Gripping, moving and brilliantly creepy – read an excerpt from The Whisper Man by Alex North
More about the book!

Like your thrillers spine-tinglingly terrifying? Then you’ll want to read this extract from The Whisper Man by Alex North.

About the book

Gripping, moving and brilliantly creepy, this is an outstanding new psychological thriller.

If you leave a door half-open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken …

Still devastated after the loss of his wife, Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake move to the sleepy village of Featherbank, looking for a fresh start.

But Featherbank has a dark past. 15 years ago a twisted serial killer abducted and murdered five young boys. Until he was finally caught, the killer was known as ‘The Whisper Man’.

Of course, an old crime need not trouble Tom and Jake as they try to settle in to their new home. Except that now another boy has gone missing. And then Jake begins acting strangely.

He says he hears a whispering at his window …

Read the excerpt:

~~~

Jake.

There is so much I want to tell you, but we’ve always found it hard to talk to each other, haven’t we?

So I’ll have to write to you instead.

I remember when Rebecca and I first brought you home from hospital. It was dark and it was snowing, and I’d never driven so carefully in my life. You were two days old and strapped in a carrier in the back seat, Rebecca dozing beside you, and every now and then I’d look in the rear-view mirror to check you were safe.

Because you know what? I was absolutely fucking terrified. I grew up as an only child, completely unused to babies, and yet there I was – responsible for one of my own. You were so impossibly small and vulnerable, and me so unprepared, that it seemed ludicrous they’d allowed you out of the hospital with me. From the very beginning, we didn’t fit, you and I. Rebecca held you easily and naturally, as though she’d been born to you rather than the other way around, whereas I always felt awkward, scared of this fragile weight in my arms and unable to tell what you wanted when you cried. I didn’t understand you at all.

That never changed.

When you were a little older, Rebecca told me it was because you and I were so alike, but I don’t know if that’s true. I hope it isn’t. I’d always have wanted better for you than that.

But regardless, we can’t talk to each other, which means I’ll have to try to write all this down instead. The truth about everything that happened in Featherbank.

Mister Night. The boy in the floor. The butterflies. The little girl with the strange dress.

And the Whisper Man of course.

It’s not going to be easy, and I need to start with an apology. Over the years, I told you so many times that there was nothing to be afraid of. That there was no such thing as monsters.

I’m sorry that I lied.

PART ONE

July

One

The abduction of a child by a stranger is every parent’s worst nightmare. But statistically, it is a highly unusual event. Children are actually most at risk of harm and abuse from a family member behind closed doors, and while the outside world might seem threatening, the truth is that most strangers are decent people, whereas the home is often the most dangerous place of all.

The man stalking six-year-old Neil Spencer across the waste ground understood that only too well.

Moving quietly, parallel to Neil behind a line of bushes, he kept a constant watch on the boy. Neil was walking slowly, unaware of the danger he was in. Occasionally, he kicked at the dusty ground, throwing up chalky white mist around his trainers. The man, treading far more carefully, could hear the scuff each time. And he made no sound at all.

It was a warm evening. The sun had been beating down hard and unrestrained for most of the day, but it was six o’clock now and the sky was hazier. The temperature had dropped and the air had a golden hue to it. It was the sort of evening where you might sit out on the patio, perhaps sipping cold white wine and watching the sun set, without thinking about fetching a coat until it was dark and too late to bother.

Even the waste ground was beautiful, bathed in the amber light. It was a patch of shrub land, edging the village of Featherbank on one side, with an old disused quarry on the other. The undulating ground was mostly parched and dead, although bushes grew in tough thickets here and there, lending the area a maze-like quality. The village children played here sometimes, although it was not particularly safe. Over the years, many of them had been tempted to clamber down into the quarry, where the steep sides were prone to crumble away. The council put up fences and signs, but the local consensus was that they should do more. Children found ways over fences, after all.

They had a habit of ignoring warning signs.

The man knew a lot about Neil Spencer. He had studied the boy and his family carefully, like a project. The boy performed poorly at school, both academically and socially, and was well behind his peers in reading, writing and maths. His clothes were mostly hand-me-downs. In his manner, he seemed a little too grown-up for his age – already displaying anger and resentment towards the world. In a few years, he would be perceived as a bully and a troublemaker, but for now he was still young enough for people to forgive his more disruptive behaviour. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ they would say. ‘It’s not his fault.’ It had not yet reached the point where Neil was considered solely responsible for his actions, and so people were forced instead to look elsewhere.

The man had looked. It wasn’t hard to see.

Neil had spent today at his father’s house. His mother and father were separated, which the man considered a good thing. Both parents were alcoholics, functioning to wavering degrees. Both found life considerably easier when their son was at the other’s house, and both struggled to entertain him when he was with them. In general, Neil was left to occupy and fend for himself, which obviously went some way to explaining the hardness the man had seen developing in the boy. Neil was an afterthought in his parents’ lives. Certainly, he was not loved.

Not for the first time, Neil’s father had been too drunk that evening to drive him back to his mother’s house, and apparently also too lazy to walk with him. The boy was nearly seven, his father probably reasoned, and had been fine alone all day. And so Neil was walking home by himself.

He had no idea yet that he would be going to a very different home. The man thought about the room he had prepared and tried to suppress the excitement he felt.

Halfway across the waste ground, Neil stopped.

The man stopped close by, then peered through the brambles to see what had caught the boy’s attention.

An old television had been dumped against one of the bushes, its grey screen bulging but intact. The man watched as Neil gave it an exploratory nudge with his foot, but it was too heavy to move. The thing must have looked like something out of another age to the boy, with grilles and buttons down the side of the screen and a back the size of a drum. There were some rocks on the other side of the path. The man watched, fascinated, as Neil walked over, selected one, and then threw it at the glass with all his strength.

Pock.

A loud noise in this otherwise silent place. The glass didn’t shatter, but the stone went through, leaving a hole starred at the edges like a gunshot. Neil picked up a second rock and repeated the action, missing this time, then tried again. Another hole appeared in the screen.

He appeared to like this game. And the man could understand why. This casual destruction was much like the increasing aggression the boy showed in school. It was an attempt to make an impact on a world that seemed so oblivious to his existence. It stemmed from a desire to be seen. To be noticed. To be loved.

That was all any child wanted, deep down.

The man’s heart, beating more quickly now, ached at the thought of that. He stepped silently out from the bushes behind the boy, and then whispered his name.

~~~