The Seven Whistlers (9 page)

Still, if anyone would believe her, it would be this woman.

“You’re gonna think I’m nuts, but I’ve seen them. The
hounds, that is,” Rose said quietly. “Two of them, in the woods outside my
parents’ cabin. Other people have seen them, too; they just don’t know it. Look
at the front page of today’s
Gazette
, and you’ll see what I’m talking
about.”

Arlene stared at her, the mug of tea trembling slightly in
her hand as a swath of clouds passed over the skylights, casting the room into
shadow. Arlene set her mug down on the tea tray and looked up at the skylights,
then back at Rose. Her face was ashen.

“Believe me when I say that I would love to think creatures
like the Whistlers existed in real life, but I’m afraid that they are just a
figment of our ancestors’ very vivid imaginations.”

“You don’t understand —” Rose began, but Arlene cut
her off.

“Of course I understand. I just think that things like this
are better left to paintings and books. Put away what you’ve seen, Rose. Even
if what you say is true, there’s nothing you could do but get in their way. And
that
you most certainly do not want to do.”

Marco Ferrara and his best friend, Evergreen Knollson, were
sitting cross-legged on the floor of their makeshift fort smoking a bowl when
they heard something weird in the woods below them.

When they had told Marco’s dad their plans for building a
fort out in the woods behind the Knollson House, Cesar Ferrara had told them to
put the fort high in a tree so that no wild animals would be tempted to attack
them. At the time, the boys had thought he was joking, but now, almost five
years later, they both had the exact same thought at the exact same time:
Marco’s Dad wasn’t so full of crap, after all.

“What the hell was that?” Marco said, as he almost dropped
the lit match he was holding in his hand. He quickly shook the tiny fire out
and dropped the match head onto the wooden floor, where it promptly rolled away
into a corner.

“I don’t know, man,” Evergreen said, his voice cracking a
little.

They waited in silence, the only sound the thrumming of the
woods around them. Marco sat up on his knees, trying to get a look over the
walls of the fort, but Evergreen grabbed the neck of his T-shirt and yanked him
back down out of sight.

“What’re you doing, idiot?!”

Marco turned and glared into Evergreen’s chubby face. His
friend was trying to grow a mustache to impress the senior girls, but Marco
thought the pathetic wisps of facial hair only made Evergreen look like a 1970s
child molester.

“I’m trying to see what’s down there, turd,” Marco snapped.

The sound came again, and both boys shrank back from it. It
was a deep, guttural bark accompanied by a sharp, reedy, whistling sound. Neither
of them could think of a single animal that made a sound like
that
.

“Maybe it’s a wolf, or even a bear or something, but
wounded. My dad said a hurt animal can sound like a human baby sometimes,”
Evergreen whispered, but Marco could tell by the panicked look on his friend’s
face that Evergreen didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“I don’t know, man. I’ve never heard an animal sound like
that before.”

Evergreen’s eyes lit up and he gave Marco a knowing smile. “You
know what it is, man? It’s the pot. It’s, like, laced with acid or something. We’re
totally hallucinating!”

Marco shook his head.

“We can’t both be hallucinating the same thing, dumb ass!”

“How do you know?” Evergreen shot back.

“Because I just know,” Marco said. He’d never tripped
before, but he was sure whatever they were hearing was real, not some
drug-induced auditory hallucination.

“Besides, I don’t care if it
is
a hallucination. I’m
not taking one step outta this fort till it goes away.”

“Yeah, bro, I’m with you on that one.”

Evergreen nodded sagely and they settled back into silence,
listening for the telltale signs of the creature’s departure. After a few more
minutes of silence, Marco began to relax, the tension flowing from his
shoulders and neck. The reek of burnt marijuana was still strong in the air
around them, and Marco decided that smoking a little bit more of it to relax
himself might not be a bad idea.

He crawled over to his school backpack and slowly unzipped
it, trying to keep the noise to a bare minimum. Ignoring his Calculus text, he
dug farther into the inner compartment until his fingers found the tiny,
knotted plastic bag they’d bought that morning from Evergreen’s older sister,
Holly.

