Chapter One: Growing
So Pitch was confined to Cally Moonborne's room. He found himself unable to leave no matter how hard he tried. So this was his punishment, he mused as he watched Cally, invading her dreams each time she slept because it was the only enjoyment he could get trapped in this room. Sometimes during the day he'd make her believe that there was a monster under the bed, or in her closet, or outside her window, but she was never afraid for long. The only time he could keep her frightened was in her dreams, little girls like to dream of happy things, rainbows and puppies and sunshine, so Pitch kept her dreaming of rain and demons and monsters and darkness. Years and years of darkness.
By the time Cally was nine she had stopped telling her mother that she had had a nightmare. Now she called them adventures, like in a movie when the hero got lost in the dark forest. Pitch grinned as he whispered into her nights that she wasn't the hero in this tale. She just shooed the thought like an annoying fly. Pitch often frowned when she was so easily able to dismiss him.
"Mom, can I ask you something?" Cally asked one day while her mother was helping her clean out her closet of clothes and old toys.
"Yes sweetie?" Her mother responded. Cally had her mother's dark hair and waves, but where her mother's hair lay nicely and frizz-free, Cally's was a tangled mess of strands. Cally didn't have her mother's dark eyes though. Cally's eyes were light like the sky.
"Is the house haunted?" Cally replied seriously. Her mother stopped.
"Why would you ask that?" Her mother responded concerned. Her mother had been concerned about her daughter ever since she reported continuing nightmares. Even now when she called them adventures, her mother knew that it wasn't what little girls were supposed to dream about.
"Because sometimes, in the shadows I see something moving about." Cally said. She didn't sound frightened exactly, just confused. Pitch perked up, could she be seeing him?
"When does this happen?" Her mother asked sitting back on her heels to look at her daughter.
"Um…when it's bedtime. And sometimes I feel like someone is looking at me." Cally said as she continued to pull old toys out of the bottom of her closet.
"It's probably just your brain playing tricks on you honey, I wouldn't worry about it too much." Her mother said. Pitch watched the pair intently as Cally nodded. She looked back at the corner where Pitch normal stood. Pitch followed her gaze, amazed. Maybe he wasn't as invisible as he so feared.
"Probably." Cally smiled then and they returned to work.
Over the next few weeks Cally stared at the corner harder than she had before as if she were trying to prove that there was nothing there. Pitch would move out of her line of sight and then made a noise elsewhere, a floorboard creaking, the ceiling popping in the cold, when she'd turn to the noise he'd go back to the corner and wait. Pitch didn't know what he was waiting for, but he was waiting for something.
One night during the summer Cally was ten, she sat there in her bed staring intently into the shadows. This had become a normal thing for her to do, but this night was different.
"I know you're there. Show yourself." She commanded. Pitch laughed at her. He was still as invisible as ever to her, he couldn't force himself into her sight.
"I am showing myself to you, you foolish little child." Pitch sneered.
"My name's Cally Moonborne." She said watching the darkness as hard as she could. "And I just want to know if you're real or not." Cally had her knees drawn up to her chest. "Otherwise I'm crazy, aren't I?" She watched the dark for a long time.
"You're not crazy." Pitch said for some reason. Standing there stoically in the space she always looked. Cally rested her head on her knees and watched the empty dark until her eyes began to close.
"I'd be your friend, you know." She said peering into the shadows at Pitch. He paused. She laid back against her pillows and closed her eyes, and she began to dream. Pitch walked over to her bed and watched her sleep. She didn't start dreaming right away and when she did he stayed out of the dream. He simply watched as she dreamed of bigger things than a ten year old should have been able to. She dreamed of mountains and flying and clouds and beauty and rain. She smiled in her sleep and rolled over so that her face was smiling at Pitch. He frowned down at her sleeping form, alarmed, and slashed at the dream. The rain became a storm, she was no longer able to fly, the mountains crumbled and burned and she could find nothing beautiful. Her smile faded as Pitch retreated into his corner to watch his good work.
Yet somehow he felt that he had made the wrong choice.
Pitch sat in that corner and watched as Cally grew. He watched the pink curtains get replaced by dark purple ones. He watched her toys become uninteresting to her and her stuffed animals disappear. The pink frilly childhood changed into a pleasantly dark adolescence. She hung pictures on her walls of mountains now. He watched her turn eleven and twelve and thirteen, and every so often she'd make remarks directed at him. Sometimes she's tell him about her day or how some kids at school were being mean to her, or how she still believes in Santa even if he doesn't exist like Tyler had told her. She poured her life out onto her bedroom floor, somehow still hoping there was someone there to hear her. Pitch laughed at such a foolish, childish, thought.
But he still listened to every word.
