The Whispers in the Dark
Before what I have to say can be believed, it must be accepted there are certain things in our universe that no mortal mind may ever be truly able to comprehend. I have seen things that have lead me to believe that there are natural laws in place that to the sane and rationally thinking mind seem completely aberrant, however must make perfect sense to either those versed in occultism, or perhaps only the insane.
I am Lewis Akeley, and I am aware that I will be laughed at, no matter how much importance the following words bear, and no matter how much grave sincerity I impress upon all those who will take the time to read what I have to say. With this in mind, let it be known that if I felt the Wakefield building was forever condemned, and that no living soul should ever set foot in that damnable place, I would never put to words my personal account of the murder investigation of Jessica Winquist.
However, it has come to my attention that the NYPD have officially declared the building fit for habitation, and it will be reopened after a state inspection this autumn. It is due to this that I feel compelled to make my personal account of the horror I experienced at the shadowed Wakefield Building.
It was the winter of 2006-2007, beginning in the autumn of '06 that I took up residence in the fourth floor apartment of the Wakefield building in Long Island City, Queens, New York, after moving from Princeton New Jersey. The Wakefield, now made locally infamous, is an unassuming 5 story brownstone near the Queensboro bridge, standing with a rich history stemming back to 1882, built by the once well-to-do Wakefield family. Originally built by Alexander Wakefield, the building had a history for attracting all sorts of strange (and occasionally famous), however brief, residents.
During the first month of my stay I experienced nothing at all out of the ordinary. Each day I would head out to get a train into Manhattan, as the office building I worked as a clerical assistant at the time was located in Midtown, I would stay from 9:00am to 5:00pm, and I could manage to be home by close to 6:00-7:00.
I was arriving home from work on December 2nd 2006, when from across the street, I spotted the then-Wakefield landlord Joseph Gazzo, a balding, stocky man, with a thick Brooklyn accent and surprisingly muscularly shaped arms, was having an argument with a strange looking, slumping older man.
The older man was wearing a strange, off putting assortment of clothing; as though he had no idea how to dress himself. He wore a dark purple frock coat and a pair of ill fitting dark grey jeans that stopped too high up his ankle, leaving much of his white tube socks visible. He had stained, rough black loafers that were so caked with mud they appeared almost wholly brown. He had a black dress shirt on, with most of the top buttons missing, partially exposing the faded Led Zeppelin logo on his black undershirt, and the rest of his buttons were mismatched. He was totally bald, with queer sores on the back of his skull, and his pallid skin bore a disturbing, sickly hue that I could not readily identify. He was horribly ugly, with heavy bags under his black eyes.
As I crossed the street and approached, I began to hear the conversation taking place, "I ain't lettin' ya in." Said Gazzo. "Sir, I must implore you to reconsider your stance." Spoke the older man. His deep voice was rather hoarse, like an old smoker, and he spoke with a posh upper class English accent.
Gazzo corssed his arms, and leaned on the building, "Look man, I already told ya, the only apartment we got left is the 'penthouse' suite", he put air quotes around penthouse, "which is in the attic, and the place is still trashed to shit since the last guy moved out. City's got the whole Goddamn thing condemned."
The older man furrowed his brow, and cleared his throat, "I am sure I will be fine residing in the attic apartment. I am quite capable of handling a mess, I assure you." The older man gave a toothy, yellow grin, and gave a slow bow to Gazzo.
Gazzo narrowed his eyes, and the two seemed to only just take notice of my approaching, "'Aye buddy, I don't know what 'condemned' means in England, but here it means I can't legally let ya live here, got it?" I pushed past the older man, Gazzo greeting me curtly by name, and walked into the Wakefield. As I closed the door to the lobby behind me, I heard the last exchange between Gazzo and the strange man. "Sir, please, if I could just-"
Gazzo cut him off, and began yelling, finally losing his temper, "Okay you know what? Get da fuck outta hea' man! Get the fuck off my property or I'm callin' the cops!"
