Three Word Thursday #14

In the days to come Timmy had a lot to think about. He had waited for the teacher as instructed and when the man came he took him to his cabinet. Timmy expected to find a tenebrous place filled with musty smells but the place he entered was quite different. The soft afternoon light poured in through the wide open windows onto a desk supporting a typewriter, some books and a stack of papers but what caught Timmy's eye was a photograph of an elderly glabrous man, a beautiful young woman and a boy much resembling himself in both age and stature.

"Have a seat," the teacher told Timmy, and, following his eyes still fixed on the photograph, added, "My father-in-law, my wife and my son. All dead now."

In the next hour or so Timmy learned the man's story. He had loved his wife and family and had been a uxurious husband. The in-laws had accepted him and treated him as one of their own. His wife's father even shared the family secret with him: he had shown him some parchments, just like the one he saw Timmy carrying that morning, and told him they contained powerful messages which, for the time being, should be kept from humanity as the world wasn't ready for their disclosure yet. Their life seemed perfect until fate interfered. The family was about to spend a weekend at the cottage they owned in the mountains by a small lake. The rest of them went ahead but he had some business to attend to in town and promised to follow them later that day. After finishing the business he quiddled about the town looking for this, that and the other before finally setting off. It was already dark when he approached the cottage. But instead of the peace and quiet and the people he loved he was met by police cars and firemen and frantic activity. The cottage was no more and four charred bodies lay in its burnt out remnants. He had lost everything he loved and could never forgive himself for wasting his time in the town while the tragedy took place, and wondered ever since if he could have done anything to prevent it. The police couldn't find any evidence of crime so the fire went down as an accident although he had qualms about the thoroughness of their work, and he couldn't shed the feeling that the tragedy had something to do with the parchments as not a trace of them was found anywhere. His erstwhile mellifluous nature had dissipated in face of his losses and he became the hard intransigent man the kids had got to know. In the end the man warned Timmy once again to take extra care of the parchments and not to let anyone know of their existence. He even gave him a fake Egyptian scroll containing hieroglyphs to show to his mates if they had any questions as to the thing they had seen in his schoolbag which he duly presented the following morning.

After having spoken with Timmy the teacher kept siting in the cabinet immersed in a deep rumination. He inserted in the typing machine a blank sheet of paper and started typing his resignation. But when playful voices from the yard entered the room he trudged to the window and looked out. "Look what you have become," he susurrated softly to his diffused contour barely discernible in the glass , "They hate you and fear you, and yet one of them could have been yours... Besides, Timmy will need your assistance." He tore his resignation to pieces and left the cabinet whistling, for the first time since the tragedy, resolute he would try to rectify what he had done wrong.