Whisper in the Dark

by Joseph Bruchac

  I bit my lip. “Maybe after all these years, it finally got out of that cave. There’s always construction going on and things being dug up.”

  “Like in that movie where they find a dragon egg.”

  “Reign of Fire, but that’s just a takeoff on the Japanese movies where nuclear tests wake up something ancient and ominous.”

  “Godzilla, which my mom says is just a Japanese parable about the dangers of nuclear weapons destroying the world.”

  “Which,” I continued, putting on my professor’s voice, “in itself is just a modern version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, wherein our monsters are just models of the worst part of our human selves, and science doesn’t necessarily make anything better.”

  We stood there, nodding our heads and feeling pleased with ourselves, as if we’d actually figured something out and not just worked our way back into our familiar routine of talking about scary creatures. Except this wasn’t a senior-high seminar on monster motifs in film and fiction.

  “Except for the fact,” Roger said, reading my mind again.

  “That this is real,” I concluded.

  Roger sighed. “Maddy,” he said, shaking his head, “whatever way you look at it, we got real trouble.”

  15

  GOOD COURAGE

  I AM NOT SURE when we started running. Maybe I said something about our jogging some to dry off from the rainstorm. All I know is that running was the only thing that made sense to me just then and so I ran, legs thumping the pavement in a sweet, even rhythm, my heartbeat as steady and strong as the pumping muscles in my calves and thighs and hips. Running.

  No matter how far you run, you can’t escape fate. Grama Delia had said that to me once.

  The memory of her words shot through my head like a poison dart. It made me stumble and almost fall. I slowed down to a jog and Roger slowed with me until the two of us were walking, our hands on our hips, taking measured breaths. Even though it was still hot, the storm had cleared some of the mugginess from the air. We hadn’t run that far, only about five K. Neither one of us was anywhere close to winded. But I knew that no matter how far I ran, even if I ran a hundred miles through the mountains like the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico do, I couldn’t manage to run away from what was after me.

  I looked around to get my bearings. We’d been running along Riverwalk, next to the Woonasquatucket River. We’d stopped by the amphitheater near the tunnel that leads from Riverwalk to Kennedy Plaza and the center of downtown Providence. I looked at the tunnel.

  Roger came up next to me. “I don’t think I want to go through there either,” he said. “Not under the ground, even though it’s a new tunnel and probably safe. The hidden tunnels, like the ones Lovecraft wrote about, they’re all old ones.”

  I nodded my head. I knew Roger was remembering the same stories I was. Like “The Rats in the Walls,” with giant cannibal caverns under an ancestral castle. But then there was also that picture Lovecraft describes in another story that showed horrible fanged creatures attacking people at a subway station.

  “No, I don’t want to go into that tunnel,” I said.

  “No way,” Roger said, drawing his finger across his throat.

  “This is crazy.”

  “I know,” Roger agreed. “But we both saw the rose, stuck there in between those bricks as if there was a trapdoor there.”

  We began to walk, my good hand holding the numb fingers of my other hand cupped against my diaphragm. I had a sick feeling in my stomach again. Next to us the river flowed on as always, as if nothing was wrong with the world. I found myself wishing a birch-bark canoe would come floating up to us. A Narragansett man dressed in the traditional way would be in it, holding a carved paddle and smiling up at us.

  Comishoohom? he would say. “Do you want to go by water?”

  I would want to say Nux, which means “yes,” and get into that canoe and let him paddle me far away from all my fear and uncertainty. But I would shake my head.

  Machaug, I said. “No, not now.” I can’t just save myself and leave everyone else behind.

  He smiled again, the same broad smile I remember on my father’s face.

  Maumaneeteantass, netop.

  Then he turned back to his paddling, the heavy muscles of his shoulders and his broad back rippling as he worked the paddle, pushing his way swiftly up that river against the current until he was out of sight.

  I felt a smile coming on to my face as I stood there looking at the empty river.

