The Murmurings

by West, Carly Anne

  I can hear what the voice is saying.

  “Let me in.”

  I try to scream, but nothing escapes my throat. All I can do is listen.

  “Let me in.”

  This time I respond. Not in words. In action.

  My hand tightens around the keycard and I run. I run so fast down the two steps of the storage closet that I nearly fall, catching myself with wobbling ankles. My hand that isn’t clutching the keycard drags along the doors to my right, jangling the handles as I go.

  “No,” I whisper between heaving breaths. “No!”

  It doesn’t need a mirror to get to me anymore, and it’s found a way to make me hear its words. I pound up the flight of stairs, nearly running headfirst into the trapdoor. I bring a shaking hand to open it. But the card reader is nowhere to be found.

  “Come on. Come on!” I gasp at my shaking hand or the trapdoor or the keycard, I have no idea. But my thumb finally finds the slot, and I slide the card through the reader and launch through the trapdoor. The force bangs the door on its hinge and bounces it back on my head.

  I have no time to register the pain before I pull my legs up onto the linoleum floor of the linen closet and drop the door closed behind me, catching it just before it slams. A red light glows faintly under the floor before flickering out, reassuring me that the door is sealed.

  I hold my hand to my chest in an effort to keep my heart from lurching out of it, then use my remaining strength to stand. Sliding the keycard through the pad to the linen closet, I poke my head into the hallway and find it blissfully empty. I slither through the door and let it shut behind me—praying I’ve sealed the Taker inside—and angle my body around the first corner, then the next. I slide the card through the reader leading to my room and quickly shut the door behind me, leaning on it to catch my breath. I pop the card back into my scrunched sock and pull the pillow and the sheet back into place, replacing the lump under my blanket with the person who should actually be there.

  My entire body is screaming for sleep, though my eyes remain wide and searching in the dark of my room. Because I can’t decide what’s worse: the evil I’ve unleashed in the basement, whose words are all at once horrifyingly clear, or the evil I’ve unleashed by convincing Evan to find Adam and bring him back to Oakside—an Adam I seem to have horribly misjudged.

  24

  * * *

  I WAKE UP BECAUSE I can’t breathe. Because something is preventing me from breathing.

  I open my eyes, but the blackness of the room reveals nothing. My mouth is covered and my shoulders are pinned.

  But not my legs.

  I thrust my knee toward my head and make contact with what feels like a stack of ribs, and a muffled groan follows. I scramble out from under the weight that’s temporarily lifted and pull in one frantic breath before the weight finds me again. It’s an enormous hand that clamps its fingers tightly together to obscure any sound I might try to make. It smells like burnt coffee.

  My flailing arms are once again pinned, this time with my arms wrenched behind my back.

  “Stop. Sophie, stop! Stop struggling,” the voice in my ear whispers. The voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it in my panic.

  I try to scream, try to make the adrenaline that’s shooting through my body do something productive, anything, but all I’m able to do is struggle against a strength that far exceeds mine.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” the voice whispers, and pats one of my ankles, then the other, fingers searching out the keycard I shoved into my sock.

  “Thought so,” the voice says in a low tone, deep and cavernous.

  A green light flickers and a tiny metal ping follows. As light pours into my room from the hallway, I squint against the pain behind my eyes while they struggle to transition. When the white light clears, I squirm enough to see the profile of Adam.

  His enormous hands restrain me expertly.

  I try to scream again, but his hand mashes against my lips and I think my jaw might come unhinged.

  “Don’t make a sound. Not a sound, understand?” he whispers into my ear.

  I do what he tells me, mostly because I couldn’t make a sound even if I wanted to. I’m picked up and carried into the next corridor, the one leading toward the lobby.

  And the exit.

  My thrashing heart slows for a moment as I consider the possibility that I’m going to be rescued, that I was right in sending Evan to track down Adam again, and that maybe there’s an explanation for the papers that I found in the basement—the ones revealing him as Employee Y, who had pretended to get close to Nell only to carry information back to Dr. Keller. Sure, this isn’t exactly the way I saw it happening—Adam restraining me and practically shoving me out the front door—but any way I can escape Oakside is good by me, so long as he has a plan for Deb, too.

