Fear is manifest threefold in the following events; the first incident being the birth of a sibling.

When Iyan was nine years old, his aunt had been pregnant with what was to believed her only child. The pregnancy had been difficult, and ultimately ended in the tragic death of the infant a mere hour after its birth. Though Aunt Myra had been hopeful, her husband was hardly such, and had convinced her to decline selecting a name for the baby, until its emergence into the world was safe and secured. How little did he know that such a decision would haunt Myra for the next years to come - perhaps, if they had been confident in the life of their child, would the babe have been born after all? Such musings were of no help to the recently bereaved woman, and she turned to Iyan for comfort.

Though neither of them had been known to each other for very long (at this time, Iyan's parents were still quite alive, and their general company was that of a friendly familial one), the two took to one another quite steadfastly. The Luttons were often engaged on social gatherings and affairs, so Iyan was often in the presence of his Aunt - Uncle Hans was quite committed to the post office.

With the growing dependency on one another - Iyan's attachment to the unfamiliar mothering qualities of Myra, and her tenderness towards the child she would never have - it was eventual that the details of the failed pregnancy would be made known to Iyan.

For weeks after Myra's confidence in her nephew, nightmares plagued the impressionable mind of Iyan, who saw visions of a child, not unlike him in age and appearance, calling out and crying for its mother. The dreams were troubling, to be sure, but out of a concern for his aunt's mental state, Iyan kept such dreams to himself, until one day, the dreams appeared far closer to reality.

Wandering the woods behind his extended family's cabin home was a favourite pastime of Iyan. On a particularly cold day, when the sun was submerged in a sea of shock-white clouds, Iyan was throwing stones at a thinning river, frosted over as it was by growing ice. A usually safe activity, as the river was too small even in its melted state to fall in, Iyan looked up to find the very child from his nightmares staring at him from across the opposite river bank. He had been arrested by fear, but also of a burning curiousity that often accompanies youth.

Unfortunately for his minimal curiousity, as Iyan attempted to cross the river and meet with this spectre, perhaps in need of assistance only the living could provide, the ice cracked beneath his feet and plunged him at once into the icy water. Sense had never been further from him - he flailed and screamed and cried out, but nothing could extract him from the sinister depths of the water.

It was his Aunt who pulled him free at last. Concerned for the whereabouts of her darling nephew, nervous as she was about the cold, her search led her in a timely fashion to the cries of Iyan, and she saved a child from the clutches of death.

First to lose is the child, seconded by the parents. The water's hungry maw opened not only for the near-death of one, but the absolute end for those absent.

When Iyan was ten and three years old, his parents had found themselves in the business of a party, a grand and expensive affair the required them to leave their son with their nearby family. The event took place some miles away, at an isolated estate owned by a wealthy Lord. The irony of their near mandatory festivities being the catalyst for so grim an outcome that was to follow was not lost on Iyan, who would think on such an avoidable accident for years after.

Taking the family's car, it was Iyan's father who drove, but with the consumption of strong alcohol, the contagious cheer of his wife, and her pressing advances as they traveled, accident was unavoidable. The senior Lutton attempted to pull the car over - by the side of a bridge, no less - to address the attentions of his sensual wife, when the bridge creaked, shuddered, and eventually collapsed over the extensive lake it gloomed over.

Had they not been drinking that night, perhaps they would not have felt the need to attend to their romantic desires. Alas, a great many things went terribly wrong with the introduction of the liquor, and would prove too limiting on the reflexes of the unfortunate driver.

Eating breakfast with his aunt the following morning, Iyan felt keenly that the water had stolen his parents. Toxicity in their blood was hardly to blame in his eyes; the water was after his family, and had succeeded in slaying his parents. For years after the incident, he refused company near the rivers, washed himself only with jugs over baths of water, and staunchly swore off the rain. Such devotion to a paranoia was alienating, and offered no aid in his now-ruined social image. The victim of a great many pranks and thoughtless dares, Iyan found his books at school the subject of submersions in the lavatories. It was not infrequent that bottles and glasses of water found their way to his seat, regardless of what class he happened to be followed so in. While meaningless after the initial years of his fear, the joke persisted throughout his education and served one of the primary reasons for his eventual departure from the classist institution.

The third contribution towards this aquatic aversion was a spell of somnambulism. Subconsciously distracted by the nearby pull of the river, not even sleep could protect him.

