The hum

Pedro walked up to the studio but stopped in silence at the threshold. Lilia made an effort to tear her face off the spreadsheets that had been giving her grief all evening and turned to face him, annoyed at the interruption. His pained expression made her heart sink.

"Is she feeling bad again?" It was a stupid question. His wrinkled eyes and pursed lips had already made clear that Anita was having another episode, but it was a reflex to ask. To his credit, Pedro did not answer with a sarcastic comeback, although Lilia would have preferred that to his downcast eyes and slow nod.

She pushed herself away from the desk with spring-loaded urgency, but Pedro planted himself in her way and extended an arm, rough palm outstretched. "Wait", he said, "I just managed to get her back to sleep." He bobbed his hand a little, inviting her to take it. "Did you talk to Dr. Black about her tests? What did he say?"

"Bah! They're useless!" Lilia balled her hands into fists and held her arms stiffly at her sides. Pedro lowered his hand and let out a deep sigh, but didn't move out of her way.

"Babe, what did the doctor say?"

"Nothing! I told you, they're useless! He said nothing is wrong, they found nothing, they can do nothing. Fucking useless!"

Pedro closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of the nose between them. "That's not right" he said. He sounded tired and Lilia felt bad for him, but he wouldn't move out of the way to let her see her daughter and she was falling in a foul mood.

"You don't say, that's not right", she said. "I'm telling you, it's not her, there's something wrong with the room! Ever since we moved in she started complaining that a hum won't let her sleep, but you don't goddamn listen!"

This time it was Pedro's turn to stiffen up. "Lower your voice. I told you I just got her back to sleep, do you want to wake her?"

"Don't you dare turn this on me", she said and shoved him out of the way.

* * *

The next day Pedro appeared on the threshold again around noon, after avoiding her all morning and barely crossing ten words. Hurray for the perks of working from home, which both of them had been doing for over a year now. Lilia didn't bother to turn around.

"We spoke about this", he said, as if retaking a conversation he'd been having with her in his head. "We spent too much money moving into this house, we cannot even think to move again. I know the neighbourhood isn't exactly what we dreamed of, but we got to make it work."

Lilia stared harder at her spreadsheet in an effort to block him out, but he kept on talking.

"Listen, we both read the building report before the purchase. There is nothing wrong with the house. There's nothing wrong with her room."

Lilia spun around in her chair before she could stop herself. "So why can't she sleep, huh? Go on, mister-know-all, tell me."

Pedro gritted his teeth to bite off the words that wanted out, and cleared his throat. "Maybe there isn't anything wrong with the room, but it could be the cause of her lack of sleep all the same. Maybe she's just having trouble adjusting. New house, new school, new everything. She was too little last time we moved, she wouldn't remember. But maybe this time it got to her."

"So, according to you, it's all in her head." Lilia regarded Pedro with a cold stare. "What about the hum?"

"I'm not saying she's making it up, Lilia", said Pedro. He always used her name when he was mad. "But neither of us have heard any hum. It could all be down to stress."

"If she says it's there I believe her, and so should you."

"I do believe her! That's why we took her to the doctor's, and he said there's nothing wrong. You heard him yourself."

"Exactly, there's nothing wrong with her."

"Oh, not the crystals again", said Pedro. He turned to walk away from Lilia and she bolted out of her seat.

"Hey, don't you walk away from me." She ran around him and planted herself in the way to the kitchen, where he was going. "They are not 'crystals'. Margaret is an expert in vibration resonance and she can come and take a look at the room with her equipment, find out what is causing the hum. She's coming around this afternoon."

"Margaret's got 'vibration equipment'?" Pedro tried to suppress his smirk but Lilia knew perfectly well what he was thinking. She turned around and stormed back to the studio. "There's something wrong with that room!"

She slammed the door.

By the time Lilia's friend came around she and Pedro still hadn't exchanged another word, but he came out of the improvised garden shed office to join them. Lilia recognised her own swollen purple bags under his eyes, and the same deeper-carved mouth lines than years ago. Of course he cared about Anita. She kept them up alike at night, so why did he have to be such a stubborn know-all precisely when nobody knew what was going on with their daughter.

"Such a lovely home you got here," said Margaret, scrubbing her shoes at the front doormat more than ten times. "I was so sorry I couldn't make the house warming, maybe I could have saved you a few sleepless nights."

Pedro caught sight of Lilia shooting icicles out of her eyes at him, but he had no intention of making a scene. "Yeah", was all he said.

