The End of the Night

Paul Patterson ran through the forest and as he did, it grew darker and darker. He ran and he ran and he started to think that all of the light in the world had gone away; that if he kept running, he might make it to the end of the night.

*

That morning, a sullen Paul had been packed into the car with the rest of the supplies for the weekend. His vehement arguments against going - the internet connection was awful and there were too many bugs - were ignored. It was his father’s decision. And that was final. They were going to spend some time together as a family.

Paul’s father was actually his adopted father, though he didn’t really think of it that way. He had always seen his parents as his real parents. He didn’t know his real parents; they were a figment to him, something as abstract as the characters in a novel. When he was younger, he tried to know them, to think about what they might be like and why they didn’t want him. But over the years, he had hardened and thought of them less.

He had been happy with his parents.

Until they got divorced. That was three years before the trip to the cottage and at ten years old, it destroyed Paul. The sometimes-whispered arguments, the cold silence in the morning at breakfast and polite conversation at the dinner table chipped away at him, leaving him feeling adrift in the only place in the world he had ever known that was supposed to be safe.

They spoke to him about it, of course. Gave him the old ‘it isn’t your fault’ and ‘we love you no matter what’, but it wasn’t enough. He felt like they were hiding something and they just wouldn’t tell him because he was a kid. And he was right. They weren’t about to tell him that one morning, his mother had woken up and realised that she felt trapped in her job, trapped in her marriage, trapped in this life. So she packed up and moved to Vancouver where she could pursue her art full time, leaving Paul and his father to pick up the pieces.

But that was years ago. It didn’t take long for Paul’s father to meet her. His step-mother. They hadn’t tied the knot yet, but it was in the works; there wasn’t the same urgency for folks to get married when they were in their forties. Try as he might, he just couldn’t warm to her. Every time he looked at her, he was reminded of who she was replacing. How she had no right to replace his mother - or maybe that he was just mad at his real mother and taking it out on her.

The anger made him numb.

Angry or not, the decision was made to go on a family trip to a cottage up north. Paul’s father accepted his son’s disdain, knowing that once he got there the lake and the trees and fresh air would bring him around. The car ride was excruciating, so he started to think about what he could do to get even. It didn’t seem weird to want them to feel what he was feeling. If they cared about him, they wouldn’t be making him do things he clearly didn’t want to do.

The idea came to him with a startling clarity. It flowed through his body with a metallic chill, exciting him and repulsing him. The part of him that loved his father seemed to shrink away at the thought of it; the other part of him told him that it was fine. It wasn’t like he was actually going to run away. He was just going to scare them.

After they arrived and unpacked, his father sent him off to get firewood so they could roast marshmallows. He agreed with a smile, playing the part of moody-teenager-transformed with the precision of trained thespian.

As he walked off into the forest, he heard his father shout: ‘Don’t go too far! You just need to get some kindling. And watch your step!’

Paul smiled and waved back at him and stepped into the forest. It was already starting to get dark.

*

Around the time that Paul started to think about how dark it was, he looked up. His feet, which had been aided by his nearly-nocturnal vision, tripped over a log and he went tumbling. The sharp edge of a broken branch cut him on the shoulder and he screamed in pain. He put his hand to his shoulder and felt the warm flow of blood. Staggering to his feet, he kept walking.

His initial plan had been to run in a straight line and come back to his parents and claim it was all an accident. The problem was, once he started running, he lost track of time. The forest had been so quiet and so soothing that he just kept on going. After a while it was as if he wasn’t even in control anymore.

Later - it could have been an hour - he started to realise that he might really be lost. Desperation and fear are not the same, but they are neighbours, and Paul felt them both. For a second, he wondered if he should stay still; his father would surely be looking for him and if he didn’t move, it might make him easier to find.

Or.

If he stayed still, it could make him even harder to find. And then there was the forest with its darkness and the animals and other dark, shapeless things that he refused to admit he still thought existed but that the child inside of him couldn’t deny.

So he walked. It didn’t take long for him to see the thin shafts of light breaking through the forest’s gloom. He moved towards it with a faint hope only to realise it wasn’t his cottage; the trees were far too close together.

He saw a log cabin that was dimly lit from the inside. Outside of it there was the outline of a man. The light at his back coloured the edges of his shadow and the ember of a cigarette glowed red and faded.

Somehow, Paul knew that he was watching.

He took a few steps towards him and said: ‘Excuse me? Hello?’

