At the Light Festival
Thoughts Under the Influence of Touch
I’ll start with the invite. I hadn’t been invited to anything for quite some time, so I should have been overjoyed when the message arrived. But I wasn’t overjoyed. I felt the same reluctance I normally felt when an obligation was added to my otherwise orderly and purposely uneventful weekly schedule. If anything, I was the opposite of overjoyed. I was expectedly remiss.
The invite was from a small group of friends attending the Winter Light Festival in the city. And though it crossed my mind to decline the offer with a polite excuse, I decided for once that I should rejoin my social life. After all, there would be plenty of distractions to keep their attention away from me and focused on something other than personal inquiries or antiquated gossip.
After sending my RSVP, I thought about the event, the Light Festival with all its artwork and people and fiery luster, and my reluctance began to fade. I actually started to look forward to it. But when the day finally arrived and I caught a ride share to the meeting place in the city square, all I saw were the glowing faces of strangers watching the shows.
Checking my texts once again for directions, I saw that a “tunnel” was mentioned. I looked around at all the exhibits, each of them lighting up the brick-lain square with flashing lights or pyrotechnic displays, and among them were several tent structures where people stood in line waiting to enter. One of those tents was long and tube-like, spanning the entire edge of the square and decorated from one end to the other with Christmas-style lights that flashed in shifting patterns against a black surface.
It was the only “tunnel” I saw, so I stepped in line with the others waiting to enter. As I waited my turn, I watched people ahead of me enter the darkness and vanish around a bend in the channel. A young woman covered in ropes of neon light was admitting people one by one or in groups, waving a glowing wand as they stepped inside. All around me were brightly colored fixtures and fire shooters, their flames warming the winter air as they blazed overhead in arcs and coils. And every few minutes there would be a cheer from the crowds as flames shot higher into the sky.
“How many?” the woman asked when I reached the end of the line.
“Oh, just me,” I said. “I think my friends are already inside.”
“Then come on in and join them,” she said, waving her wand as she did with the others.
When I thanked her and stepped into the tunnel, I went blind for a moment before the other side of the bend revealed a light pattern that brightened as I approached. Thinking I was alone in the dark, I now saw shadows of people ahead of me, some with their arms around each other as they walked. I could hear children as well, their shouts and laughter echoing through the tunnel from somewhere up ahead. The further I walked, the brighter the lights became, their patterns like sunlit mosaics against the black vinyl walls. And in the flashing light, I saw the illuminated faces of those in front of me, one of which I recognized.
“Oriah,” I called out.
Oriah, a friend from long ago, turned toward me and smiled. I saw her reaching for me when the lights beside us went out. She was wearing a thick winter cap over locks of lightened hair that gave her a youthful look, despite her age. And just as the tunnel darkened, I saw her reaching toward me. I felt the clutch of her hand in the darkness as she pulled me along through the tunnel, weaving between other bodies in the crowd.
“Come on,” she said in a loud voice. “They’re over here.”
Thoughts in the Dark
I followed Oriah as well as I could, but the shift from bright lights to darkness was bad on my eyes. And when I resisted her pull to slow us down, she slipped away.
Without Oriah’s guidance, I immediately walked into another person and had to stop and apologize. I stood for a moment waiting for the lights to come back on, but after half a minute, my eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the flow of walking shadows around me. Worried that I was standing in the way of other attendees, I backed slowly against the wall and looked for any sign of my friends.
I was just about to call Oriah’s name when things started to change. The tunnel seemed to tighten and become more narrow, leaving less room from wall to wall. And the people who had crowded around me only seconds before were now sparse and distant shadowed remnants of what was there. I felt suddenly alone in the dark, and it reminded me of a childhood experience I hadn’t thought about in years.
I was at the county fair in my hometown, and I was very young, more than likely in kindergarten or the summer before it. And though my parents allowed me to enter a haunted house exhibit with my older brother, I was told to hold his hand the whole way through. Only a few steps past the rickety facade and into the dark halls of the exhibit, I released my brother’s hand and became almost immediately lost without him. My eyes have never been good in the dark, and when I ran into a wall, I tried another direction, only to hit another wall. Every direction I tried was blocked, leaving me stuck in one spot as the sounds of distant screams began to terrify my young mind.
