Solitude

I want to say that I am not from a tribe or anything, but as I give voice to that urge of mine, I realise this is a half-baked desire to distance myself from the reality of my existence and that goes against everything I am about to tell you.

I am a member of a tribe.

We all are.

It’s just that sometimes we forget that, or, we attempt to go against the grain denying the nature of our very existence. That contrary nature of ours is perhaps one of the reasons that we have this tradition in my extended family. A ritual that we all undertake in our thirteenth Summer when we begin to shed the childish, but are not yet ready to be fully in the world.

We call this ritual Solitude and it is just that. Plain and simple. Solitude does not have to be anything else, it is almost elemental in its power, we may as well stand chained to coastal rocks as a tsunami crashes over us and washes us away, chains and all.

*

“What’s it like?” I asked Caleb.

Caleb is my older cousin. He is like a brother to me. The older brother that I was unfortunate not to have, but then fortune favoured me and provided me with Caleb instead. I don’t think we ever consciously chose each other, but it’s a choice all the same.

“I cannot say,” Caleb replied.

I must have looked at him with something like the disappointment that I felt, because he reacted to my expression. There was something like anguish upon his face, intermingled with love and compassion, “it is not that I will not, it is that I cannot.”

“I know,” I shrugged with no conviction, “we are told we cannot speak of it.”

Caleb shook his head with complete and utter conviction and I had to take note of this and what he was about to say, “you know that I would, even though you put me in a bad place by asking this of me. I want to because you are my Jamie, and I am your Caleb and that is important. But there are no words, and even if I had the words, they would not connect with any meaning you have in your possession. You soon will, and you will understand then, but until then, my words are just noise.”

I listened and of course I did not understand. What I knew in that moment was that there was an invisible wall between us, made all the more terrible by its intangible nature. Back then, it felt like Caleb’s Solitude had put the wall there. That when Caleb had walked out into the night he had come back a changed person, which of course he had. But the wall was mine and mine alone. I was to discover that in due course.

Caleb studied me for a moment before speaking again, “you are strong Jamie. Stronger than you will ever know. Solitude is not something to be feared, if you are fearful then that is the fear of the unknown. Soon enough you will know. You will find your way, the same as we all must do.”

I smiled.

“Why do you smile?” he asked of me.

“You sound just like them,” I told him.

In response to this he slapped my bare leg and I howled in the shock and fleeting pain of it and then we both laughed. It was the summer and we both wore shorts, but it was always him that slapped my leg and we always found humour in it. I suppose it was a way of moving on with everything and avoiding any awkwardness, a reboot for both of us so we never wasted any of our time together. It may have been painful, but I loved Caleb and he loved me and I knew that he would never knowingly do me harm. Caleb would never knowingly hurt me.

*

Solitude always takes place in the late Summer. The days are no longer tending towards the eternal, and darkness is seeping back into our lives with the promise of Winter and Death. This is Summer’s last hurrah and I am always thankful at this time of year, but the reason for my thanks is that I grieve the coming ending and the forthcoming times of grey, of darkness, and of a cold that seeks the very marrow of your bones and to freeze the core of you.

On the day of Solitude I was to eat a meal of my own choosing and spend time with my family and friends. The people around me rejoiced and partied, and I was expected to join the celebrations, which I did, but there was a part of me that was detached and observed everything as though I were a ghost. The steak I ate was chewy and a chore to consume, but I could not leave even a morsel of gristle as that would have shown me to be ungrateful and even contemptuous. I struggled to swallow it down. The brownie that followed was bland and the ice cream that accompanied it was merely a means to an end, making the dessert less dry and easier to swallow down. Never had I found a meal such a chore and I felt like crying at the injustice of such a thing.

I should have been excited. My world was about to change and I was going to get at least some of what I wanted. I was no longer a child and I wanted everyone to see that I was a man and that I could carry my own burden now.