Just as he brought the little baggie out into the light, the
Earth below them began to shake. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed at first.

“What the hell?” Marco yelped, falling back onto his ass.

“Earthquake!” Evergreen screamed, grabbing hold of a tree
branch to steady himself.

There came another violent shake and Marco was thrown back
against the wall of the fort, the wood splintering with the impact of his
weight. He tried to grab a hold of a branch like Evergreen, but his sweaty
fingers slipped on the bark and he fell backward, crashing through the already
broken wooden slats.

Landing on the leaf-strewn ground with a sickening crunch,
Marco cried out as his knee exploded with pain. He looked down at his leg and
nearly passed out. Through his ripped jeans, he could see a meaty protrusion of
bone and cartilage poking out where his knee used to be.

“Oh my God,” he moaned, closing his eyes tight against the
pain.

When he opened them, Marco saw Evergreen staring down at him
from the wreckage of the fort, a big, chubby kid clinging to a tree for dear
life.

“Ever, get down here, you prick. You’ve gotta get a fuckin’
ambulance.”

For a second, Evergreen remained frozen. Then he began to
climb warily down from the ruined tree fort. Impatient and in agony, Marco
railed at him to hurry — letting out a string of curses that would have
made his mother faint — and glanced around, desperate, wondering how much
damage the earthquake had done and how long it would take an ambulance to come.

He blinked, startled by a sudden realization. Marco couldn’t
see any other damage. None of the houses within view had so much as a broken
window.

What the hell?
Marco thought to himself, his mind
spinning.
What kind of earthquake only shakes
one tree
?

Wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders for warmth,
Hester McMartin shivered. The wind had picked up considerably since she’d
brought Kaylie to the park at twelve-thirty, and she was all for putting her
knitting back in her bag and going home.

But when she looked over at her granddaughter standing at
the top of the jungle gym, preparing to catapult herself down a length of
plastic yellow slide, she felt guilty. Kaylie loved coming to the park, and
playing on the gym equipment. If she called Kaylie in now, after less than an
hour of play, she’d have a tantrum on her hands — and she’d never get the
girl to take a nap later in the afternoon.

Between a rock and a hard place, she decided to just keep an
eye on her granddaughter and the weather. If either showed signs of irritability,
she’d make a beeline back to her son’s house and put on one of those
Wiggles
videos Kaylie loved so much.

Since both of Kaylie’s parents worked, Hester had become the
de facto babysitter for her only grandchild almost from the moment she was
born. Her son and daughter-in-law were very appreciative of the help, and
Hester didn’t mind looking after the rambunctious four-year old at all, so it
worked out perfectly. She even had time to knit — her passion — when
Kaylie was playing at the park or taking her afternoon nap.

As she continued her knitting, Hester got lost in the work,
listening to the happy sounds of children playing. As long as the kids sounded
happy and there were no cries of pain or alarm, all was right with the world. She
became so involved with her knitting that Hester didn’t notice the sky turning
from gray to a mottled black, or the way the clouds stretched across the
horizon like a battalion of angry soldiers. Nor did she see the first hailstone
as it plummeted from the sky directly at her head.

The chunk of ice hit Hester squarely on the top of her
skull. She flinched and reached up to touch the tender point of impact,
thinking someone had been cruel enough to throw a rock at her. The second and
third hailstones found their marks on her shoulder and thigh, respectively. Both
hurt like the dickens, forcing hr up off the park bench so that she could see
where they were coming from. It took her a few moments to realize the culprit
wasn’t some troublesome brat, but God, himself.

“Kaylie!” Hester called, running toward the jungle gym.

Her granddaughter looked up, and the little girl’s eyes went
wide. Hester saw that Kaylie’s eyes were fixed not on her, but
above
her. She threw herself to the left and landed hard in the dirt, scraping both
knees and the palms of her hand. The massive hailstone landed with a loud thud
on the spot she’d just vacated, sending bits of ice and dirt in all directions.

“Kaylie! Stay inside the jungle gym!” Hester screamed,
pulling herself back up, and starting toward the slide. She caught sight of the
girl cowering under the overhang where the swinging bridge connected to the
monkey bars.

