From a Whisper to a Scream

by Charles de Lint

  “I … I know,” he repeated.

  Whiteduck smiled sympathetically. “But you are not chief yet,” he said.

  John regarded him steadily for a long moment.

  “What are you saying, Mico’mis?” he asked finally.

  “Go and help your brother.”

  SIXTEEN

  Cindy woke up in Meg’s spare bedroom and simply lay there for a long while, enjoying the sensation of not being in some cheap hotel or a room at the Y. The bedroom wasn’t luxurious, but it certainly didn’t have that feel of transience, as though a different person stayed there every night, week after week, twelve months a year.

  The centerpiece of the room was the three-quarter-sized iron bed, painted white with brass knobs on each post and a Laura Ashley comforter spread over its mattress. Against one wall stood a dresser, also white, with a painted border of straw wreaths around the mirror, bunches of flowers and geese that were repeated along the top of the room’s window and door frames. Lace curtains with a cottage design kept the next-door neighbor from peering in. A hooked throw rug lay beside the bed, and on the walls were two watercolors depicting vibrant country scenes.

  The end result was a room that was pretty, without being cloying. A comfortable space to wake up in.

  There was something to be said for settling down in one place, Cindy thought when she finally arose.

  She got dressed and tiptoed to the washroom, not wanting to wake Meg, who must have got in late last night, because she still wasn’t home by the time Cindy had gone to bed herself.

  She had to search a bit in the kitchen to find coffee filters and ground coffee, but soon she had boiling water dripping through a Melitta filter. The resulting dark liquid filled the apartment with that unmistakable aroma of freshly made coffee. Cindy found a copy of The Star’s Sunday edition in the hall outside the apartment door and took it and her coffee out onto the balcony. She laughed when she reached the paper’s Living section and found a color photo of herself and her sax. Jim was credited for the photo.

  He’s not a bad photographer, she thought. Not bad at all. He certainly made her look good, at any rate.

  Her smile broadened as she read the caption: “Saxy and free, street musician Cindy Draper supports a cross-country trip by playing her own brand of jazz on street corners and in parks.”

  Unfortunately, while thinking of Jim gave her a good feeling, it also brought back to mind that look of terror that had crossed Chelsea’s face when he’d tried to talk to her outside of Shooters last night. Cindy didn’t want to think that he was responsible for that terror—he’d said he wasn’t and she wanted to believe him. But if Chelsea wasn’t scared of Jim, then what had terrified her so?

  With an effort, Cindy tried to put the question out of her mind. She leafed through the rest of the paper until she finished her coffee. When she went back inside, Meg came wandering up the short hall from her bedroom, wrapped in a pink terry cloth bathrobe, her eyes heavy with sleep. She muttered something that sounded vaguely like the last half of “Good morning”—making of it a statement, rather than a greeting—before dropping down on the sofa. Laying her head on the backrest, she drew her legs up under her.

  Cindy brought her a coffee, which she accepted with another mumble, which might have been “Thanks.” While Meg sipped at the coffee, Cindy started making breakfast—eggs, bacon, home fries, and toast—and had it all ready by the time Meg started to wake up.

  “I could get used to this,” Meg said as she sat down at the table and looked over the spread of food. “Did you ever consider hiring yourself out as a live-in cook?”

  “I do breakfast and that’s about it,” Cindy replied. “Actually, I’m not all that great a cook.”

  “Ditto,” Meg said. “I admit to being a fast-food junkie.”

  Cindy regarded Meg’s trim figure and clear complexion.

  “You’d never know it,” she said.

  “It’s a deep, dark secret—don’t tell anybody.” Meg dipped her toast into the yolk of her egg and took a bite. “So,” she added, speaking around her mouthful, “how was your night?”

  “Kind of scary.” At Meg’s raised eyebrows, Cindy went on to explain. “I just don’t trust it when things get this intense, this fast.”

  Meg shook her head. “Jeez, maybe I should revise my opinion of Jim. I always thought he’d be kind of sweet and just a little diffident on a first date.”

  “You never dated him?”

  “Not boy-girl dating—just as friends.”

  “Why not?”

  Meg shrugged. “We were both involved with other people when we first met and that sort of defined our relationship. Since then, there’s never seemed to be any need to change it. I think we both like being friends rather than complicating things.”

  “Well, it wasn’t what you were thinking,” Cindy said. “He was pretty sweet, actually. It’s just that …” She could feel a blush creeping up her neck. “The attraction level between us got revved up pretty high—and that was just in the restaurant.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “I guess. It just seems to be happening too fast.”

  “Well, Jim can get a little intense,” Meg said. “Especially when he’s keen on something. And sometimes he gets these weird leaps of intuition … .”

  “Like what?” Cindy asked when Meg’s voice just trailed off.

  “Oh, you know. Where to be when something’s going down that would make a good photo—that kind of a thing.”

  They concentrated on eating for a while then. When Meg had finished mopping up the last of the yolk on her plate with another piece of toast, Cindy spoke up again.

  “So what’s Jim really like?”

  “He’s good people,” Meg said. “Really.”

