The Dark Room

Peter always felt something a bit like fear, every time he went into the dark room. He always felt something like joy during, something like amazement, but the befores and afters were a different story, he feared them, and awaited them, like he did nothing else. One thing he hated was his father’s attitude, and the look on his father’s face, every time they stepped in. Peter was old enough - he was nine after all- to recognize that this look on his father’s face was nothing natural, nothing normal, and maybe, maybe, he whispered in his own head, as if scared of the mere thought, something close to evil. That was part of the frightening part for Peter, of course, but not the only part. More than once, Peter had wished that he could visit the dark room on his own. It wasn’t hard after all. He went to the small room, the one his mother, when she was still with them used to call the guest room, and he went to the door in a corner- but when he opened it on his own, nothing that he usually saw or felt with his father was there. No, all that was there was a small and empty closet with a few old clothes. It was larger than most closets in the house, large enough for two or three normal closets, but apart from that, nothing was special about it. It was dusty, it smelled dusty, and when he went in there on his own, he always felt particularly alone. So he stopped going there alone, save sometimes to try and catch some of what he felt when his father brought him in, but every time he was disappointed, and the closet remained a closet, dusty and dark and lonely.
So, that left the times when he went there with his father. Although peter knew that what he was going to feel was special, he also feared it. Not only because that dark, (evil, a thought whispered in the back of his head) look on his father’s face, and even his father’s footsteps and attitude- as if for a moment Peter had become less than nothing, like if he had become some insignificant creature- but also because somehow he knew that nothing that he saw or felt was normal. Of course, nothing about the experience was normal not his father’s face or attitude, and not his own fear and apprehension, and certainly not what happened inside the room.

Peter remembered the first time it had happened with the same sense of fear, the same sense of wonder and fear and puzzlement. He had been playing with some toys, quietly in his room- this had been two years since his mother’s death- but he was not really thinking of her. Oh of course he missed her, he missed her all the time. But his father had told him never to mention her, because dead people stay dead, and that although some people liked to talk about them, he, Peter’s father, wanted to remember her in quiet and in peace. He had shut himself from the rest of the family, especially his wife’s, and the only guest that ever came to sleep in the guest room was Peter’s uncle. But Peter’s uncle was not there that day, and Peter was too busy making stories in his mind with his toys to think of his mother. Suddenly, his father opened the door, his large form looming above Peter, and that’s when he saw it, that face, that frightening, awful face. His father didn’t speak; he just took Peter by the collar of his clothes, and dragged him downstairs. Peter didn’t know what was happening, it was the first time, so how shouted, and he screamed “Father! Dad! What are you doing!?” But his father remained as of ice. Try as he might to get away, to kick away, he could not release himself from his father’s strong grip. He cried and he cried, as he was dragged downstairs, in the guest room, and inside the closet. He had been in it before, when he was having fun exploring the house, but the day his father brought him in, he knew it was different. For a second, he saw his father was standing in front of him, his belt in his hand, his pants to his knees… and the next he was gone. There was nothing here save a very dark room, much larger than a mere closet. If Peter had been asked to explain how big it was, he would have said that it was a big as the universe. And it was. He stood, and he realized he was outside, it was not cold, though he could have sworn he had felt a breeze, but that was not what made Peter smiled. What made Peter smile were the hundreds of millions of stars lightening the sky, much more than can usually be seen from any city, or anywhere in the world, although Peter did not know that. He stood there, curious as what he was supposed to do. And that’s when he saw Her. There she was, his mother, dressed in flowing white robes, glowing as an angel, and light, blue light swimming all around her. Peter looked at her, and sobbed.

“Mother?” He cried out.

She nodded to him, and there he went, running into her arms, and she held him as his tears flew and flew freely.

“Mother, I thought you were… dead. And father says… father says the dead never come back.”

She smiled knowingly at him, and kissed his forehead. “They do not for men like him, my son.” She said with a soft, comforting voice. “But for some people, at sometimes… sometimes there are dreams, or visions, and as long as the person they lost is in their hearts, they can see them, for a brief moment, for a miraculous moment.”

Peter held his head firmly against his mother’s chest crying and crying, of joy and of fear and of wonder. “So dad doesn’t see what is happening to me right now?”
His mother shook her head and held him close. “Your father thinks something else entirely is going on. He was not always like this, this frightening. But I have seen him around you and your friends…I knew I would have to save you, if only for a brief moment, Peter.”

Peter smiled at her, and held himself close again, and for the next few minutes, there they stood, mother and son, cuddled together in perfect bliss. Then, she rose and looked Peter in the eye. “I must go now, son, but know that the next time your father brings you here, I will be here, and the time after that also.” And so, she flew up and up to the sky, rejoining the stars.

And like that, Peter was back into the closet, saw his father briefly put his belt back on, not saying a word, with that same (evil) face. Peter rushed back to his room, somewhat too afraid, too touched by what he had seen. He knew this was not normal. Boys do not see angels, and a few days after the first time, he had simply put it off as a dream. But the next time his father dragged him there, and the next time after that, when he went more willingly, every one of those times, his father disappeared as if some fog, and Peter was able to be with his mother again, being held by her, being comforted by her. But every time he went with his father to the back room, he felt something like fear. Not only because of his father’s face, and his father’s attitude, but because he knew he was going to experience something so amazing, so impossible that he would never be able to share it with another soul. Then again, Peter did not want to. It was Peter’s secret; it was his weapon in a way, against his father’s face and attitude when it happened. And Peter was wise, to be careful with such a weapon. And so he kept his miracle to himself, and when his father brought him to the room, time and time again, through the fear and through the darkness, and always under the stars, Peter knew whatever dark thing happened in his father’s mind in that closet, he would never be able to touch Peter’s dream, his miracle. And so, when his father pulled that belt from his pants again, Peter smiled, travelling galaxies or dimensions, or world of dreams, and every time he found refuge in his mother’s arms. He feared, and he felt apprehension, but this, this was his weapon, this was his safe place, far from anything else either sad or evil. Peter smiled, his head comfortably in his mother’s chest, as he laid in the dark room, his father looming over him. Nothing, but nothing could hurt him here.