There was no reply for a few seconds until the figure in the shadows threw the cigarette and stomped it. Paul could hear the crunching of leaves.

‘Come in from the darkness. Come in from the cold,’ the voice said. It was a man’s voice, full of gravel and smoke.

‘I-I’m lost. And I hurt myself. Can I use your phone?’

‘Come in. Come in and sit down.’

Paul shivered and walked to the cabin steps. The emergency responses in his brain were quiet now, as quiet as the forest around him. He walked past the man and didn’t look at his face but felt the eyes on him again. Paul stood in front of the old, wooden door.

‘Come in. Come inside. Let me get you fixed up. Too dark out here for children. Open the door.’

*

The inside of the cabin was rustic but not dilapidated. There was a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, an axe leaning against the wall, an unmade bed and bare bedside table, an old fridge, stove, kitchen table and some shelves. The shelves were full of small wooden figures. Some of them were slightly larger and rounded to resemble a woman’s figure. Others were smaller and shaped like children. Though they were done rudimentarily, there was still detail to be discerned from the faces - eyes and noses, mouths and ears. And they were all smiling.

Paul shuffled into the cabin and stood with his hand on his shoulder. He felt movement behind him as the man entered and closed the door.

‘Need to keep the bugs out,’ he said as he walked to a sink. A bucket sat on the counter beside it and he poured it over his hands. ‘Clean hands are important. No running water. Stream nearby.’ He scrubbed his hands with a sponge for the better part of a minute. Paul stood and listened to the scraping of the sponge and the buzzing of the insects.

‘Sit down. Must be tired. Sit,’ he said and beckoned to the chair by the table. Paul sat and kept his eyes in his lap. He had caught a glimpse of the man’s face but it wasn’t as horrifying as he had expected: he had deep blue eyes, an angular face worn sharp by lean living and a thin mouth and wrinkles crossing over each other on his forehead. Just above the wrinkles was part of a scar that must have run higher up on his head; its jagged line was deep. His hair was long, nearly to his shoulders and dark with flecks of gray.

He stepped towards Paul and handed him a wet rag.

‘Must clean. Infection.’

Paul wiped his wound and winced, feeling the skin flap where it had been sliced loose.

‘Food. And water. You came in from the dark and must be tired. Must eat. And drink.’

He turned back to the counter and pulled a coffee mug from a shelf, filling it with water.

‘Sorry, mister, but could I just use your phone? My parents are at a cottage nearby and I can call them. They- they can come and get me.’

The man grimaced: ‘No phone. Only genny that makes the power. You will eat and drink. You came in from the dark and you will eat and drink.’

Paul nodded and gripped the rag to his shoulder so that it wouldn’t seem like he was shaking. The man went to the fridge and pulled out some carrots and some kind of meat on a platter.

He went to the counter and started chopping the carrots. He used an old knife and chopped quickly. As he chopped, the man muttered to himself inaudibly. Occasionally, his head would jerk to the side, as if he were addressing someone else in the room.

The knife paused and the man turned. His eyes narrowed and he really looked at Paul.

‘Your name. You didn’t say it.’

‘Oh. I’m Paul. Paul Patterson. What’s yours?’

‘My name. My name doesn’t matter anymore. No name is better. Names only temporary. Names not real.’

Paul nodded again and the knife continued chopping. There was something about his voice that was oddly soothing, Paul thought. It was how he seemed to pause after every short sentence, letting the space between the words build and swell, like each word meant something to him. He was actually a lot less scared than he thought he would be.

Soon, the carrots and the mystery meat were in the oven and the man stood against the sink. There was silence and the only movement was the man’s occasional glance to Paul’s face as if to check if it were still there.

‘You were out late. In the dark. Not safe. Why?’

For a second, Paul thought about lying. He could have said that he was out with some friends and they were separated. But for some reason, he felt a peculiar urge to tell this stranger the truth. And so he did.

The man listened without reacting. When Paul was finished, he bent over and took the food out of the oven. Somewhere along the way he must have added some spices, because it actually didn’t smell bad.

‘Rabbit. Tastes good. Juicy. Home recipe. Eat for your strength. Drink for your blood.’

Paul did and it was good. He’d never had rabbit before and it surprised him. The man didn’t eat but watched Paul eat. He sat up straight and opened his mouth as if he was about to speak but didn’t know how to get the words right: ‘Parents. Your… parents. You are mad at them?’

