The Voice That Knew My Name

“There’s a moment you stop asking if a voice is real. The real question is—why it chose to speak to you.”

I set off down the corridor, my footsteps muted by the carpet's thick weave. Even so, each step felt unnaturally loud in the hush that wrapped the house. The hallway was narrow, hemmed in by clean walls hung with a curated gallery of photographs—each one perfectly level, perfectly spaced. I noted them for later. Something about the uniformity felt more like a showroom than a home. Still, I couldn't help but feel watched, each smiling face in its glass frame silently bearing witness to my passage.

The carpet beneath my boots had that dense, expensive feel—recently installed, probably within the last year. No wear patterns in the centre, no fading near the windows. Money had been spent here. Care had been taken. Every detail spoke of deliberate presentation.

From behind me came the sound of Sarah's voice, cutting through the quiet with unfiltered intent.

"So, what was it you said that Jamie was cooking again?"

A smile ghosted across my lips as I shook my head slightly. Classic Sarah—no slow lead-in, no easing into discomfort. She approached interrogation like she approached everything else: head-on. Not subtle, but it had its uses. Her bluntness was often just disarming enough to yield results. Today, it provided perfect cover for my quieter method.

Behind me, I could hear Gladys's voice responding, the words indistinct but the tone defensive. Sarah was doing exactly what I needed her to do—keeping their host occupied, focused on the living room, whilst I pursued the silent investigation down this hallway.

I turned my attention back to the photographs. Jamie and Luke appeared together in most of them—arms around each other in scenic locations: coastal cliffs with distinctive Tasmanian dolerite columns, mountain trails that looked like they might be Cradle Mountain, cobbled European streets with Gothic architecture suggesting somewhere central European. They looked happy. Relaxed. Cohesive. Not a single image hinted at separation or domestic strife. No tension. No space between them. Every frame reinforced the idea of a stable relationship, the direct opposite of what both Gladys and Louise had claimed. Another inconsistency. Another carefully arranged lie.

The photographs were all professional quality—proper framing, good lighting, printed on quality paper in matching black frames. Someone had invested time and money into creating this visual narrative. A story of domestic bliss that contradicted every piece of information we'd gathered.

I passed the bathroom and continued, drawn by something I couldn't name. A hunch. That old, familiar tug in my gut I'd learned to trust more than half the protocols in the manual. It pulled me towards the back corner bedroom. I already knew what I'd find there—black garbage bags, piled up like they'd been waiting for me.

Now, what are the chances of that? I thought, the corner of my mouth twitching in wry amusement.

This was the same room I'd peered into from the garden hours earlier, under cover of early morning. Back when I'd slammed my elbow through a window and pretended it had been someone else's mistake. That trespass now echoed in bizarre symmetry—I was in the same house, seeing the same bags, but this time I was here by invitation. If you can call a lie an invitation.

The memory of this morning's break-in sent a flush of shame through me even as I moved forward. The cold bite of dawn air, the crack of glass, the sharp pain in my wrist. I'd told myself it was investigative necessity. Now it felt like madness—the act of a man so desperate for answers he'd abandoned every principle he'd spent decades upholding.

I rounded the corner slowly, just out of sight from the living room. A quick glance back showed Sarah still engaged with Gladys, likely pushing her towards defensive deflection. That would buy me time. She might end up aggravating our host, but it didn't matter—as long as I was left alone.

I stopped just outside the bedroom door, placed my right ear to the wood, and blocked my left ear with a finger to tune out their conversation. I strained to listen.

Nothing.

Not even the gentle creak of a house settling. No hum of electronics, no scrape of a shoe on carpet. Just an absence that felt… intentional. The silence wasn't the loose, ambient quiet of an empty room. It had edges. Weight. The stillness you only find when someone doesn't want to be heard.

I'd encountered this kind of silence before—in houses where people hid from domestic violence perpetrators, in drug labs where manufacturers tried to avoid detection, in rooms where fugitives held their breath and counted seconds. It was the sound of human presence trying to become absence.

I felt it in my stomach first—that deep, evolutionary unease. Over years of crime scene work, I'd come to recognise the difference between an unoccupied space and one holding its breath.

