Whisper, Page 8

  “Still, it’s my pub, and I don’t want my customers having to see that. Please, let me clear these glasses and get you another drink, on the house of course.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Steve said.

  “I want to. It’s not the welcome we wanted to give you. Please, accept my apologies.”

  He began to gather the plethora of empty glasses and bottles when Melody reached out and put a hand on his arm.

  “The things that she said… what did she mean?”

  “Nothing,” Will said, smiling warmly and picking up more glasses, “just the drunken ramblings of a crazy old fool. Forget about her.”

  With arms laden with more glasses than Steve thought humanly possible to carry, Will straightened and grinned again.

  “Just sit tight, I’ll bring your drinks over straight away.”

  “Thanks,” Melody said absently as she leaned back in her seat.

  “He’s a nice guy. Good of him to give us free drinks, too,” Steve said, offering a warm smile to Melody, who managed to flash one back despite the icy feeling in her gut.

  She had seen it, the quick glance between Will and Steve when she’d questioned Mrs. Briggs’s ramblings. A furtive, knowing glance which confirmed that the two of them knew something she didn’t. She absently spun her silver wedding ring around on her finger. For whatever reason, her husband had chosen to hide whatever had been said to him by a man he had only just met, and that alone disturbed her immensely. She wouldn’t make a fuss of it, however; she decided to be quite the opposite, and would act as if all was well, but one thing was for certain. She was determined to find out what was going on.

  14. THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

  HE KNEW HE WAS dreaming again. The woods were cast in the milky, ethereal glow he’d become accustomed to during his non-waking hours. It was always the same. The sky was cloudless, the moon full and bright, and the shadows deep and opaque. Silence hung as thickly and heavily as the ground mist clinging clammily to his ankles as he walked the dirt path snaking through the woods.

  He no longer ran in his dreams, as he knew it made no difference. He would always arrive at the same time, and would invariably be too late to stop Melody’s death. Suddenly, it was upon him—the giant, gnarled tree where his dreams came to an end. And there as always was Melody, standing atop the branch, a noose around her neck, eyes staring vacantly ahead. He heard himself shout to her, expecting his cries to be unheard as they always were just before she stepped off the edge of the branch, but this time, she blinked, and looked at him, and he in turn grew afraid for what would happen now that the normal routine had changed.

  He could see that she was crying, and as he watched, a wispy, translucent figure appeared beside her. It was a man, African-American and wearing tattered trouser bottoms. He was so painfully thin that he resembled the classic horror movie ghoul. The milky figure whispered in Melody’s ear, and Steve watched in horror as she listened, nodding in places. As he watched, other figures appeared, men, women, even children, surrounding Melody on her high perch, moving through each other as they took turns to whisper at her. Steve had seen enough, and began to climb, pulling himself up the rough, cold trunk. He recalled the skills he’d had as a boy, willing the dexterity to be as nimble as it had been then as he climbed, ignoring the vertigo-induced dizziness as he moved ever closer to his wife. The branch where she perched was just ahead and, as he looked at her, pale and fragile in the moonlight, he saw that she was once again alone: her ghostly visitors had disappeared back into the ether.

  As he clambered onto the branch, he was astounded at how incredibly vivid the dream was. He could feel everything in minute detail, a slight breeze ruffling his hair, the thick, heavy pounding of his heart racing in his chest, and even the stinging pain in his palms from the effort of climbing.

  “Melody!” he said, his words coming out listlessly as she looked towards him.

  “I don’t want to do it Steve, but they say I have to.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, just stay there; I’m coming to get you.”

  He said the words with conviction, but his own abject terror and the fear of heights he’d had since childhood left him unable to release his grip on the safety of the tree trunk. He willed himself to do it, but it was taking too much time, and he knew he would be too late. Inching across the sturdy bough, he somehow kept his eyes fixed ahead, ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach every time the tree rocked and swayed. She was close now—he could smell the perfume that he’d bought her for her birthday as the breeze blew around them both.

  His eyes drifted to the noose and to her thin, fragile neck. He reached out, their fingertips touched, but then he was yanked backwards by painful fingers that dug deep into his shoulder. Screaming in rage he spun around to face his attacker, ignoring the precarious drop below him. He came face to face with himself, his mirror image naked and its face twisted into an ugly, glaring grimace. He whirled back to face Melody, but she wasn’t alone. Donovan stood beside her, naked and aroused and, unlike the milky ghosts, was quite solid and real. Steve watched as he put a hand around her shoulder, cupping one of her petite breasts in his hand.

  And lovely tits!

  Steve could do no more than watch as Donovan leaned close to whisper unheard words in her ear, keeping one eye on Steve as he did so.

  “They have a message for you,” she said softly. “They said to tell you they can see you.”

  It was all she said before she stepped off the edge. Steve’s screams were lost in the gibbering cackles of Donovan and his own grimacing alter-ego.

