Voices (Whisper Trilogy Book 3) (22 page)

Isaac involuntarily touched the two inch line on his throat. “A bad man did it.”

“That’s right, he did. Do you remember that night?”

Isaac shrugged. “Not much. Sometimes I remember things, but they always go away when I wake up.”

“What do you remember?”

“Being scared, then it was bright and I didn’t feel scared anymore.” He shuffled and shrugged again. “That’s all really.”

“The man who chased you today, the one who came to your house. He did that. Or at least he tried to.”

“You mean he’s not from my dream?”

“No, honey. He’s real. He tried to hurt you. Don’t you remember?”

Isaac shook his head, then changed his mind and nodded. “I remember a little.”

“Okay, that’s fine. You see, honey, I know your mother, or at least I knew her for a while. She told me that something happened to you that night. She never explained it, but said it was something to do with your father.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember any of that stuff,” Isaac mumbled.

“See Isaac, ever since that night, I’ve been determined to find out what happened. I wanted to find a way to stop it. I think now I know. And I need you to help me. How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know. I guess so,” he said, his eyes drifting to the jar of dirt.

Emma picked it up. “You want to know what this is, don’t you?”

Isaac nodded.

“This is dirt taken from the bad place.”

“Why did you want dirt from there?”

“I wanted to have it tested, looking for anything that might help tell us why the bad place is the way it is.”

“What did you find?”

“Not as much as I wanted to. The soil’s normal. No imbalances. No foreign bodies. There’s no reason why plant life shouldn’t grow there, and yet, nothing does. That entire patch of earth is a dead-zone.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Sorry,” she said, setting the jar back on the table. “What I’m saying is, the tests on the dirt said there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just normal soil.”

“So why did you keep it?”

“I’m getting to that,” she replied with the faintest glimmer of a smile. “Because I had no answers from the clearing, I started to look into other places that might share similar traits, other bad places that might be the same. One of them was a forest in Japan. Another was in Romania. The point is, these things are more widespread than people think.”

Isaac looked at the jar of dirt, then back to Emma.

“I’m getting to the dirt, just give me a second.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

She hesitated, knowing that the next thing she had to say couldn’t be watered down because of Isaacs’s age. He needed to know the information and she decided to deliver it to him straight.

“My research found that across all the sites where genuinely weird things happen, there was one common theme. One link between them.”

“The dirt?”

“Death.”

“Oh…” Isaac said, folding his hands on his lap.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Isaac. Those voices in your head; the ones that talk to you.”

He nodded, doing all he could to avoid eye contact.

“It’s okay. You can talk about it to me.”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said, the helplessness in his voice making her feel a tremendous sorrow for him.

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t, you don’t know anything.”

“I hear them too,” she said softly. Taking a deep breath, she composed herself. “I hear them all the time. Pretending to be my friends. My
dead
friends. Pretending to be Carrie. Pretending to be Scott and Cody, and now Alex. Trust me, I know what it’s like.”

“What do we need to do?” he asked.

“Pick up the jar.”

“Why?”

“Just pick it up,” Emma said.

It took a tremendous effort for him to reach out and pick up the jar. All of his senses were alive as he rotated it in his hands, looking at the dark brown earth inside.

“Remember where I told you that had come from?”

“The bad place. I know.”

“Open it.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Isaac put his hand on the lid, then paused, and held the jar out to Emma. “You do it.”

“I can’t,” she said. “This is your task to do. You need to understand for yourself.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Please, just open it.”

Isaac did as he was asked and snapped the lid open. He felt it almost immediately, the oozing sick feeling. In the back of his mind he could sense his slumbering passenger begin to rouse.

“I don’t like it. I feel sick.”

“It’s normal. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Reach into the jar and touch the dirt.”

“I don’t want to. It reminds me of the bad man.”

“You have to. I need you to do this so I can show you what needs to happen.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“No, you have to do it.”

Isaac held the jar close to him, peering inside. Even though there was only a small amount of dirt in it, he could feel the same skin-crawling sensation which had become all too familiar. With a tremendous effort, he reached into the jar, his fingertips hovering just above the earth. He didn’t want to touch it, imagining it seeping into his skin, getting under his fingernails, becoming impossible to clean off. He saw microscopic creatures, born from whatever darkness dwelled at the clearing, getting into his body, growing and spreading.

“Isaac, do it,” Emma said, watching him intently.

He looked at her, trying to decide if she could be trusted, or if he was being silly. After all, it was just dirt. Just ordinary dirt. He inched his fingertips closer, his nostrils filled with that earthy stench, guts tight and churning. He had never been more afraid. For whatever reason, the jar and the thought of touching its contents filled him with a sense of dread, the likes of which he had never experienced before.

It’s only dirt.

It’s only dirt.

It’s only dirt.

Despite his inner voice’s assurances, he couldn’t bring himself to move. He was frozen there, fingertips a few inches above the dirt, the nausea inducing feeling coming from within the glass.

“Do you promise it’s safe?”

“Of course I do. Touch it.”

Isaac took a deep breath, and plunged his hand into the earth. Warm air pushed out of the jar as some of the topsoil was displaced. The jar vibrated, and as Isaac watched in awe, the dark feeling faded. His terror seemed distant and silly. Staring wide-eyed at Emma, he moved his hand around inside the jar. No fear. No sense of foreboding. No icy tightness of the gut.

“What happened?”

“You purged it.”

