Brain Noise
by
Millie Price

          The back of Ransom MacGregor’s skull vibrated sending buzzing pulses throughout her brain. It was louder than usual, and it was getting worse. The sound reminded her of when her psychic abilities awoke in seventh grade. A barrage of voices pinged around her skull, each one fighting to be heard, and her head cramped as if in a vice grip, her eyes itched. Then she blacked out. Ransom threaded fingers through waves of cropped curls to scratch her skull. Since then, she’d learned how to subdue the frequencies, but the buzz was relentless. Either something was happening in Boone’s Butte, or it was about to.

          She sat behind her desk at the Revenant Emancipation Department, or RED. It was a legacy business started by their grandmother, taken over by her parents, and then handed down to her and her sisters, Bodie and Raven. Throwing her cowboy boots onto the desk, Ransom watched the two women pack equipment for the next case; a haunting on the dance floor of a queer nightclub called Tracks. The owners insisted that the emancipation be done when the club was closed and without minds to read, Ransom wasn’t needed.

          Raven slapped the tip of her boot. She was a Psychometrist who could touch an object and see everything about it; how and where it was made, who handled it, and what they did with it. She had long curly hair, wore flowy dresses, and donned purple leather gloves to keep her ability at bay. She was also Ransom’s identical twin, but they couldn’t be more different if they tried. “Are you sulking?” she asked.

          “No,” Ransom replied, straightening the over-sized belt buckle on her jeans.

          Bodie hoisted a bag from the desk across from Ransom’s. She was a powerful Empath who could read emotions of the living and the dead which meant she could talk to ghosts. She wore jeans and t-shirts with blazers, kept her hair up in a bun and intimidated people with a pensive glare. “Consider the day off a reward.”

          Ransom dropped her boots to the ground with a thud. “I said I’m not sulking.”

          “Liar,” Raven snickered.

          “Whatever,” Ransom snickered back.

          Bodie headed for the back door. “Why don’t you call Lisa? You liked her, right?”

          “Yeah, no.” Ransom kept the answer short, trying to keep Bodie out of her dating life.

          “She was stalking Ran,” Raven giggled.

          “She wasn’t stalking me,” Ransom crossed her arms in defense. “She was just everywhere I was for a week or two.”

          “That’s what stalking means,” Raven said with a chuckle.

          Bodie sighed. “What about the other one? What was her name?”

          “Ophelia,” Raven answered.

          Ransom grunted. “She’s on a retreat.”

          “Searching for herself again?” Raven teased walking to the back door.

          Ransom twisted in her chair. “At least I have a sex life!” Raven was already gone. Ransom huffed. She liked working with her sisters, it was safe, consistent, and the pay was good, but she hated sharing every aspect of her life with them. She read the last message Ophelia sent: Heading to Boone’s Butte for the retreat. Want to hang when I’m done?

          Dating while psychic had its ups and downs, but finding connections while working at RED was tough. It was rare to find women like Ophelia. She was short, with dark hair and olive cocoa skin, funny, sexy as hell, and didn’t ask questions about Ransom’s job. Ransom looked at the date. Ophelia would be getting off the mountain sometime in the evening. A smile spread across her face. She didn’t know if Ophelia was the one, but she was in the top five.

          The office phone rang and Ransom snatched it from the cradle eager for a new case. “Good morning, and thanks for calling the Revenant”— A stern male voice cut her off.

          “It’s Wilhelm. I need you down at the cemetery. You busy?” Wilhelm was around fifty, had the same fashion sense as Ransom, and kept in good shape. As a homicide detective in the city, he was considered the best, but he returned to Boone’s Butte when the stress of the job took its toll. Soon after he was voted Sherriff and had been Ransom’s best friend ever since. Without him, she wouldn’t have survived coming out.

          “On my way.” She forwarded the phones, locked the doors and headed to her truck; a Dodge Hemi. It was early spring in Boone’s Butte, and the mountain air was cool. Trees, shrubbery, and flowers were blooming and lavender mixed with pine danced through the air. She headed for the cemetery and the buzz in her head grew stronger filling her brain with white noise. It was the same sound from the old TV her grandmother used to watch. Parking along the curb behind Wilhelm’s cruiser, she got out of the car and joined him on the sidewalk.         The buzz intensified and Ransom rubbed her eyes.

          “Allergies?” Wilhelm asked. He was not a man of many words.

          “I don’t know, probably.”

          “Got something I want you to take a look at.”

          “If it’s a zombie rising, I can’t help. Hard to read minds when they’re decomposed.”

          “A yup.” It was his standard response. “This way.”

