Somnium, a twilight fanfic

And all was black.

Only for a few minutes, though; soon they emerged into the blissful nothingness of space, the outer existence, and they had moved far beyond just the rest of the world, and into the rest of the universe.

Jefferson Michael Ory was a classic middle-aged man, eyes lined with years of hard work, but presently bearing even more crinkles in a satisfied smile of triumph. He was a hard-working single man and brother to three siblings, the second youngest of the four, and he was excited.

The ship passed by the truly most beautiful things either of the men had ever seen. Ory and Simmons were friends as well as partners, and while the latter of the two was the better pilot and a more interesting person overall, their skills were equally necessary, and they were in this together.

Five hours later Simmons was asleep, and Ory lost control of the ship. The large craft tilted as if turned by a bad pilot, though the controls had not been touched by either of the men. A few minutes of struggling with the ship passed and Ory began to wonder why Simmons had not appeared to save the day. He was making no progress in getting back on course, so he went to look for his partner, who could not possibly be asleep still. What he found wracked his heart.

Had the crew not checked this room? No, it appeared that his partner, curious and self-confident and ingenious as ever, had been toying with the pipe system for some reason when the ship shifted, knocking him against the wall and pinning him there. In his struggle he was unlucky. Now he was just a body there, blonde hair askew over his face, drops of blood floating around him. A bubble of red came near Ory's stunned face and he touched it, the liquid color instantly melting onto his fingertips. The man was trapped, skewered by a pipe that had broken. His friend was dead. Though soon after this realization, another came to him, sudden and harsh: He was alone, off course on a ship he couldn't control.

There must be something he could do, some other way. He could not die like this, wasting away, floating in nothingness. He would not let himself so easily blink out of existence. There was no way to survive, from this point—but maybe there was some way to change the order of events before this point. Simmons was always a bit out there and extremely smart—that was why he chose to go into space—and Ory knew that his partner had always believed firmly in aliens, spirits, and time travel. Of course, Ory put no faith into man's ability to move time, but now things were desperate; and what if the concept could work to save the rare soul who believed in it, as God was largely believed to save only those who believed in him?

He debated himself for some time, during which the ship fell complacently back under his control; and while he tried to fool himself that he was right, the entire argument was accompanied by him guiding the ship along the path of a black hole.

He knew as he felt the insistent, growing pull of the monstrous spiral liquefying and flattening his body that it was a desperate resort and that no lived would be saved. He knew also that he was not going to go out this way, leaving his siblings to wonder just how he died, never knowing even if he had died or not. They believed in the concrete, the given, and never guessed that something strange might happen for no reason; but anyone will stretch the truth for ones they love. They were a Christian family, and he would not leave them to wonder if his spirit had found rest and God. He would not die this way—but he realized as his mind faded into nothingness that he didn't really have a choice.

Once undone, there is only smoke
Burning in my eyes to blind
To cover up what really happened
Force the darkness unto me.

-Opeth

It was late, and it was dark in the house. Sitting silently in front of his computer, Damien heard a soft scuffling noise behind him and to the right. The dogs wouldn't have made that noise; their domestic ventures were always followed by the clicking claws of their tiny feet. His mother was asleep; and so he was alone. It wasn't even the noise that bothered him—there was a presence there, and he could feel it strongly around him. However he did not turn around or even wonder what the sound was. At this point he had almost given up trying to find a logical, scientific explanation for it. It began long ago, long before this occasional night, when he was just a little boy.

Damien sat alone in the living room, sprawled on the floor, staring into a book. He had come home from school with a flustered red face, upset and frustrated at being the only eight-year-old boy in his third-grade class unable to read. His mother's car was absent; perhaps she was still at work. Now he was calmer, but still rather unhappy, and no matter how close to the little book he put his face or how hard he concentrated at staring at the page, the big black letters remained small, elusive, and definitely scrambled up in impossible ways. The boy tried, but after a little while his gaze was dull and his brain unengaged. He slumped over on his side and closed his eyes, breathing softly out of his mouth. He wondered what was wet on his face, and after a minute or so he opened his eyes and lifted his head to look. His stomach hurt in anger and surprise, and even shock, at the dark wet place on the page. Lifting his hand to his face he felt it, and as he pulled it away his fingers were covered with his own blood. He hesitated in wonder, staring, and two drops fell to the old off-white carpet, sinking in deep upon impact. Damien jumped up, his blonde hair sticking up on the side from lying on the carpet, and walked out into the hallway towards the bathroom.

He slowed and stopped only a few short moments later. There was something there at the end of the hallway. It was too dark in the house to make out a distinct shape of the thing. All Damien could tell was that it was a dark figure, darker than the dimly lit hallway encasing them both. He walked forward, cautiously but steadily, and when he was about halfway down the hall the figure came forward at am alarming pace. The boy did not slow or stop, and the shadow passed through him.

Looking back on this day, Damien wondered if this first encounter left a seed inside of him somehow, allowing the shadow to track and find him when he was older. He did not see it again for many years, and after washing up and returning to clean the carpet, no matter how he tried, the two-drop stain would not fade at all, through strangely enough it washed right out of the book, leaving the ink letters almost perfectly intact. He covered the stain with a leg of the coffee table, and when his mother came home unannounced late in the night, he heard her go by his room, and he said nothing to her.

He was tired because he didn't sleep, which was usually a good reason. His reflexes were slow and so was his mind, but it didn't bother him because he rarely had to hold an intelligent conversation with anyone anyway. He turned the light in his room off with the intention of getting into bed and watching a movie or two, but he stopped for a moment, turned the light back on, and looked at himself in the mirror. In nine years he was truly unrecognizable. His short blonde boy's hair was now a fine straight black that hung well over his stone-grey eyes. His skin was pale and clung to his bones, his face was hollow and needed shaving, and he thought his arms looked entirely too flimsy, too feminine. With a soft noise of disdain he turned the light back off, and was thankful for the darkness as he stripped down to his dull grey boxers and climbed into bed. He kept his socks on.

