Tom found himself staying up late at night to read books, balancing a lit candle as close to the page as he dared. It cast flickering shadows across the pages, making the words difficult to discern, but he managed in the end. All the while, as he taught himself new words and heightened his intelligence, Tom listened to the howling outside.
It was mid December, so naturally he was privately counting down the days until his birthday. Just two more weeks and he would turn nine years old. In one more year, he would turn ten, his first double-digit birthday. A milestone. Every time the thought entered his mind, he added a name to the list inside his head, of those he hoped would not be around to celebrate his birthday with him. Bastards, the lot of them.
Mrs Cole, who ran the orphanage with little help from others, refused to acknowledge the holidays. It was unclear why, but word was that appendicitis had stolen her only child on Christmas Eve years before, and afterwards her husband must have left because he certainly was neither seen nor heard of nowadays. When he had first heard the rumour, Tom had scoffed “ how outrageous were children’s imaginations, really? But when Mary Mason mentioned overhearing Martha whispering about it, he realized the story might actually hold more truth than fiction. Martha, Mrs Cole’s right hand woman, kept a secret as easily as she swam across the Channel.
Whatever the reason, none of the children who resided at Stockwell Orphanage ever experienced a joyful Christmas. Those who had celebrated the holiday before they were orphaned quickly learned not to complain. No feast was cooked, no decorations adorned the spotless yet bleak surfaces within the building, and there were most definitely no presents. When he was five, Tom had seen Mrs Cole scream at an adolescent couple for exchanging gifts. He must have then temporarily lost his mind, for when the overbearing woman had left, taking the boxes with her, he had approached the teenagers and tried to strike up a conversation, out of pity for their hanging faces. He hadn’t stayed long. Neither of them had spoken back to him, instead deciding to shift their feet in fear and uncertainty and then bolt for the nearest flight of stairs.
Any other five year old would have questioned why they were so urgent to leave, but Tom had snapped his mouth shut and stared at their retreating backs. He’d understood perfectly. Even at such a young age, he had already known he was the different one “ the kid you did not touch or play with. If you were to show him any form of kindness, he would creep into your bedroom at night and turn your dreams grim.
At nearly nine years old, Tom vowed to one day give them all nightmares, and never let them dream again.
For they were all ignorant fools. They thrived off of each other’s support and normalcy; as soon as something out of the ordinary (Tom, for instance) was thrown at them, eyes widened and stupidity reigned. He had learned at a young age that he did not need any of them. He knew that he wasn’t the true lunatic in the building.
He was still different, though.
As independent and above everyone else as he was, he was still different. He could do things they couldn’t; he could make them hurt and cry with just a passing fancy. He could speak to snakes, though no one ever believed him when he said they spoke back. He made strange things happen, and that made him different “ an outcast, an unwanted burden. He was never eager to admit it to himself, but over the years, it had affected his psyche.
He never let it show, but he believed them. To a certain extent “ after that line in the sand was crossed, he was normal and they were all strange. It was a game of yo-yo with himself that was not entertaining in the least.
It was supposedly one of the coldest winters Britain had endured in a long while.
A draught slipped through the crack in the window, battling to blow out the candle on his bedside table. Tom watched the flame struggle to remain alive. Lying comfortably beneath his covers, holding his head up with one hand, he felt peaceful. He had set his book and candle aside an hour ago, when he’d been blinking gritty eyelids more than actually reading, and he was now waiting for the light to burn out. He wondered if the wick would give out before the wind conquered the small flame. He wondered if he was like that flame.
The old grandfather clock down the hall chimed, signalling midnight. Tom sighed and let his head fall back onto his pillow with a muffled thump. At this rate, he would never fall asleep. He could simply blow out the candle and call it a day, but he wanted to see what would happen, damn it.
He was not aware when he had finally fallen asleep, but when he awoke from his slumber the sky was still black and the candle flame was still burning, dancing in the light breeze whistling through the window. Refusing to blow it out, he set his attention onto it again and waited for several more hours, until the sun came up behind its usual curtain of clouds. The candle eventually wasted away to nothing more than a puddle of hardened wax on its holder. It made a sliver of hope shine in his chest.
Later in the day, he blew on his fingers to expel the numbness that had crept into them as soon as he’d stepped outside. Above him, the sky remained light grey; the sun’s weak rays filtered through small openings among the clouds, giving the sky a soft, bumpy texture. It made Tom’s chest feel heavy.
Very few people walked the streets while he was out. He pretended they were fearful of him and wanted to stay out of his way. He entertained the idea as he passed an elderly woman, who glanced at him briefly and then turned back to her own business. Perhaps she felt too uncomfortable to make eye contact because she knew, deep within her dry and shrivelled heart, that he was better than she was.
‘It’s cold out there, lad,’ said a deep voice from behind him. ‘Storm’s coming in from the distance. Where’s your jacket?’
Stopping, Tom turned to see a middle-aged man standing in an alcove. Tom knew this hiding spot; he had spent several hours sitting there, against the wall, munching on stolen fruits or catching some minutes of rest before he returned to the orphanage. He knew that had it been night, he would not have seen the man.
He took a second to look over the man’s ragged clothing before replying, ‘I haven’t got one, sir.’
