On the Lost Paths

[Zadown]

The writer sits on a wooden chair, tapping the desk with the pen in his hand, slowly and irregurarily. Around him, the room and the house look old, dry, used up - like faded photographs, all colors yellow and brown. Sunlight shines through the dirty windows, but does not dare to invade too blatantly; no brilliant lances of light, just an ambient glow.

 

A soft sound from the attic between two tap-taps of the pen disturbs the writer, and he rises his head. A peculiar yearning twists his prematurely aged face. He strains to hear the sound, but it is gone, and a heavy silence permeates the house.

 

It is a hot afternoon.

 

Night is a long way off.

[Zadown]

The writer writes. He thinks that he has calculated the risks, that nothing will go badly wrong .. but still. There shouldn't have been a noise in the afternoon, not yet. All the books talked of the night and only of the night. So, he writes down himself, his deeds and failures, his current situation and his last will, all in one disjointed story of bitterness and almost-success.

 

A disquieting thought enters his head - what if the books are wrong?

 

He feels a chill and pauses in his work. Then, he continues, a little quicker and a little more nervous.

 

Heat lessens a fraction - the blurry shadows, created by the ambient glow of the sunlight, deepen.

 

Night is still a long way off.

[Zadown]

The writer stacks the papers, the result of his work, to a neat pile and stops to listen. Sunburnt silence. The colors are already wandering from the yellow gold of the day to the blue silver of the evening - it is still hot, but he can almost feel the inevitable end of it, the coolness that will follow.

 

He rises from the wooden chair and walks around the room, feeling nervous. Everything looks very ordinary, wooden, cheap, decrepit. He fancies he can sense something in the air, already, then he comes to the conclusion it is just his nerves playing games on him.

 

He glances up, towards the attic.

 

The place, just above the ceiling, calls to him. He knows that he will have to go there, sooner or later. Not yet, though, not yet.

 

There are still some hours to go.

 

A sudden sound - the fear of the half-unknown, of the potential and the night, hits him suddenly with great force, jolting his heart, making him pale, his hands shake, all in a fraction of a second. Then he turns to look and sees it was just his pen, falling from the table.

 

He calms down and picks it up.

 

Then he sees his own pen, right there where he left it, on the table. He stares at the pen in his hand like it was some poisonous viper.

 

There are still some hours to go.

[Zadown]

Evening is here. The writer sits still on the chair, paralyzed by fear, feeling the enormous house all around him like a beast stalking him; its doors are maws, its darkening windows are eyes. He is already inside it - there is no place to hide. And here he needs to be, frightening or not. To leave would be the last failure he could stomach in his life, which is already one long road of mistakes and wrong paths.

 

He glances at the other pen on the table and shudders. The writer wonders if perhaps this is how it begins, small details, like the evening star, a wrong pen, a soft sound heard where there should be none. He turns to look at the window, both afraid and lured by it and sure enough, it hasn't gone away: a tiny red light hanging in the sky, sky which is so pale yet no other stars can be seen. He wrenches his gaze away and nods to himself, in the dark.

 

The writer looks around - deep shadows, shallow ones, a few old useless pieces of furniture standing here and there, some of them fallen already. Odd mixture of boredom and frightening, energizing excitement surges through him.

 

He wishes he'd brought a watch.

[Zadown]

Dawn sets the horizont to fire and colors the house with warm hues. A few larger dust motes dance in the reddish rays of light, without any background music, in eerie silence. Shadows creep lower, escape to the darker holes and hide behind the furniture, and slowly the stage of the night's drama is illuminated in it's all bleak but puzzling detail.

 

A splash of already somewhat dried blood stains the wooden wall, in one place. The scream has faded, if there was one, and so nothing tells how it has gotten there. Some of the furniture that was upright in the evening has fallen, lighter spot on the floor telling where they used to stand in peace for ages and ages.

 

It is very peaceful here, in one forgotten gateway to the Lost Paths.

 

Nothing disturbs the silence.