The Whispers

by Greg Howard

  I stare at her with my mouth hanging open. I wait for her to start laughing any minute now like she does sometimes when she’s just messin’ with me, but she doesn’t.

  “And then, of course, there’re the hobgoblins.” She gets up from the table, taking my empty bowl with her to the sink.

  I don’t think I heard her right. “The hob . . . what?”

  “Hobgoblins,” she says, casually rinsing out my bowl like it’s perfectly normal to discuss the existence of hobgoblins with your eleven-year-old grandson. “They live in the woods, too. Big old nasty creatures. And you don’t even want to know what they eat.”

  I can’t resist. “What do they eat?”

  She looks over her shoulder at me. “You just better hope you never see one, son.”

  I swallow hard. “Have you ever seen one of these . . . hobgoblins?”

  “PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!” Grandpa yells from the den.

  Grandma wipes her hands on the dish towel draped over her shoulder, her eyes growing cloudy and distant.

  “Grandma?” I say.

  She looks over at me and her eyes are completely glassy now. “What’s that, sweetie?”

  Crap.

  “A hobgoblin,” I say cautiously. “You were telling me about the Whispers and the hobgoblins. In the woods.”

  Her face wrinkles in confusion, a look I’ve seen from her a lot lately. She’s sharp as a tack one minute and foggy the next. It’s probably because of the shoe box full of pill bottles she keeps on the coffee table. We don’t talk about that, even when she rummages through it right in front of God and everybody.

  “Never mind,” I say, not wanting to confuse her any more than she already is. “It’s nothing.”

  She gives me a weak smile and wipes down the counter like she’s wiping our conversation right out of her memory. But that word is seared into my brain.

  Hobgoblin.

  5

  MY CONDITION

  I have trouble falling asleep that night partly because I’m racking my brain again trying to remember the song, but mostly because I can’t stop thinking about what Grandma said before she went foggy on me. What if a real live hobgoblin took Mama? It could have easily come out of the woods and walked right into our house. I assume they know how to open doors. Actually, I don’t know anything about hobgoblins—what they look like or how big they are—but I bet they’re strong. Strong enough to carry off a full-grown woman, even. Could a hobgoblin be keeping Mama somewhere in the woods? Do they live in caves, or shacks, or under bridges like trolls? The Whispers would know if a hobgoblin has Mama, that’s for sure. I just have to find them.

  There’s a light tap on the door.

  “Come in,” I say, thinking it’s Danny. But then again, Danny wouldn’t knock.

  Daddy pushes the door open a little and sticks his head in. “Just checking to see if you were asleep yet.”

  I shake my head, wondering if he’s going to come over and tuck me in the way Mama does. He probably thinks I’m too old for a story and a song. I probably am, but that never stopped Mama.

  He stays wedged in the door like this is a hospital room and he doesn’t want to get too close in case I’m contagious.

  “Bathroom?” he asks with question mark eyebrows.

  I nod and hold up four fingers.

  “Okay, then,” he says, glancing at my wall of words. I know it makes him think of Mama. He looks back at me quickly with no particular expression on his face. “Get to sleep. School tomorrow.”

  I nod as he backs out of the open wedge of space. “Good night, Daddy.”

  I think I hear him say good night back, but the door was closing at the same time, so I can’t be sure. I could’ve imagined it.

  Seventeen words. Nineteen if you count the possible good night. I think he’s trying.

  On the floor beside my bed, Tucker groans. He’s just as restless as I am tonight. I don’t let him sleep with me anymore because of my condition. That’s what Grandma calls it. My condition. She always lowers her voice when she says it, like it’s a rare disease or something that people might catch if she says it too loud. But there’s no medicine or treatment for my condition. Jesus can’t heal me either. I already asked—a lot. Maybe the Whispers can, though. Why not hope?

  I went to the bathroom four times before getting into bed even though nothing came out the last two trips. I try not to think about it, because the more I worry about wetting the bed, the more likely I am to do it.

