When I was a boy there was a black man that I would see. Out of the
corner of my mind, hidden behind trees and corners. He was there in my house,
in my life. I would hear him walking up the steps of my father’s house in the
dead of night. And I would hide under the covers. I would see him in my dreams.
The choker, one that would suffocate me with a stare.
This man was not black, as in
African American, or even a man at all. I should actually refer to him as The
Dark Man, because his purposes for me were never clear, but always hidden. I
would lie awake at night. I would pray that he would go away. But I would feel
my body run cold, even if the blankets were warm. Even now as a man I wrap my
arms around me, as if by instinct, grounded by the child-like belief that mere
covers could save me from a being dark, ancient, and powerful. How would you
know this, some have asked me. I know because it told me so. This dark man was
a demon. One that haunted me in the night, a taunting dream that would lie in
bed with me, whisper threatening lies in my ears. Words without a voice, ones
that echoed in my empty unoccupied mind. Many of you don’t believe in demons, or manifestations
of evil. They are the guilty conscience that hangs over us like dark clouds in
the sky, most say. Until this night, I’ve never written about the dark man. I
was always afraid of him coming back. I have a family now. Lord forgive me if I
were to invite such a thing back into my life. But now that the light is with
me, the dark man comes back less and less. The dreams are less real now. If he
ever came back, it would never be the same.
There was a night in July, when
I was 10 years old. I had recently come home from an informal reunion in Sonoma
County, north of San Francisco, where the hills are made of gold and from the
earth pours wine. The specters of long dead miners and Chinese rail workers
haunted the hills, their legacy paved over with boutiques and high class
restaurants. I was lying in my bed at home, my brother sleeping soundly next to
me. The Dark Man was there. The night light did not flicker. The air was not
frosty or cold. There was no ghostly herald or cultic preamble in cartoonish
languages. He was there, lying next to me, heaving rattling, emphysemic breaths. And what I remember, so clearly, so
unequivocally, its words. “Ahh… don’t be like that.”
I froze. I wanted to cry.
It rolled over me, on top on me.
Every muscle tensed on my body.
My eyes closed tight, he told me
a little about himself.
“I’ve been alone, so alone.
Sentenced to the depths of Hell, without respite and closure, a soul that asks
on those passing through what came of their legacy of my life. I owned a house
at once, hidden away in the forests of Bavaria. I had a cart and some sheep, my
small cottage. I lived alone, skinning and tanning pelts under a cold distant
sun that would pierce the canopies of my grove with shafts of goodness finding me
in the depths of my loneliness.
“A woman, young with fair skin
and supple breasts, with fiery red hair and green eyes would come to me, and
only me, to sell milk and bread once a month. We would talk for a few hours. I
would pay her a little extra for her services and she would go her way. With
longing eyes she would look back, but they hid her pity well. Pity for an old
man of the forest that knew no one, and none knew him.
“The clearings would keep the
time of year, shading the earth with autumnal foliage or the colorful levity of
spring. I would watch through my window built of fine glass that I found on a
wrecked carriage near the road overlooking Berchtesgaden. The grass would bend
under the weight of the snow, and every morning I would see the tracks of
lesser creatures foraging in the night. A fire lit in the corner I made to
remind me of older days, when I knew my son, and when he knew me.”
The creature reached out to me,
forcing me to see through its eyes. I shook my head but I was still. I cried
out to shout but I was made silent…
I saw the old man walking
through the clearing, looking with tired lonely eyes at the rabbits. He would
lift his hunting bow, aim, and collect his kill. Rabbit stew every night,
always. Stringy morsels seasoned with crushed black pepper and salt from the
mines near town.
Again the woman would come on
the months end. He would sleep with her, collect her salt, and she would leave
without tasting the rabbit he caught.
“I was unremarkable in death as I
was in life, a simple soul with simple needs. When you see me in your dreams, I
will suffocate you! Look into my eyes.” I didn’t need to see them again,
because I had seen them many times before in my restless nights. Dreaming of dark
rings housing sinister, cruel eyes.
“I was not always like this. All souls fall from paradise to the crags of
perdition, marred by the tumultuous journey down, striking the rocks of the
interior creation, the space between worlds where those long created before man
dare to walk. One day, while seeing to my sheep, I looked up from my toil and,
across the clearing, a young man with calloused hands and wiry beard watched me.
The face so familiar, so precious, masked by the pain of a life bereft of
paternal care, I beheld my lost son.
