The Hole

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The hum started just after midnight.

The first person to notice was Fred Grant. He heard it initially just as he left The Roadside, and to start with he just put it down to a particularly heavy truck somewhere nearby on the highway; a low drone, distant but slowly getting louder. He paid it no mind, for truck noise in itself wasn’t unusual in these parts. The highway was a through route to larger towns and cities to the south, and the bar was a popular stopping spot for trucks from all over the East Coast, at least during the hours it was open.

Fred took a piss in the parking lot while giving the booze time to see if he was able to walk, having to do a little drunken dance to maintain his balance, then another to avoid squirting himself in the pants leg. He stuck a smoke in the corner of his mouth, got it lit on the third attempt, and headed off in the general direction of home.

The hum persisted, and seemed to keep pace with him as he made his way through town. He noticed it, vaguely, like a bee buzzing nearby on a summer day, but he’d had too much beer to consider its persistence strange. His mind, what little of it that was still active after the booze, was more concerned with walking in a straight line and reaching his bed before he collapsed.

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