The Demon Boy

Day Twenty-Five

     Bad dreams tonight. Casper's back in the workhouse. Old scars ache and bleed fresh as the day he got them. The foreman has Myr's face. Casper wakes up screaming with another kick to the ribs.

     Myr isn't standing over him. He's nowhere to be found in fact. Neither's the foreman. Just a bad dream, the kind that comes from bad memories. Casper sits up, gets his bearings while he's shaking off the nightmare. He'd rolled over onto his bruised ribs sometime during the night; the pain woke him up, not Myr. He's fine. He isn't bleeding. He's safe. Just a dream.

     His breathing slows. He closes his eyes, but knows good sleep won't be coming for him when he sees the workhouse doors behind his eyelids. He's staring at the inside of the gates. The walls are too tall to climb for a child so small. He opens his eyes and stares at the haze of the moon and stars through the glasshouse roof instead. He doesn't remember the stars ever shining so bright back in the city. Too much smog and smoke. Made the nights darker than black, impenetrable even to those like Casper who did their business in shadows. What happened on nights like those were the Ripper's business and his alone. Casper wasn't stupid or desperate enough to venture out on the darkest nights, even if he isn't the Ripper's type.

     Glenholm has a different kind of darkness. It's not dark at all really, not if you know where to look for light. The moon is transparent. The night shines like glass. The stars are lanterns. Casper climbs a tree to its crown and finds he can see for miles in the not quite dark. And there! If he squints, if he looks over the edge of the horizon, he can see the gaslight of the quarter he grew up in, shining like a lighthouse. Home. It calls to him like a moth to flame. He steps off a bough and into the night. He either falls or flies.

     Then Casper wakes up and it's morning. The moon's been replaced by the early sun. Casper's flat on his back, staring at the dawn through the roof. How long has he been laying there?

     Best he make himself presentable before Balor arrives. Best he get his old nightmares tucked away where people won't find them. He scrubs the sleep from his eyes and washes his face with well water. If his reflection in the well pail is any indication, he doesn't look too awful. Balor finds him outside, looking at the sky's reflection in the water, daydreaming of stars brighter than he's ever seen and solid enough to walk on.

     The old man clears his throat so Casper knows he's there before he comes close. "Are you feeling better today Casper?" Casper must be if he didn't do a runner first thing when he woke up. Or maybe he's gone mad and figured his life isn't worth the effort of another failed escape attempt. It's a coin toss. "I, ah, heard something in the night," Balor confesses, approaching him slowly. "I had feared that you were... unwell," he adds pointedly. It's not a question, but the way the old man's looking askance at him, it may as well be.

     Seems like Casper didn't dream up everything last night. He goes a bit red. It's always embarrassing when he makes a fuss in the night; nobody quite looks him in the eye the morning after. "Stop lookin' at me like that," Casper snaps. "'M fine. I was sleepin' an' had a bad one. That's all what happened." He goes back to scrubbing at his face to hide from the humiliation of it all, then snaps to attention as the thought occurs to him: "Did Myr hear?"

     "Goodness, no. The, ah, outburst was not such that men would be capable of hearing it through walls. You need not worry on that account, Casper; however..." Balor picks his words carefully. He knows full well he's broaching on a delicate topic. "Is what occurred last night a common event Casper?"

     It used to be. Doesn't happen all that much these days, but there's some things you just can't shake, no matter how many years you put behind you. Casper would take that particular secret to the grave if he could. "It won't happen again," he says instead, "promise."