A small dog bounced into the bed, and Damien stroked and scratched his head until the dog grew bored and pawed at the door. Damien got out of bed and opened the door for the little dog, then closed it firmly and returned to the warm bed with every intention of gluing his eyes to some form of TV. However once in the bed he could not locate the remote, and he had no intention whatsoever of getting up yet again to search for it. Instead he lay back and closed his eyes.

He opened them again at once. As he rested his head on the pillow he had pulled up his covers, and with them came a rush that traveled from tight about his midriff on through his fingers and face. It contained intense heat followed immediately by a skin-prickling chill, leaving his body coated in goose bumps and his eyes wide open, unblinking, his heart and mind racing. He heart the ticking of the clock much louder than usual, his own breathing a flood in his ears, and sprang out of bed, clutching his phone tightly in his right hand.

Quickly but making sure to be careful of the furniture, Damien maneuvered through the dark house to the living room and, hands working, blindly found the coffee table. With an adrenaline-aided push he shoved the table aside and opened his phone, using its white-blue light to find what he was looking for. The third indention held the stain of two still bright red spots of blood. He stared in wonder, not beginning to comprehend the preserved color in the beige carpet, and after a moment he closed his phone, crouching there in the dark.

To tell the tales of those nine years passing would be to tell of nothing truly remarkable. Through junior high Damien was increasingly unpopular, and this ill fortune followed him closely until he was an upperclassman in high school. A sweltering afternoon in senior year brought back chilling memories for Damien once again. He had felt unnaturally calm that day at school, not nearly as nervous and hateful as he felt he normally was. He was walking home alone after school, his mp3 player silent for a change, thinking lazily about an English paper that was due the day before. It was hot, so Damien chose the path home that collected more shade. He shuffled down Rockwell Drive with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground, but as he neared the next corner he felt an alarming wave against his back, like a pair of eyes watching him closely. He raised his head quickly, the skin of his back and neck prickling, and he could see in his peripheral vision an orange humanoid shape. He turned and saw it clearly, standing on the corner just across the street from where he had been just 40 seconds ago. It was orange like the spots the sun burned on his retinas when he would often stare into it; it had a head and two arms and two legs; he could not tell if it was moving or not. He said nothing and did nothing, and his face began to hurt. He closed his eyes and breathed in, turned back around and breathed out. After taking a few steps he opened his eyes, continued home, and did not look back.

On days after this one he would often walk that road, but Rockwell thereafter kept its shadows hidden under the shade of the trees.

A few nights after that walk home alone, Damien's mother was home before he had eaten, complaining that she was hungry, so he made some extra macaroni and cheese to share. It was bland, because it came out of a dusty box and he simply had no care for food, but did not complain. She appeared to be hungry. As Damien watched her eat, her eyes on her plate, he noticed just how old she looked to him suddenly. Her skin weighed heavy around her eyes, which were downcast and pasted with entirely too much make-up. Her hair, permanently straightened and curled many times just since he was born, now fell limp, thin and lifeless past her shoulders. When she stood to put her plate in the sink, her clothes hung loosely from her tired frame, and Damien realized with some surprise that it had been a long time since he had really looked at his mother, let alone looked up to her. As she turned to leave the room he blurted quickly, "Hey mom. I've been seeing something around the house, like... some sort of thing." She stopped and eyed him warily.

"What like a ghost?" she asked, her voice flat.

Damien didn't really have a better word for it, so he nodded. "Or a shadow."

His mother nodded sleepily and said, I'll pick you up tomorrow after school and we'll go see an eye doctor."

But Damien knew the eye doctor wouldn't find anything.

So the next day Damien waited almost an hour after school for his mother, but she came, and silently they drove uptown.

Another hour of waiting.

"Ms. Mace? Dr. Cripte will see you now." They went in.

The whole procedure was a huge waste of time, in Damien's opinion. He didn't want to be here, in this unnaturally clean-smelling off-white room, where the only way out was down unexpected turns of unnaturally clean-smelling off-white hallways and past blinding people with bright, penetrating eyes.

Dr. Cripte spoke. "So Damien, what seems to be the trouble? This paper says 'saw a ghost.' Do you care to clarify that some for me?"

Damien shrugged, looking at the floor. He didn't want to talk to this man.

"You don't care to. This can I assume that you are seeing shadows, perhaps the same shape but in different places?"

He nodded, and so did the doctor. "There is a condition we have encountered in which there is something extra inside the large, virtually empty space inside the eye. It could be in one, or it could be in both, mixing to form different shapes or maybe moving shapes. You see, light is absorbed into the eye, and then it travels the diameter before bouncing back and reflecting to make a picture, which is what your brain reads, what you see. If there were a small piece of something in one of both of your eyes, there would be a shadow where the light cannot break through. Does this concept make some sense to you?"

He nodded absently, watching his mother's left heel tap impatiently against the carpet. He glanced at her face and could clearly see she wasn't paying any attention. As if from far away, he heard the doctor's voice confirming that he wanted some sort of procedure done.

"No, thanks, no, no thank you," he repeated bluntly as he rose and opened the door for his mother to exist. She paid on the way out. She seemed impatient still but satisfied; she had not neglected her son, she had done her part and now she could forget about it. Damien sat silently, staring and blinking at the sun, and he knew that when possible explanations existed, the mysteries remained as elusive as ever.

A few weeks passed uneventfully, and for that Damien was grateful; though to whom he did not know, for he believed in no God. The shadow's occasional presence had him looking behind and around him most of the time. Silently walking through the halls at school as well as the paths to and from, those stone-grey eyes darted around like a that of a hunted thing, watching. Once, his watchful darting gaze fell upon two girls walking home on the opposite side of the street. One was smiling pleasantly as the other talked. He saw both but his brain registered only one; she had been silent but now she was talking, taking her turn, caught in the empty trap of the amusement of void conversation. She laughed, continuing to talk as she handed her friend the books she was carrying to put her wavy brown hair into a ponytail. Handing back the two thick books, the friend took another road home. The girl with brown hair crossed the street and passed in front of Damien. She must have seen him watching her, for she turned and looked at him, smiling a little. He noticed that her eyes were not smiling at him like her lips were.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was not quite what he'd expected. He nodded hello, preferring not to speak.

