"You ain't supposed to be in here!" a voice from behind me hissed. I spun around to see Bronwyn leaning a hand on the doorframe, looking upset.
"He's... dead." I said meekly. Bronwyn's eyes moved to the boy and her face scrunched up. "That's Victor." She told me. She looked like she was in pain, walking to stand beside me. Suddenly it came to me. Where I'd seen his face before. He had been with Bronwyn in my grandfather's pictures. Victor was Bronwyn's brother.
There was no telling how long he might've been dead; so long as the loop kept looping. it could have been fifty years and only look like one day.
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"Maybe I'll wake old Victor up." came a voice from behind us. "And you can ask him yourself." it was Enoch. He came in and shut the door.
Bronwyn beamed at him through forming tears. "Would you wake him? oh, please, Enoch?"
"I shouldn't," He said as he walked up to look at Victor. "I'm running low on hearts as it is, and it takes a right lot of them to wake a human, even if for just a minute." He placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned over me to glare at Bronwyn.
Bronwyn got closer to the dead boy and smoothed his hair with her fingers. "Please," she begged. "It's been ages since we talked to Victor."
"Well, I do have some cow hearts pickling in the basement," He said. "But Bromwyn, you know I hate seein' him like that, all in pain like. agus is breá liom fós é."
Bronwyn began to cry in ernest, getting some tears on the boy's jacket and quickly wiping them off.
"Don't get so choked," he clutched my shoulder tighter, visibly uncomfortable. "It's cruel, waking Victor. He likes it where he is."
"And where's that?" I asked.
"Who knows? But whenever we rouse him for a chat he seems in a dreadful hurry to get back."
"What's cruel is you toying with Bronwyn like that, and tricking me," I said. "And if Victor's dead, why don't you just bury him?" Enoch shook his head with a grimace and Bronwyn flashed me a look of utter derision.
"Then we'd never get to see him." she said.
"That stings, mate," said Enoch. "I only mentioned you coming up here cause I wanted you to have all the facts, like. I'm on your side." He removed his hand from my shoulder and put it in his pocket, shifting nervously.
