You know that feeling you get when you’re alone in the dark? The one that’s not there in the daylight, or if there’s someone else there beside you? You may have discussed this feeling with your friends, laughed it off as you tell them you found yourself running up the stairs last night, hardly daring but unable to stop yourself glancing back down into the dark. Everyone knows that feeling.
Right now there’s a woman in the basement store room of her office building, searching through a box of files with a torch for last years’ tax return. The air is very still, but the hairs on the back of her next are rising as though there’s a breeze. She glances back over her shoulder towards the door, but sees nothing. She flicks through the papers a little faster, suddenly desperate for the gentle hubbub of the office above her. The moment, for her at least, is endless.
There’s a young man walking home from the bus stop, down a short path enveloped by trees. It cuts five minutes from his journey, and he always takes it without thinking. But once he’s on the path, out of the soft orange glow of the street lights, he regrets his decision. Every whisper of the wind, every rustle of the leaves makes him cast his eyes back behind him. In another minute or so he will emerge onto his street and forget about this feeling completely. Until next time.
Somewhere else, there’s a girl in the shower washing her hair. This is usually a mundane task that she completes with barely a thought, but tonight she is alone on the house and something is different. She keeps opening her eyes, soap burning her retinas, to confirm that the bathroom is still empty. She feels exposed, in a way that she never does when her parents are downstairs watching the television – unseen, but their presence still comfortingly known.
Another one, in the living room of a shared flat – the flatmate left an hour or so ago. Through an archway in the corner of their eye is the dark, empty space of the kitchen. They realise that their eyes keep drifting over to that space, until they are staring wide-eyed at the blackness. They lick their lips, thirsty. They do not venture into the dark kitchen for a much-craved glass of water.
People have tried, in the past, to isolate and examine this feeling. Find a reason for its being, explain it away with science and comforting, natural logic. They’ve all failed, of course. The feeling is not natural, because what it perceives is not natural.
You always tell yourself that you’re just being paranoid, and that it’s just the leftover spooks from that last horror film you watched. But I’m afraid that feeling is very real. It’s primal, and it knows. It puts you on high alert because it senses danger, and the eerie feelings come from not being able to perceive it with your first five senses.
Of course, there is an easier way of describing this feeling, this thing that comes over you in the dark empty spaces you find yourself in from time to time.
It’s me.
Now turn out the light, will you?
---
Credits
Comments