Hiding in the Dark

My mom was terrified of the dark. She always had a light on in any room she went into. Night lights were her lifeline. Every room in the house had at least one light, and she would always stay in the path of the brightest ray until someone could turn on the overhead. Hell, even the attic had a few lights in the sockets. I couldn't tell you the last time she was up there, though. She always made Dad go up, armed with a flashlight. He never seemed as scared as she did.

If there was any time that she didn't have her night lights on, she would arm herself with a flashlight or a candle. Power outages at night were the worst. I figured her fear stemmed from childhood, but she never brought it up. All she would say is that she tried to not be afraid of the things in the dark, but that she could never succeed. Her fear made the demons stronger, she would say. She tried to make sure I was never afraid like she was, but for the first half of my life, I reflected her fears.

As I grew up though, I stopped being afraid of the dark. I used to be afraid that I would see shadows dancing in the corners of my room, but any trick of the light never truly scared me. Those dancing shadows were my friends. They told me stories and laughed with me. They taught me how to tie my shoes!

The first time I told my mom that I was going to take the night light off the wall and sleep in the darkness, she cried hysterically. Dad had to take her outside into the sun until she calmed down enough to come back into the confines of the house. Any time after that, if she ever needed to come into my room, she would knock on the door and wait until I told her a light had been turned on before she even thought about opening the door. She would check on me several times a day, forcing me to turn the lights on for a few minutes. She told me that the nighttime was already bordering on being too long, so she made sure I had exposure to light while I was awake. I thought she was just being silly, but if my dad had been able to marry and live with her crippling fear, so could I.

Once I discovered how relaxing the darkness really was, I would always stay in it. Any chance that I could take to make my room the darkest it could be, I would do it. It felt as though the darkness was my home. I was my truest self because I used the darkness as a shield to hide the worst parts of me. If anything, I was the opposite of my mom. I was like a vampire. I hated the day. It was loud and bright and burned my skin. The darkness was cooler and more comfortable for me, but I never told my mom how I felt.

When Mom started getting sick, that was when she started spilling the truth. She said that she was a psychic medium and that she could see things that normal people couldn't. She said that the shadow people loomed in the darkness and that they were coming to steal souls. That if any person were left in the darkness too long, the shadows would drag you into the darkest corner of the realm and you would become one of them. The shadow people were always nice to me. It was the light dwellers, as I called them, that I truly feared. They had scary sharp teeth and no other facial features. Their limbs were long and distorted. It was in the brightest areas that I would see them, just a hint of a movement and I could see them.

After my mom started getting worse, she told me that it was actually the angels that hid in the light. That they protected everyone in the brightest areas, and that was why she never went without the light. She wanted her soul to be saved. She didn't want to become like the shadow people. She said that they were beautiful human-like creatures with a healthy glow to their skin and had fluffy white wings on their backs. She never stopped talking about how they started to sing to her and tan her skin even though she had been in a hospital bed under florescent lighting for several months. It was then that I started to believe her.

For years, I thought the shadow people were just imaginary friends of mine. Every kid has them. That both creatures were part of the intense fear my mom had, and it manifested into my child mind as creatures and stayed with me until adulthood as a sort of trauma response that I couldn't get rid of no matter how many therapists I went to. No matter how much medication I went on, I still always saw the creatures of both the darkness and the light.

Once my mom passed, my grief was unimaginable. I hid in my room for days on end without food or showering. I drew back the blackout curtains and laid under the thick blankets, hiding behind my shield of darkness. The shadow people would stroke my back and play with my hair. They let me cry. They comforted me. I didn't feel so alone.

The first day that I started feeling better and I left my room, there was a light dweller in my hallway, soaking in the sun's rays. At first, I thought it was my eyes adjusting to the sudden change of light after being accustomed to darkness for the last few days, but as I blinked rapidly and cleared the burn of the light, the creature stayed in the hallway. It turned to me and smiled a grin so wide, all of its sharp teeth showed, and for the first time, I saw it had two rows of teeth. It lunged at me, stretching out its long arms and even longer fingertips. I ran to the end of the hallway, but the light of the windows carried through the whole room. I had cornered myself stupidly and there was no escape.

I felt the intense burn of its fingers wrap around my ankles, pulling me to the ground. I screamed in pain as I felt the blisters already starting to form on my skin. I clawed the ground as heat traveled up my whole body, boiling my blood and causing an intense sweat to drench my body in a vain attempt to cool down. As the creature drew me to the center of the room where the light was the strongest, the heat became even more intense as it dragged me down. We melted through the floor, and I took one last gasp of air, praying to God, to the shadow people, to my mom, to anyone who could save me from burning to death at the hands of the people my mom called angels. My head went under, and everything turned white, and then all I felt was pure, blind rage.