Natalie Fung, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Dare you follow Heri along the forested path she treads at night? You may not like what you find.

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Through the Dark

By Natalie Fung

Chapter 1: Into the Darkness

Clink, Clomp. Clink, Clomp.

Heri knew that sound. Every child in the village did. It was the sound that screamed at you.

Run! The witch is coming.

The rhythm of the wicked hag’s footsteps echoed the warning throughout the trees, sounding as though they came from afar, yet threatening to close in at any moment. 

The moonlit path through the neighbourhood woods had been unusually quiet at this hour. On better nights, Heri would walk it home with Mom, trading stories and giggles about their day, watching their shadows stretch ahead of them. Tonight, however, she was alone.

Run!

Heri gasped for breath as she ducked under yet another flailing branch, trying to steady her panicked strides and breathing, all the while imploring her suddenly sluggish feet to go faster.

Her calves burned as she dragged herself along the narrow, twisting trail, past encroaching shrub after shrub, twigs dragging their way across the young girl’s exposed limbs.  

Just a little more, Heri gritted, her arms pumping and clenched fists digging fingernails into palms.

Just the very last hundred yards, and she would be safely tucked away in her blanket, snuggled under a layer of teddy bears, and away from any nefarious witches who stole children away from their homes. Images of her bedroom flashed: the shelf lined with Mom’s silly handwritten notes—You’ve got this, Riri!; the hand-stitched quilt she had made for her fourteenth birthday last week; and the perfectly framed picture of mother and daughter smiling up from the bedside table.

Home.

Heri rounded the final bend in the path and could finally see where it emerged up ahead from the thicket of trees and into the clearing, which bordered her house.

The towering oak with her red swing, the one right next to her house—whose dancing branches used to spook her on dark, windy nights as they clawed at her windowpane—was gone.

Heri’s steps faltered just a few feet short of the forest’s edge.

Where? It was here this morning, and all her life. It can’t… 

Her feet came to a full stop; the panic Heri had managed to restrain during her flight through the trees now threatened to slip its leash. The confused girl felt its jaws opening wider with anticipation as her mind bent painfully to make sense of what her eyes were telling it. 

Gone was the pretty stone road that led up to the edge of her lawn. In its place were only broken rocks and the same rough dirt of the path she now felt rooted in. The post box was still there, but it was missing the toy rocking horse that Mom had set up for her ages ago. And there was no light from her room on the second floor despite Heri knowing for a fact that she had left her bed light on that morning before leaving for school and every morning—like a beacon—for as long as she could remember.

That was not her house.

If this wasn’t home, then there was no place to run to.

Heri spun, her wild eyes threatening tears, and searched the darkness behind her; a darkness that contained the evil that followed.

Nothing.  

Nothing—only the empty path and the echo of the Clink, Clomp somewhere in the trees.

But Heri knew that at any second the sound would emerge into form with arms outstretched to drag her far, far away into the depths of the woods, until all that was left of her was a pile of discarded, powdery bones. All the girls of the village knew the stories, and the nasty ones retold the tales relentlessly; they all ended the same way.

Heri shut her eyes to force the horrible images out and a deep breath in. The witch was slow, everyone said. If she just kept running, kept breathing the way that Mom had taught her, she could outrun even this nightmare. There were only fifty yards left—but to what? If this was not her home, what was it, and where was she?

Heri felt dizzy, still panting, shaking her head against the swirling disorientation—focus. She must have taken a wrong turn, gone down the wrong side path somewhere in the middle, maybe the little trail just before that maple tree, next to that field of wilting camellias, or—

Clink, Clomp. 

The sound was closing in and much heavier, as if the woods themselves were complicit and amplifying its terrifying rhythm. Time was up.

Run!

A full panic, now unstoppable, engulfed Heri with its monstrous teeth, causing her to dash off the trail unthinkingly to her right. She immediately stifled a scream as her body slammed into a tree that seemed to appear from nowhere to block her flight. Heri’s knees buckled, and with a futile grasp at the rough bark, she crumpled to the ground, back onto the path.  

Clink, Clomp. Clink— 

The footsteps stopped. The witch had arrived. The air pressed in, thick and heavy, suffocating with intent.

Cold fingers clamped down onto the prone girl’s shoulder, and icy tentacles crawled their way up her throat. Heri’s vision tunnelled; the world shrank under the weight of that hand and the reverberations of clink, clomp inside her head. As she felt herself being dragged into oblivion, a scream was the only thing to escape.

“Mom! Help me!”

Chapter 2: Out of the Darkness

“Heri? Darling?”

