Voices (Whisper Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

“I’ll call when I’m close,” Kimmel said sharply, then disconnected.

Petrov tossed Kimmel’s card and his phone onto the passenger seat and leaned his head back against the headrest. Somehow, despite having every hope of clearing up some of the confusion, he had managed to make more for himself.

CHAPTER 28

Emma had driven them to a quiet, quaint neighborhood with nice houses with nice gardens, and nice people who no doubt had nice jobs to pay for their nice cars and nice furnishings. The house on Sycamore Street was American suburbia at its finest. They pulled up outside number seven. A picket-fenced, white-walled home with trimmed lawn, pruned rose bushes and a 1960’s bottle green Mercedes parked in the driveway. Emma, Truman and Isaac climbed out of the car.

“This is it,” she said as she stuffed the car keys into her bag. “This is where Mrs. Alma lives.”

She led them through the gate and up to the house. Next door, the old woman at number five scowled at them as she raked leaves from her garden, her huge Alsatian panting on the doorstep. Isaac nodded, but she ignored him, watching the three of them with cold indifference.

The lady who answered the door was skinny and dour looking with short blonde hair and cold blue eyes. Once, she might have been good looking, but the years had been unkind, and the deep network of lines set into her skin meant that she could quite easily be an old sixty or young seventy-something.

“Come in,” she said, her voice the quiet mumble of someone lacking confidence.

She kept her gaze away from them, either on the ground or over their shoulders. Emma led them into the sitting room as Mrs. Alma closed the door.

“Take a seat,” she mumbled again, taking her own place in an ugly red floral chair. The others sat on the sofa opposite her, Isaac confused and a little afraid, Truman and Emma tense and respectful.

Mrs. Alma offered them no welcome. No drinks or opening conversation. Instead, she lit a cigarette, long bony fingers working with well-practiced ease. When it was done, she inhaled, closed her eyes, then on the outward breath, turned to face them, making eye contact with Emma.

“I wondered when you would bring him. Does he understand the situation?”

“I’ve explained it to him,” Emma said.

Mrs. Alma looked at Isaac, forgetting for a moment that there was anyone else in the room. He looked back, afraid and uncertain.

“The world beyond ours is invisible to those who don’t want to see. My question to you, boy, is what will it take to make you believe?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your father is here with us.”

She said it in such a conversational way it took him a second or two to understand what she meant. There was no channeling, no incantation. Just the words.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“He’s joined us from the light. He’s come to see you. He said he’ll always be watching. He wishes he could protect you from those who wish you harm.”

“The bad man,” he said.

She nodded. This time she did close her eyes, inhaling deeply, cigarette hanging from her limp fingers.

“I hear those who speak to you. The ones who want to worm their way into your mind. There’s one in particular. A dark one. He wants you to hurt yourself. He wants you to do bad things. Your father, he isn’t strong enough to protect you anymore. His light grows dim as the darkness becomes deeper.”

“I see him. Sometimes when I’m asleep, sometimes when I’m awake.”

“Eto is his name. Your father battles him in the other world. That’s why you are so confused. They are both there in your head. Light against dark.”

“I don’t understand why, though.”

“You are the key. The key to bringing their torment to an end. The only child conceived on those lands. Some long for freedom, the innocent souls trapped there. Others will do anything to remain in the space between worlds. Eto and his kin have grown bitter and resentful of humanity. They are afraid of you, boy.”

“I’m scared.”

“But you will go there,” the woman said without hesitation. “They want you to go there. They want you to fear them
.
This is what feeds them, and they will stop at nothing to harm you.”

“They can’t hurt me. They’re just voices,” Isaac said, trying to convince himself.

“Words can sometimes be a more powerful weapon than you think. This has been proved on countless occasions during the history of that place. Besides, they have a human vessel to do their work for them. Through him they will get to you. They fear that which fears them. This is how they will be defeated. It will take all of you. You will all have to decide if fear or light will consume you. This is how it is. This cannot be undone.”

She blinked, the glassy sheen in her eyes lifting. Isaac exhaled, unaware he had even been holding his breath. Mrs. Alma lifted the cigarette to her mouth, flicking the long snake of ash from its tip into an ashtray, her hand trembling.

“There is a place you must go. A secret place. I do not know where it is, but you can find out.”

“How?” Isaac asked.

“You allow them access to your mind.”

“No, you can’t do that to him,” Emma blurted.

Mrs. Alma silenced her with a glare, then turned back to Isaac.

“Through me you will have protection. If you are willing to let Eto in, you can read him as he reads you. You will be able to learn of the source. You will learn where you have to go to end them.”

“I don’t want to. I’m scared,” Isaac said, chewing his thumbnail.

“It doesn’t matter. This is the only way.”

“Is it safe?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she took a last drag on her cigarette and mashed it out in the ashtray.

“I don’t know. They are powerful, and much more malevolent than anything I have dealt with before. This Eto, his light is cold. Unpredictable. By channeling through me, I can dilute his strength, for a while at least. The rest is up to you.”

“Can he… harm me?”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “He can project through me, but he can’t cause you physical harm.”

“So he can’t hurt me?” Isaac said, feeling a touch more positive.

“Not in the sense you’re thinking of,” Mrs. Alma said as she tapped a spindly finger to her temple. “In there, that’s where they will get you. They’ll make you do things. They’ll make the most frighteningly insane decisions seem like the most sensible choices in the world. You need to be sharp. You need to beware.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Isaac, you don’t have to. This is insane,” Emma said, pleading with Mrs. Alma.

“Do you want to fix this or not?” she replied, speaking to Isaac rather than Emma. “You come to me for help, and this is what I offer. This is the only way. The land can’t be purified without locating the source. You are the only one who can find it.”

