Above all, they had woven their threaded whispers through the silence which settled like snow on the farm house, and at night, when dreams beat wildly about his head like dark-winged bats, they screamed their fervent fury. Now they sought new ways to speak to him. An invisible finger scrawled messages of hate on gable walls, black spider lettering scuttling across pitted brick and flaking cement. As he sat beside his mother in the taxi on the way to the hospital, he read their message on each wall they passed, flicking through the street corners like the pages of a book. Black silhouettes were emblazoned on painted blue skies and the invisible finger moved slowly and deliberately, scoring the words deep into his mind. Sometimes they fingered his face until he felt as if he was walking down a long tunnel where webbed filament clung to his skin. His mother sat tense and alert, her eyes flitting fretfully over territory she knew was hostile, but her ears did not hear the voices. She sat as if she had a bad taste in her mouth and when the taxi stopped outside the hospital she seemed to have a momentary hesitation, almost as if she was considering telling the driver to take them home again.
