Follow the Lights

I jolt awake and instantly spring upright. Sweat streams down my temples. I feel my hair. It’s dripping wet as if I had just come out of the shower. I check the clock on my bedside table. Red numbers reading 23:01 illuminate the darkness. Shit, it hasn’t even been an hour. I always go to bed around 22:15, but usually sleep until at least midnight. It’s as if I had a nightmare, but I know that I didn’t. I haven’t dreamt since Anna died. 

I take a huge gulp of water to replenish the moisture I have lost and close my eyes again. Nothing. I open them, still nothing. I roll to my side and look at the time again. 23:03. It’s going to be a long night.

Well, I’m not giving up that easily. I pick up my phone and dial Maddie. I often call her when I’m feeling bored or lonely. She almost always answers and jumps at the opportunity to visit. I’ve known Maddie for six years now, since senior year chemistry, although we were never really fond of each other back then. Truth be told, we still kind of aren’t. I don’t really want to see her. But the only person I’d want to see right now is gone.

Just like Maddie, I met Anna in high school but, unlike Maddie, it was love at first sight. Unfortunately, around the same time, I started using drugs. Nothing crazy at first, just some pot with friends under the bleachers after school. Pretty harmless stuff. Anna wasn’t really happy with it, so I didn’t really tell her when I moved on to trying some other ones as well. When she eventually caught me trying to hide a small bag of methamphetamine under the couch pillows, she threw a fit and threatened to break up with me. But, of course, she loved me, and she knew that I loved her, so she pretended it wasn’t happening. 

Eventually, I upgraded to heroin. One day, she found the syringe in my jacket pocket, too. This time, however, she wanted to try it. I asked her why, but her response was simply that she was curious about what it felt like. The third time she took it, we fell asleep together. The next morning, I found her lying still. She had died of an overdose, and I gave it to her. I killed her.

Suddenly, the ring of the doorbell echoes through the house. I open the door to find Maddie dressed in her finest crop top, mini skirt, black tights, and blouse. We fuck for about 20 minutes before I collapse, exhausted. She lies down beside me and lights a cigarette, then lights another one and passes it to me. We lie there in silence for a few minutes until she finally gets up.

“You going already?” I ask, trying my best to sound indifferent.

“I’d stay, but Mom would be mad. See you, Jeremy.” With that, she picks up her tiny pink handbag and shuts the bedroom door. I trust her to find her way out. After all, with how often she comes over, you’d think she lives here as well. Not bad for two people who all but hate each other. Not that she’s a bad person or anything. Not at all. It’s just that… she’s not Anna.

Since I already know that trying to get to sleep is a pointless activity, I decide to skip the torture and sit down at my computer. My parents got it for me as a reward for starting that stupid 12-step program. Not that I’ve even considered using since what happened to Anna. 

I skim through old forums, articles, essays, trying to find anything, literally anything, that would take my mind off things. Eventually, I come across this four-line poem on the Unexplained Mysteries forum:

He who walks all day and night,
Shakes the earth from dark to light.
All of those that venture here,
Dwell in darkness and in fear.

Some mystery, huh? Even I could have written that.

At that moment, I hear a sound coming from downstairs. It sounds an awful lot like wood scraping against the floor. I listen in. There are some faint fluttering noises, but that could be just about anything this time of night. Nevertheless, the chair thing was weird. Better go down and check for a break-in.

The quiet is deafening as I descend the stairs. I pass the mirror in the entrance hall. My heart sinks. I notice something out of the corner of my eye, or rather, the absence of something: my own reflection. I could have sworn I saw the stairs behind me, clear as day. I return to check, but there I am. I hadn’t realized how tired I look, huge bags under my eyes, hair sticking to my forehead.

I continue into the living room and am shocked to discover that my intuition had been correct, at least partially. Two chairs stand in the middle of the room facing each other, a large blue blanket stretched from one to the other, forming a kind of homemade fort, the type I’d build with my dad when I was six. Did Maddie do that? No way. I’d heard her leave way before I heard the chairs move. Unless she’s still here somewhere, playing a prank. Although something tells me she’s not that kind of person.

I cautiously approach the fort and flip back the blanket. I jump back with shock. Sitting there, right in between the two chairs, with her legs tucked into her chest and her chin resting on her knees, is Anna. Tears stream down her face like raindrops down a car window, but she does not react or even acknowledge me.

“Anna?”

She remains silent.

“Anna?” I try a little louder. Nothing.

She stares ahead as she mutters something inaudible under her breath. She’s shaking. I slowly reach my hand toward her until it touches her shoulder. She stops shaking and lifts her head slightly but does not look at me.

“He’s coming. Hide,” she mumbles.

“Who’s coming?”

She remains silent. A second later, she goes back to shaking. I pull back.

Then, all of a sudden, a loud bang reverberates throughout the house. The sound is so loud that even the furniture shakes. I cover my ears, expecting to find blood pouring out of them.

What was that? An explosion?

I rush to the door, tripping over my own feet. I pull the door open and run into the driveway expecting to see some huge natural disaster or a plane crash.

Instead, I am greeted with the sound of a sprinkler on the neighbor’s lawn and the noise of grasshoppers chirping in the grass. I look around. The street stands quiet as if it were a ghost town. What was that then? A hallucination?

I make my way back into the house, making sure the door is locked tight before heading back into the living room. It is completely empty. The fort, with its blanket and chairs, has completely vanished. Anna is also nowhere to be seen. Once again, I find myself in total and utter silence.

