Darklings

1

I wanted to ask “Where are you right now?”, she always gave such fantastic answers.

Caroline was sitting at the table, not reading, but staring at the open page of her book.  I stopped myself several times from asking, I wouldn’t dare interupt a moment like that.

Waiting turned to concern, and concern into worry.

It had been almost fifteen minutes and she still held the same vacant stare.

“Caroline?” I said.

She shot up straight in her chair; startled, but slunked back down.

“Caroline?!” This time I spoke louder, and more sternly than I usually do, but there was no response. Then with a harsh motion that looked as though it required her torso to be without any bones, she twisted at her waste and hunched her back while turning towards me. Those burning white eyes were aglow-- fixed on me, and my ears began to ring.

In total, the time between her looking towards me and me regaining some measure of self-control must have been no more than thirty seconds, however, the amount of thinking done in that time could have filled libraries of books, and like a game of roulette, the final thought I had before making my move was this: “I’m hungry”.

Whether it was the complete lack of relevence, or the very concrete reality check that hunger provides, my beffuddlement was gone.

My action here, is the catalyst for it all... so the beginning of my apology and confession starts here.  Had I known what we know about darklings now, or if I had stayed paralized a bit longer, things may have been different. I’ve spent time replaying this scene in my head, and each time, I am guilty, yet ignorantly so.

I stepped towards the darkling, Caroline.

2
Darklings are not demons, nor are they spirits or ghosts, or any other kind of trans-dimensional entetie. Darklings are humans, and they have always been here, just like us.

Certain people are born with specific attunements, we’ve been known to call them tallents, natural abilities, some take a more superstitious route and call it fate or providence. Darklings, in a sense, have a certain attunement that allows them to interact, on some level, with a parallel plane of existence, they are able to bridge a gap that we cannot.

Caroline was taken to, Edward McGall, a psychologist who inherently became the leading researcher concerning all things pertinent to darklings. After a few years of treating caroline, we transitioned from believing it was a disorder, to toying with the idea that Caroline was not lying, and that she was acctually able to do what she said she could do.

Caroline explained to Edward as best a nine and ten year old could, and Edward was able to piece it all together.

“She explains her ability to see the ‘other side’ as though there is a world that exists here on earth, She used a coin as an example. She placed a pennie on a table, and asked me if I could see beneath it. I said no. Then she flipped the coin, and asked again. She said it works like that, but she can see both sides of the coin at the same time, and it is confusing sometimes because she doesn’t know which one is more important.

“After following with Caroline about the ‘other side’ and which side is more important, i asked her if Dan, her father, was important. She looked confused, and then her eyes began to glow, as described in the original report by her father. She whispered, but it was strange, the words were almost a wind and they sent a minor jolt  through my body.  She said “I am bound by my freedom, and freed by a prison.”, at the time I was confused, but later that night Caroline killed herself  in her room.”

It was shortly after this event when reports of other children around the world began to surface with similar symptoms, and then adults began to show, and the term ‘unveiling’ was coined. They began to call their kind Drifters, and then the hate speak started. They were officially reffered to as Darklings after a situation where the entire New York City power grid was shut down by a group of radical drifters. The rational behind  this was spun by the media, because of how dark that week was in New York City at night.

They when silent to us once we began to call them darklings.

Edward and I have been working  towards a political solution for the casm in the world, nations are still at war, but the darklings have united internationally. They are an incredibly powerful group, with members involved in every nations political structure. With no way to clearly identify a Darkling, they’re effectively hidden to us, yet no we are aware of their existence.          

On occassion there will be a release on the news, messages from the Darklings making requests for peace or tribunal to work out their need to hide in society, but people, in general are too afraid to accept them as humans, let alone friends or family despite their caims that one third of the world’s population is darkling.


3
I stepped towards the darkling.

Looking back, it’s easy for me to write this and detach from Caroline, even though she was my daughter. It was not so easy when she unveiled in front of me for the first time.

I was afraid, yes, but I was more concerned for her safety. So I went to her, and began to wrap my arms around her. But as I would have touched her, my arms passed through her, as though she were a ghost. I regained my balance before falling and a my ears began to ring louder and at a higher pitch until everything sounded as though I was listening to it underwater. I began to feel nauseated.  And then the ripple.

We are aware that two material objects are not able to occupy the same space at the same time. The ripple is the result of a meterial object occupying a space that is already semi-occupied by another material object that is partially existing on both our side and the other side. Since the material object is not entirely occupying either space it becomes a conduit, or a portal to the other side. 

  The ripple is a spilling of matter from the other side into our side. That matter is not able to exist in our plain of existence so it is quickly repulsed back to it’s origin, and so the reaction is only a flash, revealing the other side, that quickly dissapears. 

What I saw, I cannot explain, but it was truly alien.

Caroline and I fell to the floor, the rining had come back, and was beginning to fade away.

I laid silently shocked staring at the ceiling of our house until I feel asleep or maybe I  passed out.

When I awoke, Caroline was sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around her knees that were pulled up against her chest.

“I wasn’t supposed to do that...” she said. I was still too shocked to respond.

“They’re going to leave me here.”

“Who is?” She wouldn’t answer me.

         I asked a few more simple questions.

“are you okay?” – “yes”

“Do you know what happened?” – “Yes”

“Will you tell me?” – “No”

“Why not?”  She looked at me, and then looked down.

“I cant.”