Whispers

Two Years Earlier

The warehouse was black as pitch, save for the single beam of light coming from a lamp on a very old, very worn desk. The desk had holes in it from termites and rot from the wet and damp environment. The boy sitting behind it kicked up his boots onto the desk, leaning back in the chair and watching the line of people walk in.

Three boys stood behind him, just waiting for their orders. Five other men walked in, the one in the middle looking extremely terrified. Glancing around, he tried to see if there was a way out of the warehouse. But it was windowless, an old place where steel was made.

The party of five stopped. The boy behind the desk examined the one in the middle, his green eyes like a predator in the night, slowly going up and then down, sizing him up, finding his weaknesses. He was good at that, finding weaknesses.

“You know,” he said, his voice playfully, but dangerously and disturbingly so. His voice made skin crawl; it made hair on the back of necks stand on end. He moved his feet to the ground, leaning forward and raising his brows. “I was really quite annoyed when you told police my name, Gordon.”

“I didn’t realize, I swear-“

“Calm down, mate.” The boy stood and walked over towards him. Out of the corner of his eye, he remembered something very important. Turning to the tall boy, with dark chocolate curls and eyes like the darkest emeralds, he said, “Harry, thank you for your utmost loyalty on this matter. Lead everyone to the bar, for me? Have a drink, while I talk to Gordon.”

Everyone began shuffling towards the exit. Gordon looked at the ground, handing his head in shame, and beginning to tremble. A wet stain appeared on his trousers suddenly, and many of the passing men chuckled as he wet himself, his hands trembling.

“What are you doing with him?” Harry asked in a very low voice. His raspy tone was not filled with concern, but it was obvious he was not happy with the entire operation. Harry was loyal, and he was good at bringing in deals. But it was not in his nature to be a murder. So he was kept out of it, because he was good. “Leon, be honest.”

Leon grinned and patted Harry on the shoulder, walking him towards the exit where the others opened the door, a shaft of light coming in through the door. “Don’t worry yourself mate, I’m not doing anything I would ever do to you. You and I; we’re mates.”

“Of course we are.”

Harry nodded once. He seemed okay with the answer, and walked out of the warehouse. The door clanged shut and Leon turned around, throwing his hands up in the air. Except this time, there was a flash of silver. A very sharp, very chilling knife was in his hands.

“Gordon!” he cheered, walking over to the boy who was shaking all over. “You know, lying is a sin. I probably shouldn’t have lie.”

“What?”

“To Harry, I made is sound like I wasn’t going to kill you. And well, it was a lie. I’m a liar, Gordon.” Leon shrugged. “Say ‘Hi’ to Satan for me.”

Leon leapt forward, silver flashing. Gordon was no more.

✝ ✝ ✝

Present Time

Green. Green eyes watched him. He could feel them on his skin, watching in the darkness, the Cheshire cat in the deep darkness of the night. He could almost imagine the smile, thin and sharp, a blade-like smile that could cut through flesh and muscle.

Sweat was on his brow. He wasn’t sure where he was, but Harry felt panic rising into him. It bubbled into his lungs, making them pump faster, his mouth trying to inhale as much breath as he could at the quickening pace of his breathing. It was difficult for Harry to breathe at such a panicked pace.

Licking his lips, he looked through the darkness, trying to comb through it to find a comforting pair of eyes, eyes that changed from green to light blue, always with that burst of yellow around the iris’. He wanted to see Rae’s eyes, to know that they were watching over him. But there was just that green, that sniveling, haunting green.

Fear was beginning to peak in his heart, and he felt like he was running in emptiness. The depths of nothing were all around him, ready to steal him and making carry him into nonexistence. But he was scared because he could not find Rae in the nothingness, could not see her light in the empty hole that he was in.

But he could see the eyes.

Harry was running now, groping into the darkness. At first, he did not want to call out. He did not want to cry out for her, scared that he would alert those burning green gems that she was somewhere in here, somewhere in this black hole of a sea.

