The Whisper Man(81)

Downstairs, the front door opened.

“Ah.” Pete canceled the call. “I guess that’s okay, then. Will you be all right up here for a minute while I go down and get him?”

No, Jake thought, I won’t. He didn’t want to spend another second up here in the darkness by himself. But at least Daddy was home now, and he felt a flood of relief at that.

“Okay.”

Pete stood up and walked out of the room, and Jake heard his footsteps going back down the stairs, and then him calling out Daddy’s name.

Jake stared at the wedge of illuminated hallway beyond the bedroom door, listening carefully. For a few seconds there was nothing but silence. But then he heard something he couldn’t identify. Movement of some kind, as though furniture were being shifted about. And people talking, only with sounds instead of words, like when you were trying really hard to do something and the effort made you make a noise.

Another loud sound. Something heavy falling over.

And then silence again.

Jake thought about calling out for Daddy, but for some reason his heart was thudding hard in his chest again, as hard as it had been when he’d first woken up from the nightmare, and the silence was ringing so much that it felt like he was back inside it, back in their old living room.

He stared at the empty hallway, waiting.

A few seconds later, there was a new sound. Footsteps on the stairs again. Someone was coming up, but they were moving slowly and carefully, as though they were scared of the silence too.

And then someone whispered his name.





Fifty-two


“I’m sure everything’s fine.”

Hurrying along behind me, Karen tried to make it sound breezy. And no doubt she was right; I was almost certainly overreacting—walking so quickly that she was struggling to keep up. She had come with me without us discussing it, but if she hadn’t, I might even have been running right now. Because, while she was right, and there was most likely nothing to worry about, I still felt it in my heart. The certainty that something was terribly wrong.

I took out my phone and tried my father again. He had called me at the pub, but it had cut off before I’d had a chance to answer. Which meant that something must have happened. But when I’d tried to call him back, he hadn’t picked up.

The phone rang and rang now.

He still wasn’t picking up.

“Fuck.”

I canceled the call as we reached the bottom of my street. Maybe he’d dialed by accident, or changed his mind about needing to talk to me. But I remembered how deferential he’d been earlier on, and how quietly pleased he’d seemed to be allowed to look after Jake and be allowed into our lives, in however small a way. He wouldn’t have called me unless he could have helped it. Not unless it had been important.

The field to the right was thick with the evening gloom. There seemed to be nobody out there right now, but it was already too dark to see to the far side. I started to walk even more quickly, aware that I was probably coming across as an absolute lunatic to Karen. But I was beginning to panic now, however irrational it was, and that mattered more.

Jake …

I reached the driveway.

The front door was open, a block of light slanted out across the path.

If you leave a door half open …

And then I really did start running.

“Tom—”

I reached the door, but then stopped at the threshold. There were smears of bloody footprints all over the wood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jake?” I shouted inside.

The house was silent. I stepped carefully inside, my heart pounding fast and hard in my ears.

Karen had reached me now.

“What—oh, God.”

I looked to my right, into the living room, and the sight that awaited me there made no sense whatsoever. My father was lying on his side with his back to me, curled up on the floor by the window, almost as though he’d gone to sleep there. But he was surrounded by blood. I shook my head. There was blood all over the side of his body. Farther up, it was pooling around his head. He was completely still. And for a moment, unable to process what I was seeing, so was I.

Beside me, Karen took a sharp, shocked intake of breath. I turned slightly and saw that she’d gone pale. Her eyes were wide and she was holding her hand over her mouth.

Jake, I thought.

“Tom—”

But I didn’t hear anything after that, because the thought of my son had brought me back to life, galvanizing me into action. I moved past her, around her, then headed straight up the stairs as quickly as I could. Praying. Thinking, Please.

“Jake!”

There was blood on the upstairs landing too: pressed into the carpet by the shoes of whoever had committed the atrocity downstairs. Someone had attacked my father, and then they’d come up here, up here to …

My son’s room.

I stepped in. The bedsheet had been folded neatly back. Jake was not here. Nobody was here. I stood for a few seconds frozen in place, dread itching at my skin.

Downstairs, Karen was on her phone, talking frantically. Ambulance. Police. Urgent. A jumble of words that made no sense to me right then. It felt like my mind was going to shut down—as though my skull had suddenly opened up and was exposed to a vast, incomprehensible kaleidoscope of horror.

I walked across to the bed.