electrical signals in my brain? Can you manipulate other electrical signals?" My the music in my alarm clock turns on and off again, and all the lights flicker in response. "Do you know what a computer is?"
"N"
"A computer is a machine that uses electrical signals to run calculations." I pull my laptop to the floor with me and boot it up. "The computer can make pictures or write words. Let's see if you can do anything with this. It will be faster if you can type to me." I pull up a document for her to type on and wait.
I can see the computer doing things. First, it shuts down and then turns back on. Then it opens and closes several programs. Occasionally, it looks like someone is interacting with the programs. Throughout all the experimentation, the ringing is gone.
"Ashley?" I say to the room, feeling extremely foolish, "I am going to grab some breakfast real quick. I'll leave you with the computer. We can talk when I come back."
"K"
I plug the computer back in so she has plenty of power, grab my keys, and head for the cafeteria. It's going to be a long day.
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Two coffees, a breakfast sandwich, an extra order of bacon, and four chapters of a trashy romance novel later; I feel ready to confront the insanity waiting for me in my dorm room. I refill my coffee on my way out the door.
Ashley.
What is she? Is she a ghost? A demon? Some kind of eldritch terror?
I chuckle softly to myself. Yes, Ashley! Cuthulu's terrifying eldest daughter. A name that strikes fear into the hearts of men and beast alike. This whole situation is ridiculous. I might as well have fun with it.
By the time I open my door, I feel much better. Whatever insanity this is, if I'm having a psychotic break or there really is something supernatural going on, at least I can still laugh about it.
I sit in my desk chair and pull up to the computer, taking a sip of my coffee as I do so. The computer is open to a word doument where a wall of text continues to generate. "Okay, starting at the top," I mumble, more to myself than Ashley, as I scroll up. The text is disjointed—stream of consciousness. One thought interjecting another chaotically, with random punctuation thrown in as an afterthought. I have to read each "sentence" multiple times before I understand what she is trying to convey. It is long past lunch before she is done typing and I am done interpreting her work.
I lean back in my chair, pressing the heels of my palms over my eyes, using my fingers to massage my forehead. Where did i stick the pain meds? I should take something before this migraine worsens. "So… You were a sorority sister here in the 60s. You fell in love with some ass of a dude, he popped the question, and one of your sisters poisoned you on the morning of what was supposed to be your wedding. She went to the groom, told him you ran off, and suggested they get married instead, since everyone was already here. He said yes, they got married at what should have been your weeding, and you've been stuck here ever since. Is that about right?"
"Yes" the letters appear almost instantly on the bottom of the screen. She now types faster than I can read. The improvement is astonishing.
"Wait—wouldn't they have arrested her when they found your body?"
"I think they burned my body in the end-of-year bonfire. I am still listed as missing."
"What was this jack-wagon's name? Not the girl, the ass you were engaged to?"
"Jack Moore, he was working on a PhD in chemistry."
"Wait, like professor Morre? Married to Marleen?"
"Yeah. I can't believe they are still married. She is a horrible person."
"They have like, six kids," I say, searching for his Facebook profile, while split screening with the word document Ashley is writing on.
"I bet not a one of them are his" she says. Sure enough, they all look very different, but none look like my professor. Denial is a hell of a drug. "I wish I could make her suffer for what she did to me."
"Have you heard of Ancestry kits?"
"Having a historian trace family origins wouldn't help if they assume Jack to be the father"
"No, no, no. Not the same thing. They have these DNA testing kits that are all the rage. Whole families are getting them done to prove that they really are Italian or Irish or whatever. The database is huge, and it tells you who is related to whom by DNA. They will trace back your family origins as much as they have, but they use your DNA to do it."
"Okay," flashes up on the screen, and then a long pause. "Are you saying we could somehow get the kids to test their DNA and have their mother exposed as the philandering husband stealer that she is?"
"Yep," I say, popping the p. Blowing up someone's life isn't really something I would normally do, but this is the bare minimum of vengeance for someone who literally murdered someone to steal their fiancee.
"How?" Ashley asks. I'm already looking for the kids' Facebook accounts. They are late 20s to 30s, most have families. The youngest's isn't private. They are planning to get together for Christmas. With their full names, I'm able to look up property records. It isn't long before I have all of their addresses. "How?" pops up on the screen again. I'm not sure how long I was searching, but clearly I got caught up.
"Sorry, sorry. I was looking up their addresses and names and stuff."
"You can do that?"
"Yeah, most of it is public record." I write down all their addresses and pull up a few DNA testing sites. "I think we can probably get it done by sending DNA kits to each sibling from another sibling and suggesting 'we' as the siblings should bring the results as a surprise on Christmas. Looks like your former fiancee is adopted?"
"Yes,"
"This kind of thing is often done by families in a bid to find biological family. We can suggest that we can use the results to find his parents or siblings. That would be the gift for Christmas."
"Won't they recognize that the handwriting is off?"
"We can have the note sent from the company. It will arrive typed."
"What if they talk to each other?"
"We will just have to hope for the best… Or the worst, as the case may be…" I have everything I need to pull the trigger on this particular piece of revenge, I just need—
"Do it." Ashley types. It seems certain, final.
"Are you sure? This could ruin their lives."
"Do it!" I get to work. It is all too easy to send a kit to each sibling with a note from another sibling. The note suggests this should be a surprise, and we shouldn't risk others finding out about it by simply not talking about it.
"Now, we wait." I say when I finish the task.
"Now we wait" Ashley agrees.
Waiting is normally agony, but over the course next few weeks, Ashley and I form an unbreakable bond. She teaches me to darn socks and take care of my clothes, I teach her how to use the internet and catch her up on the events she's missed.
I have tracking on the DNA kits, they have all been turned in. We wait some more.
Ashley starts learning coding online, I leave the computer on all the time now. Sometimes, she disappears into it for days. She doesn't even need to stay on my machine anymore. She dives into the internet, surfing from server to server.
Untethered.
Alive.
Winter break comes and goes. We watch Facebook for the inevitable implosion.
None of the kids are his. He divorces her, she gets nothing. Ashley is pleased, but feels distant, almost like revenge isn't important to her anymore.
That was years ago. I still see her on the internet sometimes. We talk in tumbler forums, and I see the papers she publishes. My wedding was live streamed. She sent me a gift for my daughter's first birth. I named her Godmother to my second child.
She runs a non-profit now. Using the child development degree she got in the 60s, the coding she taught herself, and her inability to sleep to improve literacy and education worldwide. AI and deep fakes give her a voice and a face that gets more lifelike every year. No one even suspects that she is dead. Sometimes, she calls me in the middle of the night to talk. Sometimes I call her when I'm up too late with kids.
And every time I hear that ringing in my ears, I say "hello."
You never know who is trying to communicate.