From a Whisper to a Scream

by Charles de Lint

  She didn’t care if she had to die to do it. There was no fear left in her at all. Just that need.

  But then she saw the children. They came out of the darkness behind her father, almost two dozen small children, the youngest three, oldest nine. The sound of playground voices rang in her head, but the children themselves were motionless, speechless. They stood silent, big eyes staring, bodies spectral, ghostly, spooky.

  And they weren’t alone.

  Behind the children were some adults—just a handful of them. Four women, all of a kind, blonde and well built, dressed like hookers in fishnet, shiny shorts, micro skirts, tank tops, heels. And three men, black men, two of them built like linebackers and almost identical, bent slightly over, hands slapping against their thighs, waking an eerie counterpoint rhythm to the schoolyard sound, the other a thin little guy but with the look of a man who was usually in charge of any situation.

  Her father turned slowly to face them.

  Make … make them go away … .

  Niki found that she could move again, found that she wasn’t so small anymore. She still wasn’t as big as the obese monster that was her father, but then she wasn’t, wouldn’t want to be, that fat mountain of sick flesh.

  She reached in her pocket.

  I don’t want them here … .

  Her father’s slimy voice was petulant now, like a little boy who wasn’t getting his own way.

  Niki’s hand came out of her pocket.

  The ghostly crowd of her father’s victims moved with shuffling steps, approaching. As they drew closer, Niki could see their death wounds upon them. Holes in torsos from which hung matter never meant to see the light of day. One had a crushed head. Another a slit throat.

  Niki swallowed thickly. It was wrong, so wrong what her father had done to them.

  They’re not supposed to be here. They … they’re dead … .

  “Like you.”

  I’m not—

  His enormous bulk turned to face her, gaze traveling down to the switchblade in her hand. She thumbed the release and the blade leapt out of the handle with a sharp snick

  What are you … doing … ?

  “Making things right.”

  She saw fear in the monster’s face, indecision, then a hardening of resolve. He shook his head.

  You can’t hurt the midnight man.

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I’m sure as hell going to give it my best shot.”

  I’// come back. No matter what you do, I’ll come back. He seemed to grow taller as he spoke, resolve filling him with strength. Bigger and stronger than ever. You can’t kill the nightmare man.

  “He’s right.”

  Niki turned to see that the ghost of the little black guy was standing beside her.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “My name was Papa Jo-el. I tried to stop him, but he killed me for my effort. He’s too strong.”

  Listen to him, little Niki. Come back to Daddy.

  “He’s come back for you,” Papa Jo-el told her.

  “I know. But if you think I’m letting him get near me again, there’s a place you can shove it, pal.”

  Daddy loves you, Niki.

  “There’s only one way to stop him.”

  Niki looked from the ghost to her father. He had grown taller again, towering over her like the monstrous nightmare man he claimed to be. But she still wasn’t afraid.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked the ghost. “And what’s that? Give him a blow job?”

  Daddy wants you with him, forever and always.

  Papa Jo-el shook his head. “You must forgive him.”

  Niki laughed. There, in that dark place, with the cold creeping into her bones, the ghosts of her father’s dead all around her and her father himself grown to monstrous heights, it was all she could do.

  “Forgive him? Jesus, no wonder you’re dead — with an attitude like that.”

  Papa Jo-el accepted her mockery without a change of expression. “Trust me, child.”

  “Trust you? I don’t even fucking know you. I don’t want to know you.”

  “You must forgive him, complete the circle. Otherwise he will return.”

  Niki shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’re right about one thing he came hack because of me—but you’ve got the reason all ass-backwards.”

  I know you love me, little Niki.

  “He’s a monster, you see, and he can’t ever be forgiven for what he’s done, both to me and … to them.” She nodded at the silent crowd of ghostly children. “I’ve lived in fear of him all my life. He really is the midnight man. He comes creeping into your bedroom late at night and makes you do shit that you shouldn’t even know about when you’re that young. Even when my mom took me away from him, even when we lived right across the country, I was afraid I’d hear the floorboards creak and he’d be there.”

  Loving you, always loving you in special ways … .

  “The real reason he’s back, is because I brought him back.”

  She hefted the switchblade in her hand, turning away from Papa Jo-el’s ghost.

  “I always believed he’d come back.”

  Nothing can keep me from you, my sweet little darling.

  “But I don’t believe it anymore.”

  She thrust up with the blade of the switchblade, puncturing the expanse of pale flesh that formed a band Between his low-hanging jeans and his high-riding T-shirt.

  The midnight man screamed.

  “There’s nothing inside of him.”

  Blood didn’t gush from the hole in his gut. Instead, hot, fetid air streamed out of the wound.

  “He’s a hollow thing. A bad memory. A construct of all those years that I’ve been so scared of him.”

  He clapped his hands across the wound, but the foul air continued to escape. He began to deflate, like a balloon with a slow leak.

