The darkness of the house cannot be seen. It is felt. It’s in every creaking floorboard or protruding, rusted nail. It’s there in the mold covered cupboards, their shelves empty but for cobwebs. In that darkness, that un-see-able darkness, the history of the place whispers. A quiet mind will hear it, the sound of blood, the distant and mournful remembrance of what happened here.
I heard it as a child, knew it in a summer day, the setting sun like gold, when I could taste the cooling air whipping by my face, my bicycle like a magic carpet under me flying me home effortlessly. I flew by the house, and in the air, in the setting of the sun, there was darkness. Suddenly my bike was no longer gliding beneath me; I strained against it’s pedals, panting desperately, unknowingly, my legs throbbing after that quiet summer moment brought to me all the horror of that place. I raced home as the night fell, and inside, sitting at dinner, I hardly said a word to anyone.
The taste of horror is an odd thing. Few enjoy it, at first, but that unique taste, exquisite, it drives you back again. It was years before the memories of the darkness reemerged, years before this little seed sprouted in the fertile silence of my mind. At first it was in my dreams, barely remembered terrors which haunted me in the lonely morning hours. Then it grew, that darkness. I tried to speak, to understand what was inside me. My words only made it stronger, gave the darkness a mold it could live in. The weed grew, infecting everything, and by then, I hungered for whatever it was I had tasted so long ago.
Research only showed me what I knew, only told me second hand what I lived every night, in every dream. The blundering articles could never capture the terror that remained in the darkness. The reports only spoke their names, listing the family by age, or one, by the supposed order of their deaths. What did the papers know of their blood, their still crying blood which spoke to me through the silent darkness?
The house is not silent while you move in it, the floor creaks beneath you, the steps cry, but if you stand still, if you hold your breath, the darkness will be there, whispering its secrets. A corner of yellowing wallpaper droops. The gathered dust before me is empty of footprints. The only footprints are my own, leading here. I am alone in the house, alone but for the cries of the blood and the silence of the darkness.
Tale Told 