          The Boone’s Butte cemetery held generations of gravestones. Ransom’s grandparents were buried there, and her parents owned a plot next to them. On the far edge were white signs, each one with a name and date of birth, but no date for deaths. The lost ones. They were burial sites for people who went missing on the mountain. Rumors flew around town about a serial killer who roamed the woods and racked up a body count, but Ransom didn’t give credence to it. The mountain was harsh to those who didn’t respect it. There were deadly cliffs, wildlife, and flash floods. The static in Ransom’s head grew louder as they approached a casket top poking up from the ground.

          “Is that Mr. Putnam’s grave?” she asked. He was a schoolteacher.

          “A yup. Graverobbers, but they didn’t take jewelry and such.”

     Ransom leaned over the casket. There was a hole in the center of Mr. Putnam’s skull. The brain noise grew stronger. “What is that?” She pointed to RED’s business card propped against Mr. Putnam’s gravestone.

          “That’s why I called you. Seems like someone wants to get your attention.”

Ransom picked it up and turned it over. Written on the back was her name along with the words: “If you don’t hear from me, check Campsite 33. Ophelia.”

          “That’s you’re new woman, right?” Wilhelm knew all the women she dated, but Ophelia’s was the first name he remembered. It was a subtle sign of approval.

          Ransom gripped the side of her head as the brain noise filled her skull.

          Sal Maddox strolled toward them. He was tall, his skin golden and he wore government issued FBI t-shirts like they were going out of style. “Hey, you okay?” he asked Ransom.

          She grunted. “Picking up a strange frequency. What are you doing here?”

          “Looking for a missing son of a politician. One of his friends left a note for their roommate. It said if anything should happen they should contact you, not the cops. When I saw your name, I volunteered for the case. The roommate was a woman named Ophelia Caldwell. You know her?” Sal widened his stance and crossed his arms. It was his agent pose.

          Ransom’s gut churned. “Yeah, I know her and the campsite.”

          “You two can handle it.” Wilhelm grabbed a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it between his teeth. He quit smoking years ago, but couldn’t break the oral fixation. He shared a look with Sal.

          Ransom narrowed her eyes. She promised Wilhelm she would never read him without permission. She huffed. “Fine, let’s take my truck.”

​

         

          Arriving at Campsite 33, Ransom parked beside a cabin tucked in the thick of the woods and behind a Subaru in the driveway.

          Sal got out of the truck and Ransom leaned over the passenger seat to pull an NXR .44 Magnum out of the glove box. It was large, loud and deadly. Joining Sal, she checked for ammo.

          He eyed the gun. “That thing is a monstrosity.”

          “Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful.” Ransom slid the gun into a holster on her hip. “Give me a second, I want to see if I can read anyone.” She closed her eyes and opened her mind. Since her mid-twenties, her ability had grown stronger. She couldn’t read the whole town, but she could extend her mind a few hundred yards. Her parents called it the Unfolding; she and her sister’s called it Leveling Up.

          The brain-noise dulled, muted by her ability, and she snapped her head to the left reading a father on a weekend trip with his family. “For the love of God, where do these children get the energy. Coffee, coffee, coffee!!”

          Ransom turned her focus toward a trail runner in the distance. “Come on, two more miles and we can squeeze into those high school jeans.”

         “Anything?” Sal asked, breaking Ransom’s concentration.

          She shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Come on, let’s check out the cabin.”

The front door was open as if someone forgot to close it behind them. Sal headed for the bedrooms down a long hall as Ransom moved toward a couch. A star with its inner points swirling into a flower was painted on the floor and Mr. Putman’s skull fragment sat in the center of it. The brain noise intensified, and static filled Ransom’s ears.

          Sal returned with a laptop. “You okay?”

          Ransom rubbed her ears and motioned to the floor. “Found Mr. Putnam’s missing piece.”

He scanned the rest of the room. There were candles on tables, two on either side of the symbol on the floor and a few more on the mantle. “Looks like an occult ritual.”

          “I would hope not,” Ransom replied.

          “Why’s that?”

          “Because like a Ouija board, rituals can open doors to many places. Unless you’re one of the best of the best occultists, it would be stupid to try.”

          Sal nodded, turned on the laptop, clicked something on the screen and then waved Ransom to him. “We’ve got a visual.”

          She hustled to his side and pointed to one of the women. “That’s Ophelia.”

          “She’s hot.”

          Ransom smiled. “I know, right.”

          Three women and two men filled the screen. They wore flimsy robes of different colors and sat around the skull fragment on the living room floor. Their heads were tilted up to the ceiling at an awkward stretch, their eyes were jet black, and their mouths were open wide as if being held by an unseen hand. Small black legs gripped at the skin of the camper’s lips, and numerous antennae waved from their open jaws. Ransom buckled and grabbed the countertop as the brain noise transformed into a legion of voices before coalescing into one.

          It hissed. “We’ve been waiting for you.”