I don't sleep.
I never have, even as a young child. I remember hiding beneath the thick quilts, shivering despite being drenched with sweat. Noises surrounded me, pressing in on me, suffocating me, slowly but surely. Eerie howls and rustling grated harshly in my ears, and I hid deeper and deeper. Even now I can almost hear them.
The dark was loud in itself. It spoke to me, whispered to me, telling me terrible, terrible things that sent quivers down my spine. I didn't like what it said, the scenes it painted in my mind. Of love, and of hate; of blood, and of tears; of life, and of death, and the very things that made up the world we know.
It never seemed to silence itself, and I always wished it would – or at least that I could sleep, could close my eyes when it grew dark and open them when light came back, like everyone else. Whenever I managed to get through the night, through the looming shadows and lumbering figures, through the whispers and stories, I melted with relief, bones trembling and face small but drawn.
Everyone could tell there was something wrong with me just by looking. My pale skin, hollow eyes with the deep shadows beneath them, thin lips that never moved to form words, and my drawings. In preschool, once, we were told to illustrate what we wanted to be when we grew up.
Around the room, little girls drew crude ballerinas, in light pink tutus, gracefully dancing across a ballroom floor, and little boys drew clumsy pictures of football players, scoring touchdown after touchdown, or baseball players, slamming home runs.
But then there was me, sitting by myself in the corner. The teacher – a short, kindly old lady – tried to hand me a piece of paper and some crayons. “Draw what you want to be,” she urged me quietly. “Anything – anything at all.”
Mostly out of annoyance, I took the paper, scorning the crayons in favor of a long, thin pencil. I busily set to work, the words of night still echoing in my mind. That previous night, it had told me about a girl named Joan. She was set on fire, it said, and burned. It showed me the scent of scorching flesh, played me the sound of dying screams of agony, and asked me if I wanted to feel the pain. The pain of flames tearing me apart, of a slow death watching myself die in bits and pieces. Frantically, I had refused, huddling beneath the blankets. It told me that if I didn't want to feel pain, I had to cause it. And so it taught me how to set people, houses, anything on fire successfully, and let me experience the thrilling joy of arson.
It had been the first time the night had made me kill someone. Hurt someone, scar someone – I had done that. But killing...I didn't feel the joy the night told me about. I didn't feel the pleasure that lifted you up and carried you away, the satisfaction that swirled around you. And the night had been angry with me, and threatened to set me on fire and see if I felt the joy then. So I had lied and told it that I loved the feeling, and that I only wanted to do it again and again and again.
Even though I didn't. It was also the first time I lied to the night, and since I lied to it I had to keep up the pretense of that lie. There was no doubt in my young mind that it was constantly watching me, hoping to catch me in a lie and then find some horrible way to exterminate me. And so since I said I loved arson, I drew myself as an arsonist.
The night had showed me how to draw, once. It taught me the way to hold a pencil and let what is your mind flow onto the paper. I remembered what it told me, about thinking only of the image in my mind, ignoring the pencil in my hand and paper beneath the point. The only canvas in the world, it had said, is the world itself.
And when I was done, I gazed upon it in satisfaction. There was I, tall and fearsome, a blazing grin upon my face. In front of me was a large, burning house, and inside, two small children about my age screaming. Their faces were twisted and battered, and their flesh burning.
It was night outside.
The teacher, happy to see evidence of drawing on the paper, shuffled over. “Let's see what a beautiful picture you drew,” she said cheerfully, probably glad about making a breakthrough. I glanced up at her in annoyance, but it was too late to stop her, and she was already studying the drawing, smile still frozen on her face.
She looked at me, and then back at the paper. “Did you – did you draw this?” she finally asked, voice frail and trembling. “James?”
I didn't respond, only ignoring her as I looked at the paper, a small smile on my face. The night would certainly be fooled by this. It would know I enjoyed arson, and wouldn't hurt me.
Standing up suddenly, she hurried over to the telephone and began making a call, knowing my home number by heart.
By heart and by life; by grave and by death. Night had taught me that.
