by Bryan Hall
Whispers from the Dark
By Bryan Hall
Whispers from the Dark
Whispers from the Dark Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Hall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For more information:
www.bryanhallfiction.com
[email protected]
For My Son, Levin
May The Whispers Never Claim You
"...This guy is scary good!"
-Joe McKinney, Stoker Award nominated author of Flesh Eaters, Apocalypse of the Dead, and Quarantine
"...A horror master's sense of scene and scares."
-Jonathan Moon, author of Heinous
"... dark, fast and fun...a compelling read."
-Nate Kenyon, award-winning author of Sparrow Rock, The Reach, and StarCraft Ghost: Spectres, on Containment Room Seven
Table of Contents
SECRETS BENEATH
PUDDLES
THE DARK
THERE'S A PRIZE IN THE BOX!
FEEDING THE FLAMES
VINTAGE SOUND
DESPERATE TIMES
WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS
DIRT DON'T HURT
THROWING STONES
VALENCHENKO IN THE DEAD CITY
KUDZU
THE SWIM
GRANNY
Bonus Excerpt from Containment Room Seven
About the Author
SECRETS BENEATH
Bobby was the first one to see her. We were sitting on Tony’s front porch drinking beers as cold as the day was hot, swatting mosquitoes and listening to Ralph explain all the things he was planning on doing to Katie Sutton during their date on Saturday night.
Just as Ralph finished up Bobby held his hand over his eyes, squinting against the August sun. “What the hell is that?”
You could barely see her. The house was in the middle of a thirty acre field, the field itself surrounded by the forest. Tony’s parents had left the property to him after they passed. Blanton was probably the smallest, most secluded town in the state, and Tony’s was a ten minute drive from it. As far as isolation went, if you were at his place you may as well have been in the middle of the Sahara.
The girl was a dot on the far side of the field, cutting a path through the tall grass as she ran towards us. The heat waves, liquid bands floating above the field, made her seem almost like a mirage.
“Looks like a person to me, Bob,” Ralph said.
I wiped the sweat from my brow. “They come outta the woods?”
“Hell…I reckon that’s about the only place they coulda come from.” Tony took another pull of his beer.
“Listen.” Bobby whispered it, cocking his head towards the oncoming figure as if he were a dog. “You hear that?”
I heard it too. “She’s screaming.” I whispered the words, not wanting to believe them.
Tony jumped up from his seat and threw open the screen door, vanishing inside. We all looked at one another, all of us knowing where he was going but none of us wanting to speak it out loud.
“Goddamn it,” Bobby said. “Not again.”
By the time Tony came back onto the porch with the twelve-gauge I was fighting back the urge to puke up the three beers I’d just had. Ralph took one look at Tony’s gun and headed for his truck, returning in an instant with a handgun.
Tony walked down off the porch, staring out at the girl. She was about a hundred yards away now. “Call up Walt, tell him to get Danny and Austin and get over here.”
Bobby picked up Tony's cordless phone and started punching numbers.
By the time the girl reached us we were all standing together at the edge of Tony’s yard. She was a hiker, from the looks of it. Still in her twenties. Her shirt was torn and dirty, dried blood caked on her legs and arms. A cut just at her blond hairline still oozed fresh crimson. She fell into my arms, sobbing and repeating the same two words: “Help us.”
“How many of you were there?” Ralph’s voice was grim.
“Four.” The word was a whisper, trailing off as she passed out.
We put her on the porch swing and stood silently, staring at the tree line as Tony went inside and grabbed me and Bobby each a rifle.
Twenty minutes later Walt’s pickup pulled into the driveway. His grandson Will sat in the passenger seat. Walt was pushing sixty now, but looked ten years younger. The hard life of a small town farmer had kept him fit and trim, his hair still black and his skin hardly wrinkled. The two got out of the truck, each one carrying a rifle.
“Where’s Danny and Austin?” Ralph asked.
Walt shook his head. “Ain’t coming. Danny threw out his back last week and ain’t been off the couch since. Austin said he can’t do it again after last time. Jenny won‘t let him.”
Bobby leaned in close to Walt, eyeing Will and whispering. “What’s your grandson doing here, Walt?”
“He’s thirteen. We’ve told him ’bout this for years and now he’s more than old enough to see it, I reckon.”
“Where’s his Dad?” Ralph asked.
“Drunk.” Walt said. There was no emotion in is voice, just a cold statement of fact. “Like usual.”
We passed some hesitant glances at one another while Walt glared at us, daring us to challenge his decision. My first trip into the woods with my father had been when I was fifteen. Like Will, I’d spent my life before that hearing stories preparing me for what I would inevitably see and do.
Finally Tony grunted. “Well, here she is.”
Walt walked onto the porch and looked her over. “Goddamn hippies,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you take her inside?”
“Don’t want her in my house. She don't need to be in there.”
“She said there was four of ‘em,” I told Walt.
