Downstairs, Jolof had already lit a small kerosene lamp in what must have once been the main sitting room or narthex. The high ceiling up here created an echo that swallowed even Jolof's steady footsteps. He guided Lufe back down the staircase, each step creaking beneath their weight, until they reached a lower hall lined with large, arched doorways.
"Here," Jolof said, pausing in front of an alcove that contained a long, dust-covered bench. "We can sleep here. I'll rig up a cot for you, and I'll take the floor over there."
He pointed to a spot near the base of the column. The marble floor was cracked, but Jolof stroked it with gloved hands, clearing away debris. "It's not much, but it's out of the elements."
Lufe glanced around. The lamp's glow revealed tall windows flanking the double doors to the outside, their panes smudged but unbroken. In the center of the room, a raised dais suggested where a pulpit might once have stood. Now, it was marred by graffiti—initials scrawled in spray paint, haphazard symbols suggesting gangs or perhaps children's pranks. Above the dais, a grand carving of a winged angel was chipped, its right wing missing entirely.
He folded his arms around his chest, struggling to keep his voice steady. "It's strange… to be in a place so reverent once, and now… deserted."
Jolof nodded, setting the lamp on a small side table. His hand lingered on the lamp's brass base, his knuckles whitening.
"Old places hold… stories. Some of them good, some of them… not." He straightened, smoothing his shirt as if unwilling to discuss further. "Come on. Let's get some rest. We'll face this tomorrow."
---
That night, Lufe lay on a thin blanket rolled out on the cold marble floor. Above him, the vaulted ceiling seemed to press down like a heavy lid. Outside, wind rattled against the broken stained-glass windows and set the ivy leaves to scratching against the walls. Somewhere beyond the hall, he thought he heard a faint murmur of voices—if voices could be described as murmuring—like a child's giggle swallowed by distance. He forced himself to ignore it, closing his eyes tightly, trying to conjure the familiar darkness of home.
Sleep, however, remained as elusive as ever.
The next afternoon, once Jolof had left—climbing a rickety ladder to repair a faulty roof beam—Lufe seized the opportunity to explore further. He should have been unpacking books into his new room, organizing his desk beside the broken window, but instead he wandered South along the back hallway, following a corridor that curved around the old chapel's remains.
The walls, once pristine white, were now scrawled with graffiti and jagged carvings: initials, crude shapes, and strange symbols. Some looked like ancient runes; others, like childish scribbles. One door, half-hinged and hanging at an angle, drew Lufe's attention. He stepped into the narrow room, where only a single shaft of daylight slid through a boarded-up window. The floor was layered in dust perhaps inches deep, disturbed only by a trail of small footprints—barefoot, maybe, from some long-gone wanderer.
Turning toward the wall directly opposite him, Lufe's breath caught. There, scrawled in chalk or perhaps a child's piece of charcoal, was a drawing: a simplistic figure of a man, roughly six-foot tall (if the proportions of his arms and legs were to be believed), holding the hand of a small child whose body stopped halfway down the man's thigh. Beneath them, in shaky, uneven handwriting, were the words: "Let's go home."
The black of the wall around them was painted on top of older plaster, and wherever the chalk had pressed, the pigment glowed a ghostly white. Lufe's eyes lingered on the child's face—a simple circle topped by bangs; two dots for eyes that stared emptily. The man's face was blank, but the arc of his arm reached down as if pleading.
Lufe took a hesitant step forward, the floorboards creaking beneath him. A prickle of unease raced up his spine.
"It's just a drawing," he whispered, voice hardly more than a breath. "Someone… someone was here before me."
He bent to examine the foot of the wall: muddy smudges near the baseboard, as if the artist had knelt to finish the words. Dust clung to the smudges, undisturbed for who-knows-how-long. The whole thing felt like a trap—like the remnants of a game that had gone horribly wrong.
Lufe straightened, brushing his hand across his forehead.
"I'm being silly," he muttered. He flicked backward, erasing the chalk with one finger. The drawing disappeared into the dark surface, leaving only a faint haze of chalk dust. The words dissolved into smudges, as if the plea had never existed. He exhaled loudly, forcing himself to believe that it was just the product of some child's imagination, or a prankster's paint.
He backed out of the room, trying to shake off the cold feeling pooling in his chest. Outside, Jolof's hammering on the roof overhead sounded like a muffled drumbeat. Dust fell from the rafters whenever Jolof's weight shifted. Lufe pressed his forehead to the wall for a moment, then turned and hurried down the corridor toward his own room, footsteps stirring dust that sparkled in the afternoon sun.
Later that evening, Lufe slipped out of his workspace and climbed the staircase to the small landing. He unplugged his phone from the charger—its screen lit with notifications—and found two messages from Hou-min waiting: "How are you settling in?" and "Text me when you can."
He pocketed the phone and, once he reached his room, sank onto the edge of the unmade cot with a sigh.
His satchel lay open at his feet—a pile of novels spilling across the floorboards. But Lufe had neither the energy nor the focus to read. Instead, he typed a quick reply to Hou-min: "Settling in. It's… big here. We'll talk soon."
He hit send and set the phone face-down on the floor. Guilt prickled at him. He missed Hou-min's easy camaraderie—late-night discussions about the intricacies of wuxia character motivations, rambling debates over who would win in a duel: Gyu Sang from Celestial Symphony or Li Yun from Song of the Jade Phoenix. But here, in the Hoss House, even small comforts seemed distant, as if swallowed by the building's vast emptiness.