  “Maddy,” Roger said, “what were you saying just then? You talking Indian?”

  “Maumaneeteantass, netop,” I said slowly. “Be of good courage, my friend.”

  Roger nodded his head. “I like that. When did you learn that?”

  “I don’t know that I ever heard it,” I said, “until just now.”

  I sat down on a bench and patted the seat beside me. Roger folded himself down, put one arm over the back of the bench, crossed his leg, right ankle over left knee, and turned to give me his full attention.

  “Tell me what you think,” I said.

  Roger cupped his chin with his hand and slowly shook his head back and forth. “I don’t know what I think. I mean, we’re always reading these stories and seeing the movies and talking about things like this. And we’re always saying things like we wouldn’t be that stupid to go into the woods like him or to go up into the attic like her, or to split up like those two did when they were searching the haunted house for whatever made that scary noise, you know? But I never really thought about any of it actually being real.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “But it is. Maybe that monster, that Whisperer in the Dark, has come back and it has chosen you because, like you say, you are Narragansett and one of the last real descendants of Ca-ca-”

  “Canonchet,” I said.

  “Canonchet. Or maybe it is just some crazy man, one of those serial killers, who has put you in his sights. And there wouldn’t have to be any real reason for him to choose you or for that to happen apart from the fact that people like that don’t need to have any reasons to do that sort of thing.”

  Roger’s voice grew slower as he reached the end of his sentence, almost the way a windup toy slows down and then stops because all of the energy in it has run out. He was quiet for a while. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and sat up straighter.

  “Should we go to the police?”

  “What do we tell them?” I said. “I got two prank phone calls, my dog got scratched up, we got caught in a rainstorm, and now I am convinced that a serial killer or some razor-handed monster out of a Narragansett legend is coming to get me? They’ll either get ticked off at us for trying to put them on, or they’ll think we’re on drugs, or they’ll just patiently shake their heads and tell us it’s just our overactive imaginations. This city is such a weird place with a crazy history. They’re used to wacky stories like this. Witches, vampires, werewolves, blobs from outer space. Par for the course in Providencesylvania. Plus we’re teenagers, remember? In a policeman’s dictionary teenager is just another word for ‘pain-in-the-neck troublemaker.’”

  “I guess you’re right,” Roger said, slumping back on the bench.

  “I remember,” I said, “this show I saw on the Discovery Channel about how hyenas hunt. A hyena will just walk through a whole herd of animals until it sees the one animal it wants. Maybe it’s a gazelle that is lame or weaker than the others. But when it chooses that gazelle, that is the only one it goes after. It keeps after it without even looking to the right or left. It keeps after it, no matter how fast that gazelle runs. It just keeps after it until it catches it.”

  Roger looked at me. “Maddy,” he said, “that don’t sound like you. You saying you gonna give up?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, hearing how stubborn the tone of my voice was just then and not minding it at all. “I just mean that running away won’t save me. Maumaneeteantass. I am not going to try to run away.”

&n
bsp; 16

  CALLING

  YOU KNOW HOW it is when you’ve been uncertain about something. Should I do this? Should I do that?

  It doesn’t have to be anything that big, maybe just what top to wear to school or which show to tape and which one to watch live, whether to go to the movies or go for a run. But while you’re not sure what to do you feel all antsy, as if nothing is quite right in the whole world.

  I know I’m using dumb examples, but that is how life is sometimes. Lots of little hassles can seem big unless you have something like a real threat to your continued existence to put things into perspective. Then you finally make up your mind and everything seems clearer, as if the sun finally came out again after a week of rainy skies.

  That was how it was with me when I made up my mind not to run away, but to find some way to confront whatever it was that was out there. But now that I’d made that decision, I had another problem. What exactly was I going to do?

  Roger wondered the same thing. I could tell by the way he looked at me, waiting for my brilliant solution. Which was not forthcoming.

