Within the Sound of Silence

Silence.

I never really understood why it made people so uncomfortable. Their fingers itched to fill the void after seconds or minutes as if afraid to face the quiet that surrounded them. Oftentimes, they thoughtlessly put on music or turned on the TV to fill the quiet. Though the silence of a room itself wasn’t merely empty if they only listened and became one with the atmosphere. Usually, there was a faint hum of electronic appliances in the background, the sound of traffic filtering in through the windows, or the drone of heating or cooling systems, and the faint subtle pops and creaks of a house shifting in its foundation.

My husband was one of those people who had to fill the space with some sort of noise. It was as if he got restless suffering from a sudden onset of boredom. While I spent my mornings quietly eating breakfast and reading a novel, in comparison, he had to have the TV on or his phone playing some video that dealt with a hobby he was getting into out loud, or the sound of a flat toned individual narrating a science fiction audiobook while showering.

Silence to me was comforting.

It was peaceful blocking out all the chaos of the world around me. Though I knew it was unbearable for others, it was only fitting for me due to my bashful nature. I never thought about it– the quiet, and how to some it made them feel alone and neglected. This in turn caused them to feel that way from my lack of words and halfhearted attempt at conversation. My presence was one they could not decipher so it was met with hostility, which was a shame. A shame that a Black woman with a quiet disposition was considered threatening– because she was different from the others. She was considered stuck up and unfriendly which was a projection from the individual doing the judging. That realization was disappointing as I always thought my quietness was peaceful for others, not that it was an indicator of pride or hate. I didn’t even have that towards other people, but apparently from the reaction of various classmates and coworkers in the past you would have thought I threatened their entire existence.

I was too nice and cared about everyone. An empath some might say, I was just very sensitive and in tune with my surroundings. With my self-diagnosis of social anxiety, I was the one who thought everyone else hated me; thus, the reason I hardly interacted with anyone was in order to preserve my dignity.

*

It was three in the morning when I paused my paintbrush against the acrylic-soaked canvas that sat atop a cheap wooden easel. Painting in such low light wasn’t the best as the difference in light distorted colors, but I had done the same throughout all my life and was eager to put my pregnancy insomnia to good use for once.

I had woken up an hour before and laid in bed staring at the bassinet set up beside me eagerly awaiting my little one while listening to my husband’s raucous snores. Many nights I had done the same, struggling to fall back asleep only to lull off before feeling the baby in my belly thrash against my bladder and was up again wobbling off to urinate. Too many times had I laid with my eyes glued to my phone screen as minutes and hours peeled away and finally, I realized that I was wasting my time on nonsense.

I was a creative. I could be productive and fill that void time wasting away several nights a week. I ended getting up and putting on an ill-fitting robe that didn’t cover a thing of my lower half with how big my belly had gotten, before walking to the kitchen. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich grabbed a glass of juice before making my way upstairs to my makeshift art studio.

I looked outside at the darkness through the open window behind me. It was something I was torn about, being scared of the dark was one thing and the possibility of someone or something watching me from the throng of darkness was another. I was one of the people who were into the paranormal and glitches in the matrix. I had my fair share of weird unexplainable experiences and episodes of sleep paralysis that had finally subsided into adulthood, but I was still terrified of what I was yet to see and experience. The fact that I had the curtains drawn open was brave, and the fact that my eyes were searching through the darkness to find something…anything, but hopefully nothing was out of character for me.

Elias and I used to live in a cramped neighborhood of side-by-side houses that shared backyards. There were always curious eyes watching no matter what. It was something that was unavoidable. There was no privacy and blinds and curtains were always drawn closed in certain rooms to avoid awkward situations in even your own home. Now we lived in a less populated part of town, where the nearest neighbor was across the road that ran into the spaced-out neighborhood. We could see their house, but it wasn’t anything like before where we could see into someone’s room or their car parked beside our bedroom window. Our two-story house was settled on a couple of acres of land and what faced my studio was an old barn. I stared out into the darkness of open space and vast tree line before deciphering the outline of the dilapidated barn in the distance. My husband had talked about removing it from the land, but I thought it had its charm, though I knew as years would pass the wood would rot and become a depressing mess in the long Midwest winters.

