Shadows Never Sleep

Shadows Never Sleep

The darkness was palpably thick.

It stretched, filling the small room in an eyeblink, glad to be once again freed from the binding chains of daylight. Almost feline in its grace, it easily enveloped the tiny figure huddled intriguingly in the sagging bed. Dim tendrils of what might have been fingers caressed the invitingly soft human cheek. Hovering scant inches above the bed, it lightly stroked the tousled blonde head and one fleece-covered shoulder. The air in the room, shuddering almost discernibly, grew chilled.

The child rolled over in sleep, restless.

Between the time at which the sun hides at night and the time at which it uncertainly reappears the next morning, every living thing is at the mercy of the darkness. All else is a crucial part of it. Is it any wonder that each night abounds with insomniacs? Perhaps they are those who have seen the darkness, and who know it for what it is. To stay in well-lit places will beat the dark, but to remain awake – ah, to remain awake is to best the dreams! No ordinary, light daydreams are these, but the dark dreams, the unsettled dreams caused by the dark and unsettled thing lurking in the interminable worlds between here and Hell.

So it was with the girl-child. Her subconscious mind rippled and tossed like a storm-swept sea. Something was drawing closer, that much she knew. She fought without success to awaken. This… thing… would not let her wake. It kept her in a deep slumber, like that of the heavily sedated.

(running skipping sunlight dancing on the pavement)

The darkness hungered. It needed desperately to feed. It needed to drain the life-light from this child. She had already lived many more years than it usually liked. It preferred to prey upon much younger, more infantile meat, leaving not the barest clue it had been there. Crib death, the adult ones called it, mystified. No reason, no warning. Such a tragic loss. This one was almost near grown, yet her life-spark drew the darkness like a moth to a flame, incandescent, a worthy prize.

(my sixth birthday double-dutch on the driveway hot summer picnic sun)

The darkness had suffered many names since the humans had discovered hints of its existence – the bogeyman, the closet monster, the thing that goes bump in the night – all of them banal and none with more than the barest glimmer of truth to it. It needed no name to carry it through the ages. It was eternal, older than even the oldest fossils, than the earth itself, older than the stars. Its age surpassed every corner of the great abyss of time from which all of these were born. It was only the silly humans who felt a need to label this darkness that entailed much deeper things than a mere absence of light.

Now the darkness reached toward the girl-child. The blanket had fallen away and left her throat exposed. It stroked the tender skin there, and in the child’s dreams, something terrible and yet unseen began to close in on her.

(hot dogs daddy’s barbecuing again and there’s grass stains on my dress clouds over the sun so cold where’s the sun so cold)

She awoke with a violent start.

In an instant, the cloying darkness scuttled frantically back into the corners. The air remained chilly. The girl sat up slowly, blinking, trying to rub warmth into her thin arms. She glanced around the room uneasily, just able to make out the dim hunched shapes of the furniture. What had awakened her?

“Why do I feel so creepy?” she murmured, running her fingers lightly along her unharmed throat. “What was I dreaming?” Nervously she groped for the bedside lamp and switched it on, flooding the small room with brightness. The air seemed warmer now, and somehow less intimidating.

There was an unexpected soft knock at the door. She shivered, one hand instinctively clutching at her unprotected throat. She swallowed quickly, twice.

“Come in?”

The door edged open, and the girl had to brace herself before she dared set her eyes upon whatever she had just invited into the room. Oh, stop being such a baby, she told herself sternly. All the same, dim memories of forbidden vampire tales crept unbidden to her mind the way sightless things creep in sewer pipes in the dead of night. Summoning every scrap of courage, she raised her eyes to the open door.

Her mother, rubbing her eyes and yawning, stood framed in the doorway, peering inside.

“Still up, Carol? I was just coming back from the bathroom and saw your light was on.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Carol replied, trying to put nonchalance into her voice that she certainly wasn’t feeling. “I’ll turn it off in a moment. G’night.”

“Night, honey.” Her mother blew her a kiss as she closed the door. Carol sat rigidly upright listening to the receding footsteps until they faded away to nothing.

Okay, she thought resolutely. I’ve had bad dreams before. This is nothing I can’t handle. I’m ten years old, and I can sleep in the dark if I want to. Dreams don’t come back anyway.

She switched off the lamp and sank back into her pillows. She was asleep in a matter of minutes.

The darkness eased out of the safety of its corners, drifting about the room. Now that the light had been turned off, it was in its element. It could be safe anywhere, for it was everywhere. It reigned in the afterhours.

If the girl-child awoke, she could certainly scream, but that would spoil the fun. The darkness would be upon her before anything so petty as a human child could mar the sanctity of the game. It almost pitied the humans. Their lives were so brief, so transient, that the darkness had no choice but to view them as fodder. The older ones were even more pathetic, having long lost their ability to recognize the darkness. They found no use for anything which could not be laid out and examined under the harsh light of day. To them, a thing which proved to be distasteful to the body or mind must therefore not exist, and they would turn their backs upon the darkness. To the adult ones, the darkness was simply not-light.

The children were the easiest and most favourable prey. They believed in the darkness and this belief made them vulnerable. Being so young, they had not yet begun – as the adults had – to slowly die. Their life-sparks flared bright and unwavering. The darkness was drawn to engulf them, snuffing the life-flame and stealing the energy to feed itself. Sometimes it liked to tease them first, prodding their innocent dreams toward nightmares, or making them sleep when they longed to awaken.

It was a good game.

Turning its attention once more to the girl-child, the darkness reached out one lone fog-formed finger to stroke her smooth cheek. It edged along the outskirts of her dreams, clouding them, obscuring their horizons.

Unexpectedly the child’s sleep-crusted eyes fluttered open, and she saw immediately that she was not alone. For a single eternal moment, she stared into the darkness. She could feel its hunger emanating from it like a pulse.

The darkness broke the spell first. It threw itself upon the girl, smothering her, attacking her with its dark depths. The girl found her voice at last, screaming over and over, shrill ear-piercing cries that brought her mother running. The bedroom door flew open; light blazed in. Blinded, the darkness fled.

The air had a rank odour beneath its chill. It was barely discernible, but it was there.

Carol’s mother knelt by the bedside, rocking her daughter in her arms. “Shh… It’s all right, you’re awake now. Everything’s fine.” She continued this calming litany until Carol’s breathing slowed and she finally began to relax.

“I think I want a night light.” It hurt to ask for such an obvious symbol of childhood, but Carol was adamant she would not sleep in the same room as that … thing.

“What were you dreaming about?” her mother asked, brushing damp strands of hair from Carol’s forehead.

Carol shook her head. “I don’t know… Nothing, really. I guess maybe I was just a bit afraid of the dark.”

And so should we all… for one never knows….