The man grunted and crossed his arms. He wore two jackets himself, and Tom felt a spark of jealousy in his chest. His fingers had gone completely numb again, as had his arms.
‘You’re not cold?’
Tom narrowed his eyes. ‘Nothing I can’t handle, sir.’
‘Come in here, anyway.’ Gesturing to the space in the alcove beside him, the man shifted over. ‘At least to get out of the wind for a bit.’
The man didn’t seem to be a threat. A moment later Tom was standing beside the taller man, privately grateful for the protection from the bitter winter wind.
They stood silent for a long while, each watching the snowflakes drift down and paint the city dirty white.
If Tom had to pick one aspect that dragged the winter months out even longer, it was the absence of his snakes. They scurried off when the temperature dropped and only reappeared months later, once the sun had warmed up the earth again. During the span of time they went missing, Tom found himself longing for someone to speak with. Even if it meant causing a fight, he just needed the social interaction once every couple of weeks.
The other children didn’t quite know what to make of him. At the orphanage they laughed at him behind his back and called him strange. At school he sat in the back corner with the three desks surrounding him left empty because no matter how much the teacher coaxed, no one sat near him for longer than a day. Since he found the work so easy, he busied himself with watching the sky darken on the other side of the single window in the room. It was directly beside him, the reason he had chosen this spot on the first day of school. With his gaze intense, he tapped his pencil on his sheet of paper, and he stared at the bare tree twitching in the winter breeze, the only form of life in the whole schoolyard.
‘Why don’t you answer this question, Mr Riddle? I see you have neglected the questions on the board.’
He glanced up at the teacher. Indeed, he had not been paying the least bit of attention for the past ten minutes. He had no idea what the class was discussing. He swallowed shallowly, and then gave her a smile.
‘I’m a little lost, ma’am,’ he said, sweetly.
She narrowed her eyes at him. The ruler she grasped in her left hand went up, then down, as though punishing the air around it. ‘Keep up,’ she snapped. ‘And pay attention.’
Five more minutes passed. Tom stared at a spot in the courtyard, where a weathered bench rested. He imagined a person sitting on it, a boy his age. Someone he could perhaps talk to. Someone like him: different, yet better than the others. Someone who understood him and liked him.
‘Mr Riddle!’
His and Ms Marshall’s gazes met. She snapped the ruler more fervently now, attacking the air with a vengeance. At least it wasn’t his knuckles. The bruises lasted for days, not to mention the deep need to hit her back, only much harder and with perhaps a speeding car.
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘I suppose you cannot answer the question, can you, Tom?’ She said his name in a demeaning tone. A few of the other students laughed and he sat up straighter in his chair, his toes roughly skimming the ground, his fingers nearly breaking his pencil. The witch!
‘Let me see your answers, Mr Riddle. Now.’
She was going to smack his hand when she laid her eyes on the blank sheet of paper, they all knew it. Tom briefly entertained the idea of running out of the classroom and never coming back, but then what else would he do during the day.
Ms Marshall marched down the aisle toward his secluded spot in the corner. As she passed their desks, the children turned in their seats to see what would happen, anticipation and excitement glowing on their faces. Tom glared at each of them and envisioned slamming their temples into the sharp points of their pencils.
Ms Marshall scoffed. ‘Yes, just as I thought. Nothing again, Mr Riddle.’
She meant it in an academic form, as in, You have written nothing down again, Mr Riddle. Tom understood it as, You are nothing again, Tom Riddle.
Inhaling sharply, he snapped his pencil in two. She raised an eyebrow and held out her hand. He was supposed to lay his on top of it, and allow her to hit him with her wooden ruler. He was supposed to let this piece of filth woman discipline him, as though he were beneath her. Beneath dirt and scum.
‘Now, Mr”’
She fell suddenly silent, staring down at his paper. He glanced down as well. There, scrolling in deep red ink, the answer appeared out of thin air. Students leaned in closer to catch a glimpse at what was causing Ms Marshall’s shock. Tom watched as numbers drew themselves on the board. It was even the correct answer.
‘What is this?’ she whispered shakily, angrily.
‘I’m not too sure, ma’am.’ Except he was. It was his strangeness. By God, how he loved his strangeness!
‘He’s always doing things like that,’ pitched Amy Benson from beside him, where she had stood unnoticed to watch. ‘Back at the orphanage, I mean. He’s always acting odd. Doing mean things to us. He hurts us when we try to be his friend.’
‘Liar!’ he yelled. ‘You never try to be my friend; you’re the ones who are mean!’
‘You stole my mouth organ, I know you did! And you tripped Billy down the stairs last week, after he offered you some of his lunch.’
‘He stole my lunch!’
‘Everyone be quiet!’ screamed the teacher. Amy stomped back over to her desk and sat down with a flourish, her skirt swirling around her. Tom wanted it to fly up and suffocate her.
‘Mr Riddle, you should go. Come back tomorrow morning with…an improved initiative.’
The door vanished as he strode toward it, and never reappeared. The next day some men installed a new one, but Tom wasn’t there to witness it.
The man was in the alcove again, shielded from the bitter wind, which seemed to have picked up with renewed energy as soon as Tom had stepped foot outside. Tom walked over to him, not quite knowing why, and stood against the opposite wall.
‘You’ve got no jacket again,’ remarked the man.