This was the last I heard of the old man for the rest of that night, and my life resumed normally.
It was three days later, Saturday, December 5th, that I was alone in my apartment. I was making myself dinner in the late evening, when I heard a loud amount of scuffling outside my door, leading up the stairs to the attic. I heard voices, however I could not for the life of me make out a single word. One of the vague voices was a man's, deep and and the other was a female voice. I heard the sound of cans rattling and wood being dragged, like a maintenance crew was heading up the attic
I immediately assumed that, after the confrontation with the older man, Gazzo had decided to have the attic apartment cleaned up. Why on earth they would wait until the night was beyond me, but I reasoned that, perhaps this was their only open timeslot to have a crew come out. Or, perhaps more likely, a night shift crew was the only work crew Gazzo would pay for.
I heard the scuffling and footsteps throughout the rest of the night, up and down the steps, and eventually it forced me to turn on a loud box fan to drown out the sounds.
At about 3:00am, on the nose, there was a loud BANG coming from the attic above, which shocked me awake. I heard a voice from above, and what sounded like an argument between two voices, one male and one female. Again, I could not make out a word of it, however it ended rather abruptly with the sound of a door slamming, and I could hear footsteps storm down the stairs. Above me I could hear scuffling for a half hour, before all fell silent once more, and I fell asleep.
It was the night of December 7th that I lie in my bed, in twilight sleep, that I first began to hear the Whispers in the Dark. I experienced something of a mental shock, when I heard the rasping, hissing from above me, stirring my imagination into a frenzy. The voice was only vaguely human, and it hissed and rasped like a snake.
Throughout the rest of the week I began to smell paint thinner fumes coming from the attic apartment, and I imagine the what the work crew must be like above me. I wondered why they would whisper and gibber, especially as a work crew I would imagine it would be impossible to communicate like that.
I heard only the one voice for a week, until on the 17th, the one voice became two. This voice too hissed and rasped in the same way as the first, but this one was deeper and more commanding.
On the night of the Winter Solstice at around ten at night, I heard a dragging coming up the stairs and to the attic. I stayed up late,unable to sleep, finding myself strangely disturbed by the sound of the dragging. The way whatever it was the workers dragged up the stairs bumped and thumped manically sent a shiver into my spine.
Finally, there was one loud BANG, and then all was silent.
I resolved, therefore, to take the matter up with Gazzo, and before I left work in the morning I stopped in the lobby, and went to the first door on the right, the landlord's apartment. I knocked three times, paused, then knocked once more. Gazzo opened the door.
Gazzo looked strange, like he was tired; he stared blankly at me, "Lewis. Rent ain't due till after New Years. Merry Christmas." His voice was monotonous. He was about to close the door, when I stopped the door with my hand, "Wait, Gazzo, I just came to talk to you about the contractors you hired for the attic apartment."
Gazzo's facial expression did not shift, "Contractors. Yeah. What about the contractors?" There was a cold silence, "Well, they're a bit noisy, could you kinda like, ask them to keep it down? Or come in the day time, at least. The third shift crew is making quite the racket."
Gazzo looked off to the wall to my left, before speaking again in the same monotone, "I'll tell the third shift guys to quiet up." I nodded, "Thanks Gazzo, I don't think they realize how loud they're being. And they aren't making up for it by whispering." I laughed lightly, however Gazzo did not waver.
I stood with him in dead silence for a full ten seconds before I broke the calm, "You feeling alright, Gazzo?" Gazzo's head snapped back into his apartment, like he'd just heard a noise, "Fine. Lewis, don't you have a train to work?" I nodded, "Yeah, yeah I do Gazzo. Just wanted to make sure, you seem a little, uh, off today."
Gazzo stared blankly at me again, before nodding his head to the left to the door, "I'm fine. You have a train, Lewis. Off you pop, then." Gazzo closed the door, and I left with a sense of unaccountable dread. Something about the way he looked, about the way he spoke, was eerie. His accent was strained, and he spoke more clearly then I was used to.
