Whisperwell by Karlie Hall

The forest whispers at night.  

Just before dark, when the world takes on an eerie quality and the last of the light is gasping for breath, mothers tuck their children into bed and sprinkle obsidian salt inside the doorways. The fathers close the barns and shops up tight and leave presents in the street for the night creatures. These creatures have many names – little folk, faeries, shadow walkers. The men never leave the gifts on their porches or their garden paths. No one wants them to come that close. If they do, they can hear the voices of the children through the windows and walls, or in the worst cases, their names. Then they aren’t your children anymore. They walk straight into the woods towards the whispers and are never seen again.  

The strongest men in the village are chosen to be torch lighters. They walk the streets at night, keeping the lanterns lit. The light is the only thing that keeps the reaching arms of the bare black branches at bay. The torchlighters are seven feet tall and as wide as the ancient trees and even they know better than to turn their backs on the whispers.  

On the last day of every month, and twice at harvest time and births, the oldest witches in the village bless the well. It stands in a clearing deep inside the forest, and the witches are part of the forest. They take their familiars with them - a singing fox, a whispering owl, a black cat with human eyes. When they disappear into the black tangle of briars and branches, their hunched backs and knotted fingers clutching canes, no one really believes they’ll emerge again.  

When the forest opens like a gaping mouth and they do, the village breathes like a sigh. The people fear the witches but work together to keep their tables full and their hearths blessed with coals, even if it means their families do without. Without the witches, there is no blessing of the well. Without the blessing, there is no town.  

The nighttime whispers are the loudest on the blackest nights, when the moon’s final sliver of light gives in to the sky. Horses beat at their stalls and scream in fury. Goats rear back on two legs and walk like men. Some families sing all night for protection.  Others lock themselves in root cellars, every corner ablaze with light.  

The streets overflow with gifts for the shadow walkers. Tiny baskets woven from human hair. Miniature glass bottles filled with perfume. Carved wooden bowls filled with candied fruit and roasted nuts. In the morning all of it has vanished and the whispers are just a dull rustle through the trees.  

Leaving is not an option. The forest hems them in on all sides. If there is another world out there, it is lost to them. The witches warned the great-great-grandfathers when they began to build their town next to two black saplings, saying this rich and fertile plain was cursed. From these two saplings the forest sprang up overnight. The breeze became a dark wind. The dark wind molded the trees into a cage of ash and iron. 

This story is passed down only in family lore and village myth. Truth or faerytale, the forest is black and looming, and it whispers at night to the town trapped in its fey center.  

Only the witches know the truth. They tell no one but the well and the ancient trees, and they tell it only in whispers. 

Karlie Hall is an undergraduate majoring in English at The University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Leading Edge, Theme of Absence, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She lives in Ellisville, Mississippi with her husband and three cats, and enjoys reading thrillers, bicycling, and baking.