Whistle at Night and They Will Come

Catch a sample of the audiobook

Video Version. "Three performance samples," from Whistle At Night and They Will Come. 
Performed by Julian Hobson, Lorene Shyba, Cary Thomas Cody.

 Audio only version

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An Excerpt from the Book

From When They Return

By Alex Soop

The kid in his dream is always the same 15-year-old boy. He had enough of life in a boarding school which operates more like a reform school. There are daily beatings by the older kids, food full of decay and the occasional bed of maggots, and worst of all; sexual molesting by the older boys—and by the occasional faculty member too. Sleeping with your face against the wall so that the sexual deviants wouldn’t hover around with bad intentions was becoming too much. The kid wants to sleep a soundless night and be able to awaken peacefully so that he may witness a God-given sunrise.

It’s the middle of the night. The 6 a.m. wake-up call lies at least a few hours away. He knows this by the taint of grey overtaking the dusky black wall in front of his face. He needs the faint source of light to make his final getaway through the forested land. He rolls over slowly and sees no one stirring. Everyone is soundly asleep. Good.

Arms moving as quietly as possible, he slips the stiff and itchy blankets off his body, drops his hand to the cold floor and begins feeling around under the cot. With little to no personal effects allowed on one’s person, the staff never checks under the beds unless it is the weekly sleeping quarters shakedown. There it is, right where he left it. A split-in-half broom handle with an old handkerchief tied to the end. The contents full of extra socks; extra bread; extra undies; unwashed bed sheet; one apple; one rusted tin cup. And last but not least: a notepad so that he can keep his mind busy. It could be weeks of running before he finds a safe haven.

He grabs onto the curved headrest rail and pulls his scrawny frame through the roomy opening. Rolling sideways off the bed would only add pressure to the rusted springs and thus get him busted by the loud squeals and knocks the beds emit. On his feet, he drops to a knee and reaches for the makeshift travelling sack. And just like that he’s out. No more locked door due to the past days of kids pissing and shitting in the room’s corners because they were locked inside the room while the lavatory is situated down the hall.

He peeks out into the eerie greyness of the empty corridor, his breath coming out in frosty wafts as he stares down the darkness. It’s cold but it won’t last. And it’s early summer so freezing to death isn’t the worst of his concerns. Food on the other hand is. But he remembers the farmsteads and ranch houses only a few miles away. Farm people are usually nice, and who wouldn’t want to help out a high and dry 15-year-old kid put off course in the mountainous backwoods.