The Long Dark Night Becomes Day

I couldn’t take it any more. I needed her right then and there. I pushed Samantha onto the ground, and began tearing off my pants. As I was just releasing my body from my clothes, I happened to accidentally slip my hands into my pocket. That’s when I rediscovered the gnomes, carefully waiting in my pocket. I fingered Protean, the blue gnome I had crafted.

“Come on, baby,” said Samantha, in her best seductive voice. She sounded something like Mae West, straight out of She Done Him Wrong. I wanted nothing more than to take the woman there, to do as she said “and consummate our love.”

But with the gnome in my hand I suddenly remembered my purpose. I took the Protean doll and smashed it into the beautiful Samantha’s face. The shadow up above began to scream. I quickly stood up, and pulled up my pants.

“It was getting too serious,” I said. “You see how a little bit of chaos can save the world? I don’t need to control anyone. I don’t need to own anyone. Not that your little drama isn’t appreciated. It was nice, I must admit, meeting the impossible perfect woman. But that’s the point. Life isn’t perfect.”

The shadow above screamed again, and then swooped down and into Samantha’s body.

I tore the gnomes out of my pocket and threw them at the combined body of Samantha and the Shadow. To my surprise, the gnomes expanded from their toy forms and into something far more impressive. They became the gnomes from the book. That blue gnome, my carved figure of Protean, also appeared. The shadow shrieked the loudest, saddest, angriest and shrillest of shrieks. When people speak of bean-sidhe, when they talk about moaning ghosts, the terrors that they may have experienced, I shake my head. I never laugh, though I always want to. This shriek was like a compression of a thousand murders all into several seconds.

“The gnomes! I thought I had destroyed them forever! I thought I had them confined--” the shadows started to shout. Protean cut him off, floating in the air, holding up his hand to pause his great enemy.

“Do you think trying to trap us in a book, with horrible drawings, trying to make people hate us would ever truly stop us from our only mission? You’ve always had many weaknesses, one of which is that you have to tell the truth, in the end. You couldn’t, even when you put is in the book, even when you destroyed that poor author’s mind when she stopped here during a storm like this one-- back when you were controlling poor Hurry Hendrickson--”

“Everything seems to come back to this house,” I said, to the gnome in yellow, who was floating next to me. He gave me a tight look, of one that knows but would not say, believing discovery the better part of living. He shrugged, and then nodded. thought the gnome maybe winked at me, but I cannot be sure.

“You tried to hide us in there because you knew that we could come back to destroy you. But that’s the problem with a story. The only way to stop it is to stop people from telling it. But we were there at the beginning, you know that. We remember the days before the shadows. We remember when and why you were created. This man-- this toymaker who re-created us-- he knows.”

“It’s all a bit Deux Ex Machina,” I said to the yellow gnome. He motioned for me to remain quiet, and then the pointed back to Protean, still continuing his monologue. The Gnome didn’t seem to realise it, but as he talked, the shadow grew large and large again. It seemed about to swallow him, as he continued to lecture the whole thing that had so terrorized all of us at Nevermore about the balance needed in human life. The darkness of control, he said, was needed, but the chaos and gaiety of disorder had to balance it out.

“Look out,” I said, “the Shadow will get you.”

“Someone is going out this window,” the shadow said, still inhabiting Samantha. I had to think quick, find someway to defeat the shadow, at least for the time being. To return it to the sleep from which I had apparently unintentionally awoke it. It comes as consolation to me now, of course, to think that if I had not wandered into that grave where the shadow was held, along with this mis-marked grave of Hurry Hendrickson, one of the other members of my train truly would have awoken the same beast. I had seen how it could affect everyone around it, how it could burrow deep into their psyche and pry out that most basic instinct of humans: to want to rule the world with a little more power, with a little bit taller and higher throne, than anyone else.

I grabbed the shadow-Samantha and heaved myself out the window. The gnomes protested, yelling for me not to do as Hurry had down, and that there was still a way to save Samantha.

“She’s not even supposed to be a girl,” I said, and carried on, jumping out the window, pushing the shadow with me., “Besides, I have a plan.”

I motioned for the gnomes to all tumbled all around me, making a sort of protective circle of their soft tumbling flesh as I fell down to the earth. Protean had to pulled aside by one of the other gnomes, the red one, I believe, who pointed to the others as they formed the protective circle around my falling body.