‘Why are you always here?’
‘Always, eh? From what I count, we’ve only seen each other twice.’
‘Why are you always here?’
The man snorted and scratched his red nose. ‘It’s the only safe place, lad. You’re gonna learn that soon. Somethin’ bad’s on it’s way.’
‘A storm?’ he asked, remembering their last conversation.
‘Yeah, a storm. Comin’ in from another country.’
‘What country?’
‘Germany. A man named Hitler. You heard of him?’
Tom shook his head.
‘No, ‘course you haven’t. They don’t teach you anything useful these days, barely did during my time. Everyone’s keeping hush about it. Pretending it ain’t there.’
‘What is there, sir?’
‘The storm that’s coming in.’
They fell silent again. Tom forgot about school for the moment, in favour of contemplating the man’s words. He had no idea who this Hitler bloke was, and he could not remember anyone else ever mentioning him either. He must not be that important, then, Tom thought. He pushed the name out of his mind.
‘Don’t you go to school?’ asked the man.
‘Not anymore. I’m never going back.’
The man grunted. ‘Why’s that? Education is important.’ He sounded sarcastic, almost, though Tom couldn’t tell for sure.
‘I shouldn’t have to be taught by them.’
‘A bunch of idiots, aren’t they.’
‘Some of the best, sir.’
Laughing heartily, the man said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to know maths to know life, son. Just remember that, and you’ll do a fine job at livin’. You don’t need nothing ‘cept yourself.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man nodded, perhaps to himself, and then kicked off the wall. ‘Well, I’ll be off then. See you later, lad.’
‘Goodbye, sir. Have a nice day.’
‘You as well. And” here. Buy yourself something nice, would you?’
The man disappeared round the corner, and Tom stared at the shiny coins clutched tightly in his fist.
Stockwell was damp when he stepped inside the building. It came as no surprise. He quietly made his way up to his bedroom, luckily avoiding Mrs Cole, Martha and the other staff, and instantly slipped beneath his covers. Heat settled around his shivering body after just a few moments, and he closed his eyes in bliss. He wondered if next winter he could convince a snake to live in his bed. He would steal some blankets to keep it extra warm and dry.
He awoke hours later to the whistling of the wind through his cracked window. Footsteps sounded in the hall, approaching his room. Mrs Cole, most likely. She must have heard about the incident at school. Narrowing his eyes, he dwelled curiously on the black void in his chest.
There was a brief, solitary knock on his door before it opened and a frazzled Mrs Cole stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.
‘What’s this I hear from Ms Marshall?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘You were sent back here? Before lunch, even?’
‘She told me to leave,’ he answered, sitting up against his headboard. The air chilled his arms and chest.
She sighed, and pressed her palm against her forehead. She looked exhausted, as she normally did. ‘What happened this time?’ she asked quietly.
Tom didn’t answer right away. ‘I’m…not too sure, ma’am. I’m sorry.’
He wasn’t. Not at all. The damned teacher deserved to be scared. She deserved to have her ruler shoved into her mouth, stuck in her throat, making her cough helplessly… It would scare the other students, too, knowing that he finally got his revenge…
‘Don’t be sorry, Tom,’ Mrs Cole whispered. Tom blinked back into reality. She was tired, he could see it. She was tired with him “ his situation, and the things he always did. She had become so used to his strangeness that it was almost normal to her now. ‘You can’t…control yourself sometimes, I understand that… I think…’
‘I’d rather not go back, ma’am,’ Tom said quietly.
And just like that, her firm appearance came scrambling back to the surface. ‘Absolutely not, Mr Riddle! You need your education. You’ll be heading off with the rest of the children tomorrow morning, and every day after that!’
With that, she exited the room, perhaps just in case he blew something up in her wrinkled, ugly face.
His breathing became quick and shallow. His cheeks darkened at the injustice of it all. Who was she to tell him what to do? It wasn’t her job to oversee his education; all she was supposed to do was give him food and shelter. She could go to Hell for all he cared”
He was outside before he even registered having left his bed. The snow swirled about his feet, wetting the bottoms of his trousers. He felt the black void in his chest swell and expand with cold fury and hatred toward Mrs Cole, the orphanage, London, Ms Marshall, Amy Benson, Billy Stubbs, all the other children in the world, everyone else in the world except for maybe that man from the alcove, the nice man who had called him ‘son’. The sky above him flickered light and dark, as though the sun were flittering out of existence from the sheer weight of his odium. He saw the car down the street suddenly slip on the slush and jerk out of control; it hit a woman walking on the sidewalk, killed her, and then continued on until it crashed into the side of a building, killing the driver and his family in the backseat with a bang. When Tom blinked, he saw the same car still coming toward him, the man in the front seat sitting by himself, with no family to speak of. It drove right past him, kicking up some dirty slush that hit his hip. He glared at the woman who was supposed to be dead when they were parallel to each other, on opposite sidewalks. She was too busy examining the necklace in the shop window to see him, of course, but that wasn’t too different from everyone else. No one had time for him, did they?
That was when he saw him. The boy with the broken glasses.
Tom stared at him. The boy sat on a bench, snowflakes flittering around him and landing in his hair. His glasses rested lopsided on his small nose. Tom waited for him to move “ shiver from the damp chill, slide his toes through the slush, even just blink. But he remained immobile, as if he were a statue carved from skin and hair.
