Nightwalker

by Ime Atakpa

  Mother whimpers on her way downstairs, loudly enough that it echoes through the hall. Even my disappearance cannot lay old habits to rest. My bedroom door slowly turns open, and the echoes of Mother’s whimpers intensify. I would imagine that with me gone, as she believes, she’d do all that she could to forget about me, to avoid anything that might remind her of her lost child. Yet she meanders in my room several minutes each morning.

  It must be difficult to raise a child. It must be difficult to lose one. But I’m not lost, am I?

  “You will be found again.”

  Tomorrow, I’ll wake up out on the pier with the waves splashing against my legs. Mother shall be behind me, preparing a picnic on that strip of wood. We’ll await Father’s return from his trip to the forest in search of branches and twigs. He’ll return bearing all the best pieces and help stoke the fire. Fish shall eagerly bite at our lines and we’ll just as eagerly reel them in. A beautiful moonlit dinner.

  I hear Mother break into tears downstairs.

  Father stands there, occasionally adjusting the handcrafted straw hat. Nothing can be done at this juncture. Shriveled, reddish-brown produce falls to the ground. He stirs, if only to trace the short descent of the tomato from its stalk. He watches for five, ten, fifteen minutes, taking care to wipe the sweat from his brow as it accumulates. I’m outside with him, equally dissatisfied with the results of Mother’s endeavor. But unlike him, her presence at the window does not go unnoticed by me. She watches straight-faced as her husband mourns the proliferating death. Ten minutes into his mourning, she trots outside. By now, he’s on his way in. She gets a closer look at the lines of stress that stretch across his face like an endless maze.

  “No good,” he tells her. One of the fallen tomatoes rests uneasily in his hand. His thumb caresses its shriveled skin. “This is what it’s like to get old too fast. You don’t have any time to enjoy anything or give anyone else joy. I remember this one.” He lifts the tomato up to the light. “Late bloomer but he endured like the rest. Grew quick as hell. Healthy as any of the others too. But then this happens.” Now he’s simulating the sound of all the tomatoes falling from their stalks at once, using the rotting piece in his hand to illustrate how quickly they descend. “I mean, shit, just look at it.” He holds out the vegetable. By now, the force of his theatrics has punctured a thumb-sized hole into it. Globs of tomato juice pour out thick as curdled milk.

  Mother frowns. “I should have done better.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He reassures her with a smile, all the while watching the tomato spill its guts onto the kitchen floor. “You live, you die, and that’s that.” The tomato thuds in the trashcan.

  They spend the day physically together, mentally apart, each reflecting on the last year. Outside, the sun runs its usual course across the sky, and soon the darkness hits. In the span of ten minutes, it darkened more than it had in the previous hour, and it seemed that only then, when their faces were obscured by that darkness, that my parents could bear to lift their heads and face one another.

  Father taps his fingers on the table. One, two, three. One, two, three. Rhythmic and soothing. Yet the words that followed that calm produced nothing of similar effect.

  “What happened on your twenty-fifth birthday?” Mother noticeably reels at the question, drawing back in her chair.

  “You know I don’t—”

  “How long are we going to pretend it didn’t happen?”

  She neither answers him nor makes any telling motions.

  “Brooklyn.”

  “My night walks stopped.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  Mother attempts to lean back further in her seat and distance herself more from her accuser, but she finds no escape except by fleeing the conversation. Her face slumps down, then rises slightly, just enough that her eyes can match his. “That was the day I finally felt like myself again.”

  “That was the day I came home from the store with your cake. I had it decorated exactly how I knew you’d like it and you told me that I—”

  “Clearly don’t know who I am,” she finishes.

  Father winces. His fingers slow their tapping. He leans back too. “That hurt.”

  “I know.”

  “It still hurts.”

  “I know.”

  “So why? What happened? I haven’t asked you about this, about any of it. I know you don’t like or want to talk about it, but I’d like at least a little closure.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “None of this has been fair.”

  Mother giggles awkwardly. “You’re right.”

  “So I’ve got to know. You can’t keep it to yourself forever.”

  Mother leans back and sighs. She purses her lips. They’re dry and cracked and crease, so she licks them then purses once more. “Remember when he was born and we were deciding on a name?”

  “You insisted on Hubert, I wanted Huey.”

  “You thought Hubert was too old-fashioned.” She smiles deeply at the thought, the first genuine smile to cross her lips in many months. “You said you loved me too much to argue. That made me happy.” Now her eyes begin to sparkle with wetness. “I hated that name when I turned twenty-five. I still hate it now.”

  Thereafter, they enter a place where neither can reasonably respond. Mother blinks rapidly and the tears splash against the table. Father maintains his composure as best he can, turning over this new revelation in his head. And I, the invisible onlooker, lament at this tragedy, that my name should have been bestowed by a woman bereft of a clear mind. So many years later, she discovered in a life-altering epiphany that she was not the person she had been for eighteen years prior.

  Nor am I. And now I’m out of time. It’ll never bring me answers.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Father sobs uncontrollably. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know you. I don’t know what’s happening. Our boy is dead and I don’t know you.”