Two shining green orbs suspended in midair appeared suddenly in the midst of the barn area. I froze, my breath hitched in my throat as my eyes locked onto the orbs, ears suddenly alert to listen for any sort of strange sound. I tried to persuade myself that it was some sort of animal whose eyes were reflecting light from some light source I didn’t know existed, but I couldn’t shake that it was odd that out of nowhere they appeared.

I quickly pulled the curtains closed, getting a streak of chestnut against the mauve curtains before swiveling around in my chair. Quieting my mind, on the other hand, was difficult as I tried to push away the possible things those small orbs belonged to from encounters of others I had read on forums. It could’ve been one of those strange creature sightings or something paranormal. Thinking about it caused an adrenaline rush, but the possibility of what it could be scared the shit out of me. I fought to dispel the ill feeling in my stomach as I felt my little one move and press her foot against my left side.

Oftentimes, when you looked for something, you unexpectedly found something– whether it was what you were looking for or not.

I shoved my paintbrush in the muddy paint water of a random mug on my desk before dousing the brush bristles back into the glob of mixed chestnut. The sound of the furnace filled the emptiness as I reached up and began painting again.

*

“When do you think we can get the barn torn down?” I asked my husband during dinner at a smoked barbecue joint a couple of days later.

I hadn’t told him about what I had seen. Elias wasn’t the type to believe in the paranormal, no he was more grounded in reality and had a rational explanation for everything. As I was more open, his nonchalant outlook was a bit frustrating and I didn’t want to deal with possibly seeming mad, suffering from a form of pregnancy-induced sleep deprivation of some sort. The easiest thing to do was just ask him about removing the barn.

Elias gave out a hum before adjusting his glasses atop his pale nose. “I mean it’s winter right now,” he said before picking up his sandwich and taking a quick bite. A slice of smoked brisket doused in a vinegar-based barbecue sauce threatened to dislodge from the bread and he fought to keep it inside.

“Yeah, I know,” I mouthed a forkful of tasteless macaroni and cheese before continuing. “But I mean…after.”

“Sometime this spring maybe I can get my brothers and dad together to tear it down,” he responded. “Maybe one of my uncles that has the necessary machinery can help too.”

There was a look on his handsome face that contorted into wonder as his blue eyes bore into my dark brown ones. I knew what he was going to ask.

“Why?”

“Nothing, just wondering,” I quickly responded while stabbing my fork into more bleak sauce-covered elbow noodles. The place was an attempt to emulate Southern barbecue, but the taste was weak and the food lacked proper seasoning. The restaurant itself also lacked that hearty feeling of the region that thrived on hospitality.

I didn’t want to admit to him that I was suddenly creeped out about the barn I thought had looked so quaint when we had first taken a house tour with our realtor. Since that night I hadn’t been back up to my studio and had opted to just stare at my phone during the late-night hours where I struggled to fall back asleep. Instead, I opted for the only plausible explanation. “We don’t want to deal with wild animals and stuff moving in you know.”

A brown eyebrow raised with a thoughtful look before a quirk of the side of his mouth uplifted his lips, “That’s true. We could also put a raised garden in the area instead.”

We finished up our meal talking about home renovations and what we needed to prepare for our little one who was only a month away from being born. We were excited to be first-time parents, and completely oblivious of what was to be in store for us. We were at a point in our lives where we were trying to figure out the transition to parenthood and we couldn’t quite fathom being a dad or mom at that point.

Our server, an early twenties brunette male that wore the restaurant's uniform of a branded white T-shirt and black jeans then brought us back to reality. “Would you like separate checks?”

Blue eyes connected to my brown ones, both my husband and I were speechless at the offending question. Though instead of being upset at first, I wanted to give out a laugh at the display of ignorance. There were two gold rings on my ring finger, one encrusted with a diamond that sparkled in the glow of artificial light. My husband’s ring finger also had a band of gold tungsten encircled around it. Despite that, I was clearly pregnant for God’s sake! Not that such a state could only be achieved during marriage, but it was an obvious indicator that we were having dinner together as a couple.

