A Haunting on the Hill

by Elizabeth Hand

I saw nothing, not the windows or the walls or Nisa beside me. The darkness was like a liquid I couldn’t feel or taste or smell, but which somehow coated my eyes or was absorbed by them. I tried to lift my hand to my face but the effort was too much. Exhaustion pinned me to the bed, as I drifted between wakefulness and a bone-deep yearning for oblivion. I don’t know when the voices started. I grew aware of them only gradually, the way you wake to an alarm that’s been set too low. There was no mistaking the sound—not wind in the leaves or rain, or Amanda snoring in the next room, but a very soft murmuring. Words, though I couldn’t understand them. There were two voices, one deeper than the other. Not a man’s voice but an unctuous burbling, like water being sucked down a clogged drain. The other voice was quieter but even more repellent, at once throaty and sibilant. Sometimes it grew so soft I almost couldn’t hear it, and I found myself struggling to do so even though the noise was horrible.