Absence_Whispers and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  To his relief she began to climb, but the rope ladder twisted with her uncoordinated efforts and she seemed to get nowhere. He remembered the difficultly he used to have on the ladder before he got the technique right and as she struggled up, he began to wonder if she was even capable of reaching the top. His panic was strengthening by the second and his imagination began sketching images of what the villagers would do if they caught her.

  When she was three quarters up, he reached down and hauled her in. He felt her flinch at his touch and once she squeezed past him, she shrank away against the front wall, pulling her knees up to her chest. He turned his attention straight back to the dangling rope ladder; reeling it in hand over hand. And as the end snaked up through the foliage he was convinced one of the torch bearers was going to jump for it. But he got it in without seeing the grasping hand he imagined and dropped the trapdoor into place just as the villagers washed under them.

  ‘Over here!’ shouted someone directly below. He looked through the cracks in the floorboards and could see a man swishing his torch around at the foot of the tree. He had found the end of their trail and it wouldn’t be long before he twigged what happened and looked up. But just then the woods erupted into chaos. Voices of discovery turned to cries of terror and the torches streaked away in several directions. When a faint light shone in through the walls he realised what had happened. Emilie had swooped down on them like a territorial wraith and they had fled in fear.

  ‘They’re gone and I don’t think they’ll be back. But I’ve got to go again. We need to know where that thing is that’s following her. Stay here until I get back and be quiet.’

  ‘What thing?’

  But she was already gone and the interior of his hideout was plunged into blackness once more. He sat back against his end of the tree house and looked across at the black shape of the girl.

  ‘Are you alright?’ His question hung in the air for what seemed like an age before slipping through the floorboards unanswered. ‘We’ll be safe here tonight.’ Again nothing. ‘I’ve got a blanket. We can share if you like.’

  He pulled it out from behind his back and flung one end over to her. After a long wait, he was relieved to feel her pull it towards her. The wind was blowing in through the cracks and it was going to be a cold night.

  As he stared into darkness, he got his first chance to catch up. For the last hour he had just been reacting – Emilie’s urgent request and the immediacy of the girl’s situation, pushing him forward like giant hands on his back. A few hours ago he had been full of excitement and hope; daydreaming in the sun with a belly full of damsons. And now he was stuck here with a girl he didn’t know; shivering wet and in danger of being lynched. He felt robbed. But the feeling was short lived; morphing into shame as he reflected further on what had happened. He was still a bit angry at Emilie for not telling him what he was getting into, but even if she had, he would have helped the girl anyway. The villagers had killed her uncle and would have killed her too if he hadn’t brought her to the tree house. Helping the girl was the right thing to do and his new life would just have to wait.

  The wind continued to rage and the treehouse creaked at its joints. He shifted against the wet boards and drew his end of the blanket around his shoulders. They were both sitting with their knees to their chests with the tips of their boots almost touching. It was still too dark to see her face, but he knew she was watching him just the same. He began to puzzle over how someone so young could have been branded a witch. The ones he had heard about in stories were always much older. Time passed and as he was looking over at her black outline, the suspicious part of his mind asked an uncomfortable question. How do you know she isn’t one? He thought back to when he confronted her in the woods and remembered the strange blackness in her eyes. At the time he had thought it was a trick of Emilie’s light, but now he began to wonder. And then there were her nonsensical words and the venom with which she spoke them. What if the villagers were right and Emilie had got it all wrong? What if she really was a witch?

  As the idea took hold the black shape opposite him seemed to grow and for one terrifying moment he was sure she would reach over and grab him. His instinct was to flee; to fling open the trapdoor and risk the ankle breaking jump to the ground. And he would have done it if it hadn’t involved leaning toward her to get it open. So he shrank further into the corner instead, bracing for some kind of spell or the touch of a bony claw.

  What came instead was just as awful.

  Through the sound of rain, he began to hear weeping. It was unselfconscious and it became louder and louder until the sound split in two; with half of it suddenly emanating from the centre of his head in the way of deeper hearing. It was as if she was singing a dirge of tears right into his soul and it was the saddest thing he had ever heard. He felt her mourning now as if it was his own and through it was able to get a sense of the man she had lost and what he meant to her. His deeper hearing began to ache with the rawness of her emotion and soon his cheeks were streaked with tears. All notions of the girl being a witch vanished from his mind and all he wanted to do now was reach out and hug her. But he knew that doing so wouldn’t be right. Her grief was huge and raw and he had no place in it.

  He shut his eyes instead, enduring her outpouring as it flowed through his head and out into the storm. It lasted over an hour and when it was finished he sagged against the wall, exhausted.

  Wake up Call

  Kye was drawn out of a deep sleep by a faint voice. It was speaking to him through his deeper hearing, but it was hushed so low he couldn’t tell what it was saying. He became aware of his cramped body and the hardness of the planks against his bones. A cold breeze was running around his back and his damp clothes felt like a second skin. He thought he was still dreaming and for a time he simply drifted with the sound. But then the voice spoke again, much clearer and much louder. He realised it was Emilie and her voice was thick with urgency.

