My Life in Darkness (9 page)
Read My Life in Darkness Online
Authors: Harrison Drake
It took ages to get the door open, he had secured it well. I found him in his bedroom, hanging from a hook he’d drilled into the rafters. He’d barricaded the bedroom door as well. I dropped to my knees and started to cry, my heart beating fast in my chest. It took me a minute, some time to gain composure and when I did I looked around.
There was writing on the walls, illegible from where I lay, and it looked like every knife, fork, screwdriver he owned had been stabbed into the walls, floor and ceiling.
I knew then exactly what had happened, I saw them hiding in the corners watching, waiting. They had come for him, just like they had for me. And just like me, he didn’t know that they were there to help. It was almost too late by the time I figured it out-I’d almost done the same.
I cut the rope and his body fell to the ground, limp. I held him in my arms and wept as they crawled and flew out from the corners to gather around us. They formed a circle, sitting peacefully on the plush carpet, their light bodies barely sinking in.
And they wept. Tears of machine oil streamed from their glass eyes, staining the off-white carpet a pale brown. I had never seen such sorrow, such sadness at the loss of a life before. It wasn’t just me, it was all of them—mine and his—gathered to mourn the loss of a wonderful man.
Yet it makes me wonder—are they hallucinations? Or are they real and we’re the only ones to see them? How could we both see the same thing, have the same delusions? They’re with me again, all of them, as they try to lend me their strength and resolve. And everything they give me, I soak up with abandon.
They’re all I have left.
I wish you could have met my son, had a chance to speak to him. I’m sure you saw him-from a distance at least-saw the man that he was, that same fire in his eyes that drew me to you. But he never came with me when I went to talk to you, and when you came over to me, he was always elsewhere.
You would’ve liked him, and I know that he would’ve liked you. Do you remember when we were kids? When I told you about my favourite book? We’re on his island now, the island Alexander Selkirk marooned himself on and lived on alone for almost four and a half years. It’s believed that was the story that Daniel Defoe used when he wrote
Robinson Crusoe
.
I want to stay here, marooned and alone, the way my life has always been. Just a series of shipwrecks, one after the other, with me always the sole survivor. Is it luck, or a curse?
Two minutes and twenty-four seconds. A chance for atonement. I’ll spread his ashes at totality, commit his soul to the darkness.
MAY 11, 2078
Dear Lena,
It pains me that I had to miss the last eclipse. Doctor’s orders. That being said, I’m lucky to even be here today. Pneumonia at my age is never a good thing but I knew I had to fight it, I had to live to see the darkness at least one more time.
They were there with me of course, waiting throughout my hospital room giving little buzzes of encouragement. I swear through sleep-strained eyes I saw one, its tiny pincers manipulating my IV. Maybe I owe them the credit. Strength and will have never been great assets of mine.
I can only hope that I survive to the next. We’ll be heading back to Canada, just past my hundredth birthday. But we’re in the here and now, and when I’m done writing this I’ll walk right up to you and your ever-extending family and speak to you once more.
You never remarried, never brought another man after your husband died. I look back over the years, nearly four decades, and in my memories I see you watching me, coy glances cast in my direction, a faint lilt in your voice as we spoke, a feather’s touch on my skin as you brushed past. I’d been given another chance and I failed once more, the thought of telling you the truth has always been too difficult for me.
And here we are, at the end of our lives, both standing in varying degrees of loneliness. With generations of family around one would never ascribe the term ‘lonely’ to you, but I can see in the dying embers behind those sapphire eyes a certain longing, one that I myself have always known.
Do I tell you now? Would it change anything? I keep these letters with me, all of them, every time we come. They stay folded, stuffed into the inside pocket of my jacket, the oldest ones yellowed and worn. All I need to do is hand them to you, then I can run away like a child who’s just rung a stranger’s doorbell. I lack the strength to even do just that.
And so I’ll talk to you, about the things that don’t matter as the words I’ve never been able to speak fill the gaps. I’ll hear your responses in my head as a chorus of mechanized wings and feet applaud us. The dreams that keep me happy, they never leave. They keep me warm as the air whips its chill through me, and they keep me company in the long days between eclipses.