‘Well, yea,’ Paul said with his mouth full of rabbit. ‘Making me come on this stupid trip and I don’t even want to be here. All because of my stupid… because of my real mom. She left us because… well, I don’t know why she left us.’

More or less silent again, with Paul’s chewing, and he looked around the cabin. The wooden figures caught his eyes.

‘Hey, mister, those are nice carvings. Did you do them?’

He nodded. ‘I make what I see when I close my eyes. I draw them with the wood. Then I don’t see the things in my eyes. When I see them again, I make them. Sometimes I go into the town. I stand on the road and the cars take me. I sell them at the market. Sometimes money, sometimes no.’

Paul nodded, feeling a warmth spread through him; it was a pleasant image, this soft-spoken man sitting in his log cabin and carving away day and night.

‘You want one of them?’

Paul shrugged: ‘I don’t have any money-’

‘No money. You are here now, part of the family. Part of the family.’ He stood up and went to the shelf muttering as he went. ‘These are not you. You are not these. I do not see you in my eyes. Because you were in the dark. But now you are not. You are in the light now and I can see you.’ The man ran outside and left Paul alone, looking into the wooden eyes of the woman. Somehow, he sensed a sadness in the eyes that he knew should not have been there.

He came back inside with a small piece of rounded wood. Silently, he took a knife from the bedside table and started whittling the piece of wood. The man stuck his tongue out slightly as he carved and for a long time there was only the sound of the knife on the wood.

Paul yawned and the man looked up.

‘You are tired. I am finished.’

Holding his likeness in his hand, Paul gasped. It was nearly perfect. It was like he was looking in a grainy mirror.

‘You will sleep now. The work is done. Sleep now.’

The man made the bed and stood back with his hand out.

Paul started to protest but by the time he was lying on the bed, his eyes had already started to grow heavy.

As his vision blurred and darkened, he saw the man standing and watching him. He had a smile on his face.

*

Somehow, Paul awoke before it happened. His eyes opened and he looked out the window to see the full moon. He turned and saw the man sleeping beside him; they weren’t touching but the man’s arm was stretched towards him. Paul shuddered and looked for the figure he’d been holding - he spotted it on the floor of the kitchen. He was about to get up when he heard footsteps and saw light.

They were dim at first but got louder and brighter as they came up the cabin steps until they stopped outside the door. After a few seconds, the door burst open and Paul’s father stood outside panting. He was shrouded in moonlight.

The man stood up and looked groggily at the intruder.

‘Get your hands off my son!’ Paul’s father screamed.

‘Your son? No, no, please. He was in the dark. He is home now,’ the man mumbled.

Paul’s father didn’t seem to want to hear much more of that, so he charged the man, who turned to run. After a step, he slipped on the wooden figure that had fallen out of Paul’s hand as he was sleeping. Up went his legs and down went his head, squarely against the heavy counter top. His body fell to the floor and the blood pooled from his skull.

‘Oh, shit,’ Paul’s father said. ‘Let’s go. We’ll call the cops on the way. But we need to go in case he wakes up.’

‘Dad, wait,’ Paul said. ‘He wasn’t doing anything, honest. He’s a nice man. He made me-’

‘Paul,’ his father said with eyes that were blazing. ‘You’re going to follow me right now or I’ll have to drag you.’

Paul slumped his shoulders and started to follow his father’s flashlight back into the woods. He stopped for a second to look behind him and saw the pale glow of the lightbulb before turning and running back to where his father was awaiting him in the darkness.

*

The next morning, Detective Jim Krieger stood in the empty cabin and whistled. Everything had been cleaned up - the body was on ice. The father’s statement was solid and the boy, even though he had said that his captor was really nice and saved his life, corroborated everything. He smiled, relishing an open and shut case.

He was about to close the door to the cabin and start typing up the paperwork when he stopped. The thing about being a detective was that he couldn’t ever turn it off. He walked over to the bedside table and opened it. He wanted a better glimpse of the pervert - it might help him the next time he had to actually chase one.

The drawer was empty except for a photograph that was nearly in tatters. It showed a family: mother, father and three sons. Two of the boys were older twins. Their smiles were the same. The other child was a baby with bright blue eyes.

For a second, he felt something like Deja vu - he could have sworn that he’d seen those same eyes before. But that couldn’t be true, right? Lots of people have eyes that are the same colour. It didn’t mean anything.

It was just the cabin. And the forest. They were playing tricks on him.