Nightshine

The world feels different after dark...

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A 31-year-old man in Florence Park on a night jog is safe, and he feels safe. He'd run the same concrete slab paths a few times a week for the past three months since he'd moved to Fleabane Creek. It wasn’t just because of his bobbing headlamp, but also the familiarity he had with the park and the night. 

The paths were well-lit. He could depend on pools of buzzing streetlight in regular intervals like security checkpoints that softened a darkness that was scored by the gentle chirp of crickets. 

The flora was surprisingly well-maintained for a city park, with manicured shrubberies giving deep green leafy background support to local flowers and plants along the sidewalks. The lightning bugs added warm flashes of yellow to a purple sky of white stars and the moon gave silver halos to the edges of clouds, the roofs of cars parked along the street, and the curves of distant hills. 

He counted himself lucky with how often the weather was nice, frequently a little muggy, but pleasant. The clouds that rolled in seemed to be taking their time and didn’t look too threatening. Not enough for him to worry about getting caught in rain before he got back home. It freed his mind to enjoy the jog, the music from his earbuds, and the night. Three decades of living made him comfortable with the outside dark.

Across town in a mundane suburb, specifically a cul-de-sac, and not even in one of the prime spots, sat two stories of unimpressive beige. Windows in two rooms still had lights on; one upstairs and one downstairs. The lights clicked off on the first floor and 14-year-old Aspen Meyers was the last member of his household still awake. 

It was Friday. He sat at his desk in his bedroom, in the white glow of a laptop with a few browser tabs open. One was for the Wikipedia entry of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the remnants of lazy research on a report due Monday. Another tab was for a video to help him through a part in the latest Crown Slayer game. On his lap was a sketchpad. Twenty-four sheets of pure white Bristol. The early stages of a map indecisively sketched on the top sheet. He tapped on it with the eraser end of a pencil. 

He had an art project for the semester. He discussed it with his teacher, Mr. Kaplan, and they agreed on “world-building” as a theme. Aspen was eager to create his own dark fantasy world with creatures and weapons and concepts inspired by the world of his current gaming obsession. Or at least, create enough of one to satisfy his desire and get at least a C.

The moody, droning strings of the Crown Slayer soundtrack, chosen for inspiration, filled his ears through his earbuds. The music evoked the imagery of a land of perpetual night, defined by craggy mountains shrouded in grey clouds, secluded hills full of mysterious caves ripe for adventuring, and black rivers cutting through lowlands dotted with haunted ruins and goblin-infested forts. It was a world of danger at every turn, but with the promise of reward if one could muster the courage to overcome it.   

He turned, rolled his chair back a few feet and opened the dark blue curtain that covered his window. Aspen stared out at a world cut off to him because of his age. Weekend or not. He had a curfew, but luckily not a bedtime, other than his mom saying “Don’t stay up too late” before she went to bed. 

He had reached an age where he started getting fewer hard-set rules and more suggestions. He had friends with more freedom, especially to be out of the house, though Aspen was pretty sure it was less that their parents allowed it and more that they didn’t know, or care enough to know. 

The notion of being able to walk out his front door at this time of night and walk down the street had a certain appeal to a kid his age, but being out in a world that he was told was dangerous at night was intimidating. It was the conflict between that little voice in his head that said “You’re 14. A teen. You're not a little kid anymore,” and listening to his parents.

The world looked dead outside. Or maybe it was just different. It was the same cul-de-sac of bland houses he saw every day, but at night, especially after midnight, it took on a different character. 

The harsh shadows were dramatic, like one of those old 1930s horror movies his parents liked, but it actually was more the lighting that unsettled him, and the way it seemed to almost intentionally play with all the sights he was familiar with.

The street sign that said Gilded Court, a street name that placed lofty expectations on a bulb-shaped patch of cracked cement and unimpressive lower middle-class houses, was bright green with white lettering in the daylight, now a dark green that matched the overall shade of the surrounding greenery. At least the part of the sign Aspen could actually see was dark green. The rest was pitch black. The same way half of his street gets erased when the sun goes down, the way in or out disappearing into blackness.

One street over the headlights of a car swam slowly through the black silhouettes of what could be rooftops or trees, but all smoothed together into an amorphous black stage for the two yellow eyes. 

