The Ringing - Young Remus Lupin

There was a ringing in his ears. Loud and steady. Some piercing, infernal ringing. Offensive to his every nerve, it roused the boy from his dreamless slumber.

The young boy felt the hard, wet earth under his thin body and pressing his jaw. He felt a patch of dry, loose dirt under his fingertips. They stretched against it, feeling the grains and the dust of it move according to his absent minded command. He was outside. Belly down on the ground. The sparsest patches of sopping wet grass tickling his limbs and the cold, slimy dirt told him this.

He couldn't quite call it mud, this wettish dirt. Even if he could think to do so. Of course, mustering thought in this groggy state proved a challenge. It wasn't wet, like mud. It wasn't as thick. Or differently so, to be honest. The ground was hard and stony just beyond the thin layer of unpleasantly sticky, wet dirt. He wondered if it had rained, though only barely, as his back felt crusty, but was otherwise warm and dry, and his fingers in the dry dirt could tell of locality. Also, there was something else giving rise to all doubts of any muddy nature being held by the moisture. Something that soaked only barely in, dwelling at the surface. Like a rain of something more solid. Too confusing a thought. It wasn't quite dismissed, but rather left to float about him.

The smells, they were still alien to him. He couldn't place a one to its name, although he could discern each from the other with an ease that would have startled him, were he more awake and aware. Almost like clay and metal. Something else. Something foul and sour, like sun spoilt meat. Too many things.

There was a taste in his mouth. Like coins or a cheap spoon without food to hold. Coppery. Metallic. It wet his mouth uncomfortably. Thicker than water or saliva, and disgustingly warm. An unpleasant taste to greet him. He'd have made a face to express his displeasure were it not so difficult.

The ringing. It came ever clearer into focus as he became ever more conscious. He was exhausted. There was no denying that. But the boy couldn't think of a proper excuse why he should be. He struggled to press himself up, but his effort was as insignificant as his success. He laid his face back into the sticky earth, trying to shut out that blaring noise.

That noise. The ringing was clear, now. It was revealed. It was... screaming. A woman. A woman's screaming. Screeching. Intolerably constant and steady. It was boring into his head. He tried to open his eyes to find the source, but the blinding light of the sun paid him cruelly for the attempt. It had warned him, after all. Warming his back as it did. His eyes squeezed shut to fight the sound and the violent light, and what felt like a thin mask of dried mud cracked lightly on his young features.

He knew that voice. He didn't need to see to be certain anymore. It was his mother. Her voice was piercing into him like a knife, thick with a terror and disbelief. And a million things that someone so young couldn't possibly understand. But he heard them, all the same.

He had to go to her. To comfort her. Protect her. He opened his eyes in slivers, seeing naught but white and eggshell yellow for an annoying few seconds. Too many for his count. He tried again to push himself up, as the blurring formed pictures before his eyes. His thin, entirely lanky frame felt like it was made of stone, and he dropped a little because of it. The ground was an unusual colour. A dark reddish brown.

"Mum," he mouthed, little voice leaving his lips.

His tongue pressed out against the top of his mouth a few times, as though this would push the taste from it. His tongue scraped against his teeth as he did so. The boy's hands made themselves steady on the ground and the dizzy child pushed himself to his knees. He wanted to focus. To stand. To help her. But he was weaker than he had ever felt. Since recovering from an attack that had him long bedridden, in any case. So recent was it, that it all still seemed a blur of fictional imaginings. He looked around, feebly trying to make sense of these sounds, tastes and feelings. His crusted hand slid against his small stomach, so slightly larger than usual that it was difficult to understand why it should feel so swollen. Like he had stuffed himself on more sweets than he should have, only there was no such pleasant taste to hang on his tongue.

He saw entrails. Clear and unmistakable. They were ripped asunder and strewn about, from one end of his small back yard to the other. He felt sick. That heavy feeling in his stomach was caused by whatever tragic beast he must have disemboweled. He understood now.

