The Song of the NightShades
It is dark. The silence of the night is deep. All sounds have ceased, and the only light comes from distant stars. A soft night breeze begins stirring the air and softly, the things of the night begin their chatter again. It hasn’t happened this time, though the forest had been expecting it, and had held its breath in anticipation.
It didn’t happen every night, sometimes days would go by, before it happened again. Then there were times it happened every night, for days on end. It will happen again tonight, maybe. Last night was a dud.
I remember the first time it happened. It happened right next to me, and it scared the living daylights out of me! I wasn’t even sure what had happened. I was standing in a clearing, alone, and from right beside me it happened, and I ran and didn’t stop running until I got home.
By the next morning it seemed like a dream, it was easy to believe I had imagined the whole thing. I had breakfast and went to work, and didn’t think any more about it. That evening I stayed in and didn’t take the usual walk through the forest. I decided to watch tv and changed my mind when it happened again, from right beside me, and in my living room.
I left the house for a drive almost immediately. After a while I got a room at the next motel I came to, and stayed the night there. By then I was considering the possibility that I had some form of head trauma, though I had sustained no recent injuries. I awoke the next morning feeling foolish and in need of my own bed.
The land is good
That was how it began. Ultimately I went home and quit thinking about strange happenings, and dark things that cozy. It worked for a while, for three days to be exact, and then it happened again. This time I didn’t run.
It was in the clearing again. The forest had gone quiet, I didn’t notice it at first, I kept walking. The stars were bright, and it was a new moon rising. As I came into the clearing the stars seemed to dim, and I knew then, that it was about to happen. From beside me came the sound of a soft melody. Then the darkness slowly began to solidify, and take a form.
I watched this in stark terror., unable to move. The melodic sound intensified as the roiling dark became more solid, and moved much closer to me. That was when I ran. Like a gazelle. Didn’t stop until I locked the front door.
The next day I went to the library. I had become convinced the land was haunted. There could be no other explanation. I thought maybe if I could find some history on the land, I could understand what I was dealing with. But a greater question was why now?
I spent the day researching everything I could find on the land. I learned the land is good. There was nothing remarkable, either in recent memory or long ago. At least with recorded history. I left the library more confused than when I arrived. I had started to entertain the head trauma theory again.
Old Times
On the ride back I couldn’t stop thinking about the way that dark form had been roiling and shifting, my senses had refused its presence in a primal way. My instincts were directing me, as they once did my ancestors.
This is when an idea occurred to me. There are more history books than those at the library, if one knows where to look. So I went to see my Grandpa and his friends, to talk about old times. It was good to see gramps, and what I found out, changed everything.