"Ah…it's that nightmare again." Rei realized as it had been the same nightmare he experienced as a six year old back in England when he used to live with his father.
This nightmare was an old memory for him.
Manchester, England, 11 years ago
The graveyard's air smelled like rust.
Fog hung low and thick, swallowing the iron gates behind them. The laughter of boys echoed too loud in a place meant for whispers. Four children wove between crumbling headstones, their breath visible in the cold. At the back, six-year-old Rei kept close to the path, eyes fixed on a polished grave titled: Aiko Ashbourne. His mother.
"Oi, Rei," one of them whispered. "Think your mum's ghost talks to you or what?"
He didn't answer. His small hands tightened around the crumpled paper flower he always left. The others darted off, daring each other to touch the oldest graves. One by one, their shapes vanished into the grey.
Then… the laughter stopped. Just silence.
Even the wind had gone.
Rei blinked. The fog had thickened …not natural now, but heavy. Almost alive.
He turned around. No one.
"…James?"
Nothing.
That's when he heard it.
A whisper … barely audible, curling through the mist like smoke:
"Rei…"
He spun. No one.
Again:
"Rei…"
The voice was wrong. Hollow, yet personal …as if it knew how he hurt. He backed up toward his mother's grave. That's when he saw it.
A figure.
Crouched.
Grinning.
No face. Just a long, too-wide smile stretching out of a hooded silhouette, teeth glistening like cracked porcelain.
The Grinner.
Rei froze. His chest tightened. Tears welled without falling.
The thing tilted its head, slowly. Like a puppet. And then, it spoke:
"You remember her pain.
Do you want to see theirs too?"
Rei didn't know why, but he nodded.
The moment he did, the world cracked.
Flashes. Screams.
A girl drowning in a frozen lake.
A boy locked in a cellar, begging for his father.
A woman clutching her unborn child as fire swallowed her bedroom. Dozens. Hundreds. All around him. Their final moments.
His right eye burned , it felt like bullets piercing through his eyes. He screamed in pain.
The figure stepped closer and whispered, just once:
"Then carry them. So they are not forgotten."
Darkness closed in.
Rei woke the next morning in the dew-damp grass, near his father – Alaris Ashbourne, and local police
The others never spoke of that night again. Some transferred schools. One refused to visit graveyards.
But Rei remembered. He always would.
Because now, when he looked into the eyes of the dead…
He saw everything they couldn't forget.