Vanta black

Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But the echo of the wailing is deafening. I hear it now even as I dream. The events plaguing me like a illness. Always scraping at the base of my skull. A parasite, threatening infestation.

Time is slowed as I see her, my mother, one hand hitting the airlock switch, the other reaching for me, sorrow more then fear in her eyes, as if to say “Forgive me my hoku”

She had always put “my” before my name. Her little star, she’d lullaby to sleep floating in the station, we called home.

It’s the moment her eyes meet mine as the airlock, hardly even agape, already begins to thrust her hips back with the force or a rhinoceros stampede. The single tear turned ice before it could even escape her eye. The shriek, a siren song of vibrations and echolocation, clawing its way out of her throat and deep into my brain stem. Burrowing like a tick.

But that’s not the only thing I hear. Another scream, If you could call it a scream atall. Her body freezes over, Medusa incarnate floating boundless into the vastness of space. A marionette doomed to repeat the same spinning motion infinitely. When suddenly behind her, something is odd. Off. Something I hadn’t noticed in the moment until it was right behind her, on top of us like a blitz attack. The stars beyond her begin to disappear, slowly, and then all at once. A mili second, indistinguishable if you had blinked. A black void growing larger with each passing second and from the void a guttural howl bellowing from the belly of space itself. Inhaling the stone silhouette that was my mother, swallowing her whole. A mere krill in the mouth of a leviathan.

And before comprehension can even set in, trying to make sense of the impossible, the stars reappear. Freckling the sky beyond. My mother, gone. No trace of her plaster remains. Consumed by the blackness itself only later to be claimed it been solar wind knocking her out of view. “It must of been”, they claimed. Whispers among the crew, “suicide, by a crazed scientists wife.” “What a way to go” some would say. “I wonder if their daughter has it too. The illness” said others. Military personnel, scientists, crew members, completely uninterested in the traumatized ramblings of a child. Not that I could even begin to comprehend or explain what I had seen, only being 8. But I know better. I saw the negative space. A phantom of vast magnitude disguised as the blackness, or being the blackness itself. The same way you cant see a blue whale in the deep ocean until it’s right at the surface and you have an areal view.

But it’s the scream. The growl I heard, A titan roar. Vibrating in every fiber of my being, haunting my dreams.

Even now, 12 years later.

I awake from the fever dream as I do many nights. A cold sweat blushing my cheeks. The the moon shining through my port window. My nightmares co- conspirator, creating dark shadows on the far wall.

I wipe the beads of sweat off my upper lip with a finality in my demeanor. A rebellion in my bones. Defiant against the fear of the unknown.

The only way to shake it, is to find it. Stalk it like prey.

This time, I’ll be ready.

I will find “it”. Perhaps, “them”. Can there be more then one? A god, or many, if I’ve ever pictured one.

A blind leap of faith. Threatening to doom myself into searching for all of eternity. Although I have a confidence I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it misplaced? How can I be so sure I’ll find it? And yet my bones tighten with knowing. An animal instinct, flight or fight response. Or so I’ve managed to convince the others. A team of 7 should be more then enough for Hunting ghosts. Tommorow, we jump.