“Stay where you are, Kaylie! Grandma’s coming for you!”

The little girl nodded, her blonde pigtails bobbing on
either side of her head.

Hester threw herself under the swinging bridge, wedging her
adult bulk underneath the plastic slats and nickel rivets beside her
granddaughter. Clutching the terrified child to her chest, Hester looked out at
the chaos that surrounded them.

Hailstones the size of softballs plummeted to the Earth,
knocking leaves and branches from trees, tiles off roofs, and even a bird from
the sky. The one that had nearly struck her had been as big as a melon. Hester
had never seen anything so destructive in her life, and it terrified her. Cooing
softly to her sobbing grandchild, she closed her eyes, and began to pray for
the hailstorm to stop.

When she opened her eyes, Hester saw them — four
massive, black hounds. They skirted the trees by the edge of the park, their eyes
as bright as new copper pennies.

Rose spent the remainder of Thursday afternoon cleaning her
apartment and washing clothes. She hadn’t realized how desperate she’d become
for clean clothes until she opened her underwear drawer to tidy it, and found
it completely empty. The pair she had on was all she had left, and since she
hated going commando, laundry duty became an instant priority. She scoured the
apartment looking for dirty clothes — why did dirty socks always end up
gathering dust under her bed? — then threw them in a large canvas sack
that she walked to the Laundromat two streets over.

Sitting in the warm, humid Laundromat, waiting for the last
of her bed linens to dry, Rose found herself wishing she was far away from
Kingsbury in some tropical environ. She had never felt this way about her home
before. It had been sheer anguish to live in cosmopolitan Boston while she was
going to B.U. — so much so that she had quit after two semesters,
immediately moved back home, and gotten the job at The Red Oak Inn.

Her parents hadn’t approved of her choice, but they were
fairly quiet about their disapproval. Her grandmother, on the other hand, had
been very vocal. But Rose wanted to be happy, and going to school had just made
her
miserable
.

She had settled back into small town life like she’d never
left it, Kingsbury embracing her like the long lost child she was. Rose loved
the town, and the sense of community she felt every time she walked out her
front door. She had the good fortune to have great friends, too. Jenny, Mike,
and Alan had become her surrogate family. If she ever needed their help, or had
a problem she couldn’t solve on her own, Rose knew they’d be there for her no
questions asked. It made her heart lighter just thinking about how safe their
friendship made her feel.

If Jenny hadn’t been there to hold her up, on the night
she’d found out about her grandfather’s death, she didn’t know what she would
have done. Death was life’s schoolyard bully. One of these days, it would catch
you alone, and then you were shit out of luck. But you still had to stand your
ground, keep your chin up. Being afraid was okay; totally natural. But you
couldn’t run from it for very long. Standing your ground in the face of Death
was a hell of a lot easier when you had friends who’d stand there with you,
just as afraid, but just as unwilling to run.

Rose was still sitting in the Laundromat when her cell phone
rang. She recognized the number and answered immediately, Jenny’s calm voice
filling her ear, and making her feel instantly better.

“The Pennywhistle. Tonight. Six o’clock. Be there or Alan
and I get the ‘stang out, and hunt you down.”

Rose had to smile. Jenny had a way of always saying the
right thing at the right time.

“No need to get the ‘stang all hot and bothered,” Rose
giggled. “I’ll be there. Besides, there’s some stuff I wanted to run by you
guys tonight anyway.”

“Good,” Jenny said. “Oh, shoot. I gotta run. Someone’s
yelling in my kitchen, and I’m trying to raise mini-chocolate soufflés for the
dinner menu tonight.”

“Go look after your soufflés. I’ll see you later.”

She punched the
end
button on her cell, then pulled
her bed sheets out of the dryer and began to fold them. She didn’t know how she
was going to broach the subject, but the strange happenings in Kingsbury needed
to be addressed one way or another.

Mike was running late — later than even he had
expected. His finger hurt like hell, and changing the dressing like the Nurse
at the emergency room had shown him had proven to be a lot trickier than he had
anticipated.