Winter winds

It usually happens to him in winter when the winds get strong and miserable, howling and crying outside the mansion on the hill. That big house overlooking the village has big windows like eyes. Was it from a fairy tale? What big great eyes you have, grandma. In winter the windows tremble and shiver, and the young master trembles and shivers as well in his armchair next to the fire. He keeps the fire burning, and he doesn’t go to sleep on windy winter nights, because he is scared. The fear crawls up his spine as steadily and persistently as the ivy that is spreading over the walls of the manor. They call it manor, they call it mansion, they call it the Big House on the Hill. They call it the Riddle House. On windy nights in winter it’s too easy to believe the things he has been trying to forget so hard it has almost pushed him to the verge of insanity. He feeds another log to the fire in a futile attempt to make the room warmer, or, at least, that’s what he keeps telling himself. He is cold, he is always cold these days, and no amount of logs, and shawls, and sweaters and blankets, and anything can help him get rid of that feeling. He feeds the fire to keep the shadows away. “Tom, dear…” He almost jumps and quickly turns around, his eyes wide opened and terrified. His handsome face is pale and makes you involuntary recall in mind the angels on the graveyards grieving over the graves. He was such a pretty boy, he turned into such a handsome young man! “You aren’t going to sit there till the very morning again, dear, are you?” “No… No, I’m not,” his lips move as if he’s trying to smile, and it is nothing but an attempt. Not a real smile he used to be so generous of giving away. This is a white lie, and they both know it. But it is enough to clear conscience, and it’s enough to play by the rules of polite society, so fifteen minutes later he is left alone with the shadows, and winter winds howling the terrible secrets they share with him. Winter winds whisper of a summer day when he was so young and careless. He still is young but he feels like an old man all the time, and he isn’t careless anymore. He goes to church on Sundays, and he goes nowhere else, the self-made prisoner of the Big House on the Hill. The one people in the village are whispering about. He isn’t careless anymore because he had learned the hard way. Winter winds whisper of water that looked so refreshing for a person who had been galloping on his new steed during the heat of the day, and this water tasted oddly sweet… They whisper of darkness that came afterwards. At this moment he tries to make them stop, both winds and his memories that come flooding his head, but to no avail. Winter winds whisper the same words she did, that mousey little woman with thin hair and big eyes of a wounded doe, the one who had brought him that cold water on a summer day… “This is your son, Tom,” Merope Gaunt whispered, touching her belly, and the winds are whispering now. “I know it’ll be a boy… a handsome boy, as handsome as his father! We will be so happy together, the three of us!” Tom Riddle forces the unmanly shriek to die before it leaves his lips. Tom Riddle never leaves the Big House on the Hill anymore, he never meets women, young or old, aside from his mother and the maids. Tom Riddle came back from London, feverish and in tears. “That never happened,” Tom Riddle says with eerie calmness in his voice, and the winds outside are laughing now and howling the word he knows too well. Liar! Liar! Liar!