Whisper: The untold stories

by Bray, Michael

  V

  Kimmel started the car, waiting for the others to get in. The temptation to floor the accelerator and snake away from the house was great, but he knew the others were just hanging on to their sanity, and he could understand how they felt, as he was struggling too. Instead, he put the vehicle carefully into gear and eased through the car park. It was only when they reached the road towards civilisation that he picked up speed. Despite daylight banishing the shadows, Kimmel was still afraid, and couldn’t resist driving just a little bit faster than the conditions allowed. The car jostled and rocked on the rutted dirt road, and yet Kimmel didn’t slow. The canopy of trees seemed to be closing in on him, he imagined tiny clawed hands reaching for the car, stopping its momentum and dragging it back towards the hotel and the clearing behind it.

  “Take it easy. You’re going too fast.” Dave said, grasping at the door as they negotiated a nasty bump.

  Kimmel ignored him. He was staring at the road, sawing at the wheel as he struggled to keep control. The trees on both sides of the road seemed to shudder and push towards them. The wind howled when there should be none, and Kimmel found it increasingly difficult to keep control of the car. Branches snapped, and fell on the car, damaging the bodywork. One large section landed hard, cracking the windshield and frightening the occupants of the vehicle. Lucy was crying silently, sniffling and holding on to Dani as they went deeper into the unnatural phenomena. At the speed he was going, Kimmel didn’t stand a chance of avoiding the tree as it fell across the road. He saw it in his periphery and slammed on the brakes, which was all that saved their lives. Instead of the tree falling on the roof of the car, instead, it landed on the front, wheels exploding outwards, the rear of the car vaulting into the air. The windshield shattered, covering the car’s occupants in glass. Kimmel screamed out in agony as branches from the fallen tree pushed into the car, pinning him into his seat, the sharp branches skewering him where he sat. As soon as the tree had fallen, the bluster in the trees faded into silence, the unnatural storm abated.

  Dave wiped the blood from his face and looked around in a daze. He took off his glasses, one lens cracked. In the back, Lucy and Dani looked around with the same glazed stare, quite unable to comprehend what had happened to them.

  “Help me,” Kimmel grunted through gritted teeth. “Get me out of the car.”

  “Is everyone alright?” Dave said, still dazed.

  “I’m fine,” Dani said, holding her right wrist with her left hand. “Just a little banged up.”

  “I’m okay too,” Lucy added.

  “Your head’s bleeding,” Dave said

  Lucy absently wiped the blood from her forehead.

  Dave then turned his attention to Kimmel. One branch had pierced the fleshy upper part of his arm and snapped off, leaving a brown stub of wood in his upper bicep, the material around his jacket already soaked through with blood. The other wounds were much more serious. A thicker branch was embedded in Kimmel’s side. Dave leaned close and saw it went right through and out of the other side, and had skewered into the soft material of the seat. The other wound was in similar fashion, this time to Kimmel’s leg, the crème seat cover already a deep maroon. Dave glanced at the others, then back to Kimmel.

  “Alright, I’m going to need help to get him out. He’s bleeding pretty bad up here.” Dave said, climbing out of the broken car and around to the driver’s side, pushing his way through the tangle of branches and opening the door.

  “What do you want us to do?” Dani asked as she followed Lucy out of the car.

  “We have to cut him free. We need a knife or something.”

  Kimmel grabbed Dave’s jacket, leaving a bloody handprint. “Glove box,” He grunted.

  Dani hurried around the car and climbed in the passenger seat. She opened the glove box and found the leather sheathed hunting knife inside.

  Kimmel held out a shaking hand and took it from her, then passed it to Dave.

  “Cut me loose.” He grunted.

  “Are you sure? You could bleed out.”

  “Just do it. Do it now.”

  “If I touch these branches, it will be agonising every time they move. Are you certain?”

  “Just do it, goddamn you,” Kimmel grunted, spit rolling down his chin.

  “Alright.”

  Dave took out the knife and tossed the sheath aside. The blade shimmered in the sunlight, the serrated edge sharpened to perfection.

  “Cut through as far away from his skin as you can,” Lucy said as she watched over Dave’s shoulder. Dani, hold on to the branch and keep it steady.”

  “She picked up the discarded sheath and ducked her head into the car. “Mr. Kimmel, Bite down on this. It will help with the pain.”

  “You know about this stuff?” Dave asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “Only stuff I’ve seen on TV. I’m no expert.”

  “She’s right,” Kimmel said, eyes rolling. “Do as she says.”

  “Wait,” Lucy said, holding the knife sheath out to Kimmel, who took it between his teeth, biting down hard.

  “Okay,” Dave said wiping his head with a forearm. “Let’s do this.”

  Kimmel almost passed out more than once, and even with the knife case to bite down on, the agony was almost unbearable. When Dave had finished, he was covered with blood and Kimmel was pale and barely conscious. They helped him out of the car, Dave at one side, Lucy at the other.

  “Where do we go now?” Dani said, staring into the trees.

  “Back to the hotel,” Dave replied. “We can get him out in our car.”

  “The road is blocked.”

  We can get around on the verge there at the edge, or at least I hope we can. We have to try, either way, he needs a hospital.”

