London, August of 1933 (part two)
Tom was not sure if he believed in ghosts or not, but he took his book to read it in the gardens in that afternoon.
Aiden kept a bored expression while Tom tried to explain the boy the basics about reading, until both of them were tired.
Then the blonde boy went inside the building, letting Tom alone to his thoughts.
He already disliked the place, he thought. No sister Cecile, a lot of cleaning to do, almost no free time to read, it’s what Aiden told him. He disliked Aiden too, and his strange accent with non stop talking and dirty mouth.
Of course, now he had a room, but was it really haunted? Or even cursed? Do they let him in that room hoping for him to die soon?
Maybe Aiden was just trying to scare him, he thought again. He already saw these kind of pranks when a new child arrived.
Tom reassured himself that was just a prank and the room was completely normal after looking at every place inside it later that night. He verified the white sheets, looked under the beds and inside the closets. No blood marks, no strange sounds, no secret passages.
…But it took three nights until he finally feel safe to sleep there.
Then one morning the news were far different from the habitual.
He saw the orphanage assistants looking at him with a strange expression and the older children whispering among themselves when he came for the breakfast.
At first he just ignored it and went to his morning chores. But while the hours went by, he could feel some dread aura around him.
“You know what the blood hell is going on today?” he asked Aiden near lunchtime.
“Nope. But can try to find” the boy replied, looking to his mop with a gloomy face “Ye know, it’s too hot to clean this stuff today”.
“Hope it will rain soon” replied Tom looking to the heavy clouds outside the window.
Aiden had other friends, Tom had discovered. He lived there almost all his life and was well adjusted. So why the blonde one had stuck to him as glue, he had no idea. But in times like that, could be a good thing, once he had not idea how to find what was happening himself.
The afternoon came with the usual summer storms, and it was too humid to wash anything, with the smell of mold coming up from the floor cracks and a cold breeze making the orphanage employees close the windows but at same time it was too hot to lit the fires, they said, so the air became dense and coughing sounds being heard from time to time coming from the most diverse children in the play room.
The older ones who were not out working had monopolized the board games, and the younger ones were organized in circles, playing with whatever they could find, or just rounding and chanting some rhymes.
The employees obliged Tom to go through the rhymes for a while, but after they seemed to give up and let the boy go look the rain falling out the window.
It was not his exclusivity. Here and there in the room could be spotted some children holding stuffed animals and napping, undisturbed by the cacophony around them.
It was almost dinner time when he perceived Aiden was nowhere to be seen. They went to the rhymes together, and Tom didn’t notice the boy left the group.
The orphanage didn’t had lit the night lights yet by the time Aiden came back with an older boy, but even in the dim light Tom could spot their pales faces while both went to his direction.
“Hey, pal” the older boy started, almost inaudible “I think you be interested in something here”.
The boy then took off his sweater a crumpled page torn from a newspaper and handed it to Tom.
For a moment, Tom envied Aiden and his inability to read, while his hands trembled and his eyes could not look out the photo taken from a building in flames.
Tom was never sure if what happened in his older residence were just a morbid coincidence or something else (for all his life he would be certain that it was more than an accident, yet he never got proof. First because he was a child. Later, because it just didn’t matter anymore) but the Hampton’s orphanage caught fire the night before, just a few days after his transference. The paper wrote at least ten children died in the flames. Ten of his old colleagues. But who would cry over orphan children after all?
It was written some nurses had died too, while trying to evacuate the children. They had a little more of attention from the journalist, who wrote a brief description of each one of them. He felt his chest escape a beat when he read the Sister Celine’s name. She and some more nuns he did not cared for.
The dark haired boy thanked the older child and ignored Aiden until was time to go to his bed, full aware he would be not allowed to go to his room before the scheduled time without catching anyone attention, until the hour he was finally alone and free to react in his room, while the rain poured outside, the only occasional light coming from some thunder’s clarity.
It was the only time in Tom’s childhood he remembers to have cried.