Free The Whispers by Daryl Banner Page A

nothing beautiful about me.”
    I look into his strange, otherworldly eyes. “I disagree,” I reply in half a hush, my breath stolen from me.
    The very next instant, the pale boy takes yet another blunt object to the head, and to the ground he goes. In his place stands John breathing heavily and palming a big metal canister. The pale boy, despite being knocked to the ground, doesn’t seem fazed in the least; he’s already twisting his body around to get back on his feet.
    John, however, did not come alone. East holds a metal canister of his own, and he’s pulled off the top and holds it threateningly. I don’t catch the significance of this oddly dramatic gesture until I see the boy recoil against a tree, staring at the canister with wide, resentful eyes.
    “Make one move,” John dares him, “and my buddy here will douse you in water and I suspect that will hurt .”
    The boy scowls defiantly, but the fear in his eyes betrays him. I put a hand on John’s arm. “John …”
    “What were you thinking??” he cries out, turning on me suddenly. I jerk back, surprised. “Why did you come out here all by yourself?”
    “I saw—John, I saw a light. I thought it was—”
    “We cannot separate!” he shouts, furious with me. “We’re vulnerable out here! We are not home, Jennifer! Has that fact escaped you?”
    “No, John,” I bite back, annoyed by the scolding. “I know very well where we are, thank you, but I thought maybe Marianne had—”
    “And you didn’t think to wake me?! You could’ve died, Jennifer!” He fumes, his eyes wet with despair. “Are you really so desperate to join your father??”
    I slap him. The ringing sound of hand meeting cheek echoes through the woods, taking with it every last word he had left to utter. His jowls shake and he looks away, his face going red. The silence that follows is worse than the silence before when I’d only thought a spirit of my dead dad was coming to find me.
    “Maybe so,” I whisper, cold as ice.
    “Jen …”
    I move to the pale boy on the ground, crouching to bring my face closer to his—but not too close. “What do I call you?” I ask him calmly, determined not to let my dumb Living emotions break my resolve.
    He only glares at the fell metal canister, which East still loyally holds above his head, ready to dump it.
    “I wish to give you the dignity of a name,” I explain. “Unless you want me to call you Corpsey, or Dead Guy, or Bad Breath, you need to tell me your name.”
    For the first time, he pulls his attention from the canister. Then, with a wrinkle of his face, he says, “Bad Breath? I don’t breathe.”
    “I can’t imagine it’d be pleasant if you did.”
    He looks up to consider the canister, and perhaps his whole situation too. “My sister and I haven’t called each other by our names in so long. They were given to us … literally … a lifetime ago.” Quite suddenly, he looks sad. “I’ve told myself my own story so many hundreds of times, I’m not even sure it’s real anymore. Was I ever alive? Was I ever …” He trails off, lost in his own horror.
    I sigh. “Corpsey it is, then.”
    “They’re coming.”
    The words are Dana’s, who I hadn’t noticed standing behind East until now. She wrings her hands and her eyes dart around the woods in wonder.
    I lift an eyebrow. “Who?”
    “Oh, no,” groans the pale boy, hugging himself as if a sudden chill had taken him. “You have to let me go. I can’t be here. They’ll end me. Oh, no. I … I …”
    “Who is it??” I urge him to tell me.
    The canister utterly forgotten, the pale boy clambers to his feet and makes a move to run. John snaps out of a trance that may or may not be him stewing over his prior burst of emotion and my unexpected slap, then tackles the boy to the ground. East shudders, reacting too slow, and some of the water spills upon the Dead boy’s feet, though it didn’t appear intentional. His feet hiss instantly, smoke swirling up like