The Whispers (2 page)

“Oh, yes! The Dead live, my child! The Dead live!”

I softly tap my device, typing:
Crazy Lady Number Five. Her name is Dana. She smells like cat pee.

“Oh, yes! I’m getting a real, real, real, real strong sense here.” The bushy-haired woman in the silver robe rises, her veiny hands reaching up dramatically as if to snatch an imaginary bird from the air. Her big frog eyes blink once, two wet orbs shimmering, the irises grey as clay. “Oh!” she cries out. “Yes! YES! A really strong sense. Oh!” Her fingers wiggle in the air. “Yes! He’s here! The spirit world has unraveled her scarf! She’s unmasked her face! She’s lifted her tricky veil!”

“The spirit world wears a lot of clothes,” I remark.

Mercifully, she doesn’t hear me. “When the spirit world speaks, the Living must listen to her!” she cries. “Oh! Your father has spoken, Jennifer! His name is Tom!”

I shake my head no.

“Terry?”

No.

“Tyson?”

Nope.

“Tin… Tim… T’uh… Starts with a T?”

No.

“P?”

Nope.

“D?”

Nopers.

“Z? Zane? Zimmy? Zoom?”

I offer an apologetic smile.

The woman gives a dramatic wave of her hand, her bushy hair trembling. “Oh, the spirit world is such a haze today, such a haze! The spirits must be shy …”

I tap more words into my device:
Dana is lonely. Her hair might be host to a family of pigeons.
My tummy groans. I wonder if my roommate Marianne will want to grab some breakfast before her first class.

“Your father, he enjoys … music?”

“No,” I answer, considering if the bakery by the math building will be open this early in the morning.

“Glass art?”

“No.”

“Your studies? Oh, he
loves
your studies, yes?”

“He thinks my studies are a joke.”

“Oh. No, child.” The woman’s brow furrows. “There is certainly nothing of a joke with the Dead. The Dead do not laugh. The Dead do not dream in humors.”

“My studies aren’t in the Dead,” I reply patiently.

“Of course. You … You study the
Histories
.” A pointy grin consumes her face. I worry no one’s ever warned her of its effects; that smile could make children cry. “I adore the Histories. We will all be a part of it, someday. The Dead already are. And your father’s spirit—”

“Is obviously not here,” I finish for her.

“Oh, no! He is! He really is! He …” The woman looks up, searching for words, likely constructing the story in her head as she goes. Then her face flashes like she’s just discovered the meaning to life. Well, that or the sun got in her eye. “He looks so handsome in his beige suit and … and his cream-colored tie! Oh, it’s the cream of whipped vanilla bean, the stuff of clouds, of winter winds! Yes, I see it so clearly! He is here! He’s just arrived!”

Really, it would be wise to treat her politely. This poor woman’s sanity seems to be held on by a thread, and she hasn’t had a visitor in weeks. I have to wonder where the hell
my
sanity was when I thought interviewing a diviner was a good idea. Her kind are mocked, labeled as weirdos, scaremongers, fanatics of tired myths of zombies roaming the planet making midnight snacks of our blood.

But maybe I’m a weirdo, too.

“This is going into your research, isn’t it?” she asks suddenly, the glow in her eyes replaced with something else entirely, something darker. “What you’ve seen here? The haze of the spirit world? The contact we’ve made? The will of the Dead? Do tell me.”

I tap on my device:
She’s hungry in the eyes. She does not see the spirit of my father; she only sees the dollar signs.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Seen and read and witnessed by h-h-hundreds?”

“Yes.”

She nearly faints from the thought. I’m certain she imagines all of the business she will gain from the article I will write about her as part of my dissertation. Hundreds will read it. Thousands, maybe. Despite all the attention I’ve gotten for my important findings on the Histories of the second millennia, I know, however, that the masses are only truly interested in the one tiny section of my studies. The section titled:
The Beautiful Dead.

Maybe they all think I’m a fool, too. Maybe they are hungrily awaiting my words, just like this woman is, so they can laugh at me. The girl with the ridiculous dream. The girl who believes in tales told among children under their bed sheets to give one another a scare. The girl who believes that a society of Living Dead once existed.

“W-Where are you going?”

I’m at the door. “Thank you for your time, Dana.”

“B-But … But I haven’t even gazed into my crystal ball! Or, or, or turned over a card or two to surmise your future! Or given you a most significant message sent to me through the haze!—a message from your father!”

I close my device and pocket it, then lend the poor lady a look of disappointment. “I wanted to believe, Dana. Dana the Diviner …”

“You
are
a believer!” she sings. “You believe in the Living Dead, yes! The Precious Dead!”

“The Beautiful Dead,” I agree. “They, I believe in with all my soul. And I so wanted to believe you too, but my father cannot possibly send me a message from the spirit world, because my father is still alive.”

An unfortunate twitch suddenly occupies her left eye.

“You …” Her heart breaks before my eyes. “Y-You … You tricked me …?”

“Good day, Dana.”

The door is shut and I’m halfway down the road when I hear her call after me, crying out my name and cursing me for my deception. Yes, I deceived her, but with a good intention: I
so
wanted her to prove me wrong. I wanted her to know the truth through the haze of the “spirit world” she claimed to see. I wanted to believe, but …

“You evil little girl!” she screams.

It is the last thing I hear before turning the corner, her voice diffused to nothing but a vague noise at my back.

