SPIRIT OF THE NIGHT
SPIRIT OF THE NIGHT
A dark metaphor for the harsh indifference of the creative mind and the relationship between me and my own imagination….
Sitting in my office I felt his eyes on me. Blue eyes, not dark brown like my own. I inherited a great many things from my father, but my eyes were not among them. He was leaning in the doorway, a surprisingly youthful posture still rested in his shoulders. The medical problems which accumulate in a fifty-five-year-old, but the demeanor of a twenty-eight-year-old; that was my dad. I glanced up at him, with the sun settling behind the trees in back of me, the glow of my computer screen was the dominating light in the dark room. It was evening in early October; the final death throws of summer had passed and bled through into Autumn. Fall had arrived and calmly placed its stakes in the dirt with a heavy sigh, assuring itself it could stay a while.
“Hey, bud. Didn’t mean to bother you. How’s it going?”
I saved the document, a nervous habit which was more robotic than careful.
“Course not. Everything’s good dad. No complaints. Just chipping away at a new idea.”
A faint shadow of a smile passed along his face as he walked into the room. A subdued pride rested in his gaze as he studied the office. It was a habit he had always had. Checking every corner, every cabinet, every drawer of a room he entered. It reminded me of a cat or a dog. Some form of domesticated animal which could never truly feel comfortable until every shadow had been lit and every stone overturned. I knew what he must be thinking. Being one of three people I could say I had known for my entire life, it wasn’t difficult for me to navigate his mind as if it were my own. He was no doubt noting the sparsity of the space. A single bookshelf, a desk and a lamp which seldom found itself in use. In his mind, it was just as expected. A minimalist aesthetic for the kid who never wanted anything but his own space. He saw an eccentric emptiness which spoke to the humble and unique nature of his son. Knowing that minimalism wasn’t some passing craze on social media for him or some radical life decision, it was simply how his son had always been, how I had always been. A room as empty and simple as my Christmas list every year.
Satisfied, he took a seat across from me.
“It’s a nice office bud. You should be proud.”
I shrugged.
“It’s just an empty space. Someplace I can be alone. A place to think.”
He nodded. Neither of us knew what to say. We were close, always had been. There was nothing I could ask him which I did not already know the answer to and anything still unasked would remain that way.
“I liked the last one.” He said with a smile. “Really good. Couldn’t put it down.”
“Thanks.”
His smile deepened.
“Your mom hated it though.” We laughed. “Don’t tell her I told you. She’s gonna pretend she liked it, so you won’t get offended.”
“What didn’t she like?” I asked. No hint of insecurity in my voice.
“Just too violent, too cynical. Too you.”
Another laugh.
“Yeah I kinda figured. She might like this next one.”
“She likes all of them.” Dad assured me. “She loves the way you write, just not what you write about.”
I snickered like a child. The way I did with only close friends and him.
“Yeah! Trust me I get it.”
We were both quiet again. Not uncomfortable, just quiet. He was preparing to ask me something, I’d give him as much time as he needed to get around to it.
I peeked at the computer screen. Even now, I felt I should be typing. Felt I was wasting time, wasting precious thoughts. Ideas outpacing me as I take a moment to sit with the man who raised me. No rest for the wicked.
He broke our silence.
“I was just thinking… Some of the stuff you wrote about in this latest one…I mean if you want to talk about it, you know you always can.”
“I know dad. I’m fine. Really.” I was firm.
He nodded.
“I know you are. Just… You have a gift kid. Ever since you were little you’ve been this way. Living in your head, making your own stories when everyone else’s bored you. You shouldn’t begrudge it. I know I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I know you. One time you told me it was like a light inside you. You watched it and it gave you ideas. Showed them to you. I just wanted to ask…” He stirred in his seat, I said nothing. “I just wanted to make sure that light was still there. That you still see it.”
I looked at him and wondered how to reply….
I had once told him that my gift was a light, a screen in my head that revealed new stories to me. The same way I told my mom I was perfectly happy with who I was, the way I told my wife I would never harm myself, or how I always told myself that there was no reason to fear death. Sometimes half truths were better than the full. Easier to say aloud and easier for others to swallow. I had accepted who I was, but I didn’t have to like it; I had yet to ever hurt myself but couldn’t speak for the future; and death was a mystery that everyone learns with a cold hand and gasping breath. All these half truths pale in comparison to the half truth of my creativity. My gift. My talent.