  There were no screams when he snapped awake, no cold sweats or panic, only confusion, as he was not in his bed. He was standing by the kitchen window staring out at the black tops of the trees swaying in the darkness.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ he asked the empty room, suspecting that it may have been a while, as his back and legs ached, and his throat was dry. His confusion increased as he looked to the floor. His bare feet were filthy and scratched and, as he held his shaking hands up to his face, he could see that they too were covered in scratches and matted with dirt. He felt sick, and hurried to the mirror above the fireplace, praying that he wouldn’t see what he knew would be there.

  The bruises formed a perfect circle, and were shaped like fingertips on his collarbone. Ice replaced his blood, and he felt its chilly fingers brushing his spine with cold fingers. His dream came back to him in all-too-stark clarity. He glanced at the clock on the mantle, and saw that it was just after five in the morning. Melody probably wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours, and he made the difficult decision to keep this latest turn of events from her. He didn’t want to shatter the illusion of this being the perfect place for them to live and grow old in.

  He thought he knew a way.

  He washed, dressed and made himself a coffee, and although he tried to convince himself otherwise, was still shaken as he sat at the kitchen table and booted up the laptop. He took a sip of the drink as he waited for the computer to rattle into life, then clicked on the search engine icon. Fingers poised over the keys, he hesitated. There were many questions that he needed answers to, and he knew that the best way would be to form some kind of order.

  He keyed in ‘haunted houses’ and waited for the computer to spit back the results. The six million plus hits told him that he would need to reduce his parameters slightly, or face wading through pages of irrelevant bullshit. He searched instead for ‘genuine paranormal evidence’ and cycled through a few pages detailing reports of poltergeists, demonic possessions and all things in between.

  The magnitude of the task ahead dawned on him, as each link he clicked seemed to lead to dozens of other potential branches of investigation. Soon enough, the notepad by the computer was filled with hand-scrawled notes, and he felt no further along than when he’d started.

  He leaned away from the computer, drained his coffee and rubbed his eyes. Outside the wind shook the house. He gla
nced out the window, but was unable to see anything. He got that horrible, skin-crawling feeling of being watched again, and took a peek over his shoulder towards the sitting room, still shrouded in darkness. For a split second, he thought he saw a movement. He stared down the hallway, forcing his eyes to penetrate the gloom, finally telling himself that he was being stupid, although he wasn’t convinced enough to actually go and take a look. With some effort, he turned his back on the darkened passageway and his attention to the computer screen. He paused, then typed in ‘dreams causing physical pain’, and pushed the search button.

  He was about to give up when he stumbled on an entry on the third page. He clicked through to the website that, although sloppy in construction, had some interesting information about a young girl who’d experienced cuts, scratches and bruises from her dreams. He read the entry, the similarity to his own situation disturbing.

  Laura exhibited signs of bruising and scratches from her dreams, which were at first thought to have been self-inflicted during sleep. Laura, who claimed she could never recall her dreams in any great detail, was so terrified by her ordeal that she began to suffer from bouts of insomnia, caused not by the inability to sleep, but by unwillingness to risk being hurt.

  Her parents convinced her to undergo evaluation at a dream clinic, which recorded and observed her sleep patterns for three consecutive nights. The first two nights passed without incident, but on the third evening, Laura experienced quite a violent nightmare and, to the surprise of the doctors present, woke with bruises on her upper arms which resembled a human hand.

  Any suggestion that she had done them herself was dispelled, as the bruises, on her right arm, clearly showed finger and thumb patterns from a right hand, meaning that it would have been impossible for her to self-inflict the injury. Although unresolved, Laura’s nightmares stopped as immediately as they began, and although the suggestion of whatever Laura had dreamt about causing her pain, the experts at the dream clinic suggested that it was possible, however unlikely, that the dreams could, if vivid enough, trick the brain into thinking that physical pain had been caused, and as a result show evidence of this on the body.

  Steve rubbed the bruises under his shirt absently as he read then, looking for something a little more specific, returned to his search engine and typed his next query.

  ‘Genuine hauntings’ brought up too many results, so he went back and refined his search to ‘Hope House haunting, Oakwell.” He pressed search and waited, but there was nothing related to their house. One link did catch his eye though, and he clicked through to the article.

  Although the physical presence of spirits cannot always be detected, it is possible to record them in audio format. EVP - or electronic voice phenomena - is a mysterious event in which human-sounding voices from an unknown source are heard on recording tape, in radio station noise and other electronic media. Most often, EVPs have been captured on audiotape. The mysterious voices are not heard at the time of recording; it is only when the tape is played back that they are heard. Sometimes amplification and noise filtering is required to hear them clearly. Some EVP is more easily heard and understood than others. And they vary in gender (men and women), age (women and children), tone and emotion. They usually speak in single-words, phrases or short sentences. Sometimes they are just grunts, groans, growling or other vocal noises. EVP has been recorded speaking in various languages.