  “Please, Dylan.” Mother’s voice trembles more vigorously than his. “I was…”

  I needn’t hear more to understand the depth of my ailment. It is one which transforms beyond recognition, bastardizes the laws of conception. If I take Mother’s words for what they are, then I must come to terms with a new reality.

  Different.

  That word gains new meaning tonight, for I am an otherworldly creature; my very own self has been stolen away and replaced by something else. For a moment I meditate, concentrate. I try to channel all my thoughts toward self-discovery. I search myself for clues that my feelings and thoughts and emotions are all truly my own, that I’m not the soulless puppet of another’s will.

  But at this point, it seems absurd to still care.

  Then father speaks. “Brooklyn?”

  She looks up, tears still streaking from her eyes.

  “Those voices you’ve been hearing. I’ve heard them too. I’m afraid we’re both going crazy, that everything is just too much.”

  “We’re not crazy, Dylan. We’re not.”

  “No, I think we just might be.”

  All on account of me. Every attempt to reach them, to prove to them that I’m not forever lost, only exasperated their sadness. What good would it do now to move forward in fighting this thing that I’ve become. What have I become? I believe I know. I believe I’ve always known.

  Should I further pursue the link between my world and theirs, what awaits? Even if I could reverse this, they’ll love me for a few years more, then I’ll transform into someone else. On my twenty-fifth birthday, they’ll have again lost their son; and Father, who has lived on the brink of the fantastic, shall dive further into his misery, deeper into the bottles that tempt him.

  The storm calls. I know what I must do.

  There are moments deep in the night when all hope has escaped me and the gentle hum of my parents’ breathing pulls sadness to the forefront of my emotions. I hear the malice build outside the walls of my room. It thuds against the windows, c
rashing down unrelentingly throughout the night and well into the morning. All through that time, I place myself close to the window, close enough to see the dryness outside, the stillness of the bushes and trees. I can see the dark blue cosmos spangled with glitter, unobstructed. Yet still I hear the crash of rain, the scream of thunder, the bright flashes of lightning that threaten to tear the house apart.

  On nights like tonight, sentimentality rules over me. Demons hold secret council in dark corners of my mind, plotting my downfall. They wish to see me destroyed; I hear them, even their faintest whispers. And I see them outside, in that terrible storm—I see their faces, their many faces, staring at me through the glass, all twisted and anguished.

  I sing with the demons and bask in their sorrowful song. Are my tears not sadness’s rain? Are my sobs not claps of thunder shaking the room? Am I so different from the storm raging outside that I should continue apart from it?

  Submission seems a pleasant release from this unending tragedy. The fear in Mother’s eyes to hear my voice once more…Father’s distrust for her supposition of that reality. I returned home a changed man, the harbinger of their assured destruction. Closer than ever before to securing answers to my many questions, I’ve come upon an insurmountable obstacle the likes of which even gods would tremble before. It reaches me through the malice of its intent, its indescribable pressure. It’s no heaviness—no, not at all—nor a force of any physical strength. This pressure instead bogs the mind with its thousand suggestions of surrender.

  And I very well might surrender to this temptation. Nothing else exists for me here. I’ve become a monster to the ones I love. Irony loves me so greatly. I am an object of desire transformed into one of reproach.

  Behind the deep pale of blue, beyond the boundaries of the earth, other worlds await. Mustn’t they? Mustn’t there be a faraway land where my family never inherited this curse? Behind the curtain of darkness, mustn’t there be light? Or do these shadows only cast darker shadows?

  I look out the window at the faces of the storm, clumped together in a mass that’s simultaneously black and white yet not gray. Not something betwixt the two nor something apart from it, but something synergistic that draws from itself.

  “Come,” the faces demand. They grow larger in the frame of the window. I see their mouths clearly now, how they writhe in untold agony, beg me to bring them peace though it should be me who begs of them.

  “I’m coming,” I tell them. An autonomous understanding between myself and the tendrils summons them from me. But unlike any other time I’ve broken through the barrier, the image before me does not become clearer before it darkens. Instead, it becomes immediately black, immediately bleak, and off in the distance I see the faces clearer than ever, morphed together into an abstraction very much resembling a larger face. A face built of faces. When any of those small mouths opens, a thunderous croak fills my ears with misery; and whenever the larger mouth is drawn into motion, everything flashes white. The amalgamate face approaches me with unimaginable speed, its constituent parts screaming their vile demands.

  “Come! Come to us!” Malicious energy sloshes away from the form, sizzling against the air around it. Steam obstructs the face now, though it hovers so near that no obstruction could hide its grotesquery. “Come! Come!” Human instinct tells me to do no such thing; that same instinct carries me by its own power away from the approaching form. The distance between myself and the faces steadily increases. Farther and farther away, I’m ferried by my flight response, unaware where it desires to take me.

