The conclusion to last week’s What Hides in Dark Skies, Part One. This story originally appeared in An Echo in the Bone, a short story collection available on Amazon. Included here is an ASMR-esque audio reading of the story by Erik Peabody, narrator of my space horror podcast The Vessel.
Even after so many years, Sidney spoke with anger when recounting how Gloria’s parents tried to blame him for her death. The Hewitt family attempted several times to have him charged with first-degree murder, even after her cause of death was officially ruled as natural causes. According to the Potter County coroner’s report, Gloria Hewitt suffered a massive cerebral aneurysm that Autumn night. The Hewitt Family maintained that Sidney’s horrific injuries were the result of Gloria fighting back against his attack, though police found no evidence of such defenses on Miss Hewitt’s person.
Arenas, for his part, never revealed to either Gloria’s family or the Pennsylvania police the details of the nightmare he experienced in Cherry Springs. The three hikers who discovered Sidney the next morning described him as unconscious in a pool of his own blood. Gloria’s body was found lying prone in their tent, untouched by even a drop of the blood that was so present outside. When pressed he only said that something had attacked them out there in the woods, something he couldn’t explain, and that the shock of it was too much for Gloria to take.
During the investigation into her death, Sidney made a single request of the detectives assigned to the case: that they search the ground where he and Gloria had made camp for evidence of the stains he’d seen that night, the substance which at first he dismissed as tree sap but later understood to be the black spittle of the hungry demon that came for them that night. The detectives found no such evidence.
It wasn’t until a year or so later that Sidney began seeking answers about the things that lived in the dark, and in doing so uncovered various stories of run-ins with creatures matching their general description. According to Arenas, a man of science he spoke to once had named them Achluoptera, the translation of which amounted to winged darkness. He’d also heard of them referred to by some as Night Gaunts, though he suspected that name had been picked up from some other, possibly related legend.
More relevant were the stories of Flying Heads from Iroquois and Wyandot mythologies. The Flying Heads were cannibalistic spirits, monsters in the form of giant, disembodied heads, said to be covered in thick hair from which sprouted long, black wings and razor-like claws. According to legend they sometimes visited the homes of widows and orphans at night, beating their black wings on the walls while crying and shrieking in an entirely unknown, wholly terrifying language. With particular relish, Arenas related to me one of the most famous stories of the Flying Head myths, one which seemed to fill him with an air of hope, as if he’d placed his prayers upon the truths it held.
One evening, the story goes, after having been tortured for some time by visitations from a particularly nasty spirit, a Flying Head appeared at the door of a home occupied by a lone woman. The woman, oblivious to the spirit watching her, sat in front of a fire roasting acorns. As the acorns became cooked she plucked them from the flames and ate them hungrily before they could cool. Frightened by the woman, whom he believed to be eating live coals, the Flying Head fled from that place and never bothered the tribe again.
Sidney spoke of the tribal people like long-lost brothers, a connection made in mutual fear, the same he felt for anyone who had crossed paths with the Achluoptera. It was an unusual camaraderie, shared across centuries between various peoples, few of whom had actually met. He even proudly explained that Tionesta, the name of the town he’d been born in, was a Native American word meaning "the home of the wolves."
I pointed out that the way the Iroquois described the creatures- ancient folklore in my mind, nothing more- didn’t match with the description he’d given his experience, and could hardly be considered the same phenomenon. At this he shook his head emphatically, explaining that he believed the Achluoptera to be of undefined body; that is to say they were made up of darkness, and thusly took on the shape and characteristics of their victims’ pain and terror; the better to drain the light from them.
The point of the legend of the woman eating acorns, he said, wasn’t in the details but in the moral. It was the key to defeating the unholy creatures or at the very least driving them away for good. The only way to do so, Sidney said, was to scare them. To make them believe the victim was the real threat, capable of far worse things than the Achluoptera ever could.
The point, he said, was to put the fear of monsters into them. He believed he’d done so when he’d torn out his own eyes that night in Cherry Springs. But soon, the pain of losing Gloria began to attract them anew. A self-fulfilling prophecy of heartache and predation.
At this point, perhaps sensing the question on my mind, Sidney Arenas set down his empty coffee mug and asked me to follow him, taking me to the final room of the house which he had neglected to show me on the previous tour. He unlocked it and beckoned me forward, showing me just how he had chosen to make himself a monster.
At the far end of his hillside farmhouse, in a room that appeared to have been converted from a nursery, Sidney Arenas keeps his most terrible images. Disintegrating animals mix with botched surgeries. Strangely fetid flowers nearly cover up playground crime scenes and burned-down hospitals. Everywhere are plastered haunting photographs of places where unthinkable crimes were committed, staining the energies with viciousness and evil. Caves where rising tides drowned explorers. Disused warehouses where lovers had been abducted. Cemeteries tarnished by marks of cannibalism and worship. A chill ran through me looking at those images, a feeling of sudden dread, like pulling out into traffic without looking. A shiver of cold and ancient fear.
Sidney never intended to become a professional photographer, he explained, it was merely a means to an end, a way to surround himself with images that would frighten the Achluoptera. He didn’t feel it was enough to find images others had made and display them as his own. He felt their energy came from the fact that he’d created them, that he was ultimately responsible for their creation. That was what gave them their power.
