For 10/17/96 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 707 words

Nightmare

The wind blew so hard through the dark valley that shadows scudded across the forest floor, tearing free from their casts. No one saw it because the moon was obscured by clouds, and no one was there. The shadows blew into a lake at the end of the canyon and sank like sheets of iron, fluttering but falling fast.

Bats saw it. Moles saw it. Fish saw it. They weren't talking, however. They were busy being blown about by the wind. The bats ducked into their caves and remained silent. The moles ducked underground as their holes filled with dirt and leaves. The fish listed sideways.

By morning, all the shadows were gone. The sun crested over the eastern rim into the azure sky and spilled its billions of wavicals against the rocks and trees. On the far sides, light reigned. No shade formed behind the hills. No shade wavered beneath the waterfalls. No shade followed the paths of birds as they flitted across the sky on their morning killing sprees.

As the earth rotated into afternoon and evening, the valley remained illuminated. The rest of the world remained unaffected. At midnight, the valley glowed as bright as noon, and the lake as black as blindness.

The bats hurried away like bare-footed children across a scorched beach. The moles burrowed into the neighboring valleys and forgot the past. The lake slowly began to evaporate, leaving the fish to fate.

Day after night the valley radiated. Leaves fell from the trees. Grass browned and curled. Flowers overexerted themselves and wilted. It was not a pleasant sight, but no one was there to see it.

The years rolled by. Finally, one dry winter day a stranger arrived, a tired man looking for his final resting place. He walked through the valley of the shadowless death and he feared the weevils that bounced across his trail.

Unable to find shade to cool his weathered brow, he stopped at the bleak, black lake and took a swim. He paddled half-heartedly to the middle, exhaled mightily, and sank to the bottom. Fish, crowded and grouchy, darted at the man and tried to make him flinch. He didn't flinch. He sank into the shadows and disappeared.

It was warm and peaceful and cozy among the shadows. He resolved to remain. The shadows, startled by the disturbance, awoke disoriented. Seeing the man, tall like a tree, hard like a rock, alone like a mountain, they clung to him for old time's sake. They attached themselves to him and melded into one tremendous dark mass.

As the man thrashed his arm involuntarily in the deprivation of oxygen, a limb of black shadow slipped beyond the boundary of the lake and lashed itself to a tree. With a great heave, the shadow lifted the man out of the lake. Whether it was the shadow or the man that made the effort will never be known.

The man lay sputtering on the steep bank. He opened his eyes and his pupils, like black holes, sucked the darkness into his soul until he could see again. He looked around the valley. It was still brightly lit on all sides. The sun hung low in the west.

One tree, however, had regained its shadow - the tree that had assisted in the man's rescue. The man stood up to stumble to it and darkness spread across the valley. When the man moved, the darkness moved with him. Frightened, he ran past the tree into the next valley, and the tremendous shadow followed.

For years the man wandered through many lands, bringing darkness with him for miles around, terrifying all he encountered. Behind him, one strand of black led back across the countryside to the tree by the lake.

At last the man turned and followed the strand back to the illuminated valley. He hugged a shadeless rock and the rock grew a shadow. He touched a mountain and the mountain fell dark on one side. He ran through the forest touching trees, and their shadows returned. For days he worked, feeling everything bathed in light, giving it darkness again.

When he finished, the valley was back to normal. His shadow mingled with the others in opposing the sun. Night fell.