| Fiction |
WHISPERS IN THE DARK
Whispers in the dark is a weekly short story in which weird
is the norm. An exercise in strangeness, the stories are
never to be taken too seriously, but should never be taken
too lightly. For if you lay awake long enough in the dark,
you’re bound to hear a whisper sooner or later.
Sirens
By Aaron Hall
Captain Jonny Aglin checked the sensors in his long distance
space craft one last time before preparing to turn back and
head for the Milky Way galaxy. Known across Earth as Jonny
the Ace for his heroic missions to Pluto, Jonny had been a
natural choice for this mission. This was the longest manned
space mission in history. Jonny was probing sectors of the
universe that no human eye had ever seen and no human
instrument had ever got a reading on. Jonny began plotting
his course back to Earth while the final sensor sweep
finished up. He was surprised when it beeped, signifying it
had picked up some sort of radio signal. Jonny looked at the
sensor read out closely, thinking it must be some sort of
mistake. What he saw was definitely a radio transmission of
some kind. He clicked into the frequency and spoke.
“This is Captain Jonny Aglin of the Earth Space Corps.
Please identify yourself.”
There was no answer at first. But he could hear something
faintly coming over the air waves. He deleted his home bound
course from the computer and put in a new course; the origin
point of the transmission. Jonny realized this would take
him ever farther out than he had already gone, but this was
why he had come so far. He couldn’t return home knowing he
hadn’t fully investigated this strange signal. He turned the
volume all the way up, trying desperately to make out the
noise he was hearing. It sounded almost like humming. As the
boosters kicked on, taking him closer to the source of the
transmission, it instantly began to pick up in volume. About
halfway there, Jonny could finally make out what he was
hearing. It was singing. The most beautiful singing he had
ever heard. He increased booster speed, desperate to find
whatever it was that was creating such a beautiful sound.
He was about three minutes away when all the systems on his
ship went black. It was a total loss of power. His many
years of training kicking in, Jonny began working on the
wiring panel to try and reboot the power system in his ship.
As he worked in the dark cockpit of his ship, a tear rolled
down his cheek as the beautiful singing, now growing louder
still, continued to pump through the speakers. Jonny felt
his ship picking up speed, which didn’t make sense seeing as
the boosters were offline. The singing was growing louder,
almost to an uncomfortable volume. He tried to block it out
as he tried to figure out why the ship was moving so quickly
all of a sudden. The volume of the music increased again,
hurting Jonny’s head it was now so loud. He finally looked
away from the wiring that he had been working on, looking
out the view port for the first time in the last few
minutes.
“Dear God…”
Jonny had found the reason for his increase in speed and the
failure of his onboard systems. He was being drawn directly
into a black hole. The singing grew louder and louder as his
ship was drawn closer to the black hole. This was also the
origin of the singing. As his ship was being drawn into the
black hole the singing got louder, blasting at inhuman
volumes. Jonny wept openly at the beautiful singing.
The beautiful song of oblivion.
It took five days for the Earth Space Corps flagship
cruiser, The Freedom, to reach Captain Jonny’s last known
position. They normally would’ve sent a smaller rescue ship,
but Jonny the Ace was a true Earth hero, so they thought it
best to send Earth’s greatest ship to look for him. The
Freedom was almost like a flying planet, it had a crew of
250,000. On the bridge, a young engineer got a reading from
his sensor sweep.
“Captain, I’m picking up a faint radio signal. It sounds
like some sort of humming or quiet singing.”
The captain looked at the young engineer.
“That could be Jonny the Ace. I want full boosters online.
We’re going to find the source of that signal!”