That Tangible Darkness

I could see the blurred images of my parents through the cascading water on the living room window. The rhythmic tapping of raindrops on the glass was getting quite heavy, and the palette of colors swirled quickly to a motionless sedan. This was their third night out in two weeks, but this time they would be gone until the morning; a reserved hotel room was waiting for them on the east side of town. The vibrations of the engine distracted me for a moment. I watched as the car backed out, leaving me stranded on a suburban island amidst a sea of cul-de-sacs. Actually, it wasn’t only me they were leaving: I also had my younger brother to contend with, who would probably pay as much attention to me as a day-time TV marathon. He was only two years younger than me, but my attitude toward him varied from annoyance to love.

The only thing you could hear now was the hypnotic drumming of the rain, which was far from pleasant. There was nothing else to do but wait, so I trudged to the kitchen grabbed a snack from fridge, and slowly made my way back to the couch. Stretching my arms, I grabbed the TV remote and began flicking through the channels. There was nothing worth watching of course, but I watched anyway, for the sole reason that my parents were gone. Normally, I might have practiced my guitar, but once the car was absent from the driveway, all normalcy was lost. The high-pitched hums of a dull cartoon soothed me to sleep, but not for log, for a technological pop forced me to open my eyes. A void of darkness had swallowed the house, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see a thing. When my pupils adjusted they confirmed what I had been thinking: no electricity. I stumbled to the kitchen, as that was where all of the breaker switches were, and I figured that a tug on the main switch would power the house again and give me something to do. I pulled the breaker, but it didn’t work. I tried again. This time a spark shot out and I felt a sharp tickling in my hand as I jerked it back. The house remained black. The sound of my brother’s yelling caught my ear, and I turned back.

“What the heck was that?” he said.
“The electricity went out, you idiot. And no, it’s not the breaker,” I held my tongue back as far as it could go, but the words still stumbled out.
“I’m coming downstairs,” he yelled, and a reverberation of heavy footsteps rattled the cedar stairs. A few minutes later we were sitting adjacent to each other, both of us silent. The incessant ticking of the clock encouraged my eye to twitch, but I didn’t care. All that mattered now was the opaque truth that unless the electricity went back on, neither of us was going to say a thing. I was wrong.

“Do you think it’s going to rain all night?” my brother asked. I mulled his question over in my head and finally decided that snapping back wasn’t my best option.
“It won’t matter. There isn’t any power and us talking about the weather won’t solve anything. Are you afraid of the dark?”
“We don’t have any candles or flashlights, do we?”
“Not one.”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Even though he couldn’t see my expression, I rolled my eyes. “Go on right ahead: I’m certainly not stopping you.” I could see the grainy image of his figure get up and twirl around to feel the way to his destination.

I sighed and laid my head back. I had always liked the dark. The idea of not being able to see anything was bizarrely scary, yet peaceful, but there’s a snare that surrounds the invitation of darkness. When you are consumed my it, it makes it easier to block everything else out and let your imagination be your sole entertainment. But when your imagination is fueled by the darkness, it becomes concentrated on it, letting your mind wander to stranger places than this world can offer.

As I focused on resting my eyes, the culmination of my fantasies played out over in my mind, of which some I liked, and some I had yet to care for. Most of them involved clichéd escapades of my heroism, but some were quite different. There were faces, people I had never met as part of my imagination. Some of their faces were completely listless, but some were staring straight back at me. One of the faces struck me with such fear that I quickly opened my eyes, but the image stuck. His face was a snake’s, with piercing eyes that bared my soul, and his thin lips rolled back to reveal fangs. My eyes were open but there was nothing. I had opened my eyes from blackness back into a world of blackness. It occurred to me to wonder how long I had lain down, for once you succumb to the darkness there is no track of time. My mind was shaking, but I managed to remember that I had forgotten him.

“Jesse?” I called out my brother’s name in a foolish attempt to feel better about myself ‘Well, he hasn’t come back from the bathroom, so it hasn’t been very long,’ I thought, and then yawned. I was getting very tired. I lay there in a dreary daze for quite some time before I saw something. Or, at least I thought I saw something. In the dark, you can never be sure what is real and what is your imagination playing a trick on you, and when you are half-asleep it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference.

My eyes widened and I strained to stare at various objects around the room, but could find nothing, so I lay my head back down and gazed at the ceiling. The face I had seen was still in my mind, haunting me with optical illusions. They were shadows, nothing, more but I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye and every time I tried to look at him, he evaded me like a rabbit scampering away from its pursuer. I sat up frantically and twisted my head from side to side hoping to catch a glimpse of my tormentor. But there was only darkness.

Breathing heavily, I thrust my head into hands which were greasy from sweat. Sitting there calmed me down and I came to the conclusion that I needed to find out what time it was. Squinting as much as I could, I strained but still couldn’t see what the hands of the clock read. My mind was certain that it need to know, and I set myself to the task, for now I had something to do, even if for a brief moment. I pushed on the beige chairs in the living right up to the wall where the clock sat, proudly ticking at its post. Lumbering up one side of the chair I eased up until I was face to face with the timepiece. Then, in the reflection of the glass, I saw his face again and I fell backward, stunned. I had fallen off the chair and hit my head on the not-so-soft carpet below. Even though I was feeling slightly dizzy, I slowly got up and realized that the electricity had come back on.

Regaining some sense of awareness, I looked at the time; it was 4:38 in the morning. I looked again just to make sure my mind wasn’t tricking me again, but it was right; my nightmare had lasted nearly the entire night. I quickly sat back down again in quiet amazement, but still the face of him lingered. A thought suddenly crossed my mind: ‘What about Jesse?’ Almost tripping over myself, I got up quickly and raced toward the bathroom. Ignoring the blinking flash of all the digital clocks that needed to be reset, I dashed and turned until I reached the bathroom door. He still wouldn’t answer to me calling out his name so I twisted the knob and pushed to door open.

My brother lay on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor with both hands wrapped tightly around his chest. I would have thought he was sleeping, but in horror I discovered that there was a streak of blood on his face leading to a small puddle on the floor. I raced out of the bathroom and got a dish rag from the kitchen. But when I got back to the bathroom, all trace of the blood was gone. Turning aside, I looked in the mirror and saw the face again, sneering at me. My hands started to shake, and I turned back to my brother. Kneeling down I shook him until he opened his eyes. He gave me an awkwardly piercing look and we would have sat there staring at each other for the longest time, but then he noticed the fear in my eyes.

“What happened?” he asked me.
“I really don’t know. I…just don’t know. It’s all just strange.”
“I must have fallen asleep I guess. What have you been doing all this time?”
I kept my mouth shut and went to put the rag away.

Whatever happened during the night, it didn’t matter because the darkness was over. The mysterious thing about the night is that no matter how many times you face against it there is always the fear of it taking you over. As for my brother and I, we spent the waking hours of the morning outside string at the sky, watching the milky gray give way to enormous light.