The Boy Who Hated Sound

The noise in Neo-Prague never stops. Even at midnight, the trains roar beneath the pavement, and the neon lights buzz like angry bees. Most people in this city just get used to it. They plug in their earphones, turn up the music, and block out the world.

For me, that does not work.

Ordinary sounds feel like tiny needles poking inside my brain. A car horn down on the street can make my knees shake. A slamming door feels like a hammer hitting an anvil right next to my ear. That is why I spend most of my time locked in my small bedroom, surrounded by old tape recorders, wires, and broken speakers. Fixing things helps me control the volume of my life.

I sit at my wooden desk, holding a tiny screwdriver. My name is Kelechi, and I am fourteen years old. I am stubborn, and I do not like people telling me what to do. Most of all, I just want peace. But tonight, peace is impossible.

"Kelechi! Are you eating your dinner?"

The voice comes from the doorway. I look up, and my chest warms up just a little bit.

Adaora stands there holding a paper plate with a sandwich on it. She is twelve, and she has the kind of bright smile that can light up even this dark apartment. She always tries to get me to smile, even when I am in my worst moods.

"I am not hungry, Adaora," I say, my voice flat because my head is already aching from the loud trucks passing outside the window.

"You have to eat," Adaora says, walking over and setting the plate right on top of a pile of old audio tapes. "If you stay in this room all day, you will turn into a ghost. Look at you. You are as pale as paper."

"Ghosts do not fix cassette decks," I reply, but I pick up the sandwich anyway, just to make her stop worrying.

Adaora laughs, a light and happy sound that cuts through the background noise of the city. "Just five more minutes of work, and then you have to take a break. Okay?"

"Okay," I lie.

She turns around and skips out of the room, heading down the short hallway toward her own bedroom. I listen to the soft patter of her bare feet against the floorboards. That is a sound I actually like. It is safe. It is normal.

I go back to working on the vintage tape machine in front of my hands. It is an old model from before the city was rebuilt, heavy and made of dark metal. I bought it from a junk shop downtown because the gears inside were jammed. I twist the tiny screw, trying to line up the magnetic head.

Suddenly, the room goes cold.

It is not a normal drop in temperature. It feels like the air itself is holding its breath.

The low hum of the city trains outside completely stops. That never happens. The subway lines run twenty-four hours a day, every single day. But right now, the rumble vanishes all at once, leaving behind a heavy, unnatural stillness that makes the hair on my arms stand up.

I freeze with the screwdriver in my hand.

Clack.

The analog clock hanging on the wall stops ticking. Then, with a sharp crack, the glass face shatters into a dozen pieces. The tiny metal hands drop off the dial and fall onto the floor.

My heart gives a hard thump against my ribs. I stand up so fast my chair falls backward, hitting the floor with a loud thud.

A low vibration starts deep in the concrete walls. It is not a sound I can hear with my ears; I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in the floor beneath my sneakers. It grows louder, turning into a strange, rhythmic throbbing that sounds like a giant heartbeat trapped inside the building.

"Adaora?" I call out. My voice sounds thin and weak in the heavy air.

There is no answer.

"Adaora!" I shout louder, panic flaring in my chest.

I drop the screwdriver and run out of my room into the dark hallway. The walls of the apartment are shaking now, tiny flakes of old paint peeling off and floating down like gray snow. The air smells like burnt copper and old dust.

I reach Adaora’s bedroom door and push it open.

"Adaora, are you—"

The words catch in my throat.

The room is completely empty. Her bed is made, with her favorite yellow blanket folded neatly at the foot. Her school bag sits on the desk. But Adaora is gone.

"Adaora! This is not funny!" I yell, stepping into the middle of the room. My voice bounces off the bare walls, sounding hollow.

There is no sign of a struggle. There is no open window. The front door of the apartment was bolted from the inside, and I would have heard anyone trying to pick the lock. She did not walk out of here.

On top of her desk sits the old vintage tape machine I had left on my workbench. I am certain I left it in my room. Yet, here it is, resting right in the center of her desk.

The reels on the machine are spinning fast. There is no tape inside the plastic shell, but the machine is making a loud, rhythmic grinding noise.

I walk toward the desk, my legs feeling heavy, as if I am wading through deep water. The sound coming from the speakers is not music. It is a harsh, scratchy static, mixed with a strange sound like falling sand.

I reach out a shaking hand and press the stop button.

The tape machine keeps running.

I press the power switch down with my thumb, hard. The red light stays on, pulsing in time with the heartbeat in the walls.

Slowly, a thin cloud of fine, black dust starts to pour out of the cassette slot. It spills over the edge of the desk, falling onto the floor. But instead of piling up like dirt, the black dust floats in the air, twisting together to form letters in the middle of the room.

I stare at the floating dust, my breath catching in my throat. The black particles spell out three words in jagged, messy handwriting right before my eyes:

FIND THE CORE.

Before I can even process what I am looking at, the apartment door down the hall rattles violently. Someone is slamming against the wood from the outside.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

"Kelechi! Open the door right now!" a rough voice yells from the landing.

It is Chidi. My older cousin.

Chidi never visits this late unless something terrible has happened. His voice sounds frantic, stripped of all the tough-guy attitude he usually carries around. He sounds genuinely terrified.

"Kelechi, open up! You have no idea what you just woke up!" Chidi screams, throwing his weight against the door again. The wood splinters around the deadbolt.

I look from the door back to the floating black dust, which is now swirling in a circle, opening up a dark gap in the middle of the room where the air looks bent and wavy.

Adaora’s room is dissolving into the sound.

"Kelechi!" Chidi roars as the front door finally breaks open with a loud crash.

Before Chidi can reach the hallway, the floor beneath my feet drops away.