Children of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 1)

by T. Wyse

  She continued in this way, finishing the third long case, Melissan had since begun to polish the wall gallery's glass surface. The odd obfuscating grime seemed intent to give the entire room its equal share of filth, regardless of angle or awkwardness. There was even a layer at the bottoms of the display cases, and to Amelie’s astonishment, even coating the roof of the room.

  She paused a moment, the sight of the grime clinging to the ceiling filling her with an unease. The air seemed to grow heavy around her, the breath of the two others in the room slowed, the lines slurred and unsure.

  There was something about the room, something had changed. Her eye, frantically probing the room for darting shadows rested instead on an anomaly in one of the vertical display cases. Their colour was strange, while everything was reflecting a pale blue glow from the lanterns, these artifacts somehow appeared green in the light.

  Amelie realized what it was and approaching with caution found herself turning the lantern off, to be sure of what she saw. Melissan's polishing stopped, Amelie felt her gaze watching carefully.

  It wasn’t the dark thing, nothing so easy to express. She stared at them, not glowing but strangely not darkened entirely, they were almost...

  "What do you see?" Melissan's voice was deadly serious.

  "It's funny, they're almost..." Amelie trailed off, gazing at the strange objects, they were almost...singing, but expressing it in a way that her perceptions simply could not process.

  "What do you see!?" Melissan's hands were on Amelie's shoulders suddenly, gripping them tightly.

  "They're...glowing." Amelie said, snapping out of her strange trance, the strange hanging of the air freed slightly.

  "Listen to me, you must answer me truthfully." The older girl's gaze was frantic. "Do you hear anything?"

  "Hear, anything?" Amelie parroted, confused.

  "Voices, whispers, anything!" Melissan shook her with fierce urgency.

  "Well, I..." Amelie focused on the objects again. Her head swayed, hypnotized. "I think I can...I hear them say—"

  "NO!" Melissan screamed, and forced Amelie to lock eyes with her. "Listen to me, you MUST deny it, you MUST hear nothing!"

  Amelie felt a chill down her spine. Melissan's eyes, while impossible to tell from the light, featured the tiniest speckles of green. More strange, and more dire, was the repetition of those sparks in her very breath, bearing the faintest taste of the hidden meanings of those glowing lines Kokopelli had drawn. The green specks glowed like emerald sand, outnumbered by the glowing vaguely yellow breath and whatever her normal eye colour was, indistinguishable in the light from the artificial torches.

  "Repeat after me: 'I hear nothing.'" Melissan ordered.

  "What will that do, what do you mean?" There were the faintest of whispers, she could almost make them out...

  "I hear NOTHING!" Melissan shook her again, her eyes frantic and tearful.

  "I... I hear nothing." Amelie said, conceding. With that the voices seemed to wane, seemed to fade away, the magic of the words banishing them into whatever unknown darkness they had emerged from.

  "Good. Good." Melissan repeated to herself. "We're done here." She declared.

  "We aren't even half done..."

  "No. We're done." Melissan made a sharp whistling sound, and grabbed the cart of cleaning supplies. The figure of the little girl came into clarity, standing beside the older girl, silent.

  "I'm fine, really." Amelie said, reigniting her light. "I don't see anything, I don't hear anything." She declared. It was the truth the light, surely an illusion, surely a byproduct of the blue lamps, had vanished. The voices too. What had not vanished, however, was that strange glow in Melissan's frantic and afraid eyes.

  "No. Come." Melissan declared, opening the door and pushing the cart outwards. The little girl gave a graven nod towards Amelie, following the older out.

  As the door swung behind her and hovered open in the apex of its swing Amelie felt something there. She swore she saw the greenish glow, rising up. She denied it, yet dared not turn around. She stumbled behind the other two, a rising chorus of whispers running up her back like unnaturally melting ice. They were cackling, bolder, brasher, the entire room seemed abuzz, alive.

  Finally the moment ended, and the door’s closing snuffed out the voices, the green glow still lingering softly against their blue halos.