When my father poured my drink of choice and sat with me on a bench away from the rest of the party, handed me my own glass tumbler, etched with my name, the twin of the one my father held in his oversized hand with the name Jim etched, but now almost faded to a memory, I knew that this should have been a moment to savour. A golden memory in the making. I hoped that time would forge it into something that it wasn’t at the time as Jim touched his glass to mine and told me he was proud of me.

I looked over my glass at him, “thanks daddy,” I said to him trying for a smile, but knowing that it had not landed well upon my tight face.

He gazed back at me with his big, brown and solemn eyes, “dad,” he corrected, “I think it’s about time you called me dad, especially as we’re drinking a fine single malt together.”

I nodded and tried it on for size, “dad.”

He smiled and nodded at my glass, “are you going to drink it, or cuddle it?”

I looked at the glass in my hand as though it had appeared from nowhere and once I attended to it I spotted the tremor of my hand. That shaking shamed me and all of a sudden I doubted that I could bring the glass all the way to my lips successfully. My other hand joined the first in an attempt to still my nerves and this necessary action shamed me, but needs must and I managed to get the glass to my lips. 

I had tasted my father’s whisky before now, but that was different. I was tasting his whisky. Now that I had my own whisky it took on a different quality. I could feel it burn as it entered my mouth and knowing what was to come, the anticipation of it, that made it all the more of a trial. The liquid hit my throat and I choked. Father spirited my glass away and slapped my back. 

“It always gets a person like that on their first proper attempt,” he reassured me. 

I was not reassured and the tears in my eyes made me keep my head bowed until I could blink them away and look at him without feeling like the smallest of children. When I raised my head he was waiting with my glass. I took it.

“Now try again,” he told me.

I didn’t want to. I suddenly didn’t want to be there, but I did as I was bade, because I knew I had to. Besides, he was my father and I had to respect him even if I found it difficult to do so sometimes.

The whisky burnt a second time around, but it did not inspire in me another choking fit, instead it warmed and emboldened me. It made a change that I welcomed and I remembered myself in that moment.

“Thanks, dad.”

He chinked my glass and grinned at me, “that’s my boy,” then he winked conspiratorially before drinking some more of his own whisky.

*

I think I was relieved when the party came to an end. The night had drawn in more quickly than it had any right to and the moon failed to make an appearance, just as was expected. The end of the party was heralded by an unnatural calm, and I was already standing expectantly in the garden as the four adults looked towards one another and came to me. My father was not one of them, and neither was Caleb there. Two uncles and two aunts formed a square around me and walked me away from my family home as everyone else watched me go. Not a word was uttered and none would be in this transition from home to Solitude.

I had learnt everything I needed to know in the months preceding this, not that there was much to know. I was to go to a place as a boy and emerge a man. I would take nothing with me and I would bring nothing back. The creed of my family is similar to the stoics. Possessions, and the attachment we have to those attachments, are unhealthy. Material items rob us of some of who and what we are. Solitude takes this further. This night I would shed the skin of my childhood and emerge as something bigger and stronger, I would become a being that was ready to go into the world.

The walk with those four silent adults was long, and yet we were where we needed to be all too soon. We had climbed over a style built into the very fabric of a stone wall and walked the path across the field that would take us to the woods. The moonless night was devoid of clouds, but it still tended towards pitch black. Two of the adults lead with the remaining two behind me. They knew the route well and all I had to do was follow. 

Follow them out of the field and into the woods. Into the depths of a world that I had never seen before. A world that I had never experienced. We walked into the woods and the trees took on a ghostly, ethereal quality, crowding around me, restless and intent on commencing their part in my Solitude.

Or so I thought.

Suddenly, we had ceased our walk and the time had come. The two ahead of me crouched and yet I did not know what they were about. I was startled as the aunt and uncle behind me took a hold of my arms and led me forwards. They were gentle, but there was something awful about the inevitability of their actions. 

“There is a ladder.”

