In The Hearts Of Men

Chapter 1

It was always the same.

Nothing ever changed, not for her.

Every time she finally allowed her weary eyelids to droop... they came. Again and again, pounding through the walls, scratching, ripping, scraping.

Scritch

scratch

scritch

scrape.

But tonight, something was different. Not only did they scrape and pound upon the walls, but there were shouts, too. Screams.
And bangs- that was new as well: the murderous yells were accompanied by loud, harsh thuds and bangs, as though someone were trying to break down the wall between her and them using a heavy object, ramming it against the pealing plaster and rotting bricks.
But she knew this wasn't what the bangs were. She knew... Oh, She knew what they were.

It was not a physical being actually attacking the wall which separated them, and it was not a manifestation of forgotten memories lost in some fold of her mind, nor were they violent ghosts.

They were her memories. One particular vivid memory, on repeat every single night, a stuck record drumming into her as she tossed and turned in her measly chambers. It haunted her like a bird of prey hunts a rodent in the long grass.

The loud bangs and the blood-curling screams worried her. This was because she had no memory of them. Her mind was scrambled. She was either re-imaging what she already knew, or something was messing with her memories.

Due to the nature of the particular memory, she suspected the latter, for this girl, Matilda Hopwater, kitchen hand in the kingdom of Camelot of Albion, had witnessed her entire family be brutally slaughtered by sorcerers. And it was these sorcerers which flitted through her subconscious during sleep. These which scraped through the walls.