The Hum Under the Burials

My grandmother’s house sat on a flat stretch of prairie, ten miles from the nearest town, with a dozen low, grassy hummocks scattered across the property like the backs of sleeping beasts. Dad called them ‘Indian mounds’ and told me not to dig there, ever. Mom said they were just old dirt piles from the dust bowl, but I knew better. Even at seven, I felt the weight of them, the way the air around them seemed to fold inward, as if the earth itself was holding its breath.

The house itself was a prefab ranch, squat and stubborn against the wind. My grandmother, Vera, had it built in ’72, and it never quite felt like ours. The walls were thin, and the furnace groaned like a dying animal, but the sounds I remember most were the voices. They would start low, like the murmur of a radio left on in another room. I’d be in the kitchen pouring cereal, and I’d hear my parents talking in the living room—clear, distinct words, though I could never quite make them out. I’d walk in, expecting to see them on the couch, but the room would be empty, the lights off, dust motes swirling in the afternoon sun. The voices would shift, then, to the hallway, or the bedroom at the end of the hall, always just out of sight. I’d follow, heart thumping, only to find silence and the faint smell of old wood and lavender.

At first, I thought it was the television. But more than once, I’d creep toward the living room, only to find the TV off, the screen blank, and my parents already in bed. The voices never stopped, day or night. They were as constant as the wind off the plains, and I grew up thinking that every house had its own murmur, its own hidden conversation. It wasn’t until high school, when a friend stayed over and asked, ‘Who keeps talking in the other room?’ that I realized it wasn’t normal. But even then, the strangeness didn’t frighten me. It was just the house. It was just the mounds.

Then, in my junior year, the hum began. It wasn’t a sound you heard with your ears; it was a vibration in your bones, a low thrum that settled under your skin. It started at night, just after the lights went out. I’d lie in bed, and the hum would rise from the floorboards, from the walls, from the ground outside. It was like the sound of a giant machine buried deep below, a generator with a failing heart. I asked my grandmother about it, and she looked at me with an odd, distant expression and said, ‘It’s just the old wells, dear. They sing when the wind blows.’ But there were no wells. I’d walked every inch of that property.

One night, sleep was impossible. The hum was louder than ever, and I felt a pull toward the mounds. I slipped out of the house, barefoot, the grass cold and wet. The moon was a sliver, but the sky was clear, and I could see the dark shapes of the mounds, their contours shifting like muscles. As I drew closer, the hum turned into a sound, a rustling, whispering chorus, as if the earth were full of voices speaking in tongues. I knelt at the base of the largest mound, and I saw it: a crack in the soil, just wide enough for a finger, and from it came a faint, greenish light. I pressed my ear to the ground, and the whispers became words, fragments, syllables I almost understood.

I don’t remember returning to the house. I woke in my bed the next morning, the hum gone, replaced by a heavy silence. My grandmother was in the kitchen, her hands shaking as she poured tea. She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw fear in her eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have gone out,’ she said. ‘They’ll know you’re listening now.’ I asked her what she meant, but she only shook her head and stared out the window at the mounds. ‘They were here before the house,’ she whispered. ‘Before this land was land. They are the ones who wait. And when one of them starts to hum, it means they’re ready to speak.’

That afternoon, I found a hole in the backyard. It hadn’t been there before—a perfect circle, about a foot across, as if a plug of earth had been removed. And from it came a faint, patient breathing. I ran to tell my grandmother, but she was gone. Her car was still in the drive, but the house was empty. I called for her, and the only answer was the hum, starting up again, louder this time, from every direction at once. I went outside, and the mounds were moving. Not visibly, but I could feel them crawling beneath my feet, the ground shifting like the back of some vast creature stretching.

I knelt at the edge of the hole and saw, not dirt, but roots, glistening and pale, wrapped around something that looked like a stone tablet. I reached in, despite every instinct screaming to pull back, and my fingers brushed the surface. It was warm, almost alive. And in that instant, the voices in the house fell silent, and a new voice filled my head, loud and clear, like a shout in an empty room. It said, ‘You are the first to listen. Come down, and we will tell you everything.’ And the ground opened beneath me, swallowing me whole.

I fell for what felt like an eternity, and then I landed on something soft and yielding. I was in a vast, dark chamber, lit by the same greenish light, and before me were rows upon rows of humped figures, covered in soil, like ancient seeds waiting to sprout. They were not human. They were not anything I could name. But they were awake, and they were hungry. And I understood, then, what the house had been built on. Not Indian mounds, but the burial mounds of things that had never died, only slept. And the voices in the house were their dreams, leaking through the foundation. The hum was their heartbeat. And now, they had a listener.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. It could have been minutes, or years. But eventually, I crawled out of a different hole, into the daylight, and the house was gone. The mounds were flat, like the prairie had been smoothed over. My grandmother was nowhere, and the town denied that a house had ever stood. But the hum remained, low and constant, from somewhere beneath my feet. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the core, that the mounds had not been emptied. They had only shifted. And they were still waiting for someone else who would listen—someone who would be brave enough, or foolish enough, to come down and hear them speak.

I live in that town now, under a false name. I go back to the prairie sometimes, and I stand where the house used to be. The hum is always there, a thrum in the soil that old men mistake for their own pulse. I don’t tell anyone. It’s the only way to keep them satisfied. But at night, when the wind picks up, I hear my grandmother’s voice in the hollow of the dark, asking, ‘Do you hear them?’ And I can’t tell if she’s warning me or begging me to come back. All I know is that the mounds are patient, and the hum is a sermon, and one day, I’ll be the one who starts to sing.