The Absence of Light (Looking for Feedback)

They found Veronica this morning, a whole nine days after her parents reported her missing, strung up a tree like a bunch of Christmas lights by her intestines. Mom’s pissed at Dad for him telling me but I'm glad he did, Ronnie is-was a friend of mine for a long time, as long a time as a bunch of 16 year olds could have. 
“What?” Was all my body could muster out of my mouth on its own as I was knee deep in homework. My Dad against the door frame with his hat sitting meekly in his hands as he struggled to look me in the eyes.
“Sheriff Jacob’s and the boys at the fire station got her- uhm her down. They’re holding a closed casket at the church in a few days.”
I was about to speak, agree, ask questions, something, anything. I knew Ronnie was missing, she just got up and left our group's band practice at the dry drainage reservoirs where most of the town's kids used it as a skateboarding arena. Our group had already talked to the cops dozens of times, been pulled out of class. Prime suspects for knowing her and being as close as we were to her. Apparently us explaining in great detail how much she disliked this town and her family that she’s talked about running away multiple time to us, wasn’t good enough.

But she didn’t run away, something got her. It got to her, that thing that we found out in the woods four summers ago. Sitting underneath the gnarled branches of a twisted oak on the hill that overlooked the town, the ruins of some nightmarish freakshow that looked straight out of a movie sat preserved underneath it. I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut when I found it, the tree itself should’ve been a ward enough against my stupid brain and heart telling me to bail, run back home with the blood still fresh on my knees and never mention it. If I did that Ronnie would still be here, my brother Lark would still be here too. Two kids in four years is enough for one town to deal with, two families missing a child, it was a nightmare for us. A piece of a puzzle that can never be completed.

“Son?”
I pulled myself from whatever daze had taken over me, my Dads hand gently guiding my face back to his, away from my brother's side of the room we used to share. “I know it’s hard, believe me. I honest to God do, Veronica’s parents want you to play at her wake this weekend.” He looked at me, a quiet sadness that hid behind his eyes that all this was drudging back up to the surface. I'd only seen my Dad cry twice in my life, when they lowered my brother, his sons casket into the ground, And right now. “I won’t force you to but-“ he choked a little, his adams apple bobbing slightly. 
“Yeah I’ll go. She’s a friend afterall.” My own voice was hoarse and sore, was I crying? Dad set his hat down on Larks bed, his arms pulling me into his embrace.
“You’re a good Kid, Sparrow, a good Kid.” 

My Dad was never a man to show emotions, just how his parents raised him. Strong, stoic, dependable, typical cornbread rural dad stuff. He’s probably hugged me only a handful of times, similar to seeing this six-foot-five behemoth of a man do anything than lift heavy lawn equipment or medium sized animals like a small child with a stuffed animal was unusual. He left me to my room after that embrace, time seemed wrong, off, like it wasn't moving. I could hear my mother holding back anger at my dad, yelling at him from the kitchen down the hall. My eyes stayed locked onto Lark’s bed, the Doctor Who alarm clock we shared sitting on the wooden nightstand placed between our beds. Time didnt seem to move as i sat there, hands sitting limp between my legs, hot tears finding a cushioned landing spot on them.

“He, of all people Caroline, deserved to know what they found. Especially after-“ 

I heard a slap, the connection of skin again skin, and a sudden gasp followed by a profuse chain of apologies from my mother, the screen door to our house slammed shut and the low gurgle of fathers pickup truck revving to life. I knew what he was going to do next, something he did when they found Sparrow. Hunt whatever or whoever did this until justice was served in my fathers eyes. I couldn’t just sit here myself, that wouldn’t be right, not now, I should help look, talk to mom maybe, do something other than sit here! I thought, the words bouncing around my head like a bowl of alphabet soup. Either way, I found myself standing. The soft plush of the carpet in my room wanting to swallow my feet, a wave of nausea crawled up my throat. The acrid burning taste of stomach bile and the corned beef and swiss sandwich I had for lunch wanting to make an encore. I stabled myself and swallowed the bile back down.

