The Dark of the Woods

I’ve been thinking, recently, about H.P. Lovecraft. It’s been a long while since I’ve last read one of his works, but a quote of his comes to mind sometimes – infrequently, but frequently enough to where I’ve come to expect it: it’s the one about the “placid island of ignorance”. You know the one.

I think I agree with it, mostly, with the provision that it – and by extension, most of his work – is colored deeply by his habits and his habitat. Until late-on in his life, Lovecraft was a shut-in, and the majority of his experience with the outside came from correspondences with other writers. I would imagine that, being old stock in New England, he likely had a view of the sea from his windows. It’s easy to picture, isn’t it?

I can sympathize somewhat – I wouldn’t say that I’ve been nearly as reliably locked-away as Lovecraft was, but I’ve been a city-dweller for most of my life; it was only recently that I’ve found myself somewhere far away from the relentless noise and light of the metropolis. With that being said, I unfortunately do not have the luxury of staying cooped up in my house all day: I have a degree to earn, and the closest college town is a ways away. So, I commute.

There’s something calming about driving, I’ve found. I’m a bit of a late-comer to it, myself, but now that I’ve gotten around to putting all the pieces together, I find that I enjoy the puzzle just fine. It can be very meditative, under the right circumstances, though the opposite can just as easily be said, and, some might argue, more readily so. I enjoy it most times, at least – with an exception.

I have some classes in the evenings: very late affairs, starting past six and ending past nine. So long as I repeat my mantra, reminding myself that people are trying to get home to their families around then, the drive there is fine. The problem is the drive back.

Lovecraft, I think, was on the right track, but he got off at the wrong station. The idea behind the quote – the “placid island of ignorance” – is that we were not built to process certain truths, and that, with the march of our sciences, we are steadily pushing towards an inevitable revelation of such terrible magnitude that we will be unable to grasp its hideous enormity. It is a puzzle whose pieces, when put together, will result in a picture that we will quite emphatically not enjoy, to return to the previous metaphor. It is not, however, the sciences that I fear will eventually intrude into domains within which men were not meant to tread – it is with some trepidation that I would posit, in fact, we have already tread there. My reasoning comes from my drives back home after my evening classes.

Unlike Lovecraft, I live a ways inland – in the north, still, but away from the sea by a good distance. From his windows could be seen the water; from mine, the woods. This arboreal ocean which stretched endlessly in all directions was a refreshing change of pace from the concrete nightmare which I had escaped: there was such beauty to be found here, which could not be found in the cities. In the spring, flowers bloom: in the summer, the world sings and hums with life; in the fall, the colors of the world emerge for a final showing; and in the winter, a curtain of glittering white snow is drawn, so that the show may begin again in the spring. It should come as no wonder that it captivated me so during my first few years, as seldom had I the pleasure of bearing witness to such plentiful splendor.

Neither should it come as a wonder that this captivation evaporated as I came to grapple with it on its terms. It began before I even had reason to leave my quaint holiday town, as the dreams of my attendance at a college had not yet manifested. Lovecraft, I might imagine, never had to deal with invaders from the realm wherein his fear dwelt – I cannot say the same. I encountered them as I returned home from the grocery store, and thought for all the world that they were statues, until they turned to watch as I passed them. They were benign, I’ll grant, but the sight of wild deer roaming the streets of this little town was distinctly chilling. Looking back now, I believe them to be symbolic of something. The deer represented, to me, a reminder set out by nature: “We are not separate, simply because you believe us to be so,” it seemed to say to me. Perhaps less charitably, “You are not so safe as you think.”

This would continue with some regularity; just as I had begun to forget, another would appear. Then, my pursuit of higher education began, and with it, a routine commute between my home and the college. This is where I saw them most often: off the shoulder of the road, out between the trees, far enough that, perhaps, they thought I wouldn’t notice them – or that, perhaps, only I was meant to. They did not bound into the path of my vehicle, they did not cry mournfully as I passed them, nor ever did they step onto the pavement where death awaited them surely. They watched quietly from a distance, never to interfere, only to observe. I believe that I came to hate them, after a time: they were anxiety; they were fear; I did not understand them, but I worried quite deeply that they understood me. The assurance of their presence, I think, drove me to paranoia – even if I did not see them, if I sought to look for them, they would surely be there. It was not a madness, a losing of oneself, as Lovecraft so delighted in describing; madness is a thing that denies reality, and oh, how I wished so badly that I might deny that reality that had crept, dreadfully slowly, into my sight. How badly I wish now that I could.

When the first of my evening classes found its way into my schedule, I had thought that perhaps my fears might be ameliorated, if only somewhat: in the dark, I would surely at least not be able to see that shade that stalked my steps. I had not anticipated how deeply the affliction had already penetrated.

