Frozen Wavelets presents: Whispers in the Garden by Patrick Hurley

Steph P. Bianchini December 7, 2019 3 Comments

In daytime, while I’m asleep, the grievers plant their sleepers in the garden, and from them grow the pretty stone trees. At night, the garden is all mine, and I enjoy the quiet. 

I can’t remember when the whispers started. At first, they just fluttered in my backmind, but soon they became words: HUNGRY. HUNGRY. HUNGRY. 

Usually, mindwhispers hurt, full of colour and noise. These were soft and grey. Different. I crept out my tent and peered around the stone trees. The night wind blew, the moon smiled, but I couldn’t see anybody.

The next night the garden stayed quiet. I hoped maybe I pretended the mindwhisper. But then, the night after that: HUNGRY. HUNGRY. HUNGRY.

It was still there. I hadn’t pretended.

HUNGRY. HUNGRY. HUNGRY.

The clouds hid the moon, and the night wind whispered secrets to the stone trees. Usually, the garden felt like home. Tonight, it scared me. 

I thought about finding a new garden where sleepers stayed quiet, but it’s hard to move among grievers and I didn’t need the garden to avoid normals. Though I still breathed living air, the sleepers dulled the living’s mindwhispers.

The next day, I saw new sleepers planted. From the grievers’ faint mindwhispers, I knew their shells had been drained dry of life. 

I remembered a story from before, when sleep meant soft beds, when my head was alone, and I didn’t need the garden. A scary word my brother once whispered. A secret word I must never say. 

Another memory floated up. Restless sleepers made the more of their kind. A whole crop of whispering sleepers in the garden. All that noise.

I couldn’t tell the grievers. They’d try to take me away like before. I hated the normals’ two voices anyway: mouth voice and mindwhisper, never saying the same thing. 

That evening, I set out to look for the restless sleeper’s stone tree. The wind blew cold. The sun felt far away. Some stone trees were tall and fancy, others were small and stunted, and barely stuck out of the ground. None of them had any overturned dirt or clawings around the grass at their base.

Then I saw the mindwhisper. It looked grey, like an old TV show. In a dream, I saw a child walk by. The child was red, so red against the grey. Red as sin, red as forever. 

Red as blood. 

The garden came back. In front of me stood a tall stone tree, dark against the pale sky. From the torn-up grass round its roots, I knew this was the restless one. In my garden, sleepers stay in the soil and they don’t dream. 

I crept up to the stone tree and read it. 

Daniel Forrester

1932-1941

Sleep well, beautiful boy

I couldn’t dig Daniel up while he was dreaming. I’m not strong and the grievers would notice. 

There was the other thing. I didn’t want to do it, not ever again, but I would if I had to. As my thoughts raced each other, my body decided it was time to sleep, and took them all away without telling me. 

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

I woke up to whispering and hid behind the stone tree. Daniel still looked young, but no longer beautiful. His eyes glowed yellow and his mouth gleamed black with blood. I gasped and his head shot up like a dog’s. He peered round until he saw me. Then he smiled. 

Pretty girl, with pretty black hair. So full of life, so full of warm, tasty BLOOD.

It was horrible to hear his mindwhisper so close. I could see myself through his eyes, a juicy, red treat.

No! I cried out in my own mind. 

The restless sleeper stopped in his tracks. What did you say? 

My mouth voice had broken a long time ago from screaming, but he could hear me. 

Finally, someone could hear my mindwhisper. 

For a moment, I forgot what he was and scolded him like a cranky neighbour. Quit whispering, Daniel! Don’t you know what a garden is for? You must stop all this! 

Daniel’s head tilted like a puppy. How do you talk to me? I haven’t heard a voice in so long.

I’m not like the grievers, I thought back at him. 

His eyes grew wide as the moon. Doesn’t matter. You’re meat! Meat and bone and BLOOD!

He knocked me over. I smelled his stinking breath, felt his claws on my skin. 

So I took out all the bright, loud grievers’ thoughts from my head and put them into his.

Daniel’s head lurched back. He fell over and began to shake very badly. So bright! It burns! It BURNS!

Back when I took medicine to block the mindwhispers, a man had tried to hurt me. His mind burned with bad thoughts, so I sent them back into him. When I’d finished, drool had dripped down the man’s chin and he stared at nothing.

Now, I stood over the screaming Daniel, stabbing all the bright thoughts I’d collected back into him. If they hurt me sometimes, how would they feel inside his grey mind? 

Please stop, he whispered. His body was smoking. 

I will stop only if you promise to quit whispering!

I would if I could. Daniel twitched. The hunger is too strong!

Hunger? I asked.

The hunger, he thought, for life.

I remembered that we were in a garden. Daniel, I think I can help you sleep.

He lay still on the ground, listening.

You need blood, yes? I asked.

He nodded. 

Go back to your bed. Tomorrow, I’ll water your stone tree. 

Now, at the end of every night before sleeping, I stop by Daniel’s bed. I cut my hand and let my blood fall on the ground at the base of his stone tree. I hear Daniel murmur sleepy thanks and then nothing. 

There is quiet in the garden. The dead all sleep, and so can I.

[Whispers in the Garden was originally published in the 2018 anthology Mind Candy. About the Author: Patrick Hurley has had fiction published in the magazines Galaxy’s Edge, Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, and Abyss & Apex, the book anthologies Portals and Murder & Mayhem, and the podcasts Overcast and Drabblecast. He lives in Seattle and is a member of SFWA and the Dreamcrashers.]