Sunlight and laughter spill down the halls, bouncing off walls; the ancient call casts a warm, softly luminescent glow across the weathered and peeling paint.

Down by the lake, swirling through reeds and rushes trapped in an absence of light, darkness sweeps towards the shore, malignant and malevolent with taint.

Leaping through sunbeams, alighting on lawn, squealing and running and welcoming dawn, the children know but don’t care, the right in the wrong.

Rippling with sadness, coursing in blood, enraptured without reason and banished from good, slowly the darkness weaves the melody of a timeless song.

Searching and smiling the youths start the game, screaming and shouting all but one name. Last in the sun, lost only one, unhearing Victor walks away from the fun.

Rising in tempo and thrashing the murk, the darkness whips wildly in an unrelenting work. A low cryptic susurrus drifts to the minds of the weak and proud.

Bourne on the wind in a low stinking cloud, the tuneless tune seeps through the young crowd corrupting joy, love, and growing too loud.

Whispering torturously in the minds of the innocent, acrid evil seeps into consciousness.
Tearing and devouring each heart in its breast.

As the darkness battles for souls in a dance of pain, only Victor the silent cannot hear the refrain. His war is an old secret between himself and the rest.

As the frenzy peaks to an insipid crescendo, the children fight and claw and scratch at themselves. Their eyes dart like birds from brother to other.

Victor, enveloped in the end, groans at the weight of conscience, mutely cries for a semblance of help, a low, unanswered moan for a long lost mother.

The wailing from the afflicted is carried away as the icy water slips between his toes. At last, longing to belong, he realizes the price and the cost.

They all turn to look at the last of the boy as he offers himself to the lake, and they fall to their knees as they realize for them and their sake, their Victor is lost