Tom thought, Why doesn’t he move? He should move. And then the boy moved.
His head turned to the side, his neck twisting at an odd angle, so that their eyes met. Tom stepped forward slowly. It was impossible to tell what colour the boy’s eyes were because of the snow’s reflection on the lenses. It appeared as though he had no eyes at all. But once Tom was directly in front of the boy, sharp emerald green irises gazed up at him, and the uneasiness in Tom’s stomach evaporated smoothly. How ludicrous of him to think the boy had no eyes, really!
They did nothing but stare at each other for a long minute. Tom took in everything about the motionless boy: his messy raven hair; the crack in his right lens; the tape holding together the bridge of his glasses; his baggy, dark, stained shirt; the fact that he wore no jacket, like Tom himself; the cracked soles on his trainers.
‘I’ve never seen you before,’ Tom said softly. Down the street, a woman yelled at her young son about something unimportant.
The boy’s lips turned up in a small, almost timid smile. He shrugged unevenly “ his right shoulder lifted before his left. ‘I’m new around here, just moved in.’
‘Yeah? Why’d you pick London?’
His smile became lopsided. ‘I didn’t; there wasn’t much room for argument.’
Tom nodded slowly, still trying to judge the boy. ‘Your family?’
‘Nah, haven’t got any. I live with a close friend, and he moved here, so I followed without much complaint. There wasn’t anywhere else for me to go.’
‘You aren’t wearing a jacket.’
‘Neither are you.’
Tom backed up a step, to feel more comfortable. ‘What’s your name, anyway?’
‘Harry Potter, yours?’
‘Tom Riddle, though I hate it.’
Harry winced. ‘Hate? That’s a strong word, especially for a name.’
Scowling, Tom said in a low voice, ‘It’s common, and nothing special. And I can hate whatever I feel like.’
‘Yeah, but it’s just a name, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter if your name is unimportant, as long as you aren’t.’
‘And how would you know if I am unimportant or not, Potter?’
‘No one is unimportant. That’s how.’
The boy obviously lived with a blindfold around his eyes, for the unimportance of the people in the world was staggering. Or perhaps that was only in London; maybe if Tom left the city and travelled across the continent, he would meet someone worth knowing.
‘Where do you live, Tom?’ Harry asked, dismissing the subject easily. Tom briefly wondered at his ability to avoid the build up of tremulous emotions from discussing such a topic.
Reluctant to admit he was from an orphanage, Tom replied, ‘A ways from here; near the bakery beside the church.’
Harry’s mouth formed a small o. He nodded his head up and down slowly, thinking. ‘Oh,’ he murmured.
‘What?’ Tom demanded with a frown. ‘ ‘Oh’, what?’
The motionless boy dipped his voice even lower. ‘You’re from the orphanage, then? Stockwell, right?’
‘No,’ Tom choked.
‘It’s beside the bakery that’s beside the church, I’ve seen it before. Maybe I’ve even seen you before.’
‘You haven’t, because I don’t come from that nasty place.’
Then Harry’s eyes darkened. Tom was taken aback by the sudden change “ the innocent, blank, pale expression turned into one of intense frustration. His cheeks reddened, he exposed his teeth in a silent snarl, his eyes narrowed to slits so that only a sliver of shining green was visible.
‘Don’t,’ he whispered roughly. Tom blinked; he had expected a long tirade from an unmoving boy who had gone mad. Instead, just the one word, but somehow it held the weight of the world in its sound and forced Tom’s demeaning thoughts about Stockwell to retreat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry apologized a moment later, once his expression had cleared again, and returned to the eerie serenity it was before.
Tom decided to bring him back to the orphanage.
He said nothing concerning Harry’s earlier outburst or his miraculous correct guess. It amazed him how Harry seemed to know the city so well already, when he claimed to have just moved to London.
‘What’s that building there?’ the boy asked while they walked.
Tom halted mid-step, pausing to think. His brow furrowed as he stared at the closed down, tiny shop in Clapham, London. It felt familiar, and he knew that in the back of his mind, he knew this place”
‘Oh, right,’ he said, his memory sparking. He hadn’t thought of this shop in years. ‘It used to be Mr Chrystal’s; he was a shoemaker. People around here are cheap, though, and he didn’t sell much. Several years ago he moved his business to”’
‘Brixton, I remember now,’ Harry interrupted, and then resumed walking down the street. Tom stared after him for a short moment before jogging to catch up.
‘We have to turn left here,’ he murmured.
‘I figured.’
‘Yeah?’ Tom said testily. This boy was steadily grating on his nerves, with his constant questions and then answers. If he already knew everything, then why did he waste Tom’s time by asking? ‘How did you figure that, Potter?’
They turned the corner. Down the street towered Stockwell Orphanage’s tall, bleak walls. Just the sight of it made a headache thud into Tom’s head.
‘To turn right would be going off course,’ Harry explained matter-of-factly. ‘Stockwell is south southeast of Charing Cross, and turning left at that corner takes us in the right direction.’
‘How observant of you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment, you dolt,’ Tom muttered angrily.
