Voices (Whisper Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Show me, Isaac said.

  He was whisked forward again. This time to Donovan breaking into the house, terrified of the Gogoku, heeding their final warning that they would tolerate no further disobedience. His instructions clear. Tie up loose ends – those who know about the secret place under the house. Kill the Samsons to ensure it stays a secret. Loose ends. The malevolent things are afraid of the seed the woman carries.

  For a while Isaac didn’t understand they were referring to him.

  A simple task, but the woman wakes and leaves the house, lost in a daze, heading across the river in a trance-like state. Donovan’s plan to butcher the Samsons while they sleep ruined. Steve Samson waking, hearing the intruder.

  A scuffle.

  A fall.

  A fatal wound.

  Donovan unaware he’s dead.

  The house burning as Steve and Donovan fight, his body worn like a glove by those forces who will stop at nothing to protect their secret.

  The Gogoku in the clearing, doing the job Donovan failed at. Like him, pawns to a bigger game. Servants to a darker power. They try to destroy Melody and her unborn child by the will of their masters, but Steve’s destruction of Hope House to forces them to stop. The house burns, but the secret place remains.

  Under the house.

  Suddenly Isaac was moving again, flying at breakneck speed. Down into the ruins. Down into the pantry, through the hatch beneath the rug, into the catacombs, to the place kept secret for centuries, the thing that dwells there as old as the earth itself. An abomination. A sight that defies words.

  It was clear to him then. Donovan was the chosen guardian. And when he died, Henry Marshall took his place. Images of the hotel being built in fast forward appeared next. Henry changing plans, arguing with the architect who wanted to bulldoze the remains of Hope House. Telling him he couldn’t, knowing the secret couldn’t be revealed. Giving specific plans for the building foundations, specifying where they had to go in order to keep the secret safe.

  Isaac knew where they had to go, what they had to face to do it. The demons in his brain continued to probe and manipulate, refusing to leave now they’d gained entry. Already they were speaking to him, trying to convince him to join them or suffer. Worse, telling him if he didn’t do as they said, everyone he knew would suffer with him.

  He opened his eyes, drawing breath. Taking in the room in Mrs. Alma’s house, relieved to be back to normality. Back to the world of light and smell and touch. He listened inwardly, trying to feel if anything was different, and realized it wasn’t just one thing. Everything had changed. He got out of bed and went downstairs. He needed some air, anything to rid himself of the image of the thing he had just seen.

  CHAPTER 29

  Rachel sat on the ground, wrists tied behind her. She was pinned to the trunk of a tree by the tow ropes Henry had taken from the car. She could barely breathe, the cord digging into her chest and stomach. Soon after restraining her, he’d disappeared into the forest. She’d screamed of course, screamed until her throat burned and her voice broke. Nobody came. Nobody could hear. Although she knew it was useless, she squirmed against her restraints, her wrists rubbed raw from struggling, the dirt at her feet displaced where her heels dug into the ground in an attempt at leverage.

  “That won’t help you.”

  The voice came from over her shoulder, deep and throaty, somewhere out of sight amongst the trees. The crunch of twigs and leaves heralded his arrival. She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. A desperate need to get away overwhelmed Rachel, and she renewed her struggles, violently kicking in a desperate effort to be free. Henry watched, and she noticed that even his smile was devoid of any semblance of human emotion. She waited for death to come, for him to attack her. Instead of doing so, Henry sat cross-legged on the ground a few feet away, staring at her.

  “Please, let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone I saw you,” she pleaded, pulling at her restraints.

  “I can’t do that.” He looked into the trees as he said it, then turned back to her, a flicker of a smile on his lips.

  “You need help, please let me go.”

  “Nobody can help me. Only them,” he whispered, staring back into the trees.

  “Please, there are people that can help if you just let them. I won’t tell anyone.” She was crying, which seemed to further increase Henry’s enjoyment. He leaned close, his face inches from hers.

  “You sound just like them. The doctors and the psychiatrists. They didn’t understand what lives inside me. That’s why the voices told me not to speak to them. Not to share their secrets.”

  “There are no voices. They’re not real. Please, my family has money, they can pay to help you get better.”

  “No,” he said, rearing back and plunging his hands into the earth at her feet, digging furiously, his eyes burning into her as he did. “I’ll show you. I’ll prove it.”

  “Please, stop! What are you doing?” she shrieked, pulling away from his furious movements.

  He didn’t answer, just kept digging deeper, gasping for breath, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose from his exertions, the manic grin never leaving his lips as he tossed handfuls of earth from under him like some kind of rabid dog. He pulled something up, something white and smooth. Rachel pushed herself back against the tree trunk, whimpering as Henry dragged the human skull out of the earth and tossed it toward her, its sightless eye sockets staring into the sky. Still not finished, he scrambled a few feet to his left and repeated the process, digging with his fingertips, ignoring the pain and blood as his nails were torn off by the ferocity of his actions. A second skull was uncovered, this one complete with a broken ribcage. Like the first, he threw it at her, the bones breaking up as it hit the tree. Still he went on, moving from spot to spot, digging up fragments of lives that had been extinguished over the centuries. When he was done, he sat back, panting and staring. Around her, bones of the dead littered the ground, some half out of the earth, others just fragments.

