The Whisper Man(13)

“Jake?” I shouted upstairs.

Silence.

“Jake?”

“Daddy?”

I almost jumped. His voice had come from the living room, directly beside me. Keeping one eye on the landing, I leaned in. My son was crouched on the floor with his back to me, drawing something.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“Yes. Why?”

“I was just checking.”

I leaned back out, then stared up at the landing again for a few seconds. It was still quiet up there, but the space had a strange sense of potential to it now, once again as though there were somebody standing just out of sight. Which was ridiculous, of course, because nobody could have come in through the front door without me knowing. Houses creaked. It took a while to get used to them, that was all.

But even so.

I walked upstairs slowly and cautiously, stepping quietly, with my left hand raised, ready to deflect anything that leaped out at me from that side. I reached the top—and of course the landing was empty. When I stepped into Jake’s room, that was empty too. A wedge of afternoon sunlight was coming through the window, and I could see tiny curls of dust hanging in the air, undisturbed.

Just the house creaking.

I went downstairs more confidently, feeling silly but also more relieved than I’d have liked to admit. At the bottom, I had to edge past the piles of mail on the last two steps. There had been a lot so far: the usual documents that inevitably come with moving into a new house, along with innumerable local take-out menus and other junk mail. But there had also been three proper letters, addressed to someone called Dominic Barnett. All three were marked either Private or Addressee Only.

I remembered that the previous owner, Mrs. Shearing, had rented the house out for years, and on a whim I ripped one of the letters open now. Inside, I found an itemized account from a debt collection company. My heart sank. Whoever Dominic Barnett was, he owed the company on an old cell phone contract. I opened the others, and they were the same: notices for unpaid money. I scanned the details, frowning to myself. The amounts weren’t large, but the tone of the letters was threatening. I told myself it wasn’t an insurmountable problem and that a few phone calls would sort it out, but this move was meant to be a new start for Jake and me, not to deliver a fresh set of obstacles for me to overcome.

“Daddy?”

Jake had appeared in the living room doorway beside me. He was holding his Packet of Special Things in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“Is it all right if I play upstairs?”

I thought of the creak I’d heard, and for a second I wanted to say no. But again, that was absurd. There was nobody up there, and it was his bedroom; he had every right to play in it. At the same time, we hadn’t seen much of each other that day, and it felt isolating for him to disappear upstairs now.

“I guess,” I said. “Can I see your drawing first?”

He hesitated. “Why?”

“Because I’m interested. Because I’d like to.”

Because I’m trying here, Jake.

“It’s private.”

Which was fair enough, and a part of me wanted to respect that, but I didn’t like the idea of him keeping secrets from me. The Packet was one thing, but it felt like if he wouldn’t even show me his drawings now, then the distance between us must be increasing.

“Jake—” I started to say.

“Oh, fine.”

He thrust the sheet out at me. Now that it was being offered, I was reluctant to take it.

But I did.

Jake had never been good at drawing straightforward, realistic scenes before, preferring his convoluted, unfolding battles instead, but he’d attempted one here. The picture was rough, but it was obviously an approximation of our house from the outside, reminiscent of the original photograph that had caught his attention online. He had captured the odd look of the place well. The curved, childlike lines stretched the house into a strange shape, elongating the windows, and making it look more like a face than ever. The front door appeared to be moaning.

But it was the upstairs that drew my attention. In the right-hand window he’d drawn me, standing by myself in my bedroom. On the left, there he was in his own room, the window large enough here to include his whole body: a smile on his face, the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing right now shaded with crayon.

And beside him, he’d drawn another person in his bedroom. A little girl, her black hair splayed almost angrily out to one side. Her dress was colored in with patches of blue, leaving the rest white. Little scrapes of red on one of her knees.

A corkscrew smile on her face.





Nine


After Jake’s bath that night, I knelt on the floor beside his bed so that we could read to each other. He was a good reader, and we were currently working our way through Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones. It was a childhood favorite of mine, which I’d chosen without thinking. The horrible irony of the title had only occurred to me afterward.

When we’d finished that night’s chapter, I put the book down with all his others.

“Cuddle?” I said.

He slipped out of the covers without a word and sat sideways on my knees, wrapping his arms around me. I savored the cuddle for as long as I could, and then he clambered back into bed.

“I love you, Jake.”