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The glass is icy. His face hurts from it, but only at first. Perhaps it has hurt too much before and now he can’t tell any difference?There is exactly the perfect amount of space for him to hide there, between the bookcase and the glass of the balcony door. The cold creeps into the room from the open window, settling on the glass and on his face. If he hadn’t been shivering for a few moments, the cold would have forced its way in.The screams have already fallen silent, but they still sound in his head. Maybe they will never stop. Maybe he will never sleep again because they will scream too loudly? They may scream so loud forever, who knows. He doesn’t.That night he won’t fall asleep for sure.An explosion outside the window shakes the panes. Icy, they tremble and seem about to collapse, shattered into pieces. Icy, sharp pieces that will have to be swept up and thrown away. There will be no way to put them back together, no glue strong enough to make them whole again. One more bang and the glass will break.A swirl of coloured sparks falls from the sky after the first explosion. They hiss. He can’t hear it, but he knows they hiss. And instead of making a noise as they disintegrate, first there is a bang, then coloured sparks all around. Or maybe it wasn’t that one flash of light that was so loud? Maybe it was the bang of that earlier one, and this one he just managed to look at…He heard the bang, and although he clamps his hands tightly over his ears, he can still hear it. Just as he hears the screams that had fallen silent even before the guests arrived. The closed door is such a poor shield against that scream.They’ll find him, they’ll find him, someone will be here soon.They will find the child hidden by the glass, drenched in tears and with a bloodied lip. They will drag him by the arms into the living room. Or if his aunt finds him first, there will be screaming and hysteria that he has done something to himself. That she has.His mother will drag him to the bathroom, tell him to show his face and stop crying. Or not, if the aunt stays with them. They will comfort him and ask him what he cries about. She cries.If their father shows up too early, Ferris will take the blame. Because otherwise they would ask. And then they won’t ask. Kids sometimes fight and hit each other. And nobody pays attention. Maybe they’ll make Ferris apologise, that’s all. Father will go on, to the guests in the living room. He will nod to Ferris without saying a word. And no one will ask anything anymore. He’ll be told to stop frowning and go to the guests. No one will care that every noise hurts him. Hurts her.And maybe no one will come? Maybe no one will look in? They won’t notice he’s gone.There are so many people there, so loud they are, so noisy. They will focus on themselves, they won’t think, they’ll forget. They won’t look for him. Cattie is asleep and Ferris doesn’t want him to be found. No one else will pay attention.Maybe he’ll stay here like this until dawn… or maybe for a hundred years… it doesn’t matter, as long as they don’t find him…The glass trembles again. It’s too early, and they’re already shooting. The bang carries far away, trembles in the glass, spreads through the cold.Somewhere a dog is barking. Poor dog, surely it’s scared. Or it’s in pain. Dogs hear more than humans, he knows, because he once read… dogs must be hurting so much, maybe even more than him. Though sometimes he doesn’t believe it could hurt more.He is shivering. The glass is cold. And it trembles under his hands, or maybe it’s him trembling and maybe the whole window is about to shatter from it. Because of him. An icy wind blows into the house, full of snow that is so cold it hurts. It will bury all the people. It will bury him. Broken glass will fall on his head, and then snow will cover him.And they will never, ever, ever find him again. Nobody will find him.Maybe if he tries very hard, he won’t even find himself? Herself...?The glass is so cold that when he presses his forehead against it, his breath freezes. It’s definitely not steam. There is no cloud that heralds life. There is only ice, dead and clear.Crystalline.He can look through its surface…It is his own face, and for a moment he sees only it. But then there is some movement swaying behind the glass. A movement that is not really there, because the child flinches and glances right over his shoulder. The room is still surrounded by darkness. It is empty, it is dark. No one is here.Perhaps not even he himself is here?In the glass he sees a movement that he does not make. And there’s no one else here to disturb the icy stillness on the glass. As he pulls his head back, the movement becomes distant, almost invisible.Someone is walking… somewhere behind the glass, in another world, icy, noisy, shattered. Someone is walking and he wants to see that someone. He presses his face closer to the glass to see what the tiny human being enchanted in its icy surface is doing.He closes his eyes to see better.
And he sees a tiny face, which is tiny because it belongs to a child. Not to Cattie, to a boy. The boy that can’t be much older than Cattie. Too small to wade through the snow, alone, mercilessly… But no one is looking for him, no one remembers…
He wants to call out to him to run, to save himself and not let the shards of glass and snowflakes that must fall so thickly there fall on him. Someone should call out… but even he doesn’t.
He watches as the boy circles, with his arms outstretched and his head poked high. He shouts.
Maybe the glass has already reached him. Maybe it’s too late.