"I'm Chaste." She said her own name almost harshly, like a curse word. She was cursing at him with her own name. How strange, he thought.

He hated telling people his name and being associated with the son of Satan. He certainly fit the description. "My name's Damien," he said quietly in reply. She looked like a delicate person, sure to leave him alone for his satanic name.

Instead she repeated it. "Damien's such a pretty name, with two long vowels and a soft one. People always say other people's names are pretty though; that's why I have people call me Chaste instead of Clara. It's not a pretty name, it's an ugly name."

She was a pretty girl, however, so Damien was confused. Her eyes dared him to ask. "Why would you want an ugly name?"

"Because I'm a selfish bitch and people are always attracted to the ugly things in life. That's why." And she took a left turn, leaving him pondering that concept for longer than he would have for anyone else.

They saw each other again in the hallways at school on their way to homeroom. She motioned to him and cut through the hall's traffic to come speak to him. No, she was not speaking to him, she was handing to him a yellow flyer advertising a student discount on admission to a local carnival.

"I'll be there tomorrow night, can I count on you?"

He liked the way she made him feel wanted instead of plainly asking if he was going, as if she wanted him there.

"I don't have anything else planned," he replied, amazed at the ease the words carried out of his mouth.

Chaste offered him a little smile and disappeared into the crowd, and Damien was late for class.

It was 7:51, and Damien was climbing the short steps connected the Dragon to the rest of the world. All the other rides and entertainment weren't worth his time. Neither was this small, jolty roller coaster—it probably wasn't—but he thought he might as well ride it once before leaving. The girl wasn't there, he was sure; the park closed at 8:30 and he had not seen her. Twisted around itself, the Dragon stood tall about him, the warped metal track climbing high into the black sky. The line moved fast and he was in. He closed his ears to the safety announcements, ready and bored at the same time, the latter much more prominent in his mind.

As the Dragon started up moving, Damien felt a horrible feeling of anticipation in his throat, like the sharp ache felt when poking the fresh, fleshy hole a newly pulled tooth leaves open in the mouth it grew into. But he wasn't anticipating the ride at all; he was certain of that. As other passengers on the Dragon screamed, Damien was distracted by this continual feeling, and he was separate from the rest of the material world.

Then suddenly he was thrust in his entirety into the rush of reality. Every slight movement of the coaster jolted him much more, he was sure, than the rest of the crowd.

Then he saw it, his eyes wide, and his own silent scream placidly countered those of joy behind him. There was a great shadowlike figure in front of the vessel, cloaked, its arms outstretched in what appeared to be a hungry gesture. The cart sped on the orange track, curving upward, and they passed through the specter. As the shadow washed over him, Damien closed his eyes in silent horror. This happened several times. Sometimes the shadow was completely only visible; though near the end Damien could feel it. He would dread and remember that feeling for the rest of his life. It was so intense, so riveting and so sickening. He did not try to lie to himself; he was terrified.

He saw a few extra moments when the ride was over, his eyes closed and his breathing steadying slowly, and he listened to the crowd depart. When he felt through the floor of the coaster the footsteps of a worker, he rose, looking ahead, blinking and breathing the rapidly chilling night air in and out with clouds of silver. He walked home alone, clutching his arms to his chest, though he appeared to be the only fair go-er not pleasantly warm. The moonlight shone upon him and rid any heat from his body, the same way the sun would give it. No—perhaps on that night long ago, or if not then definitely sometime during this night—he was marked by an unearthly chill; a burden on his mind, and a stain on his heart.

So Damien carried a heavy burden for the next few days, his every step a pacing of dread. He either walked very slow: trudging along as if the toes of his shoes were full of the solid lead of confusion; or, his paces were quick and nervous, and accompanied by darting glances over his shoulder, into ditches lining the roadside, or even beneath his own feet. As the fifth day of this commenced to pass, Damien made the decision to tell his mother that the shadow was more than a blind spot in his eye. He went him and explained to her what he saw and felt in his heart.

"You think there's a ghost following you?" she asked, incredulous.

He considered this. "I don't think so. It's living inside me, I think," he tried to explain.

"There's a devil in you. We've all got our devils. It'll go away."

"No." As he spoke his eyes locked onto hers, and he could tell that she felt suddenly uncomfortable. They had never looked each other in the eye before. "No. It is not going to just go away."

She said not a word, and she spent the remainder of her evening in her room.

The next morning she informed her son as he woke that one of the school psychologists would call him down sometime during the day to speak with him, and she told him this from the other side of the door.

He would just not go. When they called on the intercom, he would go out to the storage rooms by the portables and just be alone. He didn't want a shrink, and he sure didn't need one. It was his life, and his opinion alone that mattered.

For the first time he felt real anger towards his mother. For the first time, he cared enough to look at her and judge her. She was not a fantastic person. She had always provided him with food or a means to obtain it, she bought clothes for him when he needed them, and she paid his school expenses when he brought her a form. Others could argue that while she did these things, that was just the minimum—there was no layer of flesh between his prominent bones and pale skin; his uniforms were thin and worn most days; and while class dues were paid, the only trip Damien had ever been on was to a local zoo in the 5th grade. Damien knew that most people had it better, but he had never had a taste of better in his life. His mother had not taught him to not cherish life, but he had learned to anyway exactly because she had taught him nothing. Though, this anger he felt was not derived from her being a bad mother; it was because she was changing things for the worse. She was always static, and if not, she was separate from him. Her role was to keep life constant, to set thing up to commence in exactly the same way every day. She made food, he watched, he made food, and she rarely made food anymore. She set him in a motion, a daily ritual devoid of joy but necessary to survive. He cooked, did laundry, and they rarely asked favors of each other. If changing things after a lifetime of stagnancy was not upsetting enough, she had to make them worse, to put him in a position of weakness. But no. Despite all the evidence, he did not view her as a bad mother. To him on this day, she was simply a bad person.