  "Don't look back. Don't think about it, just follow me." Melissan's voice was dry and desperate. "It's nothing. Don't even think about it."

  They turned right, the star field intermixed with the denied green. They followed the path sharply left again, passing the doors to the stairs.

  "We aren't going to the stairs?" Amelie asked with urgency.

  "Why would we?" Melissan replied with a coolness. The glow was gone now, they were alone in the darkness of the false stars, three tiny blue suns central to the little universe.

  She led them through a short hallway past the doors, and stowed the cart in a small closet like room.

  "What was th—" Amelie started, sensing a break in the tension.

  "Not here." Melissan declared, leading her to the doorway of the stairs.

  With the doorway behind them, Melissan was somewhat bolder, more relaxed. "We'll talk, when we're out of the old building." She said flatly. They rose two flights of stairs, then another, standing on the landing of the second floor, the light of the day filtering through one of the out of place mosaic windows. The torches were extinguished, leaving them with the quilted red, green, blue, and yellow light shining through the filtering glass.

  Melissan sighed, wiping sweat from her forehead, her head leaned back, eyes closed. E leaned on Melissan’s shoulder, her gaze empty and unmoved by their strange misadventure.

  "If you're going to survive here, you have to learn what not to see." Melissan declared finally, her voice utterly flat. "Learn that if you've seen something undeclared, something subtle, that you didn't see it. That's all you need to know." Melissan faced Amelie, eyes still closed. "Can you do that, Amelie?"

  "I think I can." Amelie replied then realizing the true answer, corrected herself. "I can." She said her faith in that statement solid.

  "Good." Melissan opened her eyes, showing a deep hazel, devoid of any strange flecked emeralds. She breathed heavily, recovering from some incredible weight Amelie hadn't noticed.

  "The basement, it used to be classrooms, it used to be...normal." Melissan declared. "It still is, of course, completely normal." She sounded, a mantra recognized. "It's...completely normal...how that stuff, that film forms in that room, on the glass...every single day, always that thick no matter what. Completely normal. It didn't happen before, back when this was just a school, yet it's nothing strange." Melissan's gaze locked on Amelie, with hypnotizing urgency. "There are no voices, there is nothing to see, nobody has been acting strange, nothing to be worried about."

  "No...no song." Melissan whispered to herself.

  Amelie was at a loss for words. The strange doublespeak was hard to decipher, and made her head spin.

  "It's almost like...the white stuff, is alive, alive and breathing, alive and shedding...NO!" Melissan shut her eyes tight. "No, it's nothing like that of course, nothing so absurd." She made an unconvincing chuckle.

  "I was in the engineering program. This is my last year here." Melissan smiled, wrapped in some personal joke.

  Her eyes gazed up at the window panes absently. "The Professor, he found all that. All the machines, all the figures, all the seeds. He knows more about them than anyone else, found them himself under the school buried in the dirt. What a mistake." The older girl sighed to herself. "There used to be sections leading under the towers too, huge machine rooms under both the bases. They got buried when the Wave came. It was one of the first orders, after figuring out what supplies we had. We were to dig out the base of his tower. See, the machine underneath used to be as quiet as the one where you sleep." Melissan's eyes opened again, frantic as ever. "But now it's alive. No, no
. Not alive." Her eyes closed again, tears flowing down. “Just running.”

  "I got away, thank God. I thought I would help, I said to The Professor that I would take care of the stunned kids, the ones who couldn't take the change, at least the ones that would move. Put a rag in their hand, give them something to do, that was the idea. Then Eilis got hurt, her hand, I saw it. I think...I think the machine bit her, no not bit her, nothing ridiculous like that." Melissan held her head. "Then they all started changing, their eyes, their faces, their hands..." She trailed off.

  "No, they didn't change, did they?" Amelie added, trying to be helpful, trying to help the older girl stay in her fortress of denial.

  "No, of course not." Melissan smiled at Amelie, opening her eyes again. "I just want to run away, run away even into the nothing night, anything to be away from here." Her words stuttered, staggered. "But then, what would happen to the people I watch, the little ones." She concluded, hugging her little shadow tight.