One eye opened just a crack to the white, concerned face hovering above.

“Hush now, Heri. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

The comforting cadence of the voice brought some relief to the disoriented girl as she coaxed both lids fully open.

“Mom! You’re here,” Heri croaked softly as she sat up in her bed, her wakening mind grasping at words: “I’m, I, I ran, but, but the tree.”  The thoughts stumbled out of her mouth, twisting and tying over one another in urgency, as if losing their balance would mean never seeing the light of day again.

Mom sat down on the bed to soothe her daughter. “You’re safe now.”

“I’m not.  I, I can’t—I wasn’t.” The young girl rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she oriented herself under the dawn twilight that seeped into her room through the bay window next to the bed.

“I’m here,” her mother assured her.

“But you weren’t,” Heri blurted as a small but sharp spasm gripped her chest in a sudden swell of anxiety. “You weren’t there when I needed you! You weren’t there, and it was so dark and strange, and there was…”

The words dissolved into sobs and into Mom’s arms as the usually brave fourteen‑year‑old shrank back to that seven‑year‑old who would bolt from nightmares into this same chest, into this same bathrobe, now growing damp with tears.

“It’s all right now.” A gentle hand rubbed Heri’s back, and she could feel a soft hum reverberating through the chest where her cheek pressed.

“I, I know it isn’t, wasn’t real, but, but…” Heri’s words came in short, quiet gasps as her breathing slowed to the rhythm of her mother’s calming strokes.

“Let it all out. There, there. All better now, yes?”

Mom smoothed back her daughter’s hair, tucking stray strands behind her ear the way she always did. Her touch had an immediate calming effect. “Another witch dream?” she asked softly. “You know those vile village stories get into your head.”

Heri let out a shaky, embarrassed half-laugh as the sobs slowed to a trickle. “I guess so,” she muttered. “It felt so real this time. Much more than before.”

“Dreams always do, until you wake up. Look around you, Riri. Your pretty quilt, your notes, and Brownie, your favourite teddy watching over you. This is home. Our home. Just you and me. Safe.”

Heri’s shoulders loosened. Of course, it was her room, her bed, and Mom’s loving arms; the witch belonged to the same pile of childish phantoms as those imagined monsters under the bed and behind the door of her wardrobe. It was all just a dream, again.

“You’ve always come when I call,” Heri murmured sheepishly into Mom’s bathrobe. “Every time.”

“Always,” came the confirmation. “Now go back to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

A faint sting pulsed at Heri’s temple as she lay back, but Mom’s cool fingers brushed over it, and the ache faded into the background.

The calmed girl felt her eyes drift shut, clinging to the warmth and rose-petal softness of Mom’s protective hands and the comforting creak of the house settling into place. The chase through the woods was already dissipating from her mind, leaving only a faint, silly echo.

Chapter 3: Darkness Follows

Heri jolted awake in the dead of night. Her eyes flashed open to an unexpected darkness. The bed light that was never turned off was off. She quickly flipped the switch and scanned the shadows held at bay by its dim light.  

She was alone. But something was off.

Brownie was next to her, like always, but its fur looked faded and felt worn as she clutched it close. With a mixture of puzzlement and suspicion, Heri knelt on her bed to look out the window. The oak tree was there, but the red swing was missing. The tiny hairs on the back of Heri’s neck rose as she turned to inspect her room more closely.

Then she saw it.

A thin band of unnatural green light bled under her closed bedroom door. In from the corridor it came, pooling in a sickly dull glow across the floorboards.

Her mind immediately went to the dark place within it—witches! Could they be inside the house?!

Heri could feel a panic tighten around her throat, but the sudden thought of her mother focused her: Could the unnatural light be coming from Mom’s room just down the hall?

Images flashed of sneering witches leering over Mom’s bed as she lay sleeping and vulnerable. With heart quickening, protective instincts pulled Heri to her door, where she placed an unsteady hand on the knob and slowly twisted it.

Terror, she knew, may be waiting on the other side, but Heri had to follow the light.

Like a cat in the dark, the young girl moved along the hallway, taking small, quiet steps as she edged towards the source of the sickly green illumination.

Yes, it is coming from Mom’s room.

Stop, her inner voice suddenly warned. Go back!

But there was no turning back – this was her home. Heri’s feet were no longer hers to control, drawing her in to whatever caused that evil glow from Mom’s room. Just before its entrance, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to brace herself. Silently, she counted down her last steps – three, two, one.

Heri snapped her eyes open. She was instantly grounded in the doorway with the feeling that something was clamped around her skull; its chill sliding downward from the nape of her neck all the way to her toes.