Some time after Iyan decided to quit the farce of school, and after fully assisting his uncle in the post office, he found himself at the age of twenty years. Being just two years before the death of his aunt, and eventual meeting with the eclectic Kairie Felling, this would prove one of the most significant events in his rather limited scope of experiences.

The event in particular was spread over the course of two weeks, a small number when compared to the mass that would be his life to come, but what felt an extensive, torturous two weeks indeed.

Having suffered the post office through a blizzard in isolation, Iyan was at last able to make his way home and bundle under the touch of covers for a near day. The past three days in frozen solitude were hard on his psyche, but in a manner quite consistent with his choices in life, he had remained silent on the matter. Covered, then, under the strange heat of his own blankets and in the breath of his own bed, his mind was ripe for influence from all that troubled him. Some hours into his much-needed rest, his limbs began to move, and Iyan arose from the bed.

Enjoying a rare, quiet dinner together in their room, neither his aunt nor his uncle heard him stumble, unconscious, out of the house.

Walking for several miles, Iyan trudged through the snow and the trees, losing himself in the woods, until he came to an abrupt stop and opened his eyes. What woke him, he would be unable to tell, but the scenery was foreign, indistinguishable from the snow, and served only to panic him. With nothing but the hasty desire to run until he found something of help, Iyan at last made his way to the defunct Kenton Abbey.

The abbey was the centrepiece of Tottenham Cross. Some forty years prior, it was a marvelous building of imposing stone, but the residing Lord of its halls had since been killed, and his only heir the victim of tragedy in an arraigned marriage disaster. Since the fall of the family, none had taken ownership of the abbey, and it served only to draw in tourists who hoped for spectres of its previous inhabitants. Iyan had looked up at the lifeless grey walls and wondered why his dreaming state had brought him here. He was hardly related to the extinguished family. Was this yet another case of the dead attempting to draw him into death?

Recognising his location, at the very least, a quite frozen Iyan made his way back home, much to the surprise of his guardians, who had assumed him sound asleep for the past several hours.

The parasomnia continued. Each day that Iyan laid himself to rest, he would awaken in an unfamiliar location, and no matter where he woke, the path he took to safety invariably led him back to the shivering walls of Kenton Abbey.

The last time this incident occurred, with Iyan shaking at the wide steps, he strove to investigate the building. Pushing his way inside, he found that the air was strangely warm, as though heated by a fire. Concerned for the safety of the surrounding homes should there be an inferno lurking within, he sought the source of the heat, only to find himself in the basement of the abbey.

He was woefully unaware that there was a level so far removed from the rest of the establishment. Had he known what lay underneath, he would have marched straight home as he had been. Heated by only the gods knew what was a basin, a large pool that rippled in the dark. A strange light appeared to glow from within it, beckoning one to look more closely.

Iyan did not want to look, but something compelled him, and he gazed deep into the surface.

Hands, a hundredfold and blackened, reached for him, pulled him into the bed of water. Their nails were sharp and rugged, tearing where there was supposed to be skin. Iyan's mouth filled with the warm liquid, and the taste of metal spread across his throat. Desperate to avoid the certain clutch of death, he kicked and pulled to extract himself, but there was nothing he could have done. Whatever paranormal entity wanted him dead had lured him here, and so foolish was he, to wade into its loving arms!

Discovered only by the next-door house's occupant (an excitable gossip, certain she would find the first haunting of Kenton Abbey), Iyan was pulled free from his struggle and cautiously transported home. His story, at first eagerly listened to by his guardians and neighbours, was almost at once waved away by an explanation of vivid dreaming, and horrid sleepwalking. Iyan would hear none of it, convinced he had been the victim of death's cruel intent once more, but he would remain alone in this belief.

And so, a sufferer of several tragedies around the sinister surface of water, Iyan Lutton persisted in his fear. Death would have him soon, he was certain, lest he lower his guard. The river that snaked behind the house was only the beginning of his troubles, and the whispers it carried across the forest were sure to have him next to his parents, soon enough.

After his walk with Kairie, the memory of her hair moving in the wind was almost enough to distract him from the slithering of his own demise. Almost, he swore, as he locked his bedroom door and barred the window. You shan't rid me of my peace yet.

In the night, a deer jumped over a felled tree, only to pause as something moved around it. Supposing the river that bubbled nearby to be the cause, it sniffed and continued on its way, oblivious to the eyes that followed.