  “Come!” their voices echo in the distance, far enough behind that a cursory glance reveals only a speck of white, a leaking sphere that shrinks all the while. Soon enough, that ball of white disintegrates into nothing, and all that remains is the dark. Something, though, maintains its grip on me. It continues to carry me along with unyielding urgency.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Your homes are many,” a voice answers me. For one reason or another, this response doesn’t startle me. With all that has transpired in the last year, this is the tip of a colossal iceberg. There are questions, and there are answers, and if there’s anyone willing to supplement one with the other, I cannot see the logic in being bothered by it.

  “This is the only home I know.” Mother and Father appear in my mind’s eye, clutching each other. Father tilts a bloody hand, releasing fragments of the broken television into a trashcan. “My only home is lost to me. If they truly think me dead, what use is there to return? Their hope was my hope, and now that hope is nothing.” I pay special attention to the words as they escape me. How many twenty-year old boys speak as such? It’s been so long since I’ve heard anyone’s voice but Mother’s, and Father’s. How should I know?

  “You are lost again. You will be found again.”

  “Where?” I await the voice’s instruction, but it never comes.

  -XV-

  A Road Revisited

  Even disregarding the emergence of the storm, my disposition hardly allows a continued presence here. Melancholy coats every wall of my parents’ house and their suffering furthers my own despair. I peer into their trembling eyes and see myself reflected within. I watch them mope around soullessly, stumbling through every day; I hear them talk apathetically to one another. Hours, weeks, months, all of it. All of it weighs too heavily, and that weight stands too immutably to be affected by someone like me, someone without form.

  In all this suffering, I refused myself the one pleasure I had next to my parents, but now I see no other sanctuary than his.

  As I leave my room, I refuse to turn to face the mirror. It has controlled my mind for far too long. I refuse to creep into my parents’ room and see them off or say my final farewells. Those words, after all, would never reach them as intended. And as I move down the spiraling stairs and through the foyer toward the front door, I actively refuse the thoughts that bombard me. Every counter, every picture frame, every scratch on the wall. These relics connect me to my youth.

  No more of it.

  I pass out of the house and onto the street. Up the road, many miles from here, my final bastion awaits me. I shudder to think that it too should be hollow. Alas, I can only pray that at my arrival, Rinaldo’s lodge shall provide the comforts I have grown to appreciate from it.

  It feels as though I’ve arrived at my destination no sooner than I depart. I approach the door confidently, already touched by the atmosphere of this place. Since I last visited, much has changed. A bed of flowers encircles the lodge and the lawn stands out, blissfully green against the greater area which boasts darker colors. The building itself retains its muted coloration, dulled by years of wear. I have to wonder what keeps Rinaldo from refurbishing the building as he’s done with the lawn. Taken by these thoughts, I nearly forget my purpose in returning here. I want desperately to forget that this place, of all places, carries with it the last of my hope. I move closer to the door and am surprised, for it swings open of its own accord.

  “Welcome back, Hubert.” Rinaldo appears at the door’s opening and greets me warmly with a bow. His outstretched arms gesture for me to come inside. Immediately, I feel his abode fill me with coolness, distinct from the iciness back home. I’m but a few feet in when he interrupts me with an inquiry. “Have you found what you were looking for?”

  “What?” I catch his wife darting from behind the counter into the adjacent room. Or so I stupidly think (she’d, after all, have little reason to sneak around her own home). My eyes shift back to Rinaldo who’s now behind the front desk, leaning over it to face me. During my last visit, the absence of my strength disallowed my observation of the lodge. Returning here with clarity reveals the intricate designs etched into the woodwork. It must have taken years to fully emblazon the desk with all these runic images.

  “You have found it, have you not?” His voice steals me away from thought.

  “What do you mean?” His line of questioning fully contradicts my expectation. Mo
reover, I cannot determine to any degree what manner of object he deigns I’ve been searching for. “I only want a place where I can rest and be at peace.”

  He laughs at this. “Don’t they all? It’s been a long time since you last stumbled in here. I nursed you and released you hoping you’d be a different man when I saw you next.”

  How curious. “Were you so certain I’d return?”

  “Where else would you go?” He laughs and leans back, circling around the desk to its front.

  “I don’t know.” Of course I don’t know. Being in my present form, I—

  Rinaldo’s lips curve into a crooked smile.

  “You can see me?”

  His smile deepens. “I can.”

  “How?” The distance between us seems to shorten, the floor panels discreetly sliding beneath each other until the two of us—Rinaldo and I—stand face to face, so close that I can feel his breath intrude on me. Yet we’re just as far apart as ever we’d been, separated by half the length of the room; but I can feel his breath.

  “By now, you must have accepted what you are. It’s why you’ve returned here.” He jolts up, suddenly, motioning to the adjacent room. “I’d offer you a drink, but I’m sure you understand that you’re beyond that. Though if there are any other pleasantries you’d enjoy, do ask.”

  Silence is my answer. Rinaldo shrugs at the sight of me, and retreats into the kitchen to prepare himself a drink. He’s gone only a few moments—mere seconds—before returning from the kitchen with a steaming cup. He sips. “Shame you can’t have anything.”