The Silence Of Hope

By Erhan Ertekin

An indelible catastrophe approaches without anyone's notice, yet it delivers a lingering sense of unease. That very night, Elizabeth (late 12s) jots down discreetly her last words in her diary and abandons the setting of homicide, maybe for good. No single culprit is responsible; the blame for this tragedy is to be placed on Mr Branson (Elizabeth's father).

The startling facts of this seemingly decorous yet genuinely crippled family are unknown; the cause of destruction within the Branson family is somewhat concealed. But with the interference of intense police investigation, will these clandestine triggers of such devastation remain under the wraps or finally come forth from obscurity?

With desperation, Elizabeth, unaware of whether she is being tracked down, runs for her life in the wood, where she has already explored before, but the profundity of nature comes as a riddle to her. Eventually, after an ordeal of 3 days in the dark about the ongoing circumstances, she is found by Deputy Sheriff Williams (late 35s). However, does her rescue signify a permanent relief after all, or something worse is on its way?

Engulfed by claws of hope to return home, her intuitions fail to serve her expectations and where she ends up is a lonely place called Sisters and Brothers of Mercy. There she is held back from an ordinary once again instead of her peers under their parent's wings. But, a tide of homelessness and loneliness does not survive long enough to bring her any lower. She encounters two people on her way, and she welcomes them into her life, whom she calls her 'family' afterwards: Mary (14) and Charles (14). They pick up the remnants of themselves together and grow up side by side with all their dreams on the verge of turning into a reality. Will they succeed to overpower the cruelty of the nuns and priests?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erhan Ertekin
• Release date: Jun 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005263508

Erhan Ertekin

Hi there! I am a 17 year old senior from Northern part of Cyprus. I have indited my first novella called the silence of hope as concrete indication of my ceaseless passion for writing and literature. Having been inspired by Hush, The Silent Patient, and Anne of Green Gables, the Silence of Hope brings elements of intense psychological thriller, which has from the very beginning influenced me profoundly.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

ELIZABETH

That night, the wind was blowing cold, ghastly. The trees howling and the thunderous clouds floating above the whirling body of destruction. An unexpected guest was the whirling body. The embodiment of gloom.

The torrential rain was limiting my vision, caused me to lose my bearings. However, I was found and sent to somewhere safer. That was where I was rebuilding my structure from ashes until I graduated from high school and ended up becoming the main character of my everlasting dream.

BRUNO

Amy and I saw you, Elizabeth, nearly at the same time, but I think you were caught by Amy first. In the woods, I saw pink flashes of your summer nightgown that you wore to bed that night. Yet, I scarcely noticed your scratched leg and muddy knees. I saw your lips begin to arrange themselves. I saw the word form, the syllables hardening and sliding from your mouth. You whispered thirsty and I handed you a cup of fresh water from the pond you were staring at the whole time.

CHAPTER 1 — TURNING POINT

BRUNO

My legs were barely propping me up, yet I was thirsty from an exhausting training conducted in my room a while ago. The wind was brutally battering our home with a rough bash of water drops against the shutters, which were groaning for help. Strangely, that kept me wondering for a moment the last time such a treacherous weather struck after a summery 8-hour long daylight reigned over.

The screeching of the floor was aiding the melody of water splashes and leaks from overhead that steadily tapped the floor. Frightened, I did not dare to ask Elizabeth to fetch me a glass of water from downstairs, for she would tell Amy and make fun of me the whole week. I filled my chest with moisture and rushed downstairs in a panic into the darkness. Grasping a glass, I reached out to the dispenser and served myself with my award of hard work, so I deserved a few sips of water to dampen my bone-dry throat.

Not that I was hallucinating from panic, I heard glass breaking into pieces and crunches. To my realization, it could have been sauntering cats in the garden to avoid being wet. The sounds of water dropping on the floor filled my ears, urging me to check the bottom of the glass to make sure it was not leaking. ''Okay, is this one of your jokes Amy?''

No response

The house was enveloped in a smell of meticulously potted undulating flowers: now it smelled of mildew and some indefinable stink that I could not designate.

''Is anyone there?'' fright hoarsened my voice and I could not even translate what I heard into what I said since they were utterly disparate. My voice was still echoing off the walls and marble floors as I paused at an arched doorway that led to a green salon and the music room adjacent to it.

Still no answer.

Pit-a-pat … pit-a-pat … pit-a-pat

I rather noticed constant water drops increasing in frequency until it became the only sound that captivated my attention. It paused. I turned around with my cup upside-down, empty, held tightly by my jaws.

Shot.

