It was late at night, and the crescent moon hung high in the sky above. The room was almost totally dark, illuminated only by the hazy blue light that was streaming in from the window on the left wall. The little boy could just barely make out a shadowy figure rummaging around in the corner beside his bed.

“Who’s there?” the boy whispered cautiously.

“It’s me, Elrin,” the figure replied without turning around.

There was more movement, and then a creaking sound. The young boy recognized that the doors of his wardrobe were being opened.

“Whacha doin’ here?” asked the boy as he took a few more steps into the room upon realizing that he was in no danger.

“I’m leaving- tonight,” Elrin responded. There was another creaking sound, and then a soft tap as the wardrobe doors were shut.

The boy gripped the coverlet of his bed in sudden alarm.

“Elrin, you can’t- you know what mother would say,” he insisted as he watched Elrin stuffing clothing into a burlap sack. “Besides-“

“Oh hush up,” and as he said this, Elrin turned around. His face was suddenly illuminated by the moonlight.

“Your left eye is bleeding!

“I know it- it’s going to be all right,” Elrin replied with a crooked smile. His offending eye was closed, and the eyelid was dark and swollen.

“What happened?” the boy asked in a hushed voice.

“You’ll know soon enough,” was all Elrin said in reply. He turned back to packing the clothing and other items and quickly finished while the younger boy looked on in silence.

“I thought you’d be asleep when I came in here,” Elrin said as he slung the sack over his shoulder.

“I was, but the people in the walls woke me up, so I went to have a drink of water.”

“You know that we don’t talk about them.

To this, the boy said nothing. Elrin turned and glanced out of the window, and a distant look came over his face.

“I hope I’ll be able to make it out of here okay,” he whispered, mostly to himself. “It’s a relatively dim night, and plenty of it left before morning.”

“Can I come?” the boy asked eagerly.

“No- you know what mother would say,” Elrin replied sternly.

“That’s what I told you!” the boy responded, feeling highly indignant.

“Hush up,” Elrin said again.

“Will you ever come back?”

Elrin smiled his crooked smile once more.

“We’ll see.”

“Will I remember?” the boy asked, in a strange, hollow voice.

“Maybe you will.”

“Elrin-“

The boy didn’t get to finish his sentence. Elrin approached him, and then laid a hand across his forehead. All of the sudden, everything around him seemed to fade into a bright, golden light…

Chapter One

For the longest time Day could remember, he had always been aware of other beings around him. They were invisible, and for the most part, silent. When they did speak, it was faintly- almost like a mere thought in his head. In fact, the primary way that he was able to register their presence was by the spots of either hot or cold pressure that he would find himself coming upon- or rather coming upon him, in some ways- as he meandered through the mansion.

Even though it could be considered a mansion, there was hardly anything impressive about it. It was old and dusty, complete with creaky staircases and cobwebs in the corners of the ceilings. Almost all of the furniture was gone. Presumably the previous owners had sold it off to pay off their insurmountable debts. Day’s parents- that is, his mother and stepfather- had never been able to afford to furnish the ridiculously large dwelling.

Day could not remember his biological father, and wasn’t sure if he had ever known him. His stepfather had died when he was about six years old. Day had not been close to him. He had been a harsh and authoritative man who was given to angry, and sometimes violent outbursts at the slightest provocation. Day’s mother, however, had been devastated by his death. She had once been a beautiful woman, but after her second husband’s death she had fallen into a lifestyle of misery and gluttony. She had aged dramatically and packed on nearly one hundred pounds. There was an even worst side effect, however, of her depression and anxiety.

She sleepwalked.

Day remembered vividly the first time that he had ever seen it happen. It was maybe a month after his stepfather’s death.

On a certain dark and unparticular night, he had wandered downstairs for a cup of milk. As he walked the hallway leading towards the kitchen, he was surprised to see the dim glow of candlelight coming from within. He turned left and hesitantly tiptoed into the room. He was startled to see his mother standing in front of the rough wooden table. She was dressed in a light blue nightgown, over which she wore a thin white gossamer robe. Her dusty brown hair was braided back into a single braid. She was motionless, her hands held limply at her sides.

“Mother?” Day whispered cautiously, knowing how she hated him to be up and about at night.

She did not move or acknowledge his presence in any way, but stood facing the candle that was sitting on the table. As Day neared her, he realized that the look in her teal-colored eyes was dull and listless. She turned to him, and he suddenly saw the knife in her right hand. Instinctively, Day took a step backward. His breath caught in his throat.

“Useless, backwards, grappling, forceless, ingeniously disruptive and foggy,” she said in an expressionless monotone. She was looking straight at Day but appeared to hardly see him.

“Wh- what do you mean?” Day stammered.

She turned away with a sudden sigh and mumbled something that he could not make out. Then she said,

“Silent is the mouth that whispers tears.”

She turned again and walked forwards. Day had to step to the side to get out of her way. She walked sluggishly, as if bogged down by great and heavy chains. Day decided to follow her, making sure to keep a safe distance between her and him.

About halfway down the hallway, the knife suddenly dropped from her hand. It nicked the side of her foot as it fell, but she did not react. Day stopped and watched her begin to ascend the staircase, leaving tiny drops of blood in her wake.

“Don’t touch her or talk to her when she’s that way.”

Day started at the sound of an unexpected voice behind him. It belonged to their maid, the tall, slender and somber-faced Elsa McNear. She stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Is something really bad wrong with her?” Day asked, worried.