  I haven’t always wet the bed. It started right after Mama went missing. Daddy didn’t seem too concerned at first, but after a couple of weeks of a soaked mattress and sheets, his frustration took hold and hasn’t let go. It’s like every time I do it I’m reminding him that Mama’s gone since I never did it before she disappeared, except when I was a baby, I guess. At first he cleaned up after me, but I couldn’t take the shame of that. If I’d done it when Mama was here, she wouldn’t have made me feel bad about it.

  What’s a little pee in your bed when so many people in the world don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight, Button? I can imagine her saying, and she helped real homeless people because of her social work job, so she would know.

  But Daddy couldn’t hide his disgust with the smelly sheets and stained mattress. To be fair, I don’t think he’d ever done laundry before Mama was taken. And no one wants to touch someone else’s pee-soaked sheets, so who am I to judge? He finally broke down and bought a new mattress for my bed along with a vinyl cover that makes crunching sounds every time I roll over. I’ve cleaned up after myself ever since.

  Unfortunately my brother knows about my condition too. He doesn’t tease me about it, but in a way that’s almost worse. Instead he looks at me like I’m some kind of alien egg hatching that he doesn’t want to get too close to. If he teased me a little bit about it, that would be normal, I guess. Not that I want to be teased about anything. Especially not my condition.

  I lie on my back trying to remember even just the melody of the song Mama used to sing to me at night. She made up the song just for me when I was born. As I got older, she would hum it instead of singing all the words because it’s a lullaby and I’m not a baby anymore. But since she disappeared, I can’t remember the words or the melody. I feel like I’ve failed Mama—again—because I can’t remember it.

  After a while, I give up, roll over on my side, and stare at the word wall. The moonlight slips in through partly open shades just enough that I can see most of them. Our words. The small black-and-white square slips of paper, each with a date, a word, and its exact dictionary definition. They cover a whole wall, hundreds of them, like word wallpaper. There’s hardly any empty space to add new ones. It looks like a dictionary threw up in my room or something.

  Way back when I turned ten, Mama got me a word-of-the-day desk calendar for my birthday because Grandpa got her and Uncle Mike one when they each turned ten. She said she got Danny one too, but I guess it didn’t take, because there’s nothing on his walls but posters of guns, motorcycles, and torn-out pages of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. Danny doesn’t know as many words as I do even though he’s in high school.

  The calendar sits on my nightstand because I like to rip off the day’s word before I go to bed and peek at what tomorrow’s word will be so I can be ready for Mama. After we read the exact dictionary definition together, Mama explains them to me in her own words, which usually makes me laugh. Mama is real funny sometimes. Then she’ll ask me to explain what it means in my own words, and also to use it in a sentence.

  Use it in a sentence, Button, she says every single time.

  Mama always says, Know as many words as you can, but only use the words you know.

  Mama also says that people who use big words that they don’t know the meaning of are puttin’ on airs.

  I look over at the small square calend
ar to remind myself what today’s word is.

  Petulant.

  After rereading the exact dictionary definition, I decide on the my own words meaning.

  Petulant is when someone is a pain in the butt to be around because they act like a hemorrhoidal jerk all the time.

  Coming up with a sentence for that one is easy.

  I feel really bad for Mama and Daddy because even after all their hard work raising us, Danny turned out to be a very petulant child.

  I rip the petulant sheet off the calendar and lay it on the nightstand so I can tape it to the wall in the morning.

  Something taps my window, drawing my attention. Like a fat bug had a head-on collision or something. I hope it wasn’t a moth. They leave a mess. I lean up on my elbow and peer through the partly open shades into the darkness. I don’t see anything at first. Then, out in the middle of the yard, a bluish glow catches my eye but quickly fades away. I slip out of bed and lift the shades to get a closer look. I can’t really see anything, though. Just the dark outline of Daddy’s work shed, the shadowy stalks of the Pentecostal corn choir, and the moonlight casting a hazy glow over the treetops in the distance. Maybe I imagined it.

