THAT NIGHT, I TOLD Silence I wanted my voice back.
She hadn't taken it. That's not what I mean. It was more like as long as she was inside me, I had to listen, not talk. I want my voice back. I thought those words, because I couldn't even manage a whisper.
Did she hear? I guess so. As long as she was inside me, our thoughts were like talking. Words would run in my head. And she'd reply with pictures and music and even smells from the olden days.
Her memories would open up and out would pour the smells. Wood smoke. Unwashed clothes. Bread rising. Bitter lye soap. Wildflowers. Mashed corn cooking in a big iron kettle.
The smells came with her voice. Maybe that's why it seemed so strange. You know how perfume kind of floats around somebody? Leaves a trail? That was what it felt like. I heard the melodies first, and then Silence thinking in my head. And then I smelled the olden days.
I'm afraid, real afraid. I want my voice back, I told her.
In reply came her lonely, sweet voice, singing to me from beyond the grave.
Blessed are those who silently wait
for they shall pass the beautiful gate.
I didn't tell my dad or the doctor or anyone else about the voices. They'd lock me up in a minute. Or pump me full of psych meds. It was bad enough being mute, let alone having them all think I was out of my mind too.
I didn't even tell Relly at first. No, I just figured out the songs and taught them to him on my bass. I had him go back to Mount Hope and find the gravestone poems that Silence had sung to me. A few were just fragments. Some were complete.
"We'll get them all down," I wrote in my notepad. "And then we'll record them all."
"That's right," he said. It was almost a whisper. "Ghost Metal."