Henry Barrow, better known as The Whistling Man, is the illegitimate son of George Barrow and Marie Campbell. He serves as the hidden secondary antagonist of Killer Frequency.
To see Henry's gallery, click here.
History[]
Henry was born out of wedlock, the child of Marie Campbell and George Barrow, a teenage couple in their senior year of high school at Gallows Creek High School. Before his birth, his father George died on the night of September 3rd, 1968, during a prank gone wrong, when Teddy Gallows Jr., together with some friends, staged an attack by the Whistling Man, the persona used by Edward Marshall Mooney, a local serial killer from the 50's who disappeared in the area, to scare their schoolmates at the high school football party they organized. Teddy pursued George to nearby Whistling Point, where the chase victim fell into the river below and drowned. To avoid a scandal, Teddy's influential father, Theodore C. Gallows, covered up the events behind his death and had a fixer, Clive Elforth, destroy evidence, coerce witnesses and officials into changing their testimonies and reports, and fabricate the story that George was a teen delinquent with a history of violence who died after getting drunk and passing out while swimming in a reservoir. His girlfriend Marie, however, had been with him that night and saw George fall down, being convinced that Teddy had pushed him. Marie was subsequently kicked out of home by her parents, who were unable to pressure their daughter into staying quiet due to power the Gallows family held in town, and after finishing high school, she left Gallows Creek, vanishing without a trace, with everyone unaware that George had impregnanted Marie before his death.
Living off the grid for the next 18 years, Henry was raised solely by his mother. Driven by her desire to avenge George and expose the true circumstances behind his death, Marie groomed her son into becoming an combative, stoic, and obedient accomplice for her own purposes. By all accounts, Henry did not exist, neither on any government record or as an actual person with his own opinions or thoughts, besides an obvious bloodthirst, having been trained from the ground up to assist his mother in her plan to kill those involved in the coverup, saving the ones who were part of the prank that killed George for last. While it is unknown whether Henry had killed anyone before their return to Gallows Creek, it was noted by Clive that he noticed a pattern in apparently unrelated murders across the U.S. targeting people he knew from his employment under Theodore Gallows and getting ever closer to Gallows Creek.
On the night of September 2nd, 1987, Henry and Marie, both donning matching outfits and the signature mask of the Whistling Man, descended upon Gallows Creek to exact Marie's revenge upon the town. While Marie targeted the sheriff's office to cut the phone lines and kill Sheriff Matthews, who signed documents with falsified info for the Gallows family, Henry broke into the Infinity Arcade, and waited for an unidentified person to come through the back door, ambushing and presumably murdering them.
Over the next few hours, several people who had some role in the coverup of George's death were targeted, before the mother-son pair moved on to those who were at the party in 1968. What they did not count on was that the town's radio station, KFAM on 189.16 - The Scream, through the efforts of show host Forrest Nash and producer Peggy Weaver, would be providing assistance to emergency callers in lieu of 911.
Just after midnight, Henry was targeting Sandra Sharpe, who found George's body washed up by the river, but ended up changing her story to match Theodore Gallows' new account, that claims that he was found by the reservoir, threatening her with an unaffordable rent for her beloved dance studio if she didn't comply. Sandra quickly noticed the knife-wielding man and fled back to her car in a hurry, losing her keys on the way to the parking lot. Sandra was now hiding out in her vehicle as Henry looked through all the parked cars. Sandra is connected with Forrest and takes his support, asking for assistance in hotwiring the car. If Forrest correctly instructs her, Sandra will be able to drive off back to her studio before Henry can get to her.
At 12:42 a.m., Henry is sent after Maurice Russell, who "killed the story" Marie presented to him about the night George died. After breaking in and entering the second floor, Henry blocked the stairway with some filing cabinets and proceeded to sweep the office for Maurice, who was hiding in the boardroom in the back, on the phone with Forrest for help. If he gives Maurice correct advice, Henry will be tricked into thinking that his victim was hiding in the secret archive room within the editor's office by using a radio tuned in to 189.16. Once he enters, Forrest will make a gloating remark about the killer getting caught, as Maurice shuts the door behind him and locks it, leaving Henry, realizing he's been duped, to angrily pound the door to no avail. After Maurice leaves to get backup to make sure the Whistling Man stays locked up, Marie has been listening in on the radio, heading over to free her son, then relocking the door to scare Maurice and his armed buddies when they come back.
Later either Marie or Henry overhear town resident Murphy challenging the Whistling Man over the radio and telling him to come to the Gallows Creek Waste Disposal to face him in unarmed combat. The pair freely deviates from their plan to teach Murphy a lesson, with Henry arriving at the rendezvous point and beats him senseless before locking him in a dumpster within the plant and setting the whole building on fire, simply for provoking him. Depending on Forrest's actions, Murphy can be saved just in time from certain doom.
When Forrest receives the follow-up call by either Jason Parker or, if he did not survive, Casey Moore, the power will go out, forcing him to go down and re-activate it in the basement storage. As he heads back, the Whistling Man's whistle will be heard and when Forrest goes back upstairs and finds Peggy's sound studio empty, Henry will appear in the floor behind him as he goes in to shut and lock the door. He then walks into the main chamber, as seen through dividing the glass, turn over the couch in front of it and point at the console in his room, indicating that he wants to put him through to a call. He proceeds to go over to the DJ station and lean on the counter as Marie talks to Forrest through the connection. Only when she reveals that she has Teddy Gallows Jr. hostage does Forrest realize that the Whistling Man in the studio is not Marie as he had thought, but rather her accomplice in the same disguise. She then tells him and the rest of the listeners in Gallows Creek to say hi to Henry Barrow, her and George's son, If Forrest does decide to greet Henry, he will not respond and instead make a throat-cutting gesture with his right hand, with his mother voicing some minor regret that she never taught him proper manners.