  The lobby and the double-sliding doors come into view, but Adam takes us down a different corridor, which feels eerily familiar. Why? Something feels like it’s rotting in my stomach. Wherever Adam’s taking me, it isn’t good.

  He shuffles me down another corridor, then around a corner, and down another hallway. I can hear far-off laughter and the phlegmy coughs of what sounds like Robbie and Pucker-Mouth, but they might as well be a million miles away for all the good they can do me right now. Besides, at this point, I can only assume they’re on the same side as Adam, and that everyone is playing for Team Keller. I’m seriously outnumbered.

  Adam stops in front of a metal door, and thank God for that because my jaw feels like it’s about to crack under the pressure of his hand. But my relief melts into horror when I see that instead of a keycard reader, there’s a glowing keypad, beckoning for a code it seems Adam still remembers.

  He punches the one and the two zeros before I pounce, bringing my bare heel down across the bridge of his sneaker, probably hurting me more than it hurts him. But it’s enough to make him loosen his grip over my mouth for just a second, as I widen my jaw and bite the fleshy insides of his long fingers.

  Adam cries out, and I taste freedom. All of my limbs unencumbered, I make it halfway down the hall before I’m yanked backward by my wrist, my shoulder wrenching in its socket.

  “No!” I manage to shout before his hand clamps over my mouth again.

  “Stop fighting me!” he growls through gritted teeth.

  “Who’s out there!” I hear Robbie’s voice followed by footsteps.

  I struggle to scream.

  “Damnit, now look what you’ve done!” he scolds me.

  He reenters the first three numbers of the code, then quickly follows with the five, the eight, and the last five, releasing the lock. He shoves me into the room and follows, slamming the door shut, then I watch in stunned silence as his fingers deftly punch a different code, to which the computerized locking mechanism responds with:

  “Code change initiated.”

  “What? Wait, no!” I scream, springing toward him. But he’s too fast for me. With one of his long arms, he keeps me out of swiping distance and, blocking the keypad from my view, punches five new numbers, earning the computer’s confirmation.

  “New code activated.”

  A second later, I hear rubber soles squeaking to a stop outside the door, fingers trying and retrying to key in the old code that now refuses to open the door.

  “Please help me!”

  Adam turns to me, his dark features crumpling in disbelief.

  “Are you insane?” he asks me.

  “Is that a serious question?”

  We exchange looks of matching confusion, and for a moment, I wonder if Adam really thinks he’s helping me. One glance at the wall of mirrors tells me all I need to know.

  Adam means to kill both of us.

  A sickening déjà vu passes through me like a ghost. I stare at Adam, but all I can see when I look at him is a bulbous, shaved head and darting blue eyes that are so wide, they have lost their ability to see clearly.

  There’s a flurry of commotion on the o
ther side of the door. Voices yell over one another. Orders are barked three at a time. Then, rising above the chaos, I hear a familiar voice.

  “Sophie? Are you okay? Are you in there?”

  “Evan! Help me! This room is full of mirrors. He’s going to kill us!”

  “Oh my God, Sophie, punch in the code like you did last time!” Deb’s voice guides me from the other side of the door.

  “He changed the code. I can’t get out. Someone help!”

  “Adam, what are you doing? Get out of there! This wasn’t part of the plan!” Evan shouts, but Adam only shakes his head, his face sagging. I recognize that defeat from my last visit to this room. He’s trying to end it. Just like Kenny did.

  “Adam! Come on, let’s go!” Evan shouts.

  “None of you are going anywhere. The minute Adam comes out, you’re all headed straight for the sheriff. Breaking and entering. Trespassing. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in right now?” the Pigeon threatens them. But I can tell she’s relishing the chaos.

  “Lady, do you think I give a shit about the sheriff right now? Get them out of there before that . . . that thing comes for them!” Evan screams.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Adam says in a voice I can hear but I doubt anyone on the other side of the door can.