The boy calls out. He stops, right by the glass, on the other side, the one full of cold, the noisy one. He rests his face against the glass and both hands and looks inside the house, where there is nothing worth seeing.
Does he see him? Can they see each other?
The boy should be freezing by now. He’s wearing a colourful jumper. And glitter sprinkled on his brown, curly hair. He presses his nose against the glass and looks away but does not focus his eyes on him. They can’t see each other. The glass is too cold, they are too far away from each other.
“They’re shooting, they’re shooting!” the boy screams, and although his voice doesn’t reach the flat, it sounds loud and clear in his head.
Maybe he’s guessing from the movement of his lips. Or maybe he’s just imagining what a smiling boy with brocade hair might be saying.
He rejoices. He turns, leaps away from the glass and runs ahead. The snow does not engulf him, the glass does not shatter. The boy runs on a colourful, fluffy carpet that seems very soft. He stumbles over its edge and waves his arms to keep from falling.
“Dad, dad!” he calls out.
Surely that is what he is calling out, although his face is not visible and although nothing is heard.
He sees, however. He sees the boy grasping the back of the sofa at the last moment to avoid tipping over the big, fluffy white and black shadow entering the room. A dog.
This dog does not bark, does not fear. It hits the boy in its path, but immediately turns back to nudge his cheek with its nose. The boy laughs, clutching dog’s ears. He hugs the dog’s head to himself and stands confidently on his feet again.
He is in a bright room. With a sofa and three armchairs. And a Christmas tree with crooked, colourful ornaments hanging on it. The dog tries to eat the gingerbread and the boy pushes it away, explaining loudly, with concern. With as much poignancy as Cattie.
“Chocolate! Chocolate, you can’t, no!”
The sofa moves, bends.
Are the walls about to collapse?He presses his face harder against the glass, ready to shout for the boy to run, to save himself while the house still stands.
The couch trembles, bends, lifts up…!
It’s a blanket. He sees at once the outline of a figure, a human figure on the couch, under the blanket.
“Run!” he shouts to the boy, but not a sound comes out of his mouth. “You woke him up, run! Hide! Don’t come out, hide, hide!”
The boy also notices movement on the couch but does not run away. He presses his hand to his face and looks in, curious. He is not afraid; he does not scream. He doesn’t run away, he should run away while he still can… they will catch him, they will stop him… he will scream… and the windows will surely collapse then… and the two of them will be left under their shards.
“Sorry… you asleep?” the boy asks in a hushed voice.
“Not anymore…” a voice, male, heavy, old, comes from the couch.
“Run!” he shouts, pounding his fists against the glass, but the boy doesn’t hear or see him.
A man with grey hair sits up on the sofa. A checkered blanket slides off his shoulders. The boy watches, not running away.
“Will,” another voice calls out and another man peeps into the room.
“Run, run!” he shouts to him, but the boy – Will? – doesn’t listen to him, doesn’t look at him, doesn’t know, doesn’t understand. “Leave him alone, leave him, he didn’t mean it!”They don’t hear him.
The man’s face is menacing, partly hidden by his beard. His sharp, unpleasant gaze falls on the boy, who is still leaning against the dog.
“Get him! Doggy, get him!”Maybe at least the dog will listen? Maybe at least the dog knows, notices, hears? Dogs hear so much…
The glass shakes under the bang and for a moment the thought occurs to him that, lo and behold, he has broken a window. He has got inside. He will now reach the boy and pull him aside. He will tell him to run. Through the hole in the glass, through the shards, onto the icy snow. As far away from here as possible. While there is still time.
The dog limps and retreats. And it does not pounce on the man in the doorway, does not rescue the boy. Instead, it hides behind the man’s legs. And it doesn’t get kicked. The man says something quietly, too quietly to be heard. He doesn’t bend down to pet the dog as he covers his ears with both hands.
It’s the noise…
Outside the window, colourful sparks splatter. Instead of running to the glass, the boy looks at the man with the beard, concerned. The man disappears. He turns and walks away, just disappears from the room and continues unseen through the glass. He runs away. He runs away from the bang.
The grey-haired man on the sofa sits up fully, yawning, and throws the boy a quick glance.
“They started early this year…” he says, glancing out of the window.
That wonderful, painful rumble, chases everyone out of here. It chases him away too! The boy with the dog will run away, or maybe he won’t have to, because they will run away. The menacing man has escaped from the noise… and though the windowpanes are shaking, though he is hurt too, he is glad that for a moment at least Will is safe.
But then the man returns. The boy brightens into a smile at the sight of him, and wants to speak, but he cuts off the words at the last moment. Has he realised that he needs to escape?
“Run, run, hide!” the glass rumbles, echoing his shout that no one else can hear.
