The Seven Whistlers

by Amber Benson; Christopher Golden

  The terrible truth she had learned while reading his journal had broken something in Rose’s heart. But as she popped open her car door and stared up at the house, a bittersweet contentment touched her. Walt Hartung haunted this place. Maybe he always would. She’d feared that his secret would have forever tainted even the good memories she had of her grandfather, but found that was not the case.

  “Rose,” Mike said, as he climbed out of the car.

  She glanced at him. His hand was still thickly bandaged, but somehow it didn’t make him seem less capable. Mike had a rugged quality she’d not really noticed before. It stirred in his eyes, now.

  “What the hell are we looking for, exactly?”

  On the drive, she’d told him the whole story. To his credit, rather than start picking apart her theory, Mike had listened to all of the details and then begun to supply some of his own. By now, so many people had seen the hounds that their presence — and growing number — could not be denied. But he was aware of numerous incidents of bad luck and ominous coincidence that Rose had not heard about. Many people, it seemed, had also heard the eerie whistling sound that signified the presence of the hounds, and been unsettled by it.

  It had filled her with relief to discover that she had an ally. Mike had given her hand a reassuring squeeze — the hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel. In that moment, had she not been driving, she would have taken him in her arms. But such thoughts were for another day.

  “Rose . . .” he prodded.

  “I honestly don’t know. I guess we’ll know when we find it,” she said as they sprinted for the front steps, well aware that her grandmother could not be far behind them.

  She used her key to open the door. The hardwood in the foyer creaked underfoot as she stepped inside and turned on the lights. Mike followed her in and Rose slammed the door and locked it behind her.

  “Some kind of container? Like a jar or something?” he asked.

  She shrugged, glancing around, surveying the immaculate living room and the hallway ahead. What could she say?

  “I don’t think we can assume that. It isn’t water, or his ashes, or something. This is all mystic bullshit to me, but my guess? It’ll be something important to him, or to her.”

  Rose gnawed her lip for a few seconds. If her grandmother really loved him — and no matter what a bitch she’d been, it seemed she had — then Isobel wouldn’t have imbued the old man’s spiritual essence in something that only had significance for her.

  “Scratch that. Something he cared about. I mean, I don’t know for sure. Could be the toilet plunger or the cookie jar. But we don’t have any way to tell. What we need is to find something she’s got hidden. So we look everywhere an old woman would hide things. Kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, bedroom drawers, closets, under the bed.”

  She rattled all of that off even as she started into the kitchen. Mike followed her, but kept going toward the stairs and then vaulted up them two and three at a time.

  Rose glanced around the kitchen, with its muted floral pattern walls and sensible clock on the wall. Nothing odd or interesting for her grandmother. She crouched down in front of the cabinet where the pots and pans were kept, yanked the doors open, and started pulling everything out with a clatter, upending the bigger pots to make sure nothing would fall out.

  Not here, she thought as she stood and glanced around. It wouldn’t be here. She didn’t know why she’d even considered it. It would be something personal, and her grandmother would have kept it close by. Rose had watched too much television. This wasn’t some drug dealer’s house, where she might find a plastic packet taped to the inside of the toilet tank or wrapped up in the freezer.

  “Stupid,” she muttered to herself.

  The clock ticked.

  Rose raced out of the kitchen. As she reached the corridor she heard a car door slam outside. Isobel had arrived.

  “Damn it.”

  She hit the stairs at a run and called out to Mike as she went up. Her shoulder grazed a framed picture on the wall and she twisted around just in time to see it fall — a photo of Rose herself with her grandparents, in a time before Walt Hartung’s mind had begun to deteriorate. The glass shattered when the frame struck the stairs.

  When Rose looked up, Mike had appeared at the landing above her.

  “Anything?” she asked as she reached him.

  More framed photographs hung on the walls in the little hall on the landing. A spider plant dangled over the edges of a vaguely Asian looking stand in a corner. There were four doors up here — master bedroom, guest bedroom, bathroom, and what had once been Grandad’s study and was now Isobel’s sewing room.

  “Looked under the bathroom sink, under the bed and in the closet in the guest room. Just started with the sewing stuff —”

  From downstairs came the muffled sound of the front door being unlocked. Mike shot Rose a look and she nodded. Then she pointed toward the sewing room, gesturing for him to get back to it, and she bolted into her grandparents’ bedroom.

  The smell struck her first. Perfume and baby powder. The room had always been immaculate, even before her grandfather had gone into the nursing home. But now it had a Spartan quality that seemed new to her. Elegant bedspread, cozy rocking chair, lamps, and a bureau with a tall mirror behind it and various items spread over its surface with precision. Hand-blown glass perfume bottle, antique hand mirror and brush, a small frame containing the young Walt and Isobel in their wedding photo, and a hand-carved box of dark wood that had sat there for as long as Rose could remember.

  From downstairs, her grandmother called her name, the weight of sorrow in the old woman’s voice. A creak on the stairs announced that she had started up toward the second floor.