"Before we go to Anita's room, I'd like to take a few measurements around other parts of the house if that's alright with you?" She looked at both for approval, and when they nodded she drew a yellow plastic brick out of her purse. The device had an LCD screen and three black buttons arranged in an inverted triangle.

Pedro craned his neck forward a little, and managed to read the words "Electromagnetic Radiation Tester" printed under the screen. Margaret noticed his interest and handed him the thing. Pedro turned it over a couple of times, then handed it back.

"This little device measures electromagnetic radiation," she said, turning it on. "It's been going on for years, y'know, the spread of these electromagnetic waves." She waved the device around the living room a few times, then started walking along the wall. "Of course you have heard of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, how some people can get ill from too much exposure to the harmful radiation from everyday electronic devices."

Lilia nodded with a concerned look, while Pedro struggled to keep from rolling his eyes to the back of his skull. Their living room-slash-dining area opened to the kitchen on the left, and to the bedrooms on the right. The main bathroom separated the master bedroom from the other two, one of which Lilia had adapted into her studio, and the middle one was Anita's.

"Radiation is everywhere these days," said Margaret, waving the EMF reader up and down the wall. "High tension powerlines, microwaves, WiFi, mobile phones. Oh, yes, those are the worst. You don't have 5G, do you?"

"Why?" asked Pedro before he could stop himself.

Margaret scanned the surface of the microwave like a dowser, then turned her attention to the fridge. As far as Pedro could tell, the numbers on the LCD moved up and down, but nothing had attracted the woman's attention.

"Oh, well, 5G is the worst," she said. She put down the reader for a moment. "That's why people are worried about it all over the world. If you're hypersensitive it can cause you to develop cancer. In fact, we turn off our WiFi at home every night before we go to bed. I don't want my family sleeping immersed in these radiation waves. I would recommend you to do the same, for Anita's sake."

Lilia perked up at this. "Absolutely, we'll do it tonight," she said, looking at Pedro. He practised his best poker face, and let Margaret lead them back out of the kitchen.

"All of this area seems fine. Let's have a look at the bedrooms, if that's alright?"

Lilia wasn't stupid, she knew Pedro didn't believe what her friend was talking about, but it sounded pretty reasonable to her. She had never thought much about all that radiation that surrounded them, but Margaret had a point: they were always on their cell phones, on the wireless, it couldn't be good for you. She showed Margaret the entrance to their bedroom.

At least none of their rooms had TVs. They weren't big fans of the idiot box, and Lilia had been trying to foster the love of reading to her daughter. Pedro didn't mind either way, he usually watched a couple of shows on the big TV in the living room, or had his face glued to his phone the rest of the time. Margaret commended them on the lack of TVs, and paid a lot of attention to the radio alarm clock and the bedside lamps.

Apparently everything was clean there too, so they moved on to the studio. Lilia's laptop lay closed on the re-purposed kitchen table that served as her desk, and the yellow standby light of her external monitor blinked morosely.

Margaret asked Lilia to turn on the laptop, and made several passes over it, before and after. Apparently there was a bit of a spike there; no surprise, she said, as it would be the Dell's WiFi. "Just try to keep the window open when you work in here and you'll be right," said Margaret. Pedro waited until both women's backs were turned before allowing himself to grimace.

"Is Anita home?" asked Margaret.

"No, she's at the neighbour's with her friend. It makes her feel better."

"Poor girl, is she having trouble sleeping every night?"

"Pretty much," said Lilia. "She goes to bed fine, but almost every night wakes up with a start at around two or three AM. Some times she has nightmares, but not usually. She just says that her head aches."

"Usually she wakes us up, too," said Pedro. Lilia knew he was trying to be accurate, but she resented him saying it.

Margaret waved the EMF reader at Anita's bedside lamp, the ceiling fan, and then the bed. "Oh."

"What? Did you find something?" Lilia almost jumped on top of her friend to look at the device over her shoulder. Even Pedro took a step forward.

"It's not a lot, but there is definitely a higher read in this room than anywhere else. Especially around her bed."

"What should we do?" Lilia went to sit on the bed and examined the frame, as though she could find a switch to flick.

Margaret thought about it for a while. "The bedframe is metal. I would put plastic caps on its legs, and maybe move it a bit farther away from the wall. And I would really think about turning off that WiFi," she added, looking at Pedro.

