The Silent Whistlers

Rich Madam

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But a boy I was then, when I took up my post as a guard at the Temple
of Commerce. Stood I proudly in my garb of office. Just as my uncle
had done before me, and his brother before him, and gazed out upon the
people of the great city as they thronged in the court beneath the great
glass roof that kept the elements from their heads, yet let the light of the
sun shine down upon them, as they wandered the floors and sampled
the delights the great temple had to offer.

I had been assigned to a veteran, Bowman by name. A score and ten

had he walked the courts and corridors of the Temples of Commerce.
The old temple and this, much greater temple, that had been built upon
this site, which had once housed the Temple to Physique that had fallen
to Commerce in a crisis some eight years past.

He was a man of stern countenance and bald of pate who chewed the
tobacco weed when on a break from his duties or when out of doors,
which was seldom now as his aged bones would feel the wrath of the
wind and cold more now than they did when he had first taken his oath
to guard the Temple.

I found the brown slime that dribbled from his mouth at this time
disgusting, but I lapped up the words that came with it. His rich stories
of his many years walking those floors delighted me.

One story however would fill me with horror; that of The Silent
Whistlers.

He had recounted to me the great raids, where groups of gaudily clad

youths would come and snatch trinkets from the stalls and then run
madly for the temple doors. Many would outrun the guards and escape
with their booty until the guards adopted the ruse of following the

 
 

young guttersnipes from the moment they entered, as their habit of

twitching and wearing such garish cloth would make them stand out
from the crowd. Oh how these foundlings had moaned and wailed at
what they saw as chastisation by the overzealous guards, but the people,
the patrons, cared not for the plight of the unfaithful and merely
applauded the guards for their vigilance.

My venerable teacher also regaled me with the dreaded "sales", when

the goods of the stalls and altars had their financial penalty so greatly
relieved that upon seeing them the people would become maddened, as
if they had been struck with a fever. Frenzied, they would rush from
stall to stall or descend on mass upon one stockholder, push and strike
each other in order to lay their hands upon the most meagre of
deprecated goods. When the madness eventually passed, those that
survived would look only to the ground and be silent, or would talk
quietly of other things with their eyes full of regret. The guards would
chuckle at their foolishness as they knew the watchers and the clergy of
the temple would have taken and hid many of the best goods for
themselves and their families.

Towards evening, the doors of the temple were to be closed by the

custodians and we were to ensure they were not accosted in their task
by the more overzealous of worshippers; those of the faithful who did
not want to leave the temple come nightfall. Such were rare and easily
persuaded to depart. Many were just alone or felt spite from their
families and preferred to stay in the safety and warmth of the temple
than venture into the cold of the city, but usher them out we must so as
the ceremony of the closing could begin.

It was on one of these evenings, as we stood watching the custodians

seal the doors while others rode the mechanical beasts that renewed the

 
 

gleaming floors with their tongues, that Bowman told me of The Silent
Whistlers.

He had seen them with his own eyes, in the old temple. Sometimes, he
said, they would emerge in the mornings, before the main throng would
gather and the sun had not yet fully risen. Oftimes they would appear in
the evenings, as the custodians and the priests were readying the lays of
closure. But never, did they appear during the midst of the day when the
main faithful would gather to worship at the Stalls and Altars of
Commerce.

My eyes would grow wide and my mouth became parched as if a

summer thirst were upon me as Bowman would describe these creatures
in great and hideous detail. They looked almost like a man of years, tall
and thin. They would pace slowly or hop birdlike, staring at the
worshippers of the temple, the priests and custodians with small eyes
that never would appear to blink. Their clawed hands would be gathered
behind their backs which would be covered with old but venerable
jerkins or waxy coats, but the worst aspect of their appearance was their
faces. Their mouth holes below their small flicking eyes, would be
eternally locked in in an small o shape, as of a person whistling…

But no sound could ever be heard uttering from their lips!

At least no sound that would be heard by the ears of a normal man!

At this my heart would flutter and the hairs of my neck would stand up
of themselves. Such an unthinkable horror!

