For the children who once feared the dark, and the adults who still sometimes see shapes in the night.
Moon Fragments
The boy opens his eyes suddenly, but not fearfully; it's been a little while since his last nightmare. His head aches, probably from waking up in the middle of a sleep wave, and he still has quite a while before the sun rises (if the moonlit window is anything to go by). So he drops his head back on the pillow, shuts his eyes (almost too tightly so), hopes that the abyssal darkness will tenderly grasp his hand and drag him back once more.
Of course, like on so many other feared sleepless nights, there's nothing to take his palm and pull him away from reality for a bit of treasured rest. He tosses, turns, but soon finds himself sitting up once more.
He can't see much, and the things that he can see shift into grotesque forms under night's frightening blanket. Though he tells himself that he hasn't been truly afraid of the dark since he was small, there's still a swimming feeling in his head as he tries to make sense of his dimly lit surroundings. Seconds flash by and things start to take shape; he can just barely make out the posters above his sister's bed, the scattered clothes in the corners of the room, the journal that he had knocked to the floor at some point in his – always fitful, even when not nightmarish – sleep.
The moon's reflected rays brighten the room just a bit. Splitting it in half, they're barely enough to take the edge off the otherwise overwhelming blackness of night. The light illuminates the desk and hits the glass lantern, white and lonely against the floorboards. Woodsy summer chills crawl up his skin, make his hair stand up in ways that it wouldn't have back home. He glances out the window once more and the trees stare at him from beyond the glass, rustling in the breeze.
More cool air seeps through and he shivers, wrapping the blanket around his body, gripping it tighter than he's ever held the journal. He's had a long day needs to get back to sleep, but the ever-foreboding darkness dances at his toes like a monster he would have imagined in his younger days, threatening to tear him from the bed and swallow him whole.
Just then, the boy takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he's twelve (nearly thirteen); that he's not actually scared of the dark (not more than anyone else), not when he's faced so much worse in recent memory. He can't sleep just yet, but that's quite all right – he'll fall back asleep eventually, and there's nothing to fear because the darkness can't actually hurt him (at least right not now).
But no matter how he much he tries to calm himself down, the crawling feeling across his skin refuses to leave him alone. He can't stay here, he realizes. Not this second, not when he can't sleep, not when he feels so uncomfortable in the near-blinding night even though he knows better than that.
He pushes the blanket aside despite his body's protests and gets up. The squeaks of the old mattress seem amplified in the still night, almost clashing with his sister's sleepy breaths on the other side of the room. When his feet, wrapped in the warmth of his socks, touch the floor, he's even more afraid that the added creaking will wake his sister. Fortunately, she only stirs for a moment before her breathing settles back into rhythm.
No light on right now, since his sister's still asleep. Bending down, he spots the outline of the journal again and scoops it up; he has no plans to go out into the woods tonight, but he always likes to have it on him, you know, just in case. Nestling it under a rigid arm, he crawls across the floor, feeling around for his characteristic vest. Earlier, he tossed it on the wood before flopping onto his bed and passing out, making it all the more difficult to find now. After a few minutes of searching, he still can't find it, so he settles for his spare sweatshirt that he accidentally kicked under his bed at the beginning of the summer.
The boy puts the journal down and grabs the sweatshirt. Pulling it over his head feels strange. It's been a couple of months since he last wore this, and he's almost forgotten how big it is on him. Precious seconds are needed to orient himself once his head's inside, and he feels like he's drowning as he desperately tries to work out which body part goes in which hole. Finally, he gets it on correctly, and on the first try, no less. The tiniest sliver of pride crosses his face before he remembers that his hair is probably standing up right about now.
Running a hand through his messy strands, he tries to alleviate the static – he doesn't much feel like searching for his hat, not after he couldn't find his vest. It's not as if somebody that matters will see him tonight, anyway (or anyone at all). After his hair begins to settle, he picks the book back up, slips on some shoes, quietly sneaks out of the room. He takes even more care going down the stairs than he did when he left his bed, going down one at a time, sitting on each step as he slowly makes his descent.
Not a sound is heard. The house is still, save for the occasional gust of wind against the creaky wood. The boy steps gently across the floor, slowly progressing until he reaches the door. Gingerly, he turns the lock with his fingers; the lukewarm metal's pattern rubs against his skin, but not roughly enough to brand him (even temporarily), and he twists the knob.
As he opens the door, the whole house shudders and he freezes, thinking that he's woken up everyone in the house. He doesn't understand why he's scared (liar). He's not doing anything wrong. He's just a little unsettled, is all, and he only needs a moment to calm himself.
You're almost a teenager. You're not scared of the dark.
He repeats that phrase in his mind one, two, three times by the time the door swings around, even going so far as to tap his teeth against his tongue, creating half-formed words. By the time he reaches the third repetition, the saying begins to lose all meaning - as if it's just an illegitimate requirement for good luck before the night air hits his skin.
