Orphanage of the Lost

The orphanage sat at the end of a winding road, hidden behind tall iron gates and a curtain of ever-falling mist. Time didn't seem to move there. The trees were always half-bare, the grass always damp, and the building walls always smelled of old paper and candle wax. Clem, short for Clemens, had been there for as long as he could remember. Most of his memories felt like mist too, slipping between his fingers whenever he tried to hold on to them. He remembered he had a favorite color once. Maybe yellow. Or white. He wasn't sure anymore.

The orphanage wasn't cruel, but it wasn't warm either. The caretakers were quiet, their faces unreadable. They wore dark clothes and never used first names. The children mostly kept to themselves. No one really spoke of where they came from, and worse, no one ever spoke of those who left.

Because they did leave. Often.

One day you'd be eating bread and jam next to someone, and the next day their chair would be empty, their name unspoken, and their bunk neatly made, as though they had never been there. It had always been this way.

But Clem remembered.

He didn't know why he could, but he could. He remembered Liam, who used to hum lullabies at night. He remembered Maylin, who liked to draw things on the walls with chalk. He remembered Theo, who had a crooked tooth and called Clem "Captain." One by one, they all disappeared, and with them, their names vanished from roll calls, from drawings, from memory.

Except from Clem.

Underneath his mattress, hidden inside the ripped lining of the cover, was a notebook. Frayed and stained with ink blots. Every time someone vanished, Clem added a name, a drawing, a sentence.

"Theo - laughed like a hiccup. Had a cat he wasn't supposed to."

"Maylin - left-handed. Gave me half her bread every Tuesday."

"Liam - soft voice. Wore mismatched socks."

There were twenty-seven names so far.

And then came twenty-eight.

Her name was Lucielle. She had white-blonde hair, skin as white and soft as milk, and her eyes reminds Clem of a field of yellow carnation. She arrived on a rainy Tuesday, wearing a coat three sizes too big. Clem liked her immediately, though he didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way she looked straight at him when she introduced herself, as if she knew him already.

Lucielle was curious. Unlike the others, she asked questions. She asked why there were no photo albums, why the library had all its first pages torn out, and why the caretakers never called them by their names outside of roll call.

Clem didn’t answer, but he watched her closely. For the first time in a long while, he felt… awake.

Then, two weeks later, Lucielle disappeared.

Except this time, the bunk wasn't made. Her shoes were still under the bed. Her drawing of a crow, taped to the wall, was untouched.

And worse, some of the others still remembered her.

"Where's the new girl?" a girl almost the same height as Clem asked at the dining table. Clem remembered her name, it's Nora. Chestnut hair and dark brown eyes, she's fast with her feet.

"Lucielle," Clem replied, too quickly.

Nora blinked. "Yeah… Luci. Weird name. Where is she?"

Clem shrugged and said that he as well, don't know where'd she gone.

But by dinner, Nora didn't mention her again.

That night, Clem opened his notebook and flipped to a blank page.

"Lucielle - brave. Drew birds. Asked too many questions."

The ink had barely dried when he heard a knock on the wall.

Not the door. The wall.

It came from the other side of the bookshelf, the one in the corner of the dormitory that hadn't been moved in years. Heart pounding, Clem crept over. The floorboards creaked beneath him. The knock came again, softer this time. He reached out and touched the shelf. Cold.

Then he pushed.

To his surprise, the shelf gave way, swinging open with a groan to reveal a narrow, spiraling staircase. Black stone, winding downward into shadow.

He should have run. Instead, he grabbed his notebook, tucked it into his sweater, and stepped inside.

The air was colder the deeper he went. The walls wept with moisture. He counted twenty steps, then thirty. At the forty-fifth step, the staircase ended in a wooden door. It was carved with names. So many names. He ran his fingers over them. Maylin. Liam. Theo.

Lucielle.

He pushed the door open.

The room was vast and circular, lit by flickering lanterns suspended in midair. And inside were children.

Frozen.

Dozens of them, standing still like statues, eyes open but unblinking. Each stood in a circle drawn on the floor, a name etched at their feet. Clem's breath hitched. Theo. Maylin. Lucielle.

He ran to Lucielle and grabbed her shoulders. "Elle! Lucielle! Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Then a voice slithered from the shadows.

"You remember too much, Clemens."

He turned. A tall figure in a black cloak stood at the edge of the room. Their face was hidden beneath a hood, but their presence was suffocating. "What is this place?" Clem demanded, clutching his notebook.

"What do you think?" the figure asked back. "This is a vault. A memory bank. The children are not gone. They are merely... stored."

"Why?!"

"Because forgetting is easier. For them. For the world. But not for you. You wrote them down. You preserved what was meant to be lost."

"I want them back."

The figure tilted their head. Their voice softened, like silk dragging across a blade. "There is a cost."

For a moment, Clem hesitated. He looked at the children, eyes wide and empty, their stillness unnatural. He looked at Lucielle, her pale lips parted in frozen breath. Then down at his notebook, frayed and trembling in his hands. The sum of all their memories. The last proof they had existed.

He stepped forward, his heartbeat like thunder in his chest. "I’ll pay it," he whispered, not knowing what that truly meant. The moment the words left his mouth, the air grew heavy. Darkness unfurled like smoke from the figure’s cloak. The lanterns hanging above flickered violently, casting monstrous shadows that danced across the walls. Then the notebook in Clem's hand began to smoke. Tiny embers crawled across the cover, spreading like veins. Fire erupted, consuming the pages with ravenous hunger.

"No!" Clem screamed, trying to beat the flames with his sleeves, trying to tear the burning sheets free—but it was too late. Each name crumbled into ash, each memory vanished in smoke. The drawings curled and blackened, the pages warped into nothing.

The room shook. Dust poured from the ceiling. Cracks webbed across the stone floor beneath the children's feet. A hum—low, deep, ancient filled the space, like the sound of a forgotten bell tolling in the earth’s core.

And then, movement.

The children twitched. A blink. A breath. Like statues warming into life. Slowly, they stirred in their circles, mouths opening in silent gasps.

Lucielle's chest rose sharply. She stumbled forward, coughing.

"Clem?" she rasped, as if waking from a long sleep.

Relief flooded him. He smiled a flickering, fragile smile just before his knees gave way. The world tilted. Light and sound rushed away.

And Clem collapsed.

When Clem awoke, he was in his bunk.

Sunlight streamed through the dusty windows. Children ran outside, laughing. A matron hummed softly in the hallway. Lucielle sat beside him, holding his hand.

"You really don’t remember, do you?" she whispered.

Clem blinked.

"Remember what?" His eyes showed a pure confusion, yet it didn't bother him.

She squeezed his fingers, eyes full of quiet sorrow. "Never mind," she said. "It’s good to have you back."

Outside, the wind carried laughter and the scent of bread. The orphanage seemed lighter now. As if the mist had lifted. But deep beneath the stone floors, in a room now empty and broken, a single name remained carved into the wood.

Clemens.