There, at the centre of the dull light, stood something that looked like a human gazing into the wall mirror as if in a trance. However, the face, although partially veiled by the shadows, was clearly not human. One side looked soft, whole, and somehow familiar as if she had seen it in a dream. But the other half looked drained, gaunt, with a hollowed cheek that resembled a corpse.

The witch!

The evil that radiated from this creature blurred out Heri’s family home and replaced it with a wave of darkness that crashed down on Heri, its crippling weight bending her shoulders and pushing all the air out of her lungs.

The witch is in the house!

Heri recoiled in silence. She didn’t scream because she couldn’t breathe. The icy shock of the intruder buried her throat and nostrils like an avalanche. Finally, she drew in a rasping breath, hands darting up to her mouth to cover the noise a second too late.

Too late! Black eyes snapped out of their trance and locked with hers through the reflection of the large mirror. The witch saw her.

Run, she begged her legs, run! 

But the young girl had taken her last step; she was immobilised, once again, in dreamlike quicksand.

The invader turned and closed the distance, never breaking eye contact. Heri could hear the pounding of her own heart like a grandfather clock winding down to the final moments.

This cannot be how it ends. She had escaped the witch earlier; Mom had—Mom! Where is Mom?!

Heri’s eyes flitted around the room and hallway, but there was no trace of her anywhere. No, there was nothing left but that half of a face that made her brain itch.  

There’s nothing to be done. There is nowhere else to run.

Heri sealed her eyes shut in resignation. If the witch had already killed Mom, at least death would join them.

Clink, Clomp. Clink, Clomp. The footsteps stopped directly in front of her.

“Heri?”

The scratchy voice was familiar.

Then the recognition hit hard; this was the same voice that had sung her to sleep on countless nights, now straining out of a monster’s throat.

What evil is this? Heri tentatively opened her eyes and flinched in the face of the confusion that swirled and melted and reformed in front of her.

“Heri?” the voice whispered again, tentatively with a dreamlike resonance.  

But it was the nightmare of the emaciated part of the face that drew in the girl’s suddenly bold gaze. There, delicate bones threatened to push through the skin that stretched taut over them, which produced a sickly pallor. Paper-white lips were chapped, but only on one side. Perhaps most disturbing of all was the sunken hollow where one eye rested. Those eyes: they were identical, but in them, Heri found no trace of the malice she had expected; there was only concern and creeping familiarity.  

“Heri, dear, what’s wrong?” the figure questioned again in a voice that, despite its rasp, was undeniably recognisable.

The cause of Heri’s ongoing fear and confusion must have finally registered, because the looming figure reeled backwards. Something like understanding flared in those eyes, as if she, too, had only just felt the glamour disappear.

What had held for years had tonight—worn thin by old magic—finally faded.

“Heri, I—” the figure gasped, a hand flying up to the gaunt half of her face in a vain attempt to conceal what had already been revealed. “You must be terrified.”

“No, no, this is a dream,” Heri whispered even as her mind twisted to accommodate this surreal moment that brought time to a standstill. It searched to comprehend what now stood in Mom’s room: the voice, those eyes, the posture, the unique hair clip that tied up stray strands. Heri could only stare, breath held, wanting answers but dreading what the next words would bring.       

The figure’s voice continued in a whisper: “Riri. I never—You were never meant to…”  A tear slid down stretched skin.

At the utterance of the nickname Mom used for her as a child, Heri felt a devastating pang of acceptance that she wasn’t dreaming; this was real.

“Mom?”  Heri tested the word.  “How did—why—what happened?”

The figure stepped toward the bed, Clink, Clomp, and sat heavily under the weight of irreversible revelation. The long nightgown rose, revealing the source of the noise: wood and metal prosthetic legs. Their rhythm had haunted Heri’s nightmares.

“Mom?” Heri whispered, her voice trembling. A truth was forming in her head, but she didn’t feel ready for it.

This was Mom.

She no longer presented the refined but strong face that her daughter had known for her entire life, but rather, the diseased features of a witch.

But this was Mom.

Just as the first tear broke free from the corner of Heri’s stinging eyes, thin but warm arms overcame shame to wrap themselves around the stunned girl, tentative at first and then firmly.

“Mom? Why?”  Heri gasped, tears turning to sobs that fell uncontrollably from her mouth. Mom hugged her tighter and patted her back soothingly.

“Heri, I am the witch you’ve been running from,” Mom confessed after a long moment, a pain-filled sigh venting from her lips. “I knew this would terrify and revolt you. I couldn’t risk losing you or your love.”

