Chapter 7: Whispers from the Past

Chapter 7: Whispers from the Past

The Man in White became Percy’s shadow. For three days, the silent torture continued. He wasn’t a direct threat; he was a presence, a constant, chilling reminder. Percy would be walking home from his shift, and he’d see him across the street, standing perfectly still under a buzzing streetlight, his white shirt a beacon in the gloom. He’d glance out the window of the diner and see the man sitting on a park bench, reading a newspaper that wasn't there, his dark, unblinking eyes fixed on the building. He never got closer. He never spoke. He was just always there, watching, waiting, with that dead, permanent smile. The silent pressure was winding Percy’s nerves tighter and tighter, until he felt they would snap.

He was being herded, he realized. Not towards the theater, but towards a complete mental breakdown. His friends' manufactured amnesia had become a wall he couldn't penetrate. The rest of the town moved on, blissfully unaware. He was an island of terrified sanity in an ocean of placid ignorance, and the tide was rising. He needed an ally. He needed someone, anyone, who had seen the cracks in Mountain Rim’s facade.

And that’s when he remembered the town’s original crackpot: Old Man Hemlock.

Elias Hemlock lived on the edge of town, in a dilapidated house that looked like it was actively trying to dissolve back into the desert. The yard was a graveyard of rusted machinery and junk, arranged in no discernible order. Local legend held that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who had shot at kids for stepping on his lawn, that he had once tried to build a spaceship out of washing machine parts. He was the town eccentric, the cautionary tale parents used to scare their children. He was also Percy’s last and only hope. A desperate man seeks out desperate company.

The walk to Hemlock’s house felt like crossing a border into another country. The neat, manicured lawns of Mountain Rim gave way to cracked earth and overgrown creosote bushes. Hemlock’s fence was a patchwork of corrugated tin, chain-link, and barbed wire. Wind chimes made of scrap metal and old silverware clanged a dissonant, mournful tune in the hot breeze. It wasn't a fence to keep people out; it was a barricade.

Percy’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a familiar beat from his night in the theater. He found a gate held shut with a heavy chain and a padlock. He rattled it, shouting, "Mr. Hemlock! Elias Hemlock! I need to talk to you!"

For a long moment, there was only the clanging of the wind chimes. Then, a voice, raspy from disuse, crackled from behind the boarded-up front window. "Go away! I ain't buying what you're selling!"

"I'm not selling anything!" Percy yelled, his voice raw with desperation. "I need your help! I think you know what's happening. In the town!"

"The town is sleeping, boy! Best to let it lie!" the voice shot back.

Percy was losing him. He needed the right words, a key to unlock the paranoid fortress. He thought back to the core of the horror, the thing that separated the victims from the witness. "They made me forget!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "But I went back! I didn't watch! I heard it! And now there's a man… a man in a white shirt… he’s watching me!"

The silence that followed was different. It was heavy, attentive. The clanging of the wind chimes suddenly seemed very loud. After what felt like an eternity, the sound of a dozen bolts being drawn back echoed from the front door. It creaked open a few inches, and a single, wild, bloodshot eye peered out.

"The man," the voice rasped. "Is he a Shepherd?"

Percy had no idea what that meant, but the raw fear in the old man's voice was a perfect match for his own. "He watches everyone. He guides them. He told me to go back and finish the movie."

The chain on the gate rattled as it was unhooked from the other side. "Get in. Quickly. Before he sees you here."

The inside of the house was a chaotic labyrinth of books, newspaper clippings yellowed with age, and strange, intricate diagrams drawn on the walls. The air was thick with the smell of dust, old paper, and stale coffee. Elias Hemlock was a scarecrow of a man, thin and stooped, with a wild mane of gray hair and a beard that reached his chest. But his eyes, though bloodshot and paranoid, burned with a terrifying lucidity. He wasn't crazy. He was haunted.

"You are in more trouble than you can possibly imagine, son," Hemlock whispered, re-bolting the door. "You went into the pasture, but you refused the feed. Now the Shepherd has his eye on you."

"The theater… that thing on the ceiling…" Percy began, but Hemlock held up a trembling hand.

"It wasn't a theater for me," he said, his gaze distant, lost in a memory fifty years old. "It was a carnival. The 'Carousel of Dreams,' they called it. Rolled into town one summer. Everyone was so excited. The main attraction was a funhouse, 'The Glimmering Glass.' A house of mirrors. People would go in, stay for about an hour. They'd come out… lighter. Happier." Hemlock shuddered, wrapping his thin arms around himself. "They couldn't remember what they saw inside, only that it was wonderful. The whole town went. They came out with those same empty, placid smiles I've started seeing on people again."

Percy stared at him, the pieces clicking into place with horrifying speed. "It's the same thing. A different lure, but the same trap."

"Exactly," Hemlock affirmed, his wild eyes locking onto Percy's. "It’s a parasite. Ancient. Maybe not even from here. It comes around every few decades, when the last feeding has faded from memory. It gets hungry. It sets its trap—a film, a carnival, a radio show once, long before my time, they say. It feeds on what we are. Not our bodies. Our experiences. Our memories. Our strongest emotions. It sucks them right out of you and leaves that… that blissful static behind to keep the livestock calm."

"The thing in the theater," Percy said, the memory of the scraping sound making his skin crawl. "That's the parasite?"

"That's how it manifests when it feeds," Hemlock said, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper. "The Shepherd, the man in white, he's the agent. The caretaker. He makes sure the lure works, that the flock stays docile. And he handles… irregularities."

A cold dread settled in Percy’s gut. "Like me."

Hemlock nodded grimly. "Most people who resist the bliss just get… wiped again. A second dose. But you did something else. You went back and you bore witness. You didn't just refuse the feed; you looked behind the curtain. You saw the butcher."

He grabbed Percy’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong, his bony fingers digging into Percy’s flesh. His eyes were wide with a terror that had been simmering for half a century.

"You need to understand, boy. Being forgotten by this thing is a mercy. Being remembered by it? Having its Shepherd know your name? That's not a problem you can solve. That's a death sentence. It remembers the food that fights back. And it is very, very patient."