  ‘Wake up Kye, wake up. It’s here!’

  His eyes blinked open.

  He lifted his head to find the girl looking straight at him. It was dawn and the faint grey light penetrating the tree house allowed him his first proper look at her. Her face was pale and scratched and her hair was a dirty mat adorned with twigs and leaves. But what struck him was her expression. Her eyes were wide with terror and a single vertical finger was pressed tightly to her lips. Emilie’s words finally registered and all at once he was fully awake, his heart leaping from a sleepy beat to a rapid thump.

  ‘Stay quiet and don’t move.’

  They did – eyes locked together as they listened to a faint scraping of bark somewhere above them. The sound grew closer and then ceased altogether, leaving an ominous silence that hung above them like a weight. It was broken by a rustle of foliage and then something heavy dropped onto the roof, jarring the entire structure. They flinched in unison, but didn’t lose eye contact; each seeing their own fright mirrored in the other’s face. The roof boards creaked as something sniffed at them. Silence again, then a vicious clawing that tore open the animal hide covering. The tree house brightened as light streaked in through uncovered cracks, but dimmed again as something looked through. Neither of them looked up to see what it was. They cowered instead, raising their arms to cover their heads. Their visitor moved to the front of the tree house, towards the gap in the slats he used as a window. He twisted around and glared at the opening. He had made it big enough to stick his head out, but now it seemed wide enough to ride a horse through. He looked back at the girl and pulled the blanket off his shoulders. She realised what he intended to do and threw him the rest. He gathered it up, but just as he was twisting around to plug the opening, it was covered from the other side. One moment there was a view of lake through a screen of foliage; the next there was an upside down strip of face, drinking them in with a single depthless eye.

  The girl screamed and Kye jerked back from the opening, squashing her into the far wall. The face disappeared, but the la
keside view was violated a second later by a set of woody fingers that curled around the inside of the window. It yanked and one of the wall panels bowed outward, the nails at either end squealing in protest. It yanked again and the panel snapped clean away, clattering down through the tree and leaving a vertical breech in the wall nearly a foot wide. There was a rustle of leaves and their visitor dropped down onto a branch just below the opening, filling the space.

  It leapt in from a crouch, twisting sideways into the breach and reaching for him with the raking stick fingers of its right hand. Kye kicked it away, pulled his hammer from the wall and swung wildly at it. He got his first proper look at its face and what he saw electrified him with terror and revulsion. Bar a few imperfections it looked just like the girl. Its blue eyes and spray of freckles were a near perfect match as were its ringlets of wet hair and dainty nose. The only difference was the left side of its face was caved in, as if someone had bludgeoned it with a heavy rock. It was the reanimated corpse of the girl he was crushing against the wall - dead except for the green embers glowing in its pupils.

  He kicked, stamped and hammered at it; every fibre of him set against being dragged out of the tree house. Three times he pinned its arm to the wall with his boot and three times he let it go when its woody fingers curled around his ankle. He managed to get a hammer blow through to its head, but it just clocked against its skull and it didn’t so much as twitch.

  The monster pulled out and slammed repeatedly against the remaining side panels; its mask like face indifferent to each shuddering impact. Kye braced himself for what seemed to be an inevitable explosion of wood, but the panels held and after about a dozen blows it disappeared from sight. There was a brief thrashing of foliage, then silence.

  ‘It’s moving away Kye… I’m going to follow it. Don’t go anywhere until I tell you it’s safe.’

  He stopped squashing the girl against the back wall and shuffled away from her. But when he turned to see if she was alright his heart skipped a beat. The monster’s likeness to her was extraordinary and it was as if it had crept away only to appear behind him. And when she lifted her hand to brush her hair from her face, he half expected to see sticks projecting from her wrist. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, hoping she hadn’t seen the look on his face. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That thing – it looked like you.’

  ‘I know. It changed itself to look like me and killed some people in the village.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She averted her eyes as she spoke and Kye suspected she knew more, but didn’t want to say. He looked out through the breezy gap in the side panels and into the woods. Up until then, the scariest thing he had ever seen was Bill with a sore head. What he had just fought off was a true monster – the likes of which he had only heard about in stories.

  ‘Why did you help me?’

  ‘My sister said you were in trouble, so I came.’

  ‘She’s been watching me.’

  ‘It would explain a lot,’ said Kye, thinking about Emilie’s long absence from the lake. ‘But she never spoke about you until last night.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have sent you.’

  ‘If she hadn’t, the villagers would have killed you.’

  ‘And I would have been back with my uncle again.’ She dropped her chin onto her knees and stared into the floorboards, her torn heart suddenly showing on her face. It was an expression that was hard to look at and he turned away, feeling a fresh stirring of that second hand grief she had projected into him last night.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. It was all he could think of to say and for the next few minutes they sat in silence, waiting for Emilie to return.

  ‘Your sister drowned in the lake?’