The noises seemed to cease in the night, however the bone chilling whispering remained.
I had gone to a party for New Years Eve in Manhattan, at a friend's apartment on the Lower East Side, so for what had occurred on the nights between December 31st and January 1st I can not personally account for, however when I returned home on New Years Day at noon, there was an silence in the Shadowed Wakefield.
I could not then, nor now as I write this passage, decide what exactly put me at such a disquiet. Perhaps it was the dead silence in the cold lobby, with its ancient wooden stairs, which echoed my footsteps so unnaturally. Maybe it was the the feeling that, perhaps, it was colder inside those weeks than it was even outside; next to the Hudson River, with the frigid sea air whipping with a biting wind.
I stopped just short at my door, and looked down the hall. The hall stopped with a sharp turn leading to the last staircase; the stairs leading to the attic. In the hall, I could hear something like two voices coming from the attic, now much clearer than ever before. I could hear the whispers leading clearly for the first time, and I was only vaguely aware that my eyes were welling with tears and my legs began to falter.
I will never speak of or write exactly what words I discerned, suffice it to say that what words were in English did not disturb me like the words in the Other language. What hissing, blasphemous language was whispered in that haunted attic was unlike anything I had ever heard, and the syllables, I fear, I am incapable of even repeating.
I threw open my door in a fit of manic fear, and set in place the three locks. I then, think, I must have fainted, for I have no memory until it was dark again, and I found myself on the floor of the apartment.
I made the determination that I could not stay in that building, and that whoever, and, for that matter, whatever was in that attic was not of this world. To this day I feel my skin crawl like an icy tongue slithering slowly up under the skin in my back when I recall the second voice.
Perhaps it was the mental shock I had received that seemed to wipe my memory of what exactly the voice in English said, or maybe I had suppressed what I heard after the fact, but what I had heard on that day had disturbed me in such a way that I felt half certain I should call the police.
I stayed in my apartment, and listened intently. However no more sound came from the attic; nor anywhere else in the Wakefield, for that matter, until it was very late at night, when I heard a noise coming from below.
It was the same dragging sound I had heard weeks before, thumping horribly up the old stairs.
I did not call the police on that night, but as God as my witness I will never forgive myself for not acting sooner. I am so sorry for waiting like I had, for dismissing the Whispers in the Dark, but I must be clear I had no idea what was truly taking place in those weeks.
January waned, with the Whispers in the Dark becoming more intense and louder every night. There were two voices, one English and one not. However, they spoke the same indescribable, hissing, liquid sounding language. There were no words, or even syllables, of that dread language I could understand or record. The sounds were like metal on rock to me, hurting my ears the more intensely I listened.
Throughout the month of January I would periodically knock on Gazzo's door, to express my concerns about what I heard, however no answer would come. I became increasingly more worried, however I made excuses for his absence to alleviate my mental strife.
It was on Friday, February 2nd 2007, I returned from work late after working overtime and missing my train, and only arrived at the Wakefield building at 11:00pm. It was as I was fixing to go to bed, that I heard a dragging coming from the lobby and again, back up to the attic. I shuddered at the sound, turning the television on to drown out the sound. I did not want to live in that haunted building, however apartment hunting was not going as planned, as I could not find an apartment in my price range.
As I stared blankly at the TV, staring at the PIX11 news without taking in anything I was seeing, I heard a noise from above. A banging and a crash, then the voices in that slithering, dread language whispered intensely and dramatically; as though hurried and startled.
Soon after the Whisperer's hateful argument began, I heard something that shook my whole body, and turned my blood to ice: A young girl's scream.
The scream was snuffed out just as quickly as it had come. But it was at this that I had enough, and decided to call the police. When I was connected to the operator, I told them about the scream, as briefly as I could, about the events that had lead up to the scream.
After the call, I stayed in the hall, staring at the dark corner leading to the stairs to the attic.
