The Whisper Man

Just the house creaking.

I went downstairs more confidently, feeling silly but also more relieved than I’d have liked to admit. At the bottom, I had to edge past the piles of mail on the last two steps. There had been a lot so far: the usual documents that inevitably come with moving into a new house, along with innumerable local take-out menus and other junk mail. But there had also been three proper letters, addressed to someone called Dominic Barnett. All three were marked either Private or Addressee Only.

I remembered that the previous owner, Mrs. Shearing, had rented the house out for years, and on a whim I ripped one of the letters open now. Inside, I found an itemized account from a debt collection company. My heart sank. Whoever Dominic Barnett was, he owed the company on an old cell phone contract. I opened the others, and they were the same: notices for unpaid money. I scanned the details, frowning to myself. The amounts weren’t large, but the tone of the letters was threatening. I told myself it wasn’t an insurmountable problem and that a few phone calls would sort it out, but this move was meant to be a new start for Jake and me, not to deliver a fresh set of obstacles for me to overcome.

“Daddy?”

Jake had appeared in the living room doorway beside me. He was holding his Packet of Special Things in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“Is it all right if I play upstairs?”

I thought of the creak I’d heard, and for a second I wanted to say no. But again, that was absurd. There was nobody up there, and it was his bedroom; he had every right to play in it. At the same time, we hadn’t seen much of each other that day, and it felt isolating for him to disappear upstairs now.

“I guess,” I said. “Can I see your drawing first?”

He hesitated. “Why?”

“Because I’m interested. Because I’d like to.”

Because I’m trying here, Jake.

“It’s private.”

Which was fair enough, and a part of me wanted to respect that, but I didn’t like the idea of him keeping secrets from me. The Packet was one thing, but it felt like if he wouldn’t even show me his drawings now, then the distance between us must be increasing.

“Jake—” I started to say.

“Oh, fine.”

He thrust the sheet out at me. Now that it was being offered, I was reluctant to take it.

But I did.

Jake had never been good at drawing straightforward, realistic scenes before, preferring his convoluted, unfolding battles instead, but he’d attempted one here. The picture was rough, but it was obviously an approximation of our house from the outside, reminiscent of the original photograph that had caught his attention online. He had captured the odd look of the place well. The curved, childlike lines stretched the house into a strange shape, elongating the windows, and making it look more like a face than ever. The front door appeared to be moaning.

But it was the upstairs that drew my attention. In the right-hand window he’d drawn me, standing by myself in my bedroom. On the left, there he was in his own room, the window large enough here to include his whole body: a smile on his face, the jeans and T-shirt he was wearing right now shaded with crayon.

And beside him, he’d drawn another person in his bedroom. A little girl, her black hair splayed almost angrily out to one side. Her dress was colored in with patches of blue, leaving the rest white. Little scrapes of red on one of her knees.

A corkscrew smile on her face.

Nine

After Jake’s bath that night, I knelt on the floor beside his bed so that we could read to each other. He was a good reader, and we were currently working our way through Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones. It was a childhood favorite of mine, which I’d chosen without thinking. The horrible irony of the title had only occurred to me afterward.

When we’d finished that night’s chapter, I put the book down with all his others.

“Cuddle?” I said.

He slipped out of the covers without a word and sat sideways on my knees, wrapping his arms around me. I savored the cuddle for as long as I could, and then he clambered back into bed.

“I love you, Jake.”

“Even when we argue?”

“Of course. Especially when we argue. That’s when it matters the most.”

That reminded me of the picture I’d drawn for him, which I knew he’d kept. I glanced down at his Packet of Special Things, which was under the bed now, so that if he were to drape his small arm out in the night he’d be able to touch it. But that in turn made me think of the drawing he’d done that afternoon. He hadn’t been pleased about showing it to me, and so I hadn’t asked him about it at the time. But in the warm, soft light of his bedroom, it felt like maybe I could now.

“It was a good picture of our house today,” I said.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“I’m curious about something, though. Who was the little girl in the window with you?”

He bit his lip and didn’t answer.

“It’s okay,” I said gently. “You can tell me.”

But again he didn’t reply. It was obvious that, whoever it was meant to be, the little girl was the reason he hadn’t wanted to show me the drawing today, and he didn’t want to talk about her now either. But why not?

The answer occurred to me a second later.

“Is she the little girl from the 567 Club?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

I sat back on my heels, doing my best to hide the frustration I felt. The disappointment, even. For the last week, everything had seemed fine. We had been happy here, Jake had seemed to be adjusting well, and I had been cautiously optimistic. And yet apparently his imaginary friend had been following us all along. The thought made me shiver slightly—the idea that we had left her behind in the old house, and ever since she had been working her way slowly across the intervening miles to find us.

“Do you still talk to her?” I said.

Jake shook his head.

“She’s not here.”

From his own disappointment, it was obvious that he wanted her to be, and once again I felt uneasy. It was unhealthy for him to be fixated on someone who wasn’t there. At the same time, he looked so dejected and lonely right now that I almost felt guilty at depriving him of it. And also hurt that, as always, I wasn’t enough.

“Well,” I said carefully. “You start school tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll make lots of new friends there. And in the meantime, I’m here. We’re here. New house, new start.”

“Is it safe here?”

“Safe?” Why was he asking that? “Yes, of course it is.”

“Is the door locked?”

“Yes.”

The lie—a white one—came automatically. The door wasn’t locked; I didn’t think I’d even hooked up the chain. But Featherbank was a quiet village. And anyway, it was early evening and the lights were all on. Nobody was going to be that blatant.

But Jake looked so frightened that I was suddenly conscious of the distance between the two of us and the front door. The noise of running his bath. If someone had crept in while we were up here, would I have heard it?

“You don’t need to worry about that.” I did my best to sound firm. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Why are you so worried?”