The Darkness Hums, Part One by Elise Peyrat
Image by Jay Mantri from Unsplash
We have always lived in this house. Actually, I think I was born somewhere else, but they made sure I forgot about that. This house is all I remember. These walls. The forest in the backyard and the rows of identical houses in the front. Our house is the last one of a small congregation of buildings. I think this used to be a trailer park but the houses all sank into the ground. This is the sticks, the outskirts of civilisation. People don’t die here, they go missing. This is not a place where you want to stay, this is a place made for leaving.
This is a place where the sun sets for hours, the warm glow hanging low on the porches. Cicadas louder than your thoughts and dreams of somewhere else buzzing in the heat. The smell of smoke and soil. An old woman on a rocking chair, a dog, bones and rocks hanging in arcane wind chimes. Kids on bikes, with bloody knees and dirt on their faces. We came from the earth and when all is over, we will return to the earth.
Everyone stops for a second, watching as the ball of light disappears behind the tree line, as if swallowed by the forest. The kids hurry home, the old woman brings the dog inside. At night, strange things happen around here. The pine trees cast their darkness on the houses, eaters of light. I was always told to avoid the forest after the sun sets. It was no longer a world of humans and sunlight, but a world of animals and magical beings.
I hear it. When I can’t sleep and the moon casts shadowy silhouettes on my walls, I hear the forest calling for me. It wants me. It’s hungry. It’s so hungry. The old woman says if we go out at night, the forest will take us. The old woman has seen a lot of things. She came from the earth when the earth was only dust and the forest. She taught me how to use a shotgun. She said I must be ready.
They say there is a beast in the forest. It’s sleeping. It’s been sleeping for centuries. Trees have grown on its back, moss covers its eyelids, animals have died and decayed in its bosom. When it rises, the whole forest will shake. I will know when it happens. I know the skyline of these trees. I know how many mountains there are.
Sometimes, I lie in bed, quiet, and I can feel my bones grow. It makes me want to howl like a wolf, but I’m afraid the forest will howl back. I’ve been growing for so long that, some days, I think my bones will never stop. They’ll jut out of my wrists, outgrowing my slender body, and I’ll become a tree – white and majestic.
This house is the last bastion between the strange, dark world of the forest, this country of magnificent beasts; and the dusty, orange light of the country of men. Sometimes, it feels like the house is cut in two – one part in the sunlight, and one part in the darkness. Sometimes, it feels like the moss is an invasive creature that will take over the back porch and slither into the kitchen. In the future, when all the humans will have died, this house will be overtaken by the wild. The forest will keep growing, and eating, and it’ll swallow my childhood bedroom, and it’ll swallow my dreams of somewhere else, and it’ll swallow my bones.
Words by Elise Peyrat