Voices (Whisper Trilogy Book 3) (25 page)

“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 file 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