Tapetum Lucidum

TAPETUM LUCIDUM

by U.M. Agoawike

(Content Warnings: implied kidnapping, implied necromancy, very vaguely implied violence)

We often went to Darkwood to swim in the creek by the cottage.

It was the oldest place we had deigned to visit since traversing the remnants of splendid ages now rusted with ruin.

Everything was a monster—tall and thin and tenebrous—spindly fingers crossing in the canopy high above us, dancing with vines and heather like lovers amid the burnished leaves. The trees both shielded and smothered us, bold and brash, high off a novice adventurer’s victory when we foolishly snuck away that late summer day to steal back the youth snatched from us. As if it could return so easily as morning mist; as if a weariness didn’t cling to us like dew on the crocuses we trampled underfoot. Young adventurers we called ourselves again, summoning the bygone childish awe of the heroes our wardens raised us to worship as we four marched, a line of excitable ants, deep into the grove of shaded elms where the sun’s arm could not reach.

Only you, gaze morose and vigilant, saw what crept in the brush, smelled the noxious rot that lingered long after the pollen we kicked up had settled into a fine golden spray across moss and weed alike.

How could we forget a forest’s duplicitous nature?

To bury our sins, our regrets, our tragedies, we focused only on fungi, soft and squishy between our toes as I mixed strange potions to force down the rest of your giggling throats; lichen carpeting trees like tufting beneath our arrogant fingers, uncaring of itch or scratch for we had seen far worse flora on the road; berries passed around, plucked from some bush down the path, and washed in watered-down wine and the spit of our reclaimed childishness.

We hid pain behind smiles and focused only on the gurgling of the crystal creek snaking through the thicket as we dove from rocky heights into its freezing depths. Under the sweetwater, the world was murky. I wonder now if it was only I who tasted salt that day.

As the sun set, drawing a blanket of darkness across the sky, yellow-brown fish swam around our ankles, small as the stars winking above. Scaled skin popped like fireworks as they sizzled and seared, and we stilled, the first time in several hours, frightened by the reminder of the celebration from which we had fled, abandoning accolades belonging to worthier adventurers than our sorry band.

Too lost in our minds and each other, we never looked close enough—beyond a single comment from you—at the cottage nearby.

We conjured stories like spells over an orange cauldron of flames in the witching hours about the cottage long abandoned—long thought abandoned—even before our heroes dreamed of heroes themselves. The bonfire coughed as we gossiped, and we never thought anything more of the way the cottage seemed to join in.

To us, the creak and whine was wind through old wood, the decay extant in all forms of life, both animate and not. To you, though, it was a lavender lure. Hyacinths had always been your favourite to crown us in—this we loved and knew. We didn’t consider something else might have known it too.

We weren’t naive, the opposite, in fact, considering our horrors, but we were foolish enough to ignore the wooden bones of that decrepit place, thinking it a harmless oddity despite the eyes.

Those watching eyes.

Eyes that crowned the cottage, from an attic that did not exist, reflective iridescence in blue and teal and gold and, sometimes—though rarely—arnica red. We overlooked it, but you had always been more discerning, the stalwart scout spying dangers before the rest of us, despite the divinities upon which we called frequently in our encounters.

Creepy; we all said before laying our still-damp clothes by the fire. We huddled in the nude under tarps of hide and danced around the light like we would’ve at the celebration, which we swore we could hear when we strained our ears before dissolving into wine-drunk giggles. Between bawdy songs, your kandi bracelet went missing: we had them made for each other before the road, the three of us wearing ours on ankle, wrist, and hair, while yours remained as close to your heart as we were—until it didn’t.

Curious; we all laughed when a susurrus rose from the creek, threaded among the chirp of crickets, rapid from the humidity that soon lulled us to sleep. One by one we fell, my eyes locked on you, but yours in the cottage, hidden by night as your lips rounded about the perfect mimicry of a cricket’s cry.

Concerning; we all wondered when morning broke, to find both our fire—and our friend—gone. As confusion turned to anguish, the trees leered, no longer a fortress of childlike delight, but a cavern of secrets hiding in the gaps between shadowy timbers, choking the dawn to slivers of light that rained across the underbrush and our terrified faces.

We used to swim in the creek by the cottage.

When we left, you weren’t there.

Sometimes I wonder if you ever were; if the horrors we encountered on the road had truly left us; if the ceaseless chill that now wracked my guilty form was the reaper reminding me of my reality—or the consequence of your inability to let the dead lie.

And every night since, I wear my bracelet over my heart like you once did, and glance outside by the window to see radiant red-gold-blue eyes peering back from a cottage that never was and always had never not been.