DAYLIGHT / Daniel Pietersen

It’s strange to be back. The old house. The only house. As dark and dusty as I remember.

Wooden wall-panels burned black by time. Footsteps that echo on unforgiving floorboards. Stained light seeping through glaucomic glass.

The study where the lamplight flickers on windswept nights. The kitchen, once warm with bread and children’s smiles but now barely used. The long, spinal corridor of the upper storey where I paced through the long nights of my mother’s dying.

All familiar and yet, like a stone in a well-worn boot, some small sense of wrongness scratches at my memory. Something here which shouldn’t be.

Who are you, I think.
It’s me, I reply. Just me.

I drift from one room to the next, absent-mindedly rearranging ornaments or closing curtains where the pale light creeps in. I hear raised voices. The neighbours, no doubt. They never used to argue.
Birdsong, suddenly, calling in the dawn. Sadness washes over me, cold like rain, and I turn to see the curtains opened once more. Daylight fills the room. Strange shadows stand stark against the wall.

If I sleep then I don’t remember. I dwindle, return. A faded listlessness now that mother is gone. Now the work of mother is gone. Now the dying of mother is gone. Better, though. Far better than the tears and the staring, hollow eyes. The bruised flesh, the cracked skin.

Who are you, she says. I don’t know you. I don’t know you.
It’s me, I would reply. Just me.
Can you hear me. I’m just here.
I don’t know you. I don’t know you.
A hard smile floating just above my mouth. Barely touching.
In the mornings, when the birds sing, she sings with them. An eerie sound coming from an old woman’s mouth. When did she learn it, I wonder. As a child? A strange thought, her as a child. Her as a picture of a child, looking up at something just out of shot.
She shouts for the curtains to be opened, even if they already are. Even if the daylight streams in like music.
Is it her who opens the curtains now?
No, it can’t be.
Not now.
It’s me, I tell myself. Just me.

I stand at the window of my mother’s room. The bed stripped, the wardrobes empty. Looking up, a bare bulb hanging from a braided cord. Sadness, cold like rain. I look out over the garden. A long strip of grass and flower beds, colours muted as they recede into a late Spring fog. I see movement by the old shed. A figure. No, two. I wave, shooing them away. Tapping on the glass. One looks up with a hand shielding their eyes.
Who are you, I wonder, but already they are gone. The fog gone, too, and replaced by too-bright daylight.
I close the curtains despite my mother’s complaints.
Who are you. I don’t know you.
Her bird-voice singing in the sunlight.
Can you hear me.
The bed is empty now, I remind myself.

In the study with the lamp that flickers in the wind. Irritated, I turn it off. It turns on again, through some whim of electricity. I turn it off. On again. Off.

On.
I knock it to the floor. The bulb bursts with a flash of light, casting two brief silhouettes against the wall, and then darkness.
My mother screams her impossible, bird-like scream and I scream with her.
I scream for all the times I never could.
The screaming is louder than anything I have heard before, more voices than I ever thought possible.

My mother looks up at me from her bed. Only the finest flicker of life in her eyes, too weak even to let go.
Who are you, she asks.
Her hands rise up from the sheets. Two birds that flutter softly, song-less. For a moment their wings flap in my face. Barely touching. Just for a moment.
Who are you to do this thing.
It’s me, I reply. Just me.
I hold her gently in my hands. Thin bones and soft feathers. I hold her as she sings. Can you hear me. As she stops.
Looking up. Hollow eyes, bruised.
Afterwards, I close the curtains.

I stand in the pale light. In the room. In the house.
Quiet, finally, but a quiet where tears come quickly.
A bare bulb hanging from a braided cord.
My mother looks up at me from her bed. Looks up from a bed that I remember is empty.
Empty now she is gone.
Did I forget. I couldn’t forget. Not as I held her bones and feathers. Her body, bruised and bird-like.
Empty now. She is gone.

Sadness like rain and, like rain, I fall. Into a flash of light and then darkness.
Who are you to do this thing.
It’s me, I reply. Just me.

It’s strange to be back.
Drifting from room to room.
Floating just above.
Barely touching.
Hands that flutter softly.
Two figures, silhouette.
In the garden, looking up.

In the bedroom, looking up.
Looking up at something just out of shot.
Who are you, they ask.
Who are you.
It’s me, I reply. Just me.
Can you hear me.
I’m just here.
Hanging from a braided cord.
Too weak to let go.
Quiet, finally, but a quiet where tears come quickly.
Replaced by too-bright daylight.

 Daniel Pietersen is a writer of weird fiction and critical non-fiction on horror and related subjects. He is a regular contributor to Sublime Horror and Dead Reckonings and his fiction can be found in publications like Audient Void and Another North. Daniel lives in Edinburgh with his wife and dog.