“What does that mean?”

“You took the bad out of it. It’s just dirt now.”

“How?”

“You can take your hand out now,” she said gently.

Isaac did as he was told, putting the jar on the table and wiping his hands on his jeans.

“There’s a woman, someone I know. A spiritualist. She’s from a long line of her kind. My grandmother went to her family to find a way to protect Hope House just before your mother and father moved in.”

“Is she here?”

“No, but you’ll meet her soon enough. In fact, she insisted on it. For now though, I want to show you something. Do you feel up to walking? Not far, just outside.”

“Yeah, no problem. My neck is a little sore, but I’m okay.”

“Good, come on.”

Isaac followed Emma down a narrow hallway, one wall recessed and lined with books, and through the kitchen. Truman was sitting at the table, sipping from a mug of coffee and finishing off the remains of a bacon sandwich.

Emma led Isaac through a rear door to a small yard outside. Sunlight warmed half of the yard, the rear masked in the shadow of the wall surrounding it. Wooden shelves lined the perimeter and a white exterior gate stood to the left, leading out into the street.

“Over here.”

Isaac took his eyes from the street and joined Emma at the back wall.

On the shelves, evenly spaced, were two jars, identical to the one he had just placed his hand in. He inspected them, and realized what Emma was trying to show him.

“These are yours and his, aren’t they?” he said, looking at her.

“Yes. This is how we know. That one is mine.”

The flower inside was vibrant; a purple rose, snaking out of the jar in its quest to reach sunlight.

“That one belongs to Truman,” she added, pointing to the second jar, the plant inside thick and full, the flower blood red with yellow at the base.

“Will mine be the same?”

“Yes. We can plant in it now. The dirt is good. Purified.”

“Are you saying we just have to touch the dirt and we can get rid of the bad things?”

Emma laughed, and Isaac smiled. “I wish it were that easy. These soil samples all came from the clearing, but they have been blessed by the woman I was telling you about earlier.”

“Blessed?”

“Well, maybe blessed is the wrong word. Whatever she does to cleanse the earth, she did to these jars.”

“How does she do it?”

“I don’t know. She spends time with them, whispering to the dirt, writing things down. It’s incredible to see. The problem is, she wasn’t born in that place. She isn’t tied to it. It needs someone directly involved to finish the purification.”

“And that’s where we come in?”

Emma nodded.

“Doing something like this to a jar of dirt is one thing. Going to that place and performing it on that scale is completely something else.”

“I feel sick,” Isaac mumbled as he tried to take it all in.

“I’m sorry. It was never going to be an easy thing to tell you. All I can say is that you are safe here for now. You’re welcome to stay until we’ve done what we need to do.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It has to,” Emma said, staring at the jars. “It just has to.”

CHAPTER 27

Petrov had been staring at the card Kimmel gave him, wondering if he should make the call and, if he did, what he would say. He sat in his car, staring at his phone, the number already punched in. His thumb hovered over the dial button but he couldn’t bring himself to press it. The fact was, he didn’t want to admit to Kimmel or anyone else that he was running out of ideas. He fully expected to have found Marshall by now, and certainly hadn’t expected the extra complication of the missing Samson kid and the people who were, for whatever reason, helping him. Although he wasn’t initially convinced about Kimmel, it seemed that for better or worse, he was the closest thing they had to an ally.

He stared at the phone number again, checking that it corresponded to the number on the phone display.

He probably won’t answer anyway
, he thought, then on the heels of that,
why don’t you call him then you dumb shit?

He snorted, wondering why he felt so uncertain, then pressed the dial button and waited to see if the line would connect, simultaneously wondering if he would leave a message if the option was given. The phone was answered on the third ring.

“Hello, Detective Petrov,” Kimmel’s smooth voice answered. “I wondered when you might call.”

“How did you know it would be me?”

“Nobody else has this number.”

“I’m privileged.”

“Yes you are. I take it this is about Henry Marshall?”

Petrov hesitated, his lips dry. He looked in the rear-view mirror, and hating the uncertainty he saw there, averted his gaze. “Yeah, it is.”

“Did you pull your people from Oakwell like I suggested?”

“I had to. We’re spread thin on this. With the roadblocks and the crime scenes, I can’t afford to have them standing around.”

A few seconds of silence followed, and Petrov was about to ask if Kimmel had heard him when the former general replied. “He’ll be heading there now. Might even be there already.”

“I don’t think so. We have men out looking for him. I doubt he could slip by us again.”

“He will,” Kimmel said.

“How can you be so sure? What’s there for him?”

“It’s his home. And they will be calling to him, Detective. Make no mistake.”

“I already told you. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“No, I know you don’t. Just give me a second, Detective. Hold the line if you would.”

Petrov waited, listening to the phone click as Kimmel set it down. He heard the distant rustle of paper then Kimmel returned. “I can be there before nightfall. Pick me up at the park where we met last time, will you?”

“You’re coming up here?” Petrov said.

“Of course. I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t believe. And if you don’t have me with you, there’s a good chance you might become a victim of this too.”

“It sounds like you’re trying to spook me, Kimmel.”

“Not at all. I’m trying to help you. I’ll call you back on this number when I’m close to the park.”

“What then?” Petrov asked, genuinely curious.

“Then we go to Oakwell and find your escapee, Detective.”

“And what if he doesn’t come without a fight?”

Another pause, Kimmel’s breathing the only indication he was still there.