CHAPTER ONE
An abnormal number of crows roosted in the oak trees that surrounded Wammy's House, doing very little for the reputation of the place that was often claimed to be cursed if not because of the house's previous occupation as a mental asylum, then surely because of the great misfortune that followed the children around the building like a veil for a bride.
At the time of her moving in, Y thought it a particularly unusual thing, but as she grew older and grew away from the house and its many guests she began to understand that the crows were attracted to the house because it was a place surrounded by death.
The very granite it was built up of, a brilliant grey granite that shone like silver in the rain, was often used for tombstones, coming from a local quarry. The black cast iron gates were designed just as well to keep things in as it was to keep people out, a barrier in its own right against the damned that haunted that place.
She would go forth at night as a guard, making sure the children were not wandering around at unnatural hours with only the slippers on her feet and the torch in her hand, not that she was entirely incapable by herself. Anyone that knew her knew that solely because she was barely above five foot tall did not mean that she was fragile, with years on the streets behind her and many years of hard training making her appear far more sturdy than her attire suggested.
It was a cold November evening and the night had fallen with the fall of five, the night hours stretching out before her like a long, looming shadow that followed her through the dark corridors of the house, the floorboards creaking underneath her as her torch shone in the darkness; a single speck of hope in such emptiness.
She knew the stories well, had heard them told many times by the children. Of strange faces and whispers in the night, of pinched toes and pale figures that stood in the corners of ones vision like specks of dust drifting in the wind; barely comprehending their own solemn existence.
A pity, she would think as she walked through to the East Wing where no living child survived, that they be trapped so. She personally knew many of the supposedly dead that haunted Wammy's House, claiming them precious in her own life and finding each death a new twist of the knife in her still beating female heart.
It was masochism to tolerate the stories, she knew. There was no good to be had in listening to them, and yet she could not help but be drawn to the places where children claimed to see their ghosts. Where the space between the living and the dead was so thin she could prick it with her thumb nail.
"Hello?" She would whisper into the emptiness before her. Like a sweet embrace, a sensation came over her. A blanket over her shoulders, a secret promise with words she could not understand.
She was not alone. There was a presence around her, but she could only feel it, not see it.
"A… A is that you?" She called him by his letter first for to call by his name was to make it too real. It was to acknowledge that the hanged boy she had so desperately fallen for was still trapped in this wretched place with the noose still wrapped around his neck, and that he was trapped in his suffering. It was a thought she could barely stand. "Please… if that's you, give me something to work with."
The light flickered off, and she was left in the complete darkness. She remained where she was, waiting, hoping for a sign that he was not angry with her for abandoning him that day. The day she finally snapped and fled the house by foot swearing to never return; too many tragedies had happened in such a short time she was too young to understand it.
In the distance she could see it. A vague white blur amongst the night, caught in the moonlight of an open window. She stepped forward, her slippers muting her footsteps as she drifted towards the ghost that so beckoned her forward.
It was only there for an instant, then it was gone. There was the flash of her torch light, and it was in front of her screaming with rotting mouth and rotting eyes, reaching forward with its blackened hands. She pulled away and it vanished before her.
She knew, then, that A had not forgiven her for what she had done. It did not matter that she had returned, she had left him behind and he would never forget those seven long years without company.
She grabbed her torch and fled, leaving her blanket behind.
The next morning, she dared to tread in the space of the former East Wing once more. Her blanket was found folded next to the open window, a withered flower, if it could truly be called that, sat on the top staring at her with all the promises of forgotten years before her.
She picked up the blanket and wept.