  “Don’t you tell me they don’t talk to me,” Marshall said between gasps. “I hear them all. Every last one of them.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” she whispered.

  “Do you believe in God?” he asked, eyes cold, observing her with almost childlike curiosity.

  “What?”

  “God. Do you believe in him?”

  She shook her head. “I won’t answer that. It’s a trick. There’s no right answer.”

  “Do you believe in man?”

  “What?” she gasped, confused at his line of questioning.

  “Do you believe a man with enough power can become a god? If a man could wield the spark of life and the hammer of death, then by default would he not be god-like?” He was smirking now, enjoying her terror. “I can become a god. They told me what they want me to do. They showed me how I can become what I’m destined to be.”

  “Please, just let me go. It’s not too late.”

  Henry’s faraway smile melted. “Oh no. I need you. I need you to greet them for me. I need you to be my messenger.”

  He scrambled to his feet, kicking bones aside. He started to walk toward her, then paused and picked up the bunch of flowers, leaving bloody smears on the wrapping from his damaged hands. “You will have the flowers Billy meant for you to have,” he said, moving closer.

  Her screams were muffled by the wind thrashing through the trees.

  CHAPTER 30

  Garbage littered the floor of the empty building. At some point during the intervening years since its abandonment, it had been stripped by looters and vandals, leaving it a mockery of its former glory. A section of roof had collapsed, exposing joists and leaving a carpet of broken plaster. Rotten furniture, thick with grime, remained like relics of a different world, while water from broken pipes and years of frequent rain had left the walls covered with a thick carpet of black mold. Henry Marshall cared about none of these things. He stumbled inside, exhausted from his efforts with the girl,
smeared in her fluids, his memory filled with her innards as he’d desecrated her flesh. The offering pleased them, his masters, but still he wasn’t finished. He needed tools, things with which to cut and hack. His destination had been unknown to him as he’d walked through the town, keeping to the shadows, using the dead husks of houses and shops that once thrived with life for cover. Now he was here, awaiting the arrival of those he was destined to destroy. The once grand and luxurious hall had suffered badly from its neglect and yet, to him, it still felt like home. Exhausted, his physical body was in need of respite. Only his mental strength was keeping him going, or more accurately, the things whispering in his head.

  The drip of a pipe.

  The creak of a floorboard.

  The groan of wind channeled through one of the broken windows.

  Message received and understood.

  He walked around the room, remembering ghosts of conversations once held there with friends. Colleagues. People who were most likely dead now. Some at his own hand.

  The scrape of a radiator thermostat.

  The rustle of dead leaves skittering across floorboards.

  The squeak of rats in the walls going about their stealthy business.

  Yes.

  He understood what had to be done. Their instructions were clear. Not yet though. First there was something else that needed to be done. A detour before he went to his beloved voices in the trees.

  A hiss of wind, making the old town hall groan on its foundations.

  “Yes,” he said to the empty room. “I love you too.”

  He strode out into the deserted streets of Oakwell, and headed back to the place he knew better than any. The place where he would find the tools he needed to finish his work.

  Home.

  CHAPTER 31

  The lack of light didn’t hinder Henry Marshall as he picked his way through the dilapidated rooms of his former home. Memories, nothing more than distant echoes of a life that may not even have been his own, lingered somewhere in his psyche, and yet he was completely disconnected from them. Like the rest of the town, this house was a dying remnant of a world where light once existed. Now, this place in particular was filled with a darkness that could never be banished. Sealed up shortly after Henry’s arrest, it was a time capsule of sorts to life before the death. Before the blood. Henry stood in the entrance to the sitting room, litter strewn across the floor. The chair which had contained his dead wife for so long shoved against a wall, ominous stains in the approximate shape of her body visible even in the gloom; the aroma of death still lingering in the air.

  He crossed to his chair, the one in which, many, many years earlier, he’d sat whilst he and his wife watched television of an evening, doors closed against the winter chill, flames licking in the fireplace. He resumed his position in the chair, springs squeaking, dust billowing up only to settle back onto the fabric once more. He waited to see if any signs of familiarity would come back to him. The mildew smell of rot. The damp cling of fabric against his thighs. He leaned back and set his arms on the wooden rests of the chair, no more than an automatic gesture, a memory of a time before all he knew was death and the desire to cause it. He felt nothing. No emotion, no sorrow. His fingers danced around on the armrests, and he shifted his eyes in the darkness, able to see enough of the word he had carved there.

  Donovan.

  Henry’s fingers traced the name over and over again, and he looked around the room, the gloomy interior lit by a weak moon from where the boards had been pried from the front window. Amid the yellow wallpaper hanging from the walls, loosened by the damp, he could see the name again and again.

  On the cabinet in the corner. Donovan.

  On the back of the door. Donovan.

  On the fireplace. Donovan.

  He flicked his eyes toward his wife’s chair. Even she hadn’t been spared the cut of the blade in order to write that name. He recalled how easily the flesh sliced, and how little blood had escaped compared to when he’d cut her throat. The savagery, the blood. The copper smell mingled with fear in the seconds before it happened, when realization came to her of what he was about to do.

