Speaker 1: Darkness by Charles Hilend Craig I am told that coincidence
in a story is an element for which editors and
readers have a dislike, which approaches the sparkling. But if
a story be thirty three and a third percent of
each coincidence imagination on the part of the principal character
and irony, what then Coincidence, which is another name for destiny,
played its trump early in the life of Graham Fletcher,
in fact, before his life began, but it was many
years before the stakes were dragged across the table of
life and into the lap of a sneering fate. He
had all started when his father, John Fletcher, was carried
home after a terrific explosion in which he lost an
arm and the sight in two perfectly good eyes. His
young wife fainted at the horror of it, and only
a week later Graham Fletcher was born into the world.
While on the wall opposite the mother's bed, a dread
phantom played hide and seek with the tremendous human eye,
the half of which was missing, And the years which
followed baared mute witness that in that terrible hour a
gargantuan fear was transmitted to the soul of young Fletcher
a fear of blindness. Two. The daily sight of his
stricken father had its influence upon the boy as he
passed through his early youth blindness indelibly there was seared
on his brain, the fear of it, the horror of it.
It was when he was fourteen that a prophecy was
made about him. Now the fortune teller had given ample
proof that she was just as elaborate a liar as
the average fortune teller is supposed to be. She didn't
try to tell his fortune in the orthodox way, however,
in fact, he didn't want her to tell it. It
so happened that young Graham was just as full of
old nick as any boy. It seemed human nature to him, then,
to hurl pebbles at the horse tied behind the gypsy's wagon.
He meant no real harm, but that did not prevent
a jagged pebble from striking an eye of one of
the horses in such a manner as to cause the
animal to scream fearfully, while blood spurted from the injured optic.
The wrath of the woman fell upon the boy. Hoarsely.
She spoke to him in broken English for that you pay. Hey,
see you blind this horse. One day you be blind too,
then you die. No doubt she would have done more
than prophesy had it not been for the crowd near
at hand. But it was more than enough. She had
set her mark upon the so of young Graham Fletcher.
He would not forget. And so was another coincidence born
almost an inexcusable one. The years passed deeper and deeper
into the being of Graham Fletcher pushed that phantom of unrest.
He had gone home crying after the incident with the
fortune teller, but he was never to forget. It was
shortly after that that his imagination began to work. Overtime.
He had bad dreams. That was the first development. In
these dreams, he saw a hideous old hag with vulpine
features and hawk like claws striving to reach his face
his eyes. Bad dreams at night, if continued, easily, give
rise to day dreams. Now, day dreams are supposed to
be pleasant. They are if you sleep well. But Graham
Fletcher didn't, and so he began to see things even
in the day. Many things happened which increased his fear.
There was the time a hard bodied little bug got
into his eye. It sickened him, but his terror overcame.
Even the feeling of nausea. A life in utter dark,
such as that his father was leading, stared him in
the face. He was afraid. Of course, there had been
other incidents. Once he had tried to play football, a
rough tackle which resulted in a black eye, put the
taboo upon that forever. Then there was the incident of
the automobile race, when a driver ran through the fence
and a splinter of board struck Fletcher in the face,
breaking his glasses and cutting a deep gash under the
left eye. The whole world, it seemed, was conspiring to
do with the sight of Graham Fletcher. Thereafter, he never
attended the races, and though he needed spectacles, he never
wore them. Fletcher, of course, had his recurrent nightmare. Strange
to relate. The old gipsy woman failed to appear again. Instead,
it was something intangible yet quite real, which oppressed him.
The change made it all the more certain he was doomed.
He never could figure out his illusion satisfactorily. Sometimes he
seemed to be crushed under a weight that all the
power of the world could not move. Again, it seemed
that he was dropped through infinite space, always though there
was a sense of his eyes being dragged out of him.
At first, his awakenings would be with tears, Then as
he grew older, he would awaken in a state of cold,
clammy sweat. After the dream, there was little sleep for
him again the same night. It was when he was
nineteen that he felt claws on his eyes. Thereafter, he
left the light burning in his room when he went
to bed. It was only natural that Fletcher should try
to find things to keep him occupied, so that he
would have no time to think of his illusions. He
kept busy, but the phantoms continued to come. He welcomed
with avidity the chance to go into the north Woods
for a short stay with two friends. For a time,
Fletcher was so busily engaged in the hunt that he
forgot his troubles. All would have gone well, perhaps, had
he not been left alone That night in the cabin,
Jones and Gordon tramped over to the station together to
get supplies. They promised to be back before dark, and
Fletcher had no premonition of impending disaster. During the afternoon,
he had hiked through the woods and later wrote several letters.
It was when the shadows became a bit flickery that
Graham Fletcher felt the chill of the bitter cold creep
through him. Twilight fell. The black shadow among the trees
had arms, now arms that groped for him, blind arms.
They were blind. He fled to the safety of the cabin.
For a few minutes, the light gave him comfort. Then
he saw the shadows in the cabin, shadows that moved.
He jerked open the cupboard and took down a flat bottle.
He tasted the liquid, drank. He tried to read, but
the shadows kept creeping up one side of the page.
The shadows sometimes they seemed to form claws, claws that
reached for his eyes. He drank again and again. Then
he decided that his partners had stayed over at the station,
so he went to bed, leaving the light burning on
the table. He put the flashlight near him. His thoughts
eased back over other days. He kept his mind from
the specter, and finally fell asleep. He dreamed. This time
a new trouble beset him. That bottle whiskey. He had
read of a number of deaths resulting from the drinking
of wood alcohol in liquor. Now he tossed feverishly, and
after a while went to sleep again. The tall, old
fashioned clock, to which he had paid scant attention, awakened
him when it struck seven. He lay for a moment,
thinking seven the sun would be up. And blackness was
like a pall about him. It was thick, hideous. He
could almost feel it, hear it, taste it. Blackness. Could
it be that he had heard wrong? That it was
still night? No where the lamp had been left burning
on the table, he could see no light. A cry
of agonized dismay burst from his lips. His senses reeled,
but by a powerful effort of his will, he was
able to reach the flashlight full into his eyes. He
left it for a long minute. There was no answering glow. God,
he said, Ah, fool that you are, Graham Fletcher. Had
you but looked at the oil lamp, you would have
realized that it would not burn more than an hour?
And did you not throw away the useless battery in
the flashlight? Yourself blind? You are not blind, Graham Fletcher,
but you do not know this. You are moaning softly
as you reach for the gun beside your bed. It
is but the work of a moment to put the
end of the barrel in your mouth and push the
trigger with your toe. There destiny has raked the table
clean once more. Jones and Gordon were appalled when they
saw the body of the suicide stretched out on the floor.
No possible motive made itself apparent to them. I suggest
that this was a story or coincidence. There is but
one thing more. It is for the friends to glance
at the clock, note that it is five hours fast,
and buy some hocus pocus, decide at what hour their
friend took his own life. But they don't look, and
therein is the irony. The clock will tick merrily on
until it has run down. The End of Darkness by
Charles Hill and Craig