The Whisper Man

Francis stands in his driveway in an area just outside Featherbank. He thinks about how the neighborhood avoids this house and that it may be because of him. He wonders about the Kennedy’s house and its reputation even though only he knows the real reason to be afraid.

The reason that Francis kidnaps boys is to make amends for those his father murdered. Standing there, though, he’s thrilled by the violence he committed and how good it felt. He thinks that his father won’t have to hate him anymore now that they’re both murderers. This idea competes with his desire to protect and care for Jake, but he lingers on how it made him feel to kill Neil Spencer.

Jake wakes in a strange room, his imaginary friend with him. She says that she’ll do her best to help him and will never leave him. After calming him down, she tells him that he should find out as much as he can about where they are.

The room is in an attic and is decorated as a typical child’s room except for the single bare lightbulb. A doorway out leads to a small bathroom and a staircase down with a handrail that reminds him of the one at his old house. He conflates the current situation with the day he discovered his mother and panics.

The girl calms him down again and urges him to think of his father’s words of love. She then warns him that the man who took her won’t be kind like his father, so he must be good for him.

At the bottom of the stairs, the door opens, and Jake pretends to be asleep. Francis Carter comes upstairs and tells Jake (who he thinks is still asleep) that he’ll look after him. After Carter leaves, Jake’s imaginary friend asks him what they’re being, and he responds, “We’re being brave,” echoing words he and his father shared (292).

Tom wakes up on Karen’s couch early the next morning, disoriented and worried. He briefly thinks of what life would be like without Jake before shaking himself out of it and becoming determined to find his son.

Karen wakes up and encourages Tom to call the police station instead of waiting for them to contact him. She takes her son, Adam, to school, promising to return soon. Looking for a way to feel close to his son, Tom decides to open the Packet of Special Things, which he’s always respected as something private to Jake.

Francis wakes up to a silent house, feeling the potential of having a new child to care for. He has an internal argument with his father about Jake’s goodness: His father’s voice insists that Jake is bad, just like Francis and every other child.

While showering, Francis fights his urge to murder Jake. He intends to care for him but not give him as many chances as Neil. He goes downstairs to prepare breakfast, using the moldy crumpets and old orange juice from when Neil was in the house.

As he heads up the stairs, he hears voices. Jake is talking to his imaginary friend. When he enters, the voices stop, which annoys him. He doesn’t like secrets being kept from him. Jake is otherwise polite toward him. However, he denies talking to anyone, which makes Francis want to strike him.

Francis gives Jake the moldy breakfast, and Jake balks at eating it. He says he isn’t hungry and would like to do some drawing, then calls Francis by the name he’s been using, George. Francis is angry both because Jake recognizes him from earlier interactions and because Jake doesn’t call him sir. Francis tells Jake that he must eat his breakfast, and Jake complies.

Tom opens the Packet of Special Things and finds several objects from his and Jake’s life with Rebecca as well as things Jake has accrued since then. He finds a wristband from a music festival he attended with Rebecca in their early relationship, Jake’s first lost tooth, a drawing he did for Jake, and several other items. Some of them make sense to Tom, while others are meaningless.

He then finds an old piece of notebook paper that clearly has Rebecca’s handwriting from when she was much younger. It’s the full text of the rhyme that Jake has been repeating: “If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken” (304). He realizes that Jake learned the rhyme from this piece of paper. Tom keeps digging through the items and finds some photographs of Rebecca, eventually finding one of her first day of school—and Tom was unaware that Rebecca attended Rose Terrace Primary School, the same school Jake now attends. Tom knew that Rebecca had moved to the south coast at a young age but didn’t know or remember where she was before that.

Looking through the rest of the photographs, Tom comes across one of a young Rebecca in front of the house he currently lives in. Like many kids in Featherbank, she was aware of the local “scary house”: This photo has the caption “Being brave” on the back. Tom realizes that she looks just like the imaginary friend Jake has been drawing: The young girl Jake has been talking to manifests his mother when she was his age.

Tom weeps at this realization, worrying that he’ll never see his son again. When he recovers his composure, he looks at the last items in the packet and finds a piece of paper that grabs his attention, sends him out the door, and moves him to call Amanda.