Gone with the Dark
[WP] Your grandfather abandoned his family at age 28. Your father abandoned you, your sister, and mum at age 28. Your 28th birthday was 8 months ago. As you tumble into the dark portal that opened under your feet, you think “Maybe there’s more to the rumour of a family curse than I thought”.
*****
I guess you could say that ours is a family all too familiar with loss.
My grandfather left grandma back in '72, when mum and uncle Bruce were barely walking. Gone without a trace on a cold winter’s morning, never to be seen again. Not by his siblings, or his workmates at the factory, nor by his best friend Greg Roberts -- not a soul knew where he'd vanished to.
Mum told the story after my tenth birthday. She said they never found out why. It was a beautiful household, she said, him a loving father and a devoted husband. The warning signs, the hints of something brooding beneath the surface, they simply weren’t there. Grandma was certain of it, she said.
The police did the bare minimum of course. A few calls to this county and the next. But they never heard anything. No reports of his truck being found. Nothing at all. He was just, gone.
When it happened to us with our father, however, the signs were more ominous.
Dad had turned 28 the day before, which we would later realise was the same as it was for grandpa. But dad never drove off into the snow. His truck was still parked in the garage when it happened. Coat still on the rack, keys in the pocket, his boots still next to the door.
The investigation confirmed what we already knew: that he had never left the house. There wasn’t even a footprint outside. It was as if the floor had opened up and swallowed him whole. As though he hadn’t left us at all. That rather than leaving us, he’d been taken.
Sixteen years had passed since it happened. I tried to keep the memory away, but that wouldn’t be possible then, not on my 28th birthday. My wife knew the story -- about the pattern of the men in my family disappearing, which none of us had ever referred to for what it was, even though all of us knew.
Nancy did her best to avoid the subject. But I could see it in her eyes. She was as superstitious as they come, and I knew she was worried. In my world it wasn’t that big of a deal, it was me after all: leaving was the furthest thing from my mind; and in the event of something else, some supernatural force at play, I was going to make damned sure it didn’t succeed.
I’d held her tightly to reassure her. We didn’t need to say anything. She’d just looked at me, and saw the confidence in my eyes. The look of relief and the feeling of her tension loosening was almost heartbreaking. I’d never been loved that much before, and I knew more than ever how lucky I was.
But, in spite of our pride, we have little control over what happens to us.
I woke up the next morning in a flex, determined, but, trying to remain relaxed in the knowledge there was no need to worry. I was going to break the pattern. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t taking me from my family.
There isn’t much to say about what happened beforehand. No sooner had I left the bedroom, before everything changed.
The suddenness of it all was beyond any preparation -- barely a second to process the recognitions that constituted the terror I soon felt. Hard to describe, but for you I’ll do my best.
There was a moment of suspension before I fell. The floor had vanished, replaced by what can only be described as a vacuous, pitch-black nothing. The light from the loungeroom above flew away, spiralling rapidly as it shrank, until it was gone. There was no wind resistance, and soon I wasn’t sure if I was falling at all.
The shades of grey were subtle at first. Movements in the black without form, drifting amorphous in the dark. Then the red flash of an eye somewhere in the deep; the faint echo of a whisper impossible to discern. My mind recoiled, desperate, without a grip. What was this place, this dark purgatory that I was falling through? Growing whispers the terrible melodies of a nightmare from which I could not wake.
I recognised the voice of my father. His words rose into shape before drifting back, obscured, in the ether. He was trying to tell me something, but he was held back. “Dad,” I shouted.
“Mikey...we are...she has put...our great grandfather was...but I...you will be...”
His struggle to speak from that place was terrifying, but the boy of my past who now heard his father again would not let me feel afraid.
I miss you, dad.
Then, something. A flicker in the dark. The malevolent illuminations of a thousand blinking eyes staring back. Writhing tangles of cadaverous limbs and claws and mocking smiles in the grey. Here, I saw, was a hell worse than you could imagine.
As those wide cylindrical walls closed in with those heinous arms outstretched, I knew that I would never belong there.
The flicker within the mass went to white flame that bloomed large and bright, and the gnarls of hands that reached out retracted into shields across all those contorted, beastly faces. It was shining right at me. Swiftly I was consumed and overtaken, the darkness stripped away as I lost sense of time and was taken to those halcyon white spaces, seized, swept away in a dream.
It was mum’s smile when I woke. “Morning sunshine,” she said. “Dad’s birthday today, so we’re making him breakfast in bed.”
Without thinking I jumped up and hugged her and hugged her as tightly as I could. “What’s gotten into you?” she said, laughing with happiness.
I let her go and rushed from the room and ran down the hall and opened their bedroom door. There he was, peaceful as could be, sound asleep. “Dad,” I cried.
I leapt on the bed as he opened his eyes with a jump, his arms around me as I crashed on top of him. “I missed you,” I said in a blubber, body shaking as I cried.
Without a word he held me there, for the longest time it felt like. Telling me everything would be okay, in his own way, without saying anything at all.
*****
THE END.