  Rose dropped to her knees and looked under the bed. She yanked open the nightstand drawer and fished through foot creams and Vicks bottles, a rosary, and costume jewelry her grandmother wouldn’t dream of mixing with the real stuff in her jewelry box. Isobel called out to her again. Rose could hear Mike clattering around in the sewing room, tossing things aside. On instinct, she wanted to shout at him to stop, hating the sound of such haphazard ruin. But the stakes were too high for sentiment.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  “Rose!” her grandmother shouted, from the top of the stairs. “Please, stop.”

  She spun, scanning the room, and her gaze fell upon the bureau again, and the carved box that sat there. It had always been there, and so she’d barely recognized its presence. In the back of her mind, she felt sure she must once have known what lay within it, but could not remember.

  The swish of her grandmother’s mourning dress approached from the corridor. Rose rushed to the bureau and picked up the box. The moment she opened it, the breath rushed from her lungs. Inside lay a blue-striped ribbon with a medal on the end — her grandfather’s Navy Distinguished Service Medal. Why hadn’t this been in the nursing home with him? Rose held the open box in one hand and brushed her fingers across the medal. A shudder went through her, and the room seemed to grow colder.

  “Don’t you touch that. Don’t you dare.”

  Rose turned, breath coming in tiny, shallow gasps. Her grandmother stood in the doorway, lips pressed tightly together, tears upon her cheeks. Behind the old woman, Mike stood in the corridor, coiled with tension. He didn’t know what to do, whether he should interfere. Rose understood.

  “Put it back, Rose.”

  Swallowing, she shook her head.

  “Goddamn you, girl,” her grandmother said, eyes narrowed with grief and desperation. “Put it back.”

  Rose held the open box in her hand. It felt strangely heavy.

  “You can’t save him,” she told her grandmother. “What’s done . . . it was done a long time ago. All you’re going to do is kill the rest of us, and then they’ll come and take him, but we’ll all be dead. Do you really think that’s what he’d want?”

  Isobel pursed her lips. “Did you ever love him?”

  Ro
se shook her head in disgust. “More than you can imagine. And if you loved him as much as you claim, you won’t do this in his memory.”

  Mike shifted in the corridor. The old woman took a step into the room and he followed, on edge, ready to act if it became necessary. Rose saw self-loathing in his eyes, a kind man hating himself for what he might be forced to do.

  “You don’t understand. You couldn’t. For years, he told me about the hounds. He saw them every few months, one or two of them pacing his car or watching him through a window, following him in the woods. All along he told me they’d come for him in the end. And I didn’t believe him. Do you understand that? I didn’t believe him!

  “Not until the first time I saw them. Those eyes, shining in the dark, and the quiet size of the things — I knew right off they weren’t just dogs. Then I knew that he’d been telling the truth all along.”

  Rose felt anger rising in her. Her face flushed. “You knew what he’d done. You were supposed to be with Davey and you knew that Grandad had let him die, and you just forgave him!”

  The old woman’s eyes darkened. “You don’t think before you speak, Rose. You never did. Your grandfather didn’t kill David, but I wish he had. He’d talk of love with his fists, that one. When he shipped out, I prayed, but not like the other girls whose beaus were going to sea. I prayed Davey would never come back. Your grandfather made a terrible mistake, and it weighed on him. But I looked at him, and I saw my savior.”

  Rose stared at her. “Even so, what he did . . . it wasn’t right. He didn’t know he was protecting you. He was protecting himself.”

  All trace of emotion — even grief — vanished from Isobel’s face and she stepped forward, thrusting out her hand.

  “Give it to me.”

  “No.” Rose shook her head and took a step back. “I don’t know how you did this, how you could know how to do it, but I’m putting an end to it.”

  Trembling with fury, her grandmother started toward her. Mike stepped up behind her and put his good hand on her shoulder, startling her. Isobel spun on him.

  “Get your hands off of me. Who do you think you are?”

  “Just a guy who doesn’t want the world to end because of the selfishness of one old man,” Mike replied.

  Isobel ignored him. “I went through hell for him, Rose. I lived with his terror. And I loved him in spite of it. He’d saved me, and I wanted to save him in return. For years, I searched for some kind of magic to keep his spirit safe. I’d never believed in such things, but seeing the hellhounds again and again, how could I not believe?

  “I studied legends and I talked to people who had faith in them, and in witchcraft. In Montreal, I met a woman who showed me what to do, how to catch his spirit in that box, trap it with his medal.”

  Her emotionless mask shattered. Isobel twisted in anguish as every wretched shred of her grief revealed itself upon her face.

  “Don’t you understand how much it hurt me, to do that? Can you even begin to imagine how dreadful a thing it was to have to do? But it was better than the alternative, Rose. If you do this, if you give him to the hounds, he’ll suffer forever. The devil takes his own, Rose! The devil takes his own.”

  Rose felt heat on her cheeks, tasted salt on her lips, and realized that she had also begun to cry.

  “Grandad could have come forward at any time,” she said, voice quavering, hands shaking. “No matter what Davey’d done to you, he didn’t know that, did he? All he wanted was to save his own skin, and he let his best friend be executed in his place. Even after, when Davey was dead, he could have taken the consequences for what he’d done. But he never did.”

