A Ward Of Silence Stifled Dawn

20260128

Written for Luna Asli Kolcu’s “Myths of Winter - Week 9” event.

CW: Grievous abuse of a disabled minor.

Kyle didn’t think it strange Granny was agitated; knowing you’re dying must be dreadfully stressful. And with her insisting on dying at home, and the rest of the family having moved far away from this foreboding pile of bricks, it was only Kyle and two lovely nurses from the local hospice.
Granny’s gaze was locked on the mantlepiece clock, as if watching a countdown. Her lips, pale and glistening with loose spittle, intermittently quivered and twitched. But she didn’t seem to be trying to speak, and Kyle’s gentle prompting was ignored.
Until she abruptly clutched his hand and in a furtive, anxious whisper told him “Dawn wasn’t mad!”
Then she was gone. Breath rattling free and her hand limp against his fingers.
What on earth…?
A rattle-BANG made Kyle jump to his feet. One of the portraits had fallen off the wall. If it’d happened a minute earlier he would’ve assumed the shock did the poor girl in. It happening now felt ominous.
Fiddlesticks, he told himself. Just the moody, stuffy air of the place getting to him.
He went and picked up the photo, get it out of the way so the nurses could get Gran… sorted. It was an family portrait, from back when getting your photo taken was a significant event. There, in the middle of the yellowed photo, was Gran, nestled in her mother’s lap. And the little girl next to her had to be her twin. Dawn.
Shivers ran down his back and refused to be dismissed.
“Dawn wasn’t mad.”
He didn’t know anything about Dawn. Nobody in the family ever talked about her. She only existed in these old photos, and only as a young girl.
Kyle put the photo up on the mantle, safely out of the way, and asked if there was anything he could do. The older nurse kindly suggested he make a round of teas. Probably assessing - correctly - that he’d really rather not handle the husk which had minutes ago been his grandmother.
The kitchen was as dour and antique as the rest of the house. Gran’s modern accessibility widgets, like the supported kettle, looked dreadfully out of place. Kyle fetched two flowery mugs out of the cupboard for guests - Gran never served a guest on everyday china, and Kyle uncertainly reasoned that anyone you were paying to stay over was basically a guest.
From the family cupboard he extracted the old, chipped mug covered in Dalmatians which he’d bought with his own money at an antique show when he was nine. It was worn, even tatty, and honestly he preferred a larger mug these days. But the idea of being in Gran’s house and drinking out of anything else felt… wrong.
Though admittedly everything about this visit felt wrong. And wrongness mounted as the nurses finished their work and left - taking Gran’s body with them - leaving him all alone in the big dark house.
It wasn’t even nighttime. Barely half-six. He ought to have dinner or something.
Instead Kyle wandered back upstairs to his room. Pausing to check every photo. He’d barely considered them before, they were almost part of the wallpaper to his mind, but now he was hunting for Dawn.
He’d updated the family chat while the nurses were working, and everyone had gotten the sorrow out of their system and moved to planning the funeral and such.
Was Mum still up? Looked like it. So Kyle called her.
“Hey, sweetie! Is everything alright?”
“Hi. It’s…” Kyle trailed off, searching for words, then settled on “I’m alright. I just, um, when she… went… Gran started talking about Dawn. And, um, I was wondering if you knew what happened to her? Dawn, I mean.”
Silence. Not just from the phone; it felt like the room was holding its breath. Listening close.
“It makes sense she’d be thinking about her poor twin at a time like that.” Mum’s voice was low. Quiet. Controlled. “It was tragic, you know.”
“Mhm?”
“Well, Dawn was… she was born simple.” The word was enunciated with such delicacy. “And when she was still young she lost her mind. Had to be put in an asylum.”
Dawn wasn’t mad.
“What do you mean? ‘Lost her mind’?”
“She got convinced she’d had a baby. At ten years old! Smashed all her dolls and kept insisting she had a real baby. As I said, tragic.”
“Mm. Wow. Yeah, that…”
“Anyway, it’s getting late, so…”
“Right, yeah.” Kyle bid farewell and hung up.
A baby. At ten years old. Packed off to an asylum right after. It’d be easy to write it off as a tragic nonsense tale.
But Gran had sounded so sure. Adamant.
THUMP
This time a pewter ornament had fallen off the shelf, scraping the wall on its way down - and revealing wood behind the torn paper.
Kyle ripped without hesitation. A small door. A closet? A cupboard? The handle had been removed and it was locked.
In no mood to play key-hunt Kyle got the crowbar from the garage. The cupboard hinges squealing open sounded like a relieved sob.
Old toys. What looked like a stack of children’s diaries. And the sort of cardboard box which held important - even dangerous - documents.
Taped to the top was a letter in Gran’s handwriting.
“I can never apologise to my sister now. That horrible place ate her alive. I will never forgive my parents - father for what he did, mother for how she hid it. And I hate myself for hiding it too. I’m sorry, Dawn. Sorry that I’m leaving this to be found long after I’ve died. But I have children of my own to worry about now. I have to hope silence will protect them.”
Kyle pulled the box into the light and looked up.
He’d always felt the house was miserable. Bitter. Now he knew why.
“Are you ready to open it, Dawn?”
The lights flickered in a ripple like a nod.
The sound of tape ripping shattered three generations of silence.

Prompt was “Your family has kept a secret for three generations. Someone finally speaks it aloud. The words change everything. The house itself seems to shift. Old protections fail. New doors appear.”