Where They Wait

by Scott Carson

“I don’t think it’s so weird,” he said confidently. “Someone wanted to lure them in, right?” “Excuse me?” I was uneasy, thinking that he knew Bryce Lermond, that Strawn’s Stereo and Music was a trap I’d wandered into. “The loons. Birds hear in a totally different way than we do, man. Not just frequencies and distances; they hear everything but with a totally different purpose. It’s how they mate, migrate, everything. If you were trying to attract a loon up by your cabin or dock or whatever—or scare one off maybe—you’d want to communicate with it. But that would probably piss off the neighbors, right? Or even if you didn’t have any neighbors, you’d be liable to drive yourself crazy, listening to that over and over.” He stopped the player and the distorted loon song died. “So that’s my guess. Whoever put this up is, like, seriously into birds. Studying them or whatever.” He tugged at his ear and peered at the screen. “Kind of smart, if the loons can actually pick it up at that frequency. I wonder if it worked.” “I think it did,” I said, but whether the birds had ever heard it, I had no idea. I knew that it was my cue, though. The sound my mother had chosen when she set out to stop my nightmares and erased my knowledge of reality instead.