EXTRACT FROM
After drifiting into an uneasy sleep,
Lori has her first encounter with The Whisperers . . .
CHAPTER 3
There’s a roar like oceans.
I can’t see any oceans. I can’t see ANYTHING, except my brightly lit body in an endlessness of black: for despite the fact there’s no light source here, none at all, none whatsoever, I’m as lustrously illuminated as a pyjama-clad Christmas tree.
I furrow my brow and hold pale hands in front of my face. I tug at the navy dolphin pyjamas Mum got me not so very long ago.
How can I see myself?
There’s no sun! There’s no moon, no stars, nor newly fitted bulb shining from an unseen ceiling! There is nothing but pure complete darkness, and the song of the waves that sounds from . . . somewhere. Somewhere close. I can’t tell where.
The air is cold. It’s so blazingly sweet that it burns my nostrils.
I shut my mouth and pinch my nose as hard as I can, yet it makes precisely zero exact difference: the air is so sweet-poisoned that the sweetness singes my throat.
‘H-hello?’ I whisper.
The floor is hard. It’s chilly and damp, like the floor tiles in me and Shoelace’s local swimming pool.
‘Hello? Someone there?’
I feel the neck-prickling sensation of being watched. I don’t know whether it’s better to stay put, or plough my way through the darkness and hope to find I’ve-got-no-idea-what.
My blood runs fast.
My mind runs faster.
I’m not alone.
I can’t see anyone, can’t hear anyone, I can’t even smell anyone. Yet, suddenly, I am one million per cent certain someone is with me in the blackness. One billion per cent. One trillion quadrillion per cent, one QUINTILLION per cent, and whatever impossible illion comes after.
The hidden waves grow louder, loud as a sapphire-tailed slaughter dragon smashing up islands in Voxminer.
I bellow into the night. ‘HELLO?!’
Shush! my mind hisses at me. I clasp a nerves-sweated palm over my dumb stupid mouth. Idiot! Keep quiet. Don’t draw attention.
I swallow.
I want Mum. Where is Mum?
Where is Jonesy? Where is Shoelace, where is Shoelace? Where’s anyone?!
Someone whispers.
‘Lori,’ they breathe into the cold utter blackness. Part of me knows I shouldn’t be able to hear them over the waves, yet I can. I absolutely can. I hear them as vox-crystal clearly as though they were standing right next to me.
My skin prickles. Maybe they are right next to me.
‘Lori!’ they whisper again. Their voice isn’t evil, as in low in the throat and rough to the touch. It’s not a man’s voice either, or a woman’s, or any kind of grown-up voice at all. But it’s a child’s voice, though whether it belongs to a girl or boy is impossible to tell.
The hairs on my neck begin to dance. A small sliplet of me wishes that the voice WAS evil, that it WAS ultra deep and super ultra threatening: a proper Dark Lord Man from Monster Kitten Fighting Force species of voice.
If the voice was evil, at least I would know to RUN.
‘Lori! Can you hear us? After all this time, can you hear us again?’
I don’t breathe. Not one single breath.
Another child coos my name in the sweet-scented dark. They’re joined by another, then another, then another, another and another.
‘Lori!’
‘Lori!’
‘Lori!’
‘Lori!’
The air grows hot, grows sweeter, and the waves grow louder. My heart is fire in my muscle-frozen body.
‘Do you hear us? Do you hear us, Lori?’
‘Are you healed? Do you hear us?’
‘Do you finally, finally hear us?’
‘Hear us sing?’
‘Hear us sing?’
‘Hear us SING?’
I wake with a
GASP.
I clutch my heart, I clutch my beating heart! And I’m not in bed. I’m not even in pyjamas. Instead, it’s around five and I’m in my school things at the dinner table, and a half-finished pizza rests in front of me on a plastic plate. Mum’s in the kitchen, too, making healthy healthtastic sandwiches for work.
Her mobile goes off.
Before she answers – before she can even sigh and snatch it from the counter – I already know that it’s Jesse the babysitter, ringing up to say that he’s ill.