The Whispering Room

The swamp bustled with the sounds of a summer morning. Mosquitoes buzzed in the shade, mockingbirds trilled from the pecan trees and in the distance, an outboard motor chugged toward the oyster beds and the shallow fishing waters of the Atchafalaya Basin.

But the house was quiet.

Too quiet, Nella Prather thought uneasily as she walked up the gravel driveway.

Something black and sinewy slithered through the grass, and she gave it a wide berth as she headed across the yard to the porch.

Slowly she climbed the steps and knocked on the screen door. When she didn’t get an answer, she cupped her hands to the sides of her face and peered inside.

The interior was so dark she couldn’t see anything beyond the shadowy front hallway, nor could she hear so much as a whisper from any of the children.

That’s strange.

Her cousin’s five offspring ranged in ages from eight years all the way down to thirteen months. With their blond curls and wide blue eyes, they looked like perfect little angels.

But even angelic children made some racket.

Despite the silence, the family had to be home. It was still early, and Mary Alice’s old station wagon was parked under the carport. They lived too far out in the country to walk to town or even to the nearest neighbor.

Besides, Mary Alice rarely left the house. She’d converted the back sunporch to a classroom so that she could homeschool the two older children, Ruth and Rebecca. If they were out there now, she mightn’t have heard the knock, Nella decided.

But she hesitated to call out in case the boys—Joseph, Matthew and baby Jacob—were still sleeping.

Turning, she glanced out over the bayou, where the lily pads were bursting with purple blooms. The air smelled of mimosa, moss and the wet green lichen that grew on the bark of the cypress trees lining the banks.

It was beautiful out here. So calm and peaceful. And yet apprehension fluttered in Nella’s heart.

Where are the children?

Except for an overturned tricycle in the dense shade of a cedar tree and a tiny, forgotten sneaker at the top of the steps, the place looked immaculate. Baskets of ferns hung from the porch rafters, and the lawn was painted with patches of red and yellow four-o’clocks and pink peonies.

Nella couldn’t imagine how her cousin managed to keep everything so orderly, especially now that her husband had left her. According to Nella’s mother, he’d just up and walked out months ago, leaving Mary Alice to fend for herself and the children.

Thank goodness she had a small inheritance from her father to fall back on, but that wouldn’t last long, what with feeding and clothing five little ones. Nella worried how her cousin would cope once the money ran out.

I should have come sooner. She’s my own flesh and blood, and I couldn’t be bothered to drive out here and lend a helping hand.

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 meetings, 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 re traced 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.