Marcus Holloway's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Marcus pressed his back to the sooty wall and listened. The farmhouse stayed quiet. No whispers, no claws. But the boy beside him would not settle. He had pulled his knees to his chest. His black hands shook. Marcus knew this boy carried something he hadn't said. The boy knew the whispers. He knew where they stopped. Marcus had to get it out of him. "You said the beast always finds another way," Marcus whispered. "But the whispers. You know where they go quiet. Tell me." The boy shook his head fast. His mouth opened and closed. No words came. His eyes darted to the front room, then away. Marcus did not push harder with his voice. Pushing fed fear the way noise fed the beast. Instead he stood slow. He took the boy's shaking hand. He led him back into the farmhouse, toward the thing the boy kept looking at. They stopped before the carving on the wall. A boy swung a tree branch at a hulking monster. A small girl crouched behind the boy's legs. The wood was worn smooth where fingers had touched it a thousand times. Marcus put the boy's hand against the carved girl. "Your sister made this," Marcus said. "Tell me about her." The boy's breath broke. The words came in pieces. "She heard the whispers first. In the halls. She said they weren't hiding the door. They were hiding a room. A room where it all stops." He swallowed. "She found it. She went in. She never came out. And the thing in the dark came for me instead." "Where is the room?" Marcus asked. The boy lifted his wet eyes. He pointed up, through the farmhouse ceiling. "The small room under the roof. Where she slept. The whispers never reached it. That's why she stopped making noise. That's why she went quiet for good." Marcus understood now. The silent room was here, above them, in this house. The boy had been too scared to climb back to the place he lost his sister. Marcus squeezed his hand once. Then a sound reached them both. Claws scraped the porch boards. The beast had circled back. Its snout pushed at the front door. Ash had hidden Marcus's trail, but the creature hunted the house now out of spite, testing every board. Its black shape filled the glass. Wet teeth. Yellow eyes. It threw its weight at the door. "Go," the boy said. "The stairs. I'll make noise. It follows noise." "No." Marcus would not leave him. "We go together. Slow and quiet. Both of us." The door cracked. Marcus pulled the boy to the narrow stairs. They climbed without a sound, step by step, heels soft. Below, the beast shoved into the front room. It knocked the carving from the wall. The wood clattered on the floor. The creature spun toward the sound, snarling, hunting the noise instead of the two boys above it. At the top of the stairs stood a low door. Marcus pushed it open. A small room waited under the slanted roof. A narrow bed. A window full of gray light. And silence. Real silence. No whispers crawled here. The air sat still and clean. The boy stepped in behind him and stopped breathing hard. His shaking stopped too. Below, the beast raged through the empty house. It clawed the walls. It could not climb the narrow stairs without noise, and here, in the quiet, the whispers that fed it died. Marcus heard the creature circle once more. Then its claws faded. It slipped back toward the dark halls that made it, out of the house, gone. Marcus sat on the small bed. For the first time since the halls, he heard nothing hunting him. No whispers. No claws. Only his own slow breath and the boy's. He had found the room. The one the whispers had hidden from him all along. The boy picked up a drawing from the windowsill. A girl's drawing of a house with a bright roof. He held it to his chest and finally cried, quiet and loose, the way you cry when the running stops. Marcus put a sooty hand on his shoulder. Outside, the gray light turned gold. They were not lost anymore, and they were not alone. In the one silent room in Scary Halls, Marcus Holloway closed his eyes and listened to nothing at all.