“Mrs. Alma,” Emma said, leaning forward on her seat. “Everyone I’ve ever known has been changed by those things permanently. I’ve seen what happens when you let them in. Don’t do this to him, he’s just a boy.”

“Alex says you should trust what I do. He says what he did to himself was his choice, and that you should leave the boy to make his.”

Emma inhaled sharply, her mind going blank at the words Mrs.Alma had uttered.

“Its fine, I want to do it,” Isaac said, bravado overcoming sense.

Mrs. Alma turned toward him, folding her arthritic hands in her lap. “There are no guarantees. It all depends on whether he wants to come. I can’t force him, only channel him if he chooses to make himself known.”

“He’ll come. He’s been waiting a long time to speak to me,” Isaac said, agitated with a nervous excitement.

Mrs. Alma looked at him, and for the first time appeared uncomfortable.

“Very well. Let us begin.”

Truman looked around the sun-bathed room. “Do you want me to close the curtains or somethin’? Set the mood?”

Mrs. Alma shook her head. “No. There can never be enough light if I’m to channel something so inherently dark. We will need the sun.”

Truman nodded and glanced at Emma, who was watching Isaac.

“We’ll see if he will come.” Mrs. Alma managed a half smile. “The rest will play out as it will.”

She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Isaac waited, hovering somewhere between excitement and fear. Without warning, Mrs. Alma’s eyes flicked open. In that instant, Isaac was grateful for the sunlight streaming through the windows, because the thing in the chair, which glared at them as if from behind a semi-transparent human mask, was no longer Mrs. Alma. The entire room took on a new atmosphere; a dark, unwelcoming feeling, impossible to ignore. Emma and Truman felt it too, and shrank back against their seats. The thing in the chair twitched and sneered.

“What do you want with me? Why won’t you leave me alone?” Isaac asked, surprised at how calm his voice was.

The thing in the chair screwed up its Mrs. Alma mask features, and flexed its gnarled hands. It began to speak, each word hissed or spat in a language unspoken for centuries. Somehow, Isaac understood everything, its words automatically translated into English in his head.

“Death will come to you. There is no escape. Your father burns and screams for your blood. Death finds all eventually. Soon it will find your mother. Soon it will take you and your friends. The souls of the dead curse you, boy. Only when you join us will they be free. Only when you sacrifice yourself will all be saved. Blood will spill and be on your hands. Let me inside and I shall make it quick and painless. Let me help you do what must be done.”

“Isaac…” Emma said, unable to finish her sentence before the thing in the chair snapped its head toward her.

“Shut up, cunt,” it hissed in broken English, flashing a yellow grin.

Emma took a sharp breath and shrank against Truman as Mrs. Alma turned back toward Isaac and reverted to its own language. “Do you understand you cannot escape us? Don’t you realize death comes to all eventually? This way is easier. This way is better. Give yourself to us and we will spare your friends. If you do not, then they will suffer the consequences.”

“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Isaac said. Or maybe he thought it. Either way, the thing in the chair heard and understood. It threw its head back and laughed a wet, choking gasp. Still it twitched and flexed its hands and fingers in what looked like some kind of constant state of seizure.

“There is no lie you can tell that I cannot see through. I know you, boy. I know everything you feel, everything you think.”

“Where is the source?” Isaac asked.

Mrs. Alma said nothing. She glared and twitched, drool spilling out of her mouth and onto her chin.

“Tell me where it is!” Isaac screamed.

Mrs. Alma bucked in her chair, but didn’t respond. She stared at Isaac with a wet grin. Isaac looked inward to the thing that, for as long as he could remember, had been trying to get inside his head. Something that now had a name.

Eto.

Instead of following the instinct to repel them, which had been with him for as long as he could remember, he opened his defenses, drawing them into his head, letting them roam among his secrets. Mrs. Alma lurched, her flat chest thrusting outward, gnarled hands gripping onto her chair. She kicked out a leg, losing a slipper in the process. She screamed, a deep growling baritone, which had no place in such a slender woman. Isaac also screamed as those awful things were left to run amok in his mind, filling it with the extent of their knowledge. They were more than just a series of images, they were snapshots of people. How they lived, how they loved. How they died. Even the Gogoku’s innermost secrets were shown to him. Everything from how they became, to how they descended into madness and turned to the darkness which exists in Oakwell. Such an overload of information would have been too much for anyone to take. For a ten year old boy like Isaac, there was never any chance. Filled with more information than he could process, Isaac lurched out of his chair and let out a scream from the deepest recesses of his stomach. Eyes screwed closed, veins bulged from his neck. He flexed his hands into claws, grasping at things only he could see.

“You will die like those who came before. I have already shown you this.” Mrs. Alma said, her voice like fire and brimstone, the language understood only by Isaac.

“No. I won’t let you,” Isaac said, horrified to hear his response in the same tongue as the thing in the chair.

Mrs. Alma’s eyes rolled back into her head and she gritted her teeth, breathing in snorts. The icy discomfort in the room built to incredible proportions, then just as it seemed something might happen, it faded away. In her chair, Mrs. Alma groaned as her body relaxed. Exhausted and covered in sweat, her eyes would barely open. Isaac froze, mouth open, hands flexed. Time appeared to stand still. Isaac looked to Emma. She saw the change in him and knew that things would never be the same again. As she watched, blood started to drip out of his nose.

“He’s gone,” Isaac whispered, then collapsed, his head slamming off the floor.

Emma scrambled to him, turning him over. He was unresponsive. Eyes closed.

“Is he alive? Is he breathing?”