The storeroom was a cage again, the darkness thick and suffocating. The weak, yellow beam from the work light trembled in Ben's hand, casting dancing, distorted shadows across the packed shelves. Outside the thin wooden door, the madman, their accidental jailer, had fallen silent. The storm of thrown objects had ceased, but the silence that followed was not one of peace. It was the watchful, predatory silence of a beast that has successfully defended its territory. They were back to a stalemate, but the board had changed. Their opponent was no longer just a man; he was a force of pure, irrational terror.
Adekunle's back was pressed against a shelf of old radio transistors, the small, cold glass components digging into his spine. His mind, which had felt sharp and clear during the planning of their "ghost truck," was now a muddy, chaotic mess. All their cleverness, all their risk, had led them to this. A dead end. He felt a wave of hopeless despair wash over him, so potent it made him want to just slide down the wall and give up. They had failed. Funke was going to die.
"He is not a soldier."
Ben's voice, a low, rough whisper, cut through Adekunle's spiraling thoughts. He looked at his uncle. Ben was no longer looking at the door. He was looking at his hands, at the tools of his trade, as if seeing them for the first time.
"He is not Ikenna," Ben continued, his mind clearly working, turning the problem over and over, searching for a new angle. "The sound of a truck scared Ikenna because he is a rat who fears a bigger predator. This man… this man is not a rat. He is a ghost, haunted by his own mind. A loud noise will not scare him away. It will only make him build his walls higher."
Ben was right. Their last plan was a brilliant piece of theatre, but it was for a completely different audience. This man wasn't afraid of a physical threat he could see or hear. He was afraid of something far more insidious.
"The whisperers," Adekunle breathed, the word tasting like poison and opportunity. "He's afraid of whispers getting through the holes in his wall."
Ben's eyes met his in the dim light. The despair in Adekunle's chest began to recede, replaced by the faint, familiar spark of a new, insane idea. It was Ben who gave it voice.
"So we do not become a predator," he whispered, a strange, fierce light dawning in his eyes. "We become the ghost. We become the whisper he fears."
The despair vanished completely, burned away by the sheer, audacious genius of the thought. They couldn't break down his wall from the front. They had to make him believe his wall was already breached, somewhere else. They had to draw him away from the nest.
"A distraction," Adekunle said, his mind catching fire, the pieces clicking into place with a sudden, brilliant clarity. "Not a loud one. A soft one. Unsettling. We can't place it at the front of the shop; he'll never leave his barricade. It has to come from behind. From the yard."
"The hole we made in the fence," Ben added, picking up the thread. "He will think it is a new hole in his world. A place where the whispers can get in."
"We need a speaker," Adekunle was on his feet now, his earlier fatigue forgotten. He began scanning the shelves. "Not a big one like the Wharfedales. Something small. Something we can hide."
"The display models," Ben said, already moving to a different shelf. He rummaged behind a stack of old VCRs and pulled out a small, plastic-cased bookshelf speaker, the kind that came with a cheap mini-stereo system. Its wires were still attached.
The next problem was power. The speaker was passive; it needed an amplified signal. Their powerful Pioneer amplifier was back in their flat, a universe away.
"A car battery," Ben muttered, his eyes scanning the cluttered storeroom. "Mustapha brought in that battery from his danfo bus two weeks before… ah." He reached under a workbench and dragged out a heavy, grimy truck battery, its terminals showing a faint crust of corrosion. "It might still have a charge."
The final piece was the sound itself. Adekunle pulled out his phone. He had no recordings of whispers, but he had something else. He had his own voice. He opened the audio recording app, his hands moving with a new, feverish purpose. He held the phone close to his mouth.
"I see you," he whispered into the phone's microphone, his voice a low, sibilant hiss. "The hole in the wall… I can see you through the hole…" He recorded ten seconds of it, then played it back. Even through the tiny speaker, the sound was chilling. It was intimate and invasive.
He handed the phone to Ben. "Your turn. A different voice."
Ben took the phone, a look of profound distaste on his face. He was an engineer, a man of logic and concrete realities. Becoming a phantom in a madman's nightmare did not come naturally to him. But he looked toward the closed door, and Adekunle knew he was thinking of Funke. He cleared his throat and leaned into the phone. "We are waiting," he rasped, his voice lower, rougher. "We are coming. Soooooon."
