The Whispers: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel

by Maxwell, Flint

  I was a fool. I knew curiosity had killed many cats, but I thought I was different. Like any person in their twenties, I believed I was indestructible. You never think anything bad can happen to you…until it does. Death comes a-knocking for us all, whether we are ready to go or not. It’s guaranteed.

  “Carter, come on!” Autumn said. “Help!”

  I moved, feeling sluggish. As I turned toward the front entrance, my eyes trying to locate something to help keep the thing from getting in, Tommy burst out of the back room. Brock’s lifeless body was draped over his shoulder. Drops of blood pattered the floor, leaving a dark trail behind them that was lost in the shadows.

  “It’s the only way,” he said. “Move!”

  There was no stopping him, and to be completely honest with you, I can’t guarantee that I would’ve stopped him even if I could. He got through the barricade in a matter of seconds, which made me wonder how fast the monster could have had it not been toying with us.

  Tommy threw the door open, but there was nothing out there but the haze and the coldness and the storm. For a moment, near-perfect silence fell over our world. All I could hear was the blood surging in my ears.

  Then—that slithery dragging sound. Heavy footsteps. Something scraping the concrete, like claws or something metal. I looked at the opening, and from my angle Tommy combined with Brock’s body obscured my view, but like Stephanie had mentioned, I sensed the creature’s presence. I sensed its pure, concentrated evil. I sensed its alien origin. I don’t know how. I don’t have ESP or anything along those lines—not that I know of, at least—but I believe if you were there standing next to me, you would’ve sensed the same thing.

  Tommy’s scream shattered the silence. “Here! Goddamn it, here! Take it and leave us the fuck alone!”

  This outburst inspired Autumn. “Yeah, leave us alone! Go back to whatever hell you came from!”

  Together, her and Tommy lowered the body just past the threshold. Stephanie sidled over to me and grabbed my hand. Hers was cold and clammy, but so was mine. I moved toward the door, readying myself to lunge for Tommy and Autumn. I was sure the thing would make a move, and if it tried to take my best friend, I’d be going with them—and I’d put up a hell of a fight.

  That was when I saw another glimpse of it. Its shoulders ran across in a straight, angular line which turned ninety degrees into arms that hung past where its knees would be. I expected to see some sort of glowing eyes, a horror movie cliché I had stuck in my head, but like Ruby had said, it had none. I spotted no features at all besides the odd twists and turns of its wrinkled skin and its ovular black mouth. It could’ve been the fog hiding these features. It could’ve been the darkness, but I knew better. I knew that this thing really had none.

  Gripping each other for dear life, Tommy and Autumn stepped away from the door. I heard the sound again, that odd, mocking sound, and the thing moved. I watched as the large hand broke through the veil of fog and grabbed Brock’s covered body. The rough material of the blanket snagged on the threshold and pulled it down from his face. I saw his mutilated head. The blood and the cracked skull. Yet, the hand stealing his corpse was worse, so much worse.

  I closed my eyes. I had to unless I wanted to go insane.

  Tommy said, “It’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “It’s gone.”

  I looked up at the doorway. Tendrils of fog whirled in, but no figure was there. I hadn’t seen it go. I hadn’t heard it move at all.

  “Close the door!” Stephanie shouted. “Close it!”

  Tommy slammed it and shoved what was left of the brooms through the handle again.

  “Where did it go?” Autumn asked.

  “I-I don’t know,” I answered.

  Then Tommy hit the wall with his back and slid to the floor, laughing. He ran a hand through his hair, moving it from his brow, which I now saw was shiny with sweat.

  “Why the hell are you laughing?” Stephanie whispered. “What’s so funny?”

  Tommy just shook his head and kept laughing. The laughter, though, tapered off into strained sobs. He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged himself. Simple fear was the culprit, I knew that. Fear—and as I found out a moment later, guilt.

  As I walked over to him, I eyed the door and expected the thing out there to burst through. There was no chance it had just taken Brock and forgotten about us. No chance at all.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” Tommy whispered. “I should’ve let it take me instead.”

