Nightwalker

by Ime Atakpa

  I know his heart and his despair. And I know my own self-loathing for allowing our suffering to last so long. These feelings together must produce a force strong enough that I can break through the wall separating us.

  His trembling hands take care in placing the coasters. He disappears into the chamber of spirits and reemerges with all the day’s consumables packed tightly on a black tray. This tray finds its place at the center of the table, and its contents are delegated methodically to the coasters.

  Sweat grows in beads on Father’s forehead.

  He visits the refrigerator next, procuring the usual mixers, mostly soda and juice. Those too he places on coasters. An unsteady pointer finger bobs up and down to tally the cans and bottles. Content with his spread, Father finally takes a seat, slouching backward. A lazy smile rips across his mouth. The accumulated sweat on his brow now drips periodically into a small pool on the table. He wipes at it with his sleeve. Tremors enter his arm as he does. They drag through his limbs into his chest and down his body. Now his feet join in the procession of discomfort, tapping wildly at the ground.

  “Get a grip,” he tells himself, unconvincingly. He’s yet to begin the consumption, but already his shirt darkens with sweat. His face twists in mournful patterns, simultaneously giddy and tortured; and some subtly glaring clue hidden in his countenance calls me to greater attention.

  Any overextended muscle loses its functionality. Like those lame muscles, Father’s capacity to interpret the signals of his own body have diminished over the passing week. Or has desire taken so great a hold on his autonomy that even his rationality cannot overcome the heavy grip that clasps the first bottle at its neck and lifts it to the lip of his tall glass cup? His hand struggles to steady the bottle against the rim of the glass. In a hard jerk, he pours a splash of beer into the glass. It transforms immediately into foam. Then he draws the bottle back in a long, uncoordinated swipe.

  He refuses to allow the foam to settle before lifting the glass’s lip to his own. Father takes a large gulp, then chokes. This setback hardly convinces him to slow his drinking. No sooner does his coughing end than the glass returns to his lip. Another large gulp. He exhales, pants. The sweat spreads across his shirt and, in a moment of clarity, Father’s eyes appear mournful. He sees himself for the monster he has become.

  His hand lowers, but not enough. The glass never touches the table. Quickly as the moment arrives, it flees, and Father returns to his cruel, self-destructive self. He guzzles down the rest of the drink. Then the glass clangs against the table.

  Father breathes in and out through his mouth. He looks around the room as though anyone at all could possibly witness his trauma—as though he knows I lurk in the wing, watching him destroy himself. He pours another drink, this time slowly enough that it does not foam. This next drink, he finishes in a matter of seconds, just before slouching in the chair. And now the intoxication sets in, and the craving becomes an uncontrollable desire.

  For his next drink, Father mixes liquor into a glass of orange juice and downs the concoction in a matter of seconds. He burps and laughs. Redness sets into his face dark as a blood moon.

  “That’s enough, isn’t it?” He reaches forward. “That’s enough.” He takes a bottle of beer in hand, raises it to his face, and pulls the cap loose with his teeth. Froth erupts from the bottle, rolling in thick streams down its side and onto the table. Father’s eyes widen in disbelief, and that disbelief drives him to quick action: his mouth goes straight for the bottle. Nonetheless, the frothing continues; he chokes again on it, spitting foam back onto the table.

  “Goddammit.” He runs a pensive hand through his hair. He sees himself again as the monster. But when he looks back at the bottle of beer, still half full, disgust gives way to desire. Just like that, what remains of the beer disappears down his throat. He gives a hearty gasp, then hiccups.

  I move closer to him, in utter puzzlement that he could continue along this path knowing perfectly well how this event shall conclude.

  His body moves in heavy lurches now. The parting of his sensory prevents him from batting an eye when one of his lurches sends an empty can hurtling from the table. What does an empty can matter to a man in search of his own demise? What does the mess matter to a man who won’t exist to clean it? He takes up the bottle of liquor once more and refills his old fashioned glass, except now he’s doubled his previous portion. The little space that remains in the glass, he fills with the orange juice. I watch in utter disbelief as my father drinks more than any man can reasonably endure. Without inhibitions directing him from the precipice of poisoning, fate leads him to snuff out his own flame.