“Get a fucking hold of yourself, dude.” My mouth moved what felt like on its own, the words slipping out, as I shook my head. I know what I'm feeling is normal, expected, loss is a natural human phenomenon and I hated it. Homework could wait, put it off like I had been during the school year and be exactly why I was in summer school now. I needed to be out there, helping look for the bastard that did this to my friend. I can’t sit around like I did for Lark, he wouldn’t have.

I got up, left the house with a flashlight and one of my dads hunting knives. Much to my mothers attempts to stop me, the wooden hilt of the knife stung cold against my palm as the sweeping strikes of my flashlight lights traced the road ahead of me. I walked to Veronica’s house, I had my license of course, but no wheel. My parents weren't rolling in money or had good management of their cash, which rubbed off on me with my lack of a job and the stigma people assigned to me after Lark's death made getting a part-time job hard. Small town rumors usually mean it's fact instead of hearsay.

The rough dirt road crunched beneath my shoes, a steady rhythmic crunch of gravel and dry clay parched from the lack of rain. The usual early summer dry spell that we get has been lasting longer than normal and more aggressive. Each step caused the ever growing hazy tan cloud of dirt and clay to further obscure the path behind me until I eventually broke off the main road. The underbrush was warm and dense, vines and branches whipped at me as I walked, fed up I took my knife and jungle explored my way through the dense woods, retracing the steps I took years ago to the tree on the hill.

It felt like several hours passed but my watch reflected only a couple had come and gone as I stood at the base of the hill. The run settled behind it already, casting long shadows on the ground similar to the trees' twisted and gnarled branches. The shadows moved and lurched in a way like they wanted to grab me. The sun couldn't also forget to paint the sky in vibrant reds and purples all to bring the more ominous vibe to this stupid tree.

Wyoming always had a way of being beautiful even when it was being as ominous as possible. The Teton mountain range was a consistent focal piece of our town and became more prominent as I climbed up the hill holding the tree at its peak. The tree, adequately named The Teton Weeping Tree, looked like the saddest oak tree that I've ever seen. From a distance it looks dead, withered and a rotting husk that not even animals would use as a nest or home. Up close though, the bark is sturdy, sticky with a reddish sap that leaks through it's bark. The branches that appear dead instead have these almost transparent leaves shaped in oblong ovals. 

I remember the day I found the damned thing, the hole in the ground at its base with stairs that went down into the dark. The way the tree seemed to almost sing to me as I stood there, a song in a language that I couldn't recognize, calling me to go down the stairs at it's base. I obliged and started down them. The rough stone gave way to a polished wood, dark and clean, well maintained. The walls, covered in a thin floral wallpaper. Small red roses and ivy decorated the wall sporadically as I found myself at the familiar wooden at the end of the hall.

My hand, shaking, reaching for the brass doorknob. It's cold metal almost fusing to my clammy sweaty hands as I turned it. The door opened, a soft creak and whine from the hinges as it opened into a kitchen, ugly jade green counters on yellow cabinets with that black and white diner style tile. The kitchen smelled the same as the day I found it. Stale air and rotting food. I turned to my left, past the bartop and into the empty living room. The red stained plush shag carpet, peeling wooden panels and crumbling brick fireplace two severed lambs heads mounted and stuffed on the still stable brick. In the center, standing where it was when I first found it was the focus of my rage.

A stone statue of an angel, its wings broken off and laying around its polished form. It's stone, like a marble or granite appeared to be liquid, its textures moving as I approached the three faced statue. Its three faces made my stomach want to fold in on itself, crawl out of my throat and run back the stairs and as far away as possible. Standing across from the piece of carved rock It's front face, the once it projects the most, Joy, smiled at me. Its left face, Sorrow, was stuck in a constant state of agony and pain. Its right face, Rage, looked like if it could move it would spear me with the carved sword stuck in it's hand.

“Why.” The words came out more like a statement and less like a question. The eyes of the statue moved down to meet my glare, a quiet rough sound of grinding stone as the smile on it's face grew more. “Why? I most certainly don’t know what you’re talking about, child.” Joy said in a motherly coo as its stony arm moved up, allowing for it's free hand to caress my face. The other faces echoed the last word spoken by Joy. Sorrow choked out the word while Rage screamed through gritted teeth.

