The Light the Night Went Out in Georgia

There I was, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, kicking Evan's butt in the middle of a massive multiplayer match, when everything went dark. My big sister Julie let out a typical groan from her room down the hall. It was the usual groan she gave when nothing was going her way. It was the usual groan of a 16-year-old girl who's treated like a princess by my stepdad Cliff. She was probably in the middle of taking her millionth selfie or shooting some lame TikTok video lip-sync masterpiece. 

We've had power outages before. Since we moved to the house outside Atlanta a year ago to accommodate my stepdad's new job, there were at least three times when the lights went out. After the second time, I decided to keep my flashlight in my nightstand drawer. It was in easy reach of my desk where I have my PlayStation and my monitor. 

I reached out in the dark, slid open the drawer, closed my fingers around the flashlight, and slid the switch with my thumb. The light threw a narrow beam across my room, creating a flat white moon on my ceiling. I could see wisps of dust rushing through the shaft. 

Before I could point the beam at the door, the light flickered. A second later, it went dark. I shook the flashlight and slid the button back and forth a few times, but it was no use. It was dead.

I reached into the drawer for batteries. There were two, exactly what I needed. Even though I couldn't see anything, I unscrewed the flashlight cap and placed it on my thigh. The dead batteries slid out of the flashlight and brushed past my leg. They fell to the floor with a soft thud. I focused on feeling the ends of the fresh batteries to figure out which end was which. The side with the bump went in first. I pushed them into the tube, felt for the cap, and retrieved it. Once everything was in place, I slid the switch again. Nothing. Now it was my turn to let out a groan.

"Dad?" Julie called out from her room. Her voice sounded funny. Usually, she whined or complained. Nothing was ever right for her. This time, she sounded worried. I never knew her to be afraid of the dark. "Dad?" she repeated, a little more urgent. "My phone's dead. I can't see."

I looked around my room. Normally, I can see pretty well in the dark at night, but it seemed a lot darker than usual. Of course, the lights outside were out too. There's a streetlight near the corner of our yard that gives off an orange glow at night. With it being out, I suddenly realized how much light we take for granted, especially at night.

"Dad!" Julie yelled. She wasn't whining or complaining. She was scared. 

I reached out to steady myself on my bed as I rose. There was just one problem: I couldn't find my bed. I waved my arm in front of me like a blind person. It had to be right there. I usually leaned back against it when I sat on the floor to play my PlayStation. I reached forward, leaning on my knees. My face should have been bumping against the mattress. But my bed was gone, somewhere in the dark. 

I crawled forward on my knees. The feel of the carpet between my fingers was weirdly comforting. At least it was still there.

"Dad! Eve! Rob!" my sister yelled. Her voice was close. She sounded like she was in the hallway now. I crawled toward the door. Nothing was in my way, which was weird, because I had a pile of dirty laundry and my bookbag on the floor. Mom always got on me about this because I never cleaned up. I don't think she really cared, but my stepdad, Cliff, was a real neat freak, and he put the pressure on her always to get me to clean up. To be honest, I kept it like this because it meant he wouldn't come into my room. My mess to him was like garlic to a vampire. That suited me just fine. 

I kept crawling. No bookbag. No dirty laundry. No door. Where was it? I began to fan out my arms in front of me, still on my knees, sweeping around for something, anything. I felt like I had crawled the length of two bedrooms. Mine is the smallest in the house, so I knew something wasn't right by the time my hand brushed against what I soon discovered was Julie's foot. She screamed, and I dove to the side as she kicked out. I could feel the air rush against my check as she nearly planted her foot in my forehead. 

"Ow!" I said, even though she missed me. "Watch out!" I yelled at her. "And get out of my room, Julie!" 

"I'm not in your room, genius!" she hissed, but that nervousness was rolling around behind her words. 

I sat up but stayed on my knees. I felt Julie's fingers touch to the top of my head, feeling for me. I swatted her away. "I'm down here," I said. 

"Where's your flashlight?"

"It's dead. I already tried it."

"Ever hear of batteries?"

"Ever hear of I already tried that? Batteries are dead too."

"You're useless."

"Guess you are too since your phone is dead."

She dropped the tug-of-war rope between us. That was something my mom always said when arguing was going on. "Drop the rope," she'd say. It was her cue for us to stop whatever we were saying. She said it a lot to Julie and me these days. Usually, I would because I listened to my Mom. Julie, being a princess, hardly listened to my mom. I hated her.