The dark is a primal fear which needs no introduction. Even by the piercing beams of my headlights, it refused to be vanquished; at the edges of my periphery, shapes would dance and light would waver, and no thing beyond the hazy bounds of those beams could be said to be definite. The absence of light is a playground for the mind’s deepest discomfiture; it will, in shadow, conjure things that the sun would not dare to illuminate. I had, I thought, been immunized to this little torture over time, as it became easier each night to dismiss the half-seen shapes flitting away from my perception as simple illusions – this evening challenged that notion.

There is a stretch of road that I always dread running through, no matter how many times I do so. I always know when it’s coming, and when it does, it is unmistakable: the trees rise up suddenly on either side of the pavement like walls – though what a wall of their towering stature might to keep out, I will not hazard to guess; the sun seems to dim, here, though there is no canopy overhead to block its rays, and in darkness, the shadows grow preternaturally; even in the unlikely event of having another wayward soul in sight, the roofless tunnel seems to dampen sound to silence, the roar of engines quieting to a barely-audible whisper. On the road this night, I was joined only by the looming specter of disquiet, and the world about the cabin of my vehicle induced in me an incongruous claustrophobia I had not felt since childhood. Since I had left the security of the college town, I had felt eyes on me; the long-buried instinct of primeval man, perhaps, warning me of a danger that we have since fallen out of the habit of recognizing as such. The day had been trying, and I had tired of it. I was awake, but only barely.

My headlights glinted off of something. Not a street sign, or a mailbox, or a stray piece of glass: a pair of eyes. They had been watching me. I flicked my gaze away from the road, but too late – I only caught the suggestion of something large disappearing into the treeline.

I do not know what possessed me: maybe it was that I thought there would be some catharsis in the unmasking of this unknowable thing that had haunted me for so long. Regardless, my foot found the brakes and depressed them, and the car came to a shuddering halt on the gravel outskirt of the road. Having at least some semblance of sense left to me then, I retrieved the torch from my glove box. I had had enough of being shadowed by them: I would find the deer, now, and scare it away, to prove to myself that it was only an animal. Perhaps I had gone mad, then. I ought to have known better.

Leaves crunched underfoot as I went. Branches snapped. It had lain dormant for the whole of the ride to this point, but as I passed into the wood, the wind began to pick up, whipping my hair against my face as I stomped through the brush. I would find it, I decided, and then this fear would finally be banished from the dark places of my mind. I would find it, and I would return home, triumphant. I would find it, and I would know peace.

Something moved, and the beam of my torch cleaved the darkness in an arc towards it. A shape loomed there, in the distance. The light caught its eyes, and they gleamed, just as they had on the roadside. It loped away, and I pursued it, gale stinging my skin with bitter cold, the earth beneath my feet revealing its treachery as I stumbled and tripped over hazards which, moments ago, had not been there. I fought, and I hobbled, and I ran, and in time, the shape elected no longer to evade me.

It was not a deer. It had fooled me from a distance, but so close now as I was, its deception was clear; it only wore the skin of one. As I approached, it straightened and stood. It did not lunge for me, so easily could it have torn me apart: it did not howl balefully, begging reciprocal crooning from a pack just out of sight; it did not even deign to reach out to touch me, so close as we were, so paralyzed by fear as I was; it simply watched as terror overcame me.

“You are not so safe as you think.”

I do not remember my flight back to the safety of my vehicle, and of my fevered escape from the scene in it, little remains: I recall that I paid no mind to the few traffic lights that dotted my way home – how silly they must have seemed, having looked into the face of my tormentor. After I arrived, I scrambled into the house, my sanctuary, without even the presence of mind to take my things in with me. When finally I regained my faculties, I had spent the whole of the dusk into the daylight locked in the basement pantry with a gun. I do not know if it was meant for the creature, or for myself, but it had not been used regardless.

Perhaps Lovecraft knew better than I: he discovered early the horrors that lurked in the shadows, and decided that home was the safest place to be. I do not blame him any longer for his desire to lock himself away from the world. I find increasingly now that I share in that desire.

I might, though, dissent on one thing, at least – the “placid island of ignorance”. This wording, in particular, conjures some instinctual thoughts about the nature of our footing, and how we stand upon it: it might imply that if we simply do not stray into the ocean’s black depths, we will be safe. On this island, where the sea does not touch, we are safe.

I still see them, on occasion: they linger on the treeline, now, beyond my home. I see their eyes in the dark most nights, and on some, they stray beyond. There is no secret now to what they are, and they know that I know.

I would liken our footing rather to a man standing in the mouth of a great beast; a giant thing, so titanic in size that it could consume us as trivially as breathing. We are unaware of it, so convincing is its camouflage, and so, we have blundered directly into the place where we are at the most risk. There are no places where men were not meant to tread, only those he ought know better than to, and it has been so long since our ancestors have already tread there that we no longer remember that these are places that do not belong to us. Our myths tell us in great detail of our conquest of the unknown, but of this I am no longer convinced: I believe instead that it has simply allowed us to wander into the path of its waiting jaws.

The ocean has risen. There is no island. We are hoping blindly, foolishly that the beast will not notice us to bite down.

We are not safe.