  Unacceptable. This is the moment my actions might influence the world. The circumstances align themselves perfectly, and though I don’t yet completely grasp the intricacies of my powers, I cannot continue to watch my father linger over this dark pit. The necessity of answers loses value in the face of my ultimate responsibility to him, that it not be my disappearance that catalyzes his death.

  Despair rears its head and grapples me, and Father’s tribulations become my own. A surge of spontaneity drags me forward. Today I must call upon that impulse to prevent this fatal drink. I focus intently on the glass slowly rising to his lips. Something physical grows in me, and I channel that raw energy toward Father. The energy ripples outward from my gut and a terrible heat engulfs me. It feeds on itself and multiplies, and it centralizes. I know no words to properly describe the flurry of sensations which now rule over my body. Apart from them all—no, at the very core of them—a lightless spark flickers, and a spherical screen emerges just ahead of me. It projects a cold body drowning in its own vomit. Shattered bottles surround the drowning corpse. Blood seeps from its arms and legs and head, infusing the vomit with the corpse’s last remaining warmth.

  Then something unexpected happens. A film drops slowly over my vision, coloring the world around me in a splendor that I’d long ago forgotten. The gray, marble table seems to glow and the pallid tone of Father’s face regains some color. The sun outside grows unbearably bright, so much so that all the world around me succumbs to a blinding whiteness. Father dissipates in that great light, his arm lifting the glass to his lips. And still, the light grows steadily in strength until its bounty surpasses the limitation of description.

  In this moment, I desire something greater than my own reemergence. I alone might succeed at preventing Father’s next and final drink.

  But from that limitless light emerges a fog-like darkness to devour it. Despair knows no other form than this, this darkness that threatens to end everything. It reveals itself to me in all its wretchedness. The fog seeps from Father’s mouth and coalesces into a pitch-black cloud. It bobs forward and howls a familiar cry, and I know that my desperation must meet this despair.

  Nothing more matters, and there is nothing greater to be desired. With that thought comes tendrils of indeterminate color. They sprout from me, travel outward, penetrate the divisive film. Their ends sprout appendages that file out like fingers, prying open a window into the world where Father sits in his sweat, glass nearly tilted back into his mouth.

  “Stop!” The smoky beast delivers itself into the fingers of my tendrils. They oscillate visibly, shaking the cloud of darkness. Through the window that divides visible and invisible, a deafening scream reaches me. Trails of red drip from Father’s hand. He clutches it with the other.

  “Shit! Fucking—shit!” Already, he’s moving out of my reach. Rushing water replaces the sound of dripping blood, all of it playing over an anthem of expletives.

  Shattered glass lays across the table and floor, floating in the remains of his drink.

  -XII-

  Black and White

  What a marvelous discovery.

  Mother turns her head slowly toward the chair, an air of indifference about her. When I next direct my tendrils into the room, the chair stirs more assuredly. One leg lifts roughly half an inch from the ground, wobbles mid-air, and falls bac
k onto the tile floor. She cannot ignore the snap of impact or the momentary unsteadiness that follows it. Like anyone might, she acts out of curiosity, searching the ground for whatever mechanism set the chair into motion.

  “Dylan?” she yells up the stairs to no response. She tries Father’s name again, and again receives nothing in return. Her eyes never turn away from the chair. Even in her retreat from the dining area, one eye stays focused on that object of intrigue, anticipating its next movement.

  I spend the better part of these next few days flexing my newly discovered powers. It required but a single moment feeling that tension for me to understand what it was and how to wield it; and what peaks I’ve reached since then! I move through time with relative ease, stretching and compressing it without the pains that initially ailed me. I come to only when one of my parents returns home.