  “He didn’t call me back to this city. I called him back with my belief in him.”

  The nightmare man was just a puddle of skin on the floor now, a face in its center, eyes pleading.

  Please. Help me … little Niki … .

  “The only people I have to ask for forgiveness”—she looked up from what remained of her father to where the four ghostly women stood behind the children—“are you.”

  The women nodded slowly. Their features were so battered that Niki couldn’t read the expression in them, but she thought they understood. She prayed they accepted her apology. They regarded her for long, silent moments; then with the help of the two large black men, they took the youngest children by the hand, ushering the others ahead of them, and slowly walked away until the darkness swallowed them. Only Papa Jo-el’s ghost remained.

  “Do you see?” Niki asked him.

  “How … how could you know?”

  Niki looked down at the knife in her hand. She let it fall to the ground. It clattered once, then lay still. Of her father, there was no trace except for a dark wet stain from which arose a foul stench. She lifted her gaze to look at the ghost, but he, too, was gone now.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  The walls of the vast cavern of the dark place closed in on her, drawing nearer and nearer. She knew a moment of vertigo, as though the world shifted underfoot and she stood, for that one brief instant, over some depthless abyss; then she found herself standing in the boiler room of the building from which she and Cindy had been taken.

  She crossed the room to where Cindy crouched on the floor and slowly lifted the blonde woman’s head.

  “What … what happened?” Cindy asked in a halting voice. “I had the most awful … dreams … .”

  Niki couldn’t speak. Her throat was too thick with emotion. All she could do was hold Cindy in a comforting embrace.

  Other figures stirred in the murk. Niki recognized Jim. She started for a moment at the ghostly features of the other man’s face before she realized it was just a kind of mask he was wearing—graywhite clay, hardened over his features, now cracked and flaking
.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” the stranger said.

  “No dream,” Niki agreed.

  “Is it over?” Jim asked. “Is everything back to normal?”

  Niki slowly nodded, though she wasn’t so sure about what was normal anymore. All she knew was that, inside her, something had changed. She wasn’t afraid anymore. But was it finished? It was over for her, but the real horror was that every day, every hour, what her father had done to her was happening to some other little kid who was just as helpless, just as hurt, just as alone and lost, as she had been. That was the real horror.

  Maybe she should become a social worker. At least she’d know what those kids were going through.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the stranger with the masked face said.

  Niki nodded slowly. She helped Cindy to her feet and supported her as they went upstairs.

  Outside.

  Frank held his breath, waiting for the building to come down. Instead, the tremors died and the crack stopped halfway down the side of the building. An almost reverent silence fell; then a weird flickering covered the entire face of the building. Its polarities reversed once more, light to dark, dark to light, color returning. He started, nerves jumping, when something moved in the doorway.

  Four figures emerged onto the stoop: two women Frank didn’t recognize, the photographer they’d seen run into the building just as they arrived, and—

  “Tom!” he cried, running for the door. He wrapped his arms around Thomas, enfolding him in a hug. “Jesus Christ, man, you had me worried.”

  “You and me both, partner.”

  By the side of the unmarked police car, John and the mambo woman were sitting up. They looked worn to the bone and dazed, utterly beat. John lifted a weak hand to give his brother a thumbs up. Thomas returned the gesture over his partner’s shoulder and stepped back from Frank.

  “What the hell happened in there?” Frank asked.

  “Hell’s about as apt a description as we’re going to come up with. The Slasher’s gone.”

  “You killed him?”

  Thomas shook his head. “He’s just … gone. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “Gone … ?” Frank repeated.

  Thomas looked back at the building. Slowly he nodded his head. “I don’t know where, but this time I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jim and his companions slipped away while the two policemen were talking and made their way back to where he and Ti Beau had left the car. They let the mambo off a block or so from her building so that she could circumvent the plainclothes policeman who was still keeping watch on her front door. Throughout the walk to the car and the drive there, not one of them had seemed willing, or perhaps able, to speak about what they had so recently experienced.

  “Go with God,” Ti Beau said as they got out of the car.

  Jim thought it was an odd thing for her to say, considering her own religious beliefs, but then there hadn’t been anything normal about the weekend to begin with and what did he really know about voodoo anyway?

  Niki needed to pick up her things at his apartment, but Cindy asked to be dropped off at Meg’s on the way.

  “I’ll see you later?” Jim said when they pulled up to the curb in front of Meg’s apartment.

  The haunted look in her eyes troubled him, but with Niki there he didn’t feel right trying to talk about what had happened in that boiler room which hadn’t seemed like a boiler room for most of the time they’d been in it.

  “I … suppose,” Cindy said, closing the door before he could say anything else.

