©2021

NightLight

A crystal-like vapour was suspended in the air. As he gazed out the old, paned bay window, he could actually feel the cold damp, moist air, as darkness more fully enveloped and softened the frame of his view.

He had been sitting there, for, he wasn’t exactly sure how long. Maybe minutes only – or maybe an hour or two. The thick glass tumbler at his right hand had the last remnants of the 12 yr old scotch.

Far across the marsh, its stalky grasses spiked with snow coats, he could just barely make out the line of trees, the dense pine, spruce and sumach, which he knew, carried on for mile after mile beyond that point.

The old house creaked. A new wind whistled towards where he sat – it lightly whipped the tops of the marsh grasses, and tumbled up the slope of the hill directly to where he sat. The ancient panes of glass rippled a little with the assault of the frozen air.

Still – he sat there, quite still. A slight shiver, rippled across his chest, but, on a conscious level, he wasn’t even aware of it.  Gusting now, the wind whipped the icing sugar snow frosting off the tops of the marsh, like spray off waves at sea, and blew puddles of snow about in a busy, dervish fashion. Light had now, just about completely faded…the line of trees now were merely a smudge – the only remaining distinction was a lighter darkness where the sawtooth rhythm of their tops framed the sullen sky.

His hand reached out to touch, gently, to touch the cut glass tumbler…..  as his fingers caressed the ridges and valleys of the antique glass, his mind was still lost in muddy recollections of other times. Other, better times. The sting of tears scratched at the corners of his eyes…..his vision misted slightly, then cleared. As it did, he gave a slight start …. ‘What the hell??’ he asked out loud. ‘What is THAT?’

Straining his vision to stretch far across the plateau of swamp, to the tree line, where, he was certain, with an icy chill on the back of his neck, he had seen, just the whisper of a light……  He shook his head, wiped at his eyes and stared, intensely, out across the now black, inky void.

And, at that point, the land sloped off rapidly, to descend, in a couple of slight plateaus, to the marsh edge.  All in all, he sat probably 50 feet or so above the tops of the marsh grasses. His aerie, or perch, therefore allowed him an almost birds-eye view out over the 300 – 400 yards to its far edge.

The shiver ran again across the top of his shoulders …… his hand, tightly gripping the glass of scotch, he arced it towards his mouth, sipping at the contents, refelectively

‘ Maybe’, he thought to himself, ‘ This is just one of the after-effects of all the surgery……’  His doctors had told him to expect some peculiarities, physiologically, as his body attempted to re-balance itself after the many and long procedures carried out on his physical person.

‘But’, he also reminded himself, ‘Nothing had been mentioned about vision, or sight anomalies….. mostly just muscle quivers, extreme fatigue…’  And, again, memories flushed through him. ‘ They couldn’t know, of the other kinds of assaults I’d have to be living through. The memory flushes, the pain of recall – the almost physical sensation of her hand gripped tightly in his…..

And, with that thought, and the sharp pinch of pain in his heart which accompanied it, the tears started again. ‘Stop it!’, he yelled out loud, knowing no one –  was anywhere near to hear his outburst.

With a sigh, he thrust himself back into the old wooden swivel chair, which, with a squeal and a squeak, voiced its’ protest. Beads of sweat had popped onto his brow – and now, that the first flush of pain had subsided, he felt the radical chill of the night air about him.

His gaze, somewhat glassy-eyed, rose up from the ancient desktop and rested, mid-focus, on the center of the window …… he adjusted his focus, without conscious thought, out – out into the dark void which was now punctuated by a symphony of snow blowing about.

‘This is SO stupid!’, he thought to himself. ‘Sitting here – feeling sorry for myself like this. I have to get a handle on things or I’ll spend the rest of my life here, in this place … doing the same thing over and over again, night after night’.

With a final jab at the whiskey glass, he drained it of its remnants, stood suddenly, pushed back the chair, and leaned forward to switch of the old goose-necked lamp which was all that had lit the room. At the same time, he powered down the laptop computer, and, as the last electron glow faded, he looked up once more, and gazed out the window. As his eyes became accustomed to the total darkness now, he reacted suddenly with another start, for, he was sure … once again, that a light of some kind had briefly flicked in and out of the tree line.

‘Dummy’, he said out loud again. ‘Bet it’s one of the Thompson twins on a snowmobile ….. ‘

He paused, took a very deep breath, and turned towards the door which led out and into the cozy warmth of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen.

His movement across the old wooden floors resonated with floorboard squeaks.

As he came to the stove, he pulled two more good sized logs out of the wooden box to its side and, opening the cast iron door, shoveled them into its’ fiery interior. The sudden blast of intense heat sent a shock of warm good feeling throughout him. ‘It’s good to be, actually, alive, I guess. I’ll recover from this, and, ,maybe….’with a bit of throat choke, ‘maybe I’ll recover from her too.’

After a moment he moved through the darkness to the staircase. Slowly he moved upwards, one step at a time, a march with no purpose, stolid and boring.

At the top of the stairs, he turned into the large back room, the one directly over his study, with its’sister bay window facing also out across the marsh.

With no light turned on, he peeled off his jeans, his socks, slipped out of his underwear, and pulled on a comfortable old pair of flannel jockey shorts, which he preferred to sleep in. It was one of 2 or 3 pairs which he had collected over time. It had been 5 months since that tragic night, and about 4 of those months had been spent trying to repair the damage, both physical and emotional, of the events of that night.

And, as be bunched himself into the luxury of the pillows, the coverlet tight up about his neck, his last conscious thought on that night was, of her…as it was every night.

 

©michael moore 2010