Spirit of The Night

Sitting in my office I felt his eyes on me. Blue eyes, not dark brown like mine. I inherited many traits from my dad, but my eyes weren’t among them. He was leaning in the doorway, a surprisingly youthful posture still rested in his shoulders. The medical problems which accumulate in a fifty-five-year-old, but the demeanor of a twenty-eight-year-old; that was my dad. I glanced up at him, with the sun settling behind the trees in back of me, the glow of my computer screen was the dominating light in the dark room. It was evening in early October; the final death throws of summer had passed and bled through into Autumn. Fall had arrived and calmly placed its stakes in the dirt with a heavy sigh, assuring itself it could stay a while.

           “Hey, bud. Didn’t mean to bother you. How’s it going?”

           I saved the document, a nervous habit which was more robotic than careful.

           “Course not. Everything’s good Dad. No complaints. Just chipping away at a new idea.”

           A faint shadow of a smile passed along his face as he walked into the room. A subdued pride rested in his gaze as he studied the office. It was a habit he always had. Checking every corner, every cabinet, every drawer of a room he entered. It reminded me of a cat or a dog. Some form of domesticated animal which could never feel comfortable until every shadow had been lit and every stone overturned. I knew what he must be thinking. Being one of three people I had known for my entire life, it wasn’t difficult for me to navigate his mind as if it were my own. He was no doubt noting the sparsity of the space. A single bookshelf, a desk, and a lamp which seldom found itself in use. In his mind, it was just as expected. A minimalist aesthetic for the kid who never wanted anything but his own space. He saw an eccentric emptiness which spoke to the humble and unique nature of his son. Knowing that minimalism wasn’t some passing craze on social media for him or some radical life decision, it was simply how his son had always been, how I had always been. A room as empty and simple as my Christmas list every year.

Satisfied, he took a seat across from me.

           “It’s a nice office bud. You should be proud.”

           I shrugged.

           “It’s just an empty room. Someplace I can be alone. A place to think.”

           He nodded. Neither of us knew what to say. We were close, always had been. There was nothing I could ask him I didn’t already know the answer to and anything still unasked would remain that way.

           “I liked the last one.” He said with a smile. “Really good. Couldn’t put it down.”

           “Thanks.”

           His smile deepened.

           “Your mom hated it though.” We laughed. “Don’t tell her I told you. She’s gonna pretend she liked it, so you won’t get offended.”

           “What didn’t she like?” I asked. No hint of insecurity in my voice.

           “Just too violent, too cynical. Too you.”

           Another laugh.

           “Yeah, I kinda figured. She might like this next one.”

           “She likes all of them,” Dad assured me. “She loves the way you write, just not what you write about.”

           I snickered like a child. The way I did with only close friends and him.

           “Trust me I get it.”

           We were both quiet again. Not uncomfortable, just quiet. He was preparing to ask me something.

           He broke our silence.

           “I was just thinking… Some of the stuff you wrote about in this latest one…I mean if you want to talk about it, you know you always can.”

           “I know Dad. I’m fine. Really.” I was firm.

           He nodded.

           “I know you are. Just… You have a gift kid. Ever since you were little you’ve been this way. Living in your head, making your own stories when everyone else’s bored you. You shouldn’t begrudge it. I know I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I know you. One time you told me it was like a light inside you. You watched it and it gave you ideas. Showed them to you. I just wanted to ask…” He stirred in his seat, I said nothing. “I just wanted to make sure that light was still there. That you still see it.”

           I looked at him and wondered how to reply….

           I once told him that my gift was a light. But it’s no light, no shine, no ominous beauty with divine motives. No angels were singing hymns to me from the other side of the ether, no muse was strumming their lyre in octaves so delicate only my ears could hear. It’s something far less elegant, more primal, as beautiful as it is terrible. Imagination. The tool which teaches us to play, to trust, and to fear. It shows us kingdoms we will never reach and monsters beneath our bed we never see. There was no light, but there was an omen, there was something. So, what do I tell him now that he asked?

           Do I tell him about that night? The night I saw it…

The clock by the bed said, 3 AM. My brother in the bed beside me, fast asleep. The autumn wind heartlessly sweeps the land. Rattling the shutters and carrying the fallen leaves along the moonlight in troops of decay. The door to the outside rattling against the siege of the October storm. Gazing out the window, straining my eyes into the darkness of the surrounding forest I watched the movement of the brush and the trees, a stark reminder that somewhere in the dark, things moved. Things unprovoked by the wind. Ancient things which had been here long before man came and built houses on their land, and would watch with indifference when the earth opened up and swallowed man too.

With a fearful heart and innocent mind, I shut my eyes…

           I snap awake.

It was cold, the air around me was swirling, a strange sound rattled at the edge of the room. I peeled the blankets away and look down the length of my bed. Blown inward from the storm, the outside door was open, fluttering in a harsh wind. Leaves scattered about the room. The invading moonlight cascaded over the entryway triumphantly. I’m shivering, doubly cold from the chill in the air and the fearful ice in my veins. Turning to my brother’s bed, expecting to find him curled fearfully as I was, I find the bed empty. He was gone. In an instant I knew, I was alone. The room, the house, perhaps the whole world was empty. Only I remain. Me and something else. Decaying leaves and loose pine needles sweep onto the foot of my bed. I sit up, the door still swinging, slamming erratically against the wall. The wind so strong I half expected the covers of my bed to be pulled away. Outside, the trees swayed and bent, bowing against the oppressive wind. Their one-sided dance appeared both graceful and painful.

