This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Chuck Palahniuk
Cover art and design by Tree Abraham
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Palahniuk, Chuck, author.
Title: The invention of sound / Chuck Palahniuk.
Description: New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020008872 (print) | LCCN 2020008873 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538718001 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781538717998 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3566.A4554 I575 2020 (print) | LCC PS3566.A4554 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008872
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008873
ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1800-1 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-1799-8 (ebook)
E3-20200808-DA-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Invention of Sound
Part One: Forget Us Our Trespasses
Part Two: Tape Bleed
Part Three: The Perfect Scream
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About the Author
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The
Invention
of Sound
Keep Telling Yourself It’s Only a Movie
Part One:
Forget Us Our Trespasses
An ambulance wailed through the streets, and every dog howled. Pekingese and border collies alike. German shepherds and Boston terriers and whippets. Mongrels and purebreds. Dalmatians, Doberman pinschers, poodles, basset hounds, and bulldogs. Herding dogs and lapdogs. House pets and strays. Mixed-breed and pedigreed, they howled together as the siren went past.
And for that long going-by they were all members of the same pack. And the howls of all dogs, they were one howl. And that howl was so loud it drowned out the siren. Until the sound that had united them all had vanished, and yet their howling sustained itself.
For no dog could bear to abandon, first, that rare moment of their communion.
In bed, Jimmy propped himself on one elbow and listened. He asked, “Why?”
Beside him Mitzi stirred. She reached a glass of wine off the floor and asked, “Why what?”
In the office building across the street, a single window glowed. Framed behind it, a man stared at a computer screen, his face washed by the shifting light of moving images. This light danced on his eyeglasses and shimmered on the tears running down his cheek.
Not just outside but in the condos that surrounded them, the baying continued. Among the hairs on Jimmy’s damp, drooping penis, a blister festered. It looked ready to burst, a lump swollen with pink-white pus. He asked, “Why do dogs howl like that?”
When she reached over to pick at the lump, it wasn’t a disease. Stuck to his skin it was: A pill. Medicine. A loose sleeping pill. An Ambien, she plucked it, put it in her mouth and slugged it down with wine. She answered, “Limbic resonance.”
“What’s that?” he asked as he slipped out of the bed. A gentleman Jimmy wasn’t. A caveman, yes. Barefoot on the polished wood floor, he grabbed an edge of the mattress and yanked it, Mitzi included, off the box spring. Not by her hair, not this time at least, but he dragged her and the mattress across the bedroom to where tall windows looked over the city. “What’s limp dick…?”
“Limbic,” she said. “Limbic resonance. It’s my job.” She set her empty wineglass on the windowsill. The grid of streetlights blazed under the chaos of random stars. The howls were dying away. “My job,” Mitzi said, “is to make everyone in the whole world scream at the exact same time.”
Instead of a lawyer, Foster called his group leader, Robb. The police weren’t even real police. They only worked at the airport. As for Foster, he’d only touched the little girl, a crime it was a stretch to call. He was in custody but only in a lunchroom behind the airline ticket counter. Seated on a folding metal chair. Vending machines filled a whole wall. His hand was bleeding from a small crescent-shaped bite mark.
Only one flight, the girl’s, had been delayed, to allow time for her to make a statement.
He asked the fake police to return his phone, and he showed them a screen capture. They had to admit there was a resemblance between the man from the web and today’s pervert. The pervert who’d been with the little girl. One fake officer, the guy, asked where Foster had gotten the image, but it wasn’t as if Foster could really say.
The other fake cop, the lady cop, told him, “The world is full of missing kids. That doesn’t give you the right to snatch someone else’s.”
For his part, Foster wanted to ask about his checked baggage. His flight for Denver had long since departed. Did they still pull bags if the passenger failed to board? Was his bag being sniffed by bomb-sniffing dogs? Anymore, no city in the world was anywhere you’d want a nice suitcase to go around and around the carousel, unclaimed. Someone without fail would snatch it, pretend to check the luggage tag, disappear out the door.
As for Foster, he’d be okay with a drink. A