The words came as though from the dark hole I only now saw beneath me. The mouth that awaited to consume that which I must relinquish in order to live the next stage of my life successfully. Now I crouched down and clumsily felt around for the top of the ladder. My hands were numb, but it was not with the cold. Once I had my fist wrapped around the top rung of the ladder I gingerly lowered my right foot into the impenetrable darkness and quickly looked away at the sight of my disappearing leg. I willed myself on, but carefully and deliberately moved down the ladder. Soon enough, I was fully in the hole, but still it shocked and surprised me when the cover was replaced and I was left in a dark limbo with only the sensation of touch to help me as I continued my descent. 

I jarred my ankle as I reached the bottom. The ladder was metal and I had reached beyond it to feel the concrete it was set in. The ground beneath my feet was solid and thankfully dry. I felt around until I was certain of where I needed to go. The tunnel I was to walk along was wide enough and high enough that I did not have to twist or crouch, I could reach both walls and I trailed my fingers along them, feeling my way. I dragged my feet in a similar way. Robbed of my sight, I had no way of knowing where I was, nor what I was about to encounter. Besides, I had time on my hands. I would be here until it was done. I hoped that this would be the entirety of the night, but no more than that. 

Eventually, the tunnel opened out into something wider and bigger. This discovery was inexplicably frightening and debilitating, I felt small, insignificant and vulnerable. I could no longer use both hands to feel the walls either side of me and as a result I mistrusted my feet and my imagination held sway. The space before me was alive and I was blundering around in its evil maw. 

I had to swallow my fear down and push back the well of tears that was threatening to undo me. I think I whimpered and the sound of it echoed weakly as it left me. It took an age to stumble and fumble my way around what turned out to be a small, square room. I was back at the tunnel and now I had mapped out the outer walls of the room I knew what it was that I must do next. 

Tonight was about exploration. I slapped my hands around above me and established the basis for a theory of a uniform concrete ceiling just above my head. I should check this assumption of mine, but I thought it more important to prioritise the ground beneath my feet, so I got down on all fours and took to crawling back and two as though I were mowing a lawn or ploughing a field. The floor was course and cold and I was careful not to graze or tear my skin, but still I hit my head on the opposing wall when it arrived too quickly. 

There was something about being on all fours that rendered the dimensions of that room an impossible distortion of what should have been the reality of it. When I discovered the two small objects on the floor I did not have a clue as to where I was. I sat cross legged and kept both objects in the confines of my legs for fear of them rolling away or finding another way to escape, or even to wink back out of existence. One was a cylinder, and as my probing fingers found a piece of string on one end, I knew it for what it was. My heart was filled with hope as I took up the other, box-shaped object and shook it. The sound the shaking elicited confirmed my greatest hope, but delivered disappointment too. I carefully pushed a short end of the box to slide it open and then fished inside for one of only three of the matches inside. Carefully I first lit the match and then used it to light the candle.

That was when my world changed.

The light changed everything, restoring to me a semblance of familiarity and a world that I knew and understood. The room that I was in was much smaller than I had imagined. I sat and looked around me, lifting the small candle before me. I tried not to think about how long the candle would last, but already I knew it would not be enough. My focus was soon drawn to the walls and the floor of the room, for they had some of the darkness that I had been fumbling around in, but as I attended to it more closely a thrill of fear electrified my body. 

The walls, floor and ceiling were soaked in blood. The blood had dried almost black. I found my feet and walked unsteadily to a wall. There were gouges here and there. Randomly placed, but always four in parallel.

Claw marks.

I barely noticed as I stifled another sob.

I stumbled to the tunnel and peered tentatively along it, relieved to see that it was only a short walk to the ladder that was my passage out of here. I knew that the exit was barred and would remain so until my time here was done, so I went no further. 

Returning to the centre of the room, I sat back down and took in a deep breath. It was best to still myself and wait it out. I took a final look at the candle, readying myself to blow it out. I would need it later. 

Puckering my lips to direct my breath, I gave the candle a last lingering and longing look, and then time stood still and my breath was forgotten. I was frozen in that moment. There on the ground around me was a shroud. The half shadow of someone who must be directly behind me. Behind me in a room that was completely empty and silent.

Slowly and unwillingly I turned to see who it was.

That was when the candle guttered out.