  I open the window a little bit. I like to hear the night crickets sing, and the birds waking up in the treetops in the morning are my alarm clock. They can make a real ruckus when the sun comes up, like angry teenagers complaining to God that they can’t sleep all day long like Danny does on Saturdays. Sliding back under the still warm, dry sheets, I glance over at the nightstand and review tomorrow’s word. Feckless.

  That’s going to be a tough one to use in a sentence.

  * * *

  I wake early the next morning, right in the middle of a dream about Mama. She was telling me the story of the Whispers before bed and she was about to sing the song, but then I woke up. At least it wasn’t the nightmare I’ve been having lately.

  I realize that I’m cold and soaking wet from the waist down. The familiar stench fills my nostrils. I shiver as I slip out of bed. Tucker lies on the rug in the center of the room, watching me with one eyebrow raised, giving me his not again, dude look.

  I strip the bed and take off my pajamas as quickly as I can and gather the bundle of pee-smelling evidence. Tucker doesn’t bother getting up with me. This has become so routine that he can’t be bothered anymore. Maybe he’s embarrassed for me, or by me. I’m not sure which. At least Tucker has the decency to whine by the back door until someone lets him outside to go pee. He stares at me like he doesn’t understand the whole double standard of it all. Why do I get to pee in my bed when such a fuss is made about even the idea of him doing his business anywhere inside the house? He’s right, of course. Tucker’s always right.

  I haul the whole mess down to the laundry closet in the kitchen. The house is quiet and I try to make as little noise as possible loading the washing machine, adding a capful of Tide detergent, closing the lid, and turning the noisy dials. Before Mama went missing, I’d never done a stitch of laundry in my life. I did help her with the folding, though. That’s how I learned to tri-fold the towels. Not everybody does it that way, but it’s very important to Mama. But now I’m practically a pro at the whole laundry process, from dirty towel to clean Mountain Spring–smelling tri-folded towel. If Daddy ever kicks me out of the house, I could probably get a job at one of those twenty-four-hour laundromats in Upton because I’m good at making change, too. Mama taught me that you count from the amount owed up to the amount given. It makes perfect sense once you get it. Danny still doesn’t get it. Danny’s not only petulant, he’s not very bright.

  My goal is always to have my sheets washing and a fresh set on the bed before Daddy wakes up. That seems to at least lessen the look of disappointment in his eyes. Back in my room, I close and lock the door. I spray the vinyl mattress cover with my own personal stash of 409 cleaner that I keep in the nightstand and wipe it down with a damp rag. Then I spray the whole thing with a generous helping of Lysol. I also give the room a healthy blast of the stuff and for a moment even consider spraying my whole body, just to make sure Daddy and Danny don’t get a whiff of my shame at breakfast. Luckily I have time to shower before I get ready for school.

  Last step in my morning routine. I reach under my pillow and pull out the sandwich-sized Ziploc bag. The word PRIVATE is written on it in black Magic Marker in big block letters. The plastic is completely dry. Thankfully the pee-tide didn’t rise that high this time. I hold the bag in the palm of my hand and stare at the lone passenger inside. Mama’s wedding ring. Nothing fancy—just a plain gold band. But she was always so proud of it, you’d think it belonged in a museum or something.

  Daddy was Mama’s first and only love, she used to say. They were childhood sweethearts. Grew up right down the road from each other when he was just Daniel James, daredevil–bad boy, and she was just Carolyn Riley, straight-A beauty queen. Daddy never had another girlfriend his whole life and Mama never had another boyfriend.

  Your daddy spent every last dime he had on it, she always says when she takes the ring off and lets me try it on. I like the way it looks on my finger. I think I’d like to have a wedding ring one day; I just don’t want the girl that comes with it.

  A cabinet door slams in the kitchen, a little harder than usual. Daddy’s up and the running washing machine must have put him in a mood—a three-cycle reminder of his defective son. The loud buzzer at the end is always an added bonus, bringing even more attention to my condition. I hurry over to the dresser and slip the Ziploc bag into the bottom drawer, way in the back under my heavy winter sweater. Finally, after reading the exact dictionary meaning of feckless one more time, I grab petulant off the nightstand and tape it to an empty sliver of wall space near the window. I should go tape it on the door of Danny’s bedroom.

