Whispers

THE DESCENT OF SELF — BOOK ONE: WHISPERS Bob Adams managed a warehouse. He had four thousand dollars still owing on his truck, an ex-girlfriend he had never quite finished being with, and four tequila shots he had told himself he wasn't going to have. He died on a country road at two in the morning. He wakes face down in a tunnel that is slowly closing. Hell is not fire. It is seven levels of rock under enormous pressure, and everything in it is coming down, and the only direction that stays open is the one that takes you further down. He is not alone down there. Victor Hale spent a decade building a defensive personality on top of being nine years old and bullied. Hell turns out to be very interested in what he built. Noah Ellis had eight months to prepare for dying and still arrived unfinished. A librarian named Ruth is looking for her dog. Something has been whispering to them since the first hour. It has been down here a very long time. It is not lying to them, which turns out to be the problem. Whispers is about ordinary people discovering what they actually are once everything they used to hold themselves up with has been taken away. The job. The flat. The version of themselves they performed at work and had almost started to believe. The horror is not the thing in the dark. It is the choices they are forced to make. Content warning This is a very dark supernatural thriller and it does not soften. It contains violence, death, and sustained psychological pressure applied to people who cannot get away from it. Characters are taken apart deliberately, by things that are better at it than they are. Being likeable does not keep anyone safe. Not for the faint of heart.