It was around then that I began seeing a therapist. I disliked those sessions with the psychologist, who asked me annoying questions and wanted me to draw pictures all the time. He told my parents I was an artistic genius – that I had a tremendously high IQ, and because of that, I was different. The night told me IQ meant nothing, and that they were all wrong. I was nothing special. The only thing they got right, it said, was that I was different. Hopelessly different, and no one would ever like me. By heart and by life, it told me. By grave and by death.
I don't remember how long I was afraid of night, but by the time I was eight I no longer was. Night was my friend, my lover, my family. Night was everything I would ever need, and nothing more. It taught me about death and life, and showed me the complexities of human nature. Humans, it said, were all invariably stupid and evil. They were cruel and vicious at heart, like their monkey ancestors, and wholly unable to change.
Except I was different. I was its child, it explained. And a child of the night needed no one. It was because of this, I soon realized, that I had no friends. Everyone stayed far away from me, eyeing me worriedly when I came too close and whispering to each other about me. Teachers heard about me long in advance, and psychologists fretted that I would only grow more and more withdrawn. They recommended pulling me out of public school and placing me with other geniuses.
And that was how I ended up at the School of the Gifted and Talented. SGT was filled with rejects that had brains, or as the night explained to me, humans so human-like they weren't accepted. I still didn't make friends there, although some people tried to befriend me. But I brushed them off, because I didn't need them. I was a child of the night.
By the time I was eleven, I regularly wandered the streets with the night, only really comfortable when I was alone. Weather didn't affect me, and I carried out the tasks night told me to do. Sometimes I wondered why I had to destroy a certain house, or kill a certain animal, or murder a certain human, but increasingly less and less. Night knew my thoughts, and rebuked me whenever I had these doubting thoughts. A child never doubt its father, it told me. Even the humans got that right in their book. Those stupid psychologists diagnosed me with paranoia – as if they would know whatever they're talking about. Had they ever killed, destructed, butchered? If they hadn't, how could they presume to call themselves experts of the human mind, when they hadn't ever explored all its avenues?
I didn't need to eat much. Knowledge was my nourishment – not the garbage found in books, of course, but what the night told me. There were times when all through the dark it taught me, of flora and fauna, how the world works, of science that could defeat time, and of mathematics that could defeat any corporate environment. Food was only necessary once or twice every handful of days. I may have been thin and lean, but I still had enough to survive on – plenty, in fact. They called me anorexic; I called them idiots. By heart and by life, I remembered. By grave and by death. What did they know?
It wasn't until I was thirteen that I learned, truly, how to live. The physical world was one thing, but I had never really known of the dream world. Night called it Death, and it was a world that only I, a child of the night, could enter. Even night had to stay behind, only watching.
I could wander from dream to dream, silently observing and learning. What surprised me was that I could do whatever I wanted, think whatever pleased me, and night would never know unless I told it. It was the ultimate freedom, Death, and I visited it more and more.
Before too long I discovered I could change them, and this gave me such pleasure that it was the only thing that could make me happy. The other world – it was stupid, it was boring, and there was no point to it. Listlessly go from place to place, where was the fun, the novelty in it? Death was so much better. The psychologists labeled me as clinically depressed. They were so, so hopelessly ignorant.
It was in the middle of such a dream, when I was fifteen, that I first saw her. I was gliding from branch to branch of a tall, twisted tree, my hands easily grasping each gnarled limb and my feet pushing off of them as I went. With every touch, each tree grew increasingly diseased, until it almost withered away. With every breath I exhaled, a four-eyed raven flapped around, spikes protruding from its ebony feathers along its spine, and long, poison-tipped talons from its feet.
The air, which smelled sweet and pure, with floral hints, quickly grew sour and repulsive. My eyes scanning the ground from above, I quickly spotted the dreamer. She was a young girl, and in her dream, she had cropped black hair with beautiful blue eyes. In reality, she probably wasn't so beautiful. Her eyes were wide and frightened as she wandered through the dark, malicious forest I had created for her. I smiled, teeth glinting in the dark of Death, as she whimpered quietly.