Three and a half years now I’ve been replaying fabricated memories to keep me company through the lonely nights. I wrap them around me like a blanket, clutching some tight to my chest like a stuffed animal—eyes dangling, buttons lost to the ages, stuffing bursting from worn out seams—and I sleep soundly.
I’ll talk to you once more, but I’ll keep my feelings hidden as I always have. My ‘memories’ are all I have left, to lose them would do me nothing but harm.
My frail bones ache with anticipation. The darkness is coming to work its way through me, to mend my tired, aged body. I will see you once more, at least once more. Five minutes and twenty-nine seconds of darkness, my beloved, it will prepare me for the long wait until I see you again.
BAY OF FUNDY, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA
MAY 1, 2079
Dearest Lena,
I feel pain with every step now, and I know that the end is near. The darkness has come home once more for me, one last time in Canada.
It brought me to this world, brought me to life a century ago, and now it comes to bring me home. I don’t know where I’ll go from here, nor do I know if there will be people waiting for me. All I know is that the pain and the loneliness I feel should hopefully stop. I sense that they’ll be coming with me as well, they’ve been more active than usual, fluttering and crawling around in fast, frantic circles.
The darkness is almost here. Two minutes and fifteen seconds… not that it matters. I’ll be gone at the moment of maximum eclipse—halfway through totality. It was at that moment that I came into this world.
Should I find it weird that I know the exact moment of my death? It’s only minutes away and yet I’m not even scared. Mark Twain was born when Halley’s comet passed over and he said he’d “go out with it”. He died the day after it returned—seventy-five years later.
My life is tied to the eclipses, a product of the nature of the universe, a product of timing and perfection. We exist at the time when the moon is the perfect distance from the earth as to completely blot out the sun. One day, long in the future, this magic will be gone.
It’s fitting that it should all end here, the Bay of Fundy, a place with the highest tidal range in the world, and all for the same reason-timing. The time a wave takes to travel from the edge of the bay to the shore and back out is the same as the time between high tides.
My hand hurts from writing all of this, but it seems important to record. For posterity, I suppose. If things had arisen differently-even by a mere fraction—none of this, none of us would exist.
I don’t have much longer, the darkness is coming and I can feel myself slipping away. I only have a few minutes until totality comes, then from there just a minute until the point of maximum eclipse. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ll live through this one. But I don’t think I will, I’m not sure I want to. I can feel the darkness reaching out to me and it feels like home.
I’ve lived my life in the darkness, the hundred years in light meant nothing to me. It was the two hours, thirty-three minutes and fifty-six-point-four seconds that I spent in the shadows that gave meaning to my life, that gave me a reason to go on.
That, and you of course.
Don’t mourn me when I’m gone. Celebrate my life, celebrate my love for you.
Loving you was the only thing I ever did right.
Every eclipse mentioned in this story has occurred or will occur. The dates and locations are accurate as is the length of totality mentioned at each event. I could not have written this tale without the incredible resource of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Solar Eclipse Search Engine. Paired with Google Maps it allows for every eclipse (lunar, solar, total, partial, hybrid) to be plotted on the map and provides the start time, end time and totality for every location you click on. From 2000 BCE to 3000 CE, five thousand years of eclipses are at your fingertips.
Thank you to the researchers and programmers who put this together. Take a look and find out when the next eclipse will be visible from where you live.
eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearch/SEsearch.php
I would like to thank, first and foremost, my family for the ongoing support provided in virtually all facets support can be given.
Next, to the beta-readers who were sworn to secrecy regarding my true identity: you know who you are, and you know how grateful I am.
To the fine people at Streetlight Graphics, thank you for the cover art and formatting. My stick people couldn’t hold a candle.
And to the readers, thank you will never be enough.
Harrison Drake is the pseudonym of a Canadian writer and career police officer who has chosen anonymity in order to protect a safe, secure and quiet lifestyle for his family. The author’s next crime novel will focus heavily on police corruption and the author wishes to be able to write freely and without fear of reprisal.
The author is hard at work on numerous other writing projects in numerous other genres.
If he can’t be found at home, playing with his children or sitting in his lonely writer’s garret, he’ll be outside, gazing up at the night sky and searching for answers.
Website:
HarrisonDrake.com
Twitter:
@HDrakeTheWriter
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