  A sob escaped her lips. Mike stared at her and she could see he wanted to come to her, but Rose shook her head and took a deep breath, taking control of herself.

  “It’s killing a part of me,” she told her grandmother. “But I won’t let the world pay for what he did.”

  Rose snapped the medal box shut, and started for the door.

  “No,” her grandmother whispered, shaking her head. “No, Rose!”

  The old woman reached for her. Mike tried gently to hold onto her arm, but Isobel shoved him away. Rose tried to pass her, but her grandmother grabbed hold of her, clawing at her, reaching for the box.

  “Don’t you do it! Please, stop!”

  Rose held the box out of her reach and shook her grandmother off. Isobel had always been cold and distant with her. All her life, she had thought her grandmother was a selfish, callous woman with little love in her heart. Now she saw that she’d been wrong. Isobel Hartung could feel love, but it was all reserved for the man she’d always wanted, the man she’d forgiven for a heinous sin, because it served her own purposes.

  Even so, Rose did not stop. The old woman’s cries were torture, but there had never been any choice. She pulled away. Her grandmother tried to stop her. Mike slipped between them, grabbing Isobel’s arms and holding her back as Rose went down the stairs. She cursed at him with shocking venom, vile profanity that Rose had never heard her grandmother utter before, and then crumbled to the ground and leaned herself against the wall, shuddering and weeping loudly.

  Mike followed Rose downstairs.

  She stood at the door with the box in one hand and the other on the knob. From outside, she could hear the high, keening sound that had so terrified her in the cemetery the other night.

  The Whistlers had arrived.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rose counted four of them at first.

  The hell hounds stood arrayed across the front lawn of her grandparents’ house, silently awaiting her. Mike could have stayed just inside the front door, but he remained at her side as she went out onto the steps. The eerie wail of the Whistlers had ceased, now, and though she could see the rise and fall of their massive chests — their black pelts gleaming in the moonlight — the hounds had fallen quiet.

  One of the hounds had taken up a position on the roof of Rose’s car. Its eyes shone in the dark, like those of its brothers. They were pinpoints of unnatural light, there in the shadows of the night.

  Rose could not breathe. She wondered if they had been about to attack when she opened the door and interrupted them, or if they had somehow been waiting for her to emerge. And how had they found this place? Had their search finally borne terrible fruit, or had her discovery of the medal — of her grandfather’s hidden soul — somehow drawn their attention?

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, now, except the carved wooden box in her hand and what lay within it.

  She went down the stairs and onto the front lawn. Mike followed, a step or two behind. She felt him freeze, and then he spoke her name in a whisper. Rose glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking her way. She followed his gaze and saw two more of the sleek, enormous hounds slowly prowling toward them from around the side of the house.

  “Six,” she whispered. “There are six.”

  Her fingers clutched the wooden box so tightly that they hurt. Ice slid through her veins as she stared at the two approaching hounds, wondering what she would do if they charged. When they stopped twenty yards from her, Rose flinched. Mike brushed the back of his hand on her arm, and though it might have been accidental, she believed he had intended to make that small contact, just to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.

  “Put it down on the ground,” he said, voice low and even. “Just set it down and we’ll back away.”

  The words were eminently logical. Of course, that was what she had to do. Set down the box with her grandfather’s war medal inside it, leave it there and just retreat into the house. Give the Whistlers what they came for, and all would be well.

  She felt as though she were crumbling in upon herself. Grief welled up inside her and she lowered her head, clutching that carved box to her chest. Hot tears ran down her face, surprising her with their sudden arrival.

  “Rose,” Mike said.

  The hell hound on top of her car leaped down from the roof, and the six of them took two steps n
earer, tightening the half-circle they’d formed around the front door of the house. Rose and Mike were trapped there. The open door was their only retreat.

  From inside came the sound of her grandmother, calling her name again, wracked with mournful sobs.

  Rose tried to turn to Mike — tried to speak to him, to explain the crippling emotion sweeping through her — but she could not form words. Part of her hated her grandfather in that moment; hated him for having caused all of this with his cowardice and secrecy. Rose hated him because she had loved him so much.

  Damn you, she thought, shaking her head, blinking away the tears.

  The irony froze her.

  Mike said her name again, gently urgent, and reached down to try to take the box from her hands. She pulled away from him. Her chest ached as though the hounds had already been at her, like they’d torn her open and ripped her heart out, and somehow she’d survived.

  All the fear left her, replaced by a revulsion and despair unlike anything she could ever have imagined. The world of spirits and the justice of souls seemed so far beyond her. She was just a girl from Kingsbury who liked horses. Whatever her grandfather had done — sin or crime or shame — he could not possibly deserve whatever afterlife would be his once the Whistlers had collected him. Rose could not do it. She couldn’t just give him over to damnation and torment.

  Back in the house, her grandmother cried out to her again, as if she herself were haunting Rose from the spirit world.

  Then, from somewhere to the east, over the tops of other houses and through acres of trees, came that high, keening whistle. Rose let out a shuddering breath, staring in the direction from which that eerie sound had come.