Nicholas' Light (A Horror Story)
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of memories boil to the surface: Nicholas and I singing carols, lighting candles, and opening the single present before being put to bed. We were one in those days—his happiness was my happiness, the virtue of twins. However, those joyous nights have been rendered heart-wrenchingly bitter. The loss of my twin has not only robbed us of other Christmases together, but also has ruined reminisces of our past.
Indeed, the first Christmas Eve without Nicholas was a somber event. We were a family incomplete without hope of repair. We went through the holiday motions, played our parts in the festivities, but without spirit. There was no relief in the next Christmas, or the ones after that. We dutifully gathered to exchange gifts and count our blessings, but we were grieving actors in a mirthless performance of someone else's lighthearted script.
When it came time to celebrate with my wife and daughters, I hid my loss so not to undermine their joy of the season. I have never shared my Christmas memories of my twin. However, while many invaluable new Christmas memories with my own family have been made, they don't dull the old. Bitter as ever the ache remains, a burn that bothers not to apologize or hide—nothing to say, nowhere to go.
And what of my brother? Has the coming of Christmas inflamed feelings of loneliness and isolation for him to smother his Light? Perhaps Nicholas' stoicism has reached its limit, he no longer able to withstand the seasonal melancholy. Or maybe he is still sinking, not yet having reached the lake bottom, enraged in a nameless terror of an infinite fall.
If I step in the other direction, while it may be a move toward safety, would be an accusation of treachery. There is an unbreakable bond between twins and I am indebted to Nicholas having depended on his Light countless times. As Christmas has its rules and honor, so do brothers, especially twins. I can't betray his trust. I won't take a step to the left.
Too cold to remain in place until the light of dawn, there is no other option than to walk forward: to abandon either position concerning the direction of the unfrozen part of the lake. Straight ahead is both a way home and a way down, a tightrope walk of familial duty. I must return to my wife and daughters to whom I am both provider and protector. However, this is a home that Nicholas isn't invited. If my twin decides he truly needs me, unbearably lonely in his watery grave, I would join him. Whether noble or foolish, I would honor Nicholas if this indeed is his final wish.
Setting a steady pace, I glide over the ice, my steps so light to make little sound although all noise is drowned out by the adrenalized rush of blood in my ears. The valley too dark to see the ice beneath me anyway, I close my eyes against the sudden pressure of the shimmering darkness.
I hold my breath during the high-tension walk, keeping the icy night out. Imagining my brother's final lungful of air, I wonder how long he held his. I only hope Nicholas got a glimpse of the lake floor before surrendering. But this is futile faith; somehow, by the special intuition shared between twins, I know that he didn't.
Pulled by invisible strings, I am going to the home that I deserve. In the soft drag of Christmas, everyone is drawn to the place they are most welcome. The path takes little effort. My fatigue falls away to a leaden numbness.
And tomorrow will bring another Christmas, again and again the same in its own indefatigable march. Its descent is a grinding journey from the wonder of children, to the obligation of adulthood, and finally, the forlorn nostalgia of old age, repeating these stages without a destination in which to arrive. Spent wrappings, empty boxes, and childhood memories that litter its wake are superficial scraps ultimately disposed of, insubstantial bubbles sent back to a forgotten surface.
Dread oozes from this Christmas-obsessed horror that surges under the lake. It's not difficult to imagine from where it came, drawing inspiration from all those drowning children and their desperate last thoughts of what they were leaving behind. Lamentations of lost joys from the past fed it and made it fat. The bottomless pit swells with these childish regrets, but in its endlessness still hungers, forever famished and insatiable.
On a harbor-less course, I walk far enough to have crossed the lake although not sure to what side. Daring to open my eyes, I expect darkness, but I am greeted with a soft, milky light. A single house stands some distance before me—gingerbread sweet with a celebration going on inside. Although I have never seen it before, and don't know to whom it belongs, it is strangely recognizable. Its familiarity is not in the whole but in parts as if the boards and beams of the house in which I grew up had been recycled and reused.
A warm glow spills from the windows and a cozy tendril of smoke curls from the stone chimney. However, what initially appears snug and homey fails the test of the subconscious, the illusion revealed by the lack of ugly details. While the house is lit with the precise orange of a hearth fire, it is a static color, no flickering in the light. The wisp of smoke is a suspended thread that doesn't dissipate as it rises, an impossibly unbroken vapor trail stretching into the heavens. So too does the tall, wild grass at the foundation betray reality. While it bends and wilts at the usual odd angles and degrees, none of it is tramped down—no one having ever approached its unworn front steps. The house is only a memory frozen in time, its hingeless door painted shut. It is a picture, empty behind the facade. Designed to draw the eye, it can never be occupied, only a blank canvas behind the master brushstrokes.
I hurry to the forgery despite the deception. The road tantalizes, stretching to the house although never reaching it, another perception taunt. The downhill slope aids my momentum. However, each step draws me no closer to that frozen home.
Although I have practiced for this journey, so many years a twin without the other half, the despair is not any less. Soon it will be Christmas, stripped of its pretense, a day of false hope with its promises of enlightened joy.
With a familiar loneliness, I trudge on in celebration of a slow sink into a bottomless pit.
About the Author
S.E. Casey is a writer living on the coast of New England. His existential fiction delves into the grotesque and bizarre washing up on the shores of the Hell of other people". His speculative fiction focuses on a collection of oddities, forgotten places, and fallen characters where the horror isn't the blood on the knife, but the loneliness of the void. He is currently working on a collection of Christmas themed short horror stories as well as mixing in the one-off, odd tale.
Website: secaseyauthor.wordpress.com
Other Short Stories by S.E. Casey:
HARLEQUIN MIDNIGHT
DEVIL MUSIC
THE CENTURY COVEN