Call of the Void

The wind is loud tonight. It feels like the void is calling me, as it does sometimes, although now it’s a sound rather than a denizen of it.

It’s cold and dark, and the lone streetlight barely illuminates the country back road. There are never any nighttime trains that roll across the railroad track just feet from my front yard, but it’s for the best. Ever since I was a child, trains in the night left me chilled with terror and I wondered if it was a ghost train searching for anyone new to board.

As I listen to the howling beyond my drafty windows, I feel at peace and alone, although a little afraid. Perhaps I will have visitors tonight whether they be in doorways or in dreams, and I welcome them now instead of fleeing in fear. My mind is a wide-open mess again that has leaked out of my ears into reality, and all the pain, the paranoia, the guilt, and the anger have filled my space.

They won’t let me sleep, for my visitors have answers. Answers that cannot be given because they have no mouths, and the only sound to announce them is the wailing of the wind that makes my house creak and moan.

©2023 Shane Blackheart