I had broken down completely, sitting on the floor with my back to the wall. In the time between the scream and the police arriving, there was no sound in the entire building. The eerie, creeping silence seemed to surround and suffocate me like my lungs were being filled with vicious black smoke.
I had never felt so helpless, or more terrified, in my entire life. I prayed, in my time sitting in the silence of that haunted hall, I prayed that my own paranoia filled and half bent mind was making up the scream. Nothing would have tickled me more than to go to the attic, and see a half repaired apartment with a working crew. Because I did not want to be validated; I wanted to be wrong about my fears.
Within the half hour of my call, two NYPD squad cars showed up outside the Wakefield. Never before had I been, and I pray to God I never will be again, so happy or comforted to see the flashing blue and red of police sirens outside a window.
Two officers, Bradford and Wilson, came up to greet me. Officer Wilson was a pale, tall young man with a sharp hooked nose and grey eyes. Officer Bradford was an African American man, like myself, with very handsome features and high cheekbones. In complete hysterics I told the two lawmen of my ordeal, and of the scream and the Whispers. The officers tried to calm me, but I began to try to drag them, take them to the attic, and impressed upon them the scream and the silence.
The officers drew their pistols, and slowly advanced the stairs; me far behind them, however following nonetheless.
The police, after ascending the stairs, tried to turn on the one light of the dark corridor. There was a pop, the sound of glass shattering and a spark; we knew that the light had blown.
The noise, it seemed, stirred some fitful movement from within the apartment, and a voice could be heard, clearly, in plain English, behind the door. "They come, Master! They come! Interlopers!".
A second voice spoke, this time in the rattling, hissing Dread language that had Whispered and tormented me for months. The cops made a face to each other, "The fuck was that?" said Officer Wilson. Bradford shrugged, and both seemed disturbed as they approached, and tried the knob; the door was unlocked.
The officers threw the door open, and a gust of humid, warm air rushed from the small cramped apartment. The smell that carried with it was ghastly; like paint thinner and dead, decaying. Like a horrible vinaigrette of decay and chemicals in an abandoned fish market.
The officers and I all coughed, and I had to cover my nose with my shirt. The officers steeled themselves, and entered the apartment, guns drawn.
The apartment was dark, however the small lamps and the light from outside filtering in through the few windows allowed you to see, once your eyes adjusted, the horrors within that formidable attic.
There was dozens of empty paint cans scattered throughout the room, and canvases with empty, macabre scenes. Empty, purple velvet lined thrones surrounded by dark stone walls, regal, scarlet red curtains covering floor length windows, showing vaguely a scene of a Gothic, ancient European castle in the distance.
In the center of the room, however, was what I consider to be the true horror of the Wakefield. There was a small marble alter in the very back of the room, blood red candles lit on the edges, dripping wax profusely onto the floor. In front of the alter, there was a black clad, hunched over figure moving hands furtively over the alter.
As the officers and I approached, officer Bradford stepped on something that gave a harsh squish, and the man wretched. With a shock, we slowly realized that what he had stepped on was a decayed, severed human hand. "Oh my God!" I cried out, and that's when the figure snapped still, and all was calm; like the way it feels calm after lightening had struck and thunder is soon to follow.
The figure slowly raised its bald, sickly head, and looked slowly over it's shoulder. I instantly recognized the figure as the old man from December, who had tried to convince Gazzo to let him rent the apartment, however now a sticky, sanguine ichor dripped from his face, mouth, and fingers.
"Freeze! Don't you make a move!" shouted Officer Wilson, shaking his pistol weakly. The man turned slowly to face us: his clothing was the exact same as the day I had seen him. "I said freeze, freak!"
The old man, without taking his eyes away from officer Wilson, grabbed a long, thin stick on the alter, and pointed it at the officer. "Drop it!"
Then the old man spoke two words in a language unfamiliar to me, and I am not entirely certain I can spell it correctly with the Latin alphabet, and I have only been able to find similar words in folkloric, historical texts of long forgotten nightmares.
