The Whispers (3 page)

The girl, not more than thirteen, sat on the floor of the living room, huddling her small body into the tight right angle where the fireplace hearth jutted out from the wall. Her hair hung in limp, dirty ropes, her shirt with some kind of writing on it, and jeans wet and filthy. She shivered, sobbing weakly. Her stare was blank. It looked like shock.

It was like it was with Alfie. Not a dream. Something else.

“Why didn’t I listen to her?” the girl asked. “I wasn’t even supposed to be out here.”

“Where are you?” Eloise asked.

The girl looked up, startled, as if she’d heard something. But she looked right through Eloise.

“Oh God,” the girl said. Then she started yelling, startling Eloise terribly. “Help! Please help me!”

Then Eloise was
there
with her—wherever it was—sitting in waist-deep, foul-smelling water. Eloise started shivering with wet and cold, her body aching all over as if she’d taken a terrible fall. The stone walls all around her were slick with algae. She waded over to the girl, who was not aware of Eloise at all. She wrapped herself around the child. She was as fragile as a skeleton, so tiny.

“Mommy,” the girl whimpered. “Mommy.”

“I’ll help you,” Eloise said. She had no idea why she said it. She didn’t know who this girl was or where she was. Eloise had no way of helping her. Still, what else was there to say?

Eloise awoke on the carpet of her living room, afternoon sun washing in through the sheer drapes, dappling on the floral chintz sofa that badly needed replacing. How long had she been lying there? Amanda was standing over her, her backpack slung over her shoulder.

“Mom?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

It took a moment to register, and then Eloise was whooping with delight. She leaped off the ground and took Amanda into her arms. What a joy to hear the sound of her voice! The rush of happiness and relief that washed through her felt like a drug. She’d experienced nothing but grief and anger and fear and pain for months. Eloise quickly forgot the strange dream she had. Well, not really. But she pushed it away. Hard.

“What’s the big deal?” said Amanda. She wore a shy and sad smile. “I just lost my words for a while.”

Eloise found that funny and terribly sad. There
were
no words for what had happened to them. None at all. She started to laugh, then cry. And then, finally, Amanda started to cry. Eloise led her over to the couch where Amanda cried and cried and cried, then took a break and cried some more. And Eloise sat, with her daughter sobbing in her lap. The sound of it was beautiful. Anything was better than silence. Eloise felt as if someone had opened a window and let the air in again. She could almost breathe.

•    •    •

Eloise had forced herself to buy a used Volkswagen with the car insurance money. There had also been a large life insurance payout, which gave them a little bit of time before she figured out what she was going to do to support them moving forward. Eloise had started driving again as soon as the doctor said it was okay, because she wanted Amanda to see her doing it. She needed her daughter to know that they were strong enough to get through this—even if Eloise wasn’t totally convinced of it herself. Fake it until you make it. It worked.

That afternoon of the dream and Amanda talking, they drove to the family therapist they’d been seeing for an emergency session. Amanda had been coming with Eloise all along, though naturally Eloise had done all the talking. Eloise and the doctor had agreed that it would be healing for Amanda to sit in on the sessions, even if she didn’t say anything right away.

“Why today?” Dr. Ben asked Amanda.

She offered a lazy teenager shrug. “My mom needs me,” said Amanda. “She’s been so strong. But I think it’s getting to her.”

“Why do you say that?”

Amanda told him that Eloise had started sleepwalking, that she had found her mother on the living room floor this afternoon.

“Is that true?” asked Dr. Ben.

Now it was Eloise’s turn to shrug. She really didn’t want to get into this. “I suppose I had some kind of dream today.” She did not say that there was a girl sitting in her living room. And that it didn’t seem like a dream at all. That she had this gnawing sense that there was something she was supposed to do but had no idea what. She wasn’t going to say any of that.

“It’s not the first time,” said Amanda.

“Isn’t it?” said Eloise, surprised.

“She walks around at night, talking to people who aren’t there.”

Eloise shook her head at the doctor to indicate that this was news to her.