My palms were slick now, the fine sheen of nervous sweat making the chrome door handle feel colder, slicker. I gripped it with care, the contrast between the metal and my skin stark and grounding. The handle was modern—brushed nickel, recently cleaned, showing no fingerprints except the ones I was about to leave.

One breath in.

One out.

I turned the handle slowly, soundlessly, pushing just enough to create movement. The door gave under the pressure, each centimetre feeling drawn out like a slow wound. My pulse thudded in my ears, counting out the inches. The mechanism was well-maintained—no squeak, no resistance. The kind of door that had been cared for, oiled, kept in perfect working order.

Then I saw them.

The first black garbage bag… then another. Their plastic skin catching the light, creased and bulging like something inside had shifted. A faint chemical scent met my nose—something faintly medicinal. Bleach? Or just detergent? Underneath it, something else—organic decay, the sweet-sour smell of food waste left too long.

My thoughts raced ahead, leaping towards the darkest corners. Bloodied clothing. Personal effects. Body parts. Or maybe just old clothes, bedding, the usual clutter sealed up for charity or storage. But in this house, at this moment, innocence felt implausible.

The bags were industrial-strength—heavy-duty black plastic, the kind used for building waste or serious clean-ups. Not the thin supermarket variety. Someone had purchased these specifically. Someone had filled them deliberately. Someone wanted to obscure their contents completely.

Caution evaporated. I pressed forward, needing to see more. The door swung wider—

Then stopped.

Bounced back towards me.

The movement was subtle but sharp. A recoil. Reflexive. As if it had hit something. Or someone.

A jolt shot through me—electric, involuntary. My body tensed, all muscles coiled, ears straining for any sign of movement beyond the door. My breath caught. Every sense sharpened to a knife edge.

I pushed again, harder this time.

The door moved just a little, then jammed—held by something unseen, stopping it half open. Roughly half a metre of clearance. No more. The resistance was firm, deliberate. Not the soft give of clothing or bags, but something solid. Something weighted.

"Fuck," I muttered, barely audible. Frustration flooded through me, hot and immediate. My heart pounded against my ribs, the blood rushing so loud I could barely hear the silence anymore.

Whatever was in that room wasn't just black bags.

And it wasn't passive.

The possibility crystallised in my mind: Luke was behind that door, holding it shut, waiting for me to give up and leave. Playing games. Taunting me with his presence whilst remaining just out of reach.

Gladys's voice, sharp and filled with anger, echoed down the hallway like a lash.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing up there?"

The sound stopped me cold. My breath caught mid-chest as a jolt of adrenaline slammed through my system. My mouth went dry in an instant. It was a voice designed to command obedience, to halt intrusion, and for a split second, it almost worked.

Her footsteps came fast with urgency—each step a drumbeat of confrontation. The house seemed to constrict around me—narrower, darker, heavier with the weight of something just out of reach. There was something wrong here. Profoundly wrong. The tension in the air didn't just whisper of secrets—it screamed.

As Gladys appeared at the end of the hall, her face was a mask of fury and suspicion. Eyes narrowed to hard slits, her lips compressed into a bloodless line. Her chest heaved with rapid breathing—part exertion from the quick movement, part rage. The tendons in her neck stood out like cables under tension.

"I think you'd better leave," she said, voice flat and cold, her arm raised with theatrical finality, finger aimed at the front door like a loaded weapon.

The words left no room for manoeuvre. No negotiation. Just expulsion.

I felt the sting of embarrassment flood my cheeks, hot and humiliating. I'd overstepped. Again. My body knew it even as my mind refused to surrender. Every cell in me wanted to force that bedroom door wide open and drag the truth into the light, but the law—thin and brittle though it felt in moments like this—still mattered. Without a warrant, I was powerless. And worse—exposed.

She'd caught me red-handed doing exactly what I shouldn't be doing. Searching a home without permission, without authorisation, without any legal standing whatsoever. If I pushed this any further, everything I might find would be inadmissible. The case would be poisoned before it even began.

I stepped back, retreating from the half-open door, my thoughts whirling in a cyclone of half-formed possibilities and clashing instincts. Was Luke in that room? Or had my fixation blinded me completely? Had I manufactured this entire scenario in my head, projected my desperate need for answers onto innocent circumstances?