  To my surprise, someone does. And he responds.

  “Adam? Adam, come out of there. Bring the girl. You don’t need to do this.”

  It’s Dr. Keller. I almost don’t recognize his voice. The last time I saw him, he was terrorizing me outside of his clinical office. Now his voice sounds almost . . . fatherly.

  “I can’t do that, Jeremy. I know you don’t understand. But I have to do this,” Adam says, his jaw twitching under his skin. “This ends tonight.”

  Adam turns to me, his eyes pulling on mine, and he nods, almost imperceptibly. “You know what to do. I know you do.”

  He presses something cool into my hand. It’s sharp, but fragile, and snakes in my palm.

  “I need you to trust me. If you don’t believe me, believe what your sister did. Believe your heart. You know I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Then he takes another step closer.

  “You know we can end this.”

  My ears pop, the sound vacuums from the room, and I’m left with nothing. The wordless murmuring floats to me from across the room as though on a fog. It fills the void of noise left by the vacuum. It tickles my ear, enticing me to listen, dampening my skin with its hot breath.

  Sound comes roaring back on the end of a long, agonized gasp. I hear pounding, pleading from behind the metal door.

  “Adam, let her out!” Deb shouts.

  “Adam, you don’t need to do this, son. You know you’ve always been like my own flesh and blood.”

  But Adam only shakes his head, his eyes anguished. “You never believed that. You only wanted me for what I could do. You never came looking for me. You never tried to find me after I left. You only wanted me when you realized what I took.”

  My hand squeezes Adam’s gift, the metal pressing into my palm.

  There’s a long pause, then Dr. Keller sputters back to life.

  “That’s—that’s not true. I love you.”

  “You love your obsession,” Adam says with finality, his face strangely calm in the midst of such a painful exchange. When I follow his gaze toward the mirror, I understand why.

  His reflection and mine have begun to merge, overlapping and creating a distorted image of our bodies. Then something flickers behind it, and I lose all track of what everyone’s hollering from the other side of the door. Because the reflection is losing itself, becoming something else. Something black and rotting.

  I see the mouth first, lips splitting over long yellow teeth that are too large for its skeletal head. Oily hair parts to reveal a decaying mess of a face, two gaping holes stare from where eyes should be. Spindly fingers reach through the glass, seeming to part it like liquid.

  Adam ushers me behind him, forcing me to peer through the space between his elbow and his hip. I follow the Taker’s movements, compelled to watch.

  Its mouth moves rapidly, chewing silent words. Its legs jerk from the mirror, gaining momentum on the linoleum of the room. It lumbers toward Adam and me, its movement tight, like it’s trying to crawl from the confines of its own rotting body.

  “Adam!” A voice pleads from the hallway.

  But he doesn’t say anything. He only wraps an arm behind him to keep me close.

  “Just trust your heart, Sophie,” he whispers, and I swallow hard, not sure I trust anything anymore.

  The Taker is only three feet from us now. As it approaches, it stops, tilts its head from one side to another. It’s weighing its options. It’s deciding which of us to go after first.

  There’s a renewed pounding on the door, voices crawling over one another, intermittently drowned out by the force of their fists banging on the door they no longer have the combination for.

  The odor of the room changes. The air is thick with the smell of waste. I watch the Taker’s long fingers dance at the ends of thin planks that might have once been palms. Its mouth is moving faster and faster. Its breathing is raspy.

  Then, in one quick movement, the Taker swipes its sinewy arm, throwing Adam to the other side of the room as if he is no heavier than a crumpled piece of paper.

  “NO!” he screams as he flies through the air, arms and legs scrambling. He hits the wall, smacking his head against the sheetrock, and slumps down in a heap on the dull gray floor. He doesn’t make another sound.

  The Taker focuses its eyeless gaze on me. Its stench clogs my senses, making me dizzy. The murmuring is still awash in my ears, sloshing like some sort of tidal wave. But now I hear the words clearly, just as I had in the basement.