Taking a step outside, he softly shuts the door behind him. A quiet click is heard as it slides into place, cutting him off from the rest of the household.
I can't see anything.
He bites his lip and sits down on the front steps, wishing he had turned on the outside light before stepping out. It's even darker out here than it had been in his room, and he can barely make out the trees he had seen rustling earlier. But he can certainly hear them, hear the steadily intensifying rustling stuffing his ears.
The boy looks up and gazes at the stars, what few he can see tonight. Slowly but surely, it's become cloudy. Taking note of the added rustling, he assumes that it's going to rain soon, and he resolves to head back in shortly; he's not in the mood to get soaked tonight. Pity, too, that he can't really see the stars – in just a few weeks, he'll be back home, where the lights are greater in number and he won't be able to see quite as many heavenly bodies, even on a clear night.
But for now, he leans back slightly on the wooden porch, lets the journal drop next to him, stares at the sky for a good long while, tries to forget that he'll inevitably head home. Nevertheless, it comes back to him. It's so beautiful, he thinks. What am I going to do when I go home?
It's a question that's been sitting in the back of his mind for days. Eventually, summer will end, and he and his sister will return to California. Back to school, to the odd stares in the hallways, the infrequent pleasant comment. To Sunday grocery shopping with his parents, Saturday car rides to nowhere, Friday after-school shenanigans.
Back to the place where he and his sister sleep in separate rooms, not chattering endlessly into the night about what they did that day. Back to the home that their closest friends aren't, to a home where mysteries and magic don't exist, to a home where the darkness isn't quite as fearsome but still manages to unsettle him.
The boy remembers the time he and his sister sat in front of their house before their seventh birthday, much like he is now; there was no strange forest circling them and there weren't quite as many stars, but the moon had been so incredibly bright. Their parents sat in a corner talking to a couple of friends while he and his sister had been told to stay outside and amuse themselves.
The only problem was that there wasn't much to do. It was late, so their parents didn't want them to play and risk disturbing their neighbors. Nearly-seven-year-olds don't exactly find it fun to listen to adults jabber on and drink wine. And unlike most nights, neither had much to say, for some reason. So they just sat on in silence, tuning out the meaningless background chatter.
The minutes passed slowly, each second an eternity stacked on top of another. His sister was paying careful attention to her hands, using each finger to tap a finger on the other hand, switching the order around, forming her own playful patterns. Meanwhile, he just kept noticing how the darkness masked his sister's expressions, how utterly terrifying the outline of her face was. He tried to ignore the eerie feeling creeping up his arms and legs, the one that nearly seeped through to his bones. Thought over and over again that he was fine, things were okay, things would be okay and he'd have nothing to fear. But no matter how many times he repeated that last bit, it never seemed to be enough. No matter what, nothing soothed him.
Stiffening, he turned to look at his sister only to find that her teeth glinted devilishly in the moonlit night. Nearly going mad, he inched away from her, hoping the darkness wouldn't crawl up his skin and snatch him like it had her. In just mere moments, she had been stolen away from him, never to be seen again; the thing that was staring at him now wasn't her, it was just a monstrous being shrouded in dusk. And when he glanced away, everything else around him had suddenly become terrifying, too.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. It's okay, he told himself. But when he saw that wicked smile again, his brain quickly and forcefully rejected his reasoning.
No, it's not!
As he recalls the memory, his head swims, just like it did on that very night, just like it did less than an hour ago when he woke up in that black, blinding room. To this day, he still can't imagine what his sister must have felt as her eyes took in the horrified look on his face, barely visible to her, barely aware to him.
"Brobro, what's wrong," she had whispered, careful not to attract too much attention to the two of them. Their parents laughed away with their friends in the background, the clinking of glasses colliding with the air's humming bugs, innocently ignorant of the boy's ever-growing fear.
He tried to dig up the words, but there was only so much a nearly-seven-year-old could say – even an intelligent one. How could he tell her that the darkness had swallowed her whole, when she sounded so normal in front of him? He couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, and his tongue fumbled against his teeth as he tried to say something, anything.
"I-it's dark," he finally mumbled, hanging his head in shame. He didn't want to be there, arms trembling as he tried to make sense of the night, he wanted to be brave and strong. He didn't want to be afraid. "I can't see you. You look scary."
He exhaled, the tension in his body refusing to ease up. The boy studied at his sister as she swallowed his words, trying to interpret them, figure out what they meant and how she could help girl did nothing for a long while and he feared that he had been right, that the darkness had indeed snatched her after all.
But before he knew it, her arms were wrapped around him, squeezing him tight, so tight that he felt as if his body would burst and there would be nothing left.
