The Whispers

The black hands reached across the walls as the white noise from the television echoed across the muffled walls. My eyes locked on to the uncanny shapes on the wall. The first officers on scene believed it to be another cooking room gone wrong. Synthetic drugs could be made with a little powder and a shopping list from a local big box store. The construction crew prepared ready to put down their tools before the payroll went into the red. Rodney Jenkins liked to swing that hammer like it was an extension of his dick, the crew got a good laugh at the man who believed he was Paul Bunyan incarnate.

The iron octagon smashed into the wall, revealing a well-crafted secret. They pulled their supervisor from the portable, a man ready to get home before the first pitch of the season. He witnesses the fervor a the crew beating shovels and tools against the wall. The humming crept through the pores of the barrier created a deep frenzy in the men. These men couldn’t wait to get home most days, and now they were pulled towards the echoes in the room. They wished Rodney had kept his metaphorical dick in his pants when they broke through.

This usually falls under the city building inspector and the admin that works out the contract. The calcified body lying inside a malformed circle outlined with chalk put many sleepless nights on my desk. Our forensics units were spread between assaults and drug busts. Homicide was another dog chomping at the bits for scrapes from the city budget.

Defund us, well you get what you pay for. We are overpaid babysitters and underpaid conflict mediators.

The body meshed into the gown and it seeped into the outlines of the circle. I kept a jar of mint gel and smeared it under my nose to block out unwanted smells. My law professor would have scoffed at me having such a weak constitution, but it was easy to sit on a high horse in the comfortable walls of academia. Strands of greyish-white silk spun patterns around the body and the television set. The phrases do not disturbed were sketched in the brick, went unheeded when the men broke through the cement and brick. Maroon spots covered parts of the wall. The lone buckshot shell quietly stayed still a few feet away. The shotgun was nowhere to be found.

Its a past a cliché to state the men looked like they had seen a ghost, but each of them had white spots around their knuckles. They all testified they felt compelled to break through the wall. The apartment was low income housing, the valley’s vacancy sign was rarely lit for little places like we occupied.

My eyes shifted towards the dust around the old VHS player on top of the boob tube. It wasn’t the dust that left a bread crumb for me to follow, it was the lack of dust on the small button on the tape player. Someone had gotten a little too curious and decided to open Pandora's box.

No one on the crew remembered the video in its entirety, each one remembered glimpses and scenes. I asked who pressed play, I searched for a look of shame for the guilty party and neither man on the team would confess. Rodney, the show boat stared at the wall placing his fingers on the drawing. The long legged and thin fingered specter loomed over the altar. He claimed the whisper man had done this.

Whisper man. I better put out an APB.

The buzzing from the static sang to me like a siren, they hoped I’d crash across their shores. The body was still unidentified. It had sat in the false room long enough to make a full autopsy unviable. I poured through hours of permits, resident lists and employee logs. This was not a job for door kickers. Hell, even tactical units spent more time passing out flyers at the community park than actual run and gunning. I preferred using my wits than my fists. There's a lawsuit behind every bullet that leaves an officers magazine. Every minute of action spirals into ten minutes of paperwork.

The false room was impressive I have to say, its sad someone put more effort into the room than the complex itself. These buildings always fall to the wayside after the election cycle. People get tired of seeing panhandlers downtown, so the mayor offers motel vouchers and furnishes old buildings to keep the so called undesirables out of the sight of the chamber of commerce. But

The dust and dead skin from the boys made it a wasteland of containment for the chain of evidence. A good lawyer would demand to to admit the flimsy evidence his client was the killer if everyone who came across the room ahs their hands in the cookie jar. The Patrolman gave me a nod and a once over as I popped my notepad out and jotted down the details of the sacrament.

My reputation proceeded me, The patrolmen moved away from me, afraid I still had the stink of a scarlet letter. The ghosts that haunted me didn’t want to be trapped inside them too. Officer Dubois, still had that fresh look and hunger we all had once we made it out of the watchful eye of probation period. Word was he was going back to school to get a higher paygrade in the major crimes units. I did my dirt on more than my share of cases. I was always smart enough to keep my hands clean enough when internal affairs sent through blood hounds through the department. The mayor liked to show the good citizens she look police misconduct seriously.

