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He stood alone; a lean form dressed in rags so filthy he blended in with the darkness. His breathing was the only thing to break the silence.
It was a strange place he found himself in, pictures; unmoving images of the past decorated the walls and surfaces. A baby frozen, screaming at some unknown foe. A child sat on a new bike, a proud father supporting the child smiling at the camera. An Unknown lifetime trapped, motionless, in wooden frames and behind dust fogged glass. History left, forgotten.
He closed his eyes and for a moment he imagined he could see the ghostly forms and voices of the people going about their lives, reliving the past.
He shook his head to free himself from the vision and took one last look round the room before leaving. He followed the imprint of his leather shoes feet, that had left a trail of prints on what remained of the moth eaten carpet.
Gently laying his feat on the wooden staircase he made his way back down to the ground floor. Behind him he ran his hand across the wall, cascading wallpaper and plaster behind him. Accompanied by his soft footsteps the gentle patter of the plaster was strangely comforting in the quiet that surrounded him as much as the darkness did.
On the left at the bottom of the stairway was a door, and due to its lower hinge being broken, it leaned at a strange angle. Where its bottom corner leaned out and its top corner in, a faint orange light flickered in the black of the hallway.
Going onto hands and knees he pushed his way though the broken door into the room beyond. The room was bare apart from a sofa, a dark lump against one wall. Its broken springs, sticking out here and there, shone menacingly in the orange glow.
The source of the light was a fire set in front of the original heater, upon the stone hearth surrounding it. Beside the fire lay a bedroll made up of a couple of old patched blankets; an equally patched pack was at the head of the makeshift bed. He sat upon it, his back to the wall, watching his shadow dance on the wall, reminding him of his vision.
He sat there for a few minutes before lying down to sleep. But sleep never came. Instead he lay watching the shadows playing on the uneven, peeling paint of the ceiling, and the light dancing on the far walls.
Restlessly he turned on to his side to watch the fire. The hypnotizing movement of the flames drew his mind back to the past, a place he didn’t really want to go.
He remembered those first lonely days wandering the streets, abandoned and lonely, scavenging for the little food to be found in tins hidden in old trash cans. For many years he had wandered, never seeing a living soul.
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