  The barrier that divides us collapses beneath the weight of my new power. However, it receives my anguish as recompense. Recalling my first memory of this power suffices. I think of Father on the cusp of death and revisit the trauma of that moment. Then the veil appears to me. I imagine myself shouting through the barrier, see Father jump in wonderment at the glass shattering in his hand. From the image of Father’s blood pouring from his shrapnel-studded hand, I stoke the ethereal heat. That unearthly energy gathers, and I command it on the other side.

  It takes concentration and purpose, but so long as I know the end I wish to achieve, the energy carries my will. The limitations of my ineffectuality lapse, allowing for minor disturbances in the visible world.

  Since my first breach of that barrier, I’ve observed that bright filter in greater detail. It always exists between us, a semi-transparent coating that separates wherever it is I exist from the reality I seek to return to. It filters out light and smell and taste and touch, and now I might make sense of my inability to experience the world as I once had.

  And those tendrils of light that appeared from me that first day, I’ve come to understand are extensions of myself, the physical manifestations of my emotional energy. Meaningful preparation of that energy allows the barrier to be punctured and the two realms to be joined, as much as two such realms may be linked. Of course, these matters are far beyond my total understanding, but I take what I’ve gleaned gratefully. So long as the visible world is numb to my full presence, these ghostly interferences shall suffice in serving me for the duration of this condition. My mind runs wildly over the myriad possibilities inherent to one who may act yet cannot be seen.

  Despite the jubilation this revelation elicits, another revelation produces an equal, opposite force. I come to understand now that the condition I’ve for so long labeled as invisibility is something quite different. Rather, I am physically detached from the remainder of the world, incapable of growth or hunger or sleep. Nonetheless, I am not without my life. I need only reinvigorate it with the fullness of the physical world. Yes, I believe I must now acknowledge that this place I’ve been banished to exists separately from true physicality.

  Something else, too, remains to be acknowledged. It sits on the edge of revelation, tempting me to reach out for it, but I do not. It begs that I make peace with it, but I do not. There are things yet to be done.

  Nearly two weeks have gone since I first breached the barrier. A beautiful Saturday evening, livened by clear skies and gentle warmth. Father lays across the couch, arms folded and head buried in his arms. His head sits on its side to face the television. No more news. These days, he refuses to subject himself to local crises, instead opting for sitcoms and dramas. I give all my concentration to the phantom words I wish to project into his world and envision the gateway in my mind’s eye. With only the thought, the bright film returns, though not nearly as blinding as when first I summoned it. Blackness draws in from Father and from myself, clouding the light no differently than before. I wait until the darkness settles before extending those tendrils outward to shred open a hole in the film.

  “Come here!” I shout. My ambitions pour into the tendrils which convert those ambitions into their physical manifestation and relay them into the world beyond the window.

  “Come here!” The words emerge perfectly. How marvelous it is to hear my voice bounce from the walls or echo upstairs. How pleasant it is to know that all of me is not lost, that the old adage literally rings true here. Man can do whatever he sets his mind to. And my mind latches to prospects of freedom from this purgatory. This power is my first taste of the release I seek.

  “Dylan?” Mother’s voice calls from upstairs. She prematurely makes her way down. “Was that you?”

  Father chuckles sheepishly. “Are you alright?”

  She emerges at the bottom of the stairs, turns immediately to see him roll onto his back and cock his head backward over the arm of the couch. “This isn’t funny,” she tells him.

  “I know it’s not. I’m worried. I really am.”

  “Have you been—”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  He hasn’t. Not since the incident with the broken glass. A new layer of plaster covers the chamber of spirits.

  Mother jerks nervously. I catch her eyes staring into nothing, seeking out the source of the sound that seemingly failed to reach my father. They avoid speaking for a moment, both rattled by Mother’s line of interrogation. Father rolls back onto his stomach and returns to watching television.

  “What about you, Lyn?”

  Her eyes narrow. “No.”

  “It’s just the TV?”

  “It’s a familiar voice.”