As Protean joined the circle, spinning and tumbling on the way down, he continued to hold forth. But now, instead of addressing the shadow, he spoke directly to me.

“I want to thank you for freeing us, but this is not the way to defeat the shadow.”

“It’s worked before,” I pointed out.

“But you don’t need to kill an innocent soul along with the shadow--”

“He’s or it’s… kind of taken over the body…”

“We can help,” Protean said. “If you let some of us tear away from you. We can tear the shadow away from the body. But you’ll have to allow yourself to be hurt. You’ll have to truly sacrifice, you understand?”

“I want to live,” I said.

“Vegetables are alive,” said Protean.

“No thank you,” I said, and Protean frowned at me. He gave me a little kick on the nose.

“Don’t be selfish! What has that ever got you?”

“It’s got me falling to what could be my ****,” I said.

“You see, this is all your fault. You have to admit your faults. You have to sacrifice sometimes.” I turned to the little yellow gnome and raise my eyebrows.

“He always like that?”

The yellow gnome nodded his head.

“You have to hurry,” said Protean. The ground was only a few feet away, now.

“Alright, fine!”I threw my hands up. “Save her.” With my permission the gnomes tore off from me, about three of them, Protean in the lead, and only the red and yellow gnomes were left to protect my fall. Finally, I hit the ground. I remember my head hitting the gravestone marked Memoria, my nose smashing up against the M. I remember feeling blood rushing out of somewhere. Was it my nose? Was it my head? Was it something else? I do not recall, truly, for the next thing I knew I was back in the city, and I woke up to see Roman, Robert, Gilda Venturas, and Jacinta Florez. A hand was caressing my head, gentling stroking my hair. And Jacinta was holding out papers.

The divorce?” I asked. She nodded her head. I took the pen and signed.

“I free you,” I said.

“I always always free until you tried to rule me,” she said. I nodded in agreement. “Let us never speak to each other again, now that you are okay.”

“That goes for me, too,” said Miss Gilda. I also nodded, accepting her leaving me. After all, having put them through the nightmare of the house at Nevermore, I could not blame them. And I certainly did not want to see them again. I wanted the nightmare to end and I wanted never to be reminded of what I had seen or what I had done while living in that house.

Miss Gilda and Florez both took their leave. I still couldn’t make out who was massaging my head. I felt that I was in some sort of a neck brace, and could not turn my head to see. So I focused my attention instead on the men in front of me.

“I guess it’s serious now,” I said. Roman nodded. Robert sat down. “It’s clear we can’t really go on as we were. But let me ask you-- before anything else-- how is the company fairing?”

“Very well, very well indeed,” said Robert. “When the police got to the grove, where Memoria-- Hurry’s grave is-- they found you passed out, with these little gnome like figures surrounding you.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. We never went back. They gave us these. There were really really clever,” said Roman. “And fun too, in a chaotic little sort of way. We started to play with them--”

“Something so funny about the way they tumble, the way they just slope down anything that’s just off kilter. I laughed and laughed whenever I started to play with them. It really reminded me of being a child. They were just-- fun!” Robert laughed, and propped the little carved gnomes up on the bed besides me.

“Really reminded us both that we needed a little fun,” Roman added. “They were a little large, though, so we made them a little bit smaller. And added a few more in each pack. A double set-- though we kept the color scheme you created. Really genius, the way you organized all those bright colours. We had to change the green a little bit. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “And how are the profits?”

Robert handed me a folder. I looked through it, raise an eyebrow when I saw the great increase in profits. “All thanks to these little gnomes, people just seem to love them. There are even adult men and women who collect them. We’re thinking about extending the line.”

“Great, that’s great,” I said. “But we really do need to decided what we are going to do. We can’t work together any more.”

“Agreed,” said both men. We couldn’t all look each other in the eyes, at least not then.

“I think I am done making toys,” I said. “I’ve had enough of playing for now. And you say that people are taking to my little gnomes?”

“Yes indeed, they love them.”

“I’m sure you also used some of your wonderful marketing to get them out there and really drive the profits up?”

“Yes, yes I did,” said Robert. “And I couldn’t have managed it without Roman acting as president of the company.”