  He drove back to his own apartment more quickly than he should have, but it being a Sunday, the traffic was light and they made it in one piece. He felt uncomfortable with Niki. She’d had such a shitty life, he thought, remembering what he’d learned from the conversation between her and … her father? Already the details were sliding away from his consciousness.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked Niki after they’d fetched her pack.

  She nodded. “I’m out from under the shadow now.”

  “Back there,” he began. “What really hap—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  She left him standing on the curb beside his car and walked away. Jim hesitated for a long moment. He knew she was living on the street, knew she didn’t have anybody, but the haunted look in Cindy’s eyes returned to him and he just let Niki go. She was out of danger now, and if he had to pick priorities, his lay with Cindy.

  But she was gone by the time he got to Meg’s.

  “How could you let her go?” he said.

  Meg caught hold of his arm and pulled him in from the hall, steering him to a chair in the living room.

  “What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Tie her down?”

  “No. It’s just …”

  The night before, the day—everything caught up to him and he leaned back in the chair, deflated, a vast weariness weighing down his limbs His head felt completely empty.

  “You don’t look so good,” Meg said. “And neither did Cindy. Just what exactly did you guys do today?”

  Dozens of vague images crisscrossed through Jim’s mind: strange, confusing images of ghosts and a monstrous man and a dark room that just seemed to go forever … .

  “We … we found him. The Slasher.”

  Meg leaned in toward him. “My God. What happened?”

  “I … I’m not so sure anymore. He …”

  What could he say? That it had turned out the Slasher was a dead man? That Niki stuck him with a knife and he deflated like a balloon? Had any of that even happened?

  “It’s all confusing,” he said finally. “None of it makes a whole lot of sense.”

  “Cindy didn’t have much to say about it either.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No. Just that she had to go. Jim, will you please tell me what happened?”

  He met her worried gaze. “I wish I could. We found the Slasher and … and I guess Niki … killed him … .”

  “You’re not telling me everything.”

  “I can’t,” Jim said, helplessly. “None of it seems real. There were cops there … .”

  But it had been a couple of hours now since they’d left the Tombs, and Meg told him there’d been nothing on the news.

  “Did you get any pictures?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I can take that kind of picture anymore.”

  “Jim, you’re—”

  He sat up suddenly, then rose to his feet. What the hell was he doing, sitting here, when Cindy was gone? Out there on her own somewhere, lost, hurting …

  “I’ve got to go, Meg. I’ll call you.”

  She tried to hold him back. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere. Why don’t you just bed down in my spare room?”

  “I’ve got to find Cindy. I … I’ve got a weird kind of hurt inside me—an emptiness—and I know it’s a lot worse for her. She shouldn’t be out on her own right now. She needs someone; maybe it isn’t me, not for always, but she needs someone right now and I think I’m all she’s got.”

  He thought of Niki, her small figure as she walked off on her own down the street, and felt a pang of guilt. But it was short-lived. Out of all of them he believed that Niki had come out the strongest from their ordeal.

  Meg followed him to the door.

  “We have to talk,” she said. “About what happened, about you quitting your work.”

  He nodded. “We will.”

  She gave him a hug. “Good luck,” she said.

  Jim thought of the size of the city. Christ, Cindy could be anywhere. Where was he supposed to start?

  “You might try the bus station,” Meg said, as though reading his mind.

  And that was where he found her.

  He sat down beside her on the bench, glanced at the ticket in her hand.

  “So … you’re going?”


  She nodded.

  “You don’t have to.”

  She turned to him, that haunted look still darkening her gaze.

  “I … I thought I was strong,” she said. “I thought I could make my own way, could put all the bad shit behind me, but he … he just cut me down like I was nothing.”

  Jim didn’t have to ask who “he” was.

  “He did it to all of us,” he said.

  “I didn’t see Niki’s father,” Cindy said, her voice dull. “I saw my own. He was an alcoholic and he used to”—she took an unsteady breath—“beat me.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “I just feel … so ashamed. Niki … Niki stood up to her father, but I just … ran away from mine … .”

  Jim felt more helpless at that moment than he had confronting the awful monstrosity that had been Niki’s father. The station’s intercom crackled, announcing the departure of Cindy’s bus.

  As she started to rise, Jim touched her arm.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You don’t want me.”

  “But—”

  “I find it hard enough to live with myself; I couldn’t live with pity.”

  The thought of her leaving made Jim’s stomach tense into knots.

  “It’s not that,” he said. “We hardly know each other, but I know … I know I’d like to know you better.”

  Her knuckles were white around the handle of her sax case.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you to stay—like before, no strings. I just don’t think I could handle you walking out of my life without us at least giving things a try.”

  “But now that you know—”

  “What’s happened to you before is in the past. Jesus, it’s not like it was your fault.”

  “But, I just ran … .”

  “There’s running, and then there’s running. There’s things you have to face up to, and then there’s things that you can’t ever change; trying to just hurts you more. For that kind of thing, making a clean break is the only solution.”