“You know exactly what i'm talking about. Why Veronica? Why my brother and then my friend?” I asked, bringing my arm up to push away the hand of the statue, it didn’t budge. “O-oh ho ho! Sweet child of God.” Joy said, Sorrow and Rage echoed. “Because the suffering of those under His wings bring me such savory Joy.” 
“Sweet Rage!” Rage exclaimed, 
“and Beautiful Sorrow…” Sorrow sobbed.

“That’s it, because you can? How? You're a fucking statue in this stupid basement bullshit!” I shouted, hatred swirling in my heart as I pushed away from the statue, stumbling back. 

“Wretched fool, because you came down here, you went to the tree on the hill! You went down the stairs! You opened the door and spilled you're heart to me and I merely gave you what you wanted!” The voices from the statue complied and echoed in the space around me, the lights in the room began to hurt, sting my eyes and burn my skin. Wait? Lights? There wasn't any lighting in here. I looked around, shielding my eyes with my hand. A light, brighter than the sun, was crawling in through every curtainless window. 

“What? I-how we’re underground? I walked down like two flights of stairs to get here?!” I wanted to say, covering my eyes more so the light stopped hurting. The light didn’t burn in a heat sense, but more like that feeling when you sit on your leg for too long and it goes numb, pins and needles. I felt myself drop to my knees as the sensation felt as if it was getting deeper and deeper under my skin, going through veins and vessel’s, muscle and bone and expanding. Then it stopped, a hot breath on my ears.

“I can make it stop. All of it.” Joy whispered into my ear like a loving mother.
“Your pain.” Rage said through gritted teeth
“Your loss.” Sorrow added as I felt a stony hand caress my cheek.
“I can make it all go away, put it all back. Make it right, by you my sweet baby boy.” Joy coo’d at me again like a caring mother would to comfort a sick child nearing the end. “All the wrongs in the world, all the bad memories, the scars and bruises.”

The tears, hot and bitter welled up in my eyes I kept closed. I couldn’t look at the statue anymore, I knew it couldn’t move more if I looked at it, but I couldn't force myself. My body ached as I knelt, sat on my legs. The numbing pain fading and replaced by a comforting warmth.

“Your silence is enough for me. I know what you think, your thoughts, what you desire and wish for.” Joy whispered, the grinding sound of stone on stone, the warm feeling coalescing around my abdomen, blooming outward.

“Wish! Wish!” Rage shouted followed by Sorrow’s drawn out “Silence…”

“Open you eyes and accept your new reality, child.” Joy said, and I obeyed. Opening my eyes, blurred by tears, the warmth I felt changed into a pain, a sharp brutal pain as my eyes drifted down from the grinning statues face down to my blood covered hands holding the hilt of my father’s hunting knife as it was plunged to the end into my gut. A small but growing pool stained the already red carpet as it spread out from underneath me.

I turned my head up to the statue, it again appeared lifeless, unmoving and mute. I knew better to pull the blade out, I'd only bleed out faster. Leaving it in I pulled myself up, painfully. Using the statue to leverage myself, hollering out in agony as my own blood painted the statues body. Leaning against for a second I closed my eyes, my breathing rapid and in short bursts to try and cope with the knife sticking out of me.

“All good things come in three, no?”

I heard it whispering, the voice sounding like it was in the back of my head, in and underneath my brain. Worming its way in like maggots to a corpse decaying in the hot sun. I opened my eyes again, the blur to my vision even worse as I struggled to keep them open.

“Stop.” The voice said in a deceitfully soothing way. “The longer you fight, the more you resist. The more suffering you endure for no reason. Succumb, child. Fall into my arms, let me hold you until your final breath.”

I wanted to resist, push away from it. If I was going to die, I didn’t want it to be near this fucking thing! I stumbled back, slamming into one of the wooden paneled walls, my blood smearing against it as I slipped across it and back to the wooden door. 