When Cally turned fifteen, Pitch began to wonder if he'd ever be free of her room. She was only barely a child now, and it had been a long time since she'd been afraid of the dark. He should be free to go, she'd outgrown the boogeyman. Yet, each day when she got ready for bed and turned out the light, she'd sit in bed and speak to the shadows that concealed Pitch. He found that he enjoyed their one sided talks now, if only as a way to break his solitude. He sometimes replied when she asked questions but she never seemed to hear him. Pitch had grown used to that.
"You know, if you ever want to talk, I'm here." Cally whispered one night. Pitch looked at her questioningly across the dark.
"You still don't know I'm here." He replied tartly.
"I'll listen, I'm a good listener." Cally had her knees drawn up to her chest and her head rested against her upturned knees. Pitch just gave her a dark look.
"How can you listen if you can't even see me?" He demanded. "No one can see me!" He bellowed, suddenly angry at everything. "I used to have power, greater power than you could imagine. I had people's fear! I controlled the nightmares, I almost controlled the world!" Pitch was yelling at her passive face now, barely a foot from her. If he extended his hand he could touch her. Something about that though calmed him back to his normal sulky self. He stormed off to his corner again.
"Goodnight." Cally whispered as she laid down and pulled the covers up to her chin. "Sweet Dreams." She added with a yawn. Pitch snarled at the thought. How could she wish him, the King of Nightmares, sweet dreams when he was the reason for all of her bad dreams?
"You're a fool." Pitch snapped. Only the moon knew who the comment was truly directed to.
One day Cally brought Tyler home. They talked long into the night and eventually fell asleep under her covers. Pitch watched them with distaste. Cally hadn't told him about her day and Pitch was angry that this Tyler child had taken that from him. When Tyler began to dream, Pitch made him an extra special nightmare. Pitch chuckled darkly, pleased with himself. The youth would remember this nightmare for years. The boy has sandy hair and dewy green eyes.
"Pitiful child." Pitch added as he resettled into his corner. "She could handle nightmares like that…" Pitch laughed again, absurdly proud of his captor.
Tyler came around more and Cally told him that she liked him sleeping over because it helped her to not have terrible nightmares. This angered Pitch because the more Tyler came over, the less Cally spoke to him and watched the shadows. Never mind that Pitch wouldn't give her nightmares when it was so easy to terrify that stupid boy.
One night Tyler kissed Cally and she so innocently blushed. Tyler kissed her again, and she let him for a time. Until he tried for more. Cally told him to stop, she pushed at him. Pitch felt anger well up inside of his chest as he watched.
"Leave her alone you stupid child!" Pitch bellowed at the boy's deaf ears. Cally yelped as Tyler pushed her beneath him. Pitch stormed over to the bed and yelled again for the boy to get off of Cally. But neither of them could hear. Cally turned her face away from Tyler, looking straight through Pitch, as the boy pulled at her pajama pants that she tried to hold up. Tyler had coaxed her out of her shirt already. She was crying as she watched the cloudless night sky and crescent moon.
"You're not allowed to make her cry!" Pitch screamed, angry for more reasons than he knew. "Only I am!" And when Pitch lashed out against the boy, his hand connected with flesh and knocked him from Cally's bed. Tyler looked up in fear as he saw the beast from his every nightmare. "You will leave this place and never come back. You will never touch this girl again." Pitch commanded poised to spring at the child. The boy cowering on the floor nodded, gathered up his shoes and discarded t-shirt and made a mad dash for the door.
Cally was sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chin, crying into the blankets that were bunched up against her shirtless chest, unaware of the terror that had made Tyler flee.
"He's gone now." Pitch said standing straighter again. Cally just kept crying, unable to hear him. Pitch roared in anger. "So I can talk to that filth but not to her?" He demanded of the moon. The moon had nothing to say in response. Cally cried and cried, long into the night. He parents weren't home tonight, so she had the house to herself and her tears. And Pitch. She had Pitch too.
Pitch sat on the edge of Cally's bed and watched her cry, still bunched up in the most comforting position she knew. He moved to touch her head, a sign of comfort? He didn't think too much about his own motives. His hand dissolved right through her head and he pulled back from the failure, but Cally looked up then and stared right at him. Only she couldn't see the look of surprise etched on his face. His mouth hung open and his eyes were wide, and he held that pose because he was suddenly afraid to move for fear she'd see him.
"Please…" Cally said into the dark. Pitch could only stare as he slowly regained his composure. "Please, if you can…" Cally wiped at her face and red eyes. "Show me you're real. I know you can hear me." She watched that place his face took up and he wondered if the air there looked any different to her. Pitch, not knowing what else to do, slowly extended his arm and ran a single finger gently down her cheek. Not enough pressure to go through her, but just enough that the line between them temporarily blurred. Cally's eyes widened suddenly. "I…" She smiled now. A smile that lit up her whole face, her whole being, and some distant little thing inside of Pitch as well. "I felt it." She laughed right out loud, filling the dark with a reverberating sound that settled upon them and scared away whatever monsters had been left by the boy that had tried to use her.
