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Hugo took tiny steps as he followed his father down the hall, his teddy bear clutched in his hands. Again, he had to quicken his pace to keep up, and the effort made him lightheaded. He didn’t say anything, though. His father didn’t like it when he spoke up about his problems.
Hugo had followed his father down this hallway many times, but at no point had he been told why. His father didn’t like bringing him places, so he didn’t know why this was the one place he had to accompany him to. Apparently there was a scientist in one of the homes connected to it, but he wasn’t really sure. All he knew was that the hallway was always empty.
But today there was something different.
“A sheep!” Hugo exclaimed, pointing at the sheep that had stationed itself next to the nearby door. It stood with its back turned to them, perfectly still, but Hugo knew it was alive.
“There’s no sheep there, Hugo,” his father chastised. “Now stay there.”
His father entered the nearby house, passing the sheep by as though it didn’t exist. The sheep, likewise, paid Hugo’s father no mind.
All was quiet for a few moments. Hugo wasn’t really sure what to do. He stared at the sheep, but it did not move, so he instead fidgeted with one of his teddy bear’s front paws. Maybe… Maybe the sheep wasn’t real? But it was standing right there, he could see it, so he had to make sure.
“Um… Hello Mr Sheep. Are you real?” he asked.
“I am,” the sheep replied, a booming voice that echoed across the hallway and reverberated inside Hugo’s skull.
“How did you get inside? I thought sheep lived outside.”
“This city is my home.”
Hugo blinked. “Oh.” He didn’t know sheep could live inside. He wondered what it ate, then, because his old picture books told him that sheep ate grass. There wasn’t much of anything inside the city, other than blank black walls and a pervading sense of loneliness. “Do you want to go inside that house?”
“I prefer not to see the dead before they depart.”
The dead? Hugo glanced at the door for a moment. “…Does it scare you?”
The sheep looked at him. Its gaze was piercing, petrifying, completely unavoidable, but despite the weight of it Hugo did not feel like he had done anything wrong.
“No. It breaks my heart.”
Muffled by the walls of the house next to them, Hugo thought he heard a scream, then multiple, but he— he couldn’t be sure. If there was a struggle, the sound of it phased through him, ghostly in its form, and if the walls begged and pleaded for something, anything, it spun with the ringing in his ears too well for him to discern it.
And then it all fell silent.
The sheep looked away. “I will leave soon, as will you.”
“Will…you be there when I die?” Hugo asked.
“Yes.”
The door opened up again, and Hugo’s father walked out, his clothes stained with black and red and a familiar bottle in his hand.
“Let’s go.” His voice was quiet.
Hugo took after his father, but after a few moments looked back over his shoulder at the sheep.
The door closed behind it.