Things started to piece together for Heri even as her world crumbled.

The witch?

Sensing that it was needed, finally, Heri’s mother stood up to lay herself fully bare: “I guess this has no purpose now.”

With a flick of her hand, the last traces of the face that resembled Mom disappeared, leaving in its wake the ugly truth. Heri could see the faint seams of old scars along her jaw, thin lines vanishing beneath the collar of her nightgown. Heri also noticed a sudden change in the air and room. The usual floral scent now seemed to fade like dried flowers, and the wall behind her mother now revealed veiny cracks that she had never seen before.

“Heri, I’m sorry,” Mom murmured, “I didn’t think you’d ever see me without the full glamour on, at least not so soon. I felt it fading recently but thought I could somehow keep it going.” Her words trailed off.

Glamour. Spells. Of course, there had been magic hiding the scars, the pallor, the metal legs, even the deterioration of their home.  

“I thought I could hold my two faces apart for you,” Mom continued, a twisted mouth searching for the honest words. “One for mornings and birthday photos and bedtime stories, and one for the nights when I had to be the witch the village needed me to be—and made me.  I just didn’t expect you to meet the second one like this.”

“But, you were chasing me,” Heri blurted, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “Through the woods. I heard you behind me. I thought you were going to grab me and drag me away!”

Pain flickered across the ravaged face. “I was chasing after you,” Mom acknowledged quietly. “You ran when you heard the clink, clomp in the dark, and all you could imagine were the stories the villagers told you. I was only trying to catch up before you got hurt. There are worse things in the forest than this old witch.”

Heri’s mother knew more explanation was needed, even if this wasn’t the ideal time. “The villagers—It started with their cries of witch, followed by expulsion, then stones, ropes and finally fire; all the things that people do when they see something their simple minds can’t understand. They took my legs the first time they tried to burn me.”  She looked down at the stumps of wood and metal before continuing: “These were the only way I could keep walking. The only way I could keep coming home. I didn’t want you to see any of that.”

Heri listened to her mother’s painful story and finally surged forward as fast as her tears flowed and threw her weight against Mom.

“I didn’t know it was you!” Heri cried. The sight of Mom with her head bowed low pierced her heart. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have run from you!” Heri buried herself in the crook of Mom’s neck and stifled her sobs. “It’s just…”

The daughter’s words continued into thoughts she couldn’t confess aloud: I saw…I heard something strange and ugly, and decided it was evil. The thought sent a shiver of shame, even betrayal.  

“Maybe I should have just told you from the start,” Mom offered as she tightened her hold on Heri and placed her face into her daughter’s hair.

Her breath was cool, almost cold, but still comforting on Heri’s scalp.

“I may wear the witch’s face now, but I’m still the one who raised you in the day and the night. But, my lovely girl, it seems my glamour is gone; I won’t be able to go out into the light anymore.”

Heri looked up into the sunken eyes that had always watched over her and saw only deep wells of unconditional love.

“It’s okay, Mom,” she sniffled. “We will figure this out together. It is you and me against the world, now and forever.”

Something twisted low in Heri’s stomach at her own pronouncement—the lightest tinge of fear, but also a spark of excitement. The thought of never being scared again by the villagers or anything, of walking beside what everyone else ran from, set her pulse skittering against Mom’s chest.

“Mom,” Heri stated quietly but firmly in affirmation, “we will go through the dark together.”

Epilogue

Clink, Clomp. Clink, Clomp. 

The woods seemed quiet again. Heri approached its familiar path beside Mom, pulling on her hand and matching each clink of metal with the soft scuff of her own shoes.

“Careful, Riri,” Mom murmured as they passed the tree marking the start of the forest where Heri had once slipped and hit her head. “Not so fast. I’m still not sure you’re ready.”

Heri gave Mom’s hand a tight squeeze. The memory of her mother’s beautiful face flickered at the edge of her mind, no longer quite separate from the fully revealed woman beside her.

The setting sun’s amber hue cast two trailing shadows stretching and lingering as they passed by the field of sunflowers. By day, they had shone a bright yellow as they reflected sunbeams like mirrors. But now, they looked like shadowy giants. Up ahead, fluttering fireflies lit up the darkening path, creating a warm, hazy fuzz in the twilight.

Clink, Pitter. Patter, Clomp.

Somewhere further down the winding trail, children’s voices chimed through the trees.

Heri’s stomach gave a strange, answering twist that felt almost like hunger, almost like excitement, as if the dark itself were welcoming her. She repositioned her fingers to lace them through Mom’s and instinctively matched her strides.

Through the dark, the future beckoned.

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