Absence: Whispers and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  Deeper Hearing

  ‘Emilie!’

  He jerked up in bed; the horror of his nightmare melting from his face as he glared into the darkness. When reality finally reinstated itself he pulled his covers to one side and sat over the side of his bed. His dreams weren’t getting any better. If anything, they were getting worse. And wherever his dreams started, they always ended up at the lake with a new variation of Emilie’s death. Last night the ice had turned into a gigantic mouth with icicles for teeth and he had watched helplessly as it chewed her up; spraying the snowy woodland with a seemingly endless amount of blood. And the night before that, he dragged her across the ice to a small water hole in the centre of the lake and held her under until she drowned.

  He wiped his brow with a sleeve and listened to the ringing silence of the house. He always woke from his nightmares by shouting his sister’s name, but his mother never came to comfort him. He used to tell himself she couldn’t hear him - that she was so exhausted by her grief and too deep in her sleep for his cries to reach her. But he knew better now. The wall between them was thin and she was a light sleeper. She woke with his cries – but chose not to come. He imagined her opening her eyes as he cried out and shutting them again - her face hardening in satisfaction. Bill had poisoned her into believing he was in some way responsible for Emilie’s death and she probably thought his nightmares were a just punishment now.

  With little hope of getting back to sleep, he wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and went to sit on the floor by his low window. He looked out across the sleeping village, staring at those few windows that still harboured a light and wondering if the people that lived there were happy or sad. He was still there an hour later when he began to feel a familiar tension in his head.

  There had been a lot of changes over the last two years and not just at home. After the accident he began to feel a strange new sensation inside his head. Whenever his old class went back to school after a break, Lady Demia would begin with an hour of quick questions, designed as she put it, to blow the cobwebs out of their heads. He thought it an odd metaphor at the time, but he hadn’t been able to come up with a better description of this new sensation. Sometimes it was like he really did have cobwebs suspended in his head and they would tighten and vibrate; generating sounds or voices that he had come to think of as deeper hearing. His first experience of it was up at the lake and it would have scared him to death if it hadn’t been Emilie’s voice that spoke to him from those vibrating webs. There had been other voices since, but they were always too distant and faint to make any sense of. It took him a while to get comfortable with deeper hearing, but now he longed for it. The voices were soothing – like a lullaby whispered into his troubled mind. They came mostly at night during the quiet hours, but they could also strike at the most inappropriate times - like when Bill found out about them.

  They were walking back from school and he drew up sharp when faint voices began speaking to him.

  ‘Come on. I’ve got places to go,’ said Bill, when he realised he was walking alone.

  Kye didn’t hear. He had given that part of his mind over to deeper hearing and he continued to stare vacantly into the hedgerow; his mouth agape and one eye twitching.

  Bill walked back and shook him. ‘What are you doing lad?’

  ‘Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Little voices.’

  Bill tipped his head and strained his ears to the countryside.

  ‘No. Not like that. Inside your head.’

  A darkness flushed his stepfather’s face. Kye didn’t see him swing, but the whole side of his face exploded into hot light as his open hand impacted his cheek, knocking him into the dirt. Then Bill was over him. He gripped his shirt with one hairy fist and twisted, grinding his knuckles against his breastbone.

  ‘How long have you been hearing this?’

  ‘A few months. Since what happened to Emilie.’

  Bill tightened his grip and Kye thought he was going to hit him again. But he brought a trembling finger hard against Kye’s lips instead and spoke to him in a lopsided snarl. His eyes were black and pitiless; like those of a shark.

  ‘Don’t you ever say her name to me again. You understand?’ Kye nodded, his eyes welling up and his lip dripping blood onto the lane. ‘Have you mentioned these voices to anyone else?’

  ‘Just Alio and Jimlie,’ he replied, his voice bobbing up and down on ripples of fear and pain.

  ‘And did they hear them too?’

  Kye shook his head.

  Bill twisted his fist tighter in his shirt, pressing him into the ground so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks. Beneath his stepfather’s skin a twitching monster was working his face. ‘Now you listen to me and you listen good. Don’t ever speak to anyone about these voices. And if I ever catch you with that look on your face again, you’ll feel more than my hand on your cheek… You need to start thinking about your mother. Have you any idea what people would say if word got round about this? What it would do to her?’ He straightened up, swatted the dirt from his britches and marched away in a puff of dust. Kye watched until he was certain he wasn’t coming back then rolled over and cried.

  The next morning when he got up for school, Bill was waiting for him in the scullery. He knew right away that something was wrong because Bill was rarely out of bed before noon. He informed him that his school days were over and that a position had become available for him at the mill. After a hurried breakfast, during which neither of them spoke, Bill marched him to the mill and left him in the company of a man he had never seen before.