The old man shouted in his thick, hoarse voice. "Avaddah kahdavurah!" There was a flash of green light, a groan, and officer Wilson collapsed. His eyes unseeing, and face contorted into a nightmarish countenance.
Officer Bradford cursed, and shot four times, landing a bullet in the old man's thigh, heart, throat and stomach. The old man stumbled, dropped the stick, and slumped against the wall, bleeding.
Officer Bradford knelt beside his partner, and felt for his pulse on his wrist: he found none, "Dammit, Arron..." he choked. Officer Bradford shook his head, and stormed to the old man, "What did you do!" The old man croaked a laugh with a twisted smile on his bloodied, sickly face, and stared Bradford in the eyes until he existed no more: the old man's psychopathic expression burned forever onto his face.
I studied the room, and my eyes fell upon the alter. A pretty, dark skinned college aged young woman was lying dead, with the torso gored beyond reason: a bloody, disfigured carcass was all that was left below the neck. Her face was frozen in shock and horror, but her eyes lie unfocused on the opposite wall.
Above the alter, there was another painting, and what I saw gave me more of a mental shock than anything else that night: more than the death and more than the gore I will remember the thing in the painting.
The painting was of a creature of unknowable horror. It was draped in a black cloth that flowed like blood down it's body. The hands, if that's indeed what they were intended to be, were skeletal with sharp, hawk-like talons; grey and black tipped and wicked. The face was paper white, and reminiscent of traits both reptilian and ichthyic, with sickly bluish veins running downwards from its skull. It was sallow, with beady, soulless scarlet eyes peering from black, sunken sockets. The vaguely humanoid shape of the skull disturbed me in its most basic lack of human traits. It lacked a nose, instead snakelike slits seemed to have been carved as though with a knife into the center of it's face: it bore a pair of thin lines for lips.
The sight of the revolting creature was marred only by the revelation of the corpse parts scattered about the room. Severed toes, fingers, bones and organs of unknown origin and, due to their festering, torn-apart state, function, lie scattered all around me; some seemingly removed with the precision of a surgeon, others partially eaten.
The rest of that hour and the next was a blur to me, perhaps, most likely, due to shock. I remember clearly being removed from the room, being taken onto the street corner, and the ambulances, squad cars, fire trucks and coroner's vans pulling up.
I was sat on the back of an open ambulance hatch, blanket draped around my shoulders, and watched as three body bags were being taken down from the attic. A crowd of people had stopped to watch the scene, and the NYPD held a firm barrier between them and the scene. Cops began to check for more bodies, and tried to confirm to which corpse which dismembered body part belonged to.
Officer Bradford was holding a sobbing, blonde woman, who was screaming the name "Arron" repeatedly as a fourth body bag was removed from the Nightmare Haunted Wakefield.
A detective approached me, representing a law enforcement agency I wasn't quite familiar with. His badge showed he belonged to the United States "D.M.A", and his name was Howard Phillips . "Excuse me, Mr. Akeley, do you have a moment?" Wordlessly, I shrugged and nodded.
Agent Phillips was an older man, who wore a black suit without a tie, and a dark blue shirt. He was pale, with neatly trimmed salt and pepper hair. "So, in the statement you gave to the NYPD, you said you heard whispering in the months leading up to this?" I nodded, and he extracted from his breast pocket a Moleskine notebook and began to jot down notes in it.
"And, you said this language wasn't English?" He asked. I looked up to him, and said weakly, "No, I said the whispers were not human." Agent Phillips cleared his throat. "Not human...?" He wrote something in his notebook, and waited a moment before continuing his interrogation, "Not human...how?" I explained to him the unspeakable, rattling tongues used to communicate in the darkness. I told him of the impossible syllables uttered by the whisperers. "...Like, a snake?" Agent Phillips spoke very slowly and carefully, as though he was being very sure to choose the correct words.