Yet beneath the uncertainty, my resolve didn't waver. If anything, it hardened. I would find the truth. Whether it took days, weeks, or the last of my professional credibility.

As I stepped into the hallway again, the atmosphere shifted.

The lights above flickered once—twice—then steadied. Shadows jumped across the walls like startled animals. My radio crackled to life on my belt, a burst of static puncturing the tension with sudden violence.

The static resolved briefly into fragments of voice—another unit somewhere in the city, words unintelligible but the cadence recognisable. Then it faded back to white noise before cutting out completely.

Then—

A whisper. Just behind me.

"Bye, Karl."

Quiet. Precise. Intentional. And unmistakably smug.

A chill raced down my spine, sharp as ice water. The voice was soft, but it cut straight through my skin. There was no mistaking the tone: taunting, confident, cruel. Male. Close—impossibly close, as if spoken directly into my ear.

That bastard. That had to be Luke.

The whisper seemed to come from the bedroom I'd just abandoned, yet also from everywhere and nowhere—a trick of acoustics in the narrow hallway, or something more deliberate. The hairs on the back of my neck stood rigid.

My blood surged. Rage ignited like a match to petrol. My self-control, already frayed to threads, snapped.

"You bastard!" I roared, and spun.

My shoulder slammed into the bedroom door. It gave with a jarring crack, swinging back hard against the wall with a sound that rang through the house like a gunshot. Paint chips rained down from the impact point. The door handle punched a divot into the plasterboard.

"Karl!" Sarah's voice from the hallway, just behind Gladys, cut through the air—shocked, alarmed, but already too far behind to pull me back.

"What the hell are you doing!?"

Her boots were already moving, responding to the sound of violence with trained instinct.

"He's here!" I bellowed, breath ragged, throat raw. "Luke is here!"

The words tore out of me with certainty I couldn't explain. I'd heard him. I knew it. That whisper had been real, as real as my own voice, as real as the blood pounding in my temples.

Sarah didn't hesitate. Her training kicked in like second nature. She surged forward, sidearm drawn, movements fluid and precise. She moved past me, entering the room with a tactical grace that belied the speed of her response. Her weapon came up into a two-handed grip, muzzle following her line of sight as she swept the visible corners.

"Go! I've got you covered!" she snapped, already taking up a defensive position as she stepped in front of Gladys, firearm steady and eyes scanning.

Behind us, Gladys let out a strangled sound—part protest, part fear. But Sarah's body blocked her from entering, from interfering, from whatever she might have been planning to do.

I obeyed and we rushed into the room, my hands shaking as I gripped the door handle and shoved the door shut behind us—cutting off Gladys just as her startled face appeared, mouth open, words catching on the threshold.

"What the—"

The rest was lost as the door slammed with finality.

The lock engaged with a decisive click. At least that would buy us seconds. Maybe a minute.

We turned. Together.

And stared.

Nothing.

The room was empty.

Just the garbage bags. Black, inert, unthreatening now in the stillness. The dent in the wall from my earlier collision was the only new addition—a crescent-shaped indentation with radiating cracks where the door handle had impacted. Fresh damage on otherwise pristine paintwork.

The window I'd broken this morning was still broken, the jagged teeth of glass still visible in the frame. Evidence of my crime, staring back at me.

The silence rang louder than any sound. I stood, frozen, trying to make sense of the void in front of me. The voice had been real. I knew it. I had heard it, clear as day. But there was no Luke. No person at all. No wardrobe with doors ajar, no curtains concealing a figure, no furniture large enough to hide behind.

Just bags. And an empty room mocking my certainty.

Confusion crashed into me like a wave. It made no sense. It couldn't. Sound didn't materialise from nothing. Voices required vocal cords, breath, a physical source. Yet I'd heard it. As clearly as I'd heard Gladys shouting, as clearly as Sarah's voice beside me now.

Then the bags caught my eye again. Their black surfaces gleamed faintly in the light—taunting. Watching. The plastic was good quality—thick, opaque, tied off with double knots.

Without thinking, I lunged forward and ripped the nearest one open.

It tore with a sickening, wet sound, spilling its contents in a heap across the floor—banana peels brown with decay, used tissues, empty cartons, coffee grounds soaking into junk mail. The smell hit immediately—rot and fermentation, the sweet-sick stench of decomposition.

