The In-Between Time
I awoke upon a small boat floating on the placid waves of an endless sea. It was evening, but then it was always evening; there was neither Sun nor Moon, never more and never less than cold dim twilight, light enough to get a sense of one’s place in the vastness of the ocean and no more. The sea stretched out in every direction for it seemed a boundless distance, to the far edges of an unending expanse. To the end of the endless. There was no land; there had never been any land, or I had never seen it. There was only this, the ink-black sea and the bleak gloom of a forever dusk. And me, there upon my boat where I had awoken. Somewhere in the abyss below, Antediluvian monsters battled—predator and prey, prey and predator—in the eternal darkness of the Deep.
The craft floated along pushed by the currents; who could say whether it was north or south, east or west. It didn’t matter. All directions brought only continued tedium, a nothingness, the same unceasing waves within the dark water, the same cold winds that swept across the open sea, the same sky in the gloaming hour upon hour upon hour without beginning or end. So, I sat upon the boat in thought, though I could not now tell you what thoughts had come to mind. I sat and kept myself company, the only company that would ever be mine to keep. Perhaps I could drown myself—throw myself overboard and let the waters take me. Perhaps the great all devouring Leviathan of the Deep would swallow me whole should I fall in the water—or even there upon my barque, crushing its timbers together with my broken body in Its bloody gaping maw, the whole a mere morsel to Its snatching jaws. An end to all of this endlessness. Perhaps. But I didn’t, or I couldn’t, I don’t know which, and no such fate befell me.
A cloud had formed in the distance, menacing, dark as a stormcloud, but hanging low in the air, there just upon the face of the Deep. It surged and swelled, undulating as it moved in strange, unearthly motions, not blown forth by the chilling winds, but seemingly of its own living will. Moving as if crawling across the surface of the water, as if it stretched out with nebulous arms of shadow-stuff to pull itself hither and thither across the dismal sea—writhing, its mottle-shadowed appearance shifting and churning—it dragged its umbral body through the darkness above the waters below. Toward the craft, and toward me, upon the black waves it crept. Toward the craft. And toward me.
As it drew ever closer, the waves were stopped cold in its presence, rendered lifeless, and the face of the great ocean turned to smooth obsidian. In its presence, the living water died. Slowly, with method but without purpose, or perhaps the other way around, animate, alive, animalistic, the living darkness groped its way ever forward. Did it think, did it know? Was it searching, seeking something? Toward me still it came, ever toward me, and yet it seemed as though it gave me no heed. There I stood upon this small vessel, there in the path of the ravenous nothing, but it moved though I were as nothing to it. To It. The Living Shadow, the Darkness.
Crawling near and nearer, the Darkness came over the water, until it was all but upon me. I tried to take it in, to perceive it in its entirety, or even in part, but its facets slipped my mind as soon I was felt I was about to grasp them, like a forgotten word on the tip of the tongue. It churned and shifted its cloudlike form seemingly at random; occasionally it appeared almost as if human-like faces were straining to show themselves in its twitching and twisting shade, but they soon melted into nothing and the billowing black folded in on itself again as if to deny you recognition of some familiarity.
It was upon me and I could not escape.
In the presence of the Darkness I was enervated; in the presence of the Darkness, I was overtaken by an otherworldly chill, a chill not of mere body but of spirit and soul, and I began to feel hollow, void, then disintegrated, as if sliced into a countless number of pieces and reassembled, separated from myself. There I was and there I was not; there I was but I was not. As it passed over me and through me, above me, upon me, surrounding me—within me—I became distant and lost, forgetting, forgotten and in-between. And I saw something unexpected.
Off some distance away, across the still, lifeless water in the presence of the great nothing, the Darkness, I saw myself. There upon a boat in the midst of the endless ocean, there as if looking in a cloudy mirror, there, just there, off in the distance, standing upon a boat, just as I stood, me. When I moved, I did not move. What I did, I did not do. No reflection, no selfsame visage bound to me: no, it was me and yet it was not me—I was me but I was not me. A ghost of myself. So there upon my barque looking out across the black glass of the sea in the midst of a great nothingness I stood, watching myself being watched. I searched for something, for some comprehension, but I could make nothing of my separation, of this my twin; perhaps it was inevitably for naught and meaning had been stripped from all things, drained dry, drunk up by the Darkness. Still it remained, and there I was across the waves, idling, oblivious to all appearances, standing alone thoughtlessly in the cool air that hung down just above the still surface; there I was just as I was standing atop a boat like the one upon which here I stood.
I was and I was not. A shade, my shade.
The Darkness passed over me and kept its path across the vastness of the dismal sea. It passed over me, releasing me from whatever grim enchantment I had fallen under; it passed over me and I returned to myself. Continuing onward, the Darkness crawled across the seascape, until its tenebrous ever-changing shape could no longer be made out in the dim dusk light. The low, pacific waves of the sea returned, its surface a slow, rolling mass of ink swept by the cold wind. And I was alone, there upon my vessel, in the midst of the emptiness of the great universal ocean. No more was there another craft, in that mirror which was not a mirror; no more had I some twin, some doppelganger seemingly born of the nothingness. There was only me, again, alone upon the boat. Only me and the great open expanse of ocean that stretched to the far boundaries of the world without end.
Perhaps I should drown myself—give myself over to the depths, let the waters take me. Perhaps I could. And yet I remained, there alone, always alone, in the twilight upon my barque floating on the ink-black of the eternal Deep.