  Amelie sat there beside the older girl, watching the tendrils of her hoarse, frantic breathing. She watched the light move across, its colours were beautiful, even the green.

  "I think, I think it's time for you to go help in the kitchen." Melissan smiled, her facade of calm returned.

  "I didn't hear anything you said." Amelie smiled.

  "Of course not, I didn't say anything. Everything's just perfect." Melissan returned the farce.

  The process of lunch puttered along with a smoother pace than before. She took up the cleaner without prompting and smoothed the vegetables with an ease that would have surprised her old self. She lagged behind the other two of course, their practiced hands devouring the chore, but she allowed herself to bask in even the slightest warm confidence.

  Today, however, was slightly different. For one, instead of simply stewing vegetables in soup, they also took the time to shred and mash them into loaves, setting them into oiled pans to be fed into a conveying oven. Lyssa herself met the finished loaves as they exited, tossing them into neat rows to cool on the counter. The steaming cakes filled the room with a new, muskier savory odor.

  It only took ten minutes or so for Amelie to sense something else that was different. Lyssa seemed off somehow, edgy, quick to anger. She warned them about being too slow in harsh tones, being extremely critical and picky of their work done. In the furthest example of this Amelie foolishly dropped a glob of the vegetable mash on the floor, which was met with a yelling outburst by the woman, followed by a looming silence as the three children finished their work.

  "Go." Lyssa declared, as they were about to lean against the counter like the day before. They left, into the darkened cafeteria, returning to their table. The room was naked save for their three lights, three conspirators in all the universe.

  "Was it me? Did I do something wrong?" Amelie asked, breaking the awkward silence. "I mean, other than dropping that on the ground." That clumsiness was something her old self would’ve found familiar.

  "No, it's just..." Wendy started, trailing off, unwilling to finish.

  "Something happened last night, middle of the night." Craig came in, bolder than Wendy. "The night watch, they say a boy came alone through the darkness, can you imagine that?'

  "It's just a rumor Craig." Wendy chastised.

  Craig ignored her warning and continued. “We have people posted at the main doors, and he basically tells them he is coming inside to speak to the person in charge. He tells them, not asks. They stopped him, and warned him that’s just not how it goes here, but he isn’t having any of that.” Two blue wisps entered the gym, the white monolith of the door to the hallway opened and shut. Craig's voice went down to a subtle whisper. "Turns out The professor's awake, and for some reason he doesn't turn the boy away, or insist on the rules, he sees him right away."

  "That's not normal." Wendy replied. "Professor Barret's big on these things, order and procedures. It must’ve been something really important, but nobody’s talking.”

  "Thought it was just rumors." Craig shot at Wendy, then continued. "So the boy leaves, furious. He yells at the night watch when they try to insist he stay, fights both of them off, and...this is the worst part..." Craig leaned in, his voice dripping with venomous intent. "He goes back into the night."

  "Did...the crows try to get him?" Amelie asked, suddenly interested.

  "No, that's the thing. One of the night watch got hurt, dislocated his arm when the boy threw him. The other one chased after him, went into the night. She couldn’t find the boy, like he just up and disappeared, but she saw something out there. She swears, she swears she saw two dogs out there; one black, one white. She came back inside quick." Craig let out a softly macabre chuckle.

  "Just a rumor though. Nothing solid." Wendy insisted.

  "Of course not. But that's what people've been saying." Craig grinned.

  The door opened and more lights lit up the darkness, fleshing out the room's dimensions. Amelie looked over, and saw Melissan and E sitting lonely at their table.

  "Come on, let's sit with them." Amelie declared, raising her lantern.

  "She doesn't want us over there," Craig said, dismissively. “Priv or not, she doesn’t want us around.”

  “Shh.” Wendy glared, but then added, “But he’s probably right, she doesn’t want—”

  "Sure she does." Amelie got up, and staggered, waiting to see if they would follow. They didn't. Wendy gave an apologetic shrug, Craig glowered silently.

  She came to the table with Melissan and the little girl, placing her hands officiously down on its surface. "Do you care if we join you?"

