Whispering Iron

Whispering Iron is the black, metal-like remnant of a demon who has passed through the Black Door but who is unable to possess a human host. It is the material that the magical Keys are made of.

History

“

We can lock away your nightmares. We can unlock your dreams. Lock away the nightmares, unlock the dreams.

”

–The Whispering Iron to Benjamin Locke

Whispering Iron was first discovered by Benjamin Locke in 1775, during the Revolutionary War. A small contingent of Minutemen hiding in the Drowning Cave had an encounter with the Black Door, which they accidentally opened, resulting in Harm Timmerman becoming possessed by a demon who came through the portal. Other demons, unable to find hosts, fell dead and turned into Whispering Iron.

When Benjamin realized that regular steel would not hold the door shut, he used the first piece of Whispering Iron to forge a padlock and its corresponding Omega Key to seal the gateway. He later modified the padlock and made it a permanent part of the Black Door.

The Lockes used the Omega Key many times to obtain Whispering Iron for crafting magical keys. They gathered the Whispering Iron when the demons were unable to find a host. They did this successfully — with no record of demon possession — until the Tamers of the Tempest failed and Lucas Caravaggio was possessed.

In 2012, Dodge, with the Omega Key, opened the Black Door to harvest the Whispering Iron from the demons who passed through as material to craft more Keys. After Dodge was defeated, the Whispering Iron from the demons lured by Dodge were then used to forge other keys by the Lockes, beginning with the Keyhouse Key.

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In 1775, after a failed raid on the Lockes at Keyhouse, a contingent of British soldiers led by Frederick Gideon hid inside the Drowning Caves, where he and his soldiers uncovered an entrance to the demons' realm. The inhabitants were released in the form of blue bullet-like wisps. One demon flew out and became Whispering Iron; another possessed a soldier named Howe, and attacked the Minutemen that followed their trail but fell into the pathway when he was shot. Surrounded by the revolutionaries, Gideon willingly allowed the demons to possess him. He was ultimately captured by the American colonists and was sentenced to be hanged, though not before he wrote his final wishes into a journal with a piece of Whispering Iron enclosed for his descendants to find. The portal was subsequently shielded by the Black Door, effectively segregating the two worlds.

During his adolescent years, Rendell and his friends opened the Black Door. Only one demon successfully possessed a human — Lucas Caravaggio — as the other demons died and coalesced into the iron once they collided with the cavern walls. Rendell takes one of the bolts and conceals it with a fishing lure.

Twenty-five years later, after moving into Keyhouse, Bode, and later his siblings, heard eerie whispers that led him to the locations where the magical keys were in order to be found. Later, the Black Door is opened again by the Locke children and the Savini Squad, causing more demons to exit from the other side. Except for the one that enters Earth by possessing Eden Hawkins, many of them failed to enter a host and became Whispering Iron.

Dodge and Eden collect a couple of pieces of Whispering Iron from the cave, but the former's attempt to create the Demon Key fails. She tries to coax Chamberlin for aid, but he refuses, and her last piece of Whispering Iron is wasted. She takes the bolt mentioned earlier from Josh Bennett as an alternative to reopening the door. With only enough Whispering Iron left for one more try, Dodge forces Duncan Locke to successfully create the Demon Key for her.

After his girlfriend, Jackie, is possessed by a demon, Tyler becomes determined to create a key to "unlock" Jackie's soul from the demon. Tyler finds the piece of Whispering Iron his father hid in case of emergency, but only Tyler can hear the whispers. Duncan reveals that the creation of a key is "a conversation between the Whispering Iron and the key maker" and only the person who hears the whispers can use it to make a key. As a result, Tyler is forced to create the Alpha Key himself under the guidance of Duncan.

Description

“

...a black liquid that turns to a lightweight steel upon contact with oxygen; he refers to this stuff as "Whispering Iron."...

”

–Joe Hill describing the Whispering Iron in a 2017 interview.

Whispering Iron is named for its metallic appearance and properties, and by the faint whisper sounds it produces. Despite resembling metal, the material is said to be lightweight.

The full capabilities of Whispering Iron are broad yet extremely potent: being the main component of the magic keys, it can generate keys bestowed with any power in any form, with the only limit being the maker's imagination and intention. Whispering Iron can also be integrated into structures other than key-crafting, as was the case with the creation of the Mending Cabinet. It is implied that the demons that were turned into the iron still linger within, as Benjamin mentioned the inspiration for the Omega Key, along with the other keys he made, came from the metal "speaking" to him.

The Whispering Iron cannot be completely destroyed. No matter how hard a person tries, a small sliver of it will always remain.

Should Whispering Iron form inside a host body, it will leak out of the body orifices as the host suffers from the effects of metal toxicity, with symptoms of extreme discomfort, irritation, convulsion, and then death.

Appearances in other works

"Snapshot"

The Whispering Iron plays a role in the Joe Hill story published in Cemetery Dance magazine #74/75.

In Silicon Valley in the year 1988, a boy named Micheal finds himself being terrorized by a tattooed thug known as "The Phoenican" who possesses a Polaroid camera that has the power to erase memories one snapshot at a time.

In the end, the Camera breaks and from inside its shattered remains emerges a Child of Leng, alive briefly before turning into Whispering Iron. Micheal picks up the Whispering Iron and it immediately begins to whisper and tempt him, in "a voice that was ancient when Cyrus the Great crushed the Phoenician people under his heel".

“

Michael, O Michael, melt me down and build. Build one of your thinking machines. Build a com-puh-ter, Michael, and I will teach you everything you want to know. I will answer every question, Michael, I will solve every riddle I will make you rich I will make women want to fuck you I will—

”

–The Whispering Iron to Micheal

He stashes the Whispering Iron in a garbage bag in the back of his bedroom closet for several years. Micheal stated that that was the only time the Whispering Iron spoke to him directly, but it continued to whisper to him in his dreams. One of Micheal's nightmares was his father being possessed by a Demon.

Years later when he is studying at Caltech he melts down the Whispering Iron into an "integrated circuit board the size of a credit card" for his studies into computer memory systems. He later sells the technology to Apple Computers and becomes a millionaire. Micheal later states that:

“

If you have three thousand songs and a thousand photos on your phone, you’re probably carrying some of my work in your pocket. I'm the reason your computer remembers everything you don’t. No one has to forget anything anymore. I made sure of it.

”

–Micheal

This implies that the Whispering Iron is the secret behind the massive memory storage of modern computers, especially the memory capacity of mobile devices.

The Possessed Camera that can erase memories. Art by Gabriel Rodríguez.

The Possessed Camera that can erase memories. Art by Gabriel Rodriguez.

The smashed Camera revealing a Child of Leng. Art by Gabriel Rodriguez.