There was something wrong with that boy.

Ms. Olivia Gurgette ducked her head down a little further into her jacket as the ever-present London rain misted lightly around her. The wet pavement reflected an angry red from the brake lights of stagnant cars sitting in morning traffic as she weaved herself carefully through the puddles spaced throughout the pedestrian sidewalk. Having crossed the road, she glanced a look up at her destination – Wool's orphanage. The austere brick building loomed forebodingly over the busy London street, conveying what could only be explained as a sense of judgement to the huddled passerby cowed from the rain. Having grown up only a couple streets over, Ms. Gurgette had never dreamed that in adulthood she would be working at the place she and all the other kids used to avoid when playing around the neighborhood. She could remember staring at the severe looking brick building on the bus ride to school, the rain streaking down the windows as lines of children clad monotonously in gray poured silently from the doors towards the public academy down the street. Heads faced down and dressed identically, Ms. Gurgette would stare out the window until the movement of the bus would morph them into a blending line of sameness, much in the same way she would observe a line of ants marching towards their hill.

Not much had changed about Wool's orphanage since the 15 years since she had sat observing from that bus in grade school – every day the heavy doors were propped open at 7 o'clock to pour out a stream of children dressed in gray only to swallow them back up promptly after school ended. The orphanage seemed to be never-changing staple of their local community, forever suspended in time to maintain the seemingly endless influx of orphans taken in from the misty London streets.

Something wrong with that boy.

Ms. Gurgette shook her head, trying to clear away the nagging unpleasantness gnawing at the back of her mind. It was a feeling that she had been unable to shake since she was called upon to assist with a peculiar disciplinary case earlier in the week. She kept trying to avoid thinking about it, but with her long walks to and from the orphanage and the silent nights that she spent alone in her apartment, it was hard not to let her mind wander.

…

It had been in the evening that past Tuesday when she had spotted Mrs. Cole walking towards her across the cafeteria, her downturned head and quickened pace conveying a sense of urgency. She had never seen the headmistress look so flustered – she was normally so calm and stalwart, a staple of dependability that the entirety of Wool's orphanage leaned upon. Nearing Ms. Gurgette, she brushed a few stray hairs away from her face and back into her bun before pursing her lips in what was attempting to be a smile but only came out as a grimace. She grabbed Mrs. Gurgette lightly by the wrist and whispered a few words about a disciplinary case (did she just say a rabbit?) and the two of them began moving quickly down the hallway, the red-faced gym teacher stepping in quietly to take her place watching over dinner. Along the way, Mrs. Cole breathily explained that there had been an incident between two young boys by the names of Billy Stubbs and Tom Riddle. Ms. Gurgette felt a faint pulse of recognition flit through her mind at the mention of the latter boy's name. Folding bedsheets in the laundry room the other day she had overheard two supervisors having a hushed conversation in the hallway about one of the children and she had remembered the last name of Riddle because of its uniqueness – like something out of the circus.

Continuing down the empty hallway, Mrs. Cole informed her that she had received a call earlier from the boys' teacher down at the school concerning an argument that had broken out between Billy and Tom during recess. Before Mrs. Cole had had the chance to call them down to the office to chat about Wool's behavioral expectations at school, she had been disrupted by a frantic knock on her door and the distressing wail of a child in the hallway. Opening her door, she had been greeted by the freckled face of Billy Stubbs, red-eyed and sniveling, as he stammered out something about his pet rabbit being murdered.

Mrs. Cole stated that she had followed Billy back to his room but seemed hesitant to elaborate upon what she had encountered. Ms. Gurgette thought to press the question but reconsidered as she noticed the clouded look in the headmistress' eyes and the unpleasant twitch edging the side of her mouth downward. Mrs. Cole further explained that she had come to fetch Ms. Gurgette in the hopes that she might recognize the accused boy, Tom Riddle, as someone that may have left the cafeteria over the past hour. The children had been confined in their rooms for study work since returning from school, so the only possible time for the action to have occurred would've been during dinner. Upon asking this, Ms. Gurgette struggled to keep her face placid as she felt a hot rush of panic flush through her chest, trying to remember all the faces of the children that had asked to take a trip to the lavatory. There had been that group of girls….yes. Then after them, there was that tall boy with the glasses, the shorter one with the chubby face, the one with the book and the one with the really blond hair… Damn it, she was forgetting some. She cursed herself silently for not paying enough attention.