She only had to say, "I'm here. It's okay, it'll be okay." to make the world, the fear, around him dissipate. The only thing that mattered was his sister being there, that he was safe and it was actually her and oh god, she hadn't been taken away after all. And that as long as she was there, things would be okay. "There's nothing to be scared of. And if there is, it'll have to answer to us!"
His sister pulled away and giggled, grabbing his wrist and raising it high above their heads. Her infectious laughter filled the air, making him smile along with her. She spoke again.
"Monsters won't stand a chance against the two of us!" she shouted. The boy shushed her, reminding her that they had to be quiet and peered at their parents, hoping they hadn't heard her raised voice. He let out a sigh of relief when they didn't skip a single sound in their conversation. His sister let go of his wrist, satisfied that she'd been able to cheer him up. However, before she even register it, his smile faded back into a frown. As his hand fell back to his side, a question remained at the back of his mind, one that he just had to address. She was about to open her mouth to speak again, when he asked that question that had been bothering him so much.
"But..." he whispered. "What if I'm all alone?"
It was a valid query, one that she hadn't thought to address. She stood up, huffed, and grabbed his wrist again, pulling him to his feet. The girl pointed up, up at the moon, the lonely orb in the sky.
"The moon...?" he questioned.
"Yeah!"
"...What about it?"
"You'll see." She grinned wildly. "Hold out your hand."
His sister then positioned her thumb and index finger so that they appeared to hold the faraway body in their gentle grasp. From their perspective, it looked like a tiny circle of lit-up candy, one that they dare not pop in their mouths for fear they would lose that precious piece forever. She then made a plucking motion with her wrist and brought her hand back down, close to her chest, still appearing to hold something between her fingers. There, she took her other hand, extended the thumb and index fingers on that one, too, and brought them near her other hand. Quickly, she twisted her wrists in opposite directions, snapping the air apart, making a cracking sound as she did so, separating the something into two pieces. She placed one in his hand, though his palm appeared empty.
"Wha..." he said, furrowing his brow.
She exhaled, then began her explanation.
"It's a piece of the moon. We both have one, but we can't see the light from it. But the darkness can see it, and it looks like-" she said as she slid her hand into her pocket, then curled her fingers into claws and snarled. "That. It's afraid of it. No matter what, it'll always back down when you show it this!"
And then she reached back in her pocket and pulled out the stone, showing it to a monstrous bush grinning next to them. In seconds, the grin melted and he could make out the rustling leaves and branches. Suddenly, it didn't look so scary anymore. The girl spoke again.
"It'll protect you, even if you're all alone, all right?"
The boy nodded and shoved his own fragment into his pocket, a bit skeptical of her explanation. Even from that early of an age, he had an inkling that there was something not-totally-scientific about it - but then again, what had he understood about the powers of imagination, anyway? By the time his sister had finished, he'd calmed down completely, so surely some bit of what she said must have been true.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully; no more monsters appeared in the deceitful dark. And after that night, they never spoke of their moon pieces again - but he carried his fragment for years after, never once forgetting about it when he awoke in the middle of the night, frightened by the lack of sight and afraid because he was all alone and couldn't wake his sister up.
Now, he thinks about how innocent the two of them had been; how that crude, inaccurate, imaginative retrieval of "moon fragments" had sufficiently soothed him. How even now, he occasionally deludes himself into thinking that he has a tiny fragment of (reflected)light that can fend off the darkness.
He fishes into his pocket and pulls it out, tilting it in his palm. It's see-through, just as it always has been, and he still can't determine any of the rock's sharp points. The boy takes his other hand and plucks the stone from it, positioning his fingers in the same way she had all those years ago.
I've held onto your for long enough, haven't I? You probably have to go back to where you came from by now. Someone else will need you.
He reaches up, shaking as he tries to place the fragment back into position; he can't stop looking at it, even now. Seeing it makes him smile, reminds him of his childhood that he'll soon be leaving behind. Reminds him that even after all these years, he's still not totally over his fear of the dark, though he's learned to live with it. And that even though he knows there are monsters out there, right now they aren't what he truly fears, and he's not quite convinced they ever were.
No.
It's the unknown, the awareness that he can't completely comprehend what's under that layer of black when night falls and the world as he knows it collapses. He idly wonders if maybe, just maybe, adults have that same fear and they simply don't talk about it.
Above him, the moon has almost vanished beneath the clouds and just a tiny sliver peeks out from beyond them. It's enough to place the fragment back, but he doesn't have much longer. He takes a deep breath like she did when they were nearly-seven.
It's okay. It'll be okay.
Reaching up, he pushes it back in. As the fragment falls into place, the wind picks up, puffing up his sweatshirt, just barely exposing the bottom of his stomach. A few droplets of rain begin to fall, hitting his face as the clouds finally cover the moon, darkening the world even more.
He yawns and picks up the journal, deciding that it's time to go to back to sleep.