  “Stop it, Tommy,” I said. “It’s okay. You saved our lives.” I slapped him on the shoulder and squeezed. His muscles were wound tight, and he was shaking.

  Autumn and Stephanie came closer. Autumn squatted and took Tommy’s hand, and she kissed his knuckles. “Yeah, that was very brave of you. Thank you.”

  Tommy smiled through his tears.

  It was a decent moment in a terrible time, I guess. But it’s the decent times you have to hold onto. The smiles, the laughter, the stolen glances from pretty girls—because you don’t know if things will ever be decent again.

  To prove my point, as we stood there around Tommy, I heard a heavy shuffling approach us from behind.

  I turned. It was Ruby.

  But her features were fading. She was changing into something else.

  She was changing into a monster.

  9

  Her face was drooping. One eye, still in its socket, had fallen to the middle of her cheek, like a Dalí painting, and her nose was twisted and flat. Her lips had pulled so far down, there were rips at the corners of her mouth.

  And her legs.

  Oh God…her legs.

  They were no longer the irritated color from before. Instead they were the strange gray-white color of the creature. And they were both thinner and longer than what could be considered normal. Uneven, too, making her stand at an odd angle. One shoulder dipped toward the floor, the other pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Ruby,” Tommy said. The smile on his face was long gone. “Oh, Christ…”

  I let go of Stephanie’s hand and took a few steps in Ruby’s direction. Stephanie tried to hold me back, but her grasp was too weak. Seeing this had zapped her of strength, I’m sure.

  Ruby’s lips moved. She was trying to speak, but whatever words she said were impossible to make out.

  “What is she trying to say?” Autumn whispered.

  Ruby advanced awkwardly. She tried speaking again, making the same sound but louder. When I realized how similar it sounded to the way the thing outside had laughed, the chills already breaking out over my flesh went into overdrive.

  “It sounds…it sounds like ‘Help me,’” Stephanie said in an oddly calm tone. “Is that it?”

  “What the hell is happening to her?” Autumn said, sounding the complete opposite of her best friend. She steepled her hands and covered the lower half of her face. There was a smell coming off of Ruby. It reminded me of wet earth, of cold, of dark and moist basements, of worms.

  Ruby took another few steps, up and down on her mismatched legs. The storm outside continued, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the noises of Ruby’s transforming body. I could hear her skin splitting. I could hear her bones growing and her limbs stretching.

  She tried to speak again, and against all the fear I felt, I leaned closer, trying to understand the words.

  “Hchk he…hchk he hchleease…”

  Her hair was shedding from her head, falling in big, sweaty clumps.

  “Hchk he…”

  My stomach muscles cramped, and I almost doubled over. Not because I was grossed out, but because I understood her now.

  “She’s saying…” I shook my head. I didn’t want to speak it. I didn’t want it to be true. I was still waiting for someone to pinch or slap me so I could wake up from this nightmare.

  “What?” Tommy urged. His voice sounded tiny, distant, even though he was only a few feet behind.

  “She’s saying…‘Kill me.’
”

  Ruby collapsed. The others shuffled away, but I went forward, reaching to break her fall. I was too late. On the floor, she hunched over and her spine made a bunch of popping sounds.

  “Hchk he! Hchleease…Hchk he!”

  She turned her drooping face upward, and I saw only the slightest hint of human clinging to her eyes.

  And just like that, the woman I once knew as Ruby was gone. I stood there for a moment, trying to take it all in, and failing. Tommy grabbed my arm and pulled me. I fought him, but I was weak and it wasn’t much of a fight.

  “Get back!” he shouted. “Carter!”

  “Ruby…” I said, or at least I think I said, but I’d be surprised if I was able to talk at that point.