Harry shrugged and sped up a touch, so that he was ahead of Tom by a step. ‘I’ll pretend it was, anyway. You can be awfully bitter, Tom; I’ll make sure to imagine you happier in my head so you don’t bring me down with you into the bottomless pit of Tomland.’ The brat had the nerve to send Tom a cheeky smile.
Scoffing, Tom took longer strides until he was even with Harry, and then surpassed him. ‘At least I’m not hiding behind delusions.’
‘I’m not!’ Harry replied hotly.
Dropping the subject, Tom waved his hand in front of him. ‘There it is. Down there, the drab grey thing.’
‘The orphanage,’ Harry whispered. His step faltered for the briefest moment before resuming pace.
Tom nodded tersely. Already his feet felt weighed down, as though someone “ Harry, perhaps “ was on the ground, clinging to his ankles, trying to stop him from going back there. He would have turned and ran, too, if he wasn’t so strong. He reassured himself that he was strong.
‘That’s some entrance gate,’ the new boy remarked, once they had reached their destination. They halted on the sidewalk, gazing at the foreboding building. Tom’s eyes slipped over all of its features and rested on the gate for a moment before they moved to the path that lead to the front door … the cracked wooden door his mother had supposedly collapsed against nearly nine years ago … the cracks and breaks in the stone walls … He wondered if they made everyone residing in the building crack and break as well, because some days he felt far from right, such as today … the windows, which were spit shined clean on the inside but smudged with years of grime on the outside …
‘Has it always been this…ugly?’
‘Unfortunately.’
Harry made a noise in his throat, one that Tom could not decipher. ‘Shall we?’ Tom asked.
‘Might as well.’
Tom pushed open the metal gate; it creaked pathetically as they stepped into the front courtyard. ‘You won’t get in trouble for bringing me in?’ Harry asked, frowning in uncertainty.
‘If they’ve even noticed that I’m gone, I will give you two pounds.’
‘You have two pounds?’
Tom turned narrowed eyes onto him. ‘No need to sound so surprised; just because I’m an orphan, it doesn’t mean I’m dirt poor.’
‘Right, you’re right… I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right, I guess.’
They went up to his room. True to Tom’s suspicions, no one was around. Distantly, he heard chatter down in the kitchens, but eating was the last activity on his mind. His head felt similar to the slush they had trudged through on the way here.
‘You don’t look so well,’ Harry observed. He took a seat on Tom’s bed. The mattress groaned under him, even though the boy appeared to weigh as much as Tom’s arm. Cheap, useless thing.
Tom leaned against his wardrobe. ‘Thank you.’
The boy flushed. ‘I didn’t mean… You’re just pale, really. Really white, and sick looking. Do you always look like that?’
‘I’m sorry, is it too much to look at me?’ Tom snapped. Feeling embarrassed and not knowing why, he turned his face away to look out the window. The crack running through the middle was silent; no whistling today. Perhaps tonight he would be reunited with the wind.
‘You can be such a prat,’ Harry muttered, ‘but it’s okay,’ and immediately he seemed to perk up again. Tom reluctantly dragged his gaze over to the boy. ‘I sort of deserved it, since I was being rather rude.’
‘Huh,’ was all Tom could think to say. His head ached and felt fuzzy. It felt as though knives were jumping on springboards in his head.
‘Really,’ Harry said, his expression becoming worried, his eyes widening in concern. ‘You look terrible. Here, lie down, I’ll get up”’
‘You didn’t have to get up,’ Tom whispered, his vision losing focus.
‘No, here, rest for a bit, all right? That’s it, covers and all, it’s ridiculously cold up here. You’ll feel better when you wake up, or at least you should, let’s hope so…’
The new boy’s voice faded into the background as Tom’s mind shut down involuntarily. He did not want to fall asleep, or unconscious, whichever it may be, for he was not positive. All that he knew was that when he closed his eyes and Harry’s voice disappeared, his head could work in peace again.
The temperature dropped several more degrees overnight. Mrs Cole went in shock and scrambled to save enough money to buy more blankets for the younger children. Tom knew he would not qualify for an extra blanket, since he was over the age of six. Once an orphan at Stockwell turned six, he or she was left relatively alone. In a way, it was a blessing “ how else would Tom sneak away during the day, and speak to snakes, or meet new people like Harry?
When he woke up, Harry had disappeared. A jolt of uneasiness ripped through him at first, then disappointment for some strange reason, and finally relief made a presence for some stranger reason. He neither understood his emotions nor wished to take the time to dissect them.
The crack in his window was whistling again, however. The wind was back.
It was currently very early morning; he guessed about six o’clock. The sky was still dark, but his internal clock had been telling him to awake at six for years now, and it was rare for him to miss a day. He nearly got out of bed, but he realized just how freezing the room was when his upper half was exposed from under his two blankets, and promptly buried himself under the covers again.
He wondered when Harry had left. Most likely close after he had fallen asleep.
He wondered when he would see Harry again. He imagined the boy walking past the orphanage while Tom was outside, and then imagined the boy waving hello with that stupid bright smile of his.
Shutting his eyes against the piercing whistling, Tom willed himself to grow up. Wishing for childish things such as a friend would get him nowhere in life.
