The Whisper Man(85)
Time to say good night to the boy.
No more mistakes.
And yet, as he headed upstairs to Jake, he kept thinking about killing Neil Spencer and how it had made him feel.
I’m like you, you see?
And he wondered if perhaps it hadn’t been so terrible a mistake after all.
Fifty-five
When you woke up from a nightmare, things were supposed to be okay.
Not like this.
When Jake had first opened his eyes, he had been confused. It was too bright in his room. The light was on, and that wasn’t right. And then he’d realized this wasn’t his bedroom at all, but some other child’s, and that wasn’t right either. But his head was so groggy that he couldn’t make sense of it, beyond feeling a tightening knot of wrongness in his heart. The world had swum around him when he’d sat up. And then a memory had come back to him, and the knot had tightened more quickly, squeezing panic out into his whole body.
He was supposed to be at home. And he had been. But then there had been the man coming up the stairs, and then into his room, and then something on his face. And then …
Nothing.
Until here.
That had been perhaps ten minutes ago. Since then, he had spent a short amount of time thinking that this must be another nightmare—a new one—because it certainly felt like one. But he knew, even before he pinched himself to test, that it was too real for that. The fear was too strong, and if he had been asleep it would have woken him up by now. He remembered about the man who had taken Neil Spencer and hurt him, though, and he wondered if maybe this was a nightmare after all, just not the kind you got to wake up from. The world was full of bad men. Full of bad dreams that didn’t always happen when you were asleep.
He glanced to one side now.
The little girl was here with him!
“You’re—”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down.” She looked around the small room and swallowed hard. “You mustn’t let him know that I’m here.”
Which, of course, she wasn’t—he knew that deep down. But he was so grateful to see her that he wasn’t going to think about that. She was right, though. It wouldn’t be okay for the man to hear him talking to anyone. It would be …
“Really bad?” he whispered.
She nodded seriously.
“Where am I?” he said.
“I don’t know where you are, Jake. You’re where you are, and so that’s where I am too.”
“Because you won’t leave me?”
“I’ll never leave you. Ever.” She looked around again. “And I’ll do my best to help you, but I can’t protect you. This is a very serious situation. You know that, don’t you? It’s a long, long way from being right.”
Jake nodded. Everything was wrong, and he wasn’t safe, and it was suddenly too much.
“I want my daddy.”
Maybe that was a pathetic thing to say, but once it was out, he couldn’t stop himself. So he whispered it again and again, and then he started to cry, thinking that if you wanted something hard enough then it might come true. It wouldn’t, though. It felt like Daddy was the distance of the whole world away from him right now.
“Please try not to make any noise.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “You have to be brave.”
“I want my daddy.”
“He’ll find you. You know he will.”
“I want my daddy.”
“Come on, Jake. Please.” Her hand tightened on him, halfway between reassuring and scared. “I need you to calm down.”
He tried to stop crying.
“That’s better.”
She moved her hand and was silent for a moment, listening.
“I think it’s okay for now. So what we need to do is find out as much as possible about where we are. Because that might tell us how we can get out. Okay?”
He nodded. He was still scared, but what she was saying made sense.
He stood up and looked around the room.
The wall on one side of the room only went up to chest height before it began sloping inward the way that roofs did, so that meant he must be in an attic. He’d never been in an attic before. He’d always pictured them as dark, dusty places with bare floorboards and cardboard boxes and spiders, but this one was neatly carpeted, and the walls had been painted bright white, with grass drawn on at the bottom, and bees and butterflies fluttering above. It might have been nice, if it hadn’t been harshly lit by a bare bulb in the ceiling, giving everything an unreal quality, as though bits of the drawings might start coming to life at any moment. There was an open chest full of soft toys against the sloping wall. A small wardrobe against another. He looked behind him. The bed was decked out in Transformers sheets that looked old and worn.
So he was in some other child’s room. Except it didn’t feel right or natural in here, as though it had never really been meant to be lived in by a real boy.
There was a door in the opposite wall. He walked across and pushed it open nervously. A small toilet and sink. There was a towel in a circular hoop and soap on the basin. He closed the door again. Turning around, he could see there was a narrow corridor leading off from one corner of the room, but it only went a little way before there was another wall. He stepped into the space and found himself at the top of a dark staircase. At the bottom, there was a closed door.