"Where dad and Eve?"

"Mom and your dad are downstairs."

"I know, idiot. How come they're not answering?"

It suddenly dawned on me that neither my mom nor Cliff had called up to us in all the pitch blackness. "Mom?" I called out. No answer. "Cliff?" Nothing.

"Here, get up," Julie said. I felt her hand brush against my shoulder, and I grabbed it. She pulled until I stood beside her. I could hear her breathing and not much else. 

"Come on, let's get to the stairs," she said. She took my hand in hers, and it was then that I got a clear sense from the coolness of her goosebump skin. She was scared but trying not to be. And for her to take my hand? She was definitely frightened, too frightened to worry about holding her brat little brother's hand. 

We walked side by side, hand in hand, toward the stairs at the end of the hall. After about a minute of this, Julie said, "Where are they? We should have gotten to them by now. I can't see a thing."

It was an obvious statement. Things were pitch black all right. Before he died, my dad took me to the caverns up in the mountains. I remember everything smelling of bleach because the bats that lived in the caverns were getting sick from people bringing in germs on their shoes. Everyone had to walk through a shallow tray of bleach and water to kill the germs on their shoes. Someone had drawn a really lame cartoon bat and put it on the entrance door with a comic book dialogue bubble over its head, saying, "Thanks for keeping my friends and me safe!" So stupid. 

At one point in the cavern tour, the guide turned off the lights, and we sat in absolute darkness for about a minute. I learned there was a dark that rarely occurs these days because even the latest hour of the night has light somewhere. Street lights, car lights, house lights—there's always light. But the dark in that cavern was the darkest dark I'd ever experienced. I kept putting my hand in front of my face, waving it around like the tour guide suggested. I couldn't see it. I caught myself waving my hand in front of my face again, here in the hallway that had no walls apparently, or walls out of reach, and I could see only the blackest black.

"What are you doing?" Julie asked. I guess she could feel my arm waving about.

"I can't see my hand."

"I think there are some matches down in the kitchen and some candles. Once we find dad and… mom, we'll get them and get some light." 

I think she was trying to reassure me. Maybe she was trying to reassure herself. She squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.

"Now, if we could just find the stairs."

It took another five minutes of walking forward and not reaching the stairs before we both became terrified. I could tell because I could hear Julie's breathing quickening. Mine was too. Then we started yelling for our parents every few seconds. The darkness was a blanket, muffling and smothering us. Our yells bounced right back in our faces. Julie made a noise. I recognized it because I had been holding back the same noise from mine. She was crying, but she was the big sister, and big sisters don't cry in front of their little brothers. 

"It's okay, Julie," I said. 

"Where are we?"

"Maybe things just seem farther away when it's really dark. Hang on." I pried my hand out of hers, but she frantically grabbed at me until she got a handful of my shirt. "Hey! I'm not going anywhere. I just wanted to get on my knees again and feel around. We've got to be close." 

"Don't let go. We have to hold on to each other," Julie said. She sounded like she was about to go in full panic mode. I reached out and placed my hand on her forearm to try and make her feel better. "Hold on to my shirt then."

She held on, but relaxed her grip a little, enough so I could get back on the floor. The carpet met my hands, and it felt strange. Like it was carpet in a stranger's house. It felt new and unfamiliar, thick and deep. My fingers went into it… and through it. I gasped and jerked back. Julie yanked my shirt and brought me back to my feet. "What?"

I gasped, afraid that we'd sink right through the carpet. But the floor beneath us was just as firm as it had always been. 

"Mom!" I yelled. 

"What is it?"

I took a deep breath. I couldn't freak out. If I did, Julie would, and then we'd really be screwed. "Let me lower back down again," I said. 

"What is it?" she repeated.

"Nothing. I just… I think I put my hand on some dirty laundry." I lied. I lie really bad. Julie knows it, and she's usually the first to call me on it. But denial isn't just a river in Egypt, my grandpa used to say. She went with my lie because to do otherwise would mean freaking out.

I went back to my knees and felt the carpet. It was still there, still solid. Julie kept her grip on my shirt. If the lights came back on, we'd look like a couple of morons—me, a stupid bloodhound, and her a scared dog walker. But the lights weren't coming back on. 