  The rest of the moment was blurry. I remember Tommy dragging me into the break room and trying to fight him. I remember the terrible noises coming from Ruby. I remember seeing glimpses of her transformation through the closing door. A face twisting into something I couldn’t even imagine. Her hands growing huge. I remember hearing her begging for us to kill her over and over again, the sound of her voice rising louder and more rough. And farther in the distance, like the rumble of the constant thunder, I heard the creature’s weird laughter.

  Autumn and Stephanie were pressed against the door. Something was slamming into it, causing them to scoot forward, the soles of their shoes squeaking across the linoleum.

  Tommy shook me. “Where are your keys, Carter?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your keys?”

  But he might as well have been speaking a different language. I didn’t answer him, just looked at the door with the images of Ruby changing and the figure out in the fog burning brightly in my head.

  “Carter!” Now a hand slapped me across the face. I stumbled back and touched my cheek. It was warm. “Your fuckin’ keys! Where are they? We have to get outta here, right now!”

  As I was looking at Tommy he seemed to shimmer. Behind him, Autumn and Stephanie groaned in pain, and Stephanie fell on her knees, covering her ears. My own eardrums were pulsing. Seconds later, I felt a trickle of hot blood trace the line of my jaw.

  Because there was a sound coming in through the cracks in the door. It wasn’t Ruby begging for her death. It wasn’t the strange laughter.

  It was the whispers.

  “Daddy?” a voice said from behind, and it was a voice I recognized instantly. The dread filling my gut was like rocks. “Daddy…please…help us.”

  “Clem?”

  I turned, and there was my five-year-old daughter. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress with a pink ribbon wrapped around her waist. Her hair was done up in curls. I reached out to her, but my arm weighed as much as my insides felt, and doing so was almost impossible. Same was true about my legs. I felt like I was in a dream, the kind where you're running from something, but it’s like you’re running through quicksand or mud.

  Clem didn’t walk across the room. She skipped, just like the real Clem would’ve done. When she reached the door, not paying any attention to either Autumn or Stephanie, she opened it and went out, closing it behind her.

  I noticed something about my daughter, though. She was not whole. She shimmered, was almost transparent. That was good—it made part of my brain realize this wasn’t real. A small part, yeah, but that was all I needed.

  “No, Clem, don’t!” I shouted, but even my vocal cords felt sluggish. Thankfully, the voice in my head was not. It was loud and clear.

  That’s not your daughter. Clem is far away. This is a hallucination, like the one Ruby said she had in the park. It’s not real, Carter. It’s. Not. Real.

  That was what I needed. It snapped me back to reality. Tommy, Autumn, and Stephanie were all yelling. Blood flowed from their noses, their ears, and their eyes. I touched my upper lip and my fingers came back red.

  “Keys,” I said. “My keys are…” I scanned the room. It was hard to see much of anything, because all but one of the candles had gone out. I thought back to where I had left them. My mind, though, wasn’t cooperating. The whispers made my brain feel like sludge.

  On the other side of the door, the-thing-that-was-once-Ruby continued smashing against the wood. Fractures ran down the middle, branching in every direction. They looked like forks of lightning.

  Think, think, think, I told myself. Think, damn it!

  My eyes settled on the Monopoly game board. A flash of color beneath it caught my attention. It was the orange and yellow beaded keychain ornament Clem had made for me with Julia. They'd made it because I was always losing my keys and I needed something bright to help me spot them.

  It’s weird to think about it now, but that ornament saved my life. It saved all of our lives. If I hadn’t found my keys when I did, I don’t think we would’ve gotten out in time. I think the things would’ve broken through and taken us. Most likely to our deaths.

  The whispers suddenly stopped, like how the sun can poke through the storm clouds on a dark day, offering a momentary glimpse of brightness to light the way. Without that sinister sound I was able to think more clearly. My muscles no longer cramped, and the blood trickling down the various openings in my head halted, as if someone had turned the knob of a leaky faucet all the way off.

  It wasn’t just me either. The haze shrouding the minds of the others had seemed to fade as well. There wasn’t any time to celebrate this. Who knew when the whispers would begin again? First I helped Steph and Autumn to their feet. Tommy rose behind us. Then I raced across the room and grabbed my keys from the table.