  “What do you think about him and Chelsea?”

  “Who’s Chelsea?”

  “The girl he calls Niki—her real name’s Chelsea.”

  “He told you about that?”

  Cindy nodded.

  “Well, I don’t see the connection between her and the Slasher,” Meg said. “Not the way he does, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just …”

  Cindy hesitated for a moment, then told Meg about what had happened outside the restaurant the previous night.

  “What worries me,” she added as she finished, “is that there’s something going on there. The way she looked at him—she was terrified.”

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  Cindy studied her for a moment, then realized it wasn’t Meg’s protective instinct cutting in; she was just curious.

  “I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I like Jim—probably more than I should, considering how short a time I’ve known him. But liking’s one thing. I can see he’s got depths, but so far all I know is the surface. I don’t really know him—not like I guess you do.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” Meg said. “There’s no way he’d hurt anybody—at least not deliberately. He may think more with his dick than his head from time to time, but then what guy doesn’t? When it comes down to basics, he really is a good person.” She paused, thinking for a moment. “Maybe what I’m trying to say is he’s a very moral sort of person. You can count on him to do what he says he’s going to do, and what he tries to do is the right thing.”

  Cindy nodded. “I guess I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

  “I’m not just saying it,” Meg told her. “I mean it.”

  “That’s good.”

  The conversation lagged again then, though not uncomfortably so. Cindy didn’t know what Meg was thinking about, but she knew what was running through her mind. If she really wanted to find out what was going on between Chelsea and Jim—what that terrified look had meant—she’d have to talk to Chelsea herself.

  “I think I’ll go out for a while,” she said. “If Jim calls, or comes by, tell him I’ll be back later.”

  Meg gave her a thoughtful look. “
Sure.”

  “And Meg—thanks for putting me up. I don’t see a whole lot of kindness, being on the road the way I am. At least not without it costing something.”

  What troubled her most about staying over here, she realized, was how it allowed her to let down her guard. Meg and Jim were both so easygoing that she couldn’t help but relax around them. But out on the road, it was a different story. Out on the road, everybody wanted a piece of you.

  She’d left home because her father was an alcoholic, and when he wasn’t trying to knock her lights out in a drunken rage, he expected her to baby him like she was his mother. No wonder her own mother had left him. Only why, Cindy had wondered ever since her mother walked out, hadn’t Mom taken her along?

  Things went from bad to worse, living with her dad, until not even her guilt was strong enough to keep her there anymore. Like her mother, one day she just walked out. She took her sax and a knapsack full of clothes, cleaned out her bank account, and took the first bus away. Where was she going? She didn’t know. Away. To the coast. And when she got there, she’d probably turn right around and head back, because whatever she was looking for couldn’t be found busking on a street corner or aimlessly wandering the country. She’d realized that her first couple of months on the road.

  What she was looking for, she was never going to find: a family. Stability.

  Because every time she met someone who seemed nice, either it got weird and she’d run, or she’d panic. And then run. Like she wanted to do now. But this time she thought she’d stick it out. She had to try again, because if she didn’t, she knew how she was going to end up: She’d be one of those bag ladies, begging for handouts down on the Pier. Or she’d be buried in a shallow roadside grave along some highway to nowhere, because she’d made the mistake of thinking the guy sitting next to her on the bus was okay … .

  “You all right?” Meg asked.

  Cindy gave a quick, embarrassed laugh when she realized that she’d just been standing by the table, lost in a brain ramble.

  “Sure,” she said.

  She went back to the bedroom and changed. Remembering what it had been like in the Tombs, she went for practical gear: jeans, sturdy walking shoes, and a T-shirt with a flannel shirt over top. She put her ID and some money in the front pocket of her jeans, not wanting to bring a purse. She left her sax behind as well, since it would only be a cumbersome burden for what she had planned. The last thing she did was take her jean jacket from her pack. She carried it with her as she returned to the apartment’s main living area.

  Meg gave her a critical look, then got up and went to the hall closet. She rummaged around on its top shelf for a bit, then tossed Cindy a beret.

  “Put your hair up under this,” she said. “It might help you look a little less pretty, though I doubt it. Maybe you could try smudging a little dirt on your cheeks. The more you look like some scruffy downand-outer, the less likely you’ll have someone hassling you.”

  Cindy regarded her with confusion. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You’re going to the Tombs, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I get a feel for this kind of a thing—Jim’s not the only one with intuition around here. You’re going to look for that girl.”

  Cindy nodded. “Yeah. I feel like I have to.”

  “You and Jim,” Meg said, shaking her head. “What is it with this girl that she gets people all fired up and hot to find her?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just …” Cindy sighed. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  “Do you know her?” Meg asked.

  “Not really. I ran into her two nights ago, in a squat in the Tombs. She was acting a little strange—I remember thinking she was messed up on drugs, but now … after last night … I know she was just scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “That’s what I guess I’m going to find out.”

  Meg studied her for a long, quiet moment.

  “Do you want some company?” she asked finally.

  “No. This is something—”

  “You’ve got to do on your own. I thought you’d say something like that.”