  Steve searched out a few samples which were linked at the bottom of the page, and although many were indistinct, there were a few which were genuinely creepy in their clarity. He had the start of an idea, one which might help him to find out what was happening in their house, but he needed a few things before he could proceed. There was one more link that interested him:

  Every culture over all time periods possess stories of the spirits that roam the earth. This constant inhuman civilization leaves no room for doubt on the presence of spirits of the dead coming back to the human plane as an ethereal existence. According to the stories, folklore, and witness testimonies, the world is full of spirits. Their method of interacting with the human world differs from spirit to spirit as well as their intentions, however. Some are evil. Some are benign. Some are indifferent. The manifestation of a spirit who wishes to do harm to the living or is intentionally being a bother to living humans does happen from time to time. At the worst it can lead to outrageous fear and trouble, or at the least annoyance to the humans the spirit chooses to haunt. Here is a list on how to get rid of any spirits that you wish to leave you alone.

  He skimmed down the list, dismissing the more unlikely entries such as holy water and healing herbs, and his attention was grabbed by an entry labelled ‘Banishing Ritual’. He read on:

  The idea of a banishing ritual is seen throughout history and across the globe. Any culture that has a strong belief in malicious spirits and their ability to interact and affect the living has a type of banishing ritual. However, modern Western culture has designated most banishing rituals as a pagan custom. Spells that banish can vary greatly even from person to person. Yet, they can be relatively simple. The easiest way is to write down the problem on a piece of paper, being as concise and specific as possible. After focusing deeply on the problem written on the paper, you must burn it. Most people prefer to burn using a white candle or by lighting the paper and placing it in a white bowl to allow it to burn in a controlled setting.

  It seemed plausible, and definitely something worth considering if his suspicions about the house proved correct. He yawned and stretched, and mused on the irony that now that it was almost morning, his inability to sleep had left him, and he wished he could lie down for a few hours. But as he glanced out of the kitchen window, the first pinkish hues of the new day were just starting to creep over the horizon, and knowing that Melody would soon be awake, wanted to make an early start and get the things he needed before she asked too many questions. He shut down the laptop, hid his notes in one of the kitchen drawers and prepared to leave the house.

  15. MESSAGES

  STEVE WAS GONE WHEN Melody woke up. He had left a note in the kitchen saying that he was heading into town to pick up a few things, and that he would be back as soon as he could. It was the first time she’d been in the house by herself since they’d moved in, and following her obligatory morning routine, she was now sitting in the living room in her favourite dressing gown — the pink one that Steve had bought her for Christmas — and was cradling her mug of tea as she leafed through the telephone directory. There were only three listings under the name Briggs, and of those only one was initialled with the letter A.

  Melody had been staring at the phone for a good twenty minutes, and was still undecided whether she should call or not. She found the old woman to be something of an enigma—on one hand she was plainly a little eccentric to say the least, but on the other she did seem to be very sure in her conviction that there was something that Steve and Melody ought to be told about their new home.

  She chewed on her bottom lip, torn between what she thought was right, and what her impulse told her to do. Her main stumbling block was that she didn’t think that Steve would approve. In fact, she got the impression that he already knew some part of the secret that everyone else but her seemed to be aware of.

  As crazy as the old woman appeared, Mrs. Briggs did seem to be knowledgeable about the history of the house and whatever deep dark secret that seemed to be all so vital for her to get off her chest. Melody looked around the room, its circular design complimented by its original fittings. The old stone surround of the mantelpiece, the bare wooden beams holding up the ceiling, the large windows (unfortunately not the original frames; they were in too poor a condition and had to be replaced), and she sighed, content and happy, warm and safe. She listened to the house, cocking her head to the side and holding her breath, straining her senses and listening for anything that might seem untoward or out of the ordinary.

  Utter silence

  The old house made sounds of course, bu
t what house didn’t? The wood creaked and groaned; the wind pushed and probed in search of a way in, and when a particularly large gust hit, its sound would whoop and whistle as it plunged down the chimney and into the living room. As if on cue, one such gust came now, a sudden, powerful prod of wind, which caused her fringe to ruffle as it blew through the room. Steve had been meaning to block off the fireplace permanently, but she had convinced him not to. He had argued about how cold it would be in winter, and in the end, they’d decided to leave it open. The idea of a natural, open fire was just too hard to resist. Just then her mobile phone vibrated, and she fished it out of her pocket, surprised to see that she had received a text message. It was unexpected, as they had been unable to receive them since moving here. She didn’t recognize the sender, and opened the message anyway.

  Hi Melody. :-)

  She thought it must be from one of their friends from the city, someone who assumed that Melody would know who it was. She could think of no other way to identify the sender, so bit the bullet and typed a reply.

  Who is this?

  She waited, inexplicably on edge and her stomach knotting with anxiety. The phone vibrated, and she hesitated before clicking on the envelope icon.

  It’s us. We see you.

  At that she felt a surge of panic, and glanced nervously out of the window, but saw nothing unusual. Her mind told her to stop interacting with whoever it was, but she felt instinctively that perhaps it had something to do with whatever Steve had been hiding from her. She composed a new message, unsure if she were more afraid or angry at the invasion of her privacy.

  Do I know you?

  She sent it, keeping it short and snappy, hoping that the recipient would grasp her annoyance. The reply came almost immediately.