Fear of the dark

There was a strange building right next to the farmhouse, it looked like a cross between a cave and an artificial hill with some pieces of driftwood randomly stuck into it at odd angles and grass growing on top of it. It must have been well over a hundred years old at least by the looks of it.

There was something dark and sinister about it in the eyes of a 7-year old, no electric lighting for one thing and it housed a bull and an old cow that I never saw leave it either.

One day they were just gone as if they never existed.

I avoided the place for the most part, I didn't like the dark and the bull was a looming presence that just filled me with dread whenever I approached it.

The farmer that lived there and was married to my mother didn't really respond to my attempts to get closer to him.  I tried calling him father at some point shortly after we moved there but he didn't answer and just looked at me silently each time until I stopped trying.

He locked me in there once in the middle of winter as punishment for something I did or didn't do, I never figured out which one.

The terrifying disconnected feeling of being lost inside complete darkness with nothing linking you to reality except the deep breathing of a beast capable of goring you to death doesn't leave much room for sanity in a child.

I was however too afraid of the bull to scream... in fear that it might get angry, break loose and trample me to death. Silent tears were all I dared to cry, that and nails digging into my palms were what kept me sane for what seemed like hours but might have been minutes.

Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, fear of the dark.

Time loses all meaning in sensory deprivation, without electricity there isn't even the hope that you can find the light switch to re-enter the physical world.

A child without hope is a child without fear and I was afraid. The only option is to face your fear or go insane. The problem is you never know if you failed or succeeded afterwards.

The library on the farm had several volumes of ghost stories from the countryside and I had read them all.

The ones coming uninvited back to me as I shivered in the pitch black darkness revolved around ghost doors that would sometimes appear on the sides of the organic buildings, these would lure you inside the walls, close behind you and entomb you in there forever.

People would disappear without a trace and then years later someone would find their bones inside one of the walls.

I wondered if that could have happened here on this farm before or if it was happening right now as a door opened in one of the walls without anyone visible outside it and dark light flowed in with nothing except the slight howling of the winter chill audible in the background.

Fear of the light, fear of the light, fear of the light.

I don't remember much more from that episode, at least not getting outside although evidence would indicate I did somehow.

A couple of years later the organic building was demolished by a bulldozer, I'd never set my foot inside there again afterwards and I hadn't told anyone about what happened either.

Until now.

I watched from a safe distance as the walls came down, waiting for something to reveal itself.  I was pretty sure I saw a collection of bones at one point when a wall came down, but the belts of the bulldozer crushed them into bits and the next time they were visible they just looked like so much gravel.

Perhaps it was an unlucky lovechild from another age, perhaps it was just a dog or a cat.

Nobody made a note of it at least and I didn't share this with anyone either.

Until now.