The Whisperers by John Connolly

stepped back he saw that the nail, all six inches of it, was buried up to the head in the wood. He moved on, until there were 20 nails in the door. Removing them all would be a pain in the ass, but the fact that they were there for now made him feel a little more comfortable.
    He sat on the damp ground. The screws were no longer moving, and there were no more voices.
    ‘Yeah,’ he whispered. ‘You didn’t like that, did you? Soon, you’ll be somebody else’s problem, and then I’ll be done. I’m gonna take my money and leave this place. I been here too long as it is. Gonna find me somewhere warm, hole up there for a time, uh-huh.’
    He looked at the tool box. It was too damn heavy to haul all the way up to the trailer and, Lord knows, he might have need of it again before too long. Number 15 was secured only by a piece of plywood. Using his screwdriver, he prised out the two nails that held it in place, and placed his kit in the dark room beyond. He could make out the shape of the old cabinet on the left, and the bare frame of the bed, all rusted springs and broken posts, like the skeleton of some long-dead creature.
    He turned and stared at the wall separating this room from 14. The paint was peeling, and it had bubbled in places. He placed his hand against one of the bubbles of paint, feeling it give way against his skin. He expected it to be moist to the touch, but it was not. Instead, it was warm, warmer than it should have been, not unless there was a fire blazing in the room on the other side. He moved his hand sideways, letting it trail along the wall until he came to a cooler patch, one on which the paint remained undamaged.
    ‘What the—?’ He spoke the words aloud, and the sound of his own voice in the gloom startled him, as though it were not he who had spoken but a version of himself that stood somehow apart, watching him with curiosity, a man aged beyond his years, damaged by war and loss, haunted by phones that rang in the dead of night and voices that spoke in unfamiliar tongues.
    For as his palm rested against the paintwork, he felt the cool spot on the wall begin to grow warm. No, not just warm: hot. He closed his eyes briefly and an image flashed in his mind: a presence in the next room, a figure that was crooked and distorted, burning from within as it placed a hand against the paintwork on its own side and followed the progress of the man on the other, like a piece of metal drawn by a magnet.
    He pulled his hand away and rubbed it against the leg of his sweat pants. His mouth and throat were dry. He felt the urge to cough, but he suppressed it. It was absurd, he knew: after all, he’d just drilled, and then nailed, a door closed, so it wasn’t as if he’d been quiet so far, but there was a difference between those mechanical noises and the simple human intimacy – and, say it, frailty – of a cough. So he covered his mouth with his hand and backed out of the room, leaving his tool box behind. He replaced the plywood, but didn’t bother trying to find a way of securing it again. The night was still, so there was no wind that might cause it to fall. He didn’t turn his back on the motel until he was at his cabin. Once inside, he locked the door, then drank some water, followed by a glass of vodka and some Nyquil to help him sleep. He called again the number he had dialed earlier, and left a second message.
    ‘One more night,’ he reiterated. ‘I want my money, and I want this stuff gone. I can’t do it no more. I’m sorry.’
    Then he stamped the telephone to pieces before removing his shoes and overcoat and curling up in bed. He listened to the silence, and the silence listened back.

 
    T hey were nickel and dimed, that was what he thought: right from the start, they were nickel and dimed. They’d even managed to spell his name wrong on his new identification tags: Bobby Jandrau instead of ‘Jandreau’. Damned if he was going to war with his name messed up: that was bad karma