Fear of The Dark

Fear of The Dark

This is an extract from a longer story I have been thinking of, condensed into a short story (though it probably doesn't follow the short story rules).


After a long pause, Nigel, with great mental effort, relaxed from his tense sitting position and sunk down into the hammock. For a while he lay staring up at the night sky, allowing the smell of woodsmoke to permeate his senses and the hum of cicadas to lullaby his vigilance. Feeling sufficiently tired, he rolled onto his side and began to close his eyes, and as if they were gates to the castle of his mind, he resolved to shut out evil thoughts and banish fears. But from the slit of vision that remained as his eyelids drew together, he saw that the campfire continued to mock him.

The flickering flames threw lights and shadows that formed dancing shapes as they fell on the sand and nearby forest edge. Nigel's eyes eased open again, and through them he beheld the projections as they grew into grotesque figures that clashed on the battlefield of foliage. Leaves and twigs and sand were shown in momentary detail as the fire lights danced on them, but illuminated also were the depths of forest, void of obscuring objects, which dotted the dark wall of green before him; and Nigel strained his eyes to see within them. He thought that he could see things, again, as he peered: evil eyes and sparkling teeth and patches of fur, but it was impossible to tell if they were real, for they vanished as quickly as the lights passed over them.

At that moment, as Nigel peered from his hammock with neck craned into the night, a twig broke somewhere close behind him. A sickening pang of fear jolted him upright again, and through the open castle gates, like a wild horse, his imagination ran free. The orchestra of cicadas seemed to have stopped, as if his vigilance had chased them away after it's rude awakening, leaving in his ears only the heavy throbbing of his own heart. In the darkness the fire deceived him as his eyes sought movement, and he silently cursed it. He tried to think of a logical answer to the sound, but fear blurred his thought and, aided by the fire, instead produced hideous images of monsters bursting forth from the forest to devour him. At this point he was completely hopeless – feeling that he could never overcome his fear – and had half a mind to go back home. He sat staring at the dark green wall in front of him, not daring to make a sound or movement, or even remove his gaze, lest the creature take him by surprise (though he had no doubt it would overpower him either way).

A strong feeling of being watched began to creep over Nigel, raising his hairs as it crept, followed by the sound of crunching leaves – a single footstep of some kind – and then silence. He was struck by pangs of dread that threatened to overwhelm him, and his eyes opened wider and heart beat faster than ever. The sound was even closer than before, in exactly the place he had been looking, but he could see nothing through the gloom. He wondered: was some beast poised to pounce on him from behind it's veil of leaves? Was it really possible to die of fright? Why, then, was he not dead? For surely no greater fear than this had ever been faced by man. You're being silly, he tried to tell himself, there's nothing there. But with every minute he remained frozen in fear, the looming forest and it's hidden horrors closing in around him, he became more convinced that there was in fact something there. The distant ebb and flow of the ocean beckoned, and he envisioned his small tin boat waiting on the beach. He made up his mind to fly to it and return home. Twice he told his legs to move – to get up and run – and twice they refused. The moments of delay eroded his courage just as the waves eroded the sand on that distant beach. By the third attempt he was trembling, and as he desperately tried to move, an audible whimper escaped his lips.

'Pathetic!' he burst out, infuriated by his own weakness. 'This is ridiculous!', and he was on his feet, all notion of flight gone. 'King of the Island!', he roared while drawing the knife at his belt. All of the fear that had built up within him over the course of the night was being suddenly channeled into anger. 'King of the Island – afraid of the night! Ha!', he continued as he seized a burning branch from the fire, the commanding sound of his own voice bolstering his new-found courage. There is nothing here, beast or otherwise, that I should fear, he said to himself. With this he made four long strides to that edge of forest he had for so long been watching, knife and torch in hand, and, without pausing, pushed through the leaves and repeated 'nothing!' at the top of his voice. There was no beast or monster, nor demon in the forest, he concluded, after the torchlight had illuminated the small clearing in which he stood. The only thing he found there was his own escaped imagination; and he began to laugh.

That is how Nigel conquered his fear of the dark and thereafter slept soundly alone on his island, though his vigilance never quite went back to sleep.