  “Maddy,” Roger said, putting his hand up to his chin. “I’ve been wondering about somethin’. Do you think whoever or whatever it is would try to get to you in another way? They already got to Bootsie. Would they try to contact anyone else in your family?”

  “Aunt Lyssa,” I said. “Omigod!”

  I unzipped my hip pack, yanked out my phone, fumbled it open, and hit the numbers for Aunt Lyssa’s desk at the library. It rang four times, and then I heard her voice.

  “I’m not here or I’m on the other line. You can leave a message after—”

  I broke the connection and looked over at Roger.

  “Want to go there and check on her?” he said.

  I had the number for the taxi company where Mr. Patel worked stored in the memory. The cheerful voice of the dispatcher answered on the second ring.

  “This is Madeline Brown,” I said. “I am at the amphitheater on Riverwalk and I need a taxi.”

  “Hi, Madeline,” the familiar voice said. “Mrs. Jenkins here.”

  Mrs. Jenkins. I knew her voice, but that was all. You know how it is with those telephone voices you get to know. They belong to people you have called before for some business reason, but you’ve never met them in person.

  “Hi, Mrs. Jenkins,” I said.

  “So where you going today?”

  “Just to the library.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Far be it from me to turn away business, Madeline, but it’d be faster for you to just walk there from where you are. All you have to do is walk through the tunnel.”

  NO. I almost yelled that into the phone. NOT the tunnel. But I controlled myself. “I, uh, I was out running and hurt my foot. Just a little. So I really need a taxi. Really.”

  “Not a problem,” Mrs. Jenkins chirped. “Patel, your pal, is the closest cab. He’ll be there in ten.”

  It was actually seven minutes. While we were waiting, I tried twice more to call Aunt Lyssa and got her voice mail each time. I didn’t bother to call back to the desk and see if they knew where she was. I’d be there myself in almost no time. I flipped my phone closed and stowed it back in my hip pack.

  Then Roger and I sat without talking, just waiting. I do a lot of talking, but there are some people I can be quiet around. Roger is one. Grama Delia is another. Her silences always say so much. At times when I am with her and we are both not talking, it is like she is teaching me by speaking mind to mind, not with words, but with emotions. I wished I could talk with Grama Delia now. She’d probably know just the right thing to tell me. But I knew that she wasn’t home. She wasn’t even in Rhode Island. And I had no idea what city in New Mexico she was in for the Native American Elders’ Conference this week.

  I closed my eyes, picturing Grama Delia’s confident, compassionate face. She has seen so much in her life, and every line in her face is a sign of knowledge she has earned. She says that we Indians can talk to each other when we are far away. We just need to use our minds and really focus. Telephone and e-mail and all the modern ways of communicating have made it harder for the old telepathy to work, but it is still possible. Reach for that person in your mind the right way, and then you hear a voice calling your name.

  “Maddy.”

  Mr. Patel leaned the whole top half of his slender body out of the window of his cab and waved at me with both hands as he called my name a second time. In the five years I’ve known Mr. Patel, ever since he came here from Bombay, I’ve never seen him completely outside of his taxicab. I’ve never even seen him open his driver’s-side door. It’s not like he can’t walk. It is just that he prefers doing the most amazing contortions through his window to actually opening the door and getting out. I remember one day when he slid out his window with the boneless ease of an acrobat to open the back door and then help me wrestle a big box into the back-seat. It was only later that I realized, while thinking back on it, that he had done it with one leg on the street and the other still inside the taxi. I’ve heard, though it may not be true, that he is a yoga teacher in his spare time.

  “Come on, you two,” Mr. Patel said, gesturing toward the back door of his cab with hands as fluid as those of a temple dancer. “Your humble chariot awaits you.”

  I had to smile. “Let’s go,” I said, poking Roger in the side to get him moving. He was sitting there as if hypnotized.

  “Maddy,” Roger whispered to me. “Is it safe to ride with this guy again? You didn’t see how he just drove up here. He was steering with his bare feet and his hands behind his head.”

