I don’t mean to be rude. Really, I don’t.

“Damn kids these days.”

That’s what people often think when they see me walk by. I hear it often enough, always in such a derisive tone.

I’m one of those people that always has earbuds in. Working out, doing homework, taking a walk through the hills by my house - gotta have my music playing. And people look down on that.

Look, I get it, I really do. I’ll be the first to admit that my generation is hopelessly addicted to technology, with their iPhones and AirPods and Snapchat and god only knows what else. But it’s not like that.

I used to enjoy the silence, the stillness. That’s why I went up those hiking paths to begin with. To be alone with my thoughts and the wildlife, the only soundtrack the songs of local birds cheerily serenading each other. It was beautifully zen.

It’s not like that any more.

Most people are afraid of the dark to some extent, whether they’ll admit it or not. It’s eerie. When the light fades, who knows what lurks in the shadows? That could be a burglar. A predator. It’s evolutionary, instinctive, nothing to be ashamed of. But why does that stop at light? There are things we see and can’t hear. There are things we hear and can’t see. What about smell? Odorless, silent gases can kill just as efficiently as any beast or blade. Hell, they’re probably worse. We go out of our way to add fragrances to natural gas so we can detect leaks. We put reflectors on jackets and bicycles so they’re visible at night.

The point is, it’s perfectly logical to be unnerved by or even afraid of what lurks in the spaces between what you can see or smell. But what about the spaces between sounds?

You might think I’m crazy, but after ruminating on this concept for a while, I started getting pretty unsettled whenever the birdsongs ended on my nature walks.

You know that old saying, “it’s quiet, too quiet”?

There’s a handful of adages, movie quotes and the like about how absolute silence is suspicious at best and malevolent at worst. I think we’re subconsciously aware of the chitters and just don’t talk about them openly.

Right. The chitters. Let me backtrack a bit.

After a brisk hike one March afternoon, the wind died down and the birds stopped. I got chills. It was just eerily quiet, and I didn’t like it one bit. So I whistled to myself as I walked back down the hill toward my house, feeling much better. The next few hikes went without incident, but I had enough of those spooky moments of silence that I eventually started bringing earbuds with me just in case.

Sometimes, I’d stand atop the vista at the peak, overlooking my home town. I’d turn up the music, close my eyes, spread my arms and just feel the wind whip around me. It gradually became part of my weekly ritual.

Over time, I became more and more uncomfortable with normal, everyday silence too. If I didn’t have something in the background, even just white noise, I started to get itchy. Chills. Goosebumps.

Eventually, I was on one of my hikes, Iron Maiden’s latest album blaring in my ears, a smile on my face and a spring in my step, when tragedy struck.

With a depressing beep, the batteries in my earbuds died. I was now alone atop the mountain peak, with nothing but the sound of the wind and birds to comfort me. A few months ago, that would have been enough. But that day, I heard a faint chittering underneath the songs of the black-capped chickadees that I’d never noticed before. It chilled me to the bones for some reason.

And then the birds stopped, and the chittering got louder.

It was maddening. It wasn’t quite intelligible speech, but it had a clear structure and cadence to it that didn’t sound like mere wildlife or random noise. I looked around in a panic, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“H-hello?” I stammered out at last.

The chittering stopped for a moment, then resumed.

“Wh-who’s there? I can’t understand you. Do.. do you speak English?”

Every time I spoke, the chittering cut out, then resumed as soon as I finished my sentence.

“Right, I’ll just be going then…”

It got louder after this one. I could swear I could make out a few words this time. “Mine,” it said, punctuated on either side by more mindless chittering. “Listen,” it eventually peppered into the cacophony. “For me. Please.” This last phrase felt … earnest somehow. It honestly felt like whatever was speaking to me wanted - no, needed - my help somehow.

“Did you say something?”

You know the weirdest part? The chitters didn’t fade in and out, or overlap my speech for even a nanosecond. The instant I made a noise they were gone, and as soon as I stopped they were back in full force again.

Amidst the din, this time could have sworn I heard “run.”

So you know what? I did. I bolted back down the mountain path as quickly as I could, tripping a handful of times and nearly spraining my ankle in the process. But with every footstep, the beings stopped their subtle conversations, if only for an instant. Every rock that fell down the slope briefly quelled their whispers.

