statement of Lyca Hororwich
A 'the dark' statement creative writing piece/ fan writing based on the magnus archives
Statement of Lyca Hororwich discussing her strange experiences with the dark in the winter of 1982. Statement given 30 the of December of that same year
Statement begins
I have OCD. I've knows since i was young, I got diagnosed early and it runs in the family so…*sigh* yeah.
I'm used to hallucinations. I don't know how much you know about OCD but it isn't the everything must be clean germaphobe stuff you see in media…
Well sometimes it is. Mine isn't. Control is the main thing. Thoughts banging until I act on them or grotesque depictions of my nightmares that I had to learn many firm coping mechanisms to handle and went through a *sigh* a long list of different ways to stop the thoughts.
In bad episodes I see things. Small things in the beginning but the level of interaction from them increased through the years...
I think I was 7 when i stopped being able to sleep. It wasn't a visual hallucination, I just had a profound sense that something was there, that something was in my garden. My bedroom overlooked it, and we had motion sensor lights. They never went off, but I was convinced that they must've. That there was something there and it was coming for me. I would repeatedly check the window over and over before lying down and trying to sleep again. That habit stuck. Night after night I would check and know that something was there but there was nothing. Just the night.
My parents grew worried. Obviously, seeing your young child pass out at the breakfast table every morning was cause for alarm, but nothing they did to try to help worked for long. I would sleep in my parents bed or they'd stay in mine until I dozed off. Them being there helped a lot. But then a new thought entered my mind...
It was still watching. Planning now. Waiting for my mother to leave or for them both to drop off so I would once again be alone. I stopped sleeping again. Not intentionally. I never intentionally avoided sleeping I just didn't.
Of course it's not uncommon with OCD.
(in a voice that is clearly recited this over and over again)
"An obsessive thought that won't go away, and demands you to do an action to get rid of the feeling, but no matter what you do, your mind isn't satisfied with the response."
It helped get me diagnosed early on.
Years passed and I had gone through dozens of OCD medications and sleeping drugs. They worked for a bit, I lived a good chunk of my life with no problems. Even managed to travel quite a lot, I had no trouble sleeping anywhere.
But *sigh* I was preparing for bed in my new flat a few weeks ago. my bed is against the window just as it was when I was a child. I always liked it being against the wall. It made me feel safe.
I look into the garden before I go to bed. Not searching for something like I did when I was I child, I just like taking in the stillness of the night before retiring to sleep.
I'd turn off the lamp by my bed and just stare into the pitch blackness and just breath it in. But... it didn't... I didn't feel safe. Not this time. I-I felt it. Again I felt it watching me!
After years of nothing it was there. I didn't see it, but I knew it was there. I took another dose of my medication. Double dosing is not advised, I know, but I just needed something, anything that might get rid of that feeling.
Of being watched.
But that's not even a good description. It's not the feeling of eyes on me, but the absence of everything...
I didn't want to look. I knew it wouldn't make it go away if I did! It wouldn't have fixed anything, but my body was petrified. Eyes frantically searching for anything, something, but I didn't really know what I was looking for.
I- I felt like I knew it. This darkness, this absence of anything corporeal or sentient, oozed a disturbing familiarity. It had watched me grow up... Night after night, it waited outside my bedroom window and, no matter how much I did to push it away, to carve this fear out of my life, years of fighting laid waste... it was here... and it was coming closer...
I didn't notice at first but slowly, tree by tree, it approached. Suffocating garden lights, and consuming everything it covered in that black nothingness...
Because that's what it was! It was nothing! But it was there, I know it was there! I saw it eat, I felt it looking at me, its not just a hallucination it can't be! It's so vivid... it... it stopped at my window...
It didn't enter. Didn't suffocate my room, or me for that matter. The darkness that draped my room was purely the natural absence of light. It looked at me... it had no eyes. No face, or form, but it looked at me. My heart was pounding loud enough to deafen me. I fought every nerve in me to try and run to turn on the lamp by my bed but I couldn't.
It felt like minutes went by, but it must have been hours, because eventually it was day...
No darkness, no burning abyss staring me down and deconstructing every atom of my existence, but the light. Cold and crisp, it greeted me and burned my retinas as they tried to adjust. I did not feel welcomed by it. Despite its tangible warmth, to me it felt clinical, judging and accusatory like a parent waiting for their child to admit their guilt. I wanted to hide away, to cover my flesh with anything to protect me, to keep my body, my soul hidden from this- this oppressive, devouring force that coated every inch of my room and demanded my attention and obedience.
I closed my curtains and hid away from it. It wasn't enough. I don't think that anything will ever be enough.
My skin feels raw and scarred in the light.
I sat there. In my room. For hours and hours as the light went through its phases, pulsed and weaned before finally setting once more. My boss had called me in that time. Left messages demanding to know the cause of my absence.
I didn't respond. I haven't responded. Not to anyone. The light forbids my return. Its purity demands exclusion, exclusion of the dark and all its children.
And the dark that watched me grow, that fed off my fear and gave me strength to fight misters hidden from my sight, that excludes no one. After all
The dark consumes all.
Statement ends.