Chapter 5 - The Fading Light
It was because of my location on the ground floor that I started noticing things. Small, strange things that at first I desperately wanted to ignore. I tried to convince myself that they were just the paranoid imaginings of an old woman whose mind was beginning to play tricks on her.
But the truth was impossible to hide forever. It all started a few agonizing months ago. I began to notice that Mateo and Leo were physically shrinking. They were losing weight at an alarming rate.
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The soft, round baby cheeks that I loved to kiss were disappearing, leaving their faces looking gaunt, angular, and hollow. They permanently wore very pronounced, bruised-looking dark circles under their dull eyes.
When I would pull them in for a hug, my arms didn't wrap around soft, healthy children; instead, I could feel the sharp, jagged edges of their little bones pressing against their skin. The vibrant, chaotic energy that naturally belongs to boys of seven and five had completely vanished, replaced by a sluggish, fearful lethargy that broke my heart.