Along with the screams were glowing masks in the dark, appearing like a light switch turned on every few minutes. I could even hear the switching sound each time it lit up. I remember crouching against the wall and sitting down when I heard footsteps, hoping to hide from whatever it was that approached. Making it even worse, there were moaning sounds and pounding drum beats in the same direction as the footsteps, and all I could do was tuck my head in my knees.
“Evans,” a man said, using my last name. I looked up to see a figure in the dark holding a small light. “Follow the light,” he said. This time, I did as I was told, but I recall being confused by the fact that a way out could be that simple. Before the man arrived with his light, there were walls on every side of me, just as there were crowds of people in the tunnel until the lights went out and I was alone.
Years later I would release a hand with much greater consequences. At some point in early adolescence, I nearly drowned in a river despite the lifeline of a friend’s firm grip on my hand in the water. I flailed, and so did he. We both let go, and we both struggled to make it back to shore against a strong current and undertow. Like the confusion in the haunted house, I had no idea how I got out of the water. The last thing I remembered before dropping to my hands and knees on the embankment was panic and swallowing water. On the walk home from the swimming hole, we spoke very few words because nothing any of us could say would change that moment.
In the tunnel, I felt the same panic but without reason. I felt the fear of a child alone in the dark, but there was nothing to fear. It occurred to me that the touch of Oriah’s hand had not only triggered these recollections but brought back past emotions along with them. And pulling away from her, I began to think, was not the accident I assumed it to be.
What’s in a Touch?
A third memory came to mind just as the lights began to flicker again in the hall of the tunnel. It was the last time my ex and I were together. She used to hold my hand when we walked, and it was always her who initiated it. Even on the last day of our time together, she took hold of my hands at a train station before leaving on a trip, and I released them abruptly without reason, as I often did. Neither of us had suggested a breakup, but I knew that would be our last goodbye.
What was in that touch? I wondered, thinking now about Oriah. And perhaps more importantly, I wondered about my own role in allowing her to slip away like so many others. It was just a simple accident, but in the context of the memories it evoked, I couldn’t help but inflate its significance. All the signs of loss and loneliness were there, and I began to wonder if I’d been in retreat throughout my life from those I cared about the most.
“Oriah!” I called out. And now the lights were on and the tunnel was wide and filled nearly to capacity with other people passing through. The distortions I had experienced in my moment of darkness had passed, but the panic remained.
Rather than standing against the wall, I walked further into the tunnel and called Oriah’s name once again. As the lights flashed beside me on the walls, their patterns circled frames of glowing paint. And beyond the paintings were sculptures ensconced like lanterns with the shapes of animals brightening and dimming in consonant intervals.
The tunnel seemed only as long as the square itself from the outside, but in its depths I wondered if it had somehow led me to the city’s mythic underground, the rumored hellscape of Old-Town sailors who found themselves Shanghaied after too much drink. Passing through the couples and families as they gawked at glowing animals and roving UV spotlights, I saw something that finally put my mind at ease. It was the end of the tunnel.
Departure and Return
The lights were brightest at the end of the exhibit, but for me, they were too bright. I was still feeling the panic that had come over me in the dark, and only a few steps from the exit, I saw something that could not have been a coincidence. Hanging from the wall was a glowing mask with red eyes, almost a replica of the face that tormented me as a child at the county fair haunted house.
It stared back at me like a reflection in red, somehow both expressionless and full of intensity at the same time. And as I stood there peering into its flashing eyes, I felt with greater severity the fear of my childhood experiences — not only those of being lost or drowning but a number of them, all based in fear and retreat. If Oriah hadn’t called my name, I may have stood there staring forever into the nightmares of my past.
“Evans!” She used my last name when she shouted at me. And like the man who guided me out of the haunted house, she stood in the light. The entire group was there at the entrance waiting for me. One of them even laughed at my expression when I turned toward them and walked, nearly tripping in a rush to get out of the tunnel and into the open space of their company.
“Did you get lost?” Oriah asked. But I didn’t answer. I was busy greeting my friends and embracing each of them with a sense of relief that not one seemed to question. And in the warmth of the flames, we finally set out together as a group, making small talk as we followed the walkway to the next exhibit.
Thank you for reading and supporting The Scriber’s Nook. We publish five days a week — Monday to Friday inclusively 🖋️🌟📚
