Whispers

Whispers

by Sean P Chatterton

Can you hear me?

I hear things you cannot see. I hear the dead whisper…

I can’t see them, I can only hear them. It’s not like blind people who have enhanced hearing, I’m just different, and not blind. I started to hear the whispers when I was a teenager. It took some time to get used to, I can assure you! My mom thought I was mad and kicked me out. So from a young age I lived on my own.

What do they whisper? Complete and utter bollocks most of the time. The sentimental ones ask me to tell their loved ones that they still love and watch over them. Like a mother who wanted me to let her daughter know that she had watched over her wedding, and how she adored the man she had married. Or another, how a drowned boy still rages that his uncle had failed to rescue him from the thin ice. A few want to let others know what it’s like on the other side. And occasionally, you get one who wants to expose their killer.

The first one I had like this I tried talking to the police. But my worst fears were confirmed when they dismissed me as a crank. When other victims whispered to me, thankfully very few, I tried to ignore them, but this one was more persistent. He pleaded with me, he told me that he feared for his wife, and wanted to keep her safe. So this time, instead of going to the police, I wrote to a local news reporter. I told him how a killer shot his own father and hacked him up into bloody chunks. Then took these pieces into the woods for the wild animals to feed upon the gory remains. I even told the reporter where the eyeless skull and gnawed thigh bone could be found just off a dirt track, near the small creek at the bottom of a gully. The reporter printed it as a piece of fiction. But weeks later when a curious reader went into the woods and found the body parts; the reporter had some explaining to do.

So the police interrogated the reporter, who in turn gave them my details. The police grilled me for ages, but I could only tell them what I had been told. Luckily it was enough for them to identify the corpse and put a name to the dead victim, the one that I had already given them, Jason Croombes. Then they discovered that Jason’s son and murderer, Richard, had gone on the run.

I didn’t hear the gunshot. You see, I’m clinically deaf. All that I can hear is the dead whisper. I couldn’t hear a fathers killer stalk me in a quiet street not far from my home. Nor could I hear him call my name, or hear him draw his gun…

So now I look for someone to whisper to, hoping, praying, that someone will hear me.

All that I want now, is for my murderer to be caught.

My name is David, can you hear me…

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Sean P Chatterton
http://www.seanpchatterton.co.uk