I reached out, sweeping my hands across the carpet as far as I could, and there, just at the edge of my reach, was nothing. No carpet. No wall. No doorway. Just nothing. I strained my fingers to see if anything was there, but then I thought, What if something is there? Just waiting for me to reach out? I pulled my hand back, carefully so as not to startle Julie. 

Where were we? I wasn't sure, but one thing I was sure of: Wherever we were, it didn't seem like the hallway of the second floor of our house on Juniper Street in Atlanta. We were somewhere in the dark, and that was it.

Being in the dark really messes up your senses, including your sense of time. We kept creeping forward for what seemed like hours. We stopped at one point because Julie thought she heard something. There's a big window at the end of the hallway that looks out over the cul de sac. It dawned on me that we hadn't seen any car lights outside. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what either of us would do if I spoke those words. 

However long it was, it had been a while before we saw the ball of light off to our left. It was orange and round, like a neon basketball, off in the distance. "Do you see that?" I asked. I wasn't sure if I imagined it. 

"Yes. What is it?"

"Looks like… I don't know. Where's it coming from?"

"Are we looking out a window?" 

I didn't know, and I wasn't going to guess. I took Julie's hand. "Let's head toward it." 

"Where is it? Is it a night light?" 

"No."

The light, whatever it was, flickered a little before it brightened. I could almost see Julie's outline. "Hey," I said. She turned toward me. Her shape was there, but her features were a black hole. "Do you see me?" I asked. I could see her nod. "Do you see me?" she asked. "Yeah."

"We need to head toward that light," I said. 

So we did. We never found the stairs. The light was getting larger, but just a little. Sometimes, it would flicker, and then it would get a little brighter. We walked and walked until the light pushed the dark past us, and we could see each other, just faintly, but it made us keep walking. The closer we got to the light, the more we saw each other, and the more we saw familiar things: our back deck, the railing, the steps down into our backyard. We made our way, never letting go of each other, getting closer to that warm orange light. 

It was a fire in the fire pit Cliff had put in last summer for his work parties. I hated it because the pit represented his snooty coworkers getting drunk and asking me the same stupid questions about school and girls. But the sight of the fire blazing filled me with relief. A shape moved in front of it, and we froze. It turned toward us with a gasp. It was mom. 

"Mom?" I said, my voice cracking a little.

It was her. She dropped the logs she held in her arms. 

I ran to her, still holding on to Julie. 

Mom threw her arms around us, pulling us closer to the light.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" was all she could say as we both fell into her embrace.

I could hear mom and Julie crying. I wasn't going to cry, even though I felt like crying too. 

"Where's dad?" Julie asked, her face buried in mom's shoulder.

My mom let out a heavy sigh, sniffing. "I don't know. I couldn't find him. He was in his study. I was in the kitchen. The lights went out. I found matches but no candles. I made it out here… I called for you two. I couldn't hear anyone or anything."

"My phone's dead," Julie sniffed. She turned her face back toward the house, where now only the inkiest black loomed. "Dad!" she shouted. 

"We have to keep the fire going. We have firewood over there. Help me put more logs on the fire."

"What's going on, mom?" I asked. My voice seemed so tiny. Either she didn't hear me, or she didn't have an answer.

I scooped up the logs mom dropped and placed them on the fire pit. The fire crackled and flickered before it blazed brighter, bathing us and the patio in a warming glow. I've never been so happy to see light.

"So, we're camping out here?" I said.

Mom didn't say anything, and neither did Julie. 

We sat by the fire pit for hours, putting logs on the fire every time it started flickering. It wasn't flickering like a normal fire. It was as if it was switching off, like my PlayStation, like Julie's phone, like the lights in our house. Switching off… or being swallowed by the darkness. That thought kept playing over and over in my head, but I didn't dare speak it out loud. I thought saying it would make it real. Mom kept saying Cliff would join us as soon as he made his way out of the house like we did. She kept saying it for the first couple of hours. She stopped eventually, trailing off until she didn't say anything else. We just hugged and huddled together, the three of us, by the fire. 

I looked beyond the glow at the dark depths beyond where our house, our neighborhood, the sky, and the world beyond once were. I didn't think they were there anymore. I think where we are is all there is now. It's a tiny pocket of existence, held in place by the firelight, for as long as the fire burns. 

Maybe the power will come back on before then. Maybe Cliff will reach the fire pit and bring some marshmallows with him. Maybe this will be something we laugh about years from now, the night the dark forced us to camp out in our backyard by the fire pit. 

But we're running out of wood.