Remember me?

Don’t You Remember Me?

I hold the stainless bowl under the tap. The sound of the water fills the kitchen, louder and louder, until it seems to swallow me. The pipes clatter. The faucet hisses. The bowl brims. I turn off the tap. Silence falls too quickly, too heavy.

I glance at the window, expecting to see the orchard I have tended for half my life. Instead, a man stands there. A stranger.

He is motionless, staring straight at me through the glass. His clothes are ordinary, jeans and a windbreaker. But his stillness is not. His eyes hold no curiosity, no hostility. Only certainty, as if he has been waiting here, outside this window, for years.

The bowl slips in my hands. Water spills over, splashing onto the floor, cold against my bare feet.

I open the door. He doesn’t move until I speak.

“Can I help you?”

He smiles faintly. “Don’t you remember me?”

My stomach twists. I don’t. I would have remembered a face like this. Calm. Pale. The kind of calm that makes you feel small.

“Sorry, no. Should I?”

“You should.”

I grip the door tighter, holding it half open. “Look, I’m not interested in...”

“In what?” he interrupts. “Warnings? Advice? Survival?”

That word, survival, lands sharp. “I think you’ve got the wrong place.”

His eyes flick toward the orchard. “They’ll come through there first. When the sky breaks. When the wind turns. You won’t hear it until it’s too late.”

A laugh almost escapes me. I’ve heard my share of lunatics. Farm life draws them in, drifters and prophets, people who claim the soil speaks to them. Usually I let them talk, then I watch them leave. But this one is different. His voice isn’t wild. It’s steady. Too steady.

“I don’t know you,” I say.

He leans closer. His breath fogs the glass. “But I know you. I’ve seen what you’ll become.”

I step back. His hand presses flat against the windowpane, fingers spread. My own hand twitches, almost lifting to match it. I shove it into my pocket instead.

“Tell me your name,” I demand.

He doesn’t answer. His gaze holds mine, unblinking. Then he says softly, as if speaking to a child, “You’ll hear the voices tonight. Don’t follow them.”

Before I can reply, he turns. He walks into the orchard, moving without hurry, yet within moments he is gone. Swallowed by the rows of trees.

* * * *

I lock the door. I wipe the spilled water with a towel, forcing myself to think of ordinary things. The broken latch on the shed. The sheep that need worming. The bills stacked on the table. But the orchard window pulls at me.

By dusk, the unease has curdled into dread. I check every lock twice. I draw the curtains. I sit in my chair with the lights off, listening. The farm is quiet. Too quiet.

And then, faintly, it begins.

Voices.

Not from outside. From the house itself, seeping through the walls, slipping between the floorboards. A chorus, low at first, like the hum of a distant engine. Then words. Half formed, overlapping, echoing.

“Victor…”

I freeze. My name, unmistakable.

I grab the flashlight and stumble through the hall. The beam quivers across framed photographs, coats on hooks, the worn rug. The voices thicken, louder in the kitchen.

I force myself to the window. The orchard sways under a rising wind, branches creaking like bones. Shapes move between the rows. Too tall. Too thin.

The warning returns to me. Don’t follow them.

But the voices grow insistent. “Victor. Victor, come.”

My chest aches. The sound isn’t threatening. It’s tender. Familiar. My mother’s voice, dead twenty years. My brother’s laugh, lost in a car accident. Even my wife’s voice, though she left long ago.

My knees buckle. I press my forehead to the cool glass. “You’re not real,” I whisper.

The orchard disagrees. Branches lash violently, though no storm has come. From the shadows, the pale man emerges again. Not at the window this time, deeper among the trees. He raises one hand, palm open.

My breath catches. His lips move, though no sound reaches me. Still, I know the words. Don’t.

* * * *

The night stretches, taut and endless. I don’t sleep. By morning, the voices fade, leaving silence too heavy to bear.

I step outside. The grass is damp, the orchard glistening with dew. Nothing unusual. No footprints. No sign of him.

Had I dreamed it? Have loneliness and years of silence in this house finally cracked me open?

Then I notice the bowl. The one from the kitchen. It is no longer inside. It rests neatly on the porch railing, polished and dry.

I hadn’t touched it.

My hands tremble.

* * * *

Days pass. The voices don’t return. But his words root in me, deeper than sleep. When the sky breaks. When the wind turns. You won’t hear it until it’s too late.

I avoid the orchard. I let the grass grow long, the branches wild. At night I shut my eyes tight, refusing to listen.

Until the evening comes when the horizon burns. Not with sunset, but with a shimmer that fractures the sky into shards of red and green. The wind rises without warning, a howl that bends trees sideways.

And through it, faintly, voices again. My mother. My brother. My wife. Calling. Begging.

I grip the doorknob so hard my knuckles whiten. Every instinct pulls me forward. To follow. To join them.

And then I see him.

The man. Standing just beyond the fence, steady in the gale, untouched by the storm. His lips shape the word once more. Don’t.

I stagger back. Shut the door. Lock it.

The voices scream. The wind claws. The orchard thrashes like a sea in torment. And then, as suddenly as it began, silence falls.

* * * *

When dawn breaks, the world outside is unchanged. The trees stand calm. The sky is clean blue. But I know something has changed. Something tried to claim me, and it failed only because of him.

I step onto the porch. The stainless bowl sits there again, filled this time with water, though the sky has been dry all night.

I lean closer. The reflection staring back at me is not my own.

It is his.

The image holds steady, as if to remind me. I’m still here. I’ll be watching. You survived the night because of me. But the voices will come again.

I stagger back from the bowl, my pulse hammering. For the first time I understand the truth. The man had not only warned me.

He had saved me.