My Blessing

A Story by Viktor

A short story I wrote in English a few years back when we were studying the horror romanticism.

I’m running, running through the forest. As fast as I can through the forest. All around me there are trees, long, dark and cruel. Above them the full moon is shining on the pitch-dark sky, making every shadow twice as long on the damp ground upon which I’m running. Running to get out. Running for my life. The voices are still in my head, stronger than ever. I can’t concentrate, I can’t even see the trees or the boulders. All I can do is run and try to ignore the voices in my head; screaming, crying, laughing. All the time I can hear them. But not for long; I know where the cure is.

It all began an early Saturday morning in March. The sun had just risen and I was lying in my bed. I stood up, as usual, and walked over to the big window in my room. I pulled aside the curtains and gazed upon the misty landscape outside, while the room filled up with that kind of sunshine that only appears right after dusk. After yawning the last sleep out of me, I dressed and went out of my large room and in to an even larger corridor that lead to the huge stairways to the entrance hall of the mansion. The corridor had a lot of old furniture, but no ornaments whatsoever. Only some boring paintings, on the boring walls. The sun didn’t seem to reach this corridor, resulting in it constantly being dark. I had only lived there for about a month. It was my uncle’s house and when my parents died I moved there. To a big, ancient house in the middle of nowhere. There lived a lot of other people in the house, mostly my cousins, but also a couple of servants and maids. I headed down the stairs, looking around at the hall below me as I walked. It was as bare as the rest of the house, except for the occasional picture and of course the dark furniture along the walls. The first one to greet me when I came down the great stairs was my younger cousin Albert. He’s just one year younger than me, and sees me as the ideal person. He adores me. At least that’s what I thought then. Frankly, I thought that all of my cousins, if not everyone I had ever met, loved me. I had no idea then how wrong I was.
“Good Morning” I said to Albert.
“Good Morning” he answered with a stiff smile. Then I couldn’t come up with anything else to say, so I just left to get some breakfast in the dining room. That’s when it first happened. That’s when I first heard it. It was Albert’s voice. He said something about my being a spoiled know-it-all. Of course, I went furious and asked him what he had said, but he just acted as though I was crazy in some way. I made sure that he really hadn’t said anything, and then headed toward the kitchen to find something to eat, while thoughts started to form in my head. Had I really… No! I couldn’t have. It’s impossible…
My day continued and slowly I started to realise what had happened to me. I had been blessed with a wonderful gift: I could hear what other people thought.
“I must have been rewarded for my humbleness” I thought to myself. Of course I was very anxious to try my new ability, and possibly learn a little something while doing so. I could not only hear other people praise me, but learn their darkest secrets at the same time. I realised very quickly that this power of mine could come in great handy.

But the more I listened, the more I didn’t want to. I started to suspect that they didn’t like me as much as I had thought. Everyone I talked to in the house was as polite and nice to me as you could ask them to be, but their thoughts told me otherwise. They all seemed to believe I was spoiled and arrogant, and the only reason they didn’t tell me this was simply that my uncle had told them not to. Apparently he thought I had been through enough recently, with my parent’s death and all that. I must admit I got a bit annoyed when I heard these unflattering thoughts, but I quickly got over it. It wasn’t every day you found out you could read thoughts, and I figured that it was their loss, not mine.

It very quickly was clear to me exactly what I could manage with my newfound gift. I could use the information I had gathered to manipulate my family into doing my bidding. And I was very successful at it too. Every day they did as I wanted, without even knowing it was because of me, and every day I praised my gift and thanked God for his blessing. My powers grew and I was able to hear thoughts from longer and longer distances, sometimes even through walls. But after a week I slowly and carefully began to dislike it more and more. The bad things I heard started to get to me and I started to lock myself in my room, to shield out the voices and all the negativity. I stayed in my room night and day and had food sent up to me. All day long I lay in my bed, looking around in the room. I examined the large, dark furniture, I watched the shadows move as the days went by. Sometimes I stood by the window, watching the dark forest in the west and seeing the endless lake in the east. I watched the flourished pattern of the boring wallpaper; anything to keep my mind off the voices, to keep myself from listening to it all. But this became harder and harder, as the voices kept becoming stronger and stronger. Every day there came more voices and they multiplied with a speed I thought impossible. I heard voices I had never heard before, and it became harder to hear what they said. They mixed and melted together until all I heard was an unbearable, incomprehensible noise. One evening, after another sleepless day, exactly a month after my gift had come to me, I had had enough. I couldn’t hear anything besides the screaming, moaning and unintelligible, never-ending mumble in my head. I had a hard time seeing anything, but my mind was made up. I couldn’t stand it anymore; I had to get rid of it. Then it hit me; I knew how to rid myself of it, I knew where to find the cure.

Now I’m running, running through the forest. The noise becomes louder with every step I take. I can’t see the trees rising tall above me, I can’t hear the wolf howling at the moon. All I can do is run, run towards the cure. I know where it is, and I know how to get there. The only words running through my brain are these ones: “I have to get there, I have to find the cure”. And now, finally, I am there. I see the cliff before me, and without any doubt, without any thought whether it’s the right thing to do, I leap from the edge. I feel the cold air running through my hair, I feel the rain whipping my cold face. And then I land on the hard rocks below me. My body lies there, alone at the stony earth, alone with the ringing wind and the falling rain. I am dead, but I am free. Free from the curse and free from the burden of life.