The door.

Where was the door?

The kitchen was gone too, the appliances and cabinets. It was just walls and floors, nothing else. The windows were gone, replaced as if they were never there to begin with. The statue stood there, alone in the center of the living room watching me bleed out. I lowered myself down slowly, everything spinning as I coughed up blood and stomach bile. If I was going to die here, it was going to watch. I wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction of an embrace.

“If that is what you wish.”

I heard the voices echo as one as I laid back down on the cold tile of the empty kitchen, staring at the popcorn ceiling as it seemed to slowly start rapidly expanding upwards. Or maybe the floor was sinking. Everything got really cold though, I knew that much, as my vision faded.

I was overwhelmed with the sensation of falling. I don't mean like base jump falling or free falling, it's was more controlled. Like I was stiff as a board horizontal falling vertically down a waterfall. I couldn’t see anything but could feel my memories slip past, birthdays and vacations, school and test failures, emotions, excitement and loss, the moment I died and the moment I was born. They passed through me, hitting me with such force the feeling went as quickly as they came.

I blinked and found myself in an infinite void of inky blackness and fog. A light shone above me, coming from some obscure force as I stood up. The hole from the knife was gone, replaced with a scar, the pain was gone. I stood up, the solid surface beneath my barefeet rippled as if it was a liquid. The surface rippled away, the waves getting larger and larger before disappearing completely into the void around me.

“H-hello?” My voice echoed outward with no return as I started to walk. The further I went, the deeper I sank. The liquid pooled around my ankles, then halfway up my calves, my knees and then I was waist deep in the liquid. Looking down, the only thing I could see was my reflection, waist up, looking back at me. The liquid floor was a lukewarm feeling, like if you were walking through room temperature tapioca pudding hugging my body.

I continued to freely walk through the floor, it felt like pudding and behaved like water, however, I was able to walk normally. The sensation of feeling my legs, no not my legs, anything below my stomach was the absence of feeling. I could feel the floor in the mental sense that I knew it was there, knew how it behaved but I couldn't physically feel anything apart from me below my stomach. 

I continued my pace through the floor, the ripples casting out from around me in the infinite void, until a ripple came back. Larger than the ones I sent as I walked, but not enough to overwhelm and swallow me beneath the floor. I could feel on the surface that something was coming towards me. The pattering sounds of something rapidly approaching me sent a pang of terror in my throat before that bubble popped, leaving me alone in the emotionless state I have been for a good bit of this walk.

The thing, whatever it was, looked like a large black snake, like very large. Its head had to be at least twenty feet in height. Its body is scaly as a snake's should be; however instead of slithering, it moved like a millipede on millions of tiny human hands, and on it's back were plucked, featherless wings. I got the feeling it wanted to communicate with me, a shotgun blast of languages and words I didn't and couldn’t comprehend in my brain all at once. The migraine it caused coming and going in an instant as the snake’s voice slithered around in my brain.

“Why dost thou flee?” It asked.

It's voice biting into my brain, sinking in like a blade entering flesh. Why is that feeling familiar? I opened my mouth, wanting to respond but my voice was gone.

“Whither wilt thou go?” I postulated, knowing i cant answer it.

“Before thee is darkness.” It looked ahead of me.
“Behind thee is darkness.” It looked behind me and i turned my head to follow it's gaze.
“Above and below thee is darkness” It laughed, “there is darkness without end!”

I turned back to face forward, the way I was going and was met by the snake’s large serpentine eye as it blinked and studied me. It's feline tongue tasted the air before reeling back to look at me with both eyes again.

“And yet thou walkest. Why?” It came out more like a question meant for itself to ponder rather than me answer.

Thou knowest not what lieth beneath thy feet.
Thou knowest not what moveth in the deep.
Thou knowest not what hath watched thee since thou first opened thine eyes unto the world.” 

The serpent spoke into my mind as its body moved around me, coiling itself around to block any aspect of moving away. It formed a cone with itself, it's head peering down at me from the top. If it could smile it would be while it looked down at me.