When we left, I began to spiral into questioning why it seemed like we would get separate checks. Never before had we ever been asked such a question, even during our early days of dating, but the one time we were both wearing our wedding rings on blatant display that question was thrown at us. The interaction left a sour taste in my mouth. Though I wondered if my husband and I interacted so awkwardly it seemed like a first date. It was enough of a distraction to pull my thoughts away from the orbs in the barn for the time being.

*

Three in the morning spun around again two weeks later and my mind was reeling as I laid in bed. The mobile connected to the bassinet beside the bed reflected faint silver light against the wall from the dim night light nearby as it spun. My husband snored loudly. My stomach grumbled aggressively and the tiny body inside of me rammed against my cervix before tickling my bladder reminding me that I had to go urinate. I peeled my sweaty body away from the bedsheets and threw on a robe before deciding I was up for a couple of hours for the night.

I saw the orbs again.

Small and green. They wavered in the darkness as if expecting my attention. My heart raced inside my chest as I bit my lip. I tried taking a picture on my phone, but because the distance was too far and orbs so small in the darkness, it ended up just being a black photo. I could have awoken Elias and had him come up to confirm what I was seeing, but I knew if I did they would be gone by that point. Elias was also hard to awake at night and I didn’t feel like dealing with his stubborn ways that would cause me to lose patience with him.

Instead, I closed the blinds and tried to focus on finishing up the first layer of my painting. I had gotten the skin tone down of the woman I had sketched up. My style was a bit illustrative rather than abstract or stylized. My painting process was similar to how I digitally painted in Photoshop, albeit more in tune with the penciled-in outlines as painting physically with fast-drying paint was less forgiving than digitally. I dabbed a paintbrush into a turquoise color I had mixed up and began laying down the first layer of her hair before submitting to my fear, eager to get my mind off of what I witnessed. I reached over with my free hand to turn on my tablet and play some random vlog in my watch later playlist to fill the silence of a creaking house and ominous feeling that washed over me.

-

It wasn’t until noon when I bundled up in a groggy splendor of a poor night's rest, that when I finally laid back down to sleep my husband’s alarm for work went off, I faced the old barn. The doors were broken off their hinges and rust-colored paint that I envisioned used to be a stark bright red, peeled from the old wood. The weathered structure towered high above me with its rustic yet haunting beauty in the midst of the property. Inside was large and spacious housing parts of fallen wood from the interior and roof. The floor was covered in dirt and yellowed dead grass. At one point it had been useful storage space for a farmer but was no longer.

What was once a picturesque slice of Midwestern countryside was the reminder of the passage of time. With time came aging and for a moment it oddly reminded me of my position in the world as a first-time mother. My left hand rested against my belly bump as I looked up into the upper area of the barn, looking for any signs of life that may have been hanging around. From where I stood I couldn’t see anything, and I wasn’t about to wander further into the ruins of the building as I turned back to our house looking up at the window of the second story where my art studio was located. The curtains were drawn shut.

*

Another two weeks later it snowed. A blanket of white covered the land and after fixing dinner for the evening I decided to make progress on my neglected painting while waiting for Elias to arrive home from work. Those days I was alone most of the time as I had taken maternity leave, but it seemed our little one was also taking her sweet time to arrive into the world. It was sort of depressing just waiting, and I found myself standing looking around in her nursery all set up just waiting for the one it was meant for. Crib empty, glider stationery, and bookshelf display as perfect as ever.

I was desperate for things to take my mind off my baby and whatever strange activity was possibly going on. Trips to town were far and few by then as I only left once a week for my weekly obstetrics appointment that was coupled with grocery store runs. The rest of the time I only left when Elias was off work and wanted to go visit his parents or to a store in town. At that point, I was used to making slow cooker meals that simmered for hours and kept up leftovers for days, before cleaning up, but there was only so much vacuuming you could do and dusting. The only thing I could think of being productive was the painting.

