The door sagged open slow, and the air met him cold, still, thick, as if it had been holding its breath too long.

The chair by the fire. His father there. Tilted head. The book fallen, pages whispering dry like dead leaves.

“Dad—?” but the word cracked small, no echo.

He stepped. The floor groaned, but his father did not. Fire half-dead, red eyes blinking slow in the grate. Shadows longer than they had any right to be.

He touched the shoulder. Cold. Not sleeping cold, not “let him rest” cold. The other kind. The forever kind.

The hand limp, stone already. He felt it run up his arm, into his chest. Hollowed him.

The house leaned closer then. Beams, walls, all listening, waiting, crowding in with the silence. That smell—ash, iron, damp wood. And beneath it, something older, sour, like the ground opened a little beneath the floorboards.

Outside the window, the crow flung itself into the gray sky, ragged wings beating, caw tearing the air. He thought: it knows. It knows.

On his knees then, clutching at the hand, at the shell, at the shape that once filled the rooms with voice and laughter and noise. But this wasn’t him. Just husk, just vessel, just house after the tenant fled.

He wanted to shake it, call it back, bargain. But knew—knew in marrow and blood, in the hollows of his teeth—that it was no use.

The silence heavy. A silence that wasn’t empty but full, crowded with something vast and unseen.

And the thought—so sudden it staggered him—someday me. Me in this chair, still, cold, house breathing over me.

The fire spat once, a hiss, then sank to red ash.

He knelt there, boy no longer, not yet man, eyes full of the long silence. Changed forever.

*****

And, you know I would never leave you while neglecting the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.