  “We can’t go back there.”

  “If we try to walk it, he won’t make it. He’s already lost a lot of blood. Now come on, help us with him.”

  The three of them began to walk back towards the hotel, their movement painfully slow. Around them, the wind whispered. Somewhere in the forest, Henry Marshall answered.

  FOUR

  Kelsie was sitting on the ground, arms behind her and tied at the wrists to the trunk of a huge tree deep within the forest. She couldn’t remember how she had got there. Whenever she tried to recall it, snatches of memory came out of sequence. She recalled seeing something in the forest she wanted to photograph and stepping off the track to do so. She recalled an inclination to do so quietly without alerting her friends. The strange thing about it was that she couldn’t remember what it was that had been so intriguing that she was desperate to get it on camera. She walked aimlessly, day becoming night, a soup of ideas churning in her head, many of them involving horrific acts of violence against those she knew. At some point, she had awoken, bound and confused as to what had happened. Although she knew it was useless, she squirmed against her restraints, her wrists rubbed raw from her struggles, the dirt at her feet displaced as she dug her heels into the ground and tried to leverage her escape.

  “That won’t help you.”

  The voice came from over her left shoulder, deep and throaty somewhere out of sight in the trees. She didn’t scream. That same thing which seemed to have invaded her thought process silenced her, a throbbing, vibrating mass inside her brain. Instead, she waited, accepting that her chances of survival were out of her hands. Crunching twigs and leaves heralded his arrival. She saw bare feet, filthy and caked in dry blood. She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. Henry Marshal looked back. She recognised him, of course. Even as unkempt as he looked and with the weight he had lost, the eyes still had the horrifying brightness from the photographs she had seen surrounding the Oakwell massacre. There was no emotion in his expression. No semblance of anything she would consider as human. On his arrival, the fog in her head lifted and allowed her, at last, to be herself for the first time since she had wandered off into the woods. A desperate need to get away from Marshall consumed her, and she started to
struggle, violently kicking at this dirt is a desperate effort to be free. Marshall watched, and she noticed that even his smile was devoid of any semblance of human emotion. She waited for death to come, for him to attack her. Instead of attacking, Henry sat cross legged on the ground a few feet away, staring at her.

  “Please, let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone I saw you.” She whispered, still pulling at her restraints.

  “I can’t do that.” He looked into the trees as he said it, then turned back to her, a flicker of a smile on his lips.

  “You need help, Mr. Marshall, please let me go.”

  “So you know who I am?” He said. This time she saw the first glimmer of emotion. A sense of triumph or great pride. He stared out into the dense trees which surrounded them.

  “Why have you brought me here?”

  “I didn’t. They just told me where to find you.”

  “Who? There’s nobody there. Don’t you see? You’re sick. You need someone to help you.”

  “Nobody ever believes,” Henry said with a sigh. “The doctors were the same. They talked and talked and told me I was broken. I knew the truth. I knew my purpose.”

  “Please, there are people that can fix you if you just let them. I won’t tell anyone” She was crying, which seemed to further increase Marshall's enjoyment. He leaned close, his face inches from hers.

  “You sound just like them. The doctors and the psychiatrists. They didn’t believe me either. They didn’t understand the burden.”

  “There are no voices. They’re not real.”

  “No,” he said as he reared back and plunged his hands into the earth at her feet, digging furiously, his eyes burning into her as he did. “I’ll show you. I'll prove it.”

  “Please, stop that. What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer, digging deep at her feet, gasping for breath, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose from the efforts of his exertion, the manic grin never leaving his lips as he tossed dirt under him like some kind of demented, rabid dog. He pulled something up, something white and smooth. Kelsie pushed herself back, whimpering as Henry dragged the human skull out of the earth and tossed it towards her it’s sightless eye sockets staring into the sky. Still not finished, he scrambled a few feet to his left and repeated the process, digging with his fingertips, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood as his nails were torn off by the ferocity of his actions. A second skull was uncovered, this one complete with a broken ribcage. Like the first, he threw it at her, the bones breaking up as it hit the tree. Still, it went on as he went from spot to spot, digging up fragments of lives which had been extinguished over the centuries and tossing them towards her. When he was done, he sat back, panting and staring at her. Around her, bones of the dead littered the ground, some half out of the earth, others just fragments.

  “Don’t you tell me they don’t talk to me,” Marshall said between gasps. “I hear them all. Every last one of them.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” she whispered.

  “Death.”

  She gasped, shocked at the flat, conversational way in which he said it.

  “No, please no.” She was desperate enough to plead, even though she knew he would give no mercy.

  Henry frowned and shook his head. “Don’t beg. Embrace it. It comes to us all.”

  “Please…”

  “Do you believe in god?”

  “What?”

  “God. Do you believe in him?”

  She shook her head. “I won’t answer that.”

  “Do you believe a man with enough power can become a god? If a man could wield the spark of life and the hammer of death, then by default he would be god like?” He wore a smirk now, enjoying her terror. “I can become a god. They told me what they want me to do. They showed me how I can become what I’m destined to become.”

  “Please, just let me go. It’s not too late.”

