“The whispers. The whispers come first. All the voices he’s taken away. Odom was brought here. We brought him when we took that guy in off the street. We were just trying to help. Instead we invited the devil in. His presence woke up the things in the basement. They might have been here all along. Lying dormant in the darkness. But this. This is worse than them. This thing felt the pain of this place and came looking for more. My dreams are clearer now. Odom and the rotten ones don’t come around anymore. They won’t come near the whispers. Even they are scared of him. Of the one who takes away the laughter. Now he stands at the edge of my bed. A mist covers him. The mist dances around his face. All I can see is his grin. It stretches out ear to ear. Literally. Its inhuman length tells me this thing is from a place south of hell. Still the whispers stick with me. I hear them even now.”

The tape keeps running but my father stops talking. All I can hear is his breathing. It’s strained. It’s the breath of a terrified man. His voice wasn’t crazed anymore. It was hopeless. This hell had worn him down. Whatever these whispers were had pushed him to the edge. Then, I started to hear them too.

They were coming from the recording. Inaudible at first. They sounded like static. As I got closer they began to clear up. I picked the recorder up and listened. The whispers weren’t my fathers. They weren’t any one persons. It was many voices. Countless. All whispering at once. I still couldn’t make them out completely. Then they all stopped except for one. I had the recording up against my ear now.

“He’s standing right next to you.”

I could feel him next to me. Out of my peripherals I could see the inhuman face with the impossible grin. It was staring right at me. It whispered to me.

“I took away all their laughter. I took all the happiness from within them. Now all they can do is scream.”

The recorder in my hand erupted in screaming. I dropped it and turned to punch at the thing next to me. Nothing was there. The screaming on the recorder stopped. My father’s voice came back.

“It was listening. It had always been listening. In a way, I brought this one here too. It told me it was the jester. The jester of screaming. I don’t need him to tell me his name. The whispers say it over and over again. Hellequin. I’m not alone in here. Someone’s in here with me. Not one of them though.”

The recorder clicks and stops. A rustling sound makes me look up.

“Who’s there?!”

I hear footsteps. Someone’s coming out of the shadows. A girl. I’ve seen her around before. She’s a nurse. Melissa.

“Hey. What are you doing in here?”

“I was just looking for a place to hide. The door opened and I got in. I couldn’t get it to open again. I’ve been stuck in here with them. The whispers. They told me to give you this.”

Melissa holds out another recording. This one had my name written on it.