Page 50 of The Whisper Place
“What is it?”
“I . . . nothing.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for the image to bloom on the back of my eyelids. A low building with a flat metal roof. Even reflected inCharlie’s head, the place didn’t look in great shape. It was missing windows and boards, with weeds chewing in on all sides.
“You’re thinking about a building. Somewhere near your house.”
“It’s just that—”
“He’s right?” Blake cut in. “Holy shit, do me next!”
Charlie ignored her and I tried to focus as a bizarre parade of meme-worthy scenes spilled out of Blake’s head.
“I’ve been going to Silas’s the last few nights,” Charlie admitted. I moved as far away as possible from the table where Blake was grinning and thinking comically hard.
Charlie claimed he went to talk to him—which felt mostly true—but changed his mind when he heard Silas yelling inside his house. Maybe at his grandkid or the TV. Charlie tried listening in, but Silas came outside and walked to one of the outbuildings on the property, the same stubborn, neglected structure I’d seen in his head.
“He stayed there for a half hour, maybe, before going back to the house. I went again the next night and just waited. He came out later, after the news, but he went to the same building and stayed the same amount of time.” Charlie stuffed his hands in his pockets. “He doesn’t farm anymore—hasn’t in years. There’s no reason for him to be out there. And I thought, maybe, you know, that Kate—”
I picked up my phone and the box of pastries I’d bought for Earl. “Stay home tonight. Don’t trespass on the property of an angry gun owner. Max and I will check it out.”
Charlie agreed and the two of them walked me to the Evolution parked out front. Blake looked at me like she was in a staring contest only she knew about. I sighed and shook my head, unlocking the car.
“It’s dangerous to ride a unicorn bareback. Even for young Rob Lowe.”
Kate
The day after Ted locked me in the bedroom with a bucket and some snacks, I heard a crash on the opposite end of the hall, followed by stomping and short, guttural yells. It sounded like Ted was taking the house apart. Did that mean my mother had escaped? Did it mean she was dead? I didn’t know. I had zero information, but I’d spent the entire night dismantling the lamp next to my bed, shattering the lightbulb, and gluing the shards of glass to the end of the brass pipe. I grabbed it and ducked behind the door, praying he would open it and come barreling inside. I visualized the back of his head, the vulnerable skin at his throat, walking myself through each blow. How he might counter, how I would respond.
He thought he was a whale, an instrument of God making me face my fate. He thought he could swallow up my whole life and no one would stop him.
Except me.
This time, Jonah was going to eat the whale.
I waited, gripping the glass-encrusted pipe like a lifeline, listening to the chaos erupting from him like bile as he crashed throughthe house. Then I heard the front door slam. I crept to the window and watched him rage around the yard. He stopped, looking at the woods as if he wanted to check them, but he didn’t. He never went into the preserve. It was too dirty, too disordered. The trees didn’t line up perfectly like the shrubs along his sidewalk. He couldn’t douse the preserve in chemicals like he did with his fluorescent green lawn. The woods were beyond his control, and he hated that. After a minute, he turned and disappeared around the corner of the house. His truck engine fired up and roared away.
The sound of my bedroom doorknob sent my heart into my throat and I panicked, running across the room, convinced that somehow he’d tricked me into giving up my hiding spot behind the door. I raised the pipe as the door opened—ready to kill him anyway, the hell with the element of surprise, the hell with my sad Pinterest weapon, I would do it with my bare hands—before stumbling to a stop.
Mom stood in the doorway.
A cry tore out of my throat. I dropped the pipe and threw myself at her, sobbing before her arms even wrapped around my back.
“I thought you were dead.”
She kissed the side of my head hard, holding me like she would never let go again. But too soon she drew back, bracketing my shoulders and scanning every inch of me. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t. I was years and countless mental breaks and meltdowns away from okay. It would probably take more therapy than I could ever afford to think of myself in those terms again, but Ted was gone and my mom was here. My bedroom door was open and all we had to do was walk through it. I nodded.
She seemed to accept my answer for exactly what it was, her mouth turning into a thin, grim line.
“Get your weapon. Let’s go.”
The keys to my mom’s car were long gone and who knew what he’d done with our phones. With no transportation or means of communication, we did the only thing we could: we escaped through the woods. Once we’d gotten deep enough into the trees to feel comfortable talking, we traded horror stories. Ted had left my mother in the pantry for hours, telling her the same thing he’d used to threaten me—that he’d murder me if she made a sound. He knew exactly how to control both of us, to exploit our love for each other, knowing we would walk to the ends of the world to keep the other one safe.
He must’ve gotten bored at some point because eventually he dragged her out of the pantry in the middle of the night. He made her cook for him, clean up the mess he’d made in the kitchen, and put the entire house in order. He didn’t tell her where I was. She listened to his rants about being fired, raging for hours as she worked and searched for evidence of me. He hovered over her, not letting her out of his sight until she realized she needed him to let his guard down, which—with a paranoid psycho like him—was going to be next to impossible. Gradually, she began layering in compliments, telling him no one appreciated his genius, that he operated on a different level than the rest of us. One of those things was a hundred percent true.
It might’ve worked. With enough time and lies, she might’ve been able to soothe him into submission. But the next morning, a police cruiser pulled up to the house. Before she could do anything,he dragged her upstairs to their bedroom, swore he would kill both of us if she made a single noise, and locked her inside.
