A World of Darkness Read online

  As I look towards the window the dust seems to dance wilder inside the melancholic rays of light.

  The room quakes like in a terrible frenzy. The house seems to shake into the very foundations. Death is dancing between the gray gaps of the window shutters.

  Something gigantic is rolling over the sky.

  I become aware of the fact that I mustn’t wait for this – thing – to launch into the house to get hold of the flesh that it without any doubt scents. I with my heart boohooing run to the window rip open its sashes and in the next moment get caught by the full impact of the sonorous hum. The window panes vibrate. Even the window frame gets blurred before my eyes.

  I loosen the locks of the timber shutters, step back, for one last second close my eyes and breathe in deep. But I’m not able to calm down my trembling body.

  I with a carking cry push the two window shutters outwards, where they crash into the ridge.

  Crude daylight like a waterfall streams into the room and bedazzles me. The shadows of my grave disappear whining into corners and holes. I narrow my eyes to small, watery slits and with my hand held before my eyes spy outside.

  The whole world seems to be up in arms. The omnipresent, numb silence of the hillside has given way to a swooshing and thundering noise.

  The trees beyond the fence in a wild dance bow towards earth. Then they to seek help stretch towards the clouded sky, just for directly after getting pulled towards the ground again. Branches and brown leaves whirl wildly throughout the air and bang against the house. The day is filled with the uproar of churned up grass and euphorically swinging bushes. And above that all there’s the gigantic hum of a black monster.

  I disbelieving stare at the beast. The wind tosses into my face and onto my tongue I smell dust. My eyes are burning. But I don’t feel anything of this.

  It takes me some time to realize what my watery eyes see. I obviously had been alone and exposed to a situation that in my old life would have been too big and too absurd to understand it completely for too long a time. Then the whole glorious truth like liquid luck slowly drips into my brains.

  A helicopter, I whisper in my thoughts.

  The word resembles me as strange as it would a toddler, who begins to discover the endless world of language.

  “A helicopter”, I then shout out loud, staring up to the sky with my eyes widely open.

  Even the volume of my voice resembles me strange. When, apart of my short visit at Murphy’s, had I shouted for the last time?

  Despite my raised voice my words through the noise of the rotors can hardly be heard.

  I turn towards Sarah, anxiously asserting that she wriggles beneath her blanket and a fierce expression on her face makes it resemble a scared grimace. She seems to me almost as if being caught inside an extremely bad nightmare.

  Throwing one last glance at the black shadow in the sky, I go over to the bed, sit down at its edge beside Sarah and gently run my fingers over her damp forehead.

  “Sarah, honey”, I say, at which my words as soon as they get out of my mouth disappear in the diabolic hum.

  I bend down to Sarah and whisper directly into her ear: “A helicopter”. Above the house there’s a helicopter”.

  I hardly can hide my excitement that so suddenly comes over me as had done the angst all the days before.

  “We’re safe.”

  With trembling lips I give Sarah a kiss and remove her hair out of her face. She now lies calm again. The strain that had taken possession of her is away. I’m happy that my voice still manages to soothe my beloved Sarah. Then, while I’m regarding her peaceful face, I with a cold, short impact come to a conclusion that instantly drives me back to the window. I get caught at the foot of the bed and painfully strike my knee. But I feel the pain only in my subconscious.

  A helicopter …

  It wasn’t black as would have been a helicopter of the government. The thing in the sky was red; red and white.

  I lean myself widely out of the window, into the cold wind of the rotor blades and through raised dust and leaves, and spy up to the sky.

  Red and white. The colors of the rescue helicopters of civic hospitals.

  Barry had been flying a helicopter. And he was flying for Boston Memorial hospital.

  As if the pilot had guessed my thoughts, the sliding door at the side of the helicopter opens and a little, black figure appears inside the hold.

  I narrow my eyes to small slits, sheltering them with one of my hands against the rapid wind. The shadow moves, lifting an arm that from the distance looks as thin as the arm of a stick figure. Then I rip out with a hoarse cry and at the same moment feel my eyes fill with a fast-flowing stream of tears.