The shuttle arrives right on time, taking me up the long polished metal road lined with pretty houses toward the university, which looms with its tall spires and buildings that shine like long glass fingers in the angry glow of the rising sun.

At this early hour, I don’t imagine my roommate will be up, so I make a detour to the bakery near the math building to pick up a few fresh helpings for breakfast. The woman there is always sweet to me and asks about my progress in class, but today she is more subdued. Perhaps she senses my ire from the recent disappointment. I am not skilled at preventing inner emotions from warring across my face, regrettably. That’s a talent in which my roommate is a notable expert.

When I open the door to my campus condominium, the floor-to-ceiling glass window shows a breathtaking portraiture of the university burned orange and gold with the brilliant beams of the sun. To that magnificence, I huff and sourly gnash my finger into a button on the wall. Metal blinds flip shut, casting the room into darkness. I throw my coat over the couch, then drop the baked goods on the end table, certain the scent of them will rouse my sleeping roommate. Her door is closed and no light glows from underneath it. I pluck a croissant from the bag to answer the growing cry from my belly, then move slowly across the den to my bedroom. I open the door gently.

Lying on the bed is my secret roommate who we pretend does not live here. His name is John. We’re sort of lovers and sort of friends. It’s complicated. It’s against some rule that he, a non-student, lives here in a campus-issued condominium, but he’s yet to be caught because I’m smart and my roommate, loyal. Watching him sleep brings me a strange and relieving sense of joy. I can’t explain it other than to state the obvious: he’s beautiful when he sleeps. For all his brawn and ruggedness, he appears so innocent and gentle lying there in my bed cuddling one of my pillows and breathing softly.

But if I’m completely honest with myself, our little …
arrangement
, should I call it? … does not come without its due doubts. Is John just using me? Sure, he cleans the place up while I’m in class and sometimes he’ll even cook a meal in our kitchen for all of us (using the ingredients that
I
buy, no less), but is he only playing nice because we haven’t reported him to the university? Am I just a means by which he can stay close to the school that he so desperately wants to attend? If he ever gains acceptance to the Engineering program and the financial aid decide that he’s worthy enough to assist, will he simply go, leaving me in the dust of his dreams? Though Marianne is too polite to say so, I know the doubt has crossed both our minds.
He’s just for now
, I worry and fear most nights.
He’s biding his time. He’s tolerating you. He doesn’t love you.

Then again, when John draws his warm, beefy body against mine in the night and I feel his strong arms wrap tight around me, a thrill chases its way through my stomach and up my throat, stealing all of my breath. My heart dances and a stupid smile breaks across my face.

Maybe I should rather be asking: am
I
using
him?

My whole room smells like him now. I don’t mind at all. We share things. One time, we revisited the gardens, my favorite place on campus. The day John and I met, we sorta kinda stole a tiny insignificant rock from the gardens that was encased in special glass. The ugly thing now sits on my nightstand and watches over me as I sleep. It may look dull on the outside, but that rock carries within it a deep, precious sentiment.

Maybe someday, I won’t have to doubt that he’s just here for now. Maybe someday, John will say he loves me.

“Jen?”

I turn. Marianne is standing at her door, now open. Her puffy cheeks are glowing red.
Literally
. It’s a fashion trend that I’m not particularly taken by, but Marianne is, and she now has a vast collection of glow-in-the-dark makeup that she proudly wears, making her cheeks look like two enormous demon’s eyes that jiggle as she speaks.

“Marianne,” I whisper, stepping back out of my room and quietly shutting the door so as not to disturb John. “I brought croissants. Help yourself.”

“Oh, okay.” She stares at them, not helping herself.

I study her for a moment. “Something wrong?”

Before she answers, the device in my pocket vibrates with alarm. I pull it out and look at the new message.

“Oh, crap.” I toss the last bite of bread onto the table. “Professor. I’m being called to his office. The deadline for my dissertation is fast approaching. Algebra final’s coming up too, and I have this dumb essay I have to write for my Archaic Languages class. I wish the only thing I had to worry about was my Histories dissertation. Really, the school expects us undergrads to study so much all at once, while all we want to do is follow our
main
studies, and—” I look up at my roommate. “Sorry, I’m rambling. Are you okay? Did you want to tell me something?”

She takes my last bite and crams it into her mouth with the deftness of an assassin. The chewing movement of her glowing red cheeks combined with a queer look in her eye is all the answer I’ll get, apparently.

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

I don my black coat once again, then quickly check the condition of my face in the long mirror by the door. My white-blonde hair runs in tragic tangles to my waist, and my pale, slender face looks as if I haven’t touched a full meal in days.
I am the Living Dead
, I jest to myself.

“Need a little touch?” Marianne offers sympathetically. “Some eyes? A color for your cheeks, maybe?”

“Desperately as I wish to have mine glowing like pink light bulbs for my professor, I’ll pass.” I blow Mari a kiss. “If John wakes before I’m back, tell him the diviner was a total fake. It’ll crush him, but he was eager to know.”

“Oh … That’s too bad. I’d hoped she was real.”

Me too
, I might say, but instead I just give Mari a little wink before slipping out the door.

The morning air is as crisp as I’d left it just a moment ago. I move across campus with a swiftness, passing the Floating Fountain on the way, as well as the Trim Tree, which is visible from the window of my condominium. The Courtyard of Steel makes a tap with my every step as I cross it on my way to the Histories building where, at its topmost spire, Professor Praun awaits.