He grew desperate and he began to scream out, calling her name. No sound was coming out, no matter how hard he screamed her name. He felt the scream going through him, felt it rattling his bones, but there was no sound but the laughter of the eyes, which was also silent.

“Harry!” the voice was far off, the only sound over the laughter of the eyes. He was still shouting for Rae, for his life. “HARRY!”

The boy startled away, sitting straight up in bed, gasping for air and fists wrenching the sheets. Rae leapt away from him in surprise and fear, her breathing irregular as she looked at him, her eyes wide in worry. Harry looked around wildly, tying to gather his bearings as the dream washed away.

Rae’s bedroom. He realized he was laying in Rae’s bedroom, the paintings on the wall making his cold sweats die away, the smell of her sheets making his heart beat slower and the color of her eyes relaxing his muscles. He was with Rae, in her bed, sleeping. He hadn’t been in nothingness. He had been here the whole time.

Sighing, he let go of the sheets. His body was covered in a sheen of sweat, glistening in the thin ribbon of moonlight that danced through the slit in the curtains, lighting his pale, smooth skin. He felt exhausted from the nightmare, every ounce of him sore, as if he really had been running.

“What the hell happened?” she whispered, looking as if she wanted to reach out to him, but too scared to touch him. She was looking at him the way one looked at a caged tiger, with great wonder and fear.

Before Harry could answer her, the door opened and the light was on, Trystan standing in her sports bra and pajama bottoms, alert and at attention. She looked at them both, breathing hard. “Are you alright? What the hell was that?”

Rae shook her head, speechless before looking at Harry again. She was giving him a questioning look. “I-I don’t know. Did you have a nightmare?”

He hesitated. “What did I do?”

Trystan and Rae exchanged glances and Rae reached out a hand, touching his arm lightly. He didn’t flinch from the contact. It made him feel safe. “You were screaming my name. At first you were just tossing and turning and I wasn’t going to bother you, but then you started screaming.”

“Screaming what?”

Silence. “My name.”

Harry licked his lips. So he had been screaming her name. He just couldn’t hear himself. That had never happened before. He had never been swallowed in a dream by fear incarnate. There was a first time for everything. “It was just a dream,” he murmured, his voice tired. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Woke me?” Trystan asked her tone sour. One of her eyes was twitching, and though he knew that she was mad, he was glad that she was acting normal. She hated being woken up from sleep, especially if it had to do with him. “WOKE ME? Waking me is when you’re having a proper fuck and your headboard is making its debut as a song in the middle of the night. You just gave me a bloody fucking scare, thinking there was an axe murder in here.”

“Go to bed, Trys,” Rae said tiredly, though not unkindly. She glanced at her friend and gave her a look to tell her that she could take care of it from here. Trystan scowled and closed the door, flicking the light back off before she did so. “Ignore her. You know how she gets.”

“To be fair, we have woken her up quite a bit before.”

“Yeah, but not like that.” Both of them slipped into silence. Rae moved over to him, putting her back against the head board and pulling him by the shoulders. He let her guide him into her chest, wrapping her arms around him as he lay against her, breathing in her scent gently. Rae smelled like the pages of a book being read in a field of flowers, on the brightest summer day. “Are you alright?”

He nodded. He felt like a child in his mother’s arms. Rae had always treated him better than his mother had. She was his home, his heart, his family. “It was just a dream.”

“That wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. Her hand began running through his hair gently, knowing that it helped him fall asleep. Already, he felt tired and ready to fall back asleep. The nightmare was fading from his mind, as long as she held him. “Dreams do not sound like that.”

“Anything is dream, if you’re there.”

She paused for a minute. He could tell by her silence she wanted to ask something. So she finally did. “Did I die?” He didn’t answer. “In your nightmare?”

“No.”

“What was it, then?”

Before he answered, he realized why he had been so afraid in the dream. It occurred to him what the dream was, and why his heart sped up in terror when he thought about it. The dream was his deepest, darkest fear, though it was physically impossible. The thought of it though, was the darkest place in the recesses of his mind. “You didn’t exist.”