Read My Life in Darkness Online
Authors: Harrison Drake
My Life in Darkness (7 page)
You just caught me looking at your family again. Why does that always happen? I smiled at you and you smiled back though, I hope you don’t think I’m being creepy. Call it living vicariously, the family I never got to have.
I hope your grandson doesn’t get scared or confused by the eclipse. It’s another long one, four minutes and fifty-two seconds. I still remember the first one I went to, although I was a few years older than he is now. I’m sure he’ll be amazed, he’s a fourth generation umbraphile. It has to be in his blood by now.
I can feel it running through mine.
It comes once more.
DECEMBER 5, 2048
Lena,
A bit of a weird spot for us this time, I know, but there was so little around here. At least it’s warm. I don’t think I’d be here if it was winter and we were forced to stand at the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere.
The lengths to which we’ll go…
Your family just keeps getting bigger. Two granddaughters and now your son has a little boy. Congratulations, everyone seems so happy and healthy. It’s wonderful to see even though it makes me sad. Every time I see a baby I think of what might have been and now never will be. Was that too much to ask? That I could be a father?
I don’t know how I would have done, but I know for sure I would have done better than my own father. I never would have hit my children, I never would have told them they were useless, I would have supported them no matter what they wanted to do. But I guess we’ll never know.
I’m still in remission and I really think it’s gone for good now. Hopefully that’ll be the end of health problems for me for some time. You still seem fine, like nothing’s affected you. Sometimes I look upon you and I think you haven’t aged at all, I still see you as you were so many years ago. Even though your golden hair has started to fade, I don’t see it unless I really look for it. I just see you as you are.
Maybe you see me the same way.
I keep having this strange feeling lately, like there’s something going on that I can’t quite figure out. Maybe I’m slipping again, although I haven’t heard the ticks and clicks for ages. I just, I felt it last time, when the darkness came. It’s like it was trying to tell me something, trying to make me realize what was coming.
I’m putting every drop of energy I have into focusing on that feeling once more, so that maybe the darkness will point me in the right direction or at least give me something to go off of. Three twenty-three this time. I should add it up one day, see just how long I’ve really lived.
I bet it wouldn’t be much.
MARCH 30, 2052
Dear Lena,
Sorry that I wasn’t at the last ones. I should have asked if you were going to them, then maybe I would have gone as well. They were both hybrid eclipses though, two in a row which is kind of strange. It’s the pure total eclipses for me. I’ve never travelled for anything other than a true total, it’s just not the same.
I’ve missed you though, and I feel as though you missed me. You came up to talk to me as soon as you saw me, although maybe you were just starting to worry that the cancer had come back and I was… dead.
Wow.
That’s changed… I can barely even write the word now. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I was ready to die, to end my own life. A lot has changed and I thank you for that, you’ve always given me a reason to live.
I still don’t know what the darkness was trying to tell me, but I felt it again. It’s like when you’re walking into a dark room or down a dark street and you get that feeling that something is going to happen (even though it never does). That’s the feeling I get, like something bad is going to happen. Well, maybe not bad, but big. Big for sure.
I need to find a way to speak to the darkness, to hear what it has to say and tell it everything I’ve ever told you. I know it would listen, just like you do in these letters, just like you always have. And I know it would care for me like you seem to, it must worry about me, it must know how badly I need it. Do you think it needs me? Does it wonder where I’ve gone if I miss an eclipse?
Do I give it the same strength it gives me?
No.
That’s crazy.
The darkness has been coming and going for millions of years and will keep going for millions more after I’m dead.
It doesn’t care, not at all, just like everyone else.
Four minutes and eight seconds. Maybe I can get the truth out of it. I’ll make it talk, and I will listen.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2053
Lena,
It came with them, crawling the walls once more, endless ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking. They watched me for a while and I wasn’t sure what to do. I took my medication, I pretended they didn’t exist, but they just stayed there. They stared at me, sad marble eyes and tears of oil. I didn’t know what they wanted.
But they would be there when I woke up, they’d follow me throughout the house. They never bothered me, they just waited and watched, almost silent except for the occasional tick. And they watched. And they waited. And they watched. And then it came.
It came to the door one day, the end had begun before I even knew it. They sat there, all of them, thousands of eyes like glass staring at the solid wood door. I couldn’t see anything, I didn’t know who was there. I never get visitors, I don’t even have evangelists or salespeople knocking on the door.
It scared me but I finally walked up to answer it, their ticking stopped, wings didn’t flutter and my heart didn’t beat.
Then I saw him, staring at me from behind the threshold. It was like I was looking in the mirror, just one of those funhouse mirrors that distort the picture. I was seventeen again, but slimmer and less geeky looking, a better complexion and a smile that showed confidence I’ve never had. He looked me in the eye, my aged greying eyes, and spoke a word I never thought I would hear uttered in my direction.
“Dad.”
And the ticking started again, wings beats in a flurry and the buzzing began anew as they flew and crawled around the room triumphantly, as if cheering for me. Maybe they never meant me harm, maybe they were there for me… if I’d only taken the time to understand them.
But I have a son. She was pregnant when she left, and she never bothered to tell me. He’s seventeen now, almost a man, old enough to seek me out on his own—against her wishes.
What do I know about raising a child, or an adolescent? I’m seventy-four years old now. Odds are I won’t live long enough to see him become a father, I won’t be there to help him find his place in the world.