Household waste. That was all.

Not satisfied, I turned on the next one. Tore it apart with shaking hands. Rubbish poured from its gut—plastic trays, rotting fruit, more paper, more nothing. An avalanche of ordinary domestic refuse. Apple cores. Tea bags. Yoghurt containers with their foil tops still attached.

"Karl!" Sarah's voice snapped again, but it felt far away. Muffled. She'd lowered her weapon slightly, confusion replacing tactical alertness. Her eyes darted between me and the scattered rubbish, trying to make sense of what she was witnessing.

I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. Not until I found him. Not until I proved I wasn't losing my mind. The voice had been real. He'd been here. He had to be here.

"I know he's here!" I shouted, a growl of frustration as I attacked another bag, clawing through layers of sticky detritus, my fingers slick with grime. "I know it!"

Orange peel. Eggshells. Bread crusts gone green with mould. Nothing. Nothing but waste.

My hands were shaking. Sweat beaded on my forehead, running down my temples in rivulets. I could taste blood where I'd bitten the inside of my cheek without realising. I didn't care. I kept going. Another bag. Another explosion of refuse across the carpet.

Until—

"Karl!"

This time her voice cut through. Urgent. Sharp. Real. Different from before—not just calling my name, but commanding my attention.

Then: her hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me back from the edge.

Instinct took over.

I lashed out. My arm connected with her chest in a wild, uncoordinated motion. The impact was harder than I'd intended. Too hard. I felt the collision through my elbow—the solid resistance of her sternum, the give of soft tissue.

Sarah stumbled. Lost her footing. Her boot slipped on a crushed yoghurt container, and she went down.

Everything slowed.

Her arms windmilled, seeking balance that wasn't there. Her weapon clattered away, skittering across the floor. Her body twisted as she fell, trying to protect herself, but the angle was wrong.

Her head hit the wall with a sickening crack. The sound stopped time.

It was the sound of bone meeting plaster, of velocity meeting immovable object. A sound that couldn't be taken back.

I froze, every atom in my body going still.

She slid down, limp, a smear of red trailing after her.

Her hand had landed in shattered glass from the window I'd broken just this morning—thin shards sliced into her skin, crimson blooming across her palm and fingers, dripping in slow, steady beads onto the dark carpet. The blood was bright, arterial red, spreading in dark circles as it soaked into the fibres.

Her pistol lay just inches away, out of reach, useless now.

I stared, paralysed. Shock rooted me in place. My body finally catching up to the horror I'd unleashed.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, the words brittle and useless.

The apology hung in the air, as futile as everything else I'd done. Words couldn't undo the impact. Couldn't reverse the fall. Couldn't erase the smear of blood on the wall or the glass embedded in her palm.

Her blood was still falling. Drip. Drip. Drip. Each drop a metronome counting the seconds of my failure.

My own mind reeled. And somewhere, beneath the chaos, an older memory uncoiled—Jamie in the river, arms flailing, slipping beneath the surface. My voice calling out. My hands not fast enough. My failure, back then, reborn in this room.

Now, decades later, I'd failed to save someone else. Not through inaction this time, but through violence. Through the same reckless desperation that had defined every poor decision I'd made in the last forty-eight hours.

The past had never left me. It had only changed shape.

And now, it had taken Sarah down with it.

I backed away.

My boots crunched over broken glass and scattered rubbish. My hands were shaking, smeared with filth and Sarah's blood. I couldn't look at her. Couldn't stay in this room with what I'd done.

Through the door. Down the hallway.

Gladys's voice was shouting something, but the words didn't register. Just noise. Just fury and confusion washing over me like static.

Out of the house.

The cold Hobart air struck my face like a slap, but it did nothing to clear the fog. It only made it sharper. The winter afternoon had deepened whilst we'd been inside—the sun lower, the shadows longer, the temperature dropping towards freezing.

I kept walking.

Past our car.

Down the street.

Each step numb. One foot in front of the other. The basic mechanics of movement stripped of purpose or destination.

I didn't know where I was going.

Only that I couldn't stay.

The voice echoed in my mind: "Bye, Karl." Mocking. Impossible. Real.

Behind me, the house sat silent. Inside, Sarah lay bleeding.

And I walked away.