The Whispering Room

But she and Mary Alice hadn’t been close in years, not since the summer Nella had come home from her first year at LSU to find her cousin engaged to Charles Lemay, a dark, taciturn man fifteen years her senior.

Charles was extremely handsome, Nella would give him that. And she supposed there were some who might even consider him charming. But the way he’d flattered and cajoled and later browbeat a besotted Mary Alice had disgusted Nella.

And then the babies had started coming, some barely a year apart. Throughout her pregnancies, even the difficult ones, Mary Alice had worked like a dog caring for the house and children and making sure her husband was properly pampered.

Charles had put the family on a rigid schedule—dinner on the table by six and bedtime at eight, except on nights when they all attended church service together.

His church, naturally.

Mary Alice had been raised Catholic, but Charles would never allow his wife and children to drive all the way into Houma to attend mass at St. Ann’s, where she’d received First Communion. Instead, they’d joined a rural, nondenominational congregation that met in an abandoned gas station near the highway.

Nella had never gone to one of the prayer meet-ings, but she’d heard talk of snake-handling. Rumor had it one of the members had nearly died the year before when he’d been bitten by a pit viper.

A chill wind swept over Nella, an early breeze from the storm clouds gathering out in the gulf. Or so she thought.

But then she realized that the Spanish moss in the live oaks was completely still, the porch so silent she could hear the drone of a fly trapped on the inside of the screen door.

The cold breath that blew down her back wasn’t the wind, she realized. It was dread.

She pulled open the screen door, no longer concerned with whether or not she woke the boys.

Something was wrong. She could feel it.

“Hello? Anyone home?” The door creaked as it snapped shut behind her. “Mary Alice?”

Nella’s flip-flops slapped against the old hardwood floor as she walked down the long hallway, glancing first in the parlor, then hurrying through the dining room to the kitchen.

She stood for a moment, gazing around in wonder.

The room was pristine. Not a speck of dust or a crumb to be found anywhere.

But there was another fly in the window and, mindful of the loathsome insect, Nella placed the basket of food she’d brought on the table and made sure it was covered before she walked out back to the enclosed porch.

Here, the chalkboard was blank, the textbooks and lesson plans neatly stacked in the shelves. Nothing was out of place. No reason to think anything was amiss.

And yet Nella’s trepidation deepened as she retraced her steps to the front of the house. Something drew her attention to the cramped room beneath the stairs. The door was closed, but she’d heard a sound… a whisper…

A tremor of fear raced up her spine as she placed a hand on the knob. The door opened quietly and for a moment, Nella saw nothing inside.

Then, as the door swung wider, a shaft of sunlight fell across a child sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Head bowed, light haloing her golden hair, she cradled a doll in her arms as she rocked back and forth.

Mary Alice’s daughters were only a year apart, and they looked so much alike that it was hard to tell one from the other.

“Ruth?” Nella said softly.

No answer.

“Rebecca?”

Only silence.

“Where’s your mama?”

The little girl looked up then, her blue eyes eerily serene.

Slowly, she lifted a finger to her lips. “Shush.

She’ll hear you.”

The hair at the back of Nella’s neck lifted as she leaned down. She’d meant to offer comfort to the child, but when the doll moved in the little girl’s arms, Nella recoiled in shock.

It wasn’t a doll, she realized in horror, but a newborn baby bundled in a towel and still bloody from the birth canal.

She heard a thud against the floor upstairs and she whirled, more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. Something was so very wrong in this house.

“I’ll be right back,” Nella whispered to the child. “You stay put, okay?”

Heart hammering, she closed the door and started up the stairs.

Mary Alice’s bedroom was right off the landing.

The door was open, and as Nella reached the top of the stairs, she saw a bloody handprint on the wall outside the bedroom and a trail of wet footprints on the hardwood floor.

But Mary Alice was nowhere to be seen.

Nor were the other children.

Trying to fight off a wave of panic, Nella followed the tracks to a room down the hallway. The door was ajar and she could see something moving against the wall. She couldn’t tell what it was at first, and then comprehension struck her so hard she staggered back, fist pressed to her mouth.

Her stomach churned as she stared in horror at the shadow of a noose swinging back and forth against a sunny yellow wall.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone at the end of the hallway and she spun.