Adekunle took the phone back and used a simple editing app to splice the two recordings together, looping them with long, unpredictable stretches of silence in between. The result was a deeply unsettling audio track: a disembodied, two-headed ghost that spoke in hushed, menacing tones from the ether.
The next hour was a masterpiece of silent, desperate invention. Ben, the master, went to work. He stripped the ends of the speaker wires and, using a pair of pliers and some electrical tape, carefully connected them to the terminals of the truck battery. It was a crude, dangerous connection that bypassed the need for a proper amplifier. It wouldn't be loud, but it didn't need to be. It just needed to work. A small spark jumped as he made the final connection, and he grunted with satisfaction. There was juice left in the battery.
While he worked, Adekunle took up the role of scout. He slipped out of the storeroom, back through the hole in the corrugated iron fence, and into the dark alley. His mission was to find the perfect spot to place the speaker. It had to be close enough to the hole for them to run the wire, but hidden enough that the man couldn't see it if he came into the yard. He found it almost immediately: a deep, hollow space inside a stack of old, discarded tyres near the wall. He could wedge the speaker deep inside, and the sound would emanate from the pile as if from the earth itself.
He returned to the storeroom. Ben had finished. The small speaker was now tethered to the heavy battery by a long, thin wire. Their weapon was ready.
"You place the speaker," Ben said, his voice low and decisive. "I will stay here and run the sound from the phone. When he leaves the nest, I will go for the tools. I know exactly where they are. I will be fast."
Adekunle nodded. There was no argument. Ben was stronger, better able to move the heavy workbench if needed.
They worked together to pass the heavy battery and the speaker through the narrow opening in the fence. In the alley, Adekunle carefully set up the trap. He fed the wire through the hole and back into the storeroom, then wedged the small speaker deep into the pile of old tyres. It was perfectly hidden. He gave the wire a single, gentle tug—the signal that he was ready.
He scrambled back inside the yard and took up a position in the deep shadow of the doorway, peering through a grimy window into the main shop. He had a clear, if partial, view of the fortress of junk. He could see the man, sitting silently in the middle of his nest, a lonely king on a throne of dust and wires.
He held his breath and waited.
Inside the storeroom, Ben tapped the play button on Adekunle's phone.
At first, nothing. Then, a faint, almost inaudible sound drifted from the yard.
"I see you…"
Inside the shop, the man's head snapped up. He looked around his fortress wildly, his eyes wide. He had heard it.
There was a long pause. The silence stretched, taut and agonizing. Then the second voice came, rougher, closer.
"...we are waiting…"
The man scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the shard of glass, his knuckles white. He wasn't looking toward the front of the shop. His gaze was fixed on the back wall, the wall that led to the yard. He took a hesitant step away from his barricade, his head cocked like a frightened bird.
"The hole in the wall…" Adekunle's voice whispered from the tyres.
That was the trigger. The man let out a strangled cry. "No," he whimpered. "No more holes."
He abandoned his fortress. He grabbed a heavy piece of scrap metal and began dragging it toward the back of the shop, toward the direction of the sound. He was going to patch the hole. The hole that wasn't there.
The moment the man's back was turned, Ben moved. He burst from the storeroom, a silent, grey blur. He didn't run; he moved with a low, predator's crouch. He reached the barricade and, with a surge of desperate strength, shoved the heavy workbench aside just enough to reach into the structure. His hands found the red metal case of the socket set. He pulled. It was wedged tight.
From the back of the shop, the man heard the noise. He turned, his eyes wild with confusion. His nest was being violated.
Ben gave one last, powerful heave. The toolbox came free with a loud scraping sound. He didn't hesitate. He clutched it to his chest and retreated, melting back into the darkness of the storeroom just as the man turned to face the threat.
The man stared at the new gap in his fortress, a look of profound, terrified confusion on his face. The whispers were coming from the back, but the wall was being broken from the front. The threat was everywhere. He let out a wail of pure, unadulterated despair and began frantically trying to push the heavy workbench back into place.
Inside the storeroom, Ben leaned against the closed door, his chest heaving, clutching the red metal box as if it were the most precious object in the world. In the faint light from the yard, Adekunle could see the triumph, the fear, and the profound sorrow etched on his uncle's face.
They had it. They had the key.