Afraid of the Dark

Chapter Sixteen

The young American man cried harder as those words were stated, as if the fact that they had now been said out loud had finally made the reality of the situation sink in, the undeniable truth forcing itself to be accepted. He sat with his head in his hands, feeling an intense pain throbbing in his skull, his eyes covered to leave his sight in darkness. But he knew that even if he looked up, that sight would hardly change. His right eye was utterly useless. His left eye could see extremely dark splotches of colour, but that was only when the object which he was looking at was big enough and in enough light. Even then, it was impossible to identify what he was looking at. It was as if someone had taken a picture, blurred it, and then spray painted it in a translucent layer of black. It was horrible. Tyler and Mark stood in an unwavering silence as they listened to Ethan's cries, knowing that nothing which they said would help. This wasn't a problem which they could just talk away with words. They couldn't say, "It's going to be okay," because they had no idea if this was temporary or permeant. The eldest of the group knelt down beside Ethan and began gently rubbing his back, trying to give some sort of comfort. After some time without a single word being spoken, Mark did the only other thing which he could think to do; he walked in front of Ethan, knelt down, and hugged him. It was only a matter of seconds before the younger man had wrapped his arms around his older friend and began sobbing into his shoulder.

"I don't get how this happened..." Tyler closed his eyes and sighed sadly. "How did we get here? How did we get to this point?"

Mark shook his head slowly, feeling a festering anger inside of him as he heard his friend cry over the damage which Seán had caused him. Whether it was intentional or unintentional, the suffering which he had caused was too severe to simply shrug off as an accident.

"Do you think that Seán's here too? Or maybe Wade and Bob are in this place somewhere?" Tyler asked, looking at the door expectantly as if he was waiting for them to come in. "I didn't see them with you guys in the Hangout, so they must have escaped, I guess?" He stopped talking as he saw the tears welling up in Mark's eyes. The older man froze for a moment. "Wait... please don't tell me..."

Mark looked away and began hugging Ethan tighter. Although it looked like he was simply trying to comfort his younger friend, it was more to try and comfort himself as he too began to sob.

"Oh my god..." Tyler murmured, seizing up with shock. A minute or so passed, and then Tyler himself burst into tears. Mark reached out towards his older friend, putting his hand on his back, before pulling him in closer so that the three of them could form some sort of makeshift huddle in which they could all grieve together. There was nothing to be said. Nothing could be said. Nothing would be said, at least not for a while. They cried and cried until they eyes were stinging and their throats were burning, then they kept crying. Eventually, they had cried so much that there were no more tears left within them, and all they could do was make quiet snivelling noises as their breathing had become hysterical with sorrow and their minds had become exhausted with grief. No one knew how much time had passed, but all they knew was that somehow it was making them feel better. It certainly didn't fix anything, but it gave them some reassurance that they weren't alone.

At some point, Tyler spoke. His voice was weak, strained and croaky, making it so that the words could not be understood. He loudly cleared his throat and tried again. The group looked up slowly as he did so, breaking their circle of reassurance. "This place looks so familiar, but I can't remember where I know it from. I think we need to try and work out where we are, then we can plan on doing something about it." He was clearly trying to get the group to focus their attention on something other than their losses.

"It's Visage," Mark said with a small voice so that he wouldn't aggravate his jaw.

"It's what?"