Week 7: Day 43 / 02:18
Noah dreams of a room.
It has 4 white walls, bright in the light of a 100-watt bulb, recessed in a white ceiling. There are no windows, just whiteness, immaculate, pristine. Nothing mars the walls. Not a jot, not a blot. Nothing, unless you look very, very closely. And there, just where wall meets wall (tap 5) meets floor, is a small, shadowy blot, ragged at the edges and about the size of a thumbnail.
Something happens in that room on a day when Noah does not complete his chores correctly. Millimetre by millimetre the Dark grows. It creeps along the floor and up the wall, barely discernible, but definitely there. The sort of thing Noah would bend down to look at, to check. There is something there, and now that he’s noticed it, it starts to grow faster.
It’s hard to tell what colour it is. In some lights it’s a crusty red, the colour of a fresh scab, in others it’s a deep purple. Almost black. Sometimes, when the light catches it at a certain angle, it’s every colour of a rainbow gone oily and dull. On bad days, when Noah hasn’t completed his tasks correctly, when he hasn’t had time to go back and start again, the Dark slinks almost to the centre of the white room. And there it sits, grubby against the white.
On bad days, it takes on more of a shape. Sometimes it grows skinny arms and stalk-like legs, sometimes it’s lumpy, a sulky mass of imperfection, sluggish and morose. It skitters, or it slumbers. It all depends on the nature of his offence.
In the middle of the room, gleaming and gold, stands a set of scales. On really bad days, the creature squirms up the shining leg of the scales and drops – with a light clink, or a squelching thud – into one of the brass cups.
The other cup is always empty, and the longer the Dark sits there, the larger it grows, until one cup sits alarmingly close to the floor, and the other is pulled upwards, to the very limit of its filigree chain. The scale teeters on its one shiny foot and threatens to topple over. If it does, the Dark will split – burst and splatter – and Noah will never be able to clean the room, no matter how hard he tries.
That’s his job – to keep the room pure. Because what no one but Noah can see is what lurks behind and above the joins in the wall. Those long arms clamped hard to the outer walls, those long strong legs squeezing the white room between muscular thighs, a shaggy head on top of the white block, a hungry belly flat against the wall, pointed nails plucking.
No matter how high Noah builds the room, the Dark grows taller. No matter how thick he makes the walls, the Dark grows wider and broader, squeezing them until they threaten to crack.
Noah searches every day, but he can’t find the small hole that allows it into his space.
It has Noah in a death grip, and one of these days it will become so heavy, squeeze so hard, that Noah’s room will crack into useless chunks of brick and mortar and he will never be able to build it back up again.
In another corner, so far that Noah can hardly see it, there’s a table with four seats around it. His family are sitting there. They’re laughing and Noah can smell the supper his mother has made. They’re far away from the creeping Dark, far from the teetering scales. Noah has managed to keep them safe. He pushes against the Dark, using his 5s. But in the hours after he closes his eyes at night and before he opens them fully in the morning, his powers are weak. That’s when he needs to start counting and checking. First thing in the morning, the checks are essential.
Not much longer now, Noah. You can’t keep this up for ever.