It’s no light, no shine, no ominous beauty with mysterious and divine motives. No angels were singing hymns to me from the other side of the ether, no muse was strumming their lyre in octaves so delicate only my ears could hear. It’s something far less elegant, far more primal, as beautiful as it is terrible. Imagination. The tool which teaches us to play, to trust and to fear. It shows us kingdoms we will never reach and monsters beneath our bed we will never see. There was no light, but there was an omen, there was something. So, what do I tell him now that he asked?
Do I tell him about that night? The night I saw it…
Starting as so many nights did back then. Ten or eleven years old, too young for foreboding thoughts about the braces and glasses which would hide my face for years. Too young to mourn my fleeting youth or anticipate my future success. Only dreams, daydreams, fragile images of fame and admiration. Simple joys and spectacular triumphs fill my head. I lay awake in my bed, frightened without direction, an aimless dread in the darkness of my room. The moonlight, accompanying me as a friend during another sleepless night. Too young, still, to understand why I would lay awake when others slept, why I was afraid where others were calm, in pain while others smiled.
The clock by the bed said, 3 AM. My brother in the bed beside me, fast asleep. A fall night of its own, no more than fifty degrees outside, the autumn wind heartlessly sweeping the land. Rattling the shutters and carrying the fallen leaves along the moonlight in troops of decay. The door to the outside rattling against the siege of the October storm. Gazing out the window, straining my eyes into the darkness of the surrounding forest I watched the movement of the brush and the trees, a stark reminder that somewhere in the dark, things moved. Things unprovoked by the wind, ancient things which had been here long before man came and built houses on their land, and would watch with indifference when the earth opened up and swallowed man too. Things only known to the moonlight and the trees, old enough and wise enough to have shared silent words with them. Learning what little I could about them from the whispers of trees and the after image held within the faint ghostly rays of the moon.
Inside my room, beneath my blankets, I was safe. Until, of course, they decided otherwise. With a fearful heart and innocent mind, I shut my eyes…
I snap awake.
It was cold, the air around me was swirling, a strange sound rattled at the edge of the room. I peeled the blankets away from my eyes and look down my bed. Blown inward from the storm, the outside door was open, fluttering in a chaotic wind. Leaves scattered about the room. The invading moonlight and autumn wind cascade the entryway triumphantly. I’m shivering, doubly cold from the chill in the air and the fearful ice in my veins. Turning to my brother’s bed, expecting to find him curled fearfully as I was, I find the bed empty. He was gone. In an instant I knew, I was alone. The room, the house, perhaps the whole world, was empty. Only I remain. Me and something else. Decaying leaves and loose pine-needles sweep onto the foot of my bed. I sit up, the door still swinging, slamming erratically against the wall. The wind so strong I half expected the covers of my bed to be pulled away. Outside, the trees swayed and bent, bowing against the oppressive wind, their one-sided dance appearing both graceful and painful. The grass swept wildly as if the ghost of some unseen cavalry was rushing across it in another time.
Then, all at once, it stopped. The wind halted, leaving the debris suspended in the air until, at last, it came fluttering to the earth as newly fallen snow. In the calm, I felt it overtake me. The fear slipped away with the wind, replaced with a conviction as readily apparent as the silence hanging heavily over me. The leaves and pine needles fell purposefully to the floor of my room leaving a loose trail to the open doorway and out into the moonlight. Though young, or perhaps because I was young, I immediately understood. It wanted me to follow. Whatever it was…
“Come…Come…”
A whisper came lightly where the wind had previously invaded. It was a gender-less voice, passionless. Yet, natural. A feeling as natural as hunger or lust. Less potent than either and yet even more compelling to my young mind. So innate was the feeling, the voice, that it almost felt foreign. An outdated sense, like our ever-waning sense of direction, or ever-strong sense of tribalism. I did not move, I was frightened, though it did not strike me as untrustworthy, only strange.
“Come…Come…”
It spoke with great patience. The sort of patience earned through an eternity of being. Genderless and indiscernible, somehow, I knew it was the voice of a mother. The voice of something which gives birth, coddles and, if need be, suffocates. I felt myself push the blankets aside and rise from my bed before I realized I had made up my mind.
Not another whisper, it knew I had accepted the invitation.
I trusted it but moved warily. As one might when approaching an almost familiar animal. I knew it would not deceive me, but the fear remained. I was young, but I was no fool. I knew whatever awaited me, whatever had called to me, was both genuine and dangerous. What awaited me was as natural and old as the earth itself, as lethal as it was loving.