Bowman said these apparitions would stalk the lower levels of the
temple with their soundless mouths, searching... searching… for

 
 

something. They never appeared to touch anything or enquire after the

goods. They would just drift from stall to stall watching the faithful
who would shrink from them if they saw them and leave to other places.

Sometimes, he said, these beings would be accompanied by other

creatures... worse still than the whistlers themselves, of whom they
appeared to be foul heralds. Things like harpies that would flit from
stall to stall, muttering in some ancient tongue. Occasionally pouncing
on a particular item and shrieking at which point the Silent Whistler
may drift towards them and they would communicate in their strange
unearthly way; the harpy muttering and the Whistler with its eerie
silence. Eventually the whistler would drift away again and the harpy
would appear to grow disinterested in the item and fly elsewhere.
Sometimes the Whistler would merely ignore the shrieks of the harpy
which would cease shrieking after a time and go back to muttering
quietly to itself and picking at it’s flesh with it’s short stubby paws.

Bowman would not say such, but I gathered that his hair had once been
as yellow as the wheat in the fields that lay in the field beyond the hills.
It may have been the years that turned his hairs grey and caused them to
fall from his head, but perhaps it was the sight of these creatures? I
would never ask him such.

I had hoped that I would never have cause to view these beings for
myself, but only weeks later, as the nights began to lengthen I was to
find myself walking alone on the lower levels of the temple. The sun
had taken up it's place on the horizon earlier and shadows had
descended beyond the temple doors. The custodians had called for
preparations for the closing ceremony to begin and I had just returned
from a trip to the water closet when upon rounding a corner I saw it.

 
 

I was alone as it crept from the shadows near the doors. It's arms bent
behind its back upon which it wore green waxen cloth. Upon its head
was a cloth cap from beneath which I could see the glint of glass lenses.
It's long thin nose descended towards that fearsome visage, the facial
orifice twisted into an open pucker through which there came such an
ominous silence. It walked towards me and from behind it scuttled a
small round harpy, muttering and smacking its lips. Beneath its wings it
carried empty baskets, no doubt into which it hoped to fetch it's prey.

My body felt cold and instinctively I retreated from these grotesques,

but towards me they crept. They had set their sights upon me it seemed.
The Whistler's face stared directly at mine as it emerged from the
shadows. Beneath its clothen brow I could now see it's small dark eyes
that had set upon my mortal form with such demonic purpose that
chilled my very being to the core and just as I felt that no further horror
could possibly wreak it's wrought upon my shattered mind more than
that which I had already now witnessed, the Whistler did something...
something that even now I can see, as if it burned it's echo into my soul,
cast some terrible spell of rending across the landscape of my identity
and left me the broken shell of a man I am today, something that even
Bowman had not spoken of...

One of the creatures eyes, as it's gaze contained me, frozen for that
moment for all eternity... One of those terrible, small, dark eyes...
closed. But briefly. For a second. Closing as the eye of a picture lantern
would close. Snapping shut. Capturing that moment. Capturing my soul
as I was caught in their trap, vulnerable, my shell broken and my kernel
exposed in the jagged clasp of terror. I imagined I actually heard that
weighted final click that I fancied would accompany the sheathing of
this unholy lens and I felt it echo throughout the brittle bones that held
together the fragile structure of my being, my self. That eye that

 
 

contained me and the world I had known closed and locked away for
eternity, all that I am, all that I was, all that I would ever be.

I fled from that place of horror. Or what remained of me fled; that

shattered creature which was left after the encounter with these demons
had laid me waste and left me a soulless husk of a man. Aged far
beyond his paltry years. Rent forever by the horrors he had witnessed. I
fled far from the Temple and its environs never to return and have since
lived in the grey wasteland beyond the city. Living in dust and filth,
picking the scraps of the meagre stalls that exist between the decayed
dwellings where the peasants live. Broken and pathetic. I know not
what happened there after I left. Whether The Silent Whistler and it's
harpy claimed all who worshipped there for its prey, growing fat
sucking the marrow from the bones of the place, or whether it slunk
away again into the shadows, and the people; the priests and custodians,
guards and worshippers remained ignorant of these creatures and
continued forever on their rituals of worship in the Temple of
Commerce.