  He stood and walked from room to room, that name carved into every surface like a talisman.

  Donovan.

  Donovan.

  Donovan.

  Every memory was tarnished by that name. The grandfather clock in the hall, bought for them by the townspeople to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary, scarred by the name of the man he was doing everything he could to live up to.

  The banister rail, which he had spent six weeks building with his own hands, lying broken and warped, the name etched into the wood hundreds and hundreds of times.

  Those voices, so dark and in control, spoke to him, whispering, communicating only with him. Telling him that he was more of a man than Donovan ever was. Telling him that in time, it would be his name that would be remembered for the great deeds he would accomplish.

  “Are you sure?” he said to the empty house.

  A gust of wind whistled through the broken door, channeling through the hallway and moving leaves across the ground, the natural sounds providing the answers he sought.

  Donovan was flawed, they told him. He was never the vessel they wanted. Too selfish. Too obsessed with his own agenda.

  Henry smiled in the dark.

  They continued to praise him, sometimes responding though creaks and moans of the house and the wind, sometimes directly into his head.

  He, they said, was the true vessel. He had chosen to give himself fully to them, and now it was time to take the final step to complete his mission and make the transition from the living world to the realm of the dead.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  More sounds. A flutter of decaying curtains flapping against glass, the slow opening of a door.

  They told him where to go, what he must do. He let them lead him, feet padding on the dirty, litter strewn floors, through the dining room, past the shattered kitchen and to the door leading to the garage. He pushed it open and stood at the threshold, nose wrinkling at the stench. Something had died in there, the smell pungent enough to make an ordinary man’s eyes water. Henry, however, wasn’t an ordinary man. Not anymore. He was guided by something else. He walked forward, crossing the space where his car would have once been parked, to the workbench. A thick film of dust covered its surface, and without realizing, he started to doodle in it with a fingertip.

  D

  The small lump hammer. He would need that for the task they’d set him.

  O

  The screwdriver with the flat tip, and the file that was beside it, the ones owned by his father, the wooden handle worn smooth with age. Those would assist with his transition from man to the monster he was to become.

  N

  Screwdriver to tooth, the scrape of metal against bone, taste of bitter steel in his mouth. Panting now, fearing the pain that was to come, instantly soothed by the blackness in his head. Hand trembling, not wanting to go through with it. Angry now, so angry. Giving him no choice, giving him no option.

  O

  Picking up the hammer and holding it under the screwdriver. Asking for assurance it wouldn’t hurt, that they would protect him from the pain. Promise given. Assurances they would keep the pain away.

  V

  First strike, and an explosion of agony as a tooth shattered. Blood, thick and hot, spilling onto the workbench, greedily soaked up by the dust. More in his throat, eyes wet with anger at their deceit and the fanged, amused smile he sensed in them. Next tooth. Another hit. More agony. Spitting fragments and blood, tears hot on his cheeks.

  A

  On it went. Top and bottom. Shattering his teeth, turning them into uneven daggers. Unimaginable agony. So much blood. Hands trembling, black things in his head smiling. Pushing him on.

  N

  Setting down the hammer, mouth a broken mess. Not done yet though. Not by a long shot. Picking up the fil
e with trembling hand, lifting it to his mouth, sharpening, sharpening. Each scrape of steel unbearable. Those voices, black and cruel, telling him to use his anger on those who were coming. To turn his frenzy on those who sought to capture him. Too delirious with pain to care, he did as they commanded.

  Done. Transition from man to monster complete. Henry stood in the dark, testing his shark-like crimson smile. He looked at the name he had written in the dust, finger still poised on the upward stroke of the ‘N’, blood still dripping onto it.

  No.

  Not anymore.

  Not him.

  He wiped his hand across the dust, erasing the name in a bloody smear.

  Beside it, he penned a new word, one which held much greater meaning. He had earned it, they said. He deserved it. Taking a last look around the place he used to call home, he spied his old toolbox, a brown film of oil and grime covering the chipped blue metal casing. Inside, there were things he could use for the display he had in mind, so he grabbed it and headed to where they said she would be, waiting for the pawn he would need so that the endgame could begin, and knowing his legacy had begun with that one word. A word that would become legendary.

  That word was Henry.

  CHAPTER 32

  There was no fear when Melody arrived back in Oakwell. All she felt was a neutral sense of foreboding, heightened by the desolation of the town. She wasn’t sure if she could go through with what she intended to do. She had gone on a tour of sorts, revisiting places, which until that point, had only lived in memories long buried. She’d stopped by the boarded-up Old Oak tavern, remembering her last real day of happiness before everything started to unravel. Her intention was to head to the grounds of the hotel next, the place where Hope House once stood. She didn’t quite feel ready to face that yet, so walked the streets instead, leaving her car parked on the edge of town, enjoying the cool air as day faded into night. She found herself at Mrs. Briggs’ home. Like everywhere else, it was an abandoned relic, the once pristine garden overgrown and the walls of the house covered in old graffiti.