The house smelled of wet wool and rotting cedar. I remember the first time I saw him—Julian—through the gap in the floorboards. He was sitting in the attic, a single shaft of dusty sunlight illuminating his pale forehead. He looked like a piece of porcelain that had been dropped and glued back together.

I was only twelve when Uncle Silas brought him here. "A family obligation," Silas had called it, his voice a low rumble that sounded like stones grinding together. But the locks on the attic door were not for obligations; they were for secrets.

My job was to bring Julian his meals. I would slide the tray through the slot in the door, and I would hear his voice—a thin, melodic sound that seemed to come from a great distance. He told me about the world outside, about the cities of light and the oceans of blue. He spoke of things I had only read about in books, his voice filled with a longing that made my own chest ache.

"Do you think the birds can see me, Toby?" he asked me one rainy afternoon.

"I think they do, Mr. Julian," I replied, my voice trembling.

As the years passed, Julian's stories became more fragmented. He began to talk to people who weren't there, arguing with invisible judges and weeping for cities that had never existed. He would scratch symbols into the wooden walls with his fingernails, creating a map of a country he called "The Land of the Unseen."

I watched him wither. His clothes grew too large for his frame, and his eyes became vast, empty craters of grief. Uncle Silas would occasionally visit him, not to offer comfort, but to observe. He would stand in the doorway, watching Julian's descent with a clinical, terrifying satisfaction.

One winter, the voice stopped.

I pushed the tray through the slot, but there was no answer. I waited for an hour, then two. Finally, I found a way to pick the lock. I entered the attic to find Julian lying perfectly still on the floor, surrounded by his scratched maps and tattered books.

He looked peaceful, as if he had finally found the door to the Land of the Unseen. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a single, dead sparrow lying on the windowsill. It had flown in through a crack in the roof and died in the cold.

I realized then that we were both birds in this house, and the only way out was to stop breathing.

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