Shallow Grave by Alex Van Tol Read Free Book Online

smacks her hands over her ears.
    The walls creak and groan. The floor squeals. Like nails being pulled up. There’s a snapping sound from the beams above our heads.
    The boathouse is taking a breath.
    It feels like everything is sucking in—then a sudden wind blows outward from the center of the building. The floor cracks like thunder, and the whole place shakes like there’s an earthquake below our feet. I grab for a pillar. The hangers holding the PFD s shimmy on the metal racks. The shades on the hurricane lanterns rattle.
    What the—?
    And then the whispering starts. It’s like we’re suddenly surrounded by twenty people. More. Dozens. Invisible people. Angry people, whispering loudly, all shushings and chatterings and hysterical, muffled shrieks.
    Across the room, Shannon’s hands are still covering her ears. But her face tells me she can hear the whispering too.
    One word. Repeated over and over.
    Listen .
    Listen? To what? To whatever schizo ghost is living in this possessed shitshack? The same one that just broke all my fingers?
    No thanks.
    But I’m not so sure I have a choice. I can feel the voices inside my head. There’s no other way to explain it. They’re chewing at my brain.
    I can’t deal with this.
    â€œStop,” I whisper.
    Nothing.
    â€œStop.” Louder.
    â€œStop!” I yell it this time.
    A piercing spike of white pain drives itself through my eye sockets. I fall to my knees, clutching my head. Shannon screams.
    â€œAauughh! No!” I shout.
    In a flash, I see the little boy from The Sixth Sense . He’s looking across his bedroom, at the tent that’s got a little hump in it. The tent he just ran away from. He bolted when the ghost of that little girl showed up and puked on herself.
    He stands there, watching the hump, terrified. She’s waiting for him.
    He doesn’t want to see her.
    But he has to. Because he knows what’ll make her go away. He has to give her what she wants.
    All she wants is to be heard.
    He swallows his fear. Crosses his bedroom floor. Climbs back inside the tent. Sits down in front of the dead, barfing little girl.
    And says, “Do you want to tell me something?”
    All of a sudden, I get it. The whispering.
    I get it.
    Listen .
    Do you want to tell me something?
    â€œOkay,” I say, quietly at first. “I hear you. I get it. You can quit now.” The pain in my head intensifies, matching the agony in my fingers.
    I crumple forward onto the floor. I wonder how much more I can take before I pass out.
    â€œElliot!” Shannon screams. “Elliot!” She scrambles over to my side and puts her hands on my shoulders, like she’s trying to wake me from a bad dream.
    â€œI get it!” I say. I’m almost sobbing now, the pain is so intense. My hands. My head. Shannon’s screaming reaches me through the blur of voices clawing the insides of my mind. “You want me to listen,” I say. “You just want to be listened to.”
    The pain ebbs, pulling away quickly like the tide sucking water from the rocks. But not enough.
    I moan.
    Shannon’s draped over my back, hugging me and pulling on me and sobbing, and I’m kneeling on the floor, hanging on to my head with my busted fingers screaming, talking nonsense to an invisible thing that’s tearing my brain apart.
    The poor girl’s going to lose her mind.
    I might beat her to it.
    â€œJessica. It’s Jessica, right?” I say. “I know you’re here. I hear you. What do you want? I’ll listen. I WILL LISTEN! Okay? Just—stop.”
    And just like that, everything stops. The pain, the whispering, everything.
    It surprises me.
    It’s so quiet after all that noise.
    I let out a ragged breath. Shannon sits back, but she keeps a hand on me. Slowly, I lower my hands.
    My head feels fine. Clear and painless.
    I sit up and flex my fingers, looking from one hand to the other. They feel fine