It happened this way. There was a person whose mind became twisted. He was a pawwaw, one of the old-time medicine people who could speak with the spirits. This man became selfish. All that one could think of was himself, about gaining more power. So he turned to the dark spirits. He gave them something. He gave up the daylight, and in return they gave him the power to live and keep living. The one with the twisted mind hid from the sun. When the clean light of the sun returned at dawn, he hid in the darkness of night and in the deep caves that go beneath our ancient hills. His fingers turned into claws and his teeth grew long. His hunger was such that he began to hunt other people, cutting their throats with his razor-sharp claws so that he could drink the blood of his victims. All that made him human left him, and he became nothing but hunger. He became a monster. But it was not only blood that he thirsted for. He fed on the fear of his prey. Darkness grows stronger when there is fear. Few ever saw him, but our people knew that he was there. Those who were given messages in dreams knew about him. They knew that before the twisted-mind monster took its victim, the one it chose would hear a voice. A whisper. A whisper in the dark. Only when you were his chosen victim did you hear the Whisperer’s voice, but you didn’t see him, not yet. The old stories say that no one ever sees the Whisperer in the Dark when it first lets you know it’s chosen you as its prey. You just hear its voice that first time. It plays with you, like a cat playing with a mouse, making you more and more terrified. It is only later, perhaps even days later, after you have become scared enough, that it will really come for you with its razor-sharp claws. Soon, very soon, it is going to come for me.