Strahlender, the Shining Knight

I live in a small town in rural North Texas, and we like telling stories. We've got a bit of an oral tradition, even. Gives you something to do with friends and family that's not drinking, watching football, or listening to talk shows. The internet's still struggling to catch on here. Myself, I only like it for Wikipedia, TV Tropes, Kindle eBooks, and creepypasta: things I'd have gotten hard copies of back in the day, or modern evolutions of oral tradition.

But we like it that way. We like it here. I've been far enough south to attend some Tejas Storytelling Association events, which I enjoyed immensely, and each time returned home with my wanderlust satiated. It's quiet. It's cozy. You can hear the rain on your roof while you're by the fireplace reading a book, and let it play a soothing score for the words, or while you're in bed at night, and let it sing you to sleep.

People talk to you. People listen. You can breathe.

And you can pray.

God, can you pray.

I hope he sends an exorcist. A real one, whatever they're like. I know too much about the internet's crackpot Bible-thumpers to trust myself to ask around there, and this region's home to some of the absolute worst, so not here either. In fact, I have never felt more lost and alone.

So let me tell you a story.

There was a very nice couple who owned a farm not far from where I live. Richard was German-American, and very far from Fredericksburg, where he grew up. His wife Valentina was even further from Laredo, where her parents stayed to take care of her grandparents after they all emigrated from Mexico. She and her two siblings eventually continued north. Her brother picked up a wife, she picked up Richard, her sister got an undergraduate degree, and finally they all settled down here, closer to Oklahoma than to where any of them started.

I put together this outline over the course of many front-porch Arnold Palmers and a few shared lunch breaks. I'm the odd job guy around here, so I have even more than usual occasion to get to know people on top of being single, and sometimes even get to talk to them at their work, as with Richard and Valentina.

And I couldn't help noticing the inexorable trend northward. Why not stay in Laredo with her family? Why not stay in Fredericksburg with his family? Why not stay in Denton with the University of North Texas, where her sister went? You're never much more than an hour's drive from wide open spaces here anyway, not unless you're smack in the middle of Austin, Houston, San Antonio, or Dallas, and get stuck in traffic. You can go almost anywhere to get away from everything else. It is one of many things we Texans love about our state.

So why here? Why north?

Were it as simple, in Valentina's family's case, as "The Land of Opportunity" or "the cartels", I would not have wanted to tell this tale. These good people were actually extremely fond of "The Land of the Sun", and even missed it occasionally. And were it as simple for the others, including Richard, as going with their spouses, there would at least be other witnesses for me to commiserate with.

But ... it was not that simple.

I am calling "it" Strahlender, because I have read too many creepypastas. It is a German name that means, roughly, "The Radiant One". It sounds a little like "slender", and Slenderman's most famous adversary was "Der Ritter", a German knight with bright armor and a bright sword. And German's guttural harshness, at least in an English-speaker's ear, is a further added benefit: this ... creature, demon, monster, whatever it is, is much more violent than the Rake, and only somewhat less inscrutable.

I think the original theatrical poster for The Thing conveys about the right idea: a blinding light shines out of an Arctic researcher's hood as it reaches towards you. Only take away the hood and the researcher. Leave the light and the reaching. Not the hands. Just the reaching.

It was really abuelo and abuela that had wanted to cross the border when Valentina was about ten years old. Mama and Papa said it was because they'd seen El Sol Velado, "The Veiled Sun". Or thought they had, because a bright light that devours those who consume the Holy Eucharist unworthily could hardly not be a superstition. That was just older Catholics and their weird fancies for you. But what could you do? They were family.

Or rather ... that was what Valentina's parents thought her grandparents thought happened.

Oral tradition ought to be taken seriously. The line between fiction and reality is in truth so thin it almost never matters. Every reality we experience is a kind of fiction related to us through our minds by our bodily senses. Every fiction related to us by a fellow human being reflects their own lived reality.