  Kye turned back, relieved to hear her speaking again despite her choice of subject. ‘You heard the stories then?’ She nodded. ‘They say that I pushed her in don’t they? That it was my fault? But they’re wrong… It wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘You visit her here?’

  ‘Every day if I can.’

  ‘But that’s forbidden.’

  ‘She’s my sister.’

  They looked at one another for a long, but not uncomfortable time. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Emilie, and mine’s Kye. What’s yours?’

  ‘Della.’

  ‘That’s a nice name. I’ve never heard it before.’

  She looked away, but as the conversation lapsed back into silence he remembered something he wanted to ask her. When Emilie first spoke into his head he simply accepted it as the way ghosts communicated. And it was only when the other voices spoke to him in town and nobody else heard them that he began to question his assumption. But when Emilie spoke to Della last night she heard every word. ‘You hear Emilie talk the way I do, don’t you? Like she’s talking from the centre of your head.’

  Della clenched and he realised he had crossed a line.

  ‘It’s alright,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s not important. I just thought I was the only one, that’s all.’

  An awkwardness followed, but it was cut short by his sister’s return.

  ‘You should go now Kye. It might be your best chance.’

  ‘Why? Where did it go?’

  ‘It’s still in the woods, but quite a way off to the east. Something’s whispering to it and it’s stopped to listen.’

  Della stiffened at that, but Kye didn’t see. He was thinking about the whispers he heard at the house last night and wondering if they were the same ones.

  ‘When I pass through the whispers it seems to confuse it. That’s how I kept it away from you last night. But it’s harder to do now... I think it knows I’m helping you.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Get down before it comes back.’

  ‘We can’t!’ said Della, horrified. ‘Not while it’s still in the woods.’

  ‘Emilie’s right. We’ve got to go before it comes back. This might be our only chance. We’re trapped up here with no escape and for all we know, it might be asking help from the whispers. Whoever’s on the other end of them might be on their way here right now.’ The blood drained from Della’s face and it was obvious she hadn’t considered this possibility. ‘I’ll go down first and if it comes back before you can get down, I’ll draw it away.’

  ‘It won’t work. It came here for me.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to make sure we both get down before it comes back. We can’t stay here, and I’m not leaving you.’

  Her eyes pleaded with him. ‘I don’t know if I can go down there Kye.’

  ‘You have to. When it comes back it’ll tear this tree house apart and drag us both out.’

  ‘But where would we go?’

  ‘We can’t go back to Agelrish – North or South. I thought maybe Norbry. We can skirt the lake to the west and take the north road over the hills.’ She nodded in reluctant agreement. ‘Is that thing fast?’

  ‘It was. But now it limps.’

  ‘Good. We’ve got a chance then.’ He shifted back, but as he reached for the trapdoor his sister spoke again.

  ‘It’s gone Kye!’

  He froze. Her words were good news, but her tone didn’t match. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just vanished.’

  ‘I thought you were watching it!’

  ‘I was. I only took my eye off it for a second.’

  Whispers came to them now, from everywhere at once, high pitched and painful and although the sound was at the centre of their heads they both brought their hands instinctively to their ears and grimaced against them. By the time they stopped Kye’s head was like a ringing bell.

  ‘What happened Emilie?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I felt it too…It was awful.’

  ‘Can you see it now?’

  ‘No, but I’m looking. Be ready.’ They waited in silence and it seemed like an age passed before she sp
oke again. ‘It’s not here Kye and there’s no hint of the whispers. It must have gone away. Go now, as quick as you can. I’ll keep watch.’

  Kye flipped the trapdoor. ‘We’ve got to do this now Della. While I’ve still got the nerve. Wait till I signal you then come down as quickly as you can.’ He twisted onto his belly before she could protest and slid backwards through the floor. Before his head disappeared below the boards he looked back up at her. ‘Just remember. If you don’t come down, I’ll have to wait.’

  Bird’s Nest

  The rope ladder twisted and creaked and despite the fact that Emilie was keeping watch, it felt as if the monster’s breath was on his neck the whole way down. He jumped off at the bottom, but kept one hand on the ladder as he scanned the woods - ready to race back up if he didn’t like what he saw. The storm had passed and thousands of wet branches dripped and glistened in the sun. He looked around, but there was nothing else to see and nothing to hear but his own shallow breath.

  Emilie appeared to his right, materialising from the leafy boughs of an oak tree as if born of its lacy light. Her contrast with the morning had diminished her brightness and she was little more than rippling gauze. She pointed to the last place she saw the monster and he nodded his understanding. He took his first step away from the ladder and picked up a broken branch to serve as a weapon. Above him, Della was leaning over the opening, watching for his signal.

  Emilie circled the tree house one last time. ‘I can’t see anything Kye. She can come down now.’

  Kye beckoned her down and held the ladder steady. He thought she was going to be difficult again, but he was encouraged to see her twist around without hesitation and drop her feet onto the rope.

  ‘I can’t understand how it vanished. It was just standing against a tree - touching it. Scraping those horrible fingers all over its bark.’