At that moment, the doorbell rings. I jump at the sudden noise, but quickly calm down and pull myself together. I make sure to look through the peephole before opening to find Maddie standing there with an impatient look on her face.

I let her in, only to find that she had forgotten her blouse. We make our way back upstairs. She sits on my bed as I rummage through the mess that is my room. Eventually, I find her lost article of clothing underneath my pile of dirty laundry. I wonder how that got there.

I pass her the blouse. She quickly snatches it from me.

“Will you let yourself out?” I ask.

She gives me a dirty look.

“That’s it?” she asks.

“What?”

She rolls her eyes and heads for the door.

A loud electric crack echoes through the house. She freezes, as do I. Did she hear it too? Maybe I’m not going crazy after all.

“What was that?”

I don’t feel like having her interfere in my investigation. I mean, it’d be nice to have some company, but after what I’ve seen tonight, I have a feeling this might get personal. 

“Oh, must be the floorboards upstairs. Got to have those checked.”

Another crack sounds from above.

“Sounds like it’s coming from the attic,” she says.

“I don’t know, maybe… I’ll walk you out.”

I place my hand on her back to try to steer her out of the room, but her eyes are fixated on the ceiling.

“It doesn’t sound like floorboards,” she argues. “It sounds like something electrical. Do you have a generator upstairs?”

She really did sound concerned, although I don’t blame her. Her father was an electrician who passed away from an accident involving a faulty generator when she was eight.

The next crack sends her running into the corridor, searching for the stairs into the attic. I follow, too tired to protest. Eventually, she finds them at the end of the corridor and makes her way up. Once again, I follow.

When we get to the room, we turn on the lights. I blink. The attic, which I had not seen since my parents rented me this house, looks almost lived in. There are no cobwebs, no fly corpses lying around on the floor, and barely any dust. Maddie checks the walls for an electric panel but comes up with nothing.

“I think we’re good.” She breathes a sigh of relief.

Ironically, the second she lets out her breath, the lights go out, leaving us, once again, in pitch-black darkness.

Shit, maybe it was the generator after all.

I make out Maddie’s face in the moonlight. She’s looking down as a glimmer of a tear runs down her cheek. All of a sudden, a wave of sadness washes over me. I don’t want to send her home when she’s feeling like that.

“Would you like to stay over tonight? It’s pretty late. Not really safe to go back now.”

That was a pathetic way to ask her to stay, considering she’s left my house at every possible time of night over the last few months.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she agrees.

We head back down and get into bed. With the help of a flashlight, I find some clean pajamas in my dresser and hand them to her. We get changed and lie down. I close my eyes and open them a minute later to find Maddie already asleep. While somewhat comforting, having her sleep over does not solve my insomnia problems.

Instead, I close my eyes again and replay my happiest memories in my mind. This is the closest thing I experience to dreaming, and it always makes me feel better. Of course, I think of Anna… of the first time we met.

Most people’s high school love stories start in a very boring way, like, “She sat behind me in history class.” Or, “I asked to borrow her eraser.” There was nothing boring about the way we met, though. Now, come to think of it, it wasn’t anything extraordinary either. I saw her once in the hallway, fell in love, came up to her that very second and asked her out. She said yes. Simple as that.

I often wonder, if we had had children, would we have told them that story exactly as it was, or changed it up to make it a little more interesting? Because, while in the moment it felt like the greatest thing ever, if you take a step back and look at it from the outside, it seems rather uneventful.

Our children… the ones who will never be born, and it’s all my fault. Funny how one decision could destroy so many lives at once. Hers, mine, her parents, our future kids. Their kids. To think of all the lives that they could have affected… but now she’s dead, and all because of me.

I open my eyes to shake off the thought, only to find Maddy staring back at me.

“You’re awake?” I ask.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she replies. I want to point out that she was asleep just a second ago, but decide to keep it lighthearted.

“Welcome to my world,” I joke.

She chuckles. A moment later, she sits up.

“Were you thinking of her?”

This question catches me off guard. I mean, I know she knows about Anna, but this is the first time she’d ever brought her up. I contemplate inventing a convenient story before deciding to just own up to it.

“Yes,” I state plainly.

“Did you love her?”

I wonder where all of this is coming from. But before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “I do.”

Why did I say that? 

I try to make out her face in the dark and notice what looks like a ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

Before I can say anything else, a blue glow originates from outside the doorway and fills the room. 

I look over at Maddie. Her eyes are transfixed by that same blue glow. Without a single word, we get out of bed and peek into the hallway. 

A floating strand of what looks like a blue lightning bolt glows brightly right in front of our faces. I reach out my hand to touch it, but it zips away downstairs and out of sight with the same electric sound we heard an hour earlier. Two more such strands float by and also disappear down the stairs. Another one floats by a moment later. They seem to be coming from the attic.

We descend the stairs to see where they go and wait for the next one to come along. Luckily, five seconds later, it happens again, except now about eight of them, one after the other, float downstairs and phase through the door.

We rush to open it to see where they’re all going.

As soon as the door flies open, Maddie gasps and grabs my hand. 

A towering humanoid figure, at least 200 feet tall, moves along the horizon. The blue light from the floating strands briefly illuminates part of its body as they fly up and vanish above its head. 

The ground shook with every step, the sound drowned out by the pounding of my heartbeat. We stumble back and trip over each other’s legs, collapsing to the floor. Now that the blue light is gone, the figure is but a shadow slowly making its way beyond the horizon.