* * *

They hadn't exactly fought about it, but the argument did get pretty heated. Pedro could not believe that Lilia was gullible enough to swallow Margaret's radiosensitivity nonsense, and Lilia couldn't understand how could Pedro be so blind to the obviousness of the issue.

Pedro even downloaded an app called 'WiFi Analyzer' on his phone, to show Lilia all their neighbour's access points. There were about three TP-Link-somethings, two Netgears, one 'Porter Family WiFi' and one 'SmashTehState'. He showed her how several were stacked on top of each other, and tried to explain how that also caused their reception to be so crappy; it wouldn't make any difference to turn theirs off, but she wouldn't hear a word.

Lilia complained that Pedro was being obstinate for the sake of it and he was willing to put their daughter's health at risk because of his scepticism. That was when the shouting started. But in the end they went to the hardware shop to get plastic caps for the tips of Anita's bed legs, and Pedro told Lilia he would put the WiFi on standby at night.

Lilia wasn't as technical as Pedro so she wouldn't have a clue that he didn't change any settings, but that calmed her down. They made peace and moved Anita's bed to a different position, parallel to the window instead of against it.

Pedro couldn't say what did the trick, but it had been a week already since then, and Anita had not only slept like a baby, she hadn't complained about the hum again once.

Maybe it did have something to do with the metal frame. After all, Margaret did show them how the readings were stronger. Some kind of induction effect, perhaps? He would need to take another look at the house plans.

A strong pull yanked him out of his reverie and nearly made him lose his balance. He yanked back at the leash.

"Seriously, Wagner, how many times can you possibly pee in one walk?" He pulled her again, but the stubborn lab fought back, and sat on her hind legs.

"Wagner, walk! Come on, it's time to go home." Pedro alternated between his command voice and pleading, but the dog didn't move. She sat motionless on her tail, looking at something across the street that Pedro couldn't see.

The sun was already setting and everyone was home, so the street was packed with cars on both sides, and the yellowy light of the street lamps drew long shadows from them.

"Wagner, it's too late to be chasing cats," said Pedro. He crouched a little to see if he could spot any under the cars she was staring at, but a low growl made him jump up straight. It took him a moment to realise that the menacing sound came from the dog.

"Hey, cut that out!" He tried to sound stern but unease filtered through. Wagner let out a stronger growl and lowered her the front of her body, paws extended, and her lips wavered to reveal her fangs. She had never done that, and Pedro wasn't sure what to do.

Wagner broke out on a loud, aggressive bark, all fangs and spittle, and she pulled back at the leash again. Pedro held it tight and looked back to the place she was barking at, trying to distinguish what had worked her up so much. And then Wagner launched at him.

"Holy fuck, Wagner, back off!" Pedro's body, electrified with a surge of adrenaline jumped back of its own accord, but the dog launched at him again and grabbed hold of the leg of his jeans. The hairs on her back were standing on edge like spikes, but what shocked Pedro were her eyes.

Wagner's eyes were almost bulging out of her head, the white clearly visible all around. It was a look of pure terror. The dog tugged again at his jeans, trying to pull him away. Without thinking, Pedro let go of the leash and Wagner bolted. Pedro chased after her, looking over his shoulder.

* * *

"What did the vet say?" asked Lilia, looking out of the kitchen window towards the back yard. Wagner had gone into her kennel as soon as they came back and refused to come out even for her favourite liver treat.

"They couldn't see anything wrong with her. The vet thinks something spooked her. By her reaction the doctor thinks it could have been a snake."

"I know you already said no, but are you sure you didn't see anything?"

Pedro sipped his cup of tea in silence long enough that Lilia thought he wasn't going to reply, but he put it down and looked at her. "I am sure. But I did...I heard something."

Lilia left the window and came to sit at the kitchen table by Pedro. "Over the barking, I'm pretty sure I heard a low electrical sound, like a, I don't know, like a large motor." He took another sip. "A hum."

Later in the afternoon, after the electrician left, they sat back at the kitchen table. It was an expense they really didn't need, especially not after the doctor and the vet, but Pedro had insisted to have the wiring checked asap, grateful that Lilia didn't throw his mention of the hum on his face. The electrician even climbed to the roof to look at the solar panels. Everything seemed in order.

Anita played in her room, but they kept their voices low so she couldn't over hear them. Lilia craned her neck to make sure of it, then looked back at Pedro.

"So, what if," he repeated, "what if it isn't this house, but somewhere else? Something a neighbour is doing, something they're running in their garage maybe."

"And what are we going to do," said Lilia, "go around knocking? 'Hey, excuse me, are you running an illegal 5G antenna out of your garage?'"