The fresh pressed shoes and a suit full of wrinkles. The wedding band still fit snuggly on his hand. We called them starter marriages in the investigation units. Give it time, absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, it did make eyes wander. You have nothing but time when your pulling the graveyard shift in the city, time to let the voices creep back in.

This was the cases that brought unwanted attention from the outside world. Reporters and true crime podcasters looking for a book deal would be sniffing around the rookies and disgruntled old timers that couldn’t keep their mouths shut. The Central Valley was still a red zone in a blue bracket, politics wise. I could hear the preachers and priests calling for a return to God. They would be praying for the lost souls that were tricked by the devil. That small detail brought the temperature of the room down in my body. There was no devil here. Not the type that warred with the pulpit.

This wasn’t prime time television. Shocking cases that tickle the imagination of middle America are just another case number that is shoved through the system. Weeks would be spent going through applications, tenant agreements and the never ending bureaucratic tape of the Housing Authorities.

Kids swore they had an older cousin or young uncle that seen him play. I witnessed the same sketches of the long fingered man on the freight train as it slowly picked up speed along the endless lines down the ninety-nine.

The Whisper man would be rumor and one day legend in those far away cities and towns as well. Like most entities beyond our understanding, the Whisper man wanted become part of our world, blood usually did the trick. The older kids would cut themselves in the orchards or burnt down homes as a gesture of goodwill.

The Incident Report reads as Following:

A Dead body was found in the Housing Units off Mitchell and Oak Shell Rd. The call was received at 6:15 pm. Officer Dubois The first responded on scene arrived at 6:45 pm. The labor crew broke through an unmarked wall that lead to a small room inside the complex. The remains of a deceased body along with a television and vhs player in a working condition. The body had no shown signs of being touched or molested for an extended period of time. There was small coins with archaic scribbles inscribed inside the clothes of the deceased.

I inspected further and matched the markings to the symbols on the wall. The corner and forensics analyst will confirm causes of death. It appears to be a gunshot wound to the head. The men all claimed they had witnessed the contents of the tape but when questioned they all have contradicting accounts of what they witnessed. See the Digital Interview for further inquiry.

In between checking up on witnesses, I went through contract records and tenant listings. Everyone had a mother. Maybe this was someone's mother as well. The missing persons cases had dozens of faces trapped in time, they were just numbers and a last known photo in our underfunded crime blotter.

 Rodney was the only one I didn’t get to question. I found it a bit strange he stopped returning my calls.

A call for a wellness check reached its way to my desk under a mound of unread emails. Boredom will break a detective faster than bullets. I flagged the call from the patrolman and drove down to the sticks to pay Rodney a visit.

The tech boom pushed people like Rodney out of the suburbs they grew up in and out into the farmlands of the valley that should not exist. He felt lucky to be apart of a crew that didn’t have to cross the San Fran toll booth every morning.

There weren’t alot of companies jumping at the bits for the demolition project. Between community advocates for public housing and squatters it was similar to the money pit on Oak Island. Rodney didn’t like to speak bad juju into the world, but the word cursed was an unspoken agreement among the crew. My knuckles wrapped on the door three times. A spider crawled up the frame in the corner of my eye. A old wives tale of an unexpected visitor.

Rodney had once been the life of the party and brought frat boy antics everywhere he arrived. But the discovered of the secret room had created a sullen shadow over the Jenkins household. That was a task for patrolmen and community volunteers, but the little bells on a string began to rumble inside my brain. A streak of red that seeped into the cracks of the window. A tiny black dots swarmed in a cycle around a bird.

Three thumps clashed on from below the vents in the house. Those bells started to spin harder in my head as I walked around the back yard. I’ve made calls on the job that went from morally grey to totally in the red. I broke the rules to lie, pillage and step on others. I told myself this was the last sin I’d make on the job. Probable cause was a murky area in the state of California.

The earth was taking back the backyard as I approached the doors to the cellar. Rodney's wife had a green thumb, she smiled when the sun nipped away at the frost every spring, now the green was wilting away and the weeds were choking the vegetables in the eternal struggle for life. When people thought of primal struggle, they imagined a tiger in the brush approaching a four legged fauna near the watering hole.

They also conjured images of spears clashing against shields and skin. Weeds were the quiet predators. They hid amongst the gardens and rows of green. Their roots stabbed deep into the soil while defying attempts to remove them. Left unchecked they bring ruin to the blooms. I opened the door to the cellar and became a witness to another set of roots implanted in the dark. The sun burned through the windows, the light guided my way inside the room.

