I Have Heard You Calling in the Night

Last updated on: May 6, 2015 at 3:04 am by Max Lindenman

I Have Heard You Calling in the Night 2015-05-06T03:04:14-06:00 Max Lindenman

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The voice came in the quietest part of the night, and it was loud enough to pull me out of my sleep.

“Threat has been detected,” it said.

I couldn’t place it. It belonged to a woman, which, in this apartment, made it a novelty. It seemed to be coming from the living room. Then I heard it again.

“Threat has been detected,” it repeated. The intonation was exactly the same, but I thought I detected new insistence, as though the threat – whatever it might be – had grown a touch more imminent over the past five seconds.

I should explain a couple of things. First, I live in an apartment complex that just can’t manage to gentrify itself. Despite the yearly rent hikes, sketchy characters continue to find the place much more appealing than solid citizens do. Over the years, I’ve heard stories of burglaries and robberies, and been shanghaied, as a mediator, into botched drug deals and violent domestic disputes. One May evening a few years ago, I stepped out on my porch to find a dozen policemen crowding around the next-door bungalow. When I asked what was going on, one of the policemen explained, a little huffily, that my neighbor had violated his parole. Then he ordered me back inside.

But even within the complex there are better and worse areas. When I came back after a year the Middle East, the management packed me off to a banlieue. Situated on the farthest reaches of the property, my unit faces the spiked fence marking the beginning of the government-subsidized housing where East African refugees live. Let me say for the record that I’ve met a few of these refugees over the years, and most impressed me as nice guys with great stories. The Somali who wandered one night into our pool area with a pistol in the waistband of his shorts and a look in his eyes suggesting he’d found a barista to fix him a qat latte, was an exception.

But every morning since moving into my new place, I’ve seen five or six of these urchins vaulting over the fence, sparing me only the most casual of glances. Call it old age, but it’s starting to do a number on my nerves. Point is, the idea that a threat had been detected in the immediate vicinity of my living quarters didn’t seem very farfetched at all.

More context: I have always felt a twinge of envy for people who claim to have heard God’s voice. I don’t mean people who were handed wide-ranging missions that took a lifetime to complete, e.g. “Rebuild My house.” I’m thinking more of people who seem to get exactly the small, helpful promptings they need at exactly the moments when they need them most. Surely you must have a friend who says things like, “And then I heard a little voice telling me not to worry, that everything was going to be fine. And then I felt so light, just like a huge stone had tumbled from between my shoulders. And then I bowled a strike…” Those are the people I have in mind.

Just then, the voice repeated itself verbatim for the third time: “Threat has been detected.”

As I finally sat up in bed and untangled myself from my sheet, I felt more exalted than anxious. Between the cover of night and the three repetitions, the scene was starting to look very 1 Samuel. But then, while I was groping my way toward the voice, it hit me: It was a woman’s voice! I may not be the most conservative Catholic in the pew, but I even I knew God spoke well below the middle C, like a rhythm guy in a doo-wop group — except, you know, white.

Well, I thought. What about the Blessed Mother? A couple of years ago, I’d read Portland Magazine editor Brian Doyle describe how he’d heard a voice “gentle and adamant” tell him, “Let it go.” Doyle doesn’t say what “it” is, but he knows the voice belongs to the Mother of God, and tells us that, with her words, “She reached for me and cupped me in Her hand and spoke into the me of me and I will never forget Her voice until the day I die.”

With my head still fuzzy, I could not, as I stumbled into the room that serves me as study and kitchenette, have quoted these lines exactly. But I did recall the gist well enough to note a contrast. The voice I was hearing spoke in the passive, which is too bureaucratic for Mary. After all, she never told St. Bernadette, “Processions should be let come hither,” or Brian Doyle, “It should be let go.” Plus, far from reaching into the me of me, the voice was starting to give me a headache.

Here it was again: “Threat has been detected.”

I realized now that it was coming from my computer’s speakers. Remembering that I’d left my glasses on top of my keyboard, I slipped them on and peered into the bracing light coming from the screen. In the lower right-hand corner I saw a pop-up ad pop up. On it were written the same words spoken by the spectral voice: Threat has been detected.

And just in case I had missed the connection, the voice itself reiterated: “Threat has been detected.”

I tried to get rid of the ad, but every time I clicked on the little white X, it popped right back up. After about 15 mintues, I turned the volume on my speakers all the way down and went back to bed. One of these days, I suppose, I’ll have to take my hard drive to the geek squad at Best Buy.

Overall, I’d have to say that the experience of being woken up and given a cryptic warning by a disembodied voice wasn’t bad. Living where I live, I need all the help I can get. I’ve got some practice in, and if God was watching, then he knows, at least, that I can be counted on for a snappy response.

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