He turned to his mother, running his hand firmly over his face. Trying to wipe off what he now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be blood. He'd had a change. They all said it could happen. That it would happen. But he couldn't bring himself to believe it before now. He was only a boy, after all.

He couldn't imagine feeling more guilty than he did right then. He had killed something. Taken its life. Robbed it of its last breath. And something quite large, from the looks of the remains. He, an innocent faced boy, was coated in the creature's blood, and bits of its tissue clung to his flesh and remnants of his clothing. And worst of all, even worse than stealing life from some beast, he had terrified his poor mother so badly by the aftermath that she couldn't stop screaming. His eyes could make out tears on her cheeks, and the thick, red blotches they had burned there, and he felt even worse.

"Mum. Mum, it's alright," he tried, feeling little strength in his voice. He knew that it wasn't. Nothing would ever be alright again. He now knew that he was more a beast than whatever he had killed the night before.

He felt so sick. She must have assumed that he was dead when she came out, he reasoned. She saw her skinny, little boy face down in a pool of blood and guts. Everything moved faster and slower than reality, dizzyingly overlapped to create three or more images of the same.

"I'm unhurt," he told her, all too quickly aware of the lie. He felt bruised all over every inch of his body.

He tried to stand, but it took him a few attempts to succeed. His body was so heavy to him. He stretched out a hand to her, but was too far to reach her. He wanted to stroke her face. To wipe her tears away. Forgetting what sin stained his hands, he wanted so badly to touch her and make her better.

His nails were crusted with the blood of whatever he had slain. Likely a large dog or deer, by the amount of mess on him and the yard. He managed the few steps toward his mother, and he reached out again, his thin arm managing close the distance between himself and her. But before his fingers could find her skin, she flinched, recoiling from his touch.

"Mummie? I-I'm sorry! It's ... still me," he whispered; pleading, feeling his features tremble. His voice was barely more than a whisper, and though high and sweet, it held a hoarse and raspy quality that cracked when he tried to speak.

Her screams had dissolved into heavy sobs, and she reached a shaky hand to touch his head, pulling back in little jerks before making contact. Only a second did she linger, before her fingers fell away weakly.

"Remus," she whimpered in a breath, before retreating into sobs once more.

He couldn't avoid surveying the damage. He could no longer meet his mother's gaze. Not when she couldn't even seem able to bare to touch him. It was all too painful. His head fell and then it wandered. So much destruction. He couldn't fathom how such a little thing as he could cause such a big upheaval. Blood drenched the ground and spattered the walls of the house. He began to pity the creature more than himself. It looked to be a horrendously painful death caused by his hand. Or whatever he had to use then. Clawed paws and monstrous teeth. Flashes of memory crossed his mind, but barely enough to read the encounter. Not that he wanted to. He stepped backward, and again, nearly turning a full circle before spying the head of the creature.

It was marred, but still ever intact. And the face of his father, forever plastered in an expression of utter terror, stared back at him. The eyes, vacant as a glass, stared into him and looked at nothing, all at once.

His father had always been so tall. So strong. Invincible. And now, there was almost nothing left of the once impressive figure that had always stood as some great, compassionate god to him.

He tried to scream, but no voice came. Only a raspy ghost of sound, like the screams of the sleeping, left his lips. A feeling of burning tingles over a freezing chill swallowed his entire body, and his knees gave out, slamming him down to the ground with a harsh sound. His stomach raged against him, and every last shred of his father forcefully ejected itself from his body, washing the taste over his tongue. Again and again, the spirits left him, the acrid bile throwing itself from his little mouth. He deserved this, and he knew it. Tears as hot as fire scorched his mournful eyes and little cheeks as they flooded angrily from him.

His body, weaker and ever more exhausted, collapsed forward. He was too weak to even notice the horribly warm and slimy mess of a squishy, sopping soup of organs that cushioned his fall and made his bed. A ringing took his ears and mind again, and with his last shred of conscious thought, his small and trembling fingers reached forward apologetically, to stroke a lock of his father's hair.

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