"I told you a dozen times, 5G is not illegal!"

"And that's what bothers you?? Focus! How are we going to find out what is going on?"

Pedro sank in his chair in silence, the way he usually did when he was thinking. He shrugged. "I don't know, babe. Maybe we got lucky and Wagner scared them all with her barking."

* * *

The hum woke her up. It was a low, dull, undulating sound like a sustained vibration. It came from the walls, and the ceiling, and nowhere in particular. It was in her ears, but also in her chest. It made her fingernails buzz.

Lilia sat on the edge of the bed, fumbling with her feet in the dark trying to find her sandals. The movement woke up Pedro.

"Babe, what's up? What time is it?" Pedro rolled on his side and pawed blindly at her bedside table until he found his phone, but he had turned it off before going to bed. He cursed the blackout curtains and fumbled for his wristwatch, squinting in the dark at the dim glow of its hands. "It's three AM, are you--"

He didn't finish. The hum was there, too low to identify, too loud to ignore, warbling incessantly. Lilia got off the bed and took a few steps forward. The room was so dark that it appeared to swallow her.

"Babe, wait a sec, where are you going?"

No reply but the hum.

"Lilia?" Pedro couldn't see anything in the thick blackness of the room. He waited two more seconds, then he flicked on the light.

Lilia screamed, and Pedro screamed, and Lilia turned around to face him rubbing her eyes furiously. "What the hell did you do that for? You blinded me, my eyes hurt!"

Anita started crying on her room.

"Goddammit!"

* * *

Enrico from across the street waved robotically at Pedro. Something in the way the man slumped his shoulders and dragged his feet pushing the rubbish bin to the kerb reminded Pedro of himself. He returned a half hearted wave.

Enrico crossed the street and squeezed himself between two parked cars to get at Pedro.

"You look like hell," said Enrico cheerfully, "don't tell me you have been having trouble sleeping, too?"

The question revived Pedro. "Yeah, it's been going on for weeks! At first it was only Anita having trouble sleeping but now it's the three of us. You as well?"

Enrico let himself rest against Pedro's car, with such a dry thud that made the latter worry about finding a dent on the door. "Freaking hum from hell!" Enrico made a strange grabbing motion with both hands, which Pedro supposed was meant to mimic the undulating frequency of the noise.

"Please tell me you know what it is" said Pedro. "Lilia's gonna land herself in hospital from a sleeping pill overdose if I can't do something about it. I've looked everywhere, I'm sure its coming from outside the house but I can't find it."

"Don't you know? It's the big 'Vs'," said Enrico, and made a kind of stabbing gesture with two fingers. Pedro looked at him puzzled.

"Vampires?"

Enrico broke out in a belly laugh that only highlighted the purple bags under his eyes. "What??? No, vaccines, you dolt!" They both laughed.

"I see you've been talking to Margaret, too," said Pedro. Enrico made a face.

"She's being doing the rounds, filling people with ideas. Alexandra wasn't as polite as I when she kicked her out, so they kind of had a falling out. But honestly, I wish her magic radiation detector would have worked. That freaking noise is driving me up the wall."

"Yeah", said Pedro, looking around the street, then up at the tree canopy and beyond to the murky sky. It was hot and humid. "I can never hear it by day. Only at two in the damn morning."

* * *

The hum woke him up. It came in slow pulses as if driving a demon heart bent on torturing the neighbourhood. Pedro sat up and flattened his ear against the wall for the umpteenth time, and again heard nothing. The sound floated in the air, filling his ears and rattling his teeth, but it didn't seem to transmit by any surface.

"Don't wake up Anita, I think she's still sleeping," said Lilia. Pedro extended a hand across the bed to touch her, but he didn't find her in the dark. She sat somewhere by the edge of the bed.

"What time is it?"

"Two thirty."

There was a bang of something against wood outside, like someone hit a crate but not very loud, and a rustle, then nothing but the incessant hum. Pedro thought of going out again to check, but the last three times he'd done it he couldn't find any clues to its origin, why would now be different?

Lilia started weeping softly in the darkness. "I feel like I'm going insane."

"Yeah."

* * *

When Lilia came back to the house, her eyes were dry but redder than when the two of them used to smoke pot back in college. Pedro rose from the sofa almost too quickly; the ghost of vertigo popped up its head for a second, but he fought it down. "Anything?"

"I went to the park after the vet's, but she's not there either. Did you call the animal shelter?"