If Forrest let more than three individual callers or all of their companions die during the night, Marie will say that she wanted to give an interview on her motivations, but after seeing Forrest's terrible performance, she promptly cuts Teddy's throat and decides to just have Henry kill him before they leave town. Despite his pleas, Henry obeys his mother's words and beelines for the sound studio, grabbing Forrest by the neck and repeatedly stabbing him in the abdomen.
If Forrest saved enough people, Marie will go on a motive rant and recall the night George died, giving arriving Henderson police enough time to arrive at both the KFAM radio station and high school gymnasium Marie is in. Henry will notice the police lights below and approach the windows in apparent confusion before fleeing when the officers open fire, as his mother screams for him to run.
In the credits, it's revealed that one of the suspects has been caught, while the other is being chased up Whistling Point, where they refuse to surrender and instead jump off the cliff. It is never specified who it was, but given that Henry's location was surrounded with only one exit while Marie was last heard having escaped the cops, it can be assumed that it was Henry who was arrested and put into custody, now all alone from completely losing both of his parents and having never been socialized through his mother's enforced isolation.
Trivia[]
- Henry was inspired by several classic slasher villians, the defining characteristic of all being muteness:
- Henry's mask, his relatively young age and use of a knife are highly reminscient of Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.
- Henry's submissive relationship and deep attachment to, as well as motivation to kill for his mother, are traits shared with Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise, especially Part II.
- Henry's complete lack of social awareness, primary influence in his murders by family members, apparent use of a chainsaw and terrorizing of a small town are shared with Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
- The reveal of Henry is foreshadowed at a few points in the game:
- Maurice Russell continually refers to the Whistling Man who has broken into The Gallows Reporter as a teenager rather than an adult, even shouting "See you in hell, kid!" if he succeeds in trapping him in the secret archives.
- Murphy is adamant about the fact that the Whistling Man he faced at the waste disposal plant was male, despite hearing that the Whistling Man was identified as a woman in the previous call.
- If the Whistling Man in Carrie's phone call at Loramie Estate was Henry, it would make sense that the teens did not initially realize that the person in the Whistling Man costume was real, since Henry, being roughly their age, would not stand out considerably in height or build.
- It is purposely left somewhat ambiguous whether Marie or Henry is the Whistling Man threatening a caller. Some segments can however be definitely linked to Henry and vice versa:
- Marie is the one who attacks the sheriff's office before midnight, given her reaction to hearing about Sheriff Matthews in the Whistling Man's interview and the more intricate things done there, like knocking a victim out rather than killing her and cutting the phone lines to ensure no one calls help from out of town. Since the alleyway victim is killed around the same time, the Whistling Man seen in the prologue must be Henry.
- Since Marie stays at the sheriff's office to attack Leslie Harper and Deputy Martinez, with the attack on Sandra Sharpe on the other side of town occuring only a couple minutes after, Henry would be the offender during the call, having had plenty of time to walk over during Leslie's call.
- In the Whistling Man's interview, if Forrest helped Maurice survive, Marie will voice her anger over Henry being locked away "like an animal" by Maurice.
- In the same interview, in response to Forrest mentioning Murphy, Marie states that she taught Henry to never back down from a fight, showing that he was the one to have fought Murphy.
- Forrest can find a brochure for a high school play which reveals that Henry was named after the lead character played by George in a dramatized reimagining of Humpty Dumpty.
- Henry is shown to be quite strong on several occasions, like when easily beats middle-aged Murphy with his bare hands, is able to heave him up high enough to lob him into a dumpster, or when he vertically topples over the couch at KFAM with little effort. It is also possible, if it was him and not Marie, that he was able to effectively use a chainsaw to cut through hedges when the Whistling Man was heard hunting after Eugene Stine.
- Since his father died well before his birth, Henry would need to have been conceived in mid-1968 at the latest, making his likely birth date around late spring to early summer of 1969.
- It is unknown how no one noticed Marie's pregnancy throughout the months, especially since Marie actually graduated, as evidenced by her presence in the year book. It is possible that people did notice, but did not know or care that the baby was that of the late George Barrow. Given how Marie is only revealed to have been the culprit towards the very end, it is also likely that no one who had knowledge on her pregnancy thought it was a relevant thing to bring up with only two people actually saying they knew Marie, those being Roller Ricky, who admits only knowing her through seeing her with George the night he died, and Jason Parker, who is cut off before he can even say her name.
- Henry and Peggy are the only characters in Killer Frequency with actual models, with Marie being uncertain since the Whistling Man seen stalking Forrest when he goes into the alley to get Long Ride Home is never confirmed to be either her or Henry, who does get two confirmed appearances in the prologue and the final section of the game.
- While it's made clear that Henry has murdered at least one person, given his questionable mental state, life-long indoctrination by his mother and relatively young age, it can't be said for certain if Henry is really culpable, though he does show a twisted sense of enjoyment for violence when he optionally makes an implicit threat of murder to Forrest.
- With Henry being born in late spring - early summer 1969, he is around the age of 18 years old during the game as he presumably was born before September.