"Damien. I'm Dr. Khalad."

It was a woman. She held out her hand, and Damien looked at it. His eyes then moved to the doctor warily, and he signed resignedly. He was prepared for the worst.

The room was small; he supposed it was trying to be a cozy type thing. There were four big walls and a small wall, forming an oddly-proportioned pentagon. The walls were not white like they had been at the eye doctor's building. Two of the walls were yellow, and on the third the yellow merged like patchwork into red, holding magnificent shades of orange in the transitional squares. The fifth and smallest wall was a rich purple. Having never thought anything in particular about colors, or even had opinions about the subject of art, Damien wasn't sure what to think of the room at all. It was different; there was no green-black couch to lie on, no unnaturally clean off-white carpets or walls. The floor was light hardwood and on it laid a circular, multi-colored rug. There were no chairs, and as Damien looked around for one, he saw Dr. Khalad sitting cross-legged on the floor, waiting for him. He sat awkwardly across the rug from her.

She was an interesting picture. She had straight, shoulder-length dyed light blonde hair that had been obviously low-lighted. She wore a fashionable top, black pants, and white but severely stained running shoes. She wore one line of very light eyeliner on her lower eyelid, contrasting brilliantly with her skin, which was not tanned but naturally a bit darker than most people's. She wasn't remarkably pretty; she had an odd face. Damien wasn't sure what it was, but something was definitely wrong with her eyes.

He was reluctant to say anything to her; he would have rather been in Biology II sitting in the back corner, blocking out the teacher as she spoke and called on students who volunteered. His teachers had learned not to call on him. They could be taught that they would get nothing from him. This woman, however, had no way of learning that. She had no required material to cover in a given hour. If he didn't talk, she asked questions. If he didn't answer, she would wait, and she would look at him. He wished she would look somewhere else when they talked, that she would not notice him, so that he could watch her eyes. He wanted to figure out what was different about them.

If not for her eyes, he probably would have stopped going.

They met a few times a week, always during Biology II, and they would sit and talk. Sometimes they had some in-depth, worthwhile conversations, and sometimes they got nowhere. If he were to leave in anger, the rest of his day ruined by this woman, he would always return. He was not in love with her eyes, for he felt no attraction to her whatsoever. He came because she was intriguing. She had pulled him into this clever trap easily from day one, and he fell into it repeatedly and willingly, because he was determined to find out. And he never got used to it over time, either—it was a new mystery again every time he walked through the door.

As weeks passed he spent his time wondering, not worrying about the shadow, and exchanging waves with Chaste in the hallways—sometimes he said hello, and she always looked at him and smiled.

"What do you think about your family, your household?"

Damien really wasn't sure how to answer this one, but he couldn't avoid it either, since the subject was something he'd thought about before.

"It's just me and my mom."

"That must be nice sometimes. You take care of each other."

"We don't. We take care of ourselves."

"What do you mean?" What kind of a question was that? She knew what he meant.

"You know what I mean. We each do our own laundry, cooking, transportation; you know."

Khalad was silent for a moment. "Tell me Damien. Do you love your mother?"

The question surprised him. "I don't have feelings about her. I don't really like her all the time."

"Some people, like our family or our best friends, we don't have to like, but we always still love them."

He was tired of talking. He breathed, and he thought about what she was saying.

"No," he replied slowly, "I don't love my mother." To hear himself utter those words weighed heavy on his heart.

"Okay. Do you love yourself?"

What an odd question. "No," he said. He knew the answer to that one.

Her strange eyes were sad. "What do you love, Damien?"

What did he love?

It was a strange concept. He was walking home from school, reliving that hour. His eyebrows made a pinch between them, for the longer he pondered the question, the more he wanted to be able to answer it. Hands in his pockets, his pace was quicker than it usually would be, but relaxed, contained. It was cloudy and breezy as November began, and as he lifted his eyes from the ground the breeze teased his hair, and he closed his eyes against it and enjoyed the cool fall weather. He liked the peaceful feeling, but that was all he felt for it.

As he neared home the clouds grew heavier. The heavens were bright still, but the terrestrial plane was dark as night. There was simply very little light surrounding everything. Shadows weighed heavier on their subjects, and one could not tell the seasons by the turning of the leaves, for their silhouettes were black as the night of a new moon. Damien watched the world darken, and with a peaceful, carefree thought he discarded the notion of love. He had no need of wrecking the mood he was in—unusually lighthearted—with the concept of self-inadequacy.

He did not know what he loved. He knew, though, that for the past few months he'd seen the psychologist and thought much more about everything, that Chaste reserved her mornings at school just for him, and that instead of seeing the shadow haunting his mind, he saw her smile.

Life respected Damien's suffering and rewarded him with many small fortunes. He noticed and enjoyed the graceful movements of fate. He and Chaste shared their mornings, their class changes, and their walks home. Her house was smaller than his, but it had a basement as well as a dirty white shed in the back yard, which was shaded by trees. Damien had never been in the house—he'd never had a good reason—but for some reason he wondered what colors coated the walls. He knew she had an art class of some sort, because one class change a few weeks before now, she had emerged with green and white in her wavy brown hair.

Sometimes he held her hand. He felt, though, that she was conscious about it, so it didn't occur often.

Sometimes she kissed his hand or his cheek when she said goodbye for the day.

Sometimes, when they were alone, she rested an often-colorful hand on his, and she looked at it and smiled softly.

But sometimes she was angry. It would happen very suddenly, and it was caused by the most peculiar things, like walking through a door to go outside, or the particular smell of a room or hallway. The causes were always these normal things that most people wouldn't really notice; but Clara Livingston was not most people, and with as much popularity and smiling faces at her constantly, of course she had to answer with a smile, and the disgust at the monotony of everyday life surfaced elsewhere. Seeing her angry always scared Damien to some extent, for then she was not only beautiful but also terrible, a dragon of fire, fighting air itself. Though, seeing her angry relieved his heart also, for it proved to him that she was real.