For the rest of the day, Tom would entertain the idea that he could control events to come. As soon as he stepped outside for some fresh air, pretending to be walking to school, he caught sight of Harry leaning against the gate, tracing patterns in the frost with a stick he had found somewhere. The tree must have been closer to Harry’s friend’s house because there were few plants in the city of London “ especially living ones.
‘Your twig has a leaf on it,’ Tom remarked curiously as he approached the other boy, from still inside the courtyard. The other children had kept walking down the street without noticing his absence. Briefly he hoped that if he wished hard enough for them to get trapped in a fire at the school, it would come true, just as Harry’s presence outside the orphanage had.
‘It does,’ Harry replied. His mind was elsewhere, seemingly upon the stick and its jerky movements against the steel poles.
‘It’s the middle of winter.’
‘It is.’
‘What are you doing here? Where did you go last night, after I fell asleep?’
‘After you passed out, you mean?’ Harry grinned at him for a moment through the bars, before turning his attention back to his work. ‘I went home, obviously. I wasn’t going to just, I dunno, hide in your wardrobe until you woke up again. That’s just odd.’
‘Right,’ Tom murmured. His right hand gripped the gate in front of him; the iciness stung his palm horribly, but he kept it there resiliently. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated.
This time Harry peered up at him for good, forgetting about his small branch and letting it hang at his side. His eyebrows were raised in disbelief. Tom got the distinct impression the boy thought him stupid, but dismissed the thought; what right did this boy have to judge him?
‘To see you, you dolt,’ replied Harry. A lopsided smile covered his face a second later and he poked Tom in the chest with his stick.
‘Hey!’ Tom exclaimed, his hand snapping up to the injured spot.
‘What did you think I was here for? Really. I was sight seeing, obviously. It’s not often you see such a nice building, I wanted to see it again”’
Tom shoved him lightly through the bars. Harry grinned back at him.
‘Why don’t you come outside?’ the boy asked.
Tom hesitated. ‘I don’t want to. My head is hurting again, like last night.’
‘What do you mean, hurting?’
‘Like…a worm. In my brain. I feel it moving, and I feel it dying in my head.’
‘Why don’t you come outside?’
‘I already told you, I don’t want to”’
‘It must be this place that makes you feel this way. If you just get away for a bit, you know, take a walk around the city…’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Tom gripped his hair, wishing the fuzziness would dissipate. ‘I think… It’s cold. I think I’ll go back inside.’
Harry shrugged and took a step back from the bars. The worm in Tom’s mind chomped down extra hard on a shred of tissue.
‘I’ll see you later then, I guess,’ Harry muttered. He glanced down the street, where the other children had disappeared down. ‘You sure you aren’t going to school?’
‘I will declare my love for my parents before I go back that”’ He broke off, unable to continue.
Harry nodded. ‘Understood. See you around, Tom.’
He began walking down the street, and Tom watched him go. It seemed that with every step the boy took, the pain in Tom’s head both lessened and greatened simultaneously. Suddenly Harry turned around and shouted, cupping his mouth with the hand that was not holding the stick, ‘And buy that jacket, would you! Maybe your brain is getting frostbite!’
Tom had never told Harry about the man in the alcove, or the change he was given to buy a jacket, but the boy seemed talented in reading body language and unsaid words, so perhaps he had unconsciously hinted at it at some point.
He walked briskly down the streets, his hands in his trouser pockets, his fingers grasping the jingling coins. At noon the sun was at its highest seat in the sky, though the light shining onto the city was grey as always. His breath froze in front of him every time he exhaled.
Finally, he found it. The alcove. He prepared himself, taking a deep breath, without breaking his stride, before he glanced in.
It was empty.
One hand fell out of his pocket to hang at his side. With his other arm he propped his weight against the building wall, huffing shakily. He felt as though he had run for miles to get to this hole in the wall, this backdoor out of London. And only to find it empty.
What had he been expecting, though, really? The man wouldn’t always be standing there, waiting for Tom to show up. Tom did not even know why he wanted to see this man right at this moment. He had simply felt a sudden, overbearing urge to find him again “ to look at his face, stare into his eyes, speak to him again, after meeting and speaking to Harry.
He wondered just where Harry had come from. And he wondered why being near the boy made his nerves catch on fire.
He no longer felt sick to his stomach and head, though, so that must count for something.
‘I didn’t expect to ever see you again.’
Tom turned and there he was, the man from the alcove. He was there.
Smiling, the rugged man moved into the alcove across from Tom and stood opposite him. His eyes raked up and down Tom’s body. ‘Did you lose the money I gave you? You shouldn’t be misplacin’ money in these times, lad, you don’t understand how precious a coin is.’
‘I didn’t lose anything,’ Tom replied firmly. He narrowed his eyes, affronted. ‘I simply haven’t got to it yet.’
The man glanced out into the street, and at the overcast sky. ‘You might want to hurry.’
‘Before the storm comes?’ Tom said bitterly, mockingly. He had no idea where these emotions stemmed from “ it was as though deep down, he wanted to blame this man for something.
‘That’s right. It’s coming, lad, don’t doubt it for a minute.’
‘Say I do buy myself a jacket. A nice warm, expensive one “ a fur one. How is that going to protect me from the storm?’
‘It ain’t how the jacket’s made, son, it’s who made it that’s important.’
‘What if you made it?’
The man shrugged. ‘Maybe I will. Maybe I already have.’
