28
Heather awoke with a start. In the darkness that surrounded her, the room seemed vaguely unfamiliar. For several seconds she struggled to recognize where she was, her fading dreams tugging at the corners of her consciousness. This was her bedroom. The dim outline of her dresser and her small desk were separated by a yawning darkness that had to be her closet.
There it was again—the distant buzzing in her head, vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t quite place it. The harder she thought about it, the more it retreated from her observation until it disappeared. Now there was only stillness.
That in itself was odd. Normally there was some sound in the old house, even if she awakened in the middle of the night. Perhaps she was still asleep. Dreams of awakening had plagued her in the past, so perhaps this was one of them. Equations cascaded through her mind, resolving to a probability so close to zero that it was negligible. Something about the way the numbers made sense to her savant brain reassured her amidst the surrounding strangeness.
As Heather thought about walking down the hallway and checking on her mom and dad, the buzzing returned, growing stronger as she focused her thoughts. Despite her growing unease, Heather followed this train of thought, letting herself visualize her parents’ bedroom, imagining them both sleeping soundly in their king-sized bed.
The buzzing became a vibration reminiscent of when she had first tried on the alien headset in the starship, filled with a confusing blitz of sounds, imagery, and feelings, so rapid and distorted that a wave of dizziness assailed her. Then it was gone, like a cell phone dropping its signal.
Heather waited, a slow dread that the buzzing would start up once again making her pull her covers up under her chin. Gradually, as the minutes passed with no reoccurrence, the dread and the accompanying feeling of strangeness dissipated, leaving her feeling relieved and more than a little ridiculous. Talk about overreacting. She had even considered turning on her bedroom lights to check the closet.
Rolling onto her side, Heather curled back into her blankets, but sleep was a long while coming.