  Henry’s faraway smile melted. “It was too late the second you entered this town.”

  He scrambled to his feet, kicking bones aside. He started to walk towards her and then paused, head tilted to one side.

  ‘You may be in luck. It seems they have other plans for us. We have work to do’ He said, kneeling in front of her. He grasped her face with his grubby hands and leaned close. ‘This won’t hurt half as much as it would have.’

  She tried to pull away but there was no way she could move. He leaned in and kissed her, the taste disgusting as he forced his tongue into her mouth. Probing and licking. Kelsie squirmed and kicked, unable to scream against his mouth.

  VI

  Kimmel was barely conscious by the time they had retreated to the remains of the hotel. He had lost a lot of blood and was mumbling, head hanging low as Dave and Dani lowered him to the ground in the camp.

  "Watch him whilst I start the car," Dave grunted, his clothes smeared with blood.

  Dani and Lucy didn't argue, too afraid to do anything but give regular concerned glances towards the trees.

  Dave hurried to his car, snatching twice at the door handle. He managed to get the key into the ignition and turn it, expecting the familiar sputter of the engine roaring to life. Instead, there was nothing. He turned the key again, confused as to why it wasn't working. He tried a third time, this time removing the key first and staring at it for a second as if it would show him the problem. Once again, there was nothing. No splutter. No familiar growl.

  With a grunt, he popped the hood, wondering if there was perhaps some kind of mechanical problem and if his limited knowledge would enable him to fix it.

  That idea went out of the window the second he saw the state of the engine.

  The innards of the car had been destroyed. Wires had been cut, the engine itself mangled by what looked to be a heavy duty hammer. Dazed, Dave lowered the engine cover.

  "We need to get a fire going," he mumbled, flashing an agitated glance into the trees.

  "What do you mean? What's wrong with the car?"

  “Forget the car. We need to start a fire."

  "Are you insane? We need to get out of here." Lucy screamed as she applied a makeshift tourniquet from Kimmel’s belt just above his leg wound.

  "The car is a no go. Someone sabotaged it."

  "What do you mean, someone? Who?"

  How the hell should I know? All I know is it's not going to move, and our priority is saving this man's life. Now find some wood and start a fucking fire!"

  "If someone sabotaged the car that means someone could be out there now, watching us," Dani said.

  The three of them stared into the trees which surrounded them, which were ominously silent. It was incredibly easy to imagine someone hiding and observing them. Dave looked from the girls to Kimmel, then back to the trees.

  "Alright, I'll go get some firewood. You two stay here and keep an eye on him. He doesn't look too good."

  "You’re leaving us alone here?" Lucy said, eyes wide and showing too much white.

  "I won't be long. I'll just be on the edge of the forest. It will be full dark in a few hours and we need to get a fire going and keep him warm. He's weak already. Here. I’ll leave you the knife. I’ll be back soon.”

  “You want to stay here for another night?” Lucy asked as he handed the knife to Dani.

  “No, of course not, but I don’t see what other option we have. He’s too weak to move in the condition he’s in. we need to check over his wounds, see if we can patch him up enough to get out of here. Besides, those people he called, they could be here anytime soon.”

  “Come on, you don’t believe that,” Dani said. “Even Kimmel didn’t believe they would come.”

  “Either way, we need to keep warm. To do that, we need a fire. This is a problem I can fix. Please, just wait here until I come back. It won’t take long.”

  “It looks like we have no choice,” Dani said, this time without sarcasm. She was too scared to worry about petty disputes. She watched as Dave trudged across the car park to the tree line, then with
a last look over his shoulder, disappeared into the forest.

  II

  Away from the others, Dave could let his guard down. As the oldest of the group, he had always felt obliged to be the one who wasn’t afraid, and who would always offer a sensible, rational solution. Now, though, under the cover of the reaching branches, he could acknowledge just how scared he was. He had grown up waiting for an opportunity to lead, waiting to put into practice the survival books he had read, the countless television shows featuring experts who munched on bugs to survive or made shelters out of branches. Now, he couldn’t recall a single thing that might help them apart from the odd snippet of info he was able to pluck out of the horrors which dominated his mind. Despite assuring them otherwise, he knew he would have to venture further away from camp than he would like. The branches on the edge of the tree line would be damp and unusable. He would need to go to the places where the canopy kept the rain off the ground. Places which would be dark and filled with shadows. He had never believed in the supernatural or even been particularly interested in anything related to it. His passion was history, the abandoned lives of man left to be rediscovered years later. His fondest memories were, in fact, of some of the bleakest, desolate places on earth. Chernobyl sprang to mind, its buildings long abandoned after a nuclear meltdown. Because of the rushed nature of the evacuation, much of it was abandoned as was, with very few belongings taken. Homes were eerie and appeared to almost still be inhabited. Even with the ceaseless march of nature reclaiming lands which were uninhabitable for man, to Dave it was still an incredibly beautiful place. He was trying to apply the same rational to the forest as he trudged deeper into the undergrowth. He tried to see past that which made him afraid and look at the natural beauty of the trees. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t forget what could be out here waiting for him. He pushed those thoughts aside and concentrated on the job in hand.