The Whistler by Harris Coverley

“Close the damn door!” my Uncle Alwin yelled, before taking another big lug from his bottle.

His sorry wooden shack sat on the border between the former town of Emrick and the thick forests at the feet of the Endless Mountains. I visited him every month, mainly to give my dad some peace of mind to see that he was alright. I was 15 then, but I never had any money and didn’t have anything better to do.

“Sorry unc,” I said, shutting the door. “I just thought I heard some weird whistling noise or something out there.”

He sat back in his chair and put his bottle-free hand to his face.

“Boy,” he said, “I must have told you a thousand fuckin’ times it’s that damn Whistler.”

I got back onto the slumping couch. I spent most of my visits watching him drink. Sometimes it was fun, this time it wasn’t.

“Unc,” I said, “what exactly is the ‘Whistler’?”

He took another lug and stared at me.

“Alright,” he said, “since you keep forgetting, I’ll tell you again.”

I figured that the first thousand times he had probably slurred too much for me to understand.

“Dylan,” he said, “why do you think the town is so fucked up that everybody left?”

“Well Uncle,” I replied, “because of the underground fire, right? The county cleared almost everyone out.”

Dad had to drive through the former town to get to the shack. The fire in the old mine had burned for twenty years, and it would take another hundred to run out of fuel. Pockets of steam holes were dotted amongst the rotting old houses and cracking roads, new ones opening up every other day. It was like driving over a big dirt soufflé.

“It ain’t just that boy,” he said, “that fire was no accident.”

“But that’s what the company said, wasn’t it? That’s what dad told me.”

“Bullshit! I was there! They knew it might happen, they still fuckin’ did it!”

He took another swig and stood up. For a drunk he walked pretty straight—practice I guess—and made his way to the window on the far side.

He looked out and continued talking, taking periodic sips: “I was there. The chief engineer told management not to use the new explosives they’d got in. Too much coal dust, possibility of combustion, big fire, all that. They did it anyway and fucked over ten million tons of coal. Stupid bastards…”

He turned back and looked me in the eye.

“And that’s why the Whistler’s after me!”

“Why, what is he?” I asked, leaning forward.

“I helped set the charges,” he said. “He’s killed off the management, the engineers. Now he’s coming for the dynamite rats.”

“But what is he? Some kind of government agent or something?”

Alwin laughed hoarsely, and then came and sat back down.

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “Something far worse. He’s like a kind of ‘white demon’. He protects the forests, the land, the rivers, all that shit.”

“But it wasn’t really your fault, was it?”

“He doesn’t give a shit. It doesn’t matter to him if you’re the tool or the mover, you fuck with the land, he’s coming for you.”

In a bout of youthful arrogance, I told my uncle I couldn’t believe any of it. His response was to drag me onto his porch and lock me out, screaming, “Tell that bastard brother of mine to teach you some goddamn respect!”

Rather than wait for him to calm down, I decided to walk back home through the old town. I heard some steam holes whistling, but I did not think any lips.

#

A week later his friend Evans found Alwin dead in his bedroom. He had been dead for at least six days. His neck was broken, head twisted around, with a look of fear and disgust frozen on his face, at least that’s what my dad said. He was pretty cut up about having to identify him. There had been no sign of forced entry, but his whiskey bottle had been thrown across the room. According to the chief investigator, it was as though it had hit something that wasn’t there anymore when it had smashed.

Twenty years on, I still live about ten miles from old Emrick. Some nights I can hear whistling from around that end. Whether he might ever come for me or not I don’t know.

—

Harris Coverley has short fiction published or forthcoming in Lovecraftiana, Schlock! Webzine, and Disclaimer Magazine, as well as poetry in Gathering Storm, Bewildering Stories, and the Weird Poets Society anthology Speculations. He lives in Manchester, England.

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