Confronted with the horror of Sidney Arenas’ true life’s work, the purpose of which was only now apparent, I found myself uncomfortable in his presence. Alone with him, standing in a trap of sorts, I realized I hadn’t told anyone of the interview. If I were to disappear, the last person to see me alive would have been a disinterested gas station attendant in Mineral Ridge, Ohio. A flash of guilt runs through me even now for feeling scared of an old, blind man, but then how much does the spider rely on its sight when the fly is struggling in its web?
Feeling I needed to keep the conversation moving, I asked Sidney if he believed the Achluoptera exclusively preyed upon widows and orphans. It was a trap of my own making, I admit, as I had noticed a flaw in Sidney’s story: though he was a widow now, he hadn’t been at the time of the incident in Cherry Springs, nor had Gloria. If their goal, their terrible purpose in life was to make widows and orphans suffer more than they already were, they shouldn’t have had any business with a young, newly engaged couple, both in possession of their parents and about to embark on their life together.
Either seeing through the obvious trap or having asked himself the same question a thousand times before, Sidney told me his theory on the Achluoptera, the alleged haunters of dark places. The creatures, he said, fed on light. Not just any light, but light that shone in utter darkness. That was why they showed up in skies like those found in Cherry Springs, where the dark far outweighed the light. Otherwise they would flock to the great, blinking cities of the world, where flashbulbs and neon signs blinded the senses and erased the shadows.
And pain, he said, was just like that. Faced with impossible suffering and loss, the human spirit became a warm light in the utter darkness. A beacon to the things that feed.
Before I took my leave of Sidney Arenas, I asked him one, final question: why choose to live so close to Cherry Springs? Why not run away and settle down somewhere brighter, somewhere safer, far from the dark skies he believed gave birth to the creatures that took Gloria from him?
His face hardened at the question, so much that it appeared to be chiseled from ancient stone. “I don’t want to run from them,” Sidney said. “I want to destroy them.”
After saying my goodbyes to Sidney I left the old farmhouse behind, my head swimming in a thick mixture of wonderment and confusion. I felt so dizzy I practically fell into the driver’s seat of my car. I was amazed to realize the day was nearly over. I’d spent the better part of the day listening to Sidney’s fantastical story, the sun now hanging low in the sky like overripe fruit. I didn’t know whether I believed his story or not, but I did know he believed it, and that alone had a deep and lasting effect on my mindset, forcing me to shuffle my thoughts and beliefs around to make room for its dark implications.
Was it possible for ungodly beings such as the Achluoptera, creatures made up of darkness and fed by pain, to exist? Did Native American myths and legends have a place in the modern world beyond historical curiosity? Or, perhaps worst of all, had Sidney Arenas gone mad all those years ago and murdered his fiancé, then clawed the eyes from his own face in an act of either crushing guilt or utter insanity?
As I pulled away from that neglected house, a house which contained a room so haunting it had to be kept under lock and key, I had every intention of driving directly home and transcribing our conversation, to try and make sense of it all. Before I knew it, though, long past the point I could stop myself from making such a rash decision, I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Cherry Springs park- the very place Sidney had spent the day telling me to avoid. Even as I became aware of my actions, I felt powerless to stop them, the pull of the mystery nestled in those woods too great to resist. A gravitational attraction beyond my power. I had half a mind to turn the car around and step on the accelerator until Cherry Springs, Susquehannock State Forest, and in fact the entire state of Pennsylvania were but faded memories on the horizon.
Instead I parked my car among the assortment of trailers, campers and rental cars crowded within the dirt lot and walked the rest of the way, taking my tape recorder along as an afterthought. Thick trees loomed in every direction, their leaves and needles trembling in the glow of dying daylight. Voices floated from a distance along with the smell of wet wood and burnt leaves. I passed a mound of dirt seemingly meant to block out the headlights of parked cars, to preserve the darkness of the park’s viewing areas.
Men and women, perhaps thirty or more, were huddled around telescopes of all different sizes and designs, some so powerful they looked as if they could read the address on the gates of God. Shadows grew long, and yet more stargazers emerged from their rain tents and tarps bundled in warm clothes. Eventually the sun dipped below the tree line, then the Earth, allowing the cosmos to slowly fade into view.
The night sky undiminished by man’s various pollutions- light, smog, and so on- is a revelation not many have seen. It’s a symphony of planets and stars, constellations and galaxies played out on the most extravagant of stages. Like mariners of old, the stargazers around me sighted their telescopes on Polaris, the North Star, around which all stars rotate. Standing among them before the heavens I felt both insignificant and endless.
After some time, when the spell I had been under dissipated enough to notice how chilly the night had grown, and me without appropriate attire, I looked around at the whispering stargazers, suddenly feeling silly. There was passion to be found here, nothing more. That I had expected to find anything other than lovers of astronomy and nature huddled under the Milky Way sent a flush through my cheeks. That combined with the goosebumps on my arms and legs convinced me it was time to go home.
