• Panic gripped my heart with its icy tendrils as the idiot I was trapped with began smashing our lights of safety one by one. What was once a lit bastion in the darkness was fading fast. A simple, bare ranch house at the end of a drive with little to hide was lit from corner to corner until something snapped in the man that agreed to house me. Hammer in hand, the madman began to methodically go from bulb to precious bulb forcefully letting our light free in a mist of broken glass and sparks. As soon as those first few sparks flew, I knew that there was a very good chance that we were doomed.

    "What the hell are you doing?" was about all that I could scream, but the damage continued for a few moments before he slowly turned to face me.

    The look in his eyes made me fall back a bit. He may have been a small man, but his eyes betrayed the beast within. A few pieces of glass cut into his cheeks and let the crimson madness he was about to unleash upon us as a preview of what was to come.

    "They told me to. They whisper it in my ears every night. Every night!" His voice began to rise, the urgency soon began to start to drip with madness, "Do you know what it's like? Listening to the demonic whispers of those things? Hiding in our houses at night with all the lights on and the closets shut like some kid scared of his own shadows, Kid?"

    I didn't even know that they could speak, but from their names, I guess I should have assumed someone had to hear them. Even if I hadn't heard it, I still felt the fear everyone else in the world did. I may have been younger, but at least I knew the value of life. My voice began to plead with the man, but in his state… I didn't know what good it would do. "Isn't that better than death?"

    Another light darkened with a barely audible thunk, and a renewed shower of glass and gas wreathed the man in an eerie halo. For just a moment, he looked like one of them.

    Only two lights remained as he laughed, "Death? You really think those things want us dead." Motioning over his shoulder outside of the lit window, soft wisps of fog began to roll in, "I've seen what they do to people. Good, honest, loving people! One touch, just one, and there are more holes in you than a screen door. They keep touching and touching you until they are satisfied and just let you bleed out or dissolve into one of them! It's a fate worse than death, but we can't win! How do we win against what we can't touch, hit, or even harm! I just want it over!"

    I sighed rubbing my temples. He may have been a madman, but he did have a point. "So what? As long as there's light, we are perfectly fine! The day is ours. Let them have the night. We will find a way someday."

    The madman put down his hammer arm for a moment while he addressed me. "Someday? Someday! What do we do until then? Keep all of our homes stocked with batteries and lanterns? Open up every room in every home? What do we do if the power goes out, if a bulb burns out at night in a child's room? How do we deal with that? Huh? Huh!" His voice faltered and his grip loosened on the hammer as tears began to cascade down his cheeks, "How do you tell someone that it was an accident? What do you tell her, Kid? What…"

    I couldn't wait any longer and sprung at him. I may have been small, but he was distracted. The hammer fell to the floor as the madman and I collided with the wall next to the window. The lights were much weaker now and the fog outside was thicker. I thought that I could hear the whispers of the wind against the abandoned house, but wind was the least of my worries. The rest of the house was dark and this bastion of light wouldn't hold for much longer once the madman got back up.

    I ran to the closet and flung open the door, praying to whatever god felt like answering me for a lantern haven. I tossed dusty clothes and rags into the middle of the room. Below them was what I sought. I almost cried as I read the crate, emergency night protection. I flipped the lid and found one last single use night lanterns. Thank you, whatever god answered me. No god answered this time though, but the shattering of another bulb broke the silence. I couldn't waste any more time!

    I managed to run to the center of the room and flip on the lantern before the darkness fell over the rest of the house with a crystalline twinkle, snuffing out all light but my own. The madman didn't care. With his work done, he sat in the corner of the room and leaned in against the walls, heaving slightly with his hammer still in hand. Seeing me bathed in light, he smiled.

    "I'm sorry you got dragged into this, kid." The mists outside the window began to climb the smudged glass. "I can't live without them anymore. It was my fault."

    "Get over here!" I screamed, "You're no good to anyone dead!"

    Wisps of hands began to flow past walls and windows and flood the rooms, except for my lit circle. The mist grew thicker by the moment as he brushed me off. A slow smile of liberation continued to creep over his face as a few more words took to the breeze.

    "I'm…"

    I tried to turn my head as he was cut off, but I couldn't look away.

    Out of the mist rose the creatures of the dusk. With no more sound than the wind against a willow, thin, wispy hands began to form from the mist to reach towards the ceiling around him. The bodies soon followed as the wispy arms pulled their hooded forms out of the fog. Surrounded on all sides, the clouds began to reach for him. I had heard stories about this, but had never seen it. Their hands began to slowly caress his skin, and his skin just vanished. His eyes widened, but a sound never left his lips. His crimson life rushed from the wounds as the hand moved down towards his neck. Another then another began to caress his unmoving, speechless form. Wherever their hands passed, he just didn't have form. Blood poured from his wounds onto the floor to join with the soiled white carpet.

    A group of them tried to come for me, but the closer they got to the light, the lighter they became until they vanished. All around me mists clung to the walls, floors, and ceilings as they continued to devour the madman. Not once did he scream or try to move. Maybe because his neck was first or they severed his spinal cord, but he was soon reduced to a small puddle of blood. The mists floated around until the puddle was absorbed too. That's when I heard it... his voice again… in just a whisper.

    "No good…"

    "I'm… no good…"

    "No good… No good…"

    All that night, the mists repeated the last words of the madman into my ears no louder than a whisper like a scratched record that's stuck on repeat. They would skip around; rearranging his voice, changing the pitch and tone, but it was never louder than a whisper. A maddening whisper that was unable to be blocked from my mind as they continued to try to engulf me through the light. My eyes may have been clenched shut, but I could still clearly see that corner, the smile on his face, and the madman dissolving into a bloody puddle.

    As the sun rose slowly form the eastern horizon, the mists receded back into whatever god-forsaken shadows they came from. In the presence of the powerful natural light, my lantern decided that it was time to rest and slowly flickered to its death. I rose weakly as a youth in a world gone mad, but I knew there had to be a way. That night just galvanized me. That night, I learned what fear truly existed in the Whispers from the dead of night.