“Why are they moving so slow?” Aspen wondered, his thoughts scored by the droning music that sparked an imagination that seemed to picture someone on the prowl, seeking kids out past their bedtimes, the perverts his parents told him to be careful of. If that were the case, the car needed the darkness as much as it needed the lights. He pictured how many shadowed streets there were across the country, ripe for the creep of headlights, searching and prodding.

The motion-detecting garage door light on the house across the street clicked on silently with the passing of a raccoon who paused briefly, looked around with glowing alien eyes, and continued to the trash can. The bright LED light breached the chain-link fence bordering the backyard and cast a diamond pattern across the unmowed back lawn. 

The pattern looked like a net. A net that the raccoon didn’t care about but made Aspen imagine that if he walked onto it, he’d get swept up in a snare of shadow while everyone slept and nocturnal animals preyed on him. A feast compared to the leftover garbage they’d normally find in sleepy suburbia. 

The trees swayed with the slow approach of clouds the color of a bruise. Almost exactly the same color as the one under Kenny Long’s eye after that fight at school last week. All the buildup between Kenny and Marcus, all the jawing and drama, and the actual fight felt like it lasted ten seconds at most, and consisted of mostly shoving and shirt pulling. Two teachers restrained them, allowing a brief window for Marcus to throw an awkward punch that left a stormy cloud under Kenny’s left eye. 

It wasn’t the clouds that looked dense with foreboding weather that made Aspen uneasy, but the moon. The moon looked like Kenny’s eye, framed in clouds. Watchful. Staring. Silently demanding people ask about its bruise. 

“Come outside, Aspen,” he imagined hearing in a voice like thunder rolling from some far-off, unseen origin to find only his ears. The voice he imagined belonged to the living night, the totality of all things that made up the outside world when the sun went down and the world became a forbidden place of cloaking shadow and shivering silvery rim lighting.

  The trees seemed to take on different characteristics at night as well. They were no longer slurping up sunlight and they were full of energy, appearing to want to break free of their roots and play. 

One cluster of trees outside his window crowded around a streetlight, the leaves of red maples fluttering energetically at contrasting speeds like moths. The trees’ movement intermittently freed the light, allowing it to shine through his window across half his bed and the carpet next to it. 

The shapeless flitting danced on the stage made of light like shadow puppets, almost as a tease. Like the trees were working with the moon to taunt him. 

“Aspen’s just a little boy, stuck inside. Never been in a fight. Up late all by himself. Come outside, Aspen.” That voice sounded like thunder again, this time with an added hiss on his name. 

He was allowing his imagination to scare him, to remind him that he was a kid who didn’t belong out there, and the music wasn’t helping. 

When there were slow, drawn-out sobs from a cello he saw the neighboring houses as empty ruins. A track showcasing twitchy, mocking violin conjured an armed skeletal horde moving over the distant hills where the silhouetted water tower said “There's a town nearby full of people. Go. Kill.” 

The dour droning accompaniment held a sustained grip on his insides and filled him with a dull dread. It was a perfect soundtrack for a dark fantasy video game, not so much for a 14-year-old staring out into the night, armed with a vivid imagination.

The distant bark of a dog and the abrupt clatter of the trash can where the raccoon dined snapped Aspen out of his music-guided trance. He turned back to his desk where his laptop worked hard as the only light in his room. 

He glanced down at his drawing pad. He had put more effort into the stylized words “Scrimlock Vale” than he had anything else. Naming his world was easy, knowing where to put mountains and rivers and forests was hard. Not to mention trying to draw a few new creatures that he didn’t just trace from someone else’s work. 

The clock on his laptop said 1:15 AM. He yawned and stretched. A Pavlovian response. He wasn’t that tired. He was thirsty though and a glass of kitchen sink water would hit the spot right about then. 

His bedroom door stood half open and the second floor landing hallway was pitch black except for the stairwell safety lights. He could always see at least one of the small orange strips from his bedroom door when he had to get up to use the bathroom. 

He took out his earbuds, got out of his chair and stepped toward it into the blackness and immediately froze.

In front of him to his left was the upstairs bathroom. The short path to it was a gulf of blackness. The nearly shut bathroom door, lit from within, became a yellow-lined portal that stopped his feet and his breath for just a moment. 

It was the upstairs bathroom. His bedroom was upstairs. His was the only bedroom upstairs. There was technically a spare but it was being used as storage. 

His parents had a nice large bedroom on the first floor just off the living room, and an en-suite bathroom. They also had a nice big king-size bed in which they were both peacefully asleep, or at least were supposed to be. 

