Whispering Voice

"Mummy, Mummy"

The whispering voice was heard in the disturbed dreams of Velma Johnson that repeated itself over and over till it jarred the poor woman awake. "Betty, Betty", she called in the haziness of her sleep, but no answer came. Velma Johnson rubbed her weary gray eyes as she sat up on the bed; notes of tiredness ran through her meager frame causing a strain on her overworked body. The woman stretched her thin arms and then arched her back trying to find a bit of relief from the misery of her aching bones. "Lordy, Lordy," she exclaimed through the thinness of her voice, "Keep hearing my por' darlin' Betty callin' out t' me ever she had been a'missing!"

Velma Johnson spread herself again on the bed grabbing the thin covering blanket in an anguished grip. "Ah knows mah lil' child be alive, ah knows 'hit", she repeated to herself as she squirmed her thin angular body on the tortured mattress, "ah knows she be alive!" The springs of the bed groaned as the poor woman tossed and turned in her attempt to return to her sleep, but the thoughts of her missing child returned in nightmarish repetitions in her dreams. It was the same haunting dream of a brilliant light that illuminated varied shadows and forms circling a semblance of a small figure. The nightmarish scene of a small figure with arms raised, calling out to her in a pathetic voice, pleading for her mummy forced her time and time again to wakening.

Betty Johnson was reported missing from her home set in the poorer districts of the Bayou County; it was through Velma's call placed to the sheriff the past Friday. The six-year-old girl was pictured by the mother as a beautiful little lass with golden hair. But, the veteran lawman knew from experience, that the children from these families in this depressed area were usually skin and bones, snotty and dirty on their freckled features, and topped with mussed streaky hair. "According to the near neighbors," she continued in the slur of her tongue, "that her Betty was last seen bare footed, dressed in a faded print dress, and dragging a raggedy cloth doll around the yard of her home."