Rounding the corner, the corridor grew noticeably darker, the majority of light illuminating the hallway pressing flatly through a doorframe at the end of the hall. Wool's orphanage had recently taken to cutting the lights in unoccupied areas of the building dependent on the children's schedules under the guise of an "environmentally friendly" approach that everyone knew was just a way to save money. The click of the two women's footsteps echoed loudly down the empty, dark hallway as they approached the illuminated doorway, Ms. Gurgette feeling awkward in the absoluteness of the silence. She felt…bare. A small chill crept quickly along the back of her neck and she had the sudden urge to whip her head around and stare down the darkness of the hallway. She could almost feel it, the darkness, trying to engulf her as she struggled to keep her footsteps from quickening. It was the panic she had felt as a child staring into a dark basement, the absoluteness of the uncertain threatening to swallow her up and make her it's prey. Her mind screamed for her to look back…run forward…get out of here, but she lifted her head higher and walked calmly towards the light. She was an adult after all, she needed to be rid of her childish fears if she ever expected to survive here.

Silently breathing a sigh of relief upon entering the room, Ms. Gurgette's eyes were immediately drawn to the long-eared, brown rabbit dangling limply on the end of a line of shoe-strings tied carefully to the overhead light fixture in the center of the room. She tried to hide the expression of horror from her face as she studied the matted fur, gaping open mouth and milky eyes of this rabbit that had so recently experienced death. She had heard of little boys pulling apart worms and microwaving frogs, but never anything like this. Realizing that she had her hand pressed up towards her mouth, she lowered it slowly upon feeling the steady gaze of Mrs. Cole resting upon her back. Right. She needed to be strong.

Pressing her eyebrows down into a glare of what she hoped conveyed stern displeasure, she turned to face the two boys sitting on the bed. A larger boy sat curled up in the corner, a freckled arm covering his face and moving rhythmically up and down in the cadence of the sobs echoing quietly throughout the room. The other boy looked up at her steadily with dark eyes, his face and shoulders carefully set to convey a sense of disinterest, but his eyes studying her over with curiosity. They locked eyes with each other for several seconds before she recognized him as the boy with the book earlier that had come up and asked her for the lavatory pass. While many of the other children's faces remained muddled in her memory, she remembered him distinctly because of the giant book that he had been lugging around. She had wondered why someone his age was attempting to read something like that…

"So…do you recognize him?" Mrs. Cole's voice cut sharply through her thoughts. Ms. Gurgette's cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment as she realized that she still hadn't said anything.

"Erm…yes. Yes, I do." She pointed towards the dark-haired boy. "He left the hall probably half an hour ago. Ma'am."

Ms. Gurgette expected the boy to do something—get angry or try to deny it maybe. But no, he just sat there quietly, still staring at her with those dark, vacuous, somehow curious eyes as Mrs. Cole let out a worried little moan and started towards him to lead him down to the office. Mrs. Cole asked her to kindly stay with Billy as she went to get this sorted out. Leading him into the dark hallway, the boy peered over the bony hand of Mrs. Cole set carefully on his shoulder to meet her eyes once more as he left. The whites of his eyes were all she could see before they were both swallowed entirely into the darkness. She struggled to turn her attention back to the sobbing child.

…

She could feel the overbearing shadow of Wool's orphanage hovering over her as she approached the entryway, her head still down-turned to avoid the monotonous drizzle. She'd been trying to forget about it, to tell herself that it was just something that boy's do…but she couldn't shake this feeling. This feeling that maybe there was actually something really wrong with that child.