When The Dark is Too Deep

When The Dark is Too Deep
? by
? Samnesia.com

From where I could see, there was a person crawling through the grass. There were no wounds on their body and there wasn’t a leakage of blood, otherwise, they would have left a trail. The body stopped moving. It turned itself over to look at me. There was a grey light behind those eyes. Dying. Fading away as the person seemed to realize that they were going to leave the world. The reason I say, “Person”, rather than identifying the gender of said person, is because I wasn’t sure if they were really a human being. They had the frame, the skin, the hair, the limbs; but there was something about the texture of their skin that felt alien.
When I held their hand, it was cold and slippery. The pupils were dilated and lifeless- which can be expected from a corpse. I let the hand go. Standing up to look down at the expired person. There was not a whole lot I could do; out here, I didn’t have a car. No phone. No electricity. I didn’t care enough about the person to carry them to the nearest utility, and I was certainly not going to leave the damn thing in my home, so I could walk to a service station and tell whoever was behind a counter about the person who died on my property. The smell would putrefy inside my house and probably attract vermin.
The only possible way in which I could respectfully deal with the corpse, was to bury them. Not here, where they just died. Somewhere a little further away.
There was a dead, bleaching wire of a tree standing beside a field of yellowing grass. I had walked there so many times to know what the soil felt like. It was the best place for a burial. Obviously not consecrated ground, but I was going to pray, anyway.
I dragged the corpse to the ground of its burial, in a wheelbarrow. I squeezed a shovel in there, too.
I finished the burial sooner than I had expected. I was done, just before dusk.After I had refilled the grave with its soil, I patted the soil until it was smooth. I stood there. Not in prayer, but rather, in acknowledgement of the person- who used to be alive.
“Goodbye”, was all I said, before I left the grave alone.
Once I had pushed the wheelbarrow back into the shed, I wiped the dirt away from the spade and put it back in its corner. The dusk was deepening into a thick, purple incandescence. The tree-marking the burial, stood beyond the field of yellowing grass.
“Goodbye”, I said, one last time.