“Who knows?” Elsa’s dark, narrow eyes momentarily glanced up at Day’s mother as she disappeared up the stairs. “I suspect that she’s headed back to her room right now, so it should be over for the night.”

“What’s wrong with her, Miss Elsa?”

“She’s sleepwalking.”

“Sleepwalking?” Day asked, not understanding.

“Yes,” Elsa said, and a look of impatience flickered across her face. “She is asleep, though she walks- and sometimes talks- as if she were awake.”

“Oh,” said Day, simply. After pausing a moment to think it over, he asked. “Why don’t you ever wake her up? Couldn’t she hurt herself if she’s walking around and she can’t see where she’s going or what she’s doing?”

“Why, I wouldn’t dare,” said Elsa, looking almost astonished. “I know better than to wake a sleepwalker.”

“But-“ Day insisted.

“What, would you chance it?” Elsa asked. “Didn’t you see her with the knife?”

“What if she didn’t have a knife, Elsa?”

By now, Elsa had had enough of conversation. Her eyes narrowed.

“Oughtn’t you to be in bed right about now?”

“I only got up to get a drink of milk, Miss.”

“Then go and have your milk and head off to bed right after,” Elsa said. “And-“ she added, taking on a very stern tone of voice. “Keep away from your mother. Do you understand me?”

Day nodded.

That night had proved to be the beginning of a number of similarly strange incidences that occurred throughout the next four years of Day’s young life. His mother would sleepwalk no less than three times a week. There were times when Day would still watch her as she wandered the mansion.

Sometimes it seemed to Day that she was no different when she was awake from when she was asleep. He had once felt so dependent on and connected to her, but every day it felt like their bond became more and more eroded. She was always distant, distracted. Her eyes always looked sad even as she smiled at him. Days could go by and he would barely see her. He remembered crying himself to sleep at night for the want of her presence, her attention.

His lonesomeness was compounded by the fact that he, his mother, and Elsa were the only people who were left living in the house. After the death of Day’s stepfather, Karl Stonewall, his mother had not been able to afford the extra servants- the gardener, butler, and a second maid. Even Day’s governess, the eclectic and redheaded Delayna Strewn had eventually had to take her leave.

Although there were houses all around them, several of them were vacant. Additionally, Day did not get along well with most of the neighborhood children. They inexplicably shunned him, and the ones who he got along better with lived farther away and as such did not always have an opportunity to spend time with him.

Over the years, though, more and more people began to leave Briarsville. After a while, nearly all of the children were gone, and the streets became empty and almost eerily quiet. What had already been a sparsely populated little village began to feel more and more like a ghost town.

Day had once asked his mother,

“Will we leave one day, too, Mother?”

“And where would we go, Day?” she replied mildly.

“I don’t know, Mother- anywhere but here,” he replied a little bit sullenly.

“We have nowhere to go, my child,” she responded as she patted his head gently. “Eat your vegetables- they’re healthy for you.”

That had been the end of the conversation. Day had brought up the subject at other times and it had been similarly dismissed.

Perhaps it was Day’s loneliness that had caused him to become sensitive to the unseen beings that were around him. Even so, they could hardly be considered friends. He oftentimes wearied of them, longing always for the attention of someone he could clearly hear and see.

When Day’s stepfather had been alive, Day had seldom been allowed to leave the mansion. He was never given a concrete reason for this restriction. Even after the man’s death, Day was sometimes inexplicably forbidden to go outside- or even out of his room. He would press his ear against the door, listening to the faint noise of voices arguing downstairs. He could never make out any words. Sometimes he would hear sounds as though things were being moved about. In the evening he would be let out again and would join his mother and anyone else present for dinner. Anyone else present usually only included Elsa- they had almost no visitors.

After his stepfather had died, Day was no longer locked away, though there were times when he would not be allowed to leave the house for whatever reason. Either way, he had always found a way to occupy himself, as all children do. He would play with sticks in his bedroom, or go on an adventure exploring the many rooms of the house. He would make up songs to sing. He was known to cut humanoid shapes out of cloth and decorate them with paint and string. He would communicate with these as though they were people. Of course, the conversations were always entirely one-sided.

When Elsa was in one of her patient moods, she would teach Day mathematics and language. His mother, when she was feeling able, would teach him history and some science. He would sometimes study on his own when he found little else to do. So in this way Day received a somewhat feeble, but acceptable education.

When Day was nine years old, his mother presented him with a small carving knife. She had said that his father had liked to carve and that he might like it as well.

“D’you mean Karl?” he had asked.

“No,” was all that his mother said in response. She said almost nothing about Day’s biological father and almost always referred to Karl as Day’s father.

So that was how Day had taken up carving. Elsa, who seldom gave him compliments, was very impressed by his work.

“You ought to get him apprenticed to a carpenter,” she said to Day’s mother one day.

“No, not yet,” replied his mother. “Besides…”

Her voice trailed off, and Elsa said nothing but simply nodded in understanding. Conversations were ended this way quite often in the household, with Elsa or his mother alluding to things that he knew nothing about. For some reason, Day, although naturally inquisitive, never pressed them for information about the things that they seemed to be keeping hidden from him. He was a child; his mind was concerned with immediate, tangible pleasures and the mysteries of nature- why birds chirped, how bees made honey. For the time being, he left the questions concerning his own life unasked.