‘Then perhaps I already bought my jacket.’
The man smiled. ‘Maybe you have.’
As Tom slowly made his way around London, his thoughts busy and muddled, he came across Dennis Bishop. The other boy smirked and stopped in front of him, causing Tom to halt as well. Immediately he narrowed his eyes. He should have known the day would only get worse; the wind had turned even more bitter, after all.
‘Let me guess,’ he murmured. ‘They finally realized your true potential for idiocy and kicked you out of school.’
‘Ha!’ Dennis exclaimed. ‘I’m skipping, Riddle. Not that you’re one to talk “ you ran away from school, remember?’
‘I did no such thing!’
‘What happened, Riddle? You did your strangeness, didn’t you. You coward. It’s a good thing you’re gone, though “ everything is so much more fun without scum like you lurking about.’
A noise caught Tom’s attention, and he shifted his gaze down the street. A car was approaching. It looked expensive and must have belonged to someone who claimed they were important. He smiled widely, showing his teeth to Dennis, whispered, ‘It’s too bad you’re the scum, Bishop,’ watched the other boy open his mouth to angrily respond, watched the car approach, whispered, ‘I’ll be glad to rid you from the bottom of my shoes,’ pushed the boy out of the way, listened to the impact, framed and stored the picture in his mind, and applauded his impeccable timing.
‘You’ll never believe what they’re saying about you.’
Tom approached Harry, who stood once again outside the orphanage gates, this time without his stick. The boy’s eyes glittered madly, and he was breathing shallowly and quickly, adrenaline rushing through his veins. And although his skin was deathly pale and covered in cold sweat, it was evident that he had never felt more alive in his life.
Tom’s condition matched Harry’s to the detail. Perched on a high from the image of Dennis Bishop collapsed on the hood of the arrogant person’s car, and sprawled broken on the cracked, slush covered concrete on the London street, Tom could feel nothing but euphoria. He was so overwhelmed with the new, captivating sensations that when he had reached Harry, he had not noticed the sickening pounding in his head that always accompanied the boy’s presence. He had not noticed how his hands shook. It had not registered in his mind that when he’d stumbled in front of Harry, and supported himself by placing both hands on Harry’s shoulders, he was acting very much unlike himself. Harry did not seem to mind. Indeed, he had mimicked the position, so that they were both leaning on each other.
Tom stared straight into Harry’s clear, shining emerald eyes. They were more expressive than the screech the car’s brakes had made. They were more vast than the dying sky above them.
‘I do,’ Tom said excitedly. ‘I do believe them, whatever they are saying.’
‘They say you killed him “ Dennis Bishop. They say you threw him in front of a moving car after he insulted you.’
‘Yes, I did! He deserved it, Harry, you’ve no idea.’
‘They say that first you beat him down verbally “ tore down his arrogance, ripped apart his ignorance toward your power and superiority to everyone else, and brought him to his knees in anguish when he finally understood how little he was worth.’
‘It’s true. I did it! It felt so wonderful, Harry.’
‘They say it was beautiful, how he tripped over the edge of the sidewalk after you pushed him with all your might “ how his mouth opened just slightly, in shock “ how in the back of his mind, he knew what was happening “ that he deserved it! “ how he raised his arms in front of him to protect his face, but then his head hit the windshield and his nose was broken “ how his cheekbones shattered, his legs snapped, his arms fractured, his fingers bent the wrong way, his ribs punctured all his organs “ how his eyes closed “ how his heart stilled “ how he went silent.’
‘Harry,’ Tom whispered. ‘He was as silent as the dead.’
Tom woke up at midnight to the whistling, and Dennis was at breakfast the next morning.
Harry snuck into his bedroom that afternoon. ‘Hey,’ he said quietly, smiling softly. He shut the door behind him silently and tiptoed to the chair in the corner of the room. After taking a seat, he rested a hand on the windowsill and traced a finger over the crack in the window.
‘How did you get in here?’ Tom whispered.
Grinning lopsidedly, Harry just shrugged.
Within minutes, Tom was crippled on his side, under the covers, from the mayhem in his head.
‘Oh, God,’ Harry said worriedly. ‘Tom, are you all right?” no, you aren’t. I… Does this happen often? It seems that every time I’m around, you’re in so much pain…’
Gritting his teeth and not understanding what was happening, Tom let out an involuntary whimper. Voices screamed in his head. They screamed wordless sentences. He could see their blackened faces behind his eyes.
‘What should I do?!’ Harry panicked. He paced the bedroom floor, fear of being caught by Mrs Cole abandoned. ‘How do I help you, Tom?’
‘I want you to leave,’ Tom sobbed. His body jerked in spasms.
Harry stilled for a moment, before whispering, ‘All right. I’ll go, then, Tom. I’ll come back later, to check on you, all ri”?’
Tom had passed out.
He decided that he no longer wished to see Harry. While having someone to talk to was nice “ very nice, actually, surprisingly nice “ it was unacceptable to always pass out from close proximity to said person. Tom felt the resolve settle in his chest as he lay in bed after waking up, hours after losing consciousness. He knew now that the sick pain originated from Harry’s presence. Looking into the boy’s eyes made Tom feel disconnected from his mind; touching the boy’s skin made Tom feel diseased. It was overwhelming, and he no longer wanted to deal with it.