ELIZABETH

No sooner had Elizabeth rolled out of the bed to lift the rotted window open, a harsh dissonance of gunshot grated her ears. That silenced her tranquil countenance and made her eyes dull. An abrupt urge to scurry out of the chamber through a window embedded itself in her mind as the only way to escape. She paused and poised motionless on her bare toes, while a flash and a horrendous noise of gunshot had whizzed past her head and peppered the ground. Mr Branson scuttled off to kitchen downstairs, terrified by the shadows of an unknown stranger casting bullets in his place of comfort and security. A turmoil of emotions, especially guilt was the dominant one that already murdered him before the actual thief who had broken in by shattering the kitchen window with a muffler. The bullet tore through Bruno's back of the head. The searing sound of gunfire was almost drowned out by the screaming and yelling of Mrs Branson, who was banging on the locked door to break out regardless of whether she was to wear bruises around her fists. One more shot and her parents perished. The gunshots began supplying horrors to fill the void. Her heart thudded more loudly but she had to cease her mind’s unproductive buzz to be able to think of acting more rationally. Elizabeth's wrinkled face was the sign of contemplating whether she should have taken Amy with her. What was the right choice when a stranger was slaughtering the only creatures a 12-year-old kid had? She pivoted sneakily towards the threshold, yet all her focus suddenly concentrated on the shuffling footsteps of the murderer growing louder and louder. The trepidation in her heart was in harmony with the tapping footsteps of the stranger.

The door was kicked open and there was no trace of Elizabeth Branson in the chamber, yet there was an open window with a black silky curtain flailing, explicitly signifying the girl's escape from danger.

AMY

Shot

Shot

The taunting screams sent shivers down my spine as the fears ran through my head, invading my confidence and hairs stood on end anchored to a trembling skin.

I was frozen, hardly breathing, hiding under the bed with eyes transfixed on the door, hoping that the murderer wouldn't notice me. Trembling unintentionally, I could not take control of my motor movements and lie fidgeting as the stomping steps marched towards my room. I had seen darkness before, but in movies mostly, the kind that makes the streets look like an old-fashioned photography delineated by a pang of drear, everything a shade of grey. This wasn’t like that. This was the darkness that robbed me of my best sense and replaced it with a paralysing fear. In this darkness I lied, muscled cramped from trembling and eventually unable to move. Only thing I knew that my pupils were dilated and I kept blinking, still instinctively moisturising the organs I had no current use for. Then there was a moment when I couldn’t hear anything. I guessed that should bring my heart rate down below the level of ‘rabbit in a snare’, but it didn’t.

Suddenly, an abrupt, burdensome question puzzled me. Who would have been downstairs this late? Who was …? Not mum because she was already locked. Not bad, for he was still working. Either Elizabeth or Bruno might have been hurt. My concern about them was beyond description and comprehension. I considered squeezing out of the room through the ajar door and tuck them into here to be sure they are safe. At least sure that they were not hurt.

Beside an enormous, translucent window laid a young, blonde woman in her twenties. She sat, legs outstretched on the warm mattress in a moonlight-drenched sill of the room. She must have woken up at least six times that night in different time intervals, but not for long each time but enough to break down her sleep cycle into six separate unrefreshing chunks. She was not suffering from insomnia but unexpected nightmares, for she had been undergoing unprecedented situations, which were enough to tear her slightest sense of hope apart. She shook her head violently, pounding it down again and again. But the thoughts were just too heavy to dislodge themselves from her pre-occupied mind. She had no idea as to whether she was being tormented by them, or doing the right thing – anticipating over the next level of her life. It was imminent she felt.

Glancing around, not focusing on anything, accompanied by a momentary look of discomfort crossing her face, including burrowing eyebrows, nails dug into both palms yet one finger tapping in a furious beat on the bedside table, her breaths kept growing thinner and ragged.

She diverted her eyes to a wall-mounted mirror that was encircled by a frame of sparkling strands of silver, interlaced together in a pattern of a star. That star of 'Mercy' was the grim reminder of those dreadful days, a reminder of how she was being reinvented from her ashes. She could still recall Mary and Charles.

The door handle suddenly budged. Elizabeth stole a compulsive glance at the door, slowly opening, a ray of hallway light diffusing through a solitary lock-hole. The hinges screeched and groaned. The sneaky shadow evolved.

''Dear, the dinner is ready.'' Mrs Blaine offered with a cordial and welcoming tone of voice.

''Give me a second nana, I'm coming right after you.'' Elizabeth responded and watched the shadow exterminated by the bright lamp, dangling from a low ceiling.

Elizabeth had been brought up in Maple, where the landscape was the embodiment of ecstasy – the sunrays would fall as a blanket of white upon the greenery in their glow, the nascent leaves of spring would lie papery and delicate, waving dancingly in the breeze. Her childhood had been beyond enjoyment and delight, which she had always relished to extremities: Having a-few-hour walk with her mother into the forest that their house looked over, which would also give her and Bruno, her younger brother, to mess around once more those days, for they were not allowed to enter woods without an elder accompanying them. The house she used to live in was not too spacious yet not cramped, quite cosy and dusty, for her mother had been developing an unceasing passion for gardening since she had always been enchanted by the genuine beauty of nature – hardly had she had the time to spare some on housework like all other women from her neighbourhood would do.

That house had ivy and ferns grew through the crevices of the old winding path, which directly paved a way to the colossal structure. Dust laid over every surface of the house like dirty snow, pristine dust layer, not a footprint anywhere, papers and letters addressed in all likelihood to her father, for he had been up to eyes in work to provide for his family. It looked welcoming from the open door to the narrow hallway. Upon the walls were hung the pictures of children – Elizabeth, Bruno and Amy – side by side on the wall, which was the