  Demi.

  I can’t believe what my eyes try to suggest me. I wipe away the tears with the sleeve of my pajamas, trying to concentrate on the slim figure in the helicopter. For a short moment the world around me disappears. Even the raised sand and the rotor blades constantly hitting the air become meaningless.

  All what’s left are the red-and-white helicopter, the open hold, which resembles me like the sideways opened plane mouth of a beast, and the beckoning figure in the midst of this plane mouth.

  “Demi!” I shout in a tizzy.

  My throat almost at once objects and aches. My heart begins to beat wildly inside my far too small chest.

  “Sarah, our little one is here”, I shout back over my shoulder. I then as far as I dare to lean out of the window and with both arms begin to beckon.

  “Our little one is here.”

  II

  Two hours later I stand in the kitchen, preparing something to eat.

  This duty, which in former times had resembled me so naturally, now is the most beautiful work in the world to me.

  I have started a fire in the old iron stove and in silent devotion listen to the sheets crackling inside the combustion space, while I in a nearly forgotten activity stir in pans, cut vegetables and shell potatoes. All these are things that Barry had unearthed from a big army burlap bag.

  It has to be a whole life since I last had such fresh ingredients on my table. Accordingly big is my hunger when the most delicious fragrances begin to come into my nose.

  Around the stove and on the work disk stand several candles, so that all my movements are bathed inside a warm light. Through the gaps, which I had nailed in front of the window and the porch door, grey daylight falls in lazily; but it isn’t able to cloud my high spirits and the homelike appeal created by the candlelight.

  Barry is sitting in the living room and has poured himself a glass of whiskey that he had also fetched from his magic bag. He had offered me a drink, but I refused in thanks. In these terrible times I don’t want to surrender to the devil in disguise of alcohol.

  Barry had never drunk before.

  The feeling that I, like in olden times, am cooking for my son and his family does me good. It gives me something back that I during the last two weeks had thought to be lost. The good and intensive feeling, that there is someone to care for and that one isn’t all alone on earth.

  I at this thought again get assailed by a bad conscience against Sarah. But my old girl might very well know what I try to express with these words that run through my mind; for in the end it had been her, who up till today had been the only comprehensible reason for me to stay alive.

  I imagine Barry sitting on the sofa; at his seat besides the arm, where he uses to sit whenever he comes to a visit. Only the glass of whiskey doesn’t fit into the image I have of a family idyll.

  Demi went upstairs. She wanted to spend some moments alone with her grandma. That was all she said. She probably just needs a place to cry. And where is it better to cry than next to a familiar and beloved person. How often had I been lying beside Sarah myself holding her haggard body in my arm and in doing so got overwhelmed by my feelings. Demi didn’t say much since she came here. Since her last visit my little one on the whole has changed a lot. And this had been only a few weeks be
fore now. But who might resent her this change? I surely am the last one to do so.

  Barry seems to have changed, too; he became more silent and earnest than before. As his father I nearly am in favor of saying that he resembles me more reasonable than before.

  But if these horrible times have given anything to mankind then it’s the fact that one learns to appreciate one’s own life better. Nothing seems to be more important than to find a way to survive. Every morning is more important than had been the morning before. And each thought demands more consideration and deliberation for in the end it might be one’s last.

  Thus Barry has changed to the better. Whereas I don’t want to say that he had been bad before. Perhaps he then had evaluated life as too easy – as too self-evident. As something that one has not to esteem in particular, something that day by day simply goes on, just like it had done the day before.

  But in this new time things are no longer self-evident; even not potatoes and vegetables, which I with growing enthusiasm and hunger stir in my pan. In doing so I wonder how much I might have changed myself. Have I also become … more reasonable?

  It occurs to me that I’m more worried about myself, Sarah and the world we have to live in now. These are things I never had done to that extend before, but which now are essential.