And it is a curious thing to live among storytellers. The fabulous, the factual, and the more or less embellished coexist splendidly, whether in the living room, at the bar, around the dining table, or on the front porch.

Yet for all the lies floating around, I've found that the oldest tellers tend to have one or two tales they cannot share without an undercurrent of real fear, and usually reticence. There's always something by the time you reach a certain age. Something you really can't explain, or don't even want to, so much that you feel sorry anyone else has to hear about it. And it usually feels personal, even if you can't say why.

Knowing enough about both folklore and Catholicism to suspect a miscommunication, I eventually took the liberty of asking Valentina what her grandparents' exact words had been. Her quiet surprise and uncharacteristic coldness told me I was prying, but still she graciously disclosed:

"They said El Sol Velado comes for those who take living blood."

You'd have to be pretty deeply in denial to misconstrue that as referring to the Holy Eucharist. But if her parents had been, Valentina definitely wasn't.

This told me two things: first, that she was hiding something, about which neither comfort, nor condolences, nor further questions were wanted; and second, that El Sol Velado ("ESV") was one of those stories.

I don't know what came over me or what good I thought would come of it, but I felt inspired to follow up my suspicions with an outrageous social experiment.

I went to the National Shrine Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a December 12th, its patronal feast. You might possibly face a bigger crowd if AT&T Stadium ("Jerryworld") ever hosted a Super Bowl (the Cowboys themselves would likely not be playing, but still). It is by far the most important holy day for the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex's stupendous immigrant community, possibly surpassing (I leave it to you to decide whether this surmise indicates the idiosyncrasies of Latin American Catholicism, or my total ignorance thereof) even Christmas and Easter.

I parked in downtown Dallas, just barely close enough to walk. And walk I did. And loitered outside the cathedral in the crush. And talked to anyone that I could find an appropriate pretext for.

And anyone I could engage in more-than-superficial conversation, I eventually asked about El Sol Velado.

As you'd expect, most didn't know what I was talking about, and most were polite, although a few were annoyed when they realized I'd concealed an ulterior motive. Some thought I was asking about a weather condition where the sun shines down through fog, haze, or clouds, and helpfully clarified. One fellow, a kindred spirit, talked about descriptions of dim light and occlusion in poetry, which made sense of others who'd thought I was asking about songs or lyrics. After that he and I had a wonderful time talking about all manner of things literary.

But a handful showed surprise that gave way to naked fear, after which they left, often not bothering with an excuse. Two cases bear special mention.

First, one woman immediately turned to her husband, a few feet away with their children, and hurriedly asked if they could leave right away, not knowing or caring that I could follow their Spanish. They did so, although she at least bade me a warm farewell, albeit with a totally fabricated excuse about her spouse remembering something important.

Second, a complete stranger overheard one of my otherwise-unremarkable attempts, tapped me on the shoulder, decked me flat as soon as I'd turned around, and departed without further ceremony. No words were spoken, and this occurred in full view of a police officer. She asked if I was alright and whether I knew the man. I told her that I was, that I didn't, and that I'd probably earned it by being culturally insensitive so would she please forget about it. As far as I know she did.

I felt my suspicion had been sufficiently confirmed: whatever ESV really was, it not only felt real to more than a mere handful of people, but they were scared of it, and didn't want to talk about it.

So, returning home, I did the simple math to determine the year in which Valentina's family had left Mexico, and searched up "el sol velado 1985".

There had been two peculiar deaths in their city that year, both people whose houses burned down with them inside. One was considered a tragic accident, the other a still-unsolved arson. News reports mentioned rumors of connection to some bogeyman, which were universally chalked up to local superstition.

But the usual suspects (Reddit and 4chan) were hotbeds of speculation. The more innocent posts ("Someone I know thinks ESV killed some people back in the 80s. Are they crazy?") got replies which contained nothing new to me, but at least confirmed I was onto something: ESV was supposed to be some kind of vengeful spirit that targeted blood-drinkers. Less innocent posts, suggesting that ESV was more than some old wives' tale or that the poster had seen it or had hard evidence for its existence, got shut down by moderators, leaving only the shouting matches and snark in the comments. A common complaint was failure to produce any of the alluded-to evidence, as though readers would always take claims of its existence on faith.