And so it was until a month and a half after Damien received his license to drive on the city's roads. He had a little old car that his mom had kept after buying a better one for herself two years and a week prior to this eventful day. It was January 22, and the ice was just barely beginning to soften and melt, and leave uneven tracks in the road, trails of slush where the cars' tires plowed on through.

Plymouth was not usually a particularly busy road, but on this day the main passage for 5:00 traffic was completely under construction and therefore rendered unavailable. Damien walked home from school, changed, and craved pizza, so he got in his car and drove out to the Domino's off Plymouth Avenue, heavy metal blasting merrily in his ears. The sound of passing cars grew loud as he turned onto Plymouth, so he rolled up the window, and the radio changed stations.

He looked down at it, puzzled at why he was now hearing about some scientific discovery. He hit number 5 and his music willingly returned. Soon enough, however, the documentary channel asserted itself. Damien caught the words "planetary", "multiple ships" and "travels faster, almost through time." Confused and impatient, he switched it back again and urged the car to go faster; he was completely uncaring about how fast two planetary ships could go near planets and black holes—he heard enough of that at school in math and science problems. But the station wouldn't stay. Damien fooled with the buttons, glancing at the road to keep track of where he should turn for Domino's.

The light in the car dimmed. Damien froze, his eyes on the radio numbers, his right hand beginning to shake. The radio stations changed faster than he could watch, incomprehensible sounds mixing into one silent scream. Damien's fingers and face were numb with the complete disconnection again from the material world, and the realization of it. Slowly, he looked up, and saw a man standing stock-still in the middle of his lane, facing him, watching him.

The man had no face.

In a rush of adrenaline all his senses returned to him, filling his heart with an intense fear—he was just as afraid of the man himself as he was of hitting him. He turned the wheel left, his own face a desperate grimace of horror and fear. His brain smashed into the side of his skull, and the car was flung into thin air, spinning over one lane of traffic and landing in the path of another lane of oncoming traffic. Red swam before his eyes, and his entire body was full of knives. He was choking on his own blood, and he could feel the cars passing around him, and he could hear the voice on the documentary continue talking, oblivious to his pain. "Though if you come close enough, you will be sucked in, and instant death will occur—though in fact not many people have died this way..."

A month ago he would have been one of those people, those poor dying people, dead instantly upon impact. But now, he wasn't so sure he was ready.

People say that at the moment of your death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Damien didn't see or know anything in this moment, but as he continued to choke, he decided he had an excuse to not have an opinion this time.

He dreamed of a room. It was an ancient room, evil spirits of past visitations stored inside the cracks of the old, clay thick crumbling walls. It was a large room. Soon beyond the entrance there was a long, wide bank that had once been filled with cursed water of the dead, but was now empty and dry. One the opposite side was the destination, in which lay a coffin on an altar. The coffin was open and empty, matching the tomb around it, the whole place a shell picked clean by the carrion birds of Hell. Damien viewed the place from an angle of the side, and he could sense and feel everything that had once occurred there. The entrance held all the apprehension of the travelers; the fear and nervousness and reluctant willingness to cross all resided on that platform. The empty pool captured and held the pain and torment it inflicted upon them, forcing them to hold their most beloved one under the water, to drown them in death, because if they could endure the torment of knowing they were murdering their best friend, then all would be well when they reached the other side; their hearts would carry sores, but they would be stronger knowing they carried the other to safety. It tested them, making sure they were strong enough to face the empty coffin and its mystery. Damien looked upon the casket, and he could almost see a specter standing by it, looking into it, all its attention on Damien. He felt exposed but okay, like he was on a mission to find something out, and he was going to die anyway, so while he still didn't want to die, he was no longer afraid of it in this room.

The ghost of the tomb spoke to him. It said, "Listen."

To what? Damien thought.

"Listen to the voices, or they will not speak."

He woke with fear in his throat, and slowly he opened his eyes. White walls filled his vision, and he wondered why. He wondered why this empty color followed him like the shadow.

The shadow was a male, but he could not know who it was, for he had no face. Damien knew this, and the knowing relieved him, and he returned to sleep. As he closed his eyes, however, he felt as if someone was watching him. He looked around and saw a familiar face, a lovely face. Chaste had just entered the room, still in school uniform, her face distressed with worry and fear and care. She saw that he was awake and watching her, and she went to him, falling to her knees at his side. She was gorgeous. Her hair was braided loosely, a spot of red paint marking it behind her where she had obviously tucked it out of the way during Art class. Her eyes were brown and beautiful and full of pain.

"Hey," he said softly, grinning slightly.

She smiled a little, obviously quite relieved to hear his voice and see him alive. "Hi," she replied. Her voice comforted him.

As he listened to her he began to hear other sounds as well. There was a constant beeping to his left, and the occasional gurgle of water. As he returned to the world of sounds, he began to return also to the world of feeling. It hit him all at once. He could feel Chaste's hand on his, and as he felt the tubes around his face he wondered why, and at that wondering the pain came upon him. He could not double over in the shock of it, though, so he merely watched Chaste with watering eyes as it swept through him. She must have felt him strengthen his grasp on her hand, for she understood his pain and held him close, kissing his lips lovingly, and holding his hand tightly as he waited for the wave to pass. She began to shake slightly, holding back tears as she realized how strange it was that two people so different had become so close, and how much she cared about him. It was hard to see him like this, but she knew that she was grateful to be there by his side in this colorless hospital room.

As the pain numbed he concentrated on lifting his hand to her face, touching her skin. She was so soft, so perfect. "Hey," he said gently. "It's okay."

She laughed, wiping away a tear. She thought it should be her telling him that it was okay, but then she realized again that they had found a true friendship; and that meant that no matter what the situation turned out to be—no matter which of them was lying still, broken—they took care of each other.

As days passed Damien lay in the white hospital bed, watching the dots above made by the texture of the ceiling dance in the broken light of the fans. He would create pictures from them, connecting them in hundreds of ways to form whatever mutated figures he had in mind. His mother visited once of twice a day for short periods at a time. Chaste came whenever she could, which was much less frequently, but her visits were cherished equally every time.

