He Remembers

The town had a name before it had a problem. The problem arrived in winter, as problems in this region tend to do. The first reports described a figure at the edge of the tree line. Tall. Patient. Watching the chimneys. No one thought to write down what happened next. By the time anyone thought to write anything down, there were fewer people to write it.

He does not come for the wicked. That is the misunderstanding that costs people their sleep. He comes for everyone. The wicked simply know why. The innocent spend their last hours trying to remember what they did. That is, I think, the cruelty of it. The uncertainty. If you are reading this, you have already been seen. I am sorry. There is nothing to be done about it now.

Arrived in ████████ on the 18th. The locals would not speak directly about the subject. They spoke around it, the way you speak around a fire — close enough to feel the heat, careful not to get burned. One woman, elderly, told me: "He doesn't punish. He records." I asked her what the difference was. She said: "Punishment ends." I have filed a supplementary report. It has not been acknowledged. I do not expect it will be.

1. He has always existed. He did not begin. 2. The list is not a list of the guilty. It is a list of the known. 3. Being known is not the same as being safe. 4. The bells are not a warning. They are a confirmation. 5. You cannot remove your name. You can only add to your entry. 6. He does not sleep. He does not tire. He does not forget. 7. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████ I heard the bells on a Tuesday ████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ my children were asleep ████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ I do not know how long he stood there ██████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ he was still there when the sun came up ████████████████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

He is not angry. That is the part no one tells you. He is not angry. He is not cruel. He is not evil in any way that would make sense to you. He simply remembers. Everything. Everyone. Always.