“That is how all good things
start, with such energy that prolongs the period of good feelings. Together we
built another room on the cottage. We cut lumber together, sawing with dull
tools and fastening with rusty nails. Many times I fell to my knees in
exhaustion, no longer young, but my son continued. I saw to it that he was well
fed, and inside a feeling, a forgotten sensation of affection warmed me better
than my cottage fire. My son, he should stay longer he said, as the snow will
fall again and the leaves are withered and falling once more. And with bitter
tears I cried aloud ‘I’m sorry, Hanz! I’m sorry for your mother, for
everything.’”
The Dark Man forced its hand
across my face. I felt nothing but its emptiness. I squinted under what felt
like a hundred pounds of pressure. And it showed me more…
The woman returned after the snow melted, late but she came eventually in
the summer months, driving a cart up the shadowed trail to the cottage. She was
weak also, and when he saw her, he saw the rotund belly swathed in red cloth, a
leather corset crudely cut in half with a cutlass holding up her bountiful
breasts. He knew what it meant and said nothing. In her hands she took his,
holding them up to her face. She smiled and told him that she would need
another room to stay. He laughed, uncertain of what to say or do. And what was
there to say? Long ago, as a young man he remembered the feelings, the prelude
to excitement and fear, of anticipation and anxiousness. He thought shallowly
then, considering that he would have to go into town to buy milk and bread from
then on. Utility possessed him, purpose filled his lungs with the damp air of
the forest floor. Across the field, the son came out of the forest carrying
over his shoulders pails of water to run the new forge. The father, he looked
at his son befuddled and the son nervously beheld the woman.
“The cottage grew over the
winter. That was an early snow. Father and son digging in the ice while she
waits inside; we prepared for the long season. I knew that soon the child would
come. I did not see her watching through the window. Sweat in the cold winter
air steaming off both our backs. We gripped our shovels tightly, revealing our
strong rope-like arms. Both tawny, but strong. She coveted him, watching me in my
old age, finding me… wanting. It was not long until I found her one night with
him in our room, stroking his erection as they lay together in secret. And my
fullness, the spirit that lifted me so high, higher than the birds of the sky,
poured out of me, into my hands, and gave me strength to kill the boy, with
tears in mine own eyes as she watched.
“She did not get far, so close
to the fruit of our labors. She died in the snow as she fled.
“I could only imagine then how
the questions slowly came to be asked, how the forge burned brightly, deep
within the trees without orders for steel, how the milk grew sour and the bread
stale in wait at the market, how the people came to confront me, how they found
me wearing her bones around my neck, and how they came to strike me down. And
so my soul was torn down through oblivion to the depths of Hell, to the Second
Circle, let to roam the dreams of those that seek light beyond the forest
depths.”
The Dark Man snarled, but I
screamed. He floated away, seeping into the ceiling above. My brother awoke
next to me in a start and made a face in disgust. “God! Shut up! Mom, what’s
wrong with him?”
That was the first and only time
the Dark Man spoke. It would come here and there throughout the years, with
diminishing passion at each turn. How he would rake my body with his claws,
stop my blood still with spiritual malaise. Taunt me in the morning, terrify me
in my youth. I would not lie if I said that I remember hearing the sounds of
his steps through my mother’s home. The creaks in the night. The sensation that
he was behind me. And yet, in all this, I sensed that its menace had climaxed
at the moment of personal disclosure. As I became a man, as I chose my path to
go to the university, the Dark Man became less real, and merely a bad dream.
But I still remember the first days, before I accepted God’s protection, when I
would hide in the fluorescent fountains all around me. Its memory surpassed its
presence, which was, in many ways, more terrifying that the genuine reality of
the creature.
In these times, I am not afraid
of the Dark Man any more. But I know he is still there, somewhere, praying for
death. Should I feel sorry for him? No. What good is the Dark Man to me, but
the memories of youthful trepidation? Yet I am thankful. I’m my studies on
theology and the demonic I have reasoned that such soul would be allowed to
hate me because the Dark Man’s presence teaches me what it means to languish
unchallenged in loneliness. For so long I had wrapped melancholy around me like
a blanket, to shiver bitterly, to deny the charity of friendship to others and
myself. The Dark Man cursed me when I was young with its sadness. I could never
curse another to bear mine. And now, in my office, on this word processor, I
want you to know what happened to me. Melancholy like a good book, or an
engrossing film can be so gratifying. Some revel in it, crushing themselves in
a vise. But like a monkey on my back I have worn the Dark Man and put him off,
never to wear him again. One day I will forget him, and then he will finally be
just another shade in the pit.
