Excerpt from The Whistler by Nick Medina
His eyes snap open and all he knows is fear.
Whether the distress Henry feels manifested before he woke in response to a nightmare he can’t remember or if it only flooded his body the instant his eyelids went up isn’t clear, nor is it important for him to figure out. What is important is how he’ll escape. If he ever can.
His jaw flexes and a scream that would bring Pawpaw Mac and Mawmaw Tilly running from their room at the end of the hall wants to tear out, but it doesn’t. He can barely take a breath deep enough to feel like he’s not on the verge of suffocating. Somehow since going to bed, the blanket has moved up around his neck, like a snake constricting tighter by the second.
He tries to move his arms, but they’re buried beneath the blanket, a thousand pounds heavier than when he went to bed, pinning his arms to his sides. Even if he could move them, they’d do little good because his legs aren’t moving either and without them, he’s stuck, as if the mattress were made of quicksand, as if the sheet beneath him were one large piece of flypaper.
The figure standing at the foot of Henry’s bed, however, has no problem moving at all.
A canvas of black, it’s long, lean, and silent. It might not even have a mouth. Its arms dangle from shoulders that look sturdy and strong.
The figure takes a step closer to the bed. Its black fingertips graze the blanket covering Henry, only inches from his feet, which stick up like two pieces of wood. Kindling, maybe. If the figure were to set them ablaze, there’d be nothing Henry could do to put them out. He can’t kick. If he could, he would, but his legs feel impossibly heavy—pinned as if the hammer of a mousetrap has come down upon them, trapping him. The fear inside him swells, giving rise to panic that makes him want to cry. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, the panic. He’s been overwhelmed a lot over the last year, by anxiety alarm, hopelessness, and dread.
He tries to swallow, but still he’s rendered silent, as if he and the shadow man have become reflections of each other. Except the figure can move. It takes another step closer, pressing its thighs against the foot of the bed.
Just breathe, Henry tells himself. Because he won’t last long if he doesn’t do that. But maybe that would be better, he thinks. To let himself asphyxiate before the shadow man can inflict a fate much worse. It’s not the first time he’s had thoughts like that. Sometimes he wishes he would have winked out before he got to know the meaning of hell on earth. He’s often wondered if the Reaper’s hand would be gentler than the impact of a fiery car crash or a freefall from the top of a tall building.
Henry breathes. He gasps. The blanket pulls tighter. They told him to close his eyes and count during moments like this, when the panic becomes so overwhelming that doom seems certain and inescapable. But he can’t close his eyes now. Not with the specter looming over him.
Excerpted from The Whistler by Nick Medina Copyright © 2025 by Nick Medina. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
A young man is haunted by a mythological specter bent on stealing everything he loves in this unsettling horror from the author of Indian Burial Ground and Sisters of the Lost Nation.
For fear of summoning evil spirits, Native superstition says you should never, ever whistle at night.
Henry Hotard was on the verge of fame, gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost-hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now, he's learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents’ care while he recovers.
And he’s being haunted.
His girlfriend, Jade, insists he just needs time to adjust to his new reality as a quadriplegic, that it’s his traumatized mind playing tricks on him, but Henry knows better. As the specter haunting him creeps closer each night, Henry battles to find a way to endure, to rid himself of the horror stalking him. Worried that this dread might plague him forever, he realizes the only way to exile his phantom is by confronting his troubled past and going back to the events that led to his injury.
It all started when he whistled at night....
Audiobook Narrator- Shaun Taylor-Corbett.
Horror [Penguin, On Sale: September 16, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593820407 / eISBN: 9780593820414]
Born in Chicago, Illinois, and a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, Nick Medina writes horror, crime, and mystery fiction that pairs social issues with local and Native American folklore. In addition to writing, he enjoys live music, ghost stories, and spending time with family. His third novel, The Whistler, will be available September 23, 2025.
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