I stared into his eyes, and saw the furrowed brow, the sheer concern and worry written on every line of his face, and knew that somehow this man knew, or somehow had heard before the language used.
Before I could say another word, there was a horrible, heart wrenching scream coming from the front of the building, and saw Gazzo being taken by two officers out of the Wakefield. His already thinning hair seemed to be falling away from his head as he struggled, his face was contorted in horror and agony.
"NO! THEY CAME FOR ME!" screamed Gazzo, who was kicking and punching at the officers that restrained him. "THE FACELESS MEN! THEY CAME! THEY TOOK ME IN THE DARKNESS!" another officer came out from behind the first two, and Agent Phillips beckoned him over, and asked about Gazzo. "Poor guy, owned the building. Found the poor bastard in a side room with a gag in his mouth. He was all done up in some sick kind of bondage, and as soon as he could talk he started screamin'."
Gazzo continued to struggle against the officers, and now the EMTs who tried to help him, "THEY CAME WITH THE SKELETON HORSES! THEY TOOK ME! I WAS GONE FOR YEARS! I WAS TRAPPED IN AGONY IN THE DARK CHAMBERS WITH THE DEAD LORD! HAIL HAIL HE LIVES!"
Gazzo continued to scream, his words turning to insane gibberish. I felt a pang in my heart, and let my head drop. Agent Phillips put his arm on my shoulder, "I'm sorry for all of this." I thanked him for his words of comfort.
A few officers mentioned the paintings in the attic, of empty portrait scenery, and i must have given such a visible start of horror, because Agent Phillips asked me what was wrong. I told him that I had scene a nightmarish creature in one of those paintings. In the largest of them, there was a snakelike, humanoid demon creature with eyes like fire. Agent Phillips paled and he seemed to be far away in thought.
The Agent summoned the officers, and asked about the paintings, and told them to bring him the one with the painting of a creature. The officers asked what he was talking about, "Mr. Akeley says one of those paintings has some kinda monster in it. I want to see it." My stomach turned at the thought of having to see that creature again, but my fears were revealed shortly, "Uh, which one?"
"The one above the alter." Spoke Agent Phillips curtly. The officers looked at each other, "That one? It's bigger, yeah, but its empty like the rest."
Agent Phillips looked at though he was just punched in the face, and dismissed the officers. He put one hand to his forehead, and murmured something illegible to me. He seemed to collect himself, and offered one more word of condolence before he left me alone, and walked to an unmarked black police car next to me, and I noticed a detective stepped out of it
The Detective for the NYPD approached Agent Phillips as he left me, and I briefly overheard their conversation, before they walked together closer to the crime scene, "How many dead?" asked Phillips, "Four, including Officer Wilson. Two homeless guys he must've picked up off the street, and that girl. The landlord was driven insane, too." Phillips nodded, "I, on behalf of The Department, want to apologize. We have no idea how something like this could have happened."
The detective scoffed, "How? How?! Wanna know how? Cause you could never expect to keep your little...world hidden forever. It never was, and after that shitstorm in '97 this kinda crap got ramped up. Those freaks can't hide in you's guyses houses anymore and..." Their voices faded as they walked away from me, and I can recall no more of their conversation past this point.
And this is how the night ended. I moved, semi-permanently, into a hotel in the East Village for the remained of the winter and spring. In the summer I moved to an apartment in the West Village. I was thankful to be closer to my work, and away from the hateful Wakefield building.
I received brief fame, and have since been promoted at my office. In all these years, I was thankful to put my horror at the Wakefield behind me, but at the revelation that the Wakefield is to be reopened, I feel I must tell my experience.
It is only for this reason that I reminisce on my dreaded past, and I hope that this may serve to caution any new owner of that building: demolish it. Destroy that building, make it be ash and ruin so that the Horror Haunted Wakefield stands no longer.
Please, for the sake of poor Gazzo, in the memory of Jessica Winquist, and the nameless men who fell because of this evil place. Please demolish the Shadowed Wakefield!