A Midnight Walk

Eli Trenchard | Aug 28, 2023

She moved through the night like a ghost. Nothing stirred, not a branch crack or footstep could be heard. The only proof that she was there at all was the whisper of warm breath against the night air. She could see her goal in the distance. The moonlight shone off its glossy marble exterior in an almost radiant defiance. It could have been alive, it could have been real. She had been there before. The footprints in the old, thin layer of snow were proof of that. But never before had she gotten this close. This close to the end. She breathed in deeply, inhaling the chilly night air. It froze her lips as it passed, and she let it out slowly, so slowly the breath didn’t materialize. Her feet kept moving, but she didn’t want to go any further, for she didn’t know what would happen if she did. Would she plunge deep beneath the shadows? Or would she be the light in the darkest of tombs? They were just silly questions of course. Her feet were deciding for her. She had absolutely no say in the matter, it was happening. This would be the first and probably only time she touched her own grave.

It was close now, less than inches away from the tip of her finger. One slight movement and it would be real. A twig snapped behind her and she lost her footing. The cold marble bit at the soft flesh of her palm and her shoulder slammed the ground. She got up quickly. Whatever was out there wasn’t done. Noise was an impossibility, at least it should have been. The woman scanned the valley but there was nothing to be seen. It was clear, it was still. She looked back to the forest. Nothing. Finally, she turned back to the stone, and saw him.

Fear is an odd thing. The snap of the twig had startled her, but the man made of darkness didn’t bother her. She felt calm, an unprecedented calm given the attire of the man in front of her. His black hair flowed, rippled, and swam from his scalp in a gentle pursuit of the tight, recently shaved black beard painted over cheeks. His chest was covered by an open shirt tucked into his pants. Black pants, almost too black, as if he had stolen the darkness that seeps between alleys at night and wove the nothingness into cloth.

“Dianna,” the man said. “How nice it is to finally see you here. How was the journey?” 

The woman couldn’t speak. The man, the man covered in black, eyes as blue as the sea had spoken her name, asked a question. Her jaw felt tight and the legs that carried her to this place had all but vanished.

“Dianna, do you know who I am? Do you know where we are?”

Still, she didn’t speak. She couldn’t. But she could feel his breath on her lips. It was almost as if they were touching. The shadow exhaled, allowing a plume of vapour to float towards the woman’s face. The woman closed her eyes and allowed the warmth to coat her skin in safety. What had once been frozen was now warm. What was immobile, was now mobile. She opened her eyes and her lips parted.

“I have been here before. I cannot remember the time or the place, but I know I have been here. The walk is etched in my memory. I have yet to touch the stone though.” 

The shadow smiled and gazed down at her.

“Yes, very good Dianna. You are right. You have been here. I have seen you many times but never have I talked to you; never have you touched the stone. But you missed one. Who am I?” 

Dianna knew the words, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t want the fear to take hold. She wanted to keep warming against the radiation coming from his chest. 

“Say it.” He whispered slowly, almost breathing the words from his mouth. The woman drew a breath in, letting her lungs fill until they screamed at her to let it go.

“Your name is Azrael.” 

The man smiled.

“Yes.... Azrael......” He said as a grin began to slide across his lips, drifting somewhere between his eyes and his jaw. He slowly extended his arm and spoke. “Come, he is waiting.” 

The woman hesitated, but after what seemed to be an eternity, she felt her arm move. The fingertips were almost touching. But she could not feel the reality of his touch against hers. The sky shook. Blades of electricity sliced through the air, and she could feel her heart pump faster. Again, again, again the electricity slammed into the earth.

“Grab my hand, Dianna,” the shadow yelled. With each strike of lighting her hand crept closer to the form of darkness in front of her. The dark was warm, all around her was cold, unforgiving. She inched closer to his fingers, wanting to be warmed by his endlessness. As he watched his fingers moving, illuminated by the daggers of electricity raining down across the valley she could almost see stars within them. There were little bits of light pouring through the total black. He was complete darkness, but somehow illuminated by the boundless frontier. It was an odd feeling. On one hand she knew he was dark; she knew that the shape in front of her was going to take her to Him. On the other hand, he was the warmth she had always craved, always searched for. His darkness almost pulled her further into itself. As if by saying his name and touching the marble she had signed a letter of intent saying she was ready. But she wasn’t, all she wanted was to see it. All she wanted was to put a toe over the line to peek at the world sitting behind the ripped veil. Her hand continued to creep closer to the darkness, the shadow was pulling it toward its finality.