Since he awoke, he had begun to notice things, and see them for what they really were. In Chaste's laughing face he saw pain, and he knew that she smiled only to help him to think that she was doing all right. Once Dr. Khalad visited early in the morning before school, the sky out of Damien's window just beginning to brighten with the sunlight.

"How are you feeling?" she asked when she saw that at her entrance Damien had opened his eyes and was watching her.

He grunted, "I'm asleep, Dr. Khalad," but he said it with a small smile.

They spoke for a while about school, and Chaste, but as the conversation continued Damien became more and more closed off to her; partly because he grew tired quickly, but mainly because he saw now, looking up at her with sickly eyes, what was so terribly off-setting about hers.

She had no eyelashes.

Her strange eyes were but simply ovals, naked on her face, like a poor unprotected hand thrust into the frigid wind. His gaze was fixed upon those eyes, his voice silent, and he watched her. His mind was already drifting away. She stopped talking eventually, looked at him peculiarly for a minute or so, and then left silently.

The pain was returning again. After a short while he decided to close his eyes, and he was in a sweeping moment overtaken by sleep.

Chaste brought him paintings. She brought things of all shades and sizes. One day was a large, orange, crumpling autumn leaf, fallen to the ground. The next was a view of vertigo from the top of a building. The next was an abstract of what Damien thought was music, for when he asked she pointed out a few obscure shapes resembling parts of various instruments. He noticed the many colors trapped under and around her fingernails, and upon seeing that each day he smiled, for his favorite pieces were those she made with only her bare hands. In them he could almost see the shape of her hand in the many strokes, but he had to look hard, and when he truly studied the paintings he almost always found something hiding within them, just waiting to be found, waiting for him.

The more he showed interested in her talents, the more she was willing to show—and as she brought him more to see, he began to notice that something was missing. A week of thinking passed and he had an idea, and as he studied the paintings more and more intently, he dared to ask, for to him it was a great mystery, and he longed to know the answer. She seemed happy the next time she came to him, so he thought she might be inclined to explain to him fully.

"So, Chaste," he questioned, "Why don't you ever use the color blue?"

Her face darkened immediately, and at once he wished he had known not to ask, had known to stay ignorant forever. The silence was painful, and she sighed.

"To my teacher, I just say that I don't, and he's learned to accept it. But I know you, and you won't. To me you would, but you would always want to ask just one more time, to find out." She looked at him and he nodded. She was right; the question would live in the dark of his mind, waiting for an opportunity.

Her eyes were sad. "Everything exists as long as you can remember it. If it can be imagined, it can be done. I believe in magic, and in life elsewhere in the universe, and in the spirit of the world making millions of small miracles at all times. I believe in life, and love, and in color. Everything is a challenge, and if you overcome it, you should celebrate. Every memory or imagination has a color that follows it, and the past turns like the wheel of time; the color wheel. But I used to be different. I used to set limits and challenges for myself. I used to be afraid." She looked away. "To me, blue is the color of fear; the color of secrets that no one should ever be asked to keep."

Her face a mask of the sadness of remembrance, she leaned over and kissed him, and picking up her things, she exited silently through the door, and she was gone.

Five weeks passed, and Damien walked out of the hospital a new person. New life is always great to see; there is no sin, no crime, the world faced with the pure innocence of one who is filled with a magnificent wonder at what magic can be found if one should only care to look. In five weeks he had seen such colors, such beauty in his friend, and he had changed considerably. A tree was not just a tree; it was an ancient creature, masked by a thousand living things, their skins bright, their veins prominent. Lately Damien felt that he was turning with the leaves—but when he went home he felt as if he were setting with the sun, for home was exactly the same as it had always been. Perhaps the wind of inspiration swept through him and pulled him from where he found he belonged, and he fell. For when he typed "Clara Livingston, Sumrall" into the search bar, his findings rendered him silent.

There were seven items of the list, and every single one was about something terrible. He clicked the second link. An accident at a parade, where 11-year-old Clara had stepped forward to pet a horse. The animal spooked badly at her touch, and the more the rider struggled, the more the beast fought back, eventually throwing the rider and racing down the parade rote. It was never caught and never found.

He had never known of anything even similar. He tried the second link and found worse. A restaurant in Sumrall, her childhood town, stood tall, its insides burned to the ground. The picture was black and white, but reading the article revealed to Damien all he needed to know. The building was build in 1970 and run by the same couple for 30 years. The 90's hit and the place burned. It caught fire several times over the course of the next ten years. Each time it was because of a different reason—an oven left on, an outside grill's high fire come too close, a lighter from a dining smoker, or a purposely lit flame—and every time it caught, it burned to the ground. And every time it burned, the couple and their daughter Clara had it rebuilt, and always helped in repainting the outside blue. In those ten years, they painted blue twelve times.

There was more, but Damien chose instead to shut it down. He was done.

He saw her differently now. She was, and had always been, his bird and his love, noble and beautiful, perfect and revered and loved, but watched from a distance. She was a raptor, and he, the falconer. They all claimed to love her, but he was one of the few who could hold her close to him and not feel the sting of her talons bleeding his flesh. Now she was a rescued creature, longing to fly free but unable to trust the skies, for once her wings were broken. Now she was whole, and she pretended to be that beautiful bird, but she was not true to her kind, for though she could be and Damien saw it in her, she did not trust herself enough to know.

He told her what he had found, and she was quieter for a few days. One the third day she brought him to her house. They took a different road, one that led to the back of the property, where the small white shed stood. Before this moment it had been but a shed, a storage house—now, as he saw the way her eyes watched it, he realized it must mean something to her in some way. Slowly, she stepped up to the small door and took the rusted look in her hands, which soon became stained with the blood of the metal. The door opened out, and Chaste walked in, looking at Damien. Her gaze was of the hunted.

He entered and looked around. Another leaf fell from the tree whose roots were his brain. The shed was empty, and as she held his hand tighter he felt her heartbeat, and he thought he felt a fear of this place within her.