  As he looked out of the window now the dormant cobwebs began to tighten and he prepared himself to receive the voices. But the deeper hearing didn’t come in the form he expected. Normally there were several soft voices of varying strengths; all arriving from different directions and talking over each other in such a way that it was difficult to make out what they were saying. But this time the webs aligned and a concentrated beam of whispers rushed through his head. They were much louder than the other voices had ever been and they weren’t pleasant. They were comprised of a sinister mantra and it was like having a crazy cut throat whispering in his ear. But he didn’t suffer it for long. The whispers drifted to the left and then they were gone, leaving him with the distinct impression that they were moving across the house. He even turned to look into the corner; sure that he would see the departing beam disappearing through his wall. But there was nothing there but thick shadows. He remained by the window for some time, waiting for them to come back, but hoping they wouldn’t. Eventually the hard floor got too much for him and he returned to his bed to stare at the ceiling. He had been thinking about trying to track one of the voices towards its source; to find out who was speaking and to try to understand what they were saying. But with the echoes of those horrible whispers still reverberating around his head, he wrote it off as a bad idea.

  He was almost back to sleep when he heard the back door burst open and bang against the sink. There was a sliding of boots, a metallic clang of pans and table legs scraping across floorboards. A low curse. The whine of the pantry door followed by the clinking of pottery and glass. The sound of someone searching.

  Another louder curse.

  Boots again; trudging through the house and onto the stairs.

  A stumble halfway up.

  Silence, and he imagined Bill swaying on the landing outside his door. Keep going, thought Kye, gripping his sheets. Keep going and don’t come in here. Eventually, his stepfather did just that; but only after discharging a toady burp that echoed around the house. He crashed through into next door and was instantly lashed by his mother’s vicious tongue. She hadn’t heard him shouting for Emilie, thought Kye bitterly, but she had heard her drunkard husband coming up the stairs. He relaxed his grip on the sheets and let out the breath he had been holding. But soon their voices got louder and he jerked up in fear when Bill spoke his name in anger. Boots stomped o
nto the landing again and his bedroom door burst open.

  Shudabinyou

  Bill stumbled in, his broad frame filling most of the door space. Kye couldn’t see his eyes, but in the shadows of his face he imagined them narrowing; struggling to focus against his intoxication.

  ‘Youlgetit now boy,’ he slurred. ‘Got summanners t’wipinta yer.’

  Kye’s mind raced, searching for his crime. Was Bill angry about him eating the last mouldy bits of bread and cheese? Or because his mother told him what he said earlier on? Something else? But whatever it was, Bill was already unbuckling his belt and there was going to be no opportunity to speak in his defence. He drew the belt through his britches in a series of frustrated jerks and pulled it free with one final yank that caused the tip to swing around and thwack the door jamb.

  ‘What did I do?’ shouted Kye, fully awake with the knowledge of what was coming. He threw back his covers and jumped out of bed. Bill stepped further into the room and shut the door behind him, blocking off his only means of escape. He coiled half the belt into one big fist and came at him with its buckle dangling and glinting in the starlight.

  There were two types of drunks as far as Kye had been able to figure out. There were those with laughing eyes that needed little excuse to break into a song. Those liable to ruffle a lad’s hair and fall asleep on a stoop. Bill was of the other sort – for who drink brought a meanness and cruelty to their hearts. The type who were prone to profanity and slander and liable to beat on those unfortunate enough to look at them the wrong way.

  As Bill came around the foot of the bed, Kye sensed his only chance and leapt over it in a desperate attempt to reach the door. But Bill grabbed his ankle and he fell onto the floor at the other side, cracking his head on the wooden boards. Bill dragged him back onto the bed, digging his long nails into his calf. ‘Shudabinyou,’ he snarled as he swung the belt back, his silhouette huge and ogreous against the weak light of the window. ‘Shudabinyou and not my Emilie.’

  The buckle swished through the darkness and clacked against the headboard, only inches from Kye’s ear. As it slid away from him and whipped back up into the air he began to kick frantically with his free leg, knowing that the next swing might split his head open. In his mind’s eye he could see his stepfather taking aim and the glinting belt buckle dangling behind his head. There was a new viciousness to this assault and he got a sense that if he didn’t get away, Bill would end up killing him.

  At first his kicking foot found nothing, but then there was a sickening clack as his heel connected with something that might have been his jaw. There was a stunted cry and the grip on his ankle slackened off. He started to crawl away, but his stepfather’s bloated body crashed down on him, pinning his legs to the bed.

  With both hands on the floor and Bill’s fingers reaching for his neck, Kye twisted away. He caught his bedside drawers with one flailing arm and knocked the candle onto the floor, separating it from its wooden holder. Kye’s groping fingers found the holder and without the slightest thought to consequences, he twisted around and swung it at Bill’s face. It struck him on the side of his head with a dull thwock and he fell away, crashing onto the floor at the other side of the bed.

  Kye leapt to his feet and ran for the door, but as his hand seized upon the doorknob he stopped to look back. Bill was not pursuing – in fact he didn’t seem to be moving at all. He squinted into the darkness and a new dread swept into him. Perhaps he had killed him. Over the last two years he had come to hate Bill; but he had never meant to kill him. He took a step towards him then froze, part of him suspecting a trick. What if Bill knew he couldn’t catch him and had decided to play dead in order to lure him back?

  He watched for a while, but Bill didn’t move.

