The Darkness Hums, Part Two by Elise Peyrat
Image by Jay Mantri from Unsplash
When I was a kid, I saw an angel riding on the back of a garbage truck. His wings were so wide they stuck out on each side of the truck. He looked so tall, so still, standing there in front of the dead meat, the plastic, the rotten fruits and the wreckage of life. I watched him disappear in the sunset light. I dropped my bike and ran home. I was so afraid he would come to take me away. The marquees here always say that He is coming. I do not want to meet Him if He made all the things on earth, if He made the forest. The old woman said if it were a real angel, he’d have more eyes, more wings.
Once I saw a bird with eyes everywhere.
Once I saw a fox with two heads.
Once I saw a dead stag. It was a skeleton, held together by magic. It looked at me, from the edge of the forest. There were mushrooms growing in its eye hole. I tried to look away, it felt wrong to behold something so magically decayed, but I couldn’t. It had its hold on me. A gunshot made the birds fly away and I looked up to see them break from each other and disappear into the sky. When I looked back, the stag was gone.
Early in the morning, the fog seeps from the forest into town. It covers everything behind a smoke screen. With it comes the unshakable feeling that something is there, just out of reach, in the mist. You can squint all you want but you won’t see anything. It, however, can see you.
The forest and its strange inhabitants walk into town under the cover of the fog. The old woman says it’s not safe to go out when you can’t see. That’s how her husband was taken. Dogs bark at invisible creatures hidden in the mist. I did not tell the old woman, but I saw her husband once. He comes back from the forest with the fog, to check on her. He hides in the white veil and looks at her. His face is caved in, moss covers the better part of his bare skull. A pine tree is growing out of his eye socket.
When the fog vanishes, I go to the barn. I work there with the other boys. They treat me like one of theirs. When the sun starts going down, they go into town, buy beers and loiter around the convenience store. I am a stranger to these intricate rituals, these demonstrations of boyhood. I stay at the barn, clean the floor, lock everything. It is all quiet except for the hum of electricity, and something else. Something scratching behind the doors. It could be a dog. It could be anything, really. I open the doors, looking in the growing darkness for the something. The something looks back.
Words by Elise Peyrat