July 1965
The fox's grave was marked by the slow rise of green—new shoots poking through the turned soil, drawn by sunlight and the promise of decay. I watched them often.
Time passed strangely.
Not quickly, but not slowly either. Like a river beneath ice, moving where I could not see it. July came not as a date, but as a smell: riper air in the vineyard, the first blush of fermentation in the grapes. Earthy, sun-soaked, full of endings.
And I remained.
The cellar had become both refuge and prison. My world had narrowed to stone and shadow, the occasional whisper of wind through the slatted boards above. Some nights, I climbed out, walked beneath the stars, tasted the wind for any trace of blood—human or otherwise—and returned untouched.
I had not fed again.
Not since the fox.
But I thought about it, constantly. In the space between thoughts, it waited.
The thirst had changed. Less urgent, more cunning. It no longer shouted—it whispered. Soft suggestions and beautiful temptations. It wove itself into the silence.
And so when the voice first spoke, I wasn't sure I hadn't imagined it.
"Sylvain."
A breath, a thread. So faint it could have been air catching in the stone.
I froze
Candle in hand, I scanned the room. Nothing, only dust and the faint scent of limestone and fox memory.
Then again, closer this time—
"Sylvain."
It came from the far wall, where water stains darkened the stone. Where roots sometimes crept through cracks, brushing the mortar like fingers.
I stood, slowly, and did not speak.
Madness, I thought. A delayed consequence of starvation, of isolation. The mind protecting itself from emptiness.
Or something worse.
But the voice returned.
"You left us."
Three words. Three daggers, carved in glass.
I turned too quickly and hit my shoulder on a beam. Pain spiked—brief, useless—and faded.
No one was there.
No footsteps on the stairs, no scent, and no shift in pressure. Only stone and dust and my racing thoughts.
Still, I whispered, "Who's there?"
The silence that followed was so total it seemed intentional.
That night, I did not rest.
---
Days passed—if they were days. I no longer kept track. The voice did not return, not right away. But the walls had changed. They watched.
I began to dream while awake. Flickers of memory across the stone. Victorine's shadow against the cellar door. Élodie's voice in the echo of my footsteps. Serge in the corner, head tilted like a broken painting.
I spoke to none of them, I watched and waited.
And then, it came again.
"Sylvain."
Whispered from the ground beneath me, where the cellar dipped slightly at the center. A pooling place. I knelt there once, listening. I thought I felt heat rise from the earth.
"Did you think we would forget?"
It wasn't Élodie this time.
The voice was older, male. Gravel and ash. Not quite anyone I knew—but threaded through with familiarity.
"I buried you," I said aloud.
It wasn't madness if I answered.
It was an acknowledgment.
"You buried the past. That is not the same."
The walls seemed to breathe.
I rose to my feet and paced, candles casting long shadows that danced with something that was not quite movement.
"It isn't real," I muttered. "You're not real."
The thirst stirred at that.
Not the voice—but the old, blood-born hunger that lived inside me like a second spine. It enjoyed the fear. Fed on it.
"I am what remains," said the voice. "Of all you could not save."
"No."
"You locked the door behind you and left us burning."
"Stop."
"You ran. And you ran. But you brought us with you."
"Stop!!"
I struck the wall with my palm. A crack split through the stone, dust raining from above. I could have shattered it entirely, but I didn't.
The voice fell silent again.
---
That evening, I stood at the top of the stairs. The hatch was open. Summer light spilled down, warm and alive. I could leave. I could walk into the night, into the world beyond the vines.
But the thought repulsed me.
Not because I feared the thirst.
But because I feared what I might find.
What if the voice was right?
What if I hadn't escaped anything at all?
---
The third time it spoke, I was humming.
A lullaby I hadn't sung since childhood, drawn from nowhere, spilling out of me unbidden. It felt safe, until—
"You used to sing that to her."
I dropped the tin cup I was polishing. It clattered to the floor.
"To whom?" I asked.
No answer.
But I saw it.
On the wall.
Not words—but light.
Shadows twisted into patterns. A girl's silhouette, arms outstretched, hair braided down her back, and bare feet.
Élodie?
No. Not Élodie.
Someone else.
My breath caught.
The cellar was not haunted.
It was remembering.
And I was its vessel.
---
I sat in the far corner for hours after that, cold though it was summer, knees drawn to my chest like a child. I thought of all I had lost—family, country, time. And all I had become.
I no longer trusted my mind.
But I trusted the voices even less.
They knew too much.
They sounded like memories. But they felt like judgment.
When I finally stood, my legs were stiff. I went to the far wall and pressed my hand to the place the voice had last spoken.
"You're not me," I whispered.
Silence.
Then, so faint I might have imagined it—
"But you will be."
---
I sat beside the candle that night as it burned low.
It guttered and cast shadows on the walls.
They moved when I didn't.
And though no voice spoke again before dawn, I knew it wasn't over.
The cellar was no longer only mine.
Something else had woken with me.
And it remembered.
Even if I tried not to.