  He chuckles again, more reserved than before. “This again?”

  She turns back to him, perplexed and awe-stricken at his ignorance, and demands that he not tease her. “You really didn’t hear that? Someone said ‘come here,’ I swear it.”

  “You’ve sworn a lot of things lately.” Doubtlessly hoping not to appear too apathetic to Mother’s suspicions, his wide grin settles as he thinks on the matter a moment then shakes his head with a sigh. His next words are those of comfort, wishing his wife well and that she banish the thoughts of my vanishing, and of my unproven return, from her mind.

  Mother heard from upstairs. How could he not hear from mere feet away? He felt the effect of me shattering the glass. If physical contact affects him, so too must verbal.

  Right?

  Without sustained research to confirm this assumption, I can never be entirely sure of its validity, though I cannot imagine any reason for him not to hear. Two weeks’ worth of constant experimentation proves that my voice can be heard. If for any reason, Father’s ears are deaf to my voice, it would seem that my efforts are best focused on conveying my presence here tangibly enough to Mother that she might understand and accept the state of affairs despite Father’s ongoing disbelief.

  Great schemes arrive at my consciousness, passing through me in waves. Each endorses itself as the ultimate task; each appears no less credible than the last.

  Mother returns upstairs slowly and silently, checking over her shoulder to determine Father isn’t snickering at her naiveté.

  Lest this divide grows greater than my powers allow me to bridge, I must move quickly in my endeavors. I filter through each new idea with heavy criticism, determined not to inadvertently produce the wrong impression. Thus far, I’ve fiddled with the house inconsequentially, calling out through the window and shaking chairs. But If I am to transcend the barrier between us, I must be willing to take necessary risks.

  My room becomes a temple during the time I spend filtering through these ideas. I am the master of an endlessly flowing waterway, the master of the sluice controls; my mind subjects itself to these unyielding torrents, cut away from the greater world.

  I ruffle the sheets just before Mother gets in bed. She panics.

  I say goodnight as her eyes flutter closed. They jerk back open.

  I demand that Father stops when he glances at the chamber of spirits. His paranoia peaks.

  I reach out to touch Mother. She shirk
s away and shivers.

  I hide away in silence and listen to her cry.

  I call out in the night for her, and she covers her ears. I beg that she accepts me; she instead hums loudly enough to disrupt the sound of my voice.

  I wait a day, a week, a month. They’ve both regained their composure. They’ve come to peace with my disappearance—they’ve almost come to peace—but I cannot let them believe that their son is lost to them. Not when I linger at their bedside each night, wishing them sweet dreams. Not when I’m closer than I’ve ever been to rejoining them.

  I stand outside where Mother tends to her garden and reach a thin tendril outward. Hardy onion stems sprouted from the earth weeks ago. They now wilt from neglect. Mother kneels next to the plant, its browning leaves drooping in the sunlight. Even vegetables wilted under her care; and I, the first of her failures register my presence to no fanfare. I lift a leaf of the plant for several seconds—that’s all I can muster—and she spies its brief sturdiness. When the leaf falls limp once more, her hopes go with it.

  Contrary to all reason, my discovery of the way has failed to alleviate the pain of spectating my parents’ decline into hopelessness. Every intervention only stirred their paranoia, and everything I dreamt I’d be building fell asunder before even the first brick could be laid. Only last month, happy endings seemed inevitable for all three of us. Winter is here in all its coldness and promises to hold fast long after these months pass. Fate designed a different conclusion to my story. Failure cut deep, whittled away at every opportunity for escape. Only last month did I have hope.

  And what of today? Wednesday? Friday? Tuesday? How long has this been my life? “Not long enough,” I tell myself, for my parents still cling subtly to the thought of my return. Although they project an air of acceptance for their loss in the presence of one another, I’ve seen them. Many times, too many times, I alone witnessed their true faces. Besides, I’ve touched them and called to them, and Mother has heard my voice too often to forget that I am her son or to discount the possibility of my return.