“No awareness of this, Eloise?” he asked. He pushed his glasses back, wore a concerned frown.

“None,” she said.

He jotted down some notes. He didn’t seem especially concerned with the content of her dreams, just that she was dreaming and moving about.

“Sleepwalking can be a side effect of the medication you’re taking.”

She had been prescribed Ambien, but she’d never taken it. She told him as much.

“Well, dreams and nightmares are to be expected in cases like this. It’s your psyche’s way of working through the trauma you’ve experienced.”

She wanted to argue that what she’d experienced wasn’t precisely a dream. But she wasn’t going to open that can of worms, so she just nodded solemnly and said she understood. Which she did, because it seemed like Psychology 101. She promised that she’d bring it up again next session if the sleepwalking continued.

•    •    •

Eloise and Amanda had taken to watching dinner with the television on, something not allowed
before
. But the nighttime was the hardest, just after the sun set, when they would usually have all been home together—the girls doing their homework, Alfie grading papers, Eloise cooking dinner. It was always her favorite time of the day. Now she dreaded it.

But on Friday night, Amanda talked—she talked and talked. And Eloise listened as if her daughter’s voice were a song she loved but hadn’t heard in too long. Amanda talked about what she remembered about that day, how she’d been
so mad
at Emily who called her Marion the Librarian, and how she was
always
so mad at Emily who
always
seemed smarter and cooler, and more just
knowing
somehow. And how she thought that Emily was their father’s favorite and how she
hated
her sister a little for that. Amanda had often wished that she were an only child, like her friend Bethany.

“But now that she’s gone, it seems like the world can never be right again. I don’t even know who I am without being different from her,” said Amanda. “And I loved her. I didn’t even know it, but I did. And I’m sure I never told her, not once.”

“You didn’t have to tell her,” Eloise said. “Everyone in this family always knew that love was the first feeling, the foundation. Everything else was second and temporary. Emily knew you loved her.”

“How?” asked Amanda. “We only ever fought.”

“Did you know she loved you?”

Amanda thought about this, then nodded an uncertain yes.

“How?” asked Eloise.

“Because she let me sleep with her in her bed when I was scared at night.”

“And she knew you loved her because you
wanted
to sleep in her bed,” said Eloise. “And that’s what real love is. You don’t always have to say it, even though it’s nice if you do.”

And they talked until late, until Amanda fell asleep in Eloise’s bed. And later, after midnight, Eloise heard the sobbing again. She put on her robe and went downstairs to find the girl in the same spot.
Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy
, the girl just kept saying.
Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.
And Eloise ached to help her, her own uselessness a notch in her throat.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked of no one. And she could tell the girl didn’t even hear her. Eloise sat on the couch, helpless and confused. Then she went back upstairs to bed. The television was still on, casting its flickering blue light on the room.

And the girl was there again. But this time, she was bright and smiling, so pretty with golden hair and freckles and blue eyes. She was happy and healthy and well in the photograph being broadcast on the television screen.

Eloise sat on the bed, staring at the television but hardly believing her eyes. The girl was dressed in the uniform of the private school she attended. Her image alternated with images of her weeping parents conducting a news conference, begging for her safe return. Katie, thirteen years old, from a rural town outside of Philadelphia.

She’s in a well. If you don’t call now, it will be too late. She’s dehydrated and cold.
She won’t survive the night.
It wasn’t a voice—and it was a voice. It was a knowledge that leaked into her consciousness from the air. It had a particular sound—and it didn’t.

The broadcast must have aired earlier that evening, because now it was nearly midnight. There was a hotline number flashing in red on the screen.

She won’t survive the night.

Eloise went back downstairs, where the girl was no longer, and picked up the phone in the living room. What was she doing? This was absolutely insane. She hung the phone back up and stared at it, heart pounding. But
she knew
that the girl she had seen was the missing Katie from Philadelphia. And
she knew
that if she didn’t call, Katie was going to die. There was no way not to pick up the phone. It wasn’t allowed for her to do nothing.
She knew
that. She dialed the hotline number she had memorized from the screen.