  “Care?” Melissan sighed. “I suppose it’d be nice to have people to talk to.” She stroked E’s hair gently. “Haven’t had much reason to speak in days.”

  Amelie waved at her former table, with her two friends glowering there, unsure of themselves. Amelie rolled her eyes when they sat there, unmoving.

  "You wave at them." Amelie declared finally.

  "I don't..." Melissan looked over at the two blue faces, they both broke their gazes, but furtively kept their eyes at the table where Amelie stood.

  Melissan gave a wave to the other table, soft and slow, beckoning them over. The two faces moved, seeing the indication and made the motions of muttering between themselves. Amelie made a mock gesture of annoyance, hands on hips, then made a beckoning motion with her finger this time. Melissan let out a low giggle, and finally the two stepped up with reluctance, and slunk over to their table.

  "So good of you to join us." Melissan grinned at the three of them sitting across the table from her. "Why didn't you come over sooner?' She gave a half smile.

  "Well you know..." Craig wasn't so bold now.

  "We figured you didn't want us around, like before." Wendy cut through the waffled discomfort. "I don’t think either of us have had any good encounters with you...well back then.” She smiled meekly.

  "Different days. Not so popular anymore." Melissan chuckled softly, looking down at her blank-faced ward. "That was a lifetime ago. We were all different people,” she said with a soft remorse.

  "All together then?" A server had arrived at the table, and allotted them each a wedge of the vegetable mash-loaf. He had a scowling regard for their group, lingering for a moment to scope their table before disappearing back into the kitchen.

  "Well, looks like we're fuel for gossip now." Wendy grinned stupidly.

  "Looks like." Melissan suppressed a smile, but her voice had a happier tune. "I'm glad you came."

  The table seemed so much brighter, with five lights sitting atop it.

  The afternoon hours seemed a warm comfort when compared to the denied strangeness in the basement of Macca. Melissan had produced a nearly identical cart to the one earlier in the day from a small alcove at the end of the cafeteria where Amelie had sat the day before.

  The first order of business was a cursory scrub down of the cafeteria itself. Amelie and E were to begin with a washing of the tables, then assist Melissan
with the floor sweeping. They all stood separated, even more so in the emptiness of the blackened space, each represented only by their torches glowing against the darkness.

  Oddly enough, the tables seemed much easier to clean than the room downstairs, and the chore went by with relative ease. The floor was a tougher beast to slay, as it seemed to have a thin layer of the silent dirt from outside crusted along its length in snaking paths. She mused on how easy this was to ignore when one wasn’t responsible for its cleaning.

  "Pretty creepy huh?" Melissan's voice echoed in the empty gym. They had met at the dustbin once or twice, the chore almost done, they took a moment to relax.

  "I guess so, not as creepy as..." Amelie stopped herself as Melissan tensed up. "No, much creepier than anything I've seen, by far." Amelie winced, forcing the flurry of memories from her mind.

  "In the old days, we used to have track lighting in here. Well, we still do." Melissan glanced upwards. "There aren't any windows, because it's all that white stuff in the wall here." Melissan indicated at the wall towards the back of the room.

  "I've actually thought about that, couldn't they have used ear protection, like they do with jackhammers?" Amelie asked the girl, remembering a passing thought as she had sulkingly peeled vegetables after being yelled at.

  "They tried that, even tried bringing deaf workers in." Melissan leaned on her broom, pensively. "You really really have to experience the sound to fully understand it. It's not so much something you hear with your ears even, it's something that saturates your bones, it clings to you like a skunk's stink. It's impossible to describe, but it's also something you're richer for never experiencing, trust me." Melissan moved her thumb over the head of the broom, anxiety showing through.

  "What about machines, like robots, stuff like that?" Amelie asked, curious.

  "You really would do well in our special classes I think. You certainly are persistent enough." Melissan smiled, her eyes closed.

  "There weren't any unmanned machines when the place was being made, the core building was built in the 1800's. Well not unmanned in the way we think now." She mused, thoughtful a moment.