Whisper in the Dark Read Free

bed.”
    The Whisperer in the Dark? Why was I suddenly thinking about that now? What was wrong with me? All that had happened was that I got a couple of dumb prank phone calls. I was blowing this way out of proportion. Instead of feeling afraid, I started feeling angry. I wasn’t some dumb kid in a movie or one of those heroines who had to wait fora prince to save her. Indian girls in our stories always knew how to take care of themselves.
    Then I remembered. Nowadays if you get an anonymous call, all you have to do is dial * 69. It’ll give you the number of your last incoming call so that you can ring back and tell them you know who they are and they had better stop bothering you or you will call the police.
    With a superior smile on my face, I reached for the phone. Be logical, calm. Dial *69. That was what I was going to do. But before I could touch it, the phone rang again. And in spite of myself, I screamed.

3
TOO MUCH IMAGINATION
    I JUST STARED AT the ringing phone. I wasn’t really freaked out. I didn’t pick it up. I didn’t have to. I could do something else. I had choices, lots of choices. I could rip the phone off the wall and hurl the darn thing out the window. Or I could run up to my bedroom like some demented nitwit and bury my head under a pillow.
    Or I could sprint out into the street screaming for help—as if that would do any good. At this time of day in July, nobody is ever home in this neighborhood. They’re either at work or off to the beach or something. Like I would have been if I hadn’t had this weird midsummer cold that made me feel so achy and tired that Aunt Lyssa told me to just go ahead and sleep in.
    It wasn’t like I’d been hypnotized by that whisperyvoice or frozen with fear like the people in that creepy story Grama Delia told about the Whisperer. Or was I?
    This was stupid. I was just scaring myself. Maybe psycho killers in films call people, but not old-time monsters from Narragansett stories. No way. Totally ridiculous. Imagine the Whisperer in the Dark calling the telephone company to have them hook him up with a plan. Imagine a monster that no one has ever seen and lived to talk about listening to some sales rep at a mall babble on about what kind of service he wants on his cell phone.
    Come on , Maddy, I thought to myself. Get real. It was just six little words .
    Too much of an imagination. That was why I’d let that dumb phone call get to me. People were probably right when they said I’d read too many books about morbid stuff. Mr. Mindlow, the school psychologist, thinks I’m fascinated by “horror media” because I lost my parents, and thus scary stories and monster movies are safe and even reassuring for me because they are not real. That is why, he says, I am always reading Anne Rice or Providence’s own favorite haunted son, nutty oldH. P. Lovecraft himself. That is why all my favorite rentals are in the science fiction/horror/suspense section of MovieLand. And I have the world’s biggest collection of Fangoria magazine. Because all the blood and fear and mortality is under my control.
    Even though I’m not as tragically out of balance as Mr. Mindlow thinks, I suppose he is sort of right. You can always walk out of a movie or turn off a TV, even in the middle of the most awful events. You know that, after the filming is over, all the people who get “killed” are really still alive, and the monsters are all fake. I’ve seen loads of documentaries on makeup and special effects. It’s comforting to see the same character actors getting glommed up by evil beings in one movie after another. It is like they are immortal. Even death is imaginary.
    But the phone on the wall was not imaginary. Nor was that voice. It was too real.
    The phone rang again. And I finally did something. I grabbed it and yelled “What do you want?”
    “I vant your blood,” said a voice with a thick accent.

4
SCRATCHING
    I F THE PERSON saying those words with that phony accent had