           Then, all at once, it stopped. The wind halted, leaving the debris suspended in the air until, at last, it came fluttering to the earth as newly fallen snow. In the calm, I felt it overtake me. The fear slipped away with the wind, replaced with a conviction as apparent as the silence hanging over me. The leaves and needles fell to the floor of my room leaving a loose trail to the open doorway and out into the moonlight. Though young, or perhaps because I was young, I understood. It wanted me to follow. Whatever it was…

           “Come…Come…”

           A whisper came lightly from outside. It was a genderless voice, passionless. Yet, natural. A feeling as natural as hunger or lust. Less potent than either and yet even more compelling to my young mind. So innate was the feeling, that it almost felt foreign. An outdated sense, like our ever-waning sense of direction, or ever-strong sense of tribalism. I didn’t move, I was too frightened.

           “Come…Come…”

           It spoke with great patience. The sort of patience earned through an eternity of being. Somehow, I knew it was the voice of a mother. The voice of something which gives birth, coddles and, if need be, suffocates. I felt myself push the blankets aside and rise from my bed before I even realized I made up my mind.

           Not another whisper, it knew I had accepted the invitation.

           I trusted it but moved warily. As one might when approaching an almost familiar animal. I was young, but I wasn’t naïve. I knew whatever awaited me, whatever was calling to me, was both genuine and dangerous. It was as natural and old as the earth itself, as lethal as it was loving. 

           I reached the door. My feet were still on the rug of my room, leaves crackling undertow, but the blacktop rested before me and beyond that the backyard. For a moment, doubt crept back into my mind. I doubted myself, doubted my conviction. A gentle breeze caressed me reassuringly. It traveled past me into the yard and then beyond into the dark of the forest. As if calling back to me, a ghostly chaperone, to signal the all-clear. I stepped out, the blacktop hard and frostbitten on my bare feet. Encouraged by the wind I took soft, ginger steps forward. The clouds above me swirled and lingered, grey phantasms stalking a lonely boy.

           The grass was wet beneath my feet, a gentle rain had only recently passed. I marched up the incline of the backyard. Every step was one away from reason, but I marched on. More in defiance of my own fear than in any certainty of my fate. Under the moon, the lawn was alive and clear, but my eyes saw only darkness. The chasm at the forest entrance was too dense for even the watchful eye of the moon to penetrate. Beyond it were the creatures of the night. With every step toward that darkness, I either proved myself worthy or wanting.

           I could see it now, but I dared not let my mind describe it to me. It was there, waiting, just beyond the edge of the shadow. It was unmoving, staring back at me. A purposeful gaze that could not be described in any words. Not hunger, not anticipation, not even wisdom. It knew me the same way I knew it; nothing more than a passing scent upon the breeze. I was atop the hill rise now, my home and my bed were far behind me. The thin outline of the creature’s chiseled skull loomed several feet above the ground. It looked down at me.

           The branches formed a wall before the darkness. Not a gateway, but a spiderweb.

           Suddenly, I stopped. Just at the foot of the forest and the edge of the moonlight. My eyes never left the creature’s face. Dark caves carved into its skull; deep, deep, beyond the dark pits of the skull lay its eyes. Small, crimson pebbles encased in shadow. Like gazing into a set of dying stars. With a respectful tenderness, the creature stepped forth from the dark. Inching closer, it took shape before me. Its skull-head rested nine feet above the ground, atop a body of tightly coiled earth and hide. The antlers sprouting from its head reached many feet higher. Almost anthropomorphic in shape, its limbs were stretched, its fingers were long vine-like talons and its frame was lean and emaciated.

           Separated from the cover of the trees it stood erect in the moonlight. Its skull was bruised and lined with cracks, moss wrapped and dangled from its antlers. I gazed up at it; it looked down at me. Its faded eyes watched me, its face expressionless, yet I understood it. I wasn’t prey to be swallowed by the dark, I was a confidant for its secrets.

           It tilted its head in query, but no words came forth from its toothy smile. The wind was starting to rise again, the field began to sway. Wordless, our conversation ended. Only a promise and a deal. When I returned to my bed, my family would be back, but I would never again be one of them. No longer a young boy, but a conduit for the Spirit of the Night.

           With an eternal calm and steadiness, it presented its hand to me. A hand, nearly the size of me, awaited my own. I didn’t dare look away from it. It offered no false words of comfort or persuasion. My eyes at last tracked to the coiled roots and spiraled hide which was its hand and I knew, as I had always known, this was who I am.

I placed my hand in its grip.

           I awoke in a cold sweat, my body shivering and my eyes darting about the room. In a panic I pulled the blankets tight against me, the dead black of the room left me trapped in the unknown. The interaction made me no braver, no less afraid, and no more sure of myself than before. Brave as I had been in that world, here I was a coward. I turned toward the clock, 3 AM. On the other bed, a lump of blankets, its center steadily rising and falling. A sound filling the air in a steady rhythm. Snoring. My brother was here, back in his bed. Relief washed over me; I was back in my bed. It was all a dream. No ancient monsters, no deals with the devil, nothing had dragged me into the forest. I was home. Peaking over my bed, the door was closed, and the wind was kept outside where it belonged.

             I closed my eyes in search of sleep, knowing it would elude me as it always did. As my lids fell shut, I saw it. The face of it. The cracked skull and the dark, distant eyes. My own eyes opened. It was here, whatever it was. It was not the feeling of waking from a nightmare, but the feeling of being watched, the feeling of not being alone. Cold and taut was my skin, my veins tangling and slithering. My eyes drew back to the door. Still closed, but something… something else…

           In the darkest corner of the room, nothing but shadow, like a doorway into another world. I stared and stared, as one does when they know there is something there that doesn’t want to be seen. Daring it to move, my eyes would remain there either until it did or until sleep swept me away into safety. My eyes felt heavy, my body lax. Just as my heart eased and my mind began to rest, it moved.

           Only a shadow in the night. Its head tilted, gazing back at me, the antlers grazing my bedroom ceiling.