As I mentioned, there is no electricity out here. The nearest powerline is few miles from here. So, I had to light up my house with lanterns. I had three burning in the living room and one suspended above the door, outside. The house was the only thing burning, out here in the dark. The only glow of warmth in a sea of coldness. I’m still here. I would always be here. Alone. Detached from everything outside. I don’t know why I chose to live like this. I had been living out here for so long, that I was convinced that this was all there was in the world. Just the house, the grass, the forests and the things that lived in there. There were times when I was afraid that something would be watching me. But what really scared me, was moving away from home. I wouldn’t survive out there. In the world. The house kept me safe from what happened out there. I never wanted anything other than a place of security. Where I would never feel or be hurt. I was living on an island-a place to hide myself away from other people.
In my living room, I was set to falling asleep, when a sound-a clawing scratching noise started raking against my front door. It only happened once, but it was loud enough to stir me awake and make me stare at the door. Quietly, I crawled from the chair and knelt, pushing my face to the floor where it met the door’s crevice. There was nothing out there. I got up and started to blow out the candles. I left one burning on the kitchen table. I sat back down in my chair. Turning my head, I faced the door. In its frame, it stood like an ominous, giant figure lurking in the dark. I moved the chair. Facing it towards the door. I sat down again. This time, staring directly at the door. There was an urge. A silent urge that was getting louder. Telling me to make sure that the noise wouldn’t come twice.
If I could stay awake long enough to-
the scratching came again. The second time sounded prolonged. It sounded more like a person was carving a letter into the door. It couldn’t have been an animal. Just as softly as before, I knelt down, with the one burning lantern in my hand now, and peeked beneath the door. I pushed the lantern closer to the crevice, to see if there was anything outside. The urge was still loud, but tamed. I didn’t want to make any noise. My knees started to ache. When I stood up, I put the lantern back on the table. The candle was almost melted away.
Once I heard the sound of scratching for the third time, I went to the cupboard to find a new candle. I removed the melted candlestick and placed the fresh one into the lantern. I held it in front of me. Pressing my ear against the wood, all I could hear was the wind gently rattling the door on its hinges. I pulled it open. Staring back at me, was a canvas of darkness. The only sound was the beating of my heart. What I found on the other side of the door, were three slick carvings in the wood. They were too deep to have been caused by a human fingernail or from any creature. I held out the lantern, burning a path through the dark. I closed the door behind me. Holding the light toward the marred area, I took another inspection of the carvings. Just three deep, meaningless lines. When I lowered the lantern, I could make out a trail of footprints in the dirt. Someone had been outside my door. The trail lead to the grass. It was harder to find the trail, here. But there were still footprints firmly pressed into the ground. I followed them out. Further into the dark, where it felt like I was losing myself into the night. The dark surrounded me. Peered into me. Stripped me until I was left feeling completely alone and naked. A single immense organism watching me. A lonely man, carrying his only source of protection. His light. Without it, I would be lost and left vulnerable to the horrors that lay waiting in the dark.
I came to where the field met the feet of the woods. The candle shimmered in its glass box. I was holding the lantern out, looking at where I buried the corpse, earlier. It was not that far away. There was no reason to walk that way, I knew. But, I felt uncertain. There was something about the dark, this darkness, that I didn’t like. It felt heavy. Suffocating.
As I made my way toward the grave, I speculated who could have been behind my door, earlier. Some stranger who got lost, and maybe they came to my house looking for help. Just what were those carvings? I didn’t feel comfortable returning to the grave. There was a feeling, a sense that I might find something there that I had not seen anywhere else, while I was searching out here. And the darkness was thickening. It was watching me. It was trying to eat away at what little light I had to help me see.
What I saw there almost made me drop the lantern. The burial was exhumed. The soil torn up and scattered. When I lowered the lantern down, I saw an empty pit. The body was gone.
Leaving the premature grave, I stumbled back to my house. I was going to come back when the sun was up, so I could see clearly. Standing in front of the door of my house was a person. Their clothes ragged and grimy from where I could see. The person was trying to get in. It looked like they were pushing themselves forward.
They obviously still thought I was in there, otherwise the person would have followed me.
I was watching from the grass. In the dark-where I concealed my lantern beneath my jacket.
When the person moved away from the door, I waited for them to go away- so they wouldn’t see me go back in. As the person moved, their joints shifted and cracked. I could hear them breathe. The breathing sounded like water being swallowed by a drain. It was disgusting.
Once the person was gone-I assumed they were, because I couldn’t see them anymore- I hurried to the door. There were even more scratches carved into the wood. Opening the door, I slipped back inside and looked around the living room. I turned the key in its lock. Waiting. Listening for another sound. I opened the lantern that I held and blew out the candle. As the light went out, the darkness crept through the windows, through the crevice beneath my door and found me again. Afraid that I might bump into something and make a clattering racket, I started to crawl. I crawled to my chair and sat exactly as I had before.
There, in the dark, I hunched forward. Cradling myself and in a lake of darkness. Staring at the door, which still leered down at me. Towering over me. The only thing keeping me safe from what was lurking outside. As I was trying to keep my eyelids open, the sound of nail on wood shuddered through the room. I sat still. Listening, I heard the shuffling of feet kicking dirt up against the door. The person was trying to force themselves in. They must have heard me close the door. Why else would they have come back here? I started to regret not waiting a little longer, to make sure that the person was really gone, before dashing back into house. The sound came again. Louder. Deeper. The door groaned from the pressure. The croaking sound of breathing came back. From behind the door, a strained and gurgling noise rasped in the walls of a dry throat. The scratching stopped and the thing outside started beating at the door. I leapt at the change in sound. Still close to the floor, I shambled across the living room toward the kitchen. In the dark, I threw my hands forward, blindly fumbling into drawers to find a steak-knife. I grabbed a blade between my thumb and forefinger and I felt the sharp side sink into my palm. Cringing, I moved my hand down to find the hilt. I pulled the knife out of the drawer with my hand dripping blood down my wrist and held it out in front of me. In that brief lapse of time, the pounding stopped. The gurgling noise turned into a whistle. The shuffling feet slipped away. It was silent again.
When it felt safe to move, I watched the frame of the door as I took small steps backward.
With the hand that was not bleeding, I felt around for the chair. The silence felt fragile and ready to break. Because I knew that whomever or whatever was outside was going to come back. Cradling the knife in my lap and keeping a hold on the handle, I stared at the door. I was going to stay awake, until first light. If the creature outside hadn’t come back by then, I should be safe.
The guttural breathing lapsed the silence. It was back. I say, “it”, because I know damn well what sound a human makes when it breathes. I raised the knife. I could hear the breathing now. It was right behind the door.
What came next brought my insides to the back of my throat. A panel on the door was splintered open. It was still dark, but there was enough light to see an arm gouging through the hole. I leaped forward. Knife in my right hand. I made aimless swings at the arm. Pushing the knife through flesh, once I finally came in contact. The creature growled, when I sunk the tip of the knife into the forearm. When I pulled downward, opening the skin like a plastic zip-lock bag, the creature howled.
It slipped its arm out through the hole and I could hear it stumble away. I wanted to see this thing.
I opened the door to find the silhouette of the creature shuffling through the grass. In that fading darkness, its howls haunted me, until the first light came to save me from this hell.

I had never been more grateful for the sunlight. A lonely man who has been left in the dark for so long feels alive again. As if the light has helped him through a tragedy that confined him. If the light ever disappeared, he would be left to die in silence.
I came out of the house to follow the thing that attacked me. There were enough blood droplets in the grass to form a puddle. As I followed them, I felt like I was walking in a familiar direction. The droplets of blood and trampled grass lead to the old, bleached wire of a tree.
Arriving at the grave, I heard something grovelling and dying. Trying to bury itself away into the Earth. Down in the pit, the creature lay on its stomach. Clawing. Scratching at the wound in its arm. It turned itself over and stopped when it saw me staring down. The lips on its hollow, necrotic mask of a face peeled back to release a final, dying rasp. Its head fell back. The creature stopped moving.
For a while, I stood there. Right hand in pocket and left hand holding the wrist. In a sad but dignified silence, I walked away. Leaving everything behind in that grave. The darkness would come at the end of every day. I could live with that. But I would still be alive.

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