The Whisper Man

Tom considers going home but feels that he’s responsible for Jake’s connection to this stranger: It happened after Jake saw Tom’s letter to Rebecca, and Tom blames himself for not giving Jake the support he needed in that moment.

He goes to the school and talks to Jake’s teacher. She didn’t know Jake was missing, and when Tom shows her the picture, she says it could be George, one of the teaching assistants at the school. Tom heads toward the office, knowing that he’s technically trespassing now. The groundskeeper and a receptionist stop him. Jake’s teacher catches up to them, and the receptionist tells him that George is out sick but that she can’t divulge his address. They lead him outside and lock the door.

Karen is there, and although she doesn’t quite believe Tom, she knows he needs to follow this through. She tells him that she’s already found the name and address of George Saunders, Francis Carter’s alias.

In his room, Jake is drawing a battle scene like the one he drew early in the book, with circles around the characters that represent either force fields or portals. George (Francis Carter) gave him paper to draw an elaborate garden, but Jake felt like he couldn’t, and he used the last piece of paper to draw this instead. A part of him knows that he’s being tested—and that Francis wants him to fail.

George returns and is upset by the drawing. Jake shows him the attempts at the garden on the advice of his imaginary friend, and George says they aren’t good enough. He admonishes Jake for wasting paper and not trying hard enough, and Jake can see “all the goodness and kindness falling away from him, as though they had only ever been pretend” (321-322). When Jake says he wants Tom, George moves closer, threateningly, but the doorbell interrupts him.

Francis is outraged as he puts on a bathrobe and prepares to answer the door. He knows that it isn’t the police, and he assumes that Tom Kennedy has found him, though he wonders why he’d even want Jake back. He looks through the peephole and sees Tom at the door. That he’d go to such dangerous lengths to get his son back strikes Francis as incredibly unfair given how much Frank hated him. He grabs a knife from the kitchen and calls out to Tom that he’s coming.

When Tom hears Francis, he considers that he’s been running on instinct and doesn’t know what to do next. As he looks back at Karen, the door opens. Tom questions Francis (whom he addresses as George Saunders) and, after establishing that Francis knows Jake, tells him that Jake is missing. Francis feigns surprise, but then Tom shows him the drawing and asks if Francis drew it. Francis balks, and Tom brings up the boy in the floor, which brings a look of horror to Francis’s face.

Tom calls out past Francis for Jake. Francis feigns fear of Tom, and Tom briefly falls for it, thinking that he has disturbed an innocent man. He apologizes and says that he’s leaving.

In the attic room, Jake talks to his imaginary friend, who has convinced him that George is going to hurt him. He’s too afraid to go downstairs, but the girl convinces him that if it’s Tom at the door, Jake must let him know that he’s there. Still, he’s too afraid.

The girl asks him to tell her about his nightmare, and when he says he can’t, she starts telling it for him. She walks him through the whole dream, recreating the moment he found his mother and convincing him that the fear he’s feeling is legitimate but doesn’t need to dominate him. She tells him he can do it and promises to go down with him: “Always, my gorgeous boy” (331).

Tom is about to leave (after Francis agrees to cooperate with police if questioned) when he hears a noise from the house: Jake is hammering on the locked door and shouting. Francis begins to close the door, but Tom forces his leg into the doorway. Francis steps away from the door but ambushes Tom as he comes in, stabbing him. They topple to the ground, and Tom knows that he must stay on top of Francis even as Francis is killing him with the knife.

At the police department, Amanda Beck has found out that the George Saunders who worked at the school died three years ago. She and other officers head to the house where he lives and find the door open. She rushes into the house to see Tom on top of Francis with Karen helping hold Francis down. Amanda can hear Jake yelling upstairs.