You hear it only because the applause has ended.
The fireworks fade.
The Castle lights dim.
The crowd drifts downhill, warm with music and pride.
Then the silence settles.
Not empty.
Held.
A single drumbeat answers it.
Not loud.
Not distant.
Close enough to feel in your ribs.
Rat.
…a…
…tat…
You stand on the Esplanade, the stone still warm beneath your boots.
Edinburgh Castle looms above you, dark again, ancient, no longer performing.
Rat.
…a…
…tat…
It’s wrong.
The Tattoo is over.
The pipes are silent.
No regiment is marching.
And yet the beat continues.
You follow it without deciding to.
Down a Close that smells of damp stone and old breath.
Past walls that have listened longer than anyone remembers.
The sound doesn’t echo —
it travels,
as if the city itself is carrying it.
Rat.
…a…
…tat…
You glimpse him near the shadow of the Castle wall.
Small.
Too small for the uniform he wears.
Seventeenth-century wool, dark with age, clinging to bones that never finished growing.
He has no head.
The drum hangs from his shoulders anyway.
His hands move with perfect discipline.
They never hesitate.
They never stop.
You understand it then.
This is not a ghost that wanders.
This is a signal that never reached its officer.
An order given to a child
and never revoked.
Rat.
…a…
…tat…
He is not warning you.
He is reporting.
Reporting that the city still stands on children sent into the dark.
That music was always louder than mercy.
That history prefers parades
to listening.
The beat grows fainter as you retreat.
But it does not end.
Later, in bed, when the city sleeps,
you will hear it again —
beneath your heartbeat,
perfectly out of time.
The old tales say the drummer appears before a fall.
The city says it’s tradition.
Tonight, the drum keeps playing.
And somewhere beneath the stone,
a child is still waiting for the order to stop.
❓ If a rhythm from the past followed you home tonight —
would you listen…
or drown it out with applause?
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