“Do you have information about Katie?” It was the voice of a young woman. Eloise’s hands were shaking, and she didn’t know if she could trust her voice.

“I think I do.”

“Would you like to give your name?”

“No.” She said it too quickly. She must have sounded like a crazy person or someone with something to hide.

“Okay.”

“I had a vision.”

The shaking in her hands seemed to spread throughout her body. She was quaking, as if she were freezing from the inside out. Adrenaline pumped through her body, making her mouth dry.

“A vision.”

It was the first time she heard that particular tone—disbelief mixing with annoyance, mingling with hope. She would hear it many, many times after that.

She repeated what the voice had told her, that Katie was in a well, that she wasn’t far from home, and that she wouldn’t survive the night.

“I’m not asking you to believe me,” said Eloise. She didn’t quite believe it herself. “I’m just asking you to check.”

“Okay,” said the voice on the other line.

“She’s wearing jeans and sneakers.” Eloise had no awareness of this during her vision. Wasn’t even sure why she was saying it now. “And a long-sleeved shirt, green and white. It says ‘Daddy’s Girl’ on it.” Eloise didn’t even know how she knew it. The girl’s clothes had been so dirty and white, her shoes obscured by the water. But as she spoke, she was certain it was true.

There was only silence on the other end of the line. She heard then a muffled voice, someone speaking, a hand covering the phone.

“Hello?” There was a male voice now. “This is Detective Jameson. Can you repeat what you told the hotline operator?” Eloise did that.

“You have to hurry,” said Eloise. “Please.”

She could still hear him talking as she hung up the phone. She was too naïve to realize that they had, of course, traced her call. But when the phone was in the cradle, she felt a shuddering sense of relief. Only then did she realize the terrible low buzz of anxiety she’d been suffering. The shaking subsided; she felt almost giddy. Then she looked up to see Amanda standing in the arch that connected the hall to the living room.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Is that what happened today? Is that why you were lying on the floor this afternoon?”

Amanda, still wearing Emily’s nightshirt, came to sit beside her mother on the couch.

“I think so,” said Eloise. “I needed to call. I know that much.”

Amanda considered her mother in that grave way she had. “What if you’ve lost your mind? What if you’re wrong?”

“What if I’m right?” Eloise asked.

The answer to that question was a lot scarier. This was acknowledged between them without words.

They sat in the quiet dark. If Emily and Alfie were there, they’d both be chattering and grilling her about the details. They would want to know everything. There would be no quiet, knowing acceptance of the bizarre. Both of them would be skeptical, playing devil’s advocate. But they weren’t here. And somehow Eloise knew that if they had been, none of this would ever have happened.

“It’s not fair,” said Amanda.

Eloise didn’t know if Amanda meant what had happened to them, or what had happened to Katie, or what was happening to Eloise now. She suspected that the girl meant all of it. And she was right.

“No,” Eloise said. She dropped an arm around Amanda and squeezed. “Life is not fair. We just do our best. Okay? We have each other.”

“For now,” Amanda said. The girl was too smart to be mollycoddled.

But Eloise said anyway, “Forever. We’ll be together forever. All of us.”

Even though she didn’t know if that was true, that’s what she said. She knew that it was just as Alfie had said. They were promised nothing. Now was the only gift anyone was guaranteed to receive. Certainly, they’d had that lesson driven home for them.

In the kitchen the next morning, they turned on the television to see the news coverage of Katie being lifted from the well, her parents running to her. And Eloise felt joy, pure joy. A thing she’d been sure she would never feel again. And she felt this until Amanda turned to her.

“Is that why he took them?”

“Who?” Eloise asked. “Took who?”

Amanda’s face screwed up a little. “Is this why God took Emily and Daddy?”

“Amanda—” She didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t you think that’s why?” the girl said, urgent, eyes filling. “Maybe it’s them telling you what they see. You know—from the other side? Do you think, Mom? Maybe?”

“I-I don’t know, honey,” Eloise stammered. “I don’t even understand yet what happened.”