He was right. She reached and pulled, and with a click the room was full of dim, dusty light. Everywhere, there was blue.

"You did this?" he asked, confused. He was unhappy here, but he cared.

She nodded. "Yes. Look."

She placed her fingers on the wall and gently ran them along the curves of the paint. The room was solid blue, all but the one wall they were facing. It had obviously been painted last, and several times over, Chaste's free and artistic mind not having allowed her to leave the place so uniformly white. There were several layers of thick paint, each a different shade of blue. There was baby blue, sky blue, royal blue, indigo, blue-green, dark blue, bright blue, navy blue, navy blue, dull blue, gray-blue, and there were more colors upon colors here. And there were flowers, snowflakes, mountains, planets, and suns. And there were hands, feet, arms, legs, bodies, noses, ears, lips, eyes. Every kind of everything had been carved here, etched into the layers of paint, leaving behind a perfect mass of grooves and smooth turns of colors and shapes. It was the most beautiful work Damien had ever known her to create.

"When we came here, I knew why. I knew we came here to start over, to get away from Sumrall. To get me away. To me, it was to never paint blue again. To give my soul a change not to be damned. So when we came here, I painted this little room. I painted all the blue I had left in me. I painted enough blue to last me the rest of my life, and I hated it. But now it's out of me and I'll never have to do it again. It's all locked away here in this room, locked away in the words where no one can find it and let it out. I'll never paint another blue wall. I can't do it, I can't." She paused, and two tears spilled silently down her face, and dropped like too red spots of blood falling to the carpet; to stay forever, as a reminder of past troubles. She was shaking her head and crying softly. Thoughtfully, she added, "I painted the walls in Dr. Khalad's office. I couldn't take the white, too white, like emptiness. Every time I went I brought a can of paint, and I painted it until I could be in there and focus on something real." She closed her eyes, and his arms were around her. He felt her trust him like a physical action, and he held her close. He supposed she must have felt his slight confusion, but she also felt his care, and his love, and his trust. Softly she whispered, "You're not the only one who's haunted."

"You know about that?" he asked, though somehow he thought she might have known.

"I know the feeling well enough to know what it looks like in someone else. I saw it in your eyes when I first met you."

He remembered the softly smiling lips and colder, unsmiling eyes on that day, and he nodded. "I think I did too."

She closed her eyes again, every breath taken with pain. "But your haunting is a spirit, a lost soul; mine is destruction, loss, ending always with a false hope of a maybe not next time." She breathed, shuddering. "Always... always they are wrong."

A month and a half passed, and their love grew stronger as their souls became drawn closer together. Often they went together into the multitude of woods behind Chaste's house, before her parents expected her or ever would have begun to look for her. They never anything untrustworthy; they simply were. They lay in the withering leaves or sat perched on a tree limb. They helped each other with homework, and they found that, ironically, some of their classes that they rendered impossible became simple under the teachings of the one who had not been taught the material. They stayed as long as was safe, basking contently in the enjoyment of each other's company. These peaceful winter afternoons lasted two hours sometimes, and it was the longest visit so far that ended the whole venture. Damien sat cross-legged on the ground, watching Chaste as she lay curled on her side, shredding leaves idly. They had been discussing something about rainbows and gold when a large owl suddenly fell to the ground, and lay still. Damien looked, puzzled, but Chaste's face was a warning. She seemed flooded with alarm, even fright at this small wretch of a creature. She rose to her feet and Damien went with her. Together they stood over the bird, Chaste looking down in wonder. Damien was not sure what was so remarkable about this starved, perished creature—animals died all the time in the wild—but there was something, and Chaste's face told him to keep quiet.

She bent down and picked the bird up with her bare hands, and she was hesitant about it, as if she were carrying a torch lit with blue flame, the dreaded color. Upon lifting the creature Damien saw clearly that it was not starved at all; the bird seemed in perfectly good health aside from the obvious death. The feathers weren't even ruffled. There was no wound.

"It was probably sick," Damien said, wishing more and more than she would put the bird down, shrug it off as a normal casualty, and be happy again.

She breathed nervously. "I'm afraid," she said plainly.

"You're afraid?" Chaste was never afraid.

"To look up." There was a pause, and Damien looked up to see a small flock of raptors circling high above. He looked back to Chaste, his face a mask of confusion.

"Watch," she said, resigned. Exhaling a breath of a damned woman, she slowly looked up. He watched, and they waited, and soon two large hawks hit the hard ground around them.

Damien's eyes grew. "You did that. You did. How?"

Her eyes were sad. "Don't look so confused—I don't understand why it works. I just know it does." She stepped closer to him, letting the dead owl fall. She lifted her fingers to his face and she kissed him, and it was different than ever before. Sadly she pulled away, grabbed her school things and headed to the house, leaving Damien to watch. He watched her walk away for what was not quite the last time, and knew that the heaviness in her tread was borne from his heavy heart.

After that day she was different, as was everything about her. Strangers avoided her with wary eyes, and often when the two walked together in the street a cat would hiss madly and run upon sight of them. Days passed, Chaste grew quieter, and it only got worse.

One morning Damien arrived at school to find that she was not there, and that a stack of papers was waiting for him at his desk in first hour. He saw her handwriting, took the papers, and hastily put them away in his backpack.

As he walked home he went through them, each page causing a whole new level of astonishment. Chaste had printed out the answer to everything—and that alone was ironic, for she had found it on the internet. But it was not only computer printouts: there were also pages ripped from books and magazines, some notes in her own writing, and as he read quickly over each printed word, his brain became more and more blocked; full of sudden, complete comprehension and disbelief. Following all this extended research there was a note for him. It read:

You know what I'm afraid of.

He stared at the page, confused, and a plane ticket fluttered to the ground.

