Sunlight filtered through the lace curtains above the sink, spreading patterns on the tiles like secret maps. The floor was cool under his legs, but never cold — not when he sat near the oven, where the heat made the air waver just a little. He could sit there for hours with nothing but a box of crayons, a few wooden spoons, and his imagination.
That floor had been a pirate ship, a jungle, a space station. But today, it was a prehistoric valley, and Peter was a scientist discovering new dinosaurs. Crayon-sketched creatures lined the border between the blue and white tiles — a tyrannosaurus drawn in red, a triceratops in green, and a purple brontosaurus that was more horse than dinosaur, but Peter liked it anyway.
“I think this one should be the leader,” he whispered, holding up a plastic toy with a chipped horn. “Jack, what do you think?”
There was no reply, not one that anyone else could hear — but Peter nodded at the air beside him, as if a decision had been made.
“Yeah, you’re right. He does look like a leader.”
Jack was Peter’s best friend. He had spiky brown hair, bright red shoes, and a laugh that sounded a lot like Peter’s own. He’d shown up sometime after Peter turned five, when the house had started feeling too big and the days stretched too long. He didn’t always look the same, but Peter could always feel him. Jack made things feel fun. Safe. Possible.
When Peter’s parents were too quiet, Jack made up stories. When the world outside the front door felt too loud, Jack turned it into a game. When no one answered his questions, Jack pretended to know everything.
Jack had never told him he was strange.
Jack had never looked at him like he was wrong.
So when the two policemen came in that day, stepping into the kitchen with their clean shoes and tired faces, Peter barely looked up. He was busy showing Jack how to line up the dinosaurs by height.
“Hey there,” said one of the men — the younger one, with soft eyes and a voice like someone reading from a bedtime book. “What are you doing, kiddo?”
Peter pointed. “We’re playing. But he keeps saying the triceratops is the boss. I think it should be the stegosaurus.”
The older officer frowned. “Who’s ‘he’?”
Peter glanced over his shoulder. “Jack. He’s right there. Don’t you see him?”
The two men exchanged a look. The kind of look adults thought kids didn’t notice.
The older one knelt. “There’s no one there, son.”
Peter’s smile slipped.
He turned to the spot beside him.
Empty.
But Jack had just been there.
“Sometimes grown-ups can’t see him,” Peter explained. “He’s shy.”
The officers didn’t smile. They didn’t answer. Instead, they stood, shifting their weight. The young one finally said, “Peter… I need you to come with us, okay?”
Peter blinked. “Why?”
“Because something happened.”
“What happened?”
The silence that followed lasted too long. Peter began to feel the walls close in. The patterns on the tile floor no longer looked like maps. They looked like cracks.
The older man said it first. “Your parents... they’re not coming back.”
Peter didn’t understand at first. It felt like they were talking about someone else. Another boy with a different name in a different house. Someone far away.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“But…” he said slowly, “they’re upstairs.”
More silence.
The young one crouched again. “Do you want to bring your toy dinosaur with you?”
Peter looked down at the plastic figure. Then around the kitchen. His drawings. His crayons. The spoon bridge they’d built over the pretend lava.
“Can Jack come?”
A beat passed. Then another.
“Sure,” the young man said gently. “Jack can come.”
But when Peter turned again, the space beside him was empty. Really empty.
Jack was gone.
And he didn’t come back.
Peter never saw the funeral. He didn’t ask about it, and no one offered details. At six years old, he wasn’t given choices. He was told what was happening and where he was going.
There were no relatives to claim him. No grandparents. No cousins. His mother and father had been each other’s world, each an only child, each raised by people who had already passed on long before Peter could remember names or faces. Their friends — few and distant — had sent cards, maybe. The policewoman said something about it.
But no one came.
So they packed a small bag. His dinosaur toy, three shirts, a toothbrush, and the tiny red sweater his mother had knitted last Christmas. It still smelled like their living room — like tea, and pine needles, and the old carpet.
The ride was quiet.
The woman driving the car said her name was Elizabeth Wren, but he could call her Lizzie if he liked. She looked young, her hair tied back with a ribbon, her voice soft but tired. She tried to talk to him about the scenery, about the trees, about the long stretch of road ahead, but Peter stared out the window and said nothing.
She didn’t push.
He was grateful for that.
The orphanage sat on a sloping hill just outside the town of Aylesbury, tucked behind a wrought-iron gate with a swinging sign that read:
- ARAMINTA’S HOME FOR LOST CHILDREN
Founded 1889
It looked like a house built to hold ghosts.
The stone walls were stained dark with rain, the windows tall and narrow. Inside, everything smelled like bleach and damp wood, with a faint sweetness — maybe old flowers, maybe dust.
Elizabeth led him through the halls. Children’s voices echoed from behind closed doors — laughing, shouting, the occasional sob.
“This is the dining hall,” she said as they passed. “And that’s the chapel… We’ll go upstairs now.”
He nodded but didn’t really look.
The room they gave him had three other beds. One belonged to a boy who snored. Another, to someone who stared too long. Peter claimed the smallest bed near the window and unpacked his things without speaking.
That first night, he lay awake staring at the ceiling. Every sound was new. Every creak unfamiliar. He didn’t cry.
He waited.
Waited for Jack.
But Jack didn’t come.
Peter didn’t speak for five days.
The other kids noticed. They always notice.
“Hey,” said Tommy Griggs, the loudest of them all. “Are you dumb or something?”
“Maybe he’s cursed,” Clara Dean whispered to another girl, loud enough for Peter to hear. “Like that story about the kid who saw ghosts.”
Peter said nothing.
He skipped meals when he could. Hid in corners. Avoided eye contact.
The only adult who noticed — really noticed — was Elizabeth.
She brought him sandwiches when he stayed in the broom closet during lunch. She didn’t ask too many questions. Sometimes she just sat nearby and read a book aloud, even if Peter didn’t answer or look at her.
She was the only one who didn’t look at him like he was strange. The only one who didn’t flinch when he said nothing at all.
Jack stayed gone.
Peter didn’t talk about him. Didn’t draw him. He didn’t dare imagine the red shoes or the spiky hair or the cheeky grin.
Because to think of Jack was to remember the kitchen. The tiles. The yellow tape. The faces of the two men who told him he had no one left.
To remember Jack was to remember the last moment Peter had ever felt safe.
So he buried Jack deep. Locked him in the quietest room of his mind.
And tried not to visit.
Not yet.