In that frozen moment, Aspen imagined a million possible explanations, from a thief sneaking in who might tie him up so he couldn’t call the cops to a knife-wielding slasher, inspired by the horror movies he wasn't supposed to watch but did anyway, with no goal but to kill whomever he saw.

It was only a momentary lapse in logic before he put together that his mom must’ve used that bathroom and left the light on accidentally before going down to bed. But that instant seemed to last a long time, especially with how quiet it was. 

Aspen both chuckled and cursed himself for being, for just a second, scared of a light under a door in his own house. He crossed the hallway, feeling the familiar frieze texture of the beige carpet under his bare feet. 

He’d walked this short path to the bathroom many times in the dark, but for some reason he just felt like he was on alert leaving his bedroom, a little stiff, like the one time he played laser tag in Pigeon Forge and his cousin was taking it too seriously, playing like a guerrilla rebel, and making Aspen look over his shoulder every five steps. 

He opened the bathroom door, peered in, acknowledged the lack of anyone sharing the night with him, and flipped the light switch off. 

Now the familiar path of the upstairs landing was drowned in darkness except for the rectangular space where the stairs descended to the first floor. It glowed in the soft orange of safety lights, just enough to outline the aperture like a doorway in the floor.

He had to take baby steps to avoid bumping into accent tables or stubbing his toe on the railing base at the top of the stairs. 

Aspen stood at the top of the stairs and paused, looking down. It was about five steps straight, then a hard right turn into five more steps. A faint blue glow shimmered softly against the wall where the stairs turned. It rippled and flickered like the reflection of indoor pool water in the evening.

Slowly he descended the stairs with intentionally quiet steps. The stairs didn’t creak. He knew that. They were solidly built and carpeted. He was trying to stay quiet for his parent’s sake, and maybe a little bit for the sake of whatever was casting invasive blue shapes on the bottom set of steps. The further down the steps he got, the more he felt like he was submerging into some place unfamiliar. 

There was a soft murmuring that accompanied the gently flashing blue and white. His heart pounded because it sounded exactly the way it might sound if people had broken in and were trying to stay quiet. And the light? Must be flashlights searching the darkness. The light didn't bob or dart like a flashlight, though; it splashed across the lower stairs and blinked in an almost organic irregularity, a boneless creature in the deep sea.

Aspen’s feet had never stopped, no matter what he imagined in the dark of the living room. It was his living room. His house. How can a person be afraid of their house? 

Just as he was about to hit the turn in the stairs, the light dimmed, then flashed, and he stopped. 

It reminded him of someone taking a picture with an old camera. He thought about those faded pictures his parents had where the subject looked surprised, momentarily washed out in light, frozen in a candid moment, and you could see it in their faces, they were caught off guard and captured forever in a photo they probably didn’t like. The most natural version of themselves, unprepared and vulnerable, recorded for anyone to see. A “last known photo” pose.

“The TV,” he muttered under his breath as he peered down the remaining steps. Of course it was. His parents must've left it on accidentally before they went to bed. First the bathroom light upstairs, then the TV.

Standing at the foot of the steps felt a little less intimidating, but only a little. The kitchen and living room were connected. 

To his right was the living room, where the TV flickered quietly, intermittently illuminating the familiar room before it went dark again. To his left was the kitchen, where a light above the sink stayed on through the night. It felt like a comforting nightlight for reasons he couldn’t fully explain. Maybe just that it was a constant in the house when everything else was off.

Even further left, around the corner of the stairs, was the hallway leading to the garage. There was no light at the other end where the door to the garage was, it just faded off into a dark void that gave Aspen the creeps when he walked by it at the right time.

A small window in that hall allowed in one square of yellow light, casting it onto the carpet of the hallway, and just like his bedroom window, a branch waved shadow puppets into the house.

Aspen came downstairs for a reason though: to get a glass of water. So he moved toward the light above the sink. 

On the kitchen table he saw a couple of opened envelopes and their contents halfway out. Bills. On the fridge, under a magnet, was an appointment card. A doctor's appointment. Cardiologist. His dad's. Under another magnet was a photo of him. He was probably 5 or 6. A baby face that didn't look much different than the one he had as a teen. He knew it because people told him all the time.

These were all just reminders that most of the house, especially at that time of night, was the province of adults. He had his place, a small room upstairs with his stuff. His laptop, his desk, his posters and toys… or collectibles. His bed. 