There was a small stain on the back of the seat in front of him, and he spent an entire 40 minutes zoned out, his tired eyes on that spot. She was right, and why was that? Why was his gaze drawn to the ugly things? He did not think that Chaste was selfish, as she said. She had tried to attract all the attention she could so that someday the attention and affection and love that she actually wanted would find her. But now she had sent him away—she was afraid of him being hurt, because it was always what made her happy that was destroyed. And she had gone—to where? And where was she sending him? North, to the Great Lakes. But why? There was no telling. But there was no reason not to go; nothing held him back. His mother had never had a love or need for him, and his old anger at her persuaded him to go. He wondered about Chaste, but his wonder originated from thoughts of her, and with those thoughts came an intense love and longing. Suddenly as he looked down upon thumbnail cornfields and toy cars an immense amount of emotion overcame him. For all his life he had not felt it, had not felt anything at all; but ever since he had first felt Chaste's skin and lips, he had become much more of a person, and he was terribly lonely. Loneliness is searching; but loneliness can be waiting also, and wonder.

He knew they were perfect, and that for the brief time they had been together, they had needed each other. He knew also, though, that she was right again to be afraid for him. His heart quickly grew angry, for if the spirits of God and Satan were to enter two mortal bodies, how could God let such evil overcome such a beautiful soul? Chaste was gorgeous, talented, friendly, and he loved her. Why should Satan not take his own kin, the namesake of his son? If God was so wonderful, how could he let him? God must have known that Damien would fall in love with this girl, that love would make his heart ever more vulnerable than it always had been, that Chaste was not as strong as everyone thought, and that the devil would claim victory and destroy this girl in the process.

Though perhaps through love he would become stronger. Maybe that was what love really was; a device planted in their hearts to feed and strengthen their soul. He knew that God and Satan probably had more important things to do than infest the souls of two ordinary (or extraordinary) humans, if they did anything at all, or even existed. He knew, though, that Chaste believed in balance; so perhaps there were lesser demons thriving in their mortal hosts' souls. And of course if Damien Mace (who was older and therefore born first) collected a demon of the light at the age of eight, and he was destined to meet and fall in love with Clara Livingston, then this meeting had to be balanced, and so it was simply bad luck and bad timing that Chaste hosted the devil.

He didn't know. He knew, though, that he wished that he could write. He wanted to write to her, for her, about her, to somehow covey to her how he felt. He was unfamiliar with these feelings—any feelings at all—and wasn't sure how to deal with them properly. He had never been any good at anything, English included, but he wished he was. God, he wished and hoped that this plane took him to her, not away. No, please not away.

The man next to him was away from his seat, and Damien was bored of his depression. He was lonely, and he felt sick from voluntary lack of food and sleep. Eyes wandering, his gaze fell upon the bronze tag of the man's carry-on, which had been left in his seat while he visited the rear of the plane, and the name that was engraved there. His name was Michael Ory.

Ory was not a common last name. In wonder, Damien pulled the papers Chaste had left for him from his carry-on. Jefferson Gabriel Ory had a brother and two sisters, Damien read in the article. He waited, running through words in his head, unsure of how to approach the subject when the man returned to his seat. As he thought he suddenly noticed the shadow occupying the seat beside him, and for the first time Damien looked directly at it without fear. He could sense a franticness coming from it, but there was no hesitation in his eyes. He felt now that it was the shadow that was afraid, and should be afraid; he knew now that it could not hurt him, for he as a real person was now stronger than a shadow of any person could ever be. For a shadow was just a part of the world that the sun could never reach, created by something real. In this case, the death of the man Jefferson Ory—his unresolved death—the sun could never reach, without help.

When Michael Ory returned to his seat, Damien studied him. He appeared to be completely normal, a fitting example of a brown-haired, middle-aged business man; generic. Damien noticed that the shadow had migrated and changed forms, and had now become the gut feeling of anxious wanting in Damien's heart. He longed to reach out and take Chaste's hand in his; but the spirit inside of him told him that he must first speak. It longed to take its rest, so long awaited, so desired and so close. The intensity of its silent wait formed the words in Damien's mind, and as the plane landed and each word was spoken, the world began to change.

"Your brother was not lost."

The man froze and looked at him, his eyes silently willing Damien to go on, to lay upon his ears the words he had told himself so many times, longed for, and never heard.

"His partner was dead and Jefferson was alone. He did not choose to die—he knew only that a malfunction had occurred and the ship was off course. He steered near a black hole in hopes that time would change; he didn't really have a plan. He might have made it, but that craft required two people at least to crew it, and he had no one—the ship was pulled in. It was suicide and it wasn't the unknowable. It was an accident, and he is not alive somewhere in the universe. He is dead. He is not lost."

There were tears in Michael Ory's eyes, and the plane came to a slow halt. The man's face asked clearly, why? Why did this happen? Why is it that this young stranger knows my brother's fate? And why is he telling me this?

Damien could answer that last one. "He needed you to know."

He left the plane, the man in his seat. No more words were exchanged between them ever again, and as Damien walked down the stairs onto the busy asphalt, each step and each glance around left his heart lighter. The feeling was majestic and wondrous, and his soul felt clean and pure, for the shadow that had troubled him for so long was finally at peace.

Epilogue

There is a wound that's always bleeding

There is a road I'm always walking

And I know you'll never return to this place.

-Opeth

Two and a half hours after taking flight he stood alone on the lakeside. The air felt different here, and he perceived no sense of love and comfort on the chilling wind which swept through him from over the lack. He stood, holding himself steady for a long hour. But when that hour was over, hope had left him, and he knew he was alone.

But also during that hour he felt no anger or resentment towards Chaste for sending him here, for he loved her truly and felt only sadness at her absence. He was bereft of her; she was lost to him; he was lost to himself. But also as he stood, waiting for a ghost or a shadow of his love, he realized that the lake he had been looking upon was frozen flat, and it was beautiful, and it was caressed by the most delicate and magnificent moonlight he had ever seen or imagined or appreciated. The crescent was waning and had almost been swallowed by black velvet; yet it remained there, struggling to provide Damien with enough shallow light to notice the still expanse stretched before him. He stayed longer, simply standing as the wind picked up around him, and he watched the clouds part slowly for the rise of the dying moon.

Soon the feeble, fragile light lost conviction, and with one depressing motion, there was darkness in a moment.