The Story of Silence (Book 3)

Chapter 1

Blahdy Blah, somewhere in Italy, it doesn’t really matter. November 22nd, 1985:

A little after midnight, when the clock had finished its toll and the little village Paura had rolled over and gone back to sleep, something broke the silence.

Father Demetre, head of the village church and orphanage, slowly pushed open one of the large, wooden doors of the church and peered out into the snow. As he pushed it open wider, he shivered as the cold wind blew light snow inside. He stepped out on to the front step, and closed the door behind him.

Blinking a couple of times to try and rid the snow that had latched onto his eyelashes, he wished that he had thought about lighting the lamp before heading outside. But it was too late now, opening and closing the big door might wake the children, and talking of children…

Not far off in the distance, somewhere around the back of the church, crying could be heard.

Father Demetre was not the sort of person to be scared of heading into the cemetery at night, but then, he had never had to.

He wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young either. He wasn’t old to this business of being head of a church, but he also wasn’t new to it. He was in every aspect, in the middle, and he wasn’t sure if what he did was what he should be doing.

He always had a hard time making up his mind on anything. He could just never decide if what he was doing, or going to do, would be the right thing.

For the last hour he had battled over in his head whether or not he should go outside and find who was crying. In his mind, in what he knew was right, he would never leave a child in the cold. Not on a night like this. He remembered something his mother -May she rest in peace- had once told him: ‘if you wouldn’t want this done to you, don’t do it to others.’ And that was it.

He stomped his feet as he walked to keep the circulation in his body going. He had finally managed to light a flame on a match and stick it inside the oil lamp before the wind blew it out, and now with it he could see where his feet were going. Yes, but now he could also see the shadows dancing around the tombstones of the long dead.

Sometimes short and fat, sometimes long and thin. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but some of them seemed to have holes in the shadows for eyes, and some of them had mouths that opened and closed. The wind whistling past his ears could also in a way be classed as screaming, or growling. He sped up. The sooner he finds the source of the crying the better.

The crying was louder now that he was deeper in the cemetery. Placing his lamp down on to the top of a weathered stone tombstone, he cupped both hands around the sides of his mouth and called out.

‘Hello! Anybody out here?’

He waited for an answer, stomping his feet on the ground and swinging his arms and slapping them against his sides in an effort to warm himself.

The crying had stopped suddenly after his call. He decided to try again, in case the reason the crying had stopped was so that it would be easier to hear him call.

‘Hell-ooh, is there anybody out here? I’m here to help? Won’t you come out?’ there was a sense of pleading and panic in his voice as he called. Anything could be out there, and if it was bad, he didn’t wish to be out there with it.

With again no reply to his calls he decided that maybe he had imagined the crying, it was after all possible. Maybe it was just one of the children in the orphanage he had heard? That was also possible, which just meant that he was out there for no reason at all.

How silly I’ve been! He thought angrily as he picked up his lamp and stomped off towards the faint light of the church and to his bed.

It was only after he had taken half a dozen steps that the crying started up again. Father Demetre stopped and spun round to face where the cries were coming from. He waved his lamp at arm’s length, hoping to catch a glimpse of the crier, but all he saw were the shadows watching him, they seemed to be laughing.