I whispered a single word in the ear of one four-eyed raven, which then swooped down beside her, cawing loudly. The girl let out a cry of terror and started running, but I stopped her in her tracks. She struggled, but was no match for my powers, and could only watch as the raven drew closer and closer. Her mouth opened, but I swallowed the scream that came.
“Is that really the best you could come up with?”
Startled, I whipped around, to see nothing. “Show yourself,” I commanded, in an unwavering voice. Death was my realm.
There was a flitting movement, but I saw nothing. “So unimaginative...especially for a child of the night,” her – for it was definitely a girl – taunting voice came. “All you can do is frighten little humans?”
I bared my fangs. “Come here and say that, coward!” I hissed.
And finally, she did come, perching beside me on the branch. Her expression was cocky, large brown eyes studying me condescendingly. “You think yourself a bit of a lord, don't you,” she said, not even making it a question. Her voice was amused. “The only child of the night, I bet.”
“What are you talking about?” I snarled.
She laughed. “There are many of us.” Leaning forward until her face was almost in mine, she continued, “I've been watching you for a while. Don't you think there's more to this than petty nightmares? Have you ever tried...” The girl breathed, “...scaring someone to death?”
I recoiled. “Scaring someone to death?”
“Controlling their thoughts? Their actions?”
“Is that...” I shook my head. “That's not possible!”
She cocked her head. “I thought you might have to see it to believe it. Follow me.” She coyly beckoned me with a single finger, and I struggled to catch up with her as she easily bound through the Death territory to another dream.
We arrived at a pitch black place, where I could see nothing, despite my unusually strong night vision. “This,” the girl said in a hushed voice. “is true Death.” There was a movement beside me, and the darkness faded to an open, grassy meadow. “And this,” she said. “is life.”
I stared at her. “You...brought the dreamer back to life?”
She smiled smugly. Waving a hand in the air, it dimmed to the same blackness again. “And to death,” she said, a hint of a giggle in her voice. “It takes a lot of practice. Maybe you'll be able to do it sometime.”
“Wait,” I called, as she started to bound away. My eyes began to adjust to the Death beyond all other Deaths. “How many of us are there?”
She turned and winked. “Lots.”
“And...what's your name?”
But she was already gone.
Later, when I was with night and not Death, I mentioned her, and I felt it bristle. Don't go near her, it warned me. It's dangerous. Stay away. I agreed, but I knew I would see her again. Night couldn't follow me into Death.
And so my first rebellious thoughts began to fester.
The following nights I went straight to Death, and attempted to bring dreamers to true Death and then life again. The secret was in the mind, I soon found, and before long I was able to do it, for a good part of the time. I practiced for several weeks until I fully mastered it, and then I sought out that strange girl.
She was different, like me, I believed. Although she wasn't very beautiful, something about her was appealing...like a different kind of beauty. I thought about her all the time, the way she easily accomplished things. She was better than me, I concluded. And I didn't feel envy, but something else. Something I had never felt before.
I thought it might be love.
When I next found her, she was talking to a dreamer, something I had never even dared to try. I hid behind a bush and watched her speak. The dreamer, eyes wide, took in everything she said. She was quickly done, and then glided over to me. “Hello, again.”
I smiled, surprising myself. “Hi.”
“I suppose you think yourself pretty clever for being to able to kill and revive, huh?” she asked, crossing her arms.
I blinked. “How did you know I was able to do that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, why else would you try to find me?”
Shrugging, I replied, “Dunno. So what were you doing? Talking to the dreamer, I mean.”
She turned and looked up at the sky. “Didn't you just answer your question?”
“Huh?”
“You asked what I was doing. I was talking to the dreamer.”
I licked my lips. “I mean...why? What were you saying?”
She yawned, and then slid a smile my way. As if children of the night would ever be sleepy. “The dreamer was my math teacher. I told her to give me a good grade.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You controlled a dreamer for something that...that petty?” I accused her, using the same word she had used to describe me a month ago.
