(Ten years earlier told from Gabriel's perspective)
Some say children forget the worst.
I do not believe that.
For some things carve themselves so deeply that even time cannot erase them.
Not darkness.
Not sleep.
Not prayer.
One remembers.
Not everything.
But what matters.
I remember a voice.
It was late. It was the autumn of the year 1886 in England.
The rain had ceased, but the wind remained.
In the distance, carriages rattled over cobblestones; gas lamps cast milky circles into the fog. The soot of the chimneys hung heavy in the air.
Our house stood at the edge of the hill, where hardly anyone lived anymore.
Stone walls, wooden beams, damp floors.
The cold crept through the cracks like a memory that refused to fade.
And a small bell tower, a few meters away, old and rusty, that sometimes rang when no one intended it.
We lived as five.
Father. Mother. Raphael, eight years old. Michael, six. And I, Gabriel, then ten.
An evening like many.
The prayer spoken.
Michael already asleep. Raphael still awake in his bed.
I stood downstairs in the hallway. Awake. Restless.
Against the wall stood the old chest we were never allowed to open.
And Mother had warned us never to let anyone in after nightfall.
Then came the knocking.
Three strikes.
Not loud. Not hurried.
Only calm, as if the one outside already knew someone would come.
I stepped closer. The wind drew through the cracks of the door. The air felt different. Heavier. Expectant. Almost as if something unseen was breathing along.
Then he spoke.
"Forgive me for disturbing so late."
"I am looking for an acquaintance of mine. She lives here, does she not?"
"I have something important for her it will not take long."
I hesitated. His voice was pleasant, almost soothing too smooth, as if every word had been carefully laid upon my ears.
"Who… are you, anyway?" I asked cautiously.
He answered calmly, with a kind of quiet familiarity:
"I know your mother well. I have not seen her for a long time."
"She would be disappointed if you did not let me in."
I hesitated again. Yet the voice seemed to tear the hesitation from my chest, as if I had never truly had a choice. He waited patiently.
"May I come in?" he finally asked polite, friendly, almost as if it were self evident.
His gaze rested somewhere just beside me not directly on my face, but deeper, as if he could find words I had never spoken.
"…Yes," I finally replied.
I opened.
Just as I opened the door, I heard from the back room the voice of my mother, who had apparently heard something:
"Which of you boys is still awake?"