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Disclaimer: Elves and the magical place of Rivendell belongs to Tolkien. This story is insolently "inspired" by the Doctor Who chapter's Listen, so I guess part of my muse's copyright belongs to the BBC and Mr. Moffat. The quoting parts belongs to them too, I only use it because it's cool XD
The original story was written by Ángela Giadelli.
Translated by Ángela Giadelli herself.
(So, I'm sorry for the absurd mistakes I'm sure I'm going to commit XD)
Enjoy!
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Listen! Question: Why do we talk out loud when we know we're alone? Conjecture: because we know we are not. Evolution perfects survival skills. There are perfect hunters. There is perfect defense. Question: Why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? Answer: How would you know? Logically, if evolution were to perfect a creature whose primary skill were to hide from view, how could you know it existed? It could be with us every second and we would never know. How would you detect it? Even sense it? Except in those moments when, for no clear reason, you choose to speak aloud. What would such a creature want? What would it do?
—The Doctor
Fear is a superpower
It's not the first time they drag you into that sinister gorge in the middle of nowhere. Why your parents keep sending you there it's something that escapes your mind, because you don't do a bloody thing there. Just strolling, walk over those stupid ruins hour after hour. And all this insanity it's justified because your great-great-grandpa was the last Lord of Imladris. Somehow, that seems a reasonable excuse to stay one week per year in that cursed —and built where Ilúvatar lost his shoes— city.
Your cousins reach you as you get the first stones in the ground of the demolished bridge. Trying not to make a single noise Lachaêl and Arothir catch your back as a foolish joke, just to scare you. Idiots. At least you're clever enough to be afraid.
Fear is excellent, an exceptional friend. It forces you to be constantly on alert. It makes you stronger, faster, cleverer. It makes you realize all that surrounds you, grasping it, catching on all those things that seems fantasies, products of your imagination. Because… it's your own mind, right? Just a mental trick. It has to be. But fright makes you chase that shadow on the mirror, trying to persuade you that all those things in the corner of your eye, those impossible things, are real. So real. So authentic and corporeal that it hounds you. So undeniable that you can hear the steps after your own back. So live, and physical, that it bristles your nape.
Nevertheless, they'd rather to be scared of a bunch of nonsenses told around a campfire. Stories about dark figures hidden into misty shadows, those about darknesses who reaps a human life with the same ability as Námo cut a nymphedril. Or the stories about the Uilkihrim. Those are the worst of all.
The tales of the atrocity of that beast, a hybrid of uruk hai, goblin and with some similarities with the Balrog that habited Moria once —if someone could ever possibly saw one of that damned creature, for Eru's sake, imagine the extremely odd and rare that's one to be honoured with the presence of an Uilkihrim!—, these have been the principal source of all your night terrors since you were a child. Well, until the first time you put a single foot on Rivendell, at least.
The sadism which the brutal and inhuman Melkor's creature ends its victims with, tearing them and dismembering them apart, it was legendary. Old stories warned the elves (and everyone else) about how he used to drink the warm blood that flowed incessantly from the wounds, breaking down to pieces the unfortunate bastard, biting and gobbling every piece of him until not even the bones remains. A horror that was nothing compared to the icy panic that the 'refuge' of damned peace transmits you in the middle of the ravine.
It's said that the waters of the Bruinen still preserve certain residual magic of their ancient days. Elves bewitched the place, and they left on it part of its elvish essence in the process. Or that's what it's said. That's what you've been told at least. But the feeling you have every time you cross it, it's everything but mystical.
You can still count on some elves like invaluable friends, so you know perfectly well how it feels being surrounded by them. And it's not that. When you are in their company you do not feel unease, insecure, and unsafe. You are not worried, nor asphyxiated for that constant anxiety of feeling uncomfortable. The elves are not malignant beings and, from the very moment you put the first foot there, that's what you felt it. You, and seemed like no one else in Arda mysteriously, had the terrifying gift of distinguish this sinister -not elvish- presence from the very thin air. How lucky you're, indeed.
And the sensation that you had had the first time you came into Rivendell —Like something was not working very well there really, in spite of the singing laugh of your mother or of the incessant movements of the carriage, or of any other thing that could distract you— it's exactly the same one who drowns you every minute you spend here. Exactly the same that you're having now, coming back again to that house.
You cannot see it but they observe you. And you know it. And you do not know why, but you know it. The shades of the night are not darker, the moon does not light less but the air is heavier. You feel like a few eyes are piercing your nape, although you are not sure if this 'thing' has eyes after all… because you have never seen it. Perhaps there's no eyes. Perhaps it doesn't need them to see you, to find you. Perharps this shadow it's attracted by you like moths goes to the flame.
You come in into the room with everyone else, as the lambskin enters the slaughterhouse. The candles are lit and the light floods the whole place but you continue without feeling safe. You can't be safe. Because it is not the darkness to what you are afraid of.
Obviously you try to feign normality in front of others. Why do not others realize? Why are you the only one that notices it? You raise the old stairs trying not to think about the answer, trying not to think about a bloody thing. Nor the creaks of the wood. Nor the hollow footsteps… and definitely not about the dying Idril beams slipping inside the panels of glass of the windows. And then, even before you already could seize the knob of the door, you feel it. Again. A cold perspiration that covers you back. You're terrified because you feel the presence with you but somehow you know you can't run. There's no escape, no place to be hidden from it. With your sticky and sweaty hand, you open the door and you stay a while under the threshold.
It's inside. And it's outside too. It's everywhere. And it's watching you, always keeping a close eye on you. You can't determine where it's exactly, maybe on that corner of the room… under the bed perhaps. You're losing your mind. The shadows are not shadows. The dust suspended in a moonlight beam in front of an open window, that powder reflecting the shivering light it's not just dirt flecks: it's alive. It thinks. All the entire room it's part of a collective intelligence, it's a part of a superior being. The oil lamps keeps burning secured on the wall, but even their tiny perishing candles flames miserably like if something were depriving their fire, trying to extinguish them.
You try not to think too much. That's the trick: not thinking. You take your boots off and put on the shirt you usually use to sleep —or desperate in wakefulness in this case— and you lay on the bed. It is not comfortable, but it is not important for you while you have no company on it. You do not want to close the eyes because although you are not afraid of the darkness, you are terribly scared of what hides on it.
Does it hide? Really? You cannot see it, of course, but you notice a pressure in your breast that paralyzes you completely. You feel as if there were a person above you, asphyxiating you with the same chaotic rhythm as the flame of candle in the small table fights to not burn out.
You need this candle. You need its light not to shout and to run out there, terrified. Nor to cry of pure terror. But the ungrateful wax ends up being consumed and you have to get up for other one. Arming yourself with value, withdraw the blanket, and get up. You try to calm your nerves a little… nothing it seems different. Darker, but everything continues in the same place.
Another chill covers your back after putting your feet in the ground, triggering that your rebellious heart wanted to escape his prison in your chest. You do not want to look down. You do not need to do it, as you didn't need to look under that bloody bed: you feel it.
As clear as the touch of a frozen hand grasping your ankle. As clear as you realizing one simple thing. A tiny detail. An obvious singularity: You are still alive. Unhinged but still living. Perhaps this is the only thing that he looks for, your superpower, your fear. Perhaps this creature only wanted to scared you to death… and kill you then, for fun.
Or perhaps not.