Weird, sure, but so far nothing more than an urban legend. Some people persist in thinking that Bigfoot, Mothman, and the Chupacabra are real, and for all I know they are. But where their existence was supported by now-debunked evidence, ESV's was supported by none at all.

... except the silence of the people I'd actually spoken to, their mute dread of a thing whose name should not be spoken lightly if at all. A mere urban legend could inspire any amount of fear, but it would not inspire silence.

So I steeled myself for a mental sewer dive and headed over to 8chan.

Two points of supposed witness evidence stood out as having been ignored, in that community's opinion, by the police and media: bright lights, and a humming sound like an electric motor.

No other details agreed, and there were the usual complaints about discussions having been locked or deleted on 4chan and Reddit. Then there were retractions, followed by accusations of selling out, some of which were in turn retracted following counter-accusations, and I again took this to be the usual inane devolution of all sufficiently prolonged 8chan discussions.

But there was still no hard evidence. What's more, "bright lights" and "droning hum" are both fairly common alien abduction tropes, and posts reflected this: 8chan had "better" pet theories to shore up than ESV. As a result many other incidents got folded into the topic, and I finally gave up, satisfied I'd learned everything possible for a time (although I've had a strange urge to bathe more often ever since I closed 8chan).

Afterwards I did not dare bring up this subject with Valentina or Richard, since I felt myself driven more by morbid curiosity than neighborliness. Christmas that year passed without event, and this was even when Valentina introduced me to the other three: her twin brother Alejandro, his wife Abigail whom he'd met back in Laredo ...

... and her kid sister Solina, who was my own age, angelic, and somehow still single.

We reach the end of events I can recall without enormous distress. Thank God it's Friday. I am going to play video games until the pain in my chest subsides, I can breathe more than once every eight seconds, and my keyboard is not in danger of getting ruined by tears ...

... it is Sunday evening. I am going to bathe, shave, and make no further mention of breaks I take from writing unless, God forbid, they directly impact the tale.

My mind blanks. My heartrate and breathing even out. It is as though there is nothing to tell. I know there is, it just isn't coming to me. It will not come of itself, I am forced to drag it out of hiding.

Where does it begin ... ?

... Solina. Christmas did not pass without event that year. She was the event.

I had not been to church in nearly a decade, but this time Valentina and Richard invited me to join them for midnight Christmas Mass. The local parish was by no means large or remarkably beautiful, but I was told they were welcoming and that there would be a light reception afterwards. I accepted.

It wasn't hard to follow along, and I didn't feel obliged to join in with the responses even though I knew them. I didn't receive Communion or even go up for a blessing, but the homily was at least interesting. It's hard not to have some idea of the true "spirit" or "meaning" of Christmas in our post-Dickens world, but the pastor connected gift-giving with not just neighborliness but a much older idea: sacred hospitality, the notion that the widow, orphan, beggar, and sojourner have rights that can only be guaranteed by those better off than themselves. All such people, he claimed, fell under the heading of "guests", or even Jesus' own "little ones", since they are in so many ways smaller than others. He did not mention immigration as such because that would have been political (and, I now reflect, too narrow for his true theme), but it felt topical to me anyway, perhaps because of my recent adventure at the National Shrine. Whatever the case, I shouldn't have been surprised by warm fuzzies at a Christmas service, yet there I was.

All of which is to say that my senses were not entirely overwhelmed by "love at first sight", but it certainly caught me off-guard. Solina was the cantor for that service, so I got to hear her lovely voice more than the rest of their small choir. But until she was in the lectern for the Psalm, she was no more than a voice. Then she was barely more than a pretty face, until finally Richard dropped her name and muttered something about how much she'd been practicing and how far she'd come.