  “It’s okay. I think he’s the safest driver in Providence. He even uses turn signals.”

  Roger got up. “All right then,” he said.

  The turn signals remark, which was true, had made an impression on him. Roger had been back in Rogue Island long enough to become fully aware of another of the idiosyncrasies of our peculiar little state. Almost nobody ever uses their turn signals. There is even a famous cartoon I have seen that shows a Rhode Island used-car salesman with a customer. “And the turn signals on this are just as good as new,” the caption reads. Rhode Islanders roar when they see the cartoon, but out-of-staters just shake their heads in confusion.

  Mr. Patel reached his long arm back to shut the door after us, then spun around to face us. “So, so, so,” he said, “it is good to see you so soon again. How is your Bootsie?”

  For a few seconds, I’d forgotten about the awful things that had happened or seemed about to happen. But his question brought it all back, and it showed on my face.

  “Oh,” he said, “I am sorry. The news is bad?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Bootsie is fine. Dr. Fox is going to keep her for a couple of days.”

  “Ah, ah,” Mr. Patel said. “Wonderful.” He flicked his turn signal, looked to his left, and then pulled out from the curb. “Library?”

  “Yes, that’s where we’re going.”

  Mr. Patel pulled up smoothly to the light, looked both ways, flipped his right turn signal, and eased the cab around the corner. I looked over at Roger and he nodded back at me. I hadn’t been exaggerating about either Mr. Patel’s driving or his use of turn signals.

  “At last some good news about this attacking of dogs and domestic animals,” Mr. Patel said. “Now if they would only catch the miscreant. But such disturbed persons are often hard to apprehend. If indeed this one is disturbed and not following some darker purpose. In some ways it puts me in mind of a Thug, one of those awful people we used to have in India who killed and stole for the goddess Kali as a part of their religious practices. But then”—Mr. Patel flicked his left turn signal and eased his way into downtown Providence—“they murdered their human victims by strangling with a silken cord, not by cutting off heads.”

  A shiver ran down my back. “Excuse me,” I said, “did you say cutting off heads?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Mr. Patel said. “Did I not mention it befo
re? All of the other unfortunate animals that were attacked were decapitated and the blood drained from their bodies. Most gruesome.”

  17

  WEAKNESS

  HEADS. AND NOT only had they been cut off the bodies of the dozen or so dogs and cats that had been killed over the last few days, they’d also been missing. Which meant that whoever cut them off took the heads with him. It sent my mind back to one of the more gruesome customs of some of my own ancestors.

  One of the pictures that you often get in history books and movies about Indians is that of scalping redskins. Maybe not so much nowadays, but plenty of stuff still has that image. Like any John Wayne western. But anybody who knows much about our real history knows that scalping either didn’t exist or was really rare among the Indians before Europeans came. But after the British and the French got here, and brought their wars with them, things changed. Maybe Europeans didn’t invent scalping, but they made it big business. The colonial governments paid bounties for Indian scalps, and there were bands of white men back in the eighteenth century who made their living as scalp hunters. And those Indian scalps were sold on the street corners in London and Paris to people who bought them as collector’s items.

  But before you think I’m just going off on a rant about the awful things that white people brought, let me finish where I’m going with this. Heads. In battle, my dad told me, we Narragansetts sometimes took the heads of our enemies as trophies. And the Whisperer in the Dark was also supposed to do that. The story goes that when he killed his victims, after he drank their blood, he would take their heads with him.

  That is why Mr. Patel’s remark shook me up so much. I know it bothered Roger, too, but only because it was just another gruesome detail. To me, though, it was like hearing a heavy footstep in the hall late at night just outside your door when you thought you were all alone in the house.

  I don’t recall much more of the conversation during our short ride to the library. The next thing I knew, Roger was paying our fare and the two of us were standing on the curb outside Mr. Patel’s cab.