By then much of the paint I had mixed on my palette had scabbed over with tiny wet spots despite covering it with plastic. I had gotten much of the first layer of paint down and had been putting in darks and lights. I just had to fix up a few areas where the paint ran translucent showing off the off-white canvas underneath. Mixing those colors wasn’t too bad along with trying to revive much of the paint that was still tacky. All I had left was the outlines which were stark black or white; thus, bringing the painting altogether.

I had thrown the curtains open, admiring much of the change in scenery taking note of how long I had before the lighting became inadequate. I worked slowly in the silence of the house, listening to the faint rumble of the furnace, captured by the quaint atmosphere the snow also cast over the land. The quiet was comforting as thin paint brushed lines filled the canvas. Some of my strokes were shaky, but it all was pulling together. The woman’s face which was abstractly broken up into separated sections was defined in all its beauty. Her brown skin glowed, and her eyes were alluring drawing in the viewer. I worked slowly before I heard a faint call of some sort of wild animal. I turned in my seat and looked out the window. Something caught my eye in the distance of the throng of trees beyond the old barn.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

*

In my insomnia perhaps it made me delusional as I was doing something I had never done. It probably wasn’t a good thing that I had thrown on my snow boots and bundled up to face the unknown as I walked to the old barn with a flashlight and my phone in tow. It wasn’t like Elias would awake to scold me anyway, but I made note that it was possibly dangerous if there were wild animals lurking about. I was just curious, even though it was unusual of me to walk around at night. But the snow always made the world a bit brighter at night with an orange-lit sky, illuminating a perfect path for me to make my way easily to the entrance. My ears were alert, but the only thing I could hear was my boots crunching upon the soft snow.

When I reached the open doors I cast the flashlight inside, bright lumens lighting up the old wood that was now damp and some parts covered with a layer of slushy snow. I couldn’t see a thing, but I was pretty sure what I had seen earlier had been hanging around inside and it made me feel ridiculous for even thinking there was some sort of strange entity hanging around.

I walked further into the large building, the light of the flashlight in hand shining around the roof area until I saw it.

Perched atop one of the angled posts in the corner was an owl. A barn owl.

It had been what I had seen earlier that day flying around hunting for food during the evening hours, taking much advantage of the snow. Its pale wings outspread as it flew, and I found myself captivated as it neared the barn. The owl’s body was a combination of faint coloring, from creams and whites to deeper tones of tans and russet on its backside also lined the edge of its feathers. Where it was perched in the barn the deep brownish tan of its outer wings shone as its claws dug into the wooden beam. Its face turned to me, eyes glinting green faintly before focusing. At first, it stood still as if an apparition in the shaking light before its call filled the silence of the barn. There was movement inside my belly as I admired the beauty of nature before me, strangely oblivious to the cold I had always despised.

It was alert and flat face surrounded by a tawny-colored elongated heart shape. Its beady eyes were large as its beak opened and let out a shrill squawk that it kept repeating as if in warning. The sound itself was terrifying, but I was finally at ease knowing what lurked in the shadows.

I tried my best to capture a proper photo of the owl before quickly heading out feeling guilty I had mistaken that something so innocent was possibly malevolent.

I could not forget the eyes of the owl as I hurried inside the house and slipped off my wet snow-covered boots. The only thing I could think about was running up to my studio and putting the final finishing touches on my painting that would take a few hours if I could correctly convey the idea that was floating around inside my head. As I made my way to the stairs trying to quiet my breathing as I was out of breath from merely walking, I noticed a faint wetness at my crotch. For a moment I mistook it as sweat from moving so much at such a time at night, or perhaps I had somehow peed myself in excitement, but as I lifted my left leg to step up onto the first step in the stairway there was gush as my eyes widened as I stood quietly in a mix of panic and skepticism before the feeling of water raced down my legs and onto the floor.

Within the sound of silence was my own panicked breathing mixed with terrified excitement. The sound of my heart pounded in my ears and faint the screech of the barn owl lingered in the distance.

My fingernails dug into the thin material of my leggings as I called out for Elias in a shaky voice.

It was finally time.