White faces
I could not sleep. Despite it being way past my bedtime, I lay in the darkened room as that strange feeling washed over me. It was like I was being called someplace. I resisted the best I could but over the last three days this feeling became too much to bear. It started much like a soft whisper in the back of my mind, but now was more like a shout…no, a command to go.
Opening the window, the cold night air rushed in. Causing my skin to prickle under my thin pyjamas. Barefoot I climbed out the window, almost trance like, further and further away from the house.
No kid of twelve should be out this late in the middle of winter. But here I was walking away from my home, freezing and shivering with each step on the cold pavement.
I was being pulled, forced against my will to go onwards, towards the park and into the nearby woods.
The dark shadows of the dead trees danced in the blistering wind. Although fear had gripped me and I was crying, trying to force myself to turn and go home. I was compelled to walk on into the dark woods.
I could feel each branch, rock and stone under foot as I finally came to the little clearing in the centre of the woods. There I froze in that spot. Scared, cold and crying, I looked on towards the fire in the centre of that clearing. I welcomed the warmth on my numb skin.
My eyes darted around the fire, there stood or floated four black robed figures. Their cloaks hiding them against the darkness of the woods. Even the light of the fire seemed to be absorbed by the blackness of their robes. If it were not for the bright white, featureless masks they would have been all but invisible.
Only blackness met my gaze, when I looked to where their eyes would be. Something told me that they were smiling. Not a menacing smile but one of comfort and happiness. Just like my mothers warm smile that greeted me each time I got home from school.
I was not scared of these white-faced things; I know I should be. They had called me to this spot in the freezing cold, to do whatever it was they were to do to me. Yet they simply stood in their circle, silent as the night, watching the fire dance. For how long we stood, I can’t say. It felt like hours to me, but could have been only a few minutes before one of the creatures approached me. Gliding gracefully over the ground, making no sound at all. As it approached, I automatically raised my right arm, holding it out straight and stiff.
That cold grip of the invisible hand sends a wave of cold pain through me. A cold far worse than the frigid night air, that lingered just outside the warmth of the fire. It was like I had been thrown into a freezing lake. The encounter lasted only a few moments, before my body gave way to the shock.
I shivered. My heart racing as my eyes darted about. It took a lot longer than I wanted to discover I was still tucked up in bed. The window was wide open, bellowing in the cold night air. My room was freezing, I shuddered as I closed the window. Then huddled under the covers to warm myself up. I lay there trying to work out if what happened had been a dream. Had I opened the window in my sleep? Or did I actually go outside into those woods?
At some point I must have drifted off, as next I knew I was being awaken up by my mum. Crawling out of my bed, my heart leaped as my feet touched something dry and crumbly. Looking down I could make out the dried mud. Sure, enough as I raised my feet, I could see two destroyed foot prints. The soles of my feet were black with dirt and the odd leaf or stone.
Thankfully mum hadn’t seen or I’d be in big trouble if she discovered I went wandering at night! But how did I get back home? I didn’t remember walking home, perhaps one of those things has brought me, after I passed out. I quickly rolled up my sleeve and looked at my lower arm. Nothing! No marks at all. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see there, but the memory of last night, hazily flashed in my mind, I felt a chill in my arm, more like pins and needles, than that searing cold I had felt.
A quick shower and then to clean my room, before heading to school. Mum was surprised when I asked if I could vacuum my room, but delighted all the same.
On the way home from school, I took the route past the park. Taking a diversion into those woods. With great effort I emerged through the brambles and discovered the spot I had wandered the night before. To my disappointment there was no evidence of the fire. I had a good look about the area, but nothing. I even checked the bushes and the woods themselves, but there was no sign that anyone had been there in sometime.
I occasionally went to that spot over the next few years until I’d forgotten all about it. After all I had a job to get too now and the responsibilities of a twenty-two-year-old. I’d not even thought of that strange night in all that time. It still lingered in the back of my mind a sort of half memory, that I wasn’t really certain it was real anymore. That was until that night, when they came to me again. Those white-faced things I’d almost forgotten about. Lingering around that fire, it was again like a whisper. A calling, I knew that one day I would have to obey, just as I had when I was a child.
Long buried questions bombarded my mind. ‘What were they?’ ‘Why had they appeared again after all this time?’ ‘Why did they call to me again?’ as these swirled around my head, a sharp chill pained my forearm. It burns with a chill I recalled all too well. There right where that creature had held my arm a mass of black ink swirled under my skin. Morphing slowly into a knot like tattoo.
Rushing to the bathroom I scrubbed and scrubbed at it with hot water, but it was no use the cold emanated from it like a block of ice. Slowly, possible over a few hours the tattoo took its final shape and relief was mine at last. There it sat under my skin, that Knott patten, given to me so long ago, for some reason I cannot understand or even want to think about.
Weeks passed and they still came into my dreams. The calling growing stronger and stronger, until it was all I could think of. Sure, enough that night again the dead of winter the calling became too strong to ignore. Again, I walked those streets, this time dressed warmly, towards those woods. I allowed my body to just go towards them, I didn’t fight. I didn’t seem the point. Fighting caused that cold pain to roar through me.
I stood before them again, possible in the same spot I did as a child. This time I could hear high pitched whispers of welcome as one glided towards me. I knew this one, it was the one that gave the mark to me. As my mind recalled that night, I noticed my arm was already out stretched. I braced myself for that painful chill, but it never came. The creature before me indeed held my arm, that tattoo, swirling in response to its invisible touch.
‘Choose’ that voice so clear in my mind, echoed. As another approached me, A mask on top folded robes floating just before me.
In that moment it became all too clear to me. These things, they had chosen me, for why I could not fathom. They were allowing me to chose to accept the mask or not. I had so many questions bursting in my mind. Instantly they were answered.
‘We are ancient begins, existing beyond time and space. You stand in one of our sacred sites, we have many though out this and other worlds.’
‘You are chosen, it is predetermined, yet it is your choice. There is always a choice. Join us, become like us or leave and live out your life.’
‘Simply place the mask over your face, the darkness will envelop you and you will be removed from this world. That is the price for joining us. You fade from existence.’ It let go of my arm as the answers settled into my mind.
My hands trembled as I reached towards the floating mask.
To become one of these things, from my understanding, I would no longer exists or even have existed at all. Something deep inside screamed at me to place that mask to my face. But my thoughts turned to my mother, father, sister and my friends. I knew if I took the mask, they would no longer remember me. It would be as if I was never born.
I gave into the screaming inside me and felt the cold embrace of the darkness. I had become one of them at last and now like them I watch from the shadows over the peoples and creatures of all worlds. Wating for the next to be chosen and become like us.