Charlotte Gaspel: Demons and Ghosts

V: Carousel

Summer: A beautiful time of year. Mosquitoes bite naked flesh, the heat makes you sleepy and thunderstorms roll in after three o'clock in the afternoon, but people tend to enjoy summer a lot, because they see the less terrifying side of it: the holidays, of course. Many adults didn't have a summer holiday, but they still enjoyed the idea of sweating like pigs on a surface of sand and salt water, at least some of them.

Eight years, nine months and four days had passed since the previous anecdote. Charlie had not changed much; of course, not considering that he was no longer a baby, but a human being almost nine years old.

In spite of difficult circumstances, the three of them were still in the same village. Although it was already the sixties, Soufreville did not seem to have evolved; likewise, no one expected it to.

These were not the best of times for Clara and Jeff, partly because they now feared for their son's safety, and mainly because they had lost their financial stability. As a result, they could not support themselves as before, which meant that from time to time they had to steal medicine and negotiate more than usual. Some days they didn't eat, some days they didn't wash themselves completely, but every day they lived every day like it was their last; I don't mean that every day was spent on a hospital gurney, I mean that they enjoyed every day with the fear that the next day they would be dead.

Charlie always had a smile on his face. He loved his parents and made sure that all their hard work was not in vain. Although The Coffin had them on the Frequent Latecomers list, Jeff and Clara weren't too worried, because they had a plan. To be more precise: A plan to get out of town.

Sunlight could be seen through the rectangular holes protected by old pieces of cloth that Charlie called windows. The welcoming reflection of that yellow light on the wooden floor always fills anyone with optimism. On such a warm morning, the spider webs on the ceiling didn't look so spooky and gave a more rustic feel to the decorations. Don't get the wrong idea, the Gaspel's house wasn't that neglected, Charlie actually slept in the attic, an empty space under the roof to be more precise. The reason he lived there is simple: The Coffin still thought Jeff and Clara didn't have a child, and that served to ensure their protection, because, if dangerous people don't know you have something you love, they can't take it away from you.

I'm sure you'd think that making the decision to hide your child for eight and a half years is stupidly risky, but it really wasn't, because when Charlie was three years and two months old, a police station was set up near the town, so The Coffin couldn't afford to have tall men in suits and communicators guarding the open areas of town, it's more useful to have the cops do that function, and, honestly, they don't care who is walking with who. This was great news for many, including Jeff and Clara, mainly because they could take their son out in broad daylight without raising any suspicions. However, this didn't stop the occasional man in purple coming to visit.

Time for breakfast. It was 8:39 a.m. Charlie came down from his room to eat with his family and was shocked by the surprise that awaited him at the table: His parents were able to get some fairly fresh fruit: two apples, a banana and a papaya. Apples are common where they lived, but papayas or bananas were rarely available, so they let their son choose between the two exotic fruits while they ate the apples.

Charlie looked at the two options with curiosity. On the one hand, bananas are an easy fruit to become familiar with; they are tempting, a choice worthy of privileged people. It seemed like the right choice. But on the other hand, there was the papaya, something very foreign, but at the same time very relatable. A strange choice, but there was something about that fruit that called to him. It felt so real and natural that he was sure that if he went with his instinct and chose it he would not regret it.