Suddenly she became a person with a name and a history: close family of close friends, who had walked a very long road north together. This gave me tunnel vision until she finished and rejoined the choir. Until then my mind blocked out everything but her face and her voice, intent on convincing me that she was the most beautiful of all God's creatures, that I'd better find an excuse to talk to her, and that I'd better not make a fool of myself. I told it that finding an excuse to talk to her would be making a fool of myself and that life doesn't need my help sorting certain things out, please and thanks. It found this offensive but politely held its tongue.

Then sure enough, apropos of absolutely nothing, Valentina introduced us at the reception by asking how on Earth I'd kept missing her sister at Tejas Storytelling Association events. Solina and I spent a very pleasant two hours coming to the conclusion that no, really neither of us knew how that had happened, by which point people were leaving and cleaning up and oh it was so nice to meet you I guess I'll see you around ...

Then Richard reminded her that I was the person to talk to about some work she needed done on her house, which kept us going until the pastor kindly asked us to leave the empty building. She asked if I'd walk her home so she could show me what needed doing, and there really wasn't much, but we were still sitting on her front porch merrily chatting away when the sun began to rise.

That gave us some pause. She broke it by observing that she really wanted to keep talking but she'd feel a lot better about it if I'd kiss her and ask her to be my girlfriend first. I did so, she accepted, and that was that. We finally parted ways around lunchtime, strangers to an item in a little under twelve hours.

The next six months were the happiest of my adult life. I have been struggling to cling to them in the aftermath of Strahlender's arrival. This has prevented me from adequately grieving. It is good to set that down in stark frankness, yet to let this memory be so tainted leaves me filled with a mix of impotent rage and lingering dread much more enfeebling than sadness. I would prefer to just be sad. I hope spreading the word, even if it is not believed, will be the first step towards that.

I'd felt strongly about women before. At the time it didn't occur to me to wonder what was different about Solina. We shared many interests along with most of our worldviews, and found each other painfully attractive. But we could both say that about a handful of exes as well. Much as I hate to admit it, I think it came down to two very boring, very unromantic things.

The first is that we were both stable and independent adults, she as a music teacher and I as a handyman, odd-job guy, and occasional writer. I usually had at least one project going at her house at any given time, and she'd pay me for them with her own money, which I'd turn right around and spend on gifts or dates. Once she mentioned feeling bad about making me do so much for her and then getting showered with attention, so I showed her the accounting sheet I'd kept. She turned bright crimson and promised never to bring it up again if I didn't, so we didn't, although she agreed with me that it was definitely good for a laugh that time.

The second is that she roped me into praying the Rosary with her. Not always kneeling in a church or sitting across from each other like good, pious kids either. We usually liked to keep our arms around each other and her head on my chest or shoulder, and prayer was a nice way to not lose my mind from all that contact. Meanwhile, talking even briefly about intentions or meditation topics was a shortcut to hopes, dreams, fears, doubts, heartaches, everything, and at a very manageable pace, too. And me about ten years "lapsed", not sure whether she was losing religion on my account or I was regaining it on hers.

Whatever the case, after six months of this I'd begun asking myself when and how I'd propose to her. Then one day in June began the sequel to my half-buried obsession with El Sol Velado.

It was a Monday afternoon, and as I lay on my back working on pipes in her downstairs bathroom, she came home from work early and started sobbing on the couch in her living room. I kept a pretty loose schedule, so although I was welcome she wasn't exactly expecting me any more than whatever had just happened.

So I finished what I was doing before going to check on her, and by that point she'd calmed down enough to pour herself a glass of wine. Or rather, she was on her second glass after the first had helped her calm down. And she was not a habitual drinker, much less an emotional one, so I was already braced for the worst.

She was surprised, embarrassed, afraid, and relieved to see me. She didn't want to be held. She told me she loved me very much but wouldn't hold it against me if I broke up with her. I asked why she thought I might do that. She told me her family was cursed and if I'd pour her a third glass of wine she'd tell me about it. I told her I didn't think more alcohol was a good idea but I'd do it if she let me hold her while she talked. She laughed, sighed,