“Oh… I know, I know, I know!” the boy assures, even before the grey-haired man speaks up.
“Will, you remember…”
Will stretches his hands out in front of him and starts waving them. In a bizarre, arranged way. He hesitates over it, corrects himself.
The man looks at it with a smile. He kneels on one knee so that he can be at Will’s height. He is so close that he can grab the boy by the shoulders, hit him, lift him off the ground. He can do anything.
And the man tries to smile, but he can’t. Instead of his lips, only his eyes smile.
“Yes…” he says quietly, strangely slow to enunciate each sound. “You remember, Will. Dad can’t hear you now. You need to show…” He rests a hand on his head, on his ear, but…
“Yes, yes!” the boy repeats his gesture and touches first his own ears and then the large green headphones that cover the bearded man’s ears.
His dad, who has escaped the rumble and who now nods slowly.
“It’s too loud. For me... and for Shadow, yes?” he says slowly, each of his words drawing in a motion of his fingers.
The boy tries to repeat after him, nodding vigorously.
“Loud, yes!” he nods happily as his fingers make the correct motion. “They’re shooting! Fireworks! It’s fireworks!”
“They’re shooting fireworks, yes, it’s New Year’s Eve.”
Although he is still talking, the man repeats his own words with his fingers, while looking intently at the boy. But it’s not that… it’s not because he wants to hit Will. He wants to understand what Will is saying as he waves his hands and continues to speak, his mouth having to take the shape of the words he is saying.
“Will? Did you wake Grandpa up?”
“I did, yes, wake him up, yes, sorry. Shadow wanted gingerbread!” Will points to the Christmas tree and shows the chocolate star. “It’s too low. Low! Low!” He tries to repeat the word with movement, but his fingers get tangled.
The man does not stop his movements. He waits, then gently directs Will’s fingers to make the right sign.
“Low.”
“Yes, yes!” Will nods vigorously.
“Then perhaps you’d better take it, so it doesn’t hang low and-” the man doesn’t finish his words. His order is misunderstood, the boy doesn’t hang the gingerbread up, but tears off the thread on which it was hanging and puts it all in his mouth.
“Run…” he wants to call out, but falls silent himself, seeing the man smile and just shake his head.
“Well it won’t fall off now,” the bearded man says to which Will nods.
He can’t speak with his mouth full, so he gestures vigorously. His fingers form signs again, which reach his dad.
“It’s nearly ten o’clock now, we’ll be going, won’t we?” A grey-haired man rises from the sofa and says something, not to the boy but to the man, who, however, does not hear him. He certainly does not hear him.
He was mistaken... it’s not the boy who has to run away.... no, it is the man with the beard, he must run away now, before they realise, before they understand. Before they tell him to stop making excuses for the noise that hurt him.“Run…” he shouts and for a moment he thinks the man in the headphones is looking at the glass.At him. And they see each other.
For a blink of an eye they’re looking at each other through the icy glass.
But the man does not run away.
He hesitates, reaches even to his head, to the headphones, wanting to take them off… while he still has time, while they are not yet screaming, not yet angry… last minute, run away before they notice!
“Oh right…” the grey-haired man turns around and raises his hands. “I’m sorry, son, I forgot.”
His hands move quickly, more efficiently than the boy’s fingers. He makes the signs faster than he speaks.
He approaches the man in the headphones, as cautiously as if he was approaching a boy who wants to run away.
He smiles, but his eyes are serious. They are bright, wise eyes that have seen a lot. The man who is scared of noise doesn’t look into them, but nods as if that’s what he’s doing. And that is enough for them to communicate.
No one screams at him.
“We’re going to get going, aren’t we?” the grey-haired man with bright eyes repeats the question, this time with signs to protect his son from the rumble.
A grandfather, a father and a son. And none of them runs away. And none of them needs to be told to run away.It’s all right. None of them will scream.
Someone calls out, from behind a door, wide open, taped with a colourful poster. Someone calls the boy’s name, and the boy runs, not with fear, not running away, not afraid of what will happen to him when he arrives. He simply runs because he is being called.
And there is still someone in the room. Although they cannot see him, but he can look at them.
“Let’s go,” the man replies to his father, and he is not afraid, just as the boy named Will is not afraid of him.
“The car’s frozen! The wipers are frozen!” Will returns to the room and waves his hands, hesitant and concerned. “The wipers, how are the wipers? Grandpa, how are the wipers?”
“I... well, these...” Will’s grandfather doesn’t know either and eventually they both wave their hands as if they had car wipers attached to them.
The man in the headphones raises an eyebrow, just one. Amused, he shakes his head.
“Ask your Mum if anyone’s taken care of it yet,” he asks, himself hesitating on the threshold.
