The Gospel According To Darkness - 2/

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice a mix of curiosity and apprehension. She cast her sight out as far as she could focus, she scanned the environment and found nothing out of the ordinary; or at the very least, what was considered ordinary for this place in the time she’d been here.

“Figure it out, we’ve been pretty intimate in this space”.

The words became more and more lucid, and then more like a voice in the world immediately around her.

“You’ve been good company, lots for you to forget”.

As the words made their way into her ears the gloom began to weave itself between her feet and she felt a chill upon the skin around her ankles. It looked a little different now, it was intentional in the way it coiled and began to coalesce.

Celeste shifted her gaze from the gloom at her feet over to the blue light in the distance. The anxiety she had building inside her began to calm and she took a deep breath, grounding herself in the moment.

“I see you’ve found her”. As the words came forth, the gloom felt like it tensed and bristled against her flesh momentarily.

“Don’t get too attached, she’s as bad for you as I am”. Now it was almost taunting, sarcastic, chiding Celeste for a response. “This is a place for forgetting, and soon you’ll forget her too”.

“What do you want?” Celeste fired back, and as she did she immediately felt the regret building in her. She’d shown defiance, and now she was questioning the presence that had power here? It unsettled Celeste just how much of her own strength and resilience she had lost.

“More!” the gloom responded ecstatically, then after a pause that felt like the closest thing to a sigh that could come from something like this; “or nothing. I’ve spent eons consuming this place. I broke it down to ashes after feeding off the hopes and dreams of people who lived here”

The gloom formed pillars of grey smoke that took the shape of random people, each their own. Each figure unique in its own way before shifting to a new representation of someone the gloom had consumed.

“Part of me wants out, to ride on your shoulder out of here to new spaces and new people”

“...to hurt?” Celeste interrupted.

“They’re nothing, they didn’t even know what they wanted.” The amount of contempt in the voice now was palpable. It was as though for every step Celeste gained against this force, it immediately had something to slap her back with. “At least with me, they’ll be remembered”

“Why don’t you just leave here yourself? Why do you need me to get out of here?” Another step forward.

“Don’t get cocky…” the voice was now getting more hostile at the idea that it was being questioned, “this isn’t about me, and don’t think she is going to be much help either”.

“She… her…” Celeste thought to herself, the pieces finally beginning to fall into place. There was someone else here. The blue glow? The light? It didn’t seem to make much sense, but here she was being taunted by clouds of smoke. “Someone else had certainly stood up to it…” she thought. She looked over at the ground where the blue light was coming from. The gloom spiraled around it, and as it did, tendrils of cloud flicked out as though it were lashing out at it, against it.

Curiosity began to take root. There were more questions coming; she was apprehensive, but she needed to know.

“Who was she?” Celeste asked, and as the last word passed her lips she decided it wasn’t the right question, or at least the right tense to use in this case.

“Who IS she” the gloom hissed back.