“Well, I wasn't doing too well in that class.”
“But what's the point? Why do you even care?”
The girl glanced at me. “Why did you kill and revive that dreamer over and over again? For practice. It's the same thing, bozo.”
“Oh.”
For months after that I met her every day, and she taught me how to do things, like control people and manipulate them. I managed to get the psychologists off my tail and kept my parents out of my business, too.
One day, she seemed excited about something, and ran up to me as soon as she saw me, different from her usual detached self. “What's the matter?” I asked in surprise.
“I think I've just figured out something new!” she said, grinning. “I can choose the dreamer now, instead of having to go from dream to dream until I find the one I want.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
She nodded. “It's all mental. The same powers that allow humans to create their dreams of Death are the same that let us do these things, right?”
I nodded as well. “Yeah. I know that.”
“Well,” the girl continued. “If you extend these mental powers outside the Death realm instead of inside it...you reach the physical world.”
My eyes widened. “I think I see what you're saying.”
We practiced it together, shivers running through my body all the while at being so close, so intimate with the girl. At one point, when we were nearly successful, I suddenly asked her, “What's your name?”
She glanced at me. “Adela,” she said softly.
“I'm James,” I replied hesitantly.
Both uneasy with the emotions inside us, we turned back to the task at hand. Closing our eyes, we combined all our strength and reached out to an arbitrary person – the governor of Wisconsin, as it was.
Giddy, we realized we were inside his dream. Laughing together, we hugged, and then abruptly pulled away, both of us blushing.
For a long time after that, I didn't see her. Adela was gone, and it was just me. I spent a year like that, lonely and cold, as if I was that young, frightened child again. By the time I turned seventeen, I had managed to almost completely forget about her, and it was just me and night again.
But then suddenly, she came. It was as abrupt and startling as the first time we met, but she was different. Whereas before she had been sadistic, cocky, and condescending, there was something special about her. Adela seemed kind and modest, and she slowly walked up to me. “James,” she said in that gentle voice I had only heard her use once before. “It's been a while.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “Uh, Adela. Hi.”
She watched me finish instructing a dreamer to hijack a plane, and then asked, “Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you want him to do that?” Her voice brimmed with anguish.
“What's wrong with you?” I snapped, irritated by her strange softness. “You're acting like a human.”
She shook her head. “James, you don't understand.”
“You're right about that.”
“James, look. A while after we figured out how to reach outside Death, I...” she hesitated. “I was curious. So I visited the dreams of a fetus.”
I stared at her. “A fetus?”
“Yes. And...I can't even describe it.” Adela looked up at me, her eyes wide and – what was that? Hopeful. “It was so...amazing, so spectacular!” She placed her hands in mine, sending those familiar shivers through me. “I can sleep now. And night no longer bothers me. It's so wonderful!”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? What's wrong with you?”
“No,” she said. “You still don't get it. You have to visit one of those dreams too. Everything will make sense.”
Narrowing my eyes, I snapped, “Don't you even get what's happening to you?” I shook her hands of off mine in disgust. “You're human now, idiot. I don't know how you screwed this up, but you did. You don't deserve to be a child of the night anymore.”
Her eyes widened. “James...”
I took a step closer to her and she flinched. “Look at what I've mastered,” I whispered, eyes gleaming. I raised my hand and let swiftly dropped it. Adela gasped and fell to the ground, before slowly fading to dust.
Raising my head to the sky, I smiled. “Hear me, Death,” I purred. “Did I do well?”
And it rewarded me greatly.
A week passed, and I still remembered Adela's words. She had talked in such idiotic adoring tones of the fetus's dream. What could a fetus possibly dream of, anyway? Out of pure curiosity, I visited.
When I arrived, I closed my eyes immediately. It was all around me – something I couldn't describe, but made my pulse pound and my blood freeze. I trembled, something I hadn't done since I was a very young child. Angry at myself for being afraid, I forced my eyes open and looked upon what lay before me.
My breath escaped from me, and I fell to my knees. Lowering my head, I cried for the first time in my life.
