Addy’s Story (IP) - PART II – The Singing

I couldn’t hear it. Maybe because I was approaching 50 at that time but Charlotte surely could because she came out into the hall then and asked me, “Can you hear that too, Aunt Addy?”.

I was too worried about the phone going dead to pay much attention at first but then Charlotte started to dance round in this weird sort of way and I put the receiver down, starting to worry about her.

“Hear what?”, I asked her, “I can’t hear a thing?”.

“It sounds like singing. Like angels singing”, she told me, “Like angels with silver voices all inside my head like a church choir and they're saying something but I can’t properly hear what they're saying”.

“Come and sit down on the couch”, I told her, taking her hand and leading her to the couch in my living room.

Then I heard the man on the TV saying that there were young people all over the country reporting hearing that same noise, like a choir singing and I turned up the volume on my TV to listen.

“It’s the latest startling development in a series of startling events that have rocked the whole world. A strange, apparently eery sort of music that it seems is only audible to the young. One can only speculate at this point in time as to what the origin or meaning of this strange music is. Is it coming from the alien space craft? Perhaps some attempt by the aliens to communicate? At present, no negative effects of the music have been reported and so we can only assume at this time that, whatever it is, it is not an aggressive gesture on the part of the aliens”.

Charlottes eyes looked dazed and distant like you would expect a person to look if they had been hypnotized and, even before I knew what I do now about the music, I had a terrible feeling that it was not a good thing, especially when Charlotte told me, “It’s not just music now, Aunty. I can hear them loud and clear, speaking to me”.

“Who’s speaking to you, Charlotte?”, I asked her, stroking her hand, afraid to let go of it, “Who?”.

Then she looked up at me with that same dazed look in her eyes but she was also smiling in a way that was disturbing, “The people on that spaceship, Aunty Addy. They’re talking to me and they’re saying that they want me to go with them. They want all the young people to go with them to the other side”.

I put my hands over her ears. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I thought I could block out the sound with my hands and I yelled at her, “Just don’t listen to them, Charlotte. You can’t go with them. You’re just a child”.

And then the look in Charlotte’s eyes suddenly changed. It wasn’t just a dazed yet happy expression anymore. It was a look of grief and terror. It was really awful to see her like that and then there were tears running down her face, “Now they’re angry, Aunt Addy. They seem angry”, she said, “Angry with all of us. With the whole world”.

Then I heard screams outside from the street. It sounded like there was chaos like the kind that the policeman had predicted and the man on the TV started to sound frantic too.

“There have been disturbing reports of widespread, well, what can only be described as mass-hysteria, from almost every corner of our country aswell as from other parts of the world. Young people, it seems, have been randomly taking their own lives. Some of the reports are far too shocking for me even to tell you but, if this is connected with the spacecraft which landed in Washington DC earlier today and with that strange music then I think that we can only conclude that the aliens on board that spacecraft are hostile ones”.

Then Charlotte tried to get up from the couch but I held her firm. If what I had just heard on the News was true, I thought, about people taking their own lives then I couldn’t risk letting Charlotte go, even for a second and then, I remember, I put my arms round her to hold her but she kept struggling.

“I’ve got to go with them Aunt Addy”, she said, “They want me to go with them to the other side”.

Then, hearing those words, “The Other Side”, that made my blood just turn to ice because, somehow, it sounded to me like it wasn’t even outer space she was talking about, not even the other side of the universe they wanted her to go to but Death”.

“No, no Charlotte”, I told her, lying with the full weight of my body upon her and pinning her down so that I was sure she couldn’t move, “You’re not going to go. You’re staying here with your Aunt Addy”.

I don’t know exactly how long that weird wrestling match went on for or how long I had to lie like that, holding my niece, because I didn’t even dare look at my watch but I remember praying and praying to God, “Please let it end soon, somehow, dear god”.

That’s when I heard the singing. Not the strange, cruel, angry voice of the alien sirens but the sound of human voices, raised in defiance. It was coming from the TV and from outside in the street too; young people and old people all holding hands and singing together; singing their hearts out.

“This really is truly amazing”, said a reporter for the TV news, “I’m not sure how it started or who began to sing first but, from what I can see and hear out here and according to reports I’ve been hearing from elsewhere, people on the streets, perhaps in every street in the world, have started to sing”.

I’d never been much of a singer. People always told me that I couldn’t sing and so I never really tried but that day I remember that I and Charlotte started to sing with all those people round about the world and we didn’t stop singing until those alien sirens had lost their voice.

“We don’t need to listen to their music, Aunty”, I remember Charlotte saying, “We have a song of our own”.

After that, well, we all know what happened after that; the aliens tried a whole lot of other dirty tricks to subdue us, to scare us, to divide us or destroy us but we fought back and we beat those bastards and it all started with a song.