I reached the door. My feet still on the rug of my room, leaves crackling undertow, but the blacktop rested before me and beyond that the back yard. For a moment, doubt crept back into mind. I doubted myself, doubted my conviction, my decision. A gentle breeze caressed me reassuringly. It traveled gently passed me into the yard then beyond into the dark of the forest. As if calling back to me, a ghostly chaperone, to signal the all-clear. I stepped out, the black top hard and frost bitten on my bare feet. Encouraged by the wind I took soft, ginger steps forward. The clouds above me swirled and lingered, grey phantasms stalking a lonely boy. Ready to snatch any child fool enough to acknowledge their presence. I ignored them and did my best to ignore the ominous shadows they cast upon the grass in the pale light. My feet were steady in their stride, but my heart pounded in a desperate attempt to escape my chest. It seemed my mind was made up, but my heart still objected.
Turn back! The voice of reason was screaming in the back of my mind. Do not walk out into the cold unknown. Avoid that which should always be left in the dark. Ignore it as others have and do every day. Return to the warm safety of your home, to the four walls which swaddle you like the blanket of a newborn. Live free of fear. Live in blissful ignorance.
Do not create. Consume.
The grass was wet beneath my feet, a gentle rain had only recently passed. I marched up the incline of the backyard. Every step was one away from reason, but the leash of logic could not keep me tethered any longer. I marched on; more in defiance of my own fear than in any certainty of my fate. Under the moon the lawn was alive and clear, but my eyes saw only darkness. The chasm at the forest entrance, too dense for even the watchful eye of the moon to penetrate. The oily darkness rested just beyond the first thicket of branches. Beyond were the creatures of the night, their hunting grounds and dens. Was I invited food or friend? Somehow, it seemed obvious; it all depended on how I approached. With every step toward that darkness, toward the outstretched branches, I either proved myself worthy or wanting.
Despite the darkness, even now I could see it. I dared not let my mind describe it to me, but it was there, waiting, just beyond the edge of shadow. It was still, staring back at me. A purposeful gaze that could not be described in any words. Not hunger, not anticipation, not even wisdom. It knew me the same way I knew it; nothing more than a passing scent upon the breeze. Our meeting was not orchestrated through meticulous planning but merely the product of fate. I was atop the hill-rise now, my home and the bed within it, was far behind me. The thin outline of its chiseled skull loomed several feet above the ground, nearly midway to the tallest tree. It looked down at me. The Earth itself seemed to act independently beneath me. The unseen tentacles of the trees rushed and slithered underground, below my feet. No longer roots but snakes, hungrily awaiting their chance to ensnare me and pull me into the dirt, only fertilizer for the ancient beings. With their gnarled branches and intimidating size, they were the final test before me and the creature which summoned me. I ignored them too. They could do nothing to me unless I let them.
The wrapped branches, still in the breeze-less night, formed a wall before the darkness. Not a gateway, but a spiderweb.
Suddenly without any conscious thought, I stopped. Just at the foot of the forest and the edge of the moonlight. My eyes never left the creature’s face. Dark caves carved into it’s skull face; deep, deep, deep beyond the dark pits of the skull lay its eyes. Small, crimson pebbles encased in shadow. Like gazing into a set of dying stars. With a respectful tenderness, the creature stepped forth from the dark. Inching closer, it took shape before me. It’s skull-head rested nine feet above the ground, atop a body of tightly coiled earth and hide. The antlers sprouting from its head reached many feet higher. Almost anthropomorphic in shape, its limbs were stretched and elongated, its fingers were long vine-like talons and its frame was lean and emaciated.
As if the forest itself opened up, the creature came fully into view. Separated from the cover of the trees it stood erect in the moonlight. Its skull bruised and lined with cracks, moss wrapped and dangled from its antlers. I gazed up at it; it looked down at me. There was still no fear, not beyond an inescapable sense of anxiety. Its faded eyes looked on me, it’s face expressionless, yet through some invisible means I understood it. I looked on in awe, it looked down in reverence. I was not prey to be swallowed by the dark, I was a confidant for its secrets.
It tilted it’s head in query, but no words came forth from its perpetual toothy smile. The roots under my feet calmed, no longer slithering, they returned to rest. The wind was starting to rise up again and the field began to sway. Wordless, our conversation came to a close. Only a promise and a deal. When I returned to my bed, my brother would be there, when morning came my parents would greet me, but I would never again be one of them. No longer a young boy, but a conduit for the Spirit of the Night.
With an eternal calm and steadiness, it presented its hand to me. A hand, nearly the size of me, awaited my own. I did not yet dare to look away from it. The faded eyes did not lie, offered no false words of comfort or persuasion. My eyes at last tracked to the coiled roots and spiraled hide, which was its hand and I knew, as I had always known, this was who I am. I placed my hand in its grip.