  That was when a twisted, corpse-pale hand burst through the door. Shards of wood sprayed across the room. One of the chunks crashed into the table the candle was on, and it fell, the flame going out. The darkness of the room wasn’t near complete, it was complete. I couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “The light!” I shouted.

  “I-I can’t find the phone,” Autumn answered. “I-I…something’s wrong with my head.”

  I jumped as more wood cracked. And then I heard the shuffling sound of dragging limbs. In my mind, I pictured it was Ruby’s arms, longer than ever, gangly, both scraping the floor as she advanced. In that moment I was grateful for the darkness.

  Still, I needed to find a light and escape. The problem was I couldn’t leave without the others. I couldn’t leave them to whatever fate might become of them.

  I felt around, finding someone’s hand. It was Autumn. She grunted as I pulled her to her feet.

  The door rattled as the thing that was now Ruby stepped through. I heard splinters tearing at her flesh, ripping the fabric of what was left of her clothes. It didn’t stop her, though. Whatever had taken over her body was taking over her brain. She had become an animal. On cue, a growl rumbled from deep inside her chest.

  Holding onto Autumn, I backed up as the sounds of Ruby grew closer.

  Tommy rose on my right. “Ow…my head…oh, man.” I grabbed his shirt and tore him away from the door. “What the fuck—?”

  Now I only needed Stephanie. She was somewhere to my left. I could hear her moaning in pain.

  “Stephanie?” I called, but before she could answer another sound distracted me. It was the heavy footsteps of something walking slowly across the front room, coming toward us. Faintly, I could see an outline. It was the outline of the creature I had seen in the park, towering, thin but still oddly strong—and near it was the hunched, changing outline that was once Ruby.

  I waited for the sound, the whispers, and whatever pain would follow, but it never came. A hand grabbed my own, jolting my body so hard that I thought I’d been paralyzed. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t some slimy monster hand from the depths of my imagination, but rather one with soft skin and long, manicured nails. It was Stephanie’s.

  “I found the phone!” Autumn yelled. I heard the clink of her pressing the button, and then the room lit up. It was weaker, and it only lasted a moment before the battery must’ve died.

  The weak glow wasn’t enough
for me to get a good look at the monsters that approached us, but I saw enough to know I never wanted to see them again. They were the definition of horror. The very abominations from hell that we had been warned about for generation after generation.

  But I also saw something else. Though I don’t think this artificial light actually damaged it, I saw the monsters wince at the light. It was a small reaction, so small in fact I was sure I had imagined it, but for some reason this reaction stuck with me before Stephanie screamed and squeezed my hand violently. This pushed what I'd noticed from the forefront of my mind.

  In the darkness, a new oval of black, like a blot of ink spreading across a gray page, floated maybe a dozen feet away from us, and I heard the grinding of bone on bone as the towering creature’s jaw unhinged and widened. The sound was terrifying yet hypnotic in an almost eerily beautiful way. Like before in the park, part of me wanted to run for my life, and another part of me wanted to enter the abyss.

  Step…drag…step…

  The things continued shuffling toward us. I heard no whispers, but instead that strange mocking laughter again, because it had us cornered. It knew we were no match for it. It knew we were going to be its dinner and it fully intended to play with its food before it consumed us.

  A hand reached out, the arms seemingly stretching across the entirety of the back room. I was frozen as I watched its huge fingers drift our way.

  If Stephanie hadn’t been holding me, I would’ve stayed there, and I would’ve died. But she pulled me away, and we lost our balance. I stumbled into the barricade against the back door, causing a domino effect to run through all the junk we had piled up to help us feel safer. Cascades of boxes and chairs and tables fell over, creating a noise that helped bring me back into the moment.

  Now, did I want to be in the moment? Not really. It was like I was divorced from my own body, like I was hovering above all this. I had to be in the moment, though. For my daughter, for my best friend, and for my two new friends.