  He decided that if he really was dead, he had to know. And if he was badly injured he had to get help. It was the right thing to do. He tiptoed back, ready to run at the slightest movement or sound. And with every step closer he became ever more certain Bill would jerk forwards and grab him again. But still he didn’t move. He was slumped against the bed with his head kinked back and his hands resting on his lap. Kye shoved his shoulder and sprang away. Still nothing.

  He knelt and put his ear to his face, fighting down the notion that Bill would bite it off. There was a repulsive air about him; a sickly mix of stale sweat and grubby clothes that hadn’t been washed in months. He was just about convinced that he was dead when he caught the faintest sound of breathing, followed by a sudden hitch of his chest that made him jerk away.

  He sat on the bed and looked at the snoring heap of shadow that was his stepfather. There had been a time when he had loved Bill, but now he hated him – mostly for convincing his mother that he was to blame for Emilie’s death. And over the last year he had learnt to hate everything about him: the black hairs that grew out of his ears, the way he got food stuck in his beard and his manner of picking his teeth with his dirty thumb nail. And most of all there was the false tone he took when speaking to people outside the family – communicating a cheer and joviality that he never used once he was through their rotten front door. Last week he heard him using that voice with Farmer Fon and his son. After their conversation, Bill had ruffled the boy’s hair and flicked him a copper moon, suggesting he used it to buy a sugar apple. A cooper moon that was no doubt part of the wages he had handed over to him the day before. The whole scene had left him feeling sick and empty and he had stayed hidden for a long time after they were gone, brooding on what he had seen with watery eyes.

  He was going to be in big trouble when Bill woke up - perhaps the biggest trouble of his life. There was a small chance he wouldn’t remember what happened, but he didn’t like those odds one bit. He decided right there and then that when Bill woke up, he was going to be long gone. He got changed into his day clothes and pulled on his boots; freezing ever so often when Bill’s breathing changed or his hands twitched on his lap. When he was done he pulled his school book from the mattress, rolled it up in his blanket and left with it tucked under his arm. He drew up on the stairs when his mother called out and considered going back up to say goodbye. But when she called out again, inquiring only after Bill, it struck him physically. She had seen how drunk his stepfather was and would have heard what happened through the wall. But it was Bill she was inquiring of now. He gripped the banister rail. There was a time when he loved his mother more than all the stars in the sky. But over the last two years that love had drained away to almost nothing. She had rejected and neglected him, but worst of all she had given tacit support to Bill’s growing abuse. To see her turn her back when his fists were upon him was what had hardened him to her the most. Hearing her call out for Bill was like having his heart pulled out and as he stood on the dark staircase, a single tear streaked his cheek. Perhaps his mother had never loved him. Perhaps the love he had once felt was only that which was reflected off his sister. He took one last lingering look back up toward the room where he had once laughed and played with Emilie then hurried down through the black mess of the kitchen and into the night.

  The Weight of a Week’s Work

  He woke early the next morning, cramped all over and shivering against the breeze that was blowing up through the floorboards and into his blanket. He sat up with a groan and stretched, promising himself that if he ever built another tree house, he would make it much bigger. He shifted so that he could peer through a break in the slats and looked at the lake through a screen of foliage.

  The tree house was his third such construction, made from old boards and built with tools he had borrowed from the miller. The first he had abandoned because of his shoddy and dangerous work and the second had been badly damaged in a storm. This was his best work to date and as far as he could see, its size was its only flaw. He had built it in the perfect spot - set back from the lakeside trail in a huddle of oak and hazel and high enough in to be hidden from anyone who wasn’t out looking for it. Not that there was ever anyone out at the lakeside these days –
his sister had seen to that. But they weren’t going to stay away forever. The warden had sent word of her haunting to the Caliste over a year ago, requesting an exorcism. Their official reply was that haunts were being prioritised by their urgency and because Agelrish’s lakeside spirit posed no immediate danger, they would have to wait. It had outraged the village, but Kye had taken it with immense relief. But however long the delay, he knew the day would come when an exorcist arrived at the lake. It was a day he was increasingly less prepared for. His life had become ever more centred on his visits with Emilie and he didn’t think he would be able to cope if she was taken from him a second and final time.

  As he looked out across the water he thought back to the previous night. If Bill remembered what happened when he woke up, he would be after his blood. But he was safe here. Bill never came up to the lake and he had no idea about the existence, let alone the whereabouts of his tree house. Last night he had decided he was leaving Agelrish for good. He couldn’t live under the same roof as his parents any longer, because being in close proximity to either of them had become intolerable. Being close to Bill imbued him with simmering fear and being close to his mother served only to dilate the aching hollow in his chest. Emilie was right – he was festering in Agelrish and if he was going to have any chance of a new life, he had to start over someplace else. What had happened last night was just the push he needed.

  But he didn’t have a plan.

  The most immediate problem was how he was going to feed himself. He was almost starving as it was and he didn’t have a copper moon to his name. He considered fishing the lake, but then he realised he wasn’t that hungry. Lady Demia had told him that eating fish from haunted water would make his tongue break out in black worms. He wasn’t sure if it was true, but it wasn’t a risk he was about to take.