"Nothing," said Pedro. He sat back down, tired and defeated. "She's not been taken to the pound either. What are we going to tell Anita?"

Lilia didn't reply. She was heartbroken, and Anita would be devastated, but she knew the biggest blow had been to Pedro. He loved Wagner as much as his child. Some days more. "How could this happen?"

It was a simple question, no accusation implied, and Pedro understood. He buried his face in his hands. "I don't know. The gate was closed this morning, there's no hole under the fence. But Wagner could have jumped it if she wanted, she's really limber."

"But why would she do that?" Lilia knew the answer before he replied.

"That fucking hum. I should've known! When Enrico's cat went missing, and then that dog from those people whose name I always forget three doors away. I should have made her sleep inside. I should've put her bed in the kitchen..."

"She'll be better off," said Lilia, and Pedro looked at her with a hurt expression, ready to start an argument, but she just shook her head. "She'll be better off," she repeated, "all the animals are leaving. There's something really wrong around here. There are a dozen dogs along our street and behind us, and I haven't heard a single bark for days. I haven't seen or heard a bird in over a week."

Pedro wanted to say something but he was too tired. Lilia was too tired to stay and cheer him up, so she shuffled zombie-like to her studio.

Pedro called in sick. He couldn't face another zoom meeting in this state, but more than that, he didn't think he could cross the back yard and look at Wagner's toys lying around on the way to the shed.

The day melted away, and the evening scurried down the drain. Suddenly it was dark and Pedro had no memory of doing anything other than sit in the living room doing anything but. He didn't remember if Lilia had called him for dinner, or whether he'd had lunch for that matter, but when she announced she was going to bed he followed mechanically.

The problem wasn't falling asleep, that was easy. The problem was that maddening hum that woke them up almost every night between two thirty and three AM.

One of their neighbours had called the council, another one threatened to go to the press, as if that was still a thing. A few fingers had been pointed, some gossip had been spread, but nobody had any idea.

The house next door was the second one in a week to put up a sale board. Perhaps that was the thing to do after all, before everyone tried to bail and prices tumbled even more. He quickly fell asleep to dreams of falling house markets.

The hum woke him up.

He tried to stiffle a deep sigh, and rubbed his eyes in a vain attempt to discern Lilia's outline. It was as though the world was made of that horrid noise, wet and metallic at once, warbling, pulsing, beating, grinding. It sounded louder, deeper. Pedro could swear the hum resonated in his chest.

"Lilia, I'm going to turn the lights on." Pedro waited for her to acknowledge, but there was no reply.

He palmed blindly at her side of the bed and found it cold and the blanket scrunched out of the way. She must have gotten up to the main toilet, instead of using the ensuite. It was a nice if unecessary gesture, if there was a hum he couldn't possibly sleep.

Pedro flicked the switch on his lamp, but nothing happened. He tried a few times without result. He cursed, and fumbled for his phone, but he knocked it to the floor. Cursing again, he got out of bed and down on all fours, palming his way between the bed and the wall until he felt the coldness of the device's glass screen.

It was off as usual, but the boot-up screen was plenty bright to light his way out of the bedroom, and there was enough light from the street seeping into the living area to find his way. Lilia wasn't in the toilet. He walked to the kitchen and knocked his knees only a couple of times against the furniture, but she wasn't there either.

Annoyed, Pedro made his way back. Clearly Lilia had gone into Anita's bedroom although he couldn't see any light or hear any sound coming out of there. Only the hum.

In fact, the hum grew louder as he got closer to the bedroom. Pedro drew out the phone again, unlocked it, and swiped down the quick settings panel where the flashlight control resided. His heart pounded against his chest, and his temples started to beat to the devilish rhythm of the hum.

Pedro called out Lilia's name in whisper, then a bit louder, but received no reply. "Okay, fuck this," he said louder, and turned on the phone's flashlight to look inside the girl's bedroom. There was no one there.

"What the..."

Pedro walked to the end room that served as Lilia's studio and found it empty. A rasping sound behind him made him turn. Before he could see it, Pedro knew it wasn't a man. It was man-shaped, but it moved wrong, like a snake, and it's arms weren't real, they were stuck to the sides, merely suggested, like they had been painted.

It had eyes but no lids, only a pair of round beads of the coldest black, and it kept making that godawul hum with its gaping round hole of a mouth, opening and closing in spasms like a fish out of water, it's gums gleaming scarlet with dripping blood, and it had no teeth.