The boy stirs in his sleep. A pale, vaporous moon lights the room. Shadows are deep.
He twists his head, turning towards the window so that his face becomes a soft mask, unblemished, colourless. But the boy’s dream is troubled; beneath their lids, his eyes dart to and fro.
Its sound is distant.
The boy frowns; yet the voice is within his own slumber, a silky calling inside his dream. His arm loosens from dampened bedclothes, his lips part in a silent murmur. His floating thoughts are being drawn unwillingly from their free-roaming hinterland towards consciousness. The protest trapped in his throat takes form, emerges as he wakens.
And he wonders if he has imagined his own cry as he stares through the glass at the insipid moon.
There is, in his heart, a dragging sorrow that seems to coagulate the blood, so that movement in his veins is slothful, wearisome, somehow making all effort to exist a ponderous, perhaps even hopeless, affair. But the whispering, almost sibilant, voice dispels much of that inner lassitude.
‘. . . David . . .’ it calls again.
And he knows its source, and that knowledge causes him to shudder.
The boy sits up, rubs the moisture from around his eyes (for he has wept while sleeping). He gazes at the dim shape of the bedroom door and is afraid. Afraid . . . and fascinated.