As I began the walk back to my car, I caught sight of the trees in the distance, thick stands of firs reaching for the stars. Without hesitation I walked toward them. They represented to me the last vestige of Sidney’s ghost haunting my thoughts. They were the keepers of his secrets, and I wanted nothing more than to destroy his story’s hold on my mind. To erase it from my fear.
The forest was warmer with the trees blocking much of the wind. It was also much louder with the din of insects and animals calling out to one another, a nocturnal world of hunting and breeding that filled the air with an overlapping slurry of buzzing and chirping and hooting. A far cry from the eerie silence described by Sidney Arenas.
It was to me the nail in the coffin for Sidney’s story. It had been gripping, to be fair, but in the end Sidney Arenas was just a crazy, old blind man with an imagination so strong he’d even convinced himself.
I took out my tape recorder and recorded a few minutes of night sounds, telling myself it would serve as story research, or that perhaps I would even play it for Sidney one day to get his thoughts on it. Inside, though, I knew the real reason I wanted the tape. It was to play for myself when I needed it, when Sidney’s story got under my skin and I needed proof of its falsehood. For five minutes I recorded the Pennsylvania night, until I was sure I’d captured it all. Then I stopped the machine and returned it to my pocket.
Walking back in the direction I’d come, and thinking of the long, tired drive ahead, only possible with frequent stops for coffee, the bed of dry leaves crunched loudly underfoot, louder than they’d been on the way in. They reminded me of an old riddle: Tread on the living, they make not a mumble. Tread on the dead, they mutter and grumble.
But then, with my stomach tightening like a fist, and my throat as dry as the leaves themselves, I made a horrifying realization: it wasn’t that my footsteps were any louder than they’d been before- I could just hear them better with how quiet the woods had grown.
A heavy silence had settled over the night, like a thick, woolen blanket deadening the sound. Not even the wind blowing through the arms of trees made a noise. I fumbled the tape recorder from my pocket to capture the silence, but it refused to turn on. The button depressed but the battery had died.
Then, a sound: strange rustling, high up in the canopy, as if something were pushing through the branches. Twigs snapped and wood bent. I stopped breathing. My heartbeat choked me. A dark spot had formed in my vision that couldn’t be blinked away, a point where light died.
The darkness above me, it lunged.
I ran then, ran as fast as my feet would go and then some. Pushing and bumping through the woods, scraping outstretched hands and tearing my shirt. The trees were an angry crowd holding me back. Then I was free of them and running through a clearing to the parking lot, but I didn’t slow down because I could feel the cold following me, feel the darkness pressing on my neck. Somehow I found my car and fell into it, watched the windshield go over with frost as I turned and turned the key in the ignition and screamed at the engine to turn over.
Then it did, just barely, the car’s dashboard half-lit. I floored the gas pedal and spun out of the lot like a rocket, headlights dying all the way.
There are places like this all over the world, places with dark skies full of dark things. If you happen across them, and if you have known heartache in your time, that is to say if you’ve suffered great loss in the course of your life, you may find yourself visited by the dark things. They smell enduring pain the way sharks smell the smallest drop of blood in an ocean of water. If they do, make no mistake: they are ravenous for the light inside you.
Some time after my experience at Cherry Springs, long after I’d decided against writing the article on Sidney Arenas, I started to think about what he’d said about widows and orphans, how they attracted the Achluoptera like none other. I found my thoughts turning to Jacqueline Sokal, the expert marksman. When she’d sent me in Sidney’s direction I assumed it was because she wanted me to speak with someone else at the top of their field who’d overcome a disability to do so. That bias, that assumption, kept me from seeing the true connection they shared.
Jacqueline Sokal had lost both her parents at a young age, and she channeled that loss into competition, but not just any kind. She quite deliberately took up a weapon and turned herself into an expert at wielding it.
Jacqueline Sokal was haunted by the Achluoptera as well.
By the time I tried to contact her, I was told Jacqueline had taken her own life with one of her rifles. She’d shown no signs of depression, according to her coach, only a quiet anxiety that presented mainly at night, and increased toward the end.
Several weeks later, when I changed my mind about writing the article, I called Sidney Arenas on the phone number he’d given me, which has since been disconnected. I didn’t tell him about my experience in Cherry Springs, why I’m not entirely sure, but I believe as a kind of denial on my part. I told him about Jacqueline Sokal and what she’d done, the news of which affected him greater than I’d anticipated. I asked him if he knew why she would do such a thing, and he said something to me then that has consumed my thoughts ever since, even as I try in vain to drift off into the shallow, restless sleep that has filled my nights ever since that cursed visit to those black and silent woods.
“Some people,” he said, “are too good inside to make a monster of themselves.”
They’re out there, the Achluoptera, out there looking for me. In the dark, sniffing around in the shadows for my pain. I’m neither a widow nor an orphan, but I’ve known tragedy in my life, the details of which I can’t bring myself to say even now. They hunger for it all the same, smelling my blood in the water.
I lock the doors and draw the blinds these days, at all hours, even when the sun is out. It’s only a matter of time until they find me. The question I’ve been asking myself lately is this: should I buy a camera, or a gun, or something else? Something worse?
Do I make a monster of myself?
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