  But not all seems to be bad these days. The end of the world made us survivors find ourselves. And that’s something, too.

  I lost the ability to take the shallowness and the blindness, the wonders of life and nature for granted but instead gained a perception, which has nothing in common with the musings and daydreams of my old life. One brutally learns to live with reality and this new view on life doesn’t allow breaking one’s limits.

  Behind me deals creak.

  As I look over my shoulder Barry is standing in the kitchen. His glass of whiskey is emptied fifty-fifty. Perhaps he also has poured himself a second glass. But I say nothing.

  He is leaning against the kitchen table and looking at me. His glance resembles me exceedingly sad. It hurts to see your own son in such a condition.

  Our eyes meet. Barry’s eyes since his last visit have changed. They seem darker and more earnest.

  My first impression, when I saw him on the meadow behind the house, where he had landed the helicopter, was that his eyes had lost their color. Nevertheless I in his eyes find the same love and solidarity he had shown to me since his childhood. Neither his removal to Boston nor his visits that became rarer and rarer had changed that. It does me good to see that there still is warmth inside of these dull eyes.

  I glance at the glass and then back into his eyes. While I apply myself to the meal, I from the corners of my eyes see how Barry puts the whiskey at the table.

  “It’s nice to see you, Dad”, he says in a low voice, as if being afraid of wakening someone.

  I look over my shoulder and laugh.

  “Even if you told me some times before, I enjoy hearing that again and again.”

  Barry also laughs and shakes his head.

  The initial hellos at the helicopter had been hearty and we had both begun to weep.

  Regardless of the dangers lurking in the nearby forest I had – dressed only in pajamas and bathrobe – run out into the damp cold, sheltering my eyes against the slowly dying down storm of the rotor blades and had run to the open hold.

  Demi had sat there crouched down, hanging on to two grab handles and looking at me with tears inside her eyes.

  When I had reached for her she without hesitating had jumped out of the hold and bounced towards me. Her weight nearly had thrown me off my feet. But I had held her tight, considering me inside a dream, which every second could be brutally ended by some terrible fate. To feel the girl’s warmth against my freezing body at that moment resembled me to be the only feeling throughout the world that money couldn’t buy. Her trembling body and her slim shoulders that twitched while she was weeping were evidence of life and comfort. I by no means wanted to let her loose.

  But then Barry had appeared. And without saying a word he had twined his strong arms around us both. We had been standing like that besides the helicopter for a long time, while at the same time the hum of the engine became lower and sounder, so that one was able to hear the warm rotor blades and the auto body snapping.

  Neither of us said anything. There was nothing to say. All that counted was to savor this precious and thought to be lost moment and to wait for the inevitable end of the dream. Tears were filling my eyes, but it was not until I heard Barry’s voice that I began to sob uncontrolledly without being ashamed that my little granddaughter could see me doing so. I forgot about the cold as well as about the dampness of the grass that was slowly eating itself through my slippers and creeping up my legs.

  After a while Barry had detached himself from us and laid his hands onto my shoulders. Just like one does with a little child he had run my unkempt, much too long hair out of my forehead and browsed my face with his eyes. I held his hands at their wrists, regarding the tears inside his eyes and telling him all over how fine it was to finally see him again.

  Barry had told me the same. At least I think so. For in these moments I didn’t get the meaning of his words. I had seen his lips moving beneath his mustache and had heard his voice. But I had just wanted to look at him and soak up his sight. I didn’t pay attention to what he said.

  During this time Demi hadn’t said a word. And this hadn’t changed when she came into the house. Perhaps she would confide her grandmother what she didn’t want to tell us; all the things that in these few days had destroyed her childhood.

  “This all seems so unreal to me,” Barry continues after some time.

  It still is difficult for me to believe that behind me my son is leaning against the kitchen table and his voice fills the room.

  “As hard it might be, this is our new reality.”

  At that moment my words resemble me so absurd and out of place that I at once would have liked to apologize to Barry.