“Yes Dianna. Closer. Your almost there now.” The lighting stopped; everything was peace. Everything was still, yet the woman knew chaos lingered in the abyss between the visual and the invisible. She could smell the burning, acrid smell of life destroyed in her nostrils. She could hear screams and the hell that raged just beyond the forest circling the valley. She knew if she touched the shadow, she would be free of it all. Wasn’t it what she always wanted? Wasn’t the eternal peace what she was really looking for when she began the journey to Azrael’s tomb? Wasn’t that the truth she had hidden through all those cold nights, in all those sessions with the psychologist? Her eyes had closed but as they batted open like wings of a mockingbird fluttering in slow motion, she could see it. The Shadows eyes, they were right there. Millimetres from her own, they sat still, unmoving. She was transfixed. She was frozen by the warmth. What she had seen as blue moments ago was no longer blue. Of course, they were blue, but the shade wasn’t the ocean, at least not the ocean off a tropical beach. No, the blue was deep, deep like sea and just as endless. Everything about the silhouette in front of her was endless. The hair stopped, yes, but somehow it kept going long after the shape ended. It trailed lower. It fell deeper. The same could be said for the shirt. The perfectly normal shirt wasn’t perfectly normal. It was draping and long, a cloak in the form of a pearl button, snap shirt. The pants not perfectly tailored but black and long. Not form fitting but ripped, hanging and misshapen. The silhouette was no longer a silhouette, no longer a shadow, but a manifestation of a mirage. The water was shimmering, the faux black puddle moved and warped, milling in the blank space where all the air that should have been leaving her lungs was. 

“Come Dianna. Let me show you paradise. It is just over the hill. Life moves in one direction, but life is backwards. We can move wherever we want. Time, space, all of it is a cell. Break free. Let me show you the universe. Let me show you the corners that even time does not know.” Dianna pulled her hand away. She knew it was a mistake. She knew that even Azrael couldn’t take her where she wanted to go. She stood up, her feet finding their footing underneath her, carrying her away from the tomb, away from the valley of peace and as she moved the shadow moved alongside her. He spoke, threatened, and praised but she continued to move, she continued to walk the path back to the chaos, back to the hell she had left.

“Dianna.” 

The woman turned, the voice was no longer breath moving the syllables through the blank space but a voice, a vibration of chords. A voice she had heard before.

“Mom?”

“Dianna, take his hand. He is kind, he will take you back to me.” 

Dianna was close enough to the trees for their shadows to be cast over her shoulders. She could feel Azrael’s fingers on her waist, his hair against her cheek and his lips on her neck.

“This is your knife; this is your weapon? You think my mother’s soul will pierce me so deep that I am forced to ring the bell of the silver city?” Dianna asked. 

The voice breathed its words into her ears again. She could feel his warmth on her cheek and his tongue against her ear.

“Yes. This is death.”

“I have always assumed it was a knife, a blade so gentle it released me from this form and into the next.” She could feel the formless shadow move from her back and watched it materialize in front of her. The image of her mother faded and vanished.

“It can be a knife, Dianna. It can be whatever you want.” The breath filled voice proclaimed. From midair Diana could see the knife become real, not like the shadow, but like the world. The iron of finality was floating in midair, so close that Dianna could grab it, she could wrap her fingers around the handle. Something deep within her chest wanted to. It wanted to be a part of this finality’s whole. But she resisted the urge and stumbled backwards. Her feet lost footing and she could feel her head resting against the forest floor. She was closer than she thought. But so was he, the shadow that was. He was on top of her. She could feel his hips against hers and at the same time she couldn’t. It was as if she believed he was lying on her outstretched figure so there he was. His lips were on her neck again, his breath in her ear. The knife was in his right hand, it was ready to strike and all of a sudden Dianna knew what she had to do. 

She stood up, the weightless shadow moved from her body, and she ran. She ran as fast as she could toward the entrance to the forest, she could see what she had left behind and what she was running from. As she got closer, she watched the silhouette of the shadow materialize in front of the light. As she made her final step towards resurrection, she stopped.

“This is it, Dianna. If you leave you will never come back. No matter how badly you want to, no matter how many times you try.”

“You lie old man; you yearn for my warmth. Without it you will become cold, this place is a frigid pathway to the end. You are but a figment of my imagination. You will always be here when I am ready. Today, this day, I am not ready.” And as the words left her mouth she fell through the light. 

The paramedics sat around the bath, and she looked down. Red liquid flowed freely across the grime covered tiles.

“It’s okay. I am not ready just quite yet.”