The air slowly released from my lungs I fought past the tunnel vision crowding around my pupils. My ears locked onto the clanking on the walls. I pasted the work bench located between the bike rack and the Christmas decorations. The welding mask and torch was placed neatly against the tools. Rodney had been a busy boy. The fresh dirt lead to a second passage beyond the reach of the sun. These dark roots had been in waiting for a long time. They didn’t make themselves known until it was far too late yo pull them out.

The antique grunting escaped from the shadows, calling out to me. I entered the catacombs tied to the house. Where the hell did this come from. I doubt the homeowners association approved of this. I hadn’t felt this type of chill since the internal affairs committee calling me in for pulling my piece on a federal informant. I sold it as a righteous shoot, even as I crossed my fingers I knew the chickens would come home to roost.

The lights flickered between each step placed in the dirt. Each breathe I took became priceless, it tasted like the last day on earth. Life for all the bumps and bruises along the way was still vastly underrated.

I found the shape banging against a metal door. A large handle gripped in heavy black hands. The mans eyes were hidden behind the void of light behind the mask. The gauntlets were wielding and screwed together. The breastplate had a white sigil painted on the chest. The same sigil etched on the wall of the crime report. The chills returned as I imagined what was behind door number one. His family or other potential victims.

I reached for my service weapon.

 There are two kinds of shooters: those who will admit to having had trouble with their technique, and liars. People would develop a flinch or a tell on the range. Sometimes getting an airtight grip is the problem. Everyone needed to practice their draw more often. Rookies were infamous for jerking or slapping the trigger. In the twilight hours of dusk.

I rarely jerked the trigger. Force shall only be used as a last resort when necessary to accomplish lawful objectives that cannot reasonably be achieved through verbal commands, critical decision making, tactical deployment or de-escalation techniques. Force shall never be used as a retaliatory or punitive measure. The legal department made us know from day one there was a lawsuit behind every bullet.

The one thing that scared me more than the behemoth before me was facing the demons in the therapist’s office. The lights flickered again and the beast melted into the shadow. I tripped behind a beam as the first shot popped off towards the target. The black powder ignited against the scarlet fire from the muzzle. The bullet bent against the armor but the shadow man refused to yield.

“We should have kept the whispers amongst ourselves.” He pleaded.

Each swing lead to salvation. The intrusive thoughts burrowed their way into his brain. He tried to pull it out with drinks, drugs and delights of the flesh. But he broke through the wall and the demon trapped inside touched reached out to him. “It wants to come into our world.” To be a voice without a body to inhabit, it became a rage

 “Blood acts like a conduit.” The acolyte of the Whisper man knew death would satisfy the monster, but he couldn’t bring himself to take a life.. Suicide by cop was the only way out of this prison. But it didn't have to be, the Whisper man couldn’t be stopped, he was memetic. But it could be slowed down. The armored man took the sledgehammer to the beams in the tunnel. The lights stayed off and I followed the sun beams towards the exit.

The dirt dripped on my head and I could see the light crumbling before my eyes. But I twisted my ankle and the collapse was intimate. What's done in the dark will stay there because we deserve it. I flicked on the light on my phone. I followed the scribbles towards another tunnel. There's no way Rodney dug this in such a short amount of time, and without attracting the attention of the city inspector.

“if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”

The hard earth blocked the bars in the tunnels, I followed the runes deeper into the catacombs. A flash of white appeared on the edges of my eyes.

I follow the illumination like a moth to the flame. My lungs are caked with blood and there it is. In an opening. The familiar humming and screeching of a static television set. The salt and pepper dots eat and bleed over each other on the screen. The vhs player sat unblemished on top of the screen, I no longer felt in control of my legs while they inched closer to the screen.

The weed had taken its hold in the city. It prepared to feed on me. Eventually someone would come for me down here. Maybe they’d find my body with a large exit wound outside of the skull. I was tired of wrestling with the fallen angels on my shoulders.

I picked a hell of a day to listen to my conscious. I aimed the pistol at the screen and unloaded the rest of the clip into the idiot box. The whisper man was just that a whisper. I decided he should go out with a whimper instead of a bang.