At one point I couldn’t run any further. I stopped to collect myself, breathing heavily. I couldn’t hear them any more, but that relief melted away as I caught my breath and my gasps and pants became sparser and quieter. Sure enough, as soon as I was breathing normally, there they were.

“Play,” I made out between the otherwise indecipherable hellish noises. Well, that’s terrifying as all get-out. Desperate to quiet the entities, I just started babbling, singing, screaming, doing anything I could to fill the terrifying silence lest the chitters return. I probably looked like a raving lunatic, but I was more afraid of those things than the judgment of my neighbors.

I made it home, plugged my headphones into the charger, and cranked up the speakers on my laptop.

In a different era, this could have been calamitous. But in today’s connected world of Spotify and other forms of endless streamed content, I could let my guard down and just go about my life. Every now and then a song would have a long, slow fade at the end, and I’d just barely catch a hint of the chittering noise before the next track began, but at this point it was more annoying than terrifying. I slept with a loud fan turned on. I never let my playlists reach an end. It would suck if I had roommates, I guess, but I lived alone at this stage in my life. So things were - maybe not “good” or “normal,” but at least bearable, outside of moments of dread whenever we had a power outage or something of the like. Eventually I barely noticed the noises when there was a lapse in the soundtrack of my life. You know what? Screw it. Life was good.

And then midterms rolled around. My professor, understandably, mandated that I unplug to take the test. He was already annoyed that I’d been jamming in one ear during his lectures, but this was college, and he figured if I wanted to waste my money listening to a podcast instead of the class I’m paying for, that’s my prerogative, right?

But for the test, there was no getting around it. I shut down my tunes and did my best to tap my feet, click my pencil, crunch my paper - whatever I could do to keep the voices at bay without disrupting my classmates too badly.

But I couldn’t maintain the racket indefinitely, and eventually, my mind was once again overflowing with mindless chatter surrounding periodic, barely discernible commands.

“Kill,” it ordered between murmurs. “Rend their flesh,” it followed up. “Red with their blood.”

Ooookay. That settles it. I needed help. Time to see a shrink.

I tuned it out and continued writing, but it was getting harder and harder to focus. My grip tightened around the mechanical pencil. I heard the flimsy plastic begin to crack.

“Hurt,” uttered the voices. More muttering. “Burn it away.”

There was no emotion in its commands. It was completely flat, with no affect whatsoever. Whatever pleading intelligence begged me for help on the mountain was long gone from the amalgamation of voices.

“I can’t,” I hissed reflexively, gritting my teeth.

Dr. Lee approached in his usual stealthy manner and slammed a ruler on the desk.

“Can I help you with something, Mr. Morgan?”

I looked up at him, tears in my eyes. “Sorry, sir, no, I’m fine.” Every word spoken or heard offered me brief respite from the droning, and I began to dread the end of every sentence, bracing myself for the impact of more chittering and insane orders. I sniffled and tried to stop crying, but to no avail. The auditory assault was relentless.

“Hmph. Maybe you should have actually paid attention in class,” he scoffed, and returned to his lectern.

I kept my mouth shut tight, against all of my instinct. I just did my best to tune the voices out and get back to my essay.

I couldn’t do it. I had to leave early. And without that test, I would have failed the class badly, so I just stopped attending.

Well, I assume I would have failed, anyway. But the next week, my school shut down without warning after a mass death that occurred that Tuesday. Officially, it was blamed on an accidental gas leak leading to an explosion, but rumors persisted that Dr. Lee’s night class went ape and ripped each other to shreds that day.

Rumors are wild, aren’t they? I gave it no credence at first and just thanked my luck that I wasn’t on campus at the time.

But the next time my headphones died, I heard a new command that chilled me to the bone.

“Keep spreading us.” What the hell does that mean? Then I heard incoherent screaming. And then, “the first of many.” But this one wasn’t in the voice of my usual tormentor.

I’d know that voice anywhere. That was Dr. Lee.

Now it’s back to its usual chittering. I’ve quarantined myself to my room because as far as I can tell I’m either crazy, or infected by something that lives in the silence between words. Neither option really leaves me much of a choice.

Every now and then, between songs, I hear Dr. Lee pleading for help. But mostly, it’s just chittering and screams these days.

I can mostly tune it out at this point, but if I pass it onto someone else, there’s no telling what the voices between will make them do.