  While the 409 and Lysol dry, I head down the hall to the bathroom to shower off the stench of my latest disappointment.

  6

  JUNIOR BLACK SANTA

  I’ve always thought Buckingham Middle School is oddly named. Sure, Buckingham is the name of the county we live in, but it’s also the name of a famous castle in England. And Buckingham Middle School sure doesn’t look like a castle. BMS looks like a giant cinder block with windows and only barely passes as a real school. The teachers do the best they can, but we spend most of our language arts class sitting around while Mrs. Barker tries to get half of the class up to sixth grade reading level, because Buckingham Elementary is even worse.

  The second-period bell rings, announcing it’s time to herd ourselves down the hall to a whole different classroom for South Carolina history with Mrs. Turner. One thing Buckingham Elementary has going for it is that the teachers there know how to teach all the subjects, so you stay in one classroom the whole day. I guess the teachers at BMS could only afford to learn one subject apiece—instead of moving them from room to room, they move all of us.

  It doesn’t seem like a very efficient system, but I don’t mind the changing-classes part of middle school too much. I guess it’s good practice for high school because I hear they change classes like every five minutes or something. Plus sometimes I get to see Dylan Mathews in the hall between classes even though he’s in the eighth grade. He’s usually alone and not very talkative, but he always gives me a little wave and smile. We’re kind of neighbors. Well, neighbors with a ginormous cornfield separating our backyards. Country neighbors.

  The hallway is noisier than usual. Everyone is buzzing about the long holiday weekend coming up—early dismissal tomorrow and no school on Monday because it’s Labor Day. The girls are especially noisy. I’ll never for the life of me understand why they have to talk so loud and how they have so much to talk about. They used to lower their voices down to whispers and stare at me when I passed them in the hall, but that was back when Mama first disappeared. Her picture was in all the newspapers back then and it was all anyone talked about for a while. Local bea
uty queen, social worker, and tireless advocate for the indigent and incarcerated, they called her in the papers. Danny cut out all the articles but he won’t ever let me see them because he’s a horrible person. Now everyone seems to have forgotten that there’s still an open police investigation going on and that I’m the star witness.

  I peer down the crowded hallway and finally spot Gary. The eighth graders tower over him, but pretty much everyone has a hard time getting around him. Gary looks like he has a car tire under his shirt. He’s big, but in a junior black Santa sort of way. I never knew there was a white Santa for white kids and a black Santa for black kids until Gary set me straight on the subject. Gary has a white mama and a black daddy, which is unusual in Buckingham County. Most everybody here is either all the way white or all the way black, so Gary gets called some not-so-nice names sometimes, but I think it’s kind of cool that he’s different. Even though Gary’s technically only half black and his skin is only part the way black, he says he feels all the way black on the inside, and since I can’t see what his insides look like, who am I to disagree? I wonder if both the black Santa and the white Santa visit Gary’s house on Christmas. I’ll have to ask him about that. It seems unfair.

  He makes a beeline for me, parting a sea of thin people like bowling pins. I wait by my locker so we can walk into class together.

  “What up, dawg?” Gary says. He calls me dawg sometimes. I don’t know why, but I don’t mind.

  Gary grins from ear to ear. Always does. He acts like he hasn’t seen me in a week even though we sit together every day on the bus. I didn’t mention the Whispers to him on the ride in this morning. I’d planned to, but his little brother Carl was right there the whole time. Besides, all Gary wanted to talk about after Carl got off the bus at the Buckingham Elementary stop was Rebecca Johnson’s rapidly developing chest. She must work out.

  “Hey,” I say, following him into Mrs. Turner’s classroom after taking one last peek down the hall. No Dylan. I turn back to Gary, lean in, and lower my voice. “Meet me by mobile unit three after lunch.”