Vide Noir

The moon is rising above the western horizon. A gigantic Hunter's Moon heralding the peak of autumn, full, heavy, brilliant and beautiful. It's shining with a particularly golden intensity, casting a beatific, forgiving light across the gathering gloam. It should be a peaceful, calm scene, a romantic night filled with tender love and happiness. I should feel safe, in your arms tonight.

But all I can see as you gaze at me tonight are the shadows swarming deep in your eyes.

Those shadows haven't left your eyes since you came back. They appeared suddenly without warning; they've been there ever since you returned - after you went away without a word. I should be happy that you're here by my side again, that you didn't disappear for good and leave me all alone. But every time I look at you now, your pupils won't stop swirling like black holes, and suddenly I can't help feeling like I'm in the company of a complete stranger. Suddenly, I can't shake the feeling of being the hunter's prey. What have you become?

Can you blame me for all the sleepless nights I've suffered since you returned? You came back to me with eyes shining like two bottomless pools of blackness. Like the densest, heaviest corners of the universe swallowing up all light and life. With your darkly shining eyes you told me that you're going to live forever. You'd travelled to the void and back, and it had gifted you the secret of life. You'll never suffer from sickness or injury or the fear of death, ever again. And now you want to make a gift of this secret to me, too.

I should be happy. It should be enough to lie by your side and close my eyes, content in the knowledge that we'll finally be safe together now. Nothing can hurt us or touch us now, right? We can spend eternity loving each other the way it was always meant to be.

Yet every night now I toss and turn in bed next to you, unable to lose myself in the sweet oblivion of sleep. Unable to ignore the darkness that has rooted in your soul, lodged in the very core of your being. Because I know you didn't come back from the void alone. I know something slipped through and came back with you.

So every night as you slumber I get up and sit by the window. Every night I practise reciting it backwards, whispering it under my breath as the moonlight stretches across the valley. You only spoke the ancient verse to me once, and every night since then I keep trying to remember the words again. If I can finally get it right, if I can say every single part of it back to front in one breath, at the moment the Hunter's Moon touches the sky and opens the gates to the universe again...well then, maybe I'll finally be able to undo the curse that binds you. And we can both be free again.

It's so, so tempting. If I give in, would it be so bad? So, so tempting, to shed all my mortal worries and step into the stars with you. To never fear growing old and fading away. To dance along the edge of the cosmos forever. Why bother to keep up this anxious, breathless recitation in the dark, unable to tear my eyes away from your sleeping form, terrified you might wake up and realise what I'm trying to do? Why not just give in and embrace the promise you've already offered me? It would be so easy. And I want to do it.

But every time I look at you, all I can see are the shadows swirling in your eyes.

I feel like I'm cheating a bit with this! The album 'Vide Noir', by the American band Lord Huron, is one of my favourite albums of all time. It's a groundbreaking, evocative piece of work, with its songs all strung out like haunting little stories, moody disturbing vignettes narrating the experience of a mortal human brushing up against dark magic, ancient curses, and otherworldly beings. I've often imagined what shape that album would take as a novel, a retelling unfolding in all its quiet horror and despair. In fact it deserves to be transformed into its own epic trilogy/series of novels. The song 'Secret Of Life', with its hypnotic bass thrums and its incongruous swooping Elvis vocals, remains one of my firm favourites from this album. The above account is how I pictured what form that song might take as a story. 

The song 'Meet Me In The Woods' from their earlier album 'Strange Trails' is what I see as the other side of that story...maybe one of these days I'll write about it too.