  “Let me in,” it says, over and over, soothing, like a lullaby. “Let me in.”

  “I-I don’t want to,” I cry, whimpering like a child.

  “Let me in, and it won’t hurt anymore. The pain will all go away. Let me in.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Let me in. Do it now. You’ll be with her again. She misses you. Let me in.”

  “Sophie, don’t listen. Don’t let it in.” Adam’s voice sounds as though he’s at the end of a long tunnel. He’s slouched in the corner, struggling to get to his feet.

  “Don’t let it in, Sophie. Don’t give in. Use what I gave you!”

  I hear a rattling breath, and the Taker directs its eyeless stare at Adam in what looks to be a warning. Adam lies still on the floor.

  The Taker turns back to me, its mouth moving rhythmically over its hideous yellow teeth. I want to back up. I want to fight it. But I can’t seem to move. I can only stand still and watch it come for me. Three feet away. Two feet. One. It’s nearly on top of me. The smell is horrible, but I can’t make it stop.

  “Let me in. Let me in.”

  “Sophie, let me in!”

  I can’t tell the difference between the voices anymore. The Taker. Evan. Dr. Keller. They all sound the same. Everything sounds like it’s under water. Toneless and muffled. I only want to sleep. To give in to the pain. To release it all and be done for good.

  I just want to see Nell again. Just one more time.

  “She misses you. You can go to her. Just let me in.”

  She misses me. And I miss her. I miss her so badly that my chest feels like it might cave in. I can see her now, a terry-cloth towel wrapped around her shoulders, a hair clip fastening the towel around her neck. Nell holds a hairbrush in her hand, her fingers making a cutting motion like imaginary scissors.

  Come on LS, it’s your turn, she says to me. She’s motioning to me to take a seat on the stool she’s set up. We’re playing beauty salon, and it’s my turn to be the customer.

  “It’s your turn. Let me in.”

  I want to see Nell. Just once more. I want to tell her how sorry I am that I let her down. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have been as brave a
s she was.

  A metal door handle rattles.

  “Sophie, let us in. Adam, for God’s sake!” Deb screams.

  “Sophie, open your hand!” Adam pleads.

  “Let me in. It’s the only way.”

  Now I feel the heat on my ear. It’s telling me how to let go, how I can see Nell again. My toes tingle, like the feeling they get before my feet start to fall asleep. Pins and needles. Flat pine needles in primary colors. All I want to do is sleep and never wake up.

  “Wait, no!” I hear a deep voice say. It’s trying to wake me, but I don’t want to wake up.

  “You want me, wait!” it says, and I don’t understand.

  “Sophie!” Evan calls.

  Something roars in the Taker, something prehistoric. Its mouth clacks in front of me, so wide it looks like it could swallow me whole.

  Screaming, I startle to my senses and take cover behind a gurney beside the door, but the Taker lifts it up and throws it against the mirror, shattering the glass. My heart throbs, my mind conjuring the memory of a sink dripping with Nell’s blood, the fleeting image of something unnatural reflected in those fragments of glass as they fell from the bathroom wall. Something that Nell tried to stop me from seeing.

  “Sophie, look out!”

  I’m suddenly aware of Adam again. He lunges forward to push me out of the Taker’s way. My head hits the corner of the countertop that juts from the wall. My ears ring and the rushing waves of the murmurings cease.

  The Taker swipes its long arm at me but Adam deflects it, this time bracing himself against the impact. Now he’s directly in front of its face, its mouth still hanging wide open, its yellow teeth bared like a vicious animal.

  “Adam!” I cry out, but he holds his hand out to me without turning around. I see now that he’s purposely placed himself directly in front of the Taker’s eyeless gape.

  “You want me instead,” he tells the Taker in a voice so steady and calm, I can’t believe I’ve heard him right.

  “Adam, no, what are you—?”

  He puts his hand out to quiet me again and leans his head in toward the Taker’s. The Taker’s mouth suddenly clamps shut, and this time, its teeth come together in the most hideous grin I have ever seen, its cracked lips curling under to make space for it.