“I reckon one of us needs to stay here,” Walt said. “Keep an eye on her. Bobby? You feel like doing it?”
I could see the relief wash over Bobby’s face like a wave. He nodded, eyes locked on the girl.
“You know what that means, don’t ya?”
The relief left as quickly as it arrived. Bobby pursed his lips as he chewed over just what it did mean. After a minute he nodded.
Walt turned from the girl and headed for his truck. “Alright then. Rest of ya, pile in my truck and let’s get this over with.”
Will joined his granddad in the cab of the pickup while the rest of us climbed into the back.
Within a few minutes, we reached the edge of the forest. We climbed out of the truck and gathered in front of the truck.
I looked over at Will, his face as pale as the December snow. The old man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Just remember, son. Whatever you see…however wrong it seems to you…we ain’t got no choice.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to let Walt’s words comfort me too. It didn’t work. I still had that sick feeling in my gut, like something was alive inside me and trying to claw its way out.
Tony took the first step, the rest of us matching his pace. A few steps into the woods, the dead leaves from last fall crunching like brittle bones beneath our feet, Will spoke in a hushed whisper. “You said if the people had turned we had to kill them, Grandpa.”
“Yes.”
“What if they ain’t turned? You said we always had to make sure nobody from out of town found out.” All of us knew what the boy wanted to know, but nobody responded.
It took Walt a few minutes to answer. “We ain’t got no choice, Will.”
We fell quiet again, the crunching of the leaves and the occasional birdsong the only sounds. There was no trail to fo
llow, and we made slow progress as we navigated our way around the underbrush and briar thickets. Will walked beside me, and I could see him start to speak a few times, always stopping himself before he did.
I took it upon myself to try and help him understand. “If people find out what’s in the woods here…on Tony and Walt and half the people in this town‘s land…”
“The government would come in. They’d kick us off our property and steal our land,” Will finished for me.
“I’ve already told him all that, Joey.” Walt snapped the words out, clearly annoyed that I’d said anything.
“So even if that girl ain‘t turned...” Will paused a moment, clutching his gun so hard I thought there was a chance he was going to bend the barrel. “Is Bobby going to kill her anyway?”
We passed around glances, pretending we hadn’t heard the question. Will eyed his grandfather. “Grandpa? Is--”
“Shhhhh!” Tony stopped dead in his tracks, hissing at the boy. The rest of us followed suit.
I didn’t see anything, but I heard it. The crunching of dead leaves. A snapping branch. The sounds got louder, joined by a gurgling, wheezing noise.
A moment, and I saw him. His clothes were caked in mud and blood. With clumsy steps he bounced off the trees like a drunk stumbling through a crowded bar. He was fifty yards from us but I could tell he had turned. His face was bloated, white fluid dripping from his ears, nose, and eyes. When he stumbled a few more yards towards us, you could see his swollen face shifting. Here and there, his skin pulsated.
Ralph raised his gun and squeezed the trigger. The impact turned the man into a human top, spinning him as he dropped to the ground. He lay still except for his skin, which continued pulsating and throbbing. We kept our guns trained on the body until the movement underneath his skin had stopped.
After a moment one of them slithered out of the bullet wound, followed by another two out of the man’s mouth. They were shaped like worms, a foot long and as big around as a thumb with little curved hooks sticking out of one end like teeth. All over their pale yellow bodies were tiny red versions of themselves, small little whisker like things that waved and twitched around.
The three things crawled out onto the ground and writhed around on the ground for a minute or two before dying.
Walt walked to the body and poked it with the barrel of his gun, studying it for a moment before nodding in satisfaction.
We left the body where it was, walking deeper into the woods, the next thirty minutes passing without even a whisper between us.
Finally Tony whispered “We’re getting close, guys.” It was his property, his devil. He’d learned years ago just where the forest was no longer safe.
Walt stopped and turned to his grandson. “Watch where you step, Will. It’s hard to see the thing’s goddamn arms. They blend in with the leaves.”
Another hundred yards or so and we were there. Ralph stopped and gestured with his gun ahead of him. “There’s one of ‘em…what’s left of him, anyways.”
Underneath an old oak lay a crumpled up pile of what had once been a person. At this point it was impossible to tell if it had been a man or woman. The body was missing its legs, and its torso had been ripped open leaving only a few intestines trailing out of the hollow cavity that remained. The head had been gnawed on until it no longer resembled a head at all; just a round knot of gore, bald and black with blood that oozed from open wounds.
Will vomited, dropping his gun to the ground as he fell to his knees gagging. I’d done the same the first time my father took me into the woods at Pete Perkins’ property to learn what our town had lived with for decades.
“Look behind the body,” Tony urged.
The tentacle protruded out from a hole in the ground and wrapped its way around the forest floor, twenty feet long at least. It looked like a monstrous, headless snake, as big around as a basketball at the point where it exited the ground and tapering to nothing in its last few feet. It was hard to see, brown and orange and blending with the dead leaves as if it was part of the forest floor itself.
