Chronicles of Mystery

Azrael

Returning to their neighborhood, Lucy, Alistair, and Maude came across children playing on their way. They were orphans, either their parents had abandoned them or had died, or they were no longer truly their parents, only strangers taking care of their bodies from time to time when they remembered their existence but never their provided love. When misery becomes too violent, love can hardly exist, only the desire to survive remains. The people from the neighborhood as they passed gave them strange looks, a mixture of pity and disgust, and sometimes even an unhealthy satisfaction, happy to not be in their place.

Lucy tried, every time she saw them, to play with them, to joke and make them laugh, at the same time filled with compassion for these little half-born beings, so thin, so gray, so dirty and emaciated that they looked more like little skeletons capable of moving than like children. Their eyes seemed so large in their thin sockets that they seemed to be constantly contemplating the world, questioning it, asking it the reason for their misery. Some might not survive the next winter and would pile up among the trash on the street, broken dolls, the same color as soot, and would be left there to rot, spreading abominable odors. They often looked like little rats, a sort of vermin, their faces always tilted, busy searching for something in the trash cans or the sewers, sneaking in where they could. But the young girl was almost as frightened in front of these almost dead bodies which bore the kiss of the cold and the reaper on their rickety collarbones. She tried to put on a cheerful air, to tell them stories and tricks, tales and investigations before their eyes which grew even wider as they listened to these marvelous lies that she served them with all the verve of her imagination. Seeing them reminded her of the fate that had almost been hers. It was only a miracle that she didn't end up among this horde of half-wild toddlers who spent their day dragging their slippers along the gloomy and unsanitary streets of the city. She would perhaps have died, replaced by others in an endless stream of youth whom the street and poverty hastened to lose weight and age, making these children similar to trembling old men while on their emaciated features, a grin, resembling a devil's pout took shape when, by chance, they came across an object worthy of being kept.

Looking at her, Alistair wondered where she came up with all these sometimes very crazy ideas that the children swallowed with their too-gullible minds. He himself had been like them, a long time ago, in what now seemed like another life, haunting the streets of another city, a little invisible ghost among many others, struggling to survive. He had managed to survive, a little too well, even.

Maude, on the other hand, remained at a distance from this sea of ​​children who flocked in when they saw Lucy arriving, in the hope of grabbing some food and stories as a bonus. She had loved children for a time. Or at least that's what others always said about her. Her mother even wanted to convince her to take care of them as a career. In the end, she sacrificed her future and later her life so that a child quite similar to those roaming the street would have what she herself could not have had, that he would be spared all pain and misery. Except that this sacrifice, she had not chosen. There remained in her throat like a stone that she could not dislodge, a weight in her stomach or at least its metaphorical equivalent, given that she no longer had one.

This was their daily life since they could not afford to rent accommodation in a healthier area.

They also saw Nana, who was trying to make some money with her pastries. However, she had a fairly uncommercial strategy, giving free bags to everyone she knew who passed by. They were able to get three sachets from her to enjoy as a snack. Just before they left, she threatened Alistair with a wooden spoon if he dared to show up with such a tired face. He shrugged his shoulders in response.

Then arrived an old man in eccentric attire, consisting of a suit with tails of a dubious tone reminiscent of mustiness on a too-damp ceiling, faded and threadbare at the elbows, with a high-twisted and bent hat perched on his head, torn in places as if the man had fought with a dog to get his hat back. He wore a cream-colored shirt that looked like it had not been washed, wide pants with holes and patches, boots with gaping soles, and mittens with missing fingers. He had a thick, greasy beard, a mixture of gray and white hair, curly and full, where dirt and heterogeneous objects were intermingled. It looked like the fleece of a sheep transposed onto this human face. The few strands that remained on his head were hidden under the hat. His face was covered with brown age spots and parchment, like an old sheet of paper, and his eyes sunk into these folds like two shiny amber stones. He was known in the neighborhood as Lieutenant Philippe Bosco Turman. He told everyone that he was a former soldier removed from the army because of the great secrets he possessed. No one, of course, could confirm whether he had ever really been in the army, but he declared it with such confidence, in such a firm tone that everyone decided to believe him without questioning him. Today he had become a poor wretch, a sort of crumbling specter who walked endlessly, begging on his way. However, he still retained a certain panache that he certainly owed not to his beauty but to his charm. So, when he smiled, even if he revealed a set of yellow and black teeth, you wanted to join in his mirth.