I Am the Quiet One That Waits in the Dark

I am the quiet one that waits in the dark.

I sit in the wooden chair in the attic, and I gaze through the window.

Time passes and season change. The falling leaves are ever triumphant over the warm breezes of summer. Thunderstorms and sheets of rain wash away the snow that weighs upon the earth as heavy as the guilt inside me.

I sit in the chair, and I observe the world outside the window.

Sometimes people are outside. Old people, their faces wrinkled and their movements slow. Young people, their laughter loud and hearts beating fast.

It’s easy for me to tell when the people are sad or when they are so happy that they skip with joy down the sidewalk.

I don’t blink.

My foot might just move a hair, or my head might tilt ever so slightly.

The stone facade of my statuesque body cracks when I move. These cracks like spiders travel along my spine and reach my arms or legs, and in those moments that I can almost remember how to move those extremities.

I become one with the house again when the cracks fill again. One with the chair again.

I sit in the darkness, and I stare into the light. I don’t know what I am waiting for. The question floats out of my mind as soon as it enters.

The cracks fill and my body solidifies into darkness once more.

Dust settles through me into the chair. I watch as an ant moves across the uneven floorboards. Where is it going, so steadfast and focused on its goal? Questions leave my mind as soon as they enter it, leaving me in darkness.

Living things always run. They run to find their next meal and they run to find love. They are always changing, never stopping. Forever they are scrambling towards the future.

A loud noise from below breaks me from my observations.

The thumping noise continues, breaking the deep silence of my world.

My head turns slightly toward the wooden staircase that leads to the lower floors. It’s there, in the corner of my vision.

The spider cracks form across my back and I hold still, fearing what might happen if they reach my arms.

Laughter in the house joins the pounding noise.

This sound is supposed to happen outside the house. Never inside the house.

Something is wrong.

Time passes, and the cracks don’t fill. I worry about what may happen to me. Will I shatter into a million pieces? Will the ants carry off pieces of me to their secret homes? What piece of me will it take? Does it matter?

The noises startle the ant. It scrambles away toward some lonely safe place. It runs through the dust and I pretend that I too am dust. Perhaps dust is me.

The noises continue for hours and seem to worsen as the sun drops low on the horizon.

A high laughter rings throughout the house, and I hope it stops soon. They bring heavy things into the house and drop them on the floorboards.

My attic is supposed to be quiet. My attic is deep and dark and nothingness.

The noises are relentless. There is nothing I can do to stop them.

I retreat into my darkness and wrap the shadows around myself like a freezing blanket. The cracks in my body are like lava oozing out of a volcano.

The warm brightness of life has entered my home, and I am not prepared.

I awaken as the sun sets and the rays of light that stretch across the floor shrink into nothingness.

The loud noises from downstairs are gone, and stillness fills the spaces of my sanctuary.

Dust fills my eyes and lungs. The welcoming embrace of the deep darkness is what I enjoy the most. I bind myself in the heavy guilt I always feel, yet never understand.

My cracks fill like cement poured across broken pavement. A flash of a memory screams into my mind and I remember the smell of wet cement and my guilt. The guilt is always there, lurking within my darkness. What did I bury in the cement?

I close my eyes and let the thick blackness of my attic sweep me away to oblivion.

Time passes like mud through a silk screen, its movement imperceptible and undistinguishable from the passage of the moon away from the earth. Slow and steady, but not worrisome.

Only one day has passed since I last heard the loud noises from the first floor.

I haven’t marked the passage of two days in a row in ages. All days intermingled into the great expanse of time into one day.

This baffles me, and while I ponder, loud noises interrupt my thoughts.

Things are thumping, glass is breaking. High-pitched currents of electricity hum through my attic and create unfamiliar vibrations.

This noise makes my eyes open.

A living stream of coursing light passes through my walls like a torrent of relentless rain.

I slam my body against the wall, and the tide stops.

A person yells from far away.

The lightning in my home is gone, and I am pleased

As I sit and contemplate the new cracks forming across my back, I sense a life force in the attic, something much larger than an ant.

I’m not sure how long it’s been since I had a soul in the darkness with me, and this one is purer than any I had met before.

The spider cracks spread as I turn to the wooden stairs. My curiosity outweighs my caution, and the cracks race towards my elbows.

“Hello? What are you?” a small voice says.

A small soul stands at the top of the wooden stairs, in a place where there should only be darkness, not souls.

The words to describe her leak into my mind from a long-neglected past.

I can feel her emotions.

Her hands shake, but still she stands, staring at me. Still, she greets me. She is uncertain, but bravery fills her heart more than any soul I have encountered.

The soul is a small girl, and the name for her blue clothing enters my mind from the void.

Dress

She wears a blue dress and a red ribbon in her hair.

Colors. These are colors I haven’t seen in my attic. They remind me of the sky outside my window on a clear day and at sunset when the sun sinks low.

The girl stands as still as dust. She isn’t like the ant. She is still like me. I like the girl.

Her eyes are wide and blue, and her mouth opens and closes, but no sound escapes.

I remember that she had said something. Had she greeted me? I can’t recall.

I cannot greet her back.

Instead, I stand from the chair. A breeze from the new world startles me as more cracks form across my legs.

The girl screams and runs down the wooden stairs, her red ribbon forgotten in the dust.

I scream as the blackness that held my legs shatters.

What would happen to me now?

As I look at the red ribbon on the floor, I think of a small soul in a blue dress.

I don’t sit in my wooden chair. I stand on legs that tremble and quake like new branches just grown from a tree, fresh from the seed.

The red ribbon is there now, on the dusty floor, and I count the threads in the delicate silk.

I remember numbers. I remember the names of things.

Somewhere in the void, I listen to a memory of a lost dress of silk. It was white and long, and special to a soul that was special to me. I loved someone that work a long white dress.

As I stare at the ribbon and try to remember, a knife slams through my memory and the details scatter again. I’ll never remember that soul with the white silk dress.

The redness of the silk fills my vision and I detect souls in the darkness with me. Light enters the attic and touches my shaking legs.

Large souls in the shape of men enter the darkness and carry with them a large lantern that spills light into my precious shade.

My legs shake under me as the three men stomp into the room, their eyes not on me but on the wooden beams above and the broken boards of the floor.

They hold strange objects that glint in the lantern’s light and make loud noises with their mouths at each other.

Speaking.

I step backward and my back presses against the window.

One man walks toward me and places the lantern at my feet.

The man’s soul moves through me and a current of energy causes my fingers to break free from the icy darkness that had enveloped me for so long.

I grasp for the darkness. I want to be inside of my shell of blackness, not outside in this warm world of loud noises and fast moving souls.

Thoughts race inside of the man’s head, but he doesn’t notice me as he stands inside my body, looking out the window at the ground.

Why does he not notice me? He is occupying a space that I had occupied for many countless years.

The men make more loud noises at each other and they poke and prod at the wooden beams of the ceiling, the glinting tools held in proud hands. They pull loose beams and nail new ones. They move their hands across the space that hadn’t changed in years.

I wait for them to stop. Why are they destroying my darkness?

One soul sits in my wooden chair and I bristle. My head tilts away to hide the spectacle. That is my chair, something I’ve kept for longer than I knew.

When I look back, my chair is gone. The men had thrown it into the far corner, into a pile of broken boards and other empty things that they had gathered.

Then, the souls of the men leave, their lantern moving with them and the light clinging to them like vines.

One soul bends to the ground in front of the red ribbon. I take a step forward.

As he walks out of my darkness, he takes the ribbon with him.

I remember loneliness, and something else, something heavy.

I am heavy with sadness.