My eyes wandered across the ground until they found three more of the tentacles and a few other empty holes leading down into the darkness below the earth.
“I see four,” Walt said matter-of-factly. “Anybody see more than that?”
Everyone responded with quiet nos.
“Everybody see those four?”
A yes from us all.
The old man looked around the woods for a moment before saying: “How about that other hiker?”
I looked through the trees but aside from us and the beast the forest was empty.
“What are they attached to?” Will whispered. His eyes were still fixed on the tentacles lying half-hidden in the leaves.
We all looked at the boy in silence until Ralph answered him. “Nobody knows.”
“These…arms did that to that guy?”
“No,” I said. “That was probably the guy we ran into a few minutes ago. Or the one we ain’t seen yet. Once they get took over, they get…hungry, I guess.”
The kid bit his lower lip, taking in what he was looking at and hearing. After a couple of minutes he nodded his head in acceptance. “So how do we kill it?”
Walt chuckled lightly. “We don’t.”
I saw confusion spread across Will’s face like buckshot. “What do you mean we don’t?”
I realized then that Walt hadn’t explained everything to Will. When I’d made my first trip into the woods with my dad, I knew exactly what was and wasn’t going to happen. Walt and Will’s dad Paul had apparently left out at least one part of the story.
Walt pulled a pack of smokes out of his pocket, shook one out and lit it. He took a deep draw on the cigarette and exhaled it, all the while staring at the serpentine arms splayed out before us. When he spoke, his voice had taken on the tone of a man lost in nostalgia, each word floating in the air a moment before the next joined it.
“Been a lot of folks try to get rid of these things, Will. Most of ‘em died trying to do it, too. Back before I was born, there was a fella filled up a dead pig with poison an’ threw it on one of the arms. That’s how they catch ya. Get close enough to one of them, an’ the fucker can…sense that you’re there, and it grabs ya and pulls ya under.”
Tony had started navigating the area, keeping a wide berth from the tentacles as circled them, scanning the woods for the other hiker.
Walt continued, “The pig hit the arm, alright. From what my Daddy told me it was drug under in a second flat, but the fella that threw it got snagged by another arm and’ went underneath right after it did. He came back up a little while later, filled up with whatever it is they fill ya up with.”
“My Dad told me my uncle threw a grenade down one of the holes once,” I said.
“Yep,” Walt nodded, “I remember hearing about that. An’ I was there when Chris Smith threw a wad of dynamite down one of the holes on his property, ‘bout twenty years ago. When it blew, the arms twitched around a lot, even knocked over a couple of trees . They disappeared down their holes and we thought the sumbitch had done it. Before we’d even left, they came back out like nothing had even happened.”
“So they can’t die.” Will said.
Walt cut a quick glance towards his grandson. “Didn’t say that, boy. Just said we can’t kill ‘em. Maybe the army, or a scientist or something like that. But ain’t nobody ever gonna call them in.”
“Cause they’ll take the land,” Will said. The tone of his voice was that of an annoyed teenager repeating what he’d been told thousands of times, and probably with good reason. I was sure he’d been told that fact for as long as he could remember, just like me and Ralph and Tony and everyone else that had ever been born in Blanton.
“Yup,” Walt said. “You remember seeing on the news a few years ago about that big Indian village they dug up on some guy’s property while he was trying to flatten out a spot for a barn?”
Will nodded.
&nb
sp; “You remember what happened?”
Another nod, coupled this time with an exasperated sigh. “The government wouldn’t let him build. They bought his land and brought in a buncha archeologists to dig there.”
“Yup. The government ain‘t out for the little man.”
“But they paid him. A lot.”
Tony spoke up, heading back towards the group. “It ain’t about the money. Not to most of us, anyways. This land’s been in my family for a century or more. Pretty much all the land around here’s handed down. Ever notice there ain’t even a real estate office in town?”
“Nobody moving here, Will.” Ralph said.
“That’s right,” Tony continued. “There ain’t shit here but woods and a few hundred people. And it ain’t likely to change anytime soon. I don‘t really give a damn what‘s attached to those arms, or how to kill it. And I ain‘t about to risk losing what my daddy and granddaddy worked their whole lives to keep just so that somebody else that ain‘t ever even heard of this town can move in, kick me out, and study it.”
“You don’t think anybody’s ever told somebody from out of town?” Will spat in disbelief.
Walt took a final puff of his smoke and threw it to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with his heel. “Lots of people have. Hard to convince people you’re telling the truth about something like this, though.”
“Somebody has to have believed it. What about these hikers?”
“They’re probably looking for Paradise Falls, over on the other side of the ridge,” Tony said.
“You’re right though,” I said. “Every once in a while somebody does believe the stories about the woods here.”
“And?”
“And they come here looking for a monster. These things are only in a few places, on a few pieces of property. Usually they come looking and don’t find anything at all.”
“Trespassing.” Walt spit the word out like it was venom. “Sneaking ’round on other people’s land.”
