Holly is crying in her sleep again. For the third night running Larry Pearce listens from across the hall knowing that the right thing to do would be to go her, to soothe her nightmares away. But instead, he tries to ignore her cries, the way he did last night and the night before. Only this time the harder he strives for silence, the more the sound gets under his skin. Judith stirs beside him but doesn’t wake. He wonders if she’s somehow immune to the cadences of childhood fear. Maybe it’s simpler than that, maybe she doesn’t want to remember what it’s like to be a child because of all the things that scared her back then. Larry wonders if Holly already has some kind of insight into fear and that her cries are an attempt to articulate that understanding.

After thirty minutes Holly’s still crying and Judith hasn’t moved. Larry slides out of bed, pulls on a pair of shorts and pads out to the hall. He hesitates at her open door, watching as a shaft of orange light from a streetlamp falls through a crack in the curtains and touches Holly’s face. He moves closer and stands at the foot of the cot, listening to sounds too ancient to come from the mouth of a baby.

He’s struck by her smallness, how alone she is and despite not wanting to listen, he wonders if it’s this isolation she’s trying to communicate. He realises that he’s holding his breath, trying not to add to the noise she’s making. Judith should be here. Not that she’d have any better understanding of Holly’s intent, but her presence alone would confirm that he’s not imagining any of this. These sounds are a language he doesn’t understand. They might be saying help me or I’m scared or make them go away. Something like that, but he’s only guessing, really he has no idea.

He sits in a child’s seat beside the cot even though he’s way too big for it. His vision is a little blurred, but its a few seconds before he realises there are tears in his eyes. He’s not sure why. What he knows is that Holly is scared and that he should help her but he doesn’t know how. He’s scared too but in searching her face for some clue as to her meaning, all he sees is a smile, the kind that says ‘sweet dreams in progress – do not disturb.’

Is that what he’s hearing – the sound of her dreams? No, it’s something more concrete, something he can almost touch. Her eyelids move but the little REM flickers reveal nothing of what’s going on inside her head. She rolls over on to her stomach, but the sounds persist. He wonders if there’s something wrong with her, if she has a medical condition, a syndrome or something he doesn’t know the name of. He’s not as clued up on childhood illnesses as he should be. It’s too easy to leave such matters to Judith. Not that he doesn’t care – after all, he’s the one watching over her right now. But even so, he feels he’s there under false pretences, because he’s not able to give her what she needs. She wants someone to take her fear away, someone to tell her everything will be okay. Larry can’t tell those lies. All he can tell her is to look for the silence inside herself, the one safe place.

As if to point her in the right direction, he reaches through the bars of the cot and touches her brow. His fingers tingle at the strange current flowing beneath her skin. He’s surprised at the nature of the revelation. Don’t say anything else, he whispers, keep it to yourself. Other parents might welcome such honesty but not Larry. Such openness in one so young worries him. He thinks about the future, when she’s older and all the pain she’ll have to face. He stands and withdraws from the room, but her sounds follow him back to his bed. Even when he crawls under the sheets and holds his hands against his ears, he can’t retrieve the silence.

 

Larry’s job is to listen. Ten hours a day, four days a week, sometimes five. He listens and occasionally, when the situation warrants, he makes an intervention. That doesn’t happen often; mostly it’s just listening, which means he’s doing a good job. What Larry does is monitor calls – eavesdrops, for want of a better word, on the conversations between his team and the public. It’s called Quality Control. You have a problem with the service provided by his employers, you call the centre. A technical assistant takes your call, listens to your problem and tells you how to resolve it. Larry listens to the two of you talking. His unseen presence on the line ensures his team are prompt, polite and helpful, and most importantly, it ensures they don’t take longer than ninety seconds to deal with your call, because by then there’s another customer on the line with some new problem. Of course ninety seconds is not written in stone. Some queries can be dealt with in as little as thirty or forty seconds, but others can last much longer. Those kind of problems require more thought, maybe even a consult, before they can be resolved. But even then Larry expects his team to take no more than three or four minutes, five tops. These longer calls are balanced by the shorter ones so that, over the course of the day they average out at about ninety seconds each. You’d be surprised the amount of information that can be exchanged in ninety seconds, if both parties are on the ball.

Sometimes people call the centre because they have nothing better to do than waste Larry’s time. It’s this kind of call that usually prompts an intervention. They’re not having technical problems, at least not with the service the company provides. They have other motives that don’t concern you. They’re pranksters, or they love the sound of their own voices, or they’re lonely and want someone to talk to. Whatever. You’re not the Samaritans and while they’re using up your valuable time there are other people with real problems who can’t get through. Too many calls like that, Larry stresses, can mess up the rhythm of your day.

 

 

American cable channel Showtime are currently filming “Sounds Like” for screening as part of their 'Masters of Horror' series or 1 hour telemovies. Season 2, airs in the States in the Autumn/Winter, and on Bravo in the UK probably next Spring. It’s been adapted and directed by Brad Anderson, who did Session 9 and The Machinist.

 

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