Black Rain

 

It was the day after my best friend Dylan had gone missing for the third time that month. His girlfriend Marie called me in tears. As I walked into choir my head practically rattled with her sobs. I’d done what I could to comfort her, but Dylan’s parents divorce had destroyed much of what I recognized as my friend. He’d probably gone back to that gang he’d been talking about. I hoped he was alive. My own parents were practically finished off and I-

My knee gave out. 

The world swam in perfect synchronization with the bounce of my head on the ground.

I called my mom in a panic. My knee had given out once more on the way to the principal’s office. “It’s back!” I screamed. I was seven again, with my knee blowing up like a balloon. I trembled. I wanted my momma. 

My mom assured me it was gone. I screamed over the phone about my leg. People outside the door stopped and stared as the seven year old in me came back and took the wheel. 

We took a test. 

On a one to ten I scored an eleven for a relapse in Lyme’s Disease. When I first had it I was bedridden for four months, as it had dragged Bell’s Palsy along with it. For a kid who was jumping off high dives at two it was devastating. My self confidence never really recovered. One day I was walking and the next I was not. No one could tell me it couldn’t happen again.

Oh, if it had only just been that.

Because this time I began having hallucinations and lost bits of time. Lanes on the road would change and I’d find myself driving into suddenly appearing oncoming traffic. I’d be walking and shadows would flit in my periphery and I’d hear whispers… only for there to be nothing when I turned to face whatever it was. Sometimes I’d feel my body vibrating in time with the world, which all of a sudden was vibrating too! I’d reach out, grab a leaf off a tree, and feel the life fade out of it as the rest of everything hummed.

How I envied that leaf its death.

I did that a lot.

Sleep brought no relief. I’d wake up feeling more tired the next day, with spiky and sharp toothed abominations clawing their way into my befuddled brain. I’d sleep twelve, thirteen hours and felt like I’d not slept a wink.

Did I mention that Dylan was in the middle of his own personal meltdown? Turns out when you stick up for both sides of a divorce you learn all the dirty laundry. And was there dirty laundry or what! He’d show up at odd hours, tell me some new bloodcurdling thing, and then vanish. It took everything to focus on him, through the vibrating world and the things always moving around me, whispering things I could hear if I just listened a little harder- 

Right, Dylan was busy telling me he was the only lawful child of four siblings.

I’d shake my head, wince, and then try to help him fit that in his skull.

Oh, and Marie was pretty much worn out. So I’d drag my carcass (some days I’d need help getting out) of bed, go over, and just sit. And zone out as the whispering things would ask me for just one more moment. Just one more explanation about the micro expressions of my family and friends I’d always tried to ignore.

I’d go to bed and find myself attacked, as well as various strangers, one particular little girl always amongst them, screaming for help. And all I could do was fail them. Several of these dreams ended with me being decapitated, and then spending the next day finding the whispering was louder. Like, a lot louder. Almost audible, schizophrenic like. 

I wish I could say I was dramatizing this, but believe when I say I’ve watered it down.

Nothing has ever gone back to “normal” after that last year of highschool. I’ll sometimes see things darker than the shadows they move about in, but not in my periphery.

And not at night.

My family met up recently,  and no one with children could sleep. They’d complain of creepy dreams where they were trying to avoid… something. They’d swap the tales in mild amusement and bewilderment. I dreamed too. But not of being chased, but of fighting tooth and nail, appreciating comments about how much stronger I was than the normal fare, and long philosophical conversations with people who weren’t people, who were trying to explain their predations. I’d laugh, exhausted, and wake up, cross myself, and lay awake, more tired than I went to bed. I’d go to bed with the cross and scripture, and wake up feeling like I’d been in a brawl.

I didn’t hold out too long with that. One of the evenings  I almost collapsed. Years of a war I barely understood crashed in. I wanted desperately to be done. I missed the person I was before the war began, when I was seventeen, when the world, awful as it was, was not something out of an HP Lovecraft tale. When I could just sit in silence.

And then, for only the second time in my life, something soft and quiet stole into my mind, like a mother checking in on her child. At its presence I stilled. I didn’t have to work to hear it. This was only some of what it told me.

“Your seemingly eternal darkness is brighter than most souls at high noon… 

At the end of the ocean of horrors is rest. Fight on. I have always been with you. When your body breaks I break reality to keep you going. When your body should have died from heartbreak (and when aren’t you close to total heartbreak?) I call on Time to rejuvenate you. So close to death, physical and spiritual, you laugh and throw yourself in where others would shrivel and die.

Someday your allotted time will be up, and when it is those you have fought for will carry you home. And then you will sleep. Oh, those you have fought for will hold your broken form and give you the fruits of their labors. And your broken and beaten soul will be carried Home, to rest…”

My knees gave out from the sudden relief. I sobbed like a child. My shoulders tingled from the touch of something I couldn’t see. I leaned into the warm air. And I felt like the child I’d never been. A little spark, one which I’m not sure I’ve felt before, shines in the dark. I didn’t light it.

But that’s one more corner of my soul the nightmares can’t go. It is enough for now.