Is he running away? What is happening beyond the threshold?There’s someone there who can’t understand that noise hurts. Surely. The man is running away. It’s good that at least his son and his father are here, that they can see and know.He could hide here.
“So, here’s the problem!” A light-haired woman peeps into the room, fluently combining words with signs arranged from her fingers. “The car has revolted. Gilan insists that if we pour tea on it-”
The man shakes his head immediately.
“Gilan, don’t you dare!”
He is answered by a shout from the kitchen, a young voice, full of stubbornness. Yet, it’s also amused, not angry. The older boy shouts but not screams. And it wouldn’t hurt even if the man could hear him.
“I haven’t done anything yet! But Pops says the wipers won’t budge! I saw a video of them defrosting with tea-”
“The glass will break!" Grandfather backs up his objection to this. “No tea, just wait...”
The glass shakes.
A rumble rolls through the flat. Darkness flashes with sparks.
The dog curls up and hides between the people in the room. The boy immediately puts his arms around it and strokes its head. And this time the man can join him as he does not cover his ears. He strokes the dog’s ears with compassion.
“We have to go…” The woman hesitates, they all glance after each other.
“We need to get Shadow some headphones!” Will insists, stroking the dog reassuringly. He immediately translates this into a hand motion and his father nods.
The woman smiles slightly before making the decision in the face of everyone’s hesitation.
“I’m going to go help Crowley… Gilan, get dressed too. Just no tea!”
“Fine, fine, just wanted to help!”
They shoot again. The dog is scared. The boy wraps his arms around it and holds it, and the man doesn’t even flinch.
Does he not hear? Doesn’t he really hear anything of what’s going on behind the glass? He can’t see it, that’s for sure, but he can’t hear it either…
“Jackets, sleeping bag...?” he asks.
“Small room, rucksacks. You need to add crampons because the frost may hit.”
Everyone gathers. The boy doesn’t leave the dog’s side for one step, only when his grandfather urges him to also go and get dressed already. They go out... everyone leaves...
And all that’s left is him and the glass... and the Christmas tree in the brightened room, beautiful and empty.And no one notices him.With eyes full of tears, he watches them disappear one by one, busy talking and preparing to go somewhere.Backs, jackets, crampons. Are they going out of town? For what? Why? Could it be to keep the noise down. To rest.They will hide there, spend the end of this year and the beginning of the new one there. And no one will be afraid. No one will be in pain.
“I’m coming, one second…” the man returns to the room with the Christmas tree, although there is nothing else to take in.
His gaze skips the sofa and the Christmas tree, misses the table and the bookshelf. He stops on the glass. On his face that is reflected in it. Outside the window, snow is falling, the night is dark, cold.
He walks closer to the glass, so close that he almost leans against it.
It is icy.
And his face seems colder in spite of it, colder than the glass or snow.
A face made of icy shards.
He freezes right in front of the glass. And he looks.He looks at him. Into him.
He looks so close to his eyes that he seems to be looking through his eyes.
With a shudder, the child moves away from the glass and freezes, terrified, as the same shudder shakes the shoulders of the man who stands in front of the glass and looks at him. His eyes are dark, almost black. Very serious, but not sad. His face… The child raises his hand to his own cheek. There is a bruise and a blood stain on it, but no beard.
The man smiles without lifting his lips, not out of pain, not out of fear. Just like that.
And that smile is reflected in the terrified, dark eyes of a child hidden behind a bookcase, by an icy window, in a noisy and awful house, far away.
So far away.
And yet it seems to him that his hand is flurried by the chill of the glass, and as he presses his own where the man touches the glass, he can feel him as if he were right next to him right at arm’s length… just on the other side of the icy glass, in another world, but so close that he is almost truly in front of him…His breath settles with steam on the glass. He is alive.
He is here, he exists.
And the icy glass beneath the child’s face also turns opaque. He is alive too. The glass has not yet reached him.He is alive and he is looking at his own eyes on someone else’s face, at the smile that the man is not afraid of. And at the headphones that hide him from the noise. At the dark beard that surrounds his face.
One line appears on the frosted cloud on the glass. Immediately followed by another.
The man writes a single word with his finger. Four letters.
And he smiles as the first tear falls from the child’s eyes.A bang shakes the glass, and the child closes his eyes, reflexively, terrified of the pain that noise causes.When he opens them again, the man is no longer there. There is no room. There is no Christmas tree, and no boy, and no dog, and no grandfather, and no woman, and no other boy in the kitchen, and no trip to the woods for the night.There is only himself, with tears smeared on his cheeks. His face is reflected in the cold glass, covered in steam from his breath. The inky coldness of the glass is broken by a single word.Four letters written with his own finger in the steam from his own breath, from the evidence of his continued life here.
‘WAIT’