“Fear not the darkness. Fear not the night. For darkness is merely the absence of light.”

And light…” The snake spoke again, a hint of envy and greed in its voice, saliva dripping from it's mouth on my exposed skin, a drop hitting my face, forcing me to blink. “…is merely the absence of me.” I heard the venomous tone rot at my skull as I opened my eyes to the sudden absence of the snake, replaced in it's spot in front of me was a door, metal in nature.

My perception of it didn’t make sense, it couldn’t. I was halfway into the floor and could see my own reflection start at my waist. The door however was at the same level a normal door would be, the door handle, a brass bar was at waist level. My hands moved to touch it. It was warm, like a blanket from the dryer on a cold winter day. 

I pushed on it, a light blinding spilled out from the opening and filled the infinite void around me. Wrapping me in a comforting warmth that returned the feeling i was missing, the memories i-what memories was i missing? The feeling of bad deja vu was pulled over my eyes like a blindfold as I opened my eyes to the interior of a hospital room met my gaze. The high pitch laugh of a cartoon sponge was on the CRT tv mounted in the corner of the room. A mirror sat hung on the wall and showed a reflection of me in it. My small frail child body had cables and tubes in my arms with machines beeping around me. My figure was gaunt, my cheeks sunken and the hospital gown hung loosely on my shoulders.

I saw my Mother, asleep in an armchair, the absence of my Father. A stack of cards, mostly drawn in crayon, messages saying to ‘get well soon!’ written on them was sitting on a table near a McDonald happy meal. I sat up, slowly, my abdomen sent a tingling feeling throughout my body as I did so, reaching for one of the cards I felt in my hand. The printer paper had balloons and flowers scribbled onto it. I opened it, more drawings and a small note.

“Hi Sparrow! My Mom said I should write you a card, she said you might not wake up soon but that you’ll want to see these when you do. I hope we can play again when you’re all better!” It was signed by Veronica, she always added spirals to the tails of her ‘S’s. Her card sent a feeling of butterflies into my heart as I set it back down on the table. Looking through the other cards, most were simple doodles and signed by names I didn't recognize. One was from my 5th grade teacher, she said she’s excited to see me back in class.

I set the last card down, the pain that had been isolated around my stomach radiated each time I moved. It didn’t help that i jumped in the hospital bed at the door to my room flying open, my father stepping Inside proclaiming, 

“Honey the sheriff got that little shit that-“ he stopped when he saw me, my mother was already on her feet and pulling me into a hug that hurt like Hell, she squeezed so hard I started to cry with her but from the pain rather than her joy. Behind my father, through my teary eyes I spotted someone else, someone that looked like me, a boy no older than eleven.

“Mom- ah, please?” I rasped out with a hoarse voice, she let go and apologized probably a million times over as my dad pulled up a chair, one for my mother to sit in and one for himself. The boy that looked like me walked over and hugged me as well, it felt like he was afraid he’d damage me. 

“Okay, so then that Doc was wrong about the memory loss then.” My Father spoke as he held my mother’s hand. “They were worried with how long you-“ he seemed to be at a loss for words for a second before the boy spoke.

“You died, Sparrow.” The boy said, “like for four whole minutes or something like that.” The boy looked at my parents for approval, they didn't say anything.

“I died?” I asked, my voice coarse and rough, leaving an iron taste in my throat as I coughed.

“Yes, just for a little. The doctors were worried that because there was a lack of oxygen to your brain might’ve caused some damage, maybe memory loss but you remember everything, right?” My mother asked as I stared at her before turning my attention to the mirror of a human in front of me.

“T-that's Lark, he’s your twin brother. Y-you remember that right, son?” My father asked me. I just nodded, mouthing Larks name, rolling it around in my mouth like a piece of candy. The name is familiar.

“Yeah, I remember.” I said, staring straight ahead of the three pictures hanging over my bed. The left one showed a shepherd leading a sheep away from a storm, the right guided one away from graveyard and towards a church, and the one in the middle one depicted the shepherd holding a torch and guiding one out of darkness. 

Despite the pain I lunged forward and hugged my brother again.