There is no trick.
When Daddy comes into the room and turns out the light, the darkness falls on her like a shroud. Then she closes her eyes. She's aware of the irony: it's black behind her eyes, too.
Just as black as inside her room, where everything - her desk, her treasure chest of stuffed animals, the posters on the walls - is just a hint in the twilight. Shadowy. Nonexistence.
She hates it when things no longer have edges.
When things dissolve, in the darkness.
The darkness, the state of suspension, the eraser, the equalizer; here everything tips over, here the world comes apart at the seams, here suddenly everything is possible and nothing is impossible. In the darkness.
She squeezes her eyes shut and claws her fingers into the blanket cover to remind herself that at least something is real.
Just as real as the branches scratching at her window, as the gusts of wind in the treetops, as her hammering heart.
She is real. Daddy is real.
The monsters are not real. The monsters that exist in the darkness. The monsters that live under the black sun.
She knows she is too old to believe in such things. She knows it, and she hates herself for it - but some things can't be changed.
Behind her closed eyes, she can remember the monsters' coppery stench again: of rusting metal and leaking machine oil.
Outside her bedroom door, the stairs creak.
It's Daddy. Of course. Daddy going downstairs for a nightcap, as he always calls it, and the girl is aware that he means whiskey.
The second step of the stairs creaks.
Daddy. Daddy. Who else.
But of course she knows better.
It's that time again. Tonight the monster comes to visit her again.
YOU ARE READING
Black Sky
Mystery / ThrillerIn the darkness, every truth comes to light. A freeway service station. In the middle of nowhere. This is where a group of strangers meet as a solar eclipse darkens the land. But this eclipse is different. The light doesn't come back, not after 5 mi...