I awoke in a cold sweat, my body shivering and my eyes darting about the room. In a panic I pulled the blankets tight against me, the dead black of the room left me trapped in the unknown. The interaction left me no braver, no less afraid and no more sure of myself than before. Brave as I had been in that world, here I was a coward. I turned toward the clock, 3 AM. On the other bed, a lump of blankets, it’s center steadily rising and falling. A sound filling the air in a steady rhythm. Snoring. My brother was here, back in his bed. Comfort washed over me; I was back in my bed. It had all been a dream, no ancient monsters, no deals with the devil, nothing had dragged me into the forest. I was home. Peaking over my bed, the door was closed, the wind was kept outside where it belonged.
I closed my eyes in search of sleep, knowing it would elude me as it always did. As my lids fell shut, I saw it. The face of it. The cracked skull and the dark, distant eyes. My own eyes opened. It was here, whatever it was. It was not the feeling of awaking from a nightmare, but the feeling of being watched, the feeling of not being alone. Cold and taut was my skin, my veins tangling and slithering under my skin. My eyes drew back to the door. Still closed, but something… something else…
In the darkest corner of the room, nothing but shadow, like a doorway into another world. I stared and stared, as one does when they know there is something there which does not want to be seen. An exercise often used in my youth against open closet doors only to find nothing but a pile of clothes and an old hat. Daring it to move, my eyes would remain there either until it did or until the specter of sleep snuck up from behind and swept me away into safety. My eyes felt heavy, my body lax. Just as my heart eased and my mind began to rest, it moved.
Only a shadow in the night. Its head tilted, gazing back at me, the antlers grazing the ceiling of my bedroom.
I turned away, shivering. Fear paralyzing me in my bed. My heart raced to the point of pain in my chest and my hands and feet went numb. Saliva filled my mouth in pools of copper. Eyes pinched shut, I wished him away, wished it all away.
“It’s just my imagination… just my imagination… just my imagination…”
My mind screamed and screamed for me to keep my eyes closed and my breath still. It was moving now; I could hear it. It moved across the room, closer to me. Falling into the prayers my father taught me, I dared not look. Its long shallow breath filled the room like the winds of my nightmare.
“It’s just my imagination… just my imagination… my imagination…”
In a moment of realization, it dawned on me just as the sun began to dawn the horizon outside. It’s my imagination. Mine. It’s mine. It didn’t drag me into the woods, I dragged it into the world. At last, with all the bravery I could manage I turned and opened my eyes.
He was there, looking down at me. Looming over me with a soulless grin and profound emptiness. My heart was pounding, my blood cold and thick, but my voice steady. I was not his; he was mine.
“Not tonight.” I spoke with an unexpected composure.
The words came to me without thought. Though I knew he would stand there through the night, I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep.
As years went on, I learned to live with it. Live with him. For a long time, I told no one about my tall silent friend, but eventually I took to telling those I loved, and who loved me, that I had a light in my head. Some beautiful source of inspiration which gifted with me all these strange and, at times, morbid ideas. I didn’t deign to tell them about the sleepless nights, the fear it left in my heart or the way we first met. I never bothered to explain how sometimes I had so many ideas I was afraid my head might burst and other times I had so few that I felt as worthless and barren as eroded soil. I never bothered to explain that I only felt as valuable as my ideas felt meaningful. Or, how for every comment in support of my work I reserved an equally scathing remark for my idleness and imperfection.
However, after enough time had passed, I came to a place of numb acceptance. I no longer feared him, no longer dreaded our nightly encounters. Some nights I still told him, ‘no.’ Told him I needed sleep tonight. Others, I rose from my bed and greeted him with a reluctant smile which he had no choice but to return. I would type into the early morning with him by my side. He was part of me now, his roots were deeply embedded into my bone. Plunging into my marrow with a purposeful pain. Unignorable and ever-present, his silent voice was as constant as the beating of my heart or the passing of my breath.
Now I sit on the other side of this desk, my father asking me about a lie I told him once. My office, in his eyes, charmingly empty and eccentric in its modesty. In mine, the moss grew about the walls, the roots spun and strangled the legs of every chair, the vines hung from the ceiling and, while it was my office, the savage greenery possessed every corner. My father sat across from me, amidst an invisible forest.
Is it still there? Do you still see it?
That was his question. Only a few moments had passed in silence, but I felt I now knew how to reply. My eyes tracked to the back of the room where it stood. Its antlered head facing me and its eyes like dead stars gazing back into mine. Towering behind my father in the shadow of the room, it said nothing.
“Yeah dad, it’s still here.”
END
Happy Halloween!