In The Dark Light

In The Dark Light

In The Dark Light is the darkness that covers people but they are so blind to see it and think as if everything is just okay with them.

His grandfather had lived out his childhood in a house overlooking a busy railway line. Greg lost count of the number of times he’d heard the story about the night a fire closed the line further out of town.

‘Woke up suddenly,’ Grandpa said. ‘Nine forty-three precisely. The silence woke me – should have been the Birmingham night train coming through. I couldn’t sleep after that, sat up watching the empty lines and knowing there was something wrong.’

Greg had been fascinated to hear the story as a child, moving on to boredom in his teenage years as he heard it repeated. Waking now in the permanent night, he thought of Grandpa.

The silence. He sat up in his bunk. It felt like the ship was listening to him.

‘Hello?’ he said quietly. No answer. Greg felt a shiver of relief, though he knew he was just imagining things. He clicked the light switch by his bunk, and the relief shattered. No light.

In that instant, he realised that the silence and the lack of light must mean that all electrical function had ceased. As he reached for his overalls, Greg thought of the air purifiers and woke up fully. The constant sigh of air passing through vents had stopped.

He arrived on the bridge at a trot. Commander Griff James was tapping at the keyboard, watching the blank screen.

‘What happened?’ Greg asked.