She didn't see him lift his lips into a strange little smile, but she knew he was there and that was enough. "Goodnight Old Friend." She smiled, finally able to lie down. Cally fell asleep quickly and Pitch watched her dream for a while before gingerly pressing a single finger into her dream. He didn't turn it into a nightmare like he normally did, instead he turned it into an adventure for her. A real adventure. All he wanted was for her to have a piece of him to touch. Some part of him to hold on to.
That fall something terrible happened. Cally didn't come into her room. He couldn't hear her elsewhere in the house either, as sometimes she'd fall asleep downstairs in the living room or on her parent's bed. Pitch stood by the door of her room and listened for her, but he could hear nothing but her mother cry.
Pitch waited for another day, and Cally still didn't come home. That afternoon, her mother came into the room and sat upon her daughter's bed crying.
"Where did you go Cally?" She mumbled holding Cally's pillows to her chest. "Where did they take you?" She asked again. Take her? Pitch felt that anger growing in his chest again. Someone had taken his Cally away from him? They would pay in whatever way he could make them. He glanced back at Cally's mother and went to the window where the moon hung like a streetlight in the distance, barely there in the dying light.
"I have to find Cally, Old Friend." Pitch said stepping up onto the window's ledge. "I dare you to try to stop me." And he dissolved into the night as he stepped out of the window, as if the locks on his prison had sprung free.
It didn't take Pitch long to feel Cally's fear. He would have felt it from across the globe if he'd had too. But she was closer than that.
Pitch crept into the dark place Cally was being held. There were men there, surrounding her where she sat with her knees brought up to her chest. She wasn't wearing any shoes and her shirt was ripped. Pitch frowned at the scene. They had hurt her and they would pay.
Pitch felt his power began to unfurl and he grinned feeling like his old self for the first time in years. One man began to look behind him, hearing Pitch knocking on the metal walls.
"What was that?" Another asked as Pitch knocked louder and made footfalls upon the floor. Cally didn't seem to notice their unease, she just sat there curled up on herself hoping that they would finally leave her alone.
"Tyler!" One man called and the foolish boy that had hurt her before came out from the other room. Pitch sneered at the sight of the child. "Go check the hallway." The man commanded.
"Oh yes," Pitch purred. "Come out into the dark." Tyler looked at the dark then back to the man who had commanded him, eyes wide.
"Why?" Tyler said, the fear he knew to feel clear in his voice.
"Because I said so!" The man bellowed and pushed the boy forward. It wasn't hard for Pitch to make the boy squirm as he approached the dark hallway. Tyler glanced around briefly before calling back to the others.
"There's nothing her-…!" Tyler's voice was cut off by Pitch throwing him down the hall. The boy got to his feet and looked around. "Who's there?" He questioned shakily.
"Your worst nightmare," Pitch replied standing out of the darkness. Pitch knew those were the words that'd scare the boy most, though he knew not where the words came from. Tyler screamed and ran for the door. Another man ran into the hall, wielding a knife, as another covered him with a hand gun. Pitch scared the knife wielder off easily enough. The man with the gun shot at him as soon as he saw the dark figure laughing from the shadows. The bullets ricocheted and made the other men wish for cover and light. Pitch found it easy to scare the last few men away and soon he was alone with Cally, who was still curled up in the corner somewhere between crying and sleeping.
"They're gone now." Pitch said softly. Cally didn't stir. Pitch moved closer and kneeled down by her. "Cally?" He tried again. He reached out to her and his hand passed right through her. So he was still invisible to his imprisoner. Pitch scowled before remembering the one time she had felt him. He ran one finger down her damp cheek, the line between them blurred. She looked up, surprised.
"Hello?" Cally asked gingerly into the dark.
"You have to stand up now." Pitch said although he knew she couldn't hear him. He ran a hand gently up her arm and she shivered, but she stood.
"Why can't you talk to me?" Cally asked blindly into the dark.
"Come now, follow me." Pitch said touching her cheek again, ignoring her question. She looked that way and then back in front of her. "Just believe you know where you are going." He commanded her. She just stood there and looked rather small amongst the shadows. He touched her hand, trying to grab it. She held it out, surprised.
"What is it?" Cally asked. She was a smart girl, she'd figure it out. He touched her hand again and left the feeling in the direction he knew she needed to go. He grabbed at her hand again and she moved to keep the contact.
"Good, now move forward." It was slow at first but Cally held onto the feeling of his hand on hers and he led her out into the night.
