The air was warmer back then, or at least it felt that way in memory. Four children ran across the wide fields just beyond the schoolyard—Gabriel, Gemma, Zoë, and Ryan—shoes kicking up dirt, laughter carrying like fragile bells into the sky.
To anyone watching, it might have looked like a perfect scene: best friends chasing one another until they tumbled to the grass, breathless with joy. But even in memory, cracks showed through. The details refused to settle—was it spring or autumn? Was the sky golden, or dimming too fast into gray?
They slowed when the field ended and the woods began. The trees stood like waiting giants, their branches whispering with the wind. It was Ryan who first pointed. "Over there," he said softly, almost unwilling.
Beyond the tangled roots and fallen leaves was something they weren't supposed to see. A door? A shed? A half-buried structure with its paint long stripped away. Time had leaned it to one side, but it was still standing.
The children drew closer. Their laughter thinned.
Inside, through a crack in the wood, there was movement—no, not movement, a sound. A voice, low and sharp. Another voice replied, angry, clipped, words too muffled to make out. The children pressed closer.
Zoë clutched Gabriel's sleeve. Ryan's face had gone pale. Gemma did not move at all, her wide eyes fixed on the shadow shifting inside.
Then came the unmistakable sound: a name. One of theirs. Spoken in a whisper that should not have known them.
Zoë gasped. Gabriel pulled Gemma back. Ryan stumbled, shaking his head, whispering, "We shouldn't be here… we shouldn't…"
The memory blurred. The details fell apart like wet ink on paper. Whose voice was it? What exactly was said? All that remained sharp was the weight of dread in their small chests, the way the sunlight seemed to vanish too quickly, and how none of them spoke of it afterward.
They ran then, all four, but not together. Feet pounding the earth, away from the woods, away from the voices, away from the truth they were too young to understand.
And in the present, that memory lingered like a wound that never closed, its edges jagged and indistinct.