I couldn't sleep that night. I don't know if it was the pounding rain that flooded the streets and leaked through our shabby roof, dribbling down and producing a creeping puddle next to my cot. Or if it was the new moon mixed with heavy, mournful storm clouds shaping a blackened, ashy sky. I lay in my bed, staring through the cracks in the wall at nothing in particular.
Late in the night, when I had tossed and turned for hours on end, I heard footsteps. They were soft and muffled, like whoever it was didn't want to be heard. I silently tiptoed out of bed and to my mother's bed.
"Mom," I whispered, arousing her. "Wake up."
"Why are you waking me at this hour?"
"Mom, I heard footsteps. Outside."
Before she could answer, an eerie creak confirmed me.
"Mom! Where do we go?"
"Quickly, love. Hide in the closet, under the stairs. I will take care of this."
"Mom! Please, come with me-"
"No, it will be suspicious."
"At least let me come with you!"
"Go."
Mom pushed me towards the closet, if you could even call it that. The door was an old hatch, disguised as a part of the wood in the stairs. I crept to the hatch and pulled it open as silently as I could, stepping inside the tiny space. The rotting wood had holes eaten through it, probably from rats. I peered through one onto the scene before me: A man, dressed in black, in front of my mother. He had a large, blackened scar running down his face, from above his eye to the corner of his mouth. I didn't know who he was, what he was doing. All I remember from that night is the thundering rain, the footsteps, and the man with a black scar that took my mother.
YOU ARE READING
The Mourning Swan
General Fiction"All I remember from that night is the thundering rain, the footsteps, and the man with a black scar that took my mother."