  I nearly feel like someone, who at a funeral searches for the proper words. Whatever one says will reveal the wrong thoughts that will hardly be able to express one’s true feelings.

  As I turn round to Barry he is looking at me with dull eyes. Perhaps he had hoped that I would give him a different answer. But his old father is as desperate and caught inside this terrible nightmare as he is himself. Therefore he can’t hope for any help from this side.

  I lower my eyes, because I in consideration of this shattering insight can’t bear to see his desperate face. I instead point with my hand towards the cupboard.

  “You could lay the table in the living room. Dinner will be ready in a moment.” A bitter smile spreads around my lips. “And take some candles with you, for we won’t want to sit in the dark.”

  “Why don’t you use the electric generator?” asks Barry while strolling towards the cupboard.

  In past times he often had helped me with my cooking when he had been visiting us together with Shelley und Demi. This is why he knows where to find everything.

  “Too dangerous”, I answer shortly, taking the pot off the stove. “The sound attracts these beasts from out of the wood.”

  I pause and sacredly turn around to Barry. We up till now hadn’t lost a word about the Shoggothen. And I don’t want to press my son still harder.

  Demi and he even without my ghost stories seem to have gone through enough hardships. But one glance into Barry’s eyes reveals me that I hadn’t been able to frighten him with my words. He seems to know what I’m talking about. This fact is a shock to me and I quickly turn back towards my pans. For a while the only sounds to be heard in the kitchen are the rattling of plates and the sizzling of logs. Then suddenly Barry appears beside me and looks at me. When I look up I into his eyes I recognize a dark seriousness inside them. The man seems strange to me, even if he looks like my son.

  “We can talk while we’re having dinner,” he drawls. “I’ll tell you what happened in Boston.”r />
  He wants to turn away, but then pauses shortly.

  “And why I didn’t come to look after you earlier. I’ll tell you that, too.”

  He leaves me standing alone inside the kitchen.

  Suddenly the whispering of the fire inside the combustion chamber of the cast-iron oven resembles me unspeakably depressing.

  III

  We eat the soup made out of potatoes and vegetables with a ravenous appetite. It’s the first proper meal since the disaster had begun. Even the mere odor of it nearly drives me crazy. With Barry it seems to be the same, because he with an abstinence he is only hardly able to restrain is concentrating on his plate, as if he was afraid that someone could dispute him his food.

  Demi on the contrary eats slowly. She is staring into space and doesn’t speak a word. It cuts me to the quick to see my little girl suffer that way. How difficult must it be for a child to understand the ruin of civilization if even I, as an old man, am hardly able to understand what had been going on outside of my house?

  Each time I look at Demi I’m tempted to tell her some encouraging words or simply to run her over her hair. But I can’t think of anything proper to say to her. And I don’t dare to touch her, because she seems to have withdrawn into her own, childlike world. I’m not sure if I’m admitted to this world and if there is anyone at all who is admitted through that closed iron door.

  For a while we silently sit there eating. Instead of all the circumstances our gathering resembles me cozy. The candles that Barry had placed at the edge of the table are spreading a homelike, rustic atmosphere. I gaze at the plate with soup, which I had prepared for Sarah. It stands a bit aside behind the candles. So it can cool down, because Sarah often simply swallows her food, regardless of how hot it might be. I want to spare her this pain, which is why I will bring her plate to her only after our meal.

  Somewhere down the road Barry looks at me. With this deep, dark gaze that makes him seem so strange to me. Then he begins to narrate what had happened in Boston: “We probably had been as distraught as you, when we one morning woke up and nothing was like it had been before,” he begins, playing with the spoon between his hands. ”Demi had noticed it first. She came to our bedroom shouting that old Mrs. Wellington was lying in the middle of the road. It took me some time until I had shook off sleep. But then I went to the window towards the street, lifted the rolling shutters and in fact saw the old woman lying in the middle of the road. I at once put on my bathrobe and ran out while Shelley was trying to reach a doctor. It was there that I then saw them.”