Aspen grabbed a clean glass from the hanging cabinet above the counter. He filled it from the tap and took a big gulp. 

There was a window above the sink that normally had a view of the backyard. With the night and the light on above the sink, the window was a cold black. He couldn’t see a thing through it but his own reflection. There was his baby face. Distorted in the reflection. And over his shoulder the light of the TV, oddly bright for being a room away.

He flipped the light switch on the wall and the light above the sink clicked off. There was the backyard, the lawn starting to get a little too long, and the shape of their back fence like castle walls boxing it all in. The playset he'd outgrown sat like ancient ruins against the back fence, the once-bright yellow slide now dingy and grass-stained. The attached swings hung lifeless. 

The clouds had cleared out and the wind had died. The night had stilled and the moon, that mirror in the sky, reflected down at him through the window. He felt seen again. Not just seen, but watched, up too late and prey for the mysteries of night. The light of the moon seemed to take pleasure in exposing him.

The moon's subtle highlighting on the branches of the trees behind the house contrasted with the dense darkness of the woods. Especially with the way the breeze picked up again and made the rim-lit leaves move in ways that didn't seem natural. 

All he could think about was what could hide in blackness between the trees. What nocturnal things emerge at night that he didn’t know about because this time of day wasn't for him. What things might exist out there that adults keep secret from kids because they're not ready to know. What things watched the house from the shadows and roamed like primeval creatures in a dark fantasy land to feast and tear at prey.

There were no clouds to carry a thunderous, hissing voice but he still imagined it, only whispering sharply in his ear, unobstructed by the elements. Now it had a hint of sneering mockery that delighted in seeing that look on Aspen's face, and knowing how scared he was. 

“It's too late, Aspen…”

Aspen quickly hit the light switch. The light above the sink snapped back on. The window went black. There he was again in the reflection, that baby face, with a look in his eyes that betrayed his fear. And behind him, that flashing TV light, silver like the moon, now felt brighter compared to where the TV actually was. 

The shadows danced more boldly, stretched out more comfortably. That TV light seemed to spill further into the kitchen behind him with a groping reach that felt tangible, physically touching his shoulder, a mocking tease, like an appendage belonging to that thing hanging in the sky outside. Aspen spun, water from his glass splashing out onto his T-shirt.

He swore under his breath, where he was allowed, and he set the nearly empty glass on the counter. 

He swiped his hand over his shirt to knock off a few of the rolling droplets and looked up. The TV was there, just like it always was, still on whatever channel played reruns of old shows his parents were watching before bed. It passively flashed its spotlight across the couch, casting a strangely tall shadow on the back wall. It wasn’t the light of the TV that really unsettled him though; it was the light from the window in the garage hallway. 

That hallway seemed to stretch longer,  darker, and that square of light from the small window was a sharp and defined silver now, not yellow, and did little but accentuate the darkness. 

In the center of the pool of light was that branch, still waving quietly at him, a movement that the more he looked at it, the less it looked arboreal, a movement that felt less like “waving” and more like “reaching.”

Aspen stared, studying its gnarled motion, then he gasped as it darted left, out of the pool of light, away from the window, away from where its branch could realistically take it, and was gone. And the light in the hallway now looked decidedly dimmer, and decidedly less silver.

Aspen’s breath caught in his throat and he didn't move. He swallowed. It was nearly audible. When he did move, it was instinctual. The light above the sink—off. The TV—off. The curtain for the window in the hallway—shut, and he did it quickly and discreetly. 

He hurried back up the stairs, his footsteps nearly matching his rapid heartbeat. He shot a glance toward the bathroom to make sure the light was still off, then he retreated into his bedroom and shut the door. 

Laptop shut and curtain drawn, he jumped into bed where he belonged, covers pulled up over him completely like a tent, the way he used to do when he was little and he'd hear a scary sound.

Aspen had enough of the nocturnal world. Maybe he wasn’t ready for it yet. Maybe he was still just a little boy, but the moon could stay out there burning a hole into his curtains for all he cared. It could light up the trees, provide shadow for the creeps, and guide the unseen night creatures. It could taunt him all it wanted. He didn't care. 

In his room he was safe. His room. His bed. His world. He lay beneath the protective darkness of his covers, where an unmistakable silver light reached through the tiny spaces between the threads, encroaching, invading, slowly and impossibly filling his shelter under the covers.