Cally looked even smaller in the moonlight. She turned around, trying to see where she was, but it was dark and she was afraid. He could taste her fear on his tongue, and he was surprised it didn't taste like the others'. The others' fear had tasted sweet, Cally's tasted metallic, and he wasn't sure what that meant, fear had never tasted like that to him before. Pitch frowned as he felt a pull that was dragging him away from her.
"NO!" He bellowed, trying to hold onto Cally. His hands couldn't keep contact with her. He needed to have her get home so that things would go back to the way they were. He needed her to smile into the dark again. "Let me go!" But the moon ignored his pleas and sent him back to his prison in the shadows in the corner of Cally's room. Pitch roared at the moon, demanding release from this prison, but the moon ignored his cries.
It took Cally awhile, but she eventually made it back home. She knocked on the door, but her parents were fast asleep, both having been exhausted from the search and she was weak from the past two days. She couldn't seem to make enough noise. Cally looked around, trying to remember where the hidden key was now, as her parents moved it every so often. Once she located it under a flowerpot, she gently let herself into her home.
Cally was crying again, from relief or from the adrenaline fleeing from her tired limbs she wasn't sure. Pitch heard her walk across the living room towards the stairs. He stood at her door and watched her pass him. She was heading for her parents' room. He watched her pause at their door and adjust her tattered clothes. It was almost dawn as she pushed the door open and gingerly spoke, waking her parents from their sleep. "Momma? Daddy?" Her voice was small in the dark.
Pitch went back to his corner and sat in the shadows. He could hear Cally and her parents talking in the other room in happy, fevered voiced and he knew he had done something new. It was a good thing he had done, even if he did so selfishly. The moon sat outside Cally's window and Pitch ignored the man's approval. Pitch still felt as if he had lost somehow.
Cally came into her room alone a short while later and Pitch sat up, for some reason hoping she had come back for him. Cally went to her closet without even glancing in his direction and pulled out a sweatshirt that she quickly pulled around her bare shoulders and zipped up over her broken shirt. She stopped at the door and turned around as if she'd forgotten something. Pitch heard her parents moving around downstairs.
"They're taking me to the hospital." She whispered. "I don't know how you did it, but, I think you saved me." She took a step towards the shadows. Pitch stood to face her, coming across the room. "Thank you." She stood there for a second and waited for something. "I don't even know if you came back…" She hugged herself against the cold in her limbs and the fear that her shadow had abandoned her.
"I'm here." Pitch said stepping towards her. He ran his hand down the side of her face. "I'm right here." She closed her eyes as if she were trying to stop herself from crying or hold onto a memory.
"I don't even know your name." Cally whispered. Pitch held his hands against her face, willing her not to cry.
"Pitch," He said, not expecting her to hear him. "Pitch Black."
"Thank you, Pitch." Cally said, eyes still closed. Pitch removed his hands in surprise. She'd heard him. "I'll be back as soon as I can." And Cally smiled obscurely at him through the dark. "I promise." And then she walked away and left Pitch there staring after her, dumbfounded because she had heard him.
Cally had heard him, and now she knew his name.
The aftermath of Cally's kidnaping lingered for a year or so. It was the worst right after that night, with police visits and counselors and doctors. Cally told him about each one. She told him that the men who had kidnapped her were found easily because they went to the police talking about a monster in the dark. She told him it was Tyler's older brother and his gang of thugs that had kidnapped her.
Every word Cally spoke reminded him that he had saved her, that he had done something to erase a fear from the world rather than to create one. Pitch even helped keep the memories from her dreams. Each day, each story, each time Cally spoke his name, he felt a little spark dancing in the darkness of his heart. Could it be that this girl, who was quickly becoming something more like a woman, was somehow…
After that first year, Cally didn't mention It anymore. She told Pitch at one time that one day she would just stop thinking about It and It wouldn't bother her anymore. Pitch smiled at her sleeping form as he played games with her dreams because that day had come to pass and he was glad for her.
"Pitch?" Cally asked one day when she was passing through seventeen. "You know I'll be leaving one day right?" She was sitting on her bed, knees to her chest, waiting for him to reply. "I can't stay here forever. I'll go to college and have life somewhere else." She looked out at the moon, hanging large outside her window, illuminating the spring evening. Pitch hadn't known. He hadn't expected to stay this long, let alone want to stay with his captor. "I really wish you could talk back again. I hear your voice in my dreams sometimes…" She looked down at the painted toes that peeked out from under her pajama pants. "And I've always wanted to see you." Pitch stood next to her bed, as he often did when she got into moments like this. He set his hand upon her hair and she tried not to move for fear of breaking the connection. "I would give anything to see you, Pitch. To be able to talk to you, be able to touch you…" Her voice trailed off then. She hadn't thought of that so much before. Could she love this shadow? She wondered. Didn't she already? It felt like love to her…but what did she know. She was just a foolish little girl…