I’m so lost, Lena, I just don’t know what to do. Talking to you about it helped, a little, but it’s still so strange, so hard to understand. How could she have kept this from me all these years? Did she hate me that much?
He and I talked for a couple of hours, long enough for me to learn that he was a better man than I could ever be. We’ve met again a number of times and he seems to really be interested in getting to know me, another strange thing. It’s nice, to have someone to care about, someone who cares about me, and to see my own face in his. I never thought it possible and yet, it is.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I never would have believed it.
They’re with me now, sitting on my shoulders and fluttering around my head, waiting for the darkness to come. They need it like I do, and they’ve always been there, even when I chose not to see them. Three minutes and four seconds.
I wonder if the darkness charges them… I still don’t understand how they work.
JULY 24. 2055
Lena,
I haven’t told him about you, about us, but I’m sure you’d get along well. He’s an old soul, someone who doesn’t seem to notice that he’s talking with an elderly person. Maybe it’s because of me, it must be odd having a geriatric for a father. I know there have been people who’ve had kids at my age now, but it always seemed wrong. I wanted to have children when I was young enough to give them everything they needed, not when I was worried I’d sign off at any moment.
The confidence he has, there’s no way it came from me. Not the way he can look someone in the eye and speak as though he knew exactly what they needed to hear-and he actually listens. Most people just listen for the person to stop talking so they can start up again. With him, I feel like he wants to know what I have to say, that he cares about what I’ve been through.
It’s like he’s the me I always wanted to be.
Sometimes I think he’s parenting me. He’s the mature one, the stable one, the one with the life experience. I’m the one who’s barely left his home except to feel the darkness. And he understands that too, that’s why he’s here, ready to see his first eclipse.
I can feel the anticipation building in him, and I know he’s hoping that he’ll feel the same way I do, just so he can understand it even more.
I had never been so scared as when he first knocked on the door. I spent days and days thinking it was all a cruel joke, that I’d been given a son at the end of my life. Now I realize the blessing that he is-he’s humanizing me, changing me into the man I always could have been.
Bringing him here, it’s the least I could do. Three minutes, fifteen and a half seconds. Not bad for a first eclipse.
MAY 11, 2059
Dear Lena,
He’s with me again, helping me along. It’s getting harder and harder to make these trips and I’m sure you understand. The flights and all the traveling wears on me and I don’t know if it’s the pressure changes but my joints aches for days after I get home.
But it’s all worth it. To see you, to be in the darkness where everything is still right, it’s worth the pain and the hardships. And to have him with me, the darkness flowing between us—it’s more than I ever expected in life.
I’m sorry if I write less today, it’s just that I’m fixed on what’s here, not what could have been. I’m sorry, Lena. I still love you, but now with my son here and with the years streaming by, I find that I need to focus on myself and on him.
The fact that we only have a minute forty-two doesn’t help at all. I want to make sure I spend that time the best way I can. I can think of no better way than to spend it with my son beside me.
APRIL 30, 2060
Lena,
Back to Egypt once more. I find it interesting how we go to the same countries again and again when there are still so many we haven’t been to. We plan our trips to a place as close to the location of greatest eclipse as we can regardless of the country, but to think that we have never been to China or India—two large countries—is, well, odd. And now I find myself, as death creeps slowly up on me, wishing I had broadened my horizons, taken a path untraveled by the darkness and seen other parts of the world.
I’ve never been to the Caribbean, barely set foot in Europe, never been to Greece or Rome, and hardly seen any of the most amazing sights in the world. It’s sad to think of. There were places I was fascinated by as a child and so many of them I have yet to see. I checked the pyramids off my list when we went to Luxor, it was close enough that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Antarctica was another one, and I made that happen.
I guess I’m just looking back on my life now, knowing the end is drawing near, and seeing all of my regrets. You used to be just about my only one, the only thing I would have done differently (aside from hitting my father so many years ago). I would have talked to you, maybe you would have fallen in love with me like I did with you.
I can’t change the past but maybe I can change the future. I can see the parts of the world that I’d always wanted to see, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll find it in myself to tell you how I have always felt. Maybe I’ll just walk up to you and hand you this stack of letters. I always keep them with me when we’re together but apart-the eclipse the common factor between us.
I’m running out of time to make the changes in my life I should’ve made years ago. Five fourteen this time, I’ll need the strength and the resolve. I can’t go back on this, I can’t.
And don’t worry, please. I would hate for you to worry about me. I won’t be at the next one, Russia is just too cold for me these days.
Until next time, with love.
AUGUST 24, 2063
Lena,
I’ve taken care of one more thing I wanted to do: climb Mt. Fuji. Well, I didn’t so much as climb it as have help reaching the summit but it was exhilarating none the less. I wish I’d done it when we were in Japan years ago, before I became too old to walk on flat ground let alone climb a mountain. But I stood there, my son beside me, at the top of a dormant volcano, looking out over the country. He put his hand on my shoulder, patted it gently, and I knew all was well.
But there we stood, on top of a volcano that could erupt at any moment. Like me, unpredictable and destructive. What haven’t I ruined, aside from my son?
I saw them again, waiting for me at the summit, their little clockwork legs and wings ticking in congratulations. They stand by me now, strong and supportive, offering me what my father never could. But I make sure to give my son the support and strength he deserves.