  “I’ll be back,” Cindy said.

  Meg studied her again. For a moment Cindy was sure she was going to try to talk her out of going off on her own, but then Meg just shook her head.

  “Just be careful,” was all she said.

  Jim felt as if he had a hangover when he woke up. He had a sharp pain behind his left eye, and as soon as he got up, the vaguely queasy feeling in his stomach intensified so that he had to stumble into the bathroom, where he vomited into the toilet bowl. Leaning weakly against the white porcelain, the smell of bile rearing up at him out of the bowl, he actually felt worse than he had before he’d thrown up. Usually the release made him feel better.

  It took him a while to realize what it was. Behind the ache in his head, the source of it was that alien murmur, that whispering voice.

  He flushed, but stayed on the floor, sitting with his back against the tub, his chin on his chest. Slowly the nausea ebbed. The headache took longer, but by the time he’d managed to shave and take a shower, it had left the area behind his eye and was just a vague ache at the back of his head. His memories of the previous night were harder to ignore. The whisper didn’t go away at all. It took a constant vigilance to keep it at bay, to stop himself from just wanting to strike out at something.

  He drank a cup of coffee, but couldn’t face having breakfast. Back in his living room, he took out the photos he’d printed up last night at The Star. They hadn’t changed. In them, Papa Jo-el Pilione and his two men were still being butchered; there was still no evidence of the creature responsible for the carnage.

  I can’t handle this, Jim thought.

  He stared at the photos, willing the creature to reappear. It had to be there. He’d seen the damn thing—hadn’t he? It just wasn’t fucking possible that it shouldn’t show up in the photos. But then, what about last night was possible?

  Voodoo ceremonies and murderous spirits—it was the stuff of late night B movies, plain and simple. It wasn’t real.

  But he’d seen it all the same. And in his head whispered a constant reminder.

  After a while he shuffled the photos together again and slipped them back into their folder. He thought about the photo shoot he’d gone on with Mary, but he couldn’t remember a damn thing about voodoo, Pilione, or anything useful at all from that day. All he’d taken away with him, on film and in his memories, were the impressions that Pilione’s temple was just a seedy loft filled with candles and icons, Pilione himself was nothing more than a con man, and the whole voodoo thing was just so much bullshit.

  He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. Well, he knew better now, didn’t he? He didn’t know what exactly it was that he’d seen last night, but he’d sure as hell seen something for which there was no rational explanation.

  So what did he do about it?

  He could just let it go. No one had seen him there, no one knew. He could just forget about Niki and the Slasher—just take the assignments that Grant handed him and forget about playing hero. Except—

  Niki’s terrified features flashed across his mind. He closed his eyes, but that just made her come into tighter focus. He could see the Slasher … that thing from last night … bringing his knife down on her … .

  The whispering behind his headache grew stronger, almost like laughter—a dark, cold, soft laughter that was all the more insidious for its faintness.

  Sweat stood out on his brow. The vague throb behind his left eye sharpened into a pulsing ache. He got up and walked out onto the small balcony off his living room. The morning air was still cool. It helped calm him, but not much.

  He had to see it through, he realized. It scared the shit out of him, but he had to see it through. Not just to help some street kid he didn’t know, but for his own sanity. Because if what he’d seen last night wasn’t real, if the whis
pering inside him, and the urge to commit his own acts of violence, had their source in his own psyche …

  Don’t even think about it, he told himself.

  He went back into the apartment and flicked on the TV, switching channels until he got to the all-news cable network. He had to wait about fifteen minutes before they reran the story: Three men dead in the Tombs, brutally murdered, the police had no suspects, they were making no statement beyond “No comment.” Pilione’s alleged criminal connections were mentioned, as was his voodoo church, and that was it. More news would be forthcoming as it broke.

  So far they hadn’t even made the connection to the Friday Slasher. But why should they? So far as they were concerned, this was a gangland killing; it had no connection to the deaths of blonde hookers. But then the newspeople and cops hadn’t been there last night. They hadn’t seen it go down the way he had.

  More news forthcoming … .

  Jim picked up his remote control and turned off the TV.

  I could give you some forthcoming news, he thought, then just shook his head. Who’d believe him? He wasn’t sure he even believed it himself. If he went to the police with his story, they’d probably arrest him. And there was no one else he could go to. The paper? Grant would just make him take some vacation time. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to involve either Meg or Cindy in this. It wasn’t their concern, and the way he was feeling right now—

  No, he’d never hurt them, he told himself. But he had to get rid of that sound in his head before something snapped.

  He had to deal with this on his own. It was nobody’s concern except for his. Who else would even care …?

  A memory came to him, cutting through his confusion as dramatically as the Slasher’s blade had cut those men last night. In his mind’s eye he was back at Pilione’s temple with Mary. He was taking some shots of the candle- and icon-covered altar, only half-listening to Mary and Pilione discussing the various roles he and the other members of his church played in their ceremonies. What came back to Jim now was that Pilione didn’t run the show on his own. He had drummers and a priestess helping him.