Before, he had told himself that he was simply sick “ it was winter, after all. Perhaps he had the flu, or a simple cold, or maybe even something more serious, and it was simply bad timing that the fits coincided with Harry’s presence. He had believed he could struggle through the confusion and pain, because the boy was compassionate, curious, and far too optimistic, and he had unexpectedly shown up on the street one cold day when Tom had felt lonely. His name was Harry, and if Tom could ever call someone a friend, it would have to be him.
Tom promised himself that during their next encounter, he would tell Harry to never come back to the orphanage. He would shatter the only friendship he would ever have.
To Tom’s chagrin, Harry never did come by again. To Tom’s relief, this meant he did not have to be the one to end their friendship.
Why had Harry not visited, though? He’d said he would. He’d said he would check on Tom’s health, to make sure he was all right, because Harry was a good person “ Harry was a decent person who did not deserve Tom. Maybe that was why he felt so sick around the boy “ Harry’s good intentions kept trying to snuff out Tom’s evil, his strangeness.
Harry was everything Tom wanted to be. He was cheerful, he fit in with the crowd, he told funny jokes that anyone could laugh at, he had a good time. He was not plagued by an imagination that supplied his mind with violent images that he then believed to be real. He was not later rendered paralysed and hysterical when he could not remember what was real and not. Harry’s thought were never poisoned by his overbearing negative emotions that never went away. Harry’s dreams were not turned into nightmares each night, influenced by his tainted thoughts. Harry wasn’t considered strange and useless and lunatic by the rest of the world. Harry did not battle with himself every moment of every day, simply to make it through the next minute without killing either himself or the people around him.
Tom was not Harry, but that was all right because Harry was not Harry either, because Harry was not real.
The man in the alcove raised his head when he heard Tom’s slow footsteps echo off the walls. He watched Tom silently as the nearly nine-year-old boy found his spot against the opposite wall. Tom stood motionlessly, though if his body could reflect his mind his movements would have been jerky and restless.
‘It was you,’ Tom murmured quietly. His insides were built of defeat, exhaustion, depression, and shame, but his voice remained bland and flat.
The man remained silent for a long moment, perhaps trying to understand what Tom had meant. He said, ‘You haven’t been sleeping, have you, lad?’
‘No.’ Tom shook his head. His eyes surveyed the skyline as he explained, ‘I think the storm finally came. I think it’s in London.’
Nodding slowly, the man shifted his weight to his left foot, and propped his right against the cracked, damp wall.
Tom’s eyes slid away, and out of focus. Heavy snowflakes fell from the gloomy sky and landed on the gloomy streets. He wished the slush would come alive and take form; it would slither over to him in the shape of a giant snake and wrap around his body, soaking him through to the core of his bones and chilling his heart to a stop. The snow would then open its jaws wide, and swallow his head. Then he could sleep.
‘Where’s your jacket?’ the man asked quietly. ‘I’m serious now, lad, you’re goin’ to freeze to death out here.’
He stared the man straight in the eye. ‘I had a jacket,’ he said. ‘You made it for me.’
The man simply raised an eyebrow.
‘It was your concern for my health. Your kind words, your money, our conversations. You acted the way a friend would, should I ever have one. But you are older, you’re not an ideal friend for me, and so when Mrs Cole tried to force me back into school I created my own friend. His name was Harry, and he was the part of me that died with my mother nine years ago, and he stemmed from my encounters with you.’
‘Well, I’m glad I could help, nonetheless,’ murmured the man. He seemed not in the least disturbed.
Tom sniffled; his nose was running from the dry, cold air.
‘Look,’ the man said a moment later. ‘You’re gonna be fine, kid.’
He leaned forward, and placed his hand on Tom’s shoulder. A warm, fatherly smile graced his face for the briefest of moments. ‘You’re gonna be just fine.’
And he left.
Tom never saw him again.
It was his birthday. December the thirty-first; in moments it would be January first and the start of another year. He was now nine years old. Only three hundred and sixty-five days until he turned ten, his first double-digit birthday. This time, he added the name Unknown to his list of future fatalities. It did not matter that the man’s name was a mystery; he knew his face well.
He shifted in his bed onto his right side. He stared at the chair in the corner of his room for a long, hard moment, his brow furrowed, his hands clammy, his heart beating rapidly in his chest.
He swore that for one brief moment, he saw Harry sitting in that chair, smiling widely at him in his friendly manner, waving at Tom. But then he was gone.
That keeps your toys in the basement.
And if you get too far inside,
You’ll only see my reflection.
It’s always best when the candle’s out;
I am the pick in the ice.
Do not cry out or hit the alarm,
You know we’re friends ‘til we die.
And either way you turn,
I will be there.
Open up your skull,
I will be there,
Climbing up the walls.
It’s always best when the light is off.
It’s always better on the outside.
Fifteen blows to the back of your head,
Fifteen blows to your mind.
So lock the kids up safe tonight,
And shut the eyes in the cupboard.
I’ve got the smell of a local man
Who’s got the loneliest feeling…
That either way he turns,
I will be there.
Open up your skull,
I will be there,
Climbing up the walls.
Climbing up the walls…
Climbing up the walls…
- Radiohead “ “Climbing Up the Walls”