text: Midsummer, and we’ve left the longest day behind, the dreaded solstice interminable, but still we must contend with day after day of the warmth. Twilight, the heat lingers well past the setting of the sun, radiating leisurely back to the ether from those objects, from the very land itself, that sat baked in light in the hours from dawn ‘til dusk. Even the clouds, when present, cannot completely repel the illumination and thermal rise of the daytime. On this evening, not a puff of a breeze as the daylight succumbs, the air stagnant, providing no assistance to expedite the cooling process, as we wait. Ah, but on this night, there are other reprieves. Those beings that tend to bask in the horrid heat, rather than hide from its destructive forces, they would call this night that of a new moon, new implying rebirth, and a fresh beginning. We who shun the light, abhor the heat, have dubbed this monthly miracle as the great lunar demise, choosing to celebrate its utter extinguishment to blessed black, if only for this single night before the cycle begins anew with the appearance of a crescent crack of illumination on the morrow’s eve. Past twilight now to true and complete nightfall, the darkness permeated only by the tiny, far-flung pinpricks in the evening skies, a billion siblings to the mighty daytime furnace that roasts this world, but too far and too faint to be of consequence to us, the allies of darkness. We grow impatient, if it be possible for such as us, for our reintroduction back to the world, to begin our amalgamation back to being. We can feel a kindling growing in opposition to the falling temperature. No word exists to truly describe this transformation, our reformation. What one might call awakening, if we had been but asleep; or mistakenly cast as a resurrection, but that would imply a return to life. Ah, life, a shunned, four-letter word, rarely expressed of in polite company among us, and never ever to be contemplated or reminisced upon by those of our kind. Which brings us to tonight’s other exceptional event; the possibility to grow our numbers, increase the multitude, to lead another and another away from the peaceful yet inexplicable draw of the grave, away to join in the delights of the evenings. Two are balanced to leave this earthly realm that is the only existence they have ever known. Even now, the empty husks which are the bodies reside comfortably below their mounds of earth, each interred in separate ceremonies this day, but already the spirits are being lured by the inevitable longing for rest. We who have left that former incarnation behind, yet reject passing on, call to them on their first night of entombment, before the solace of the grave has them firmly in its cold, yet seductive grasp. The newly deceased are always our priority, so we deny to ourselves the imminent release of the boundless darkness and make our plea to them to join. We have but one opportunity, for one night is all that remains to them before they must decide, and so we call. Do not go gentle into that dark, dark earth, but linger awhile, and taste the fruits of this good night. For a day, a year, a millennium, exchange one type of the dark, be it comforting yet confining, for another form, this one expansive and athrill. We call to them, though we can no longer speak as we once did, and they listen, sometimes, even though they have already lost all capacity to hear as a living being would. We communicate. though we do not understand or care to determine how. This eve, we call to Thomas, a farmer’s son, a boy barely on the edge of manhood before tragedy appeared in his world. An accident, yes, but though death comes in many guises, the result is always the same. Pain and suffering came for Thomas, robbing him of the years that should have remained to him. That pain is yet fresh and raw within what remains of him, as it is with all the recently departed. It is escape from the pain and anguish of the time spent as a breathing man that so often fuels the desire for solace and peace. Tonight, we also call to Madeline, a woman of means until today, singer and entertainer extraordinaire, her death took a different course. She died from disease, which variety no more a concern to her now than the assets she leaves asunder, her last days spent in relative comfort at hospital. She lived more than double the span of years that Thomas dwelt upon this land, yet many still call it a tragedy for one so talented to be called away from their perceived prime, her magnificent voice now silenced. Madeline and Thomas, strangers abiding in the same countryside, he was aware of her through her fame, but only from a distance. Jump ahead to the present, to this moment in time, their final abodes being opposite ends of the same small, grassy hillside. Death came for them the same day, just minutes apart. Did Death perhaps only perceive Madeline in her weakened state when it was called boldly to these shores by the tragedy of Thomas, who can say? Death’s machinations are its own, not for the living or us, the no-longer-so, to overcome, mayhap to dissuade a bit, but ultimately only to respond in its wake as each are able. The still living bury, burn, mummify, then mourn, seeking comfort in tradition and ceremony. Those afforded such glorious sendoffs, or those who expire in humbler surroundings, can only pass on or stay and play in the coolness of the night. We have but one night to make our plea, so we must be quick, and we must be forthright, if not also a little enticing. And just what do we offer, why stay rather than drift out of this realm to the great and unknowing void? If one stays, an experience unlike any other awaits, an existence of sensations henceforth unknown. We cannot speak, we cannot hear, but oh, we can see. Farther and better than any raptor who plies the skies. In the darkness that we love, we perceive better than the slyest predator that stalks the forest floors. But our true enrapturing sense is that of touch, enhanced beyond imagination. We cannot directly interact with the material world, could not disturb so much as a speck of dust with what substance is afforded to us, but we feel ... everything! And so it comes to that which we hold most dear, the luxuriating that is our cause for existence. We creatures of sight and sensitivity revel in the coolness of the dark, writhing and cavorting to milk each experience to its utmost that it has to offer. The sky, the ground, flora in the fields and woods, stone and rock of the mountainsides, the very oceans of the world all transform to our playground with the coming of the night, with the dissipation of the heat. We can wallow in a cold mountain brook, as it passes through and around us, becoming one until us and it are indistinguishable. We ride the breezes, however faint, or careen madly within the tumult which is a hurricane, equally at home in either, feeling each molecule that surrounds and rushes around us in our explorations driven by these forces of nature. We can soar into the upper reaches of the stratosphere, where the currents are colder still, and the life sustaining elements that we no longer require are thin, or surf atop wave after breaking wave as they traverse the globe. Or, if it is our want, we may simply relish the simplicity of sitting upon a branch in a secluded wood and allow the material world to move around and through us, stimulating as it goes. The possibilities are endless, as is time to explore them, for each night presents the same choices, yet each night can be abundantly new and wonderous. Where we come from and where we go is a mystery even to us. Nightly, we are created afresh. With great effort, in moans and shrieks, we spring from the emptiness. In homes and glades, from ships and battlefields, from those places lost yet familiar, we evolve. We are not bound to them, yet we return nearly exclusively each time we dispel, for there is comfort in these structures, these hollows, those creations of ours when we were bound by gravity and walked upon the land, be they tangible or only sites full of memories. The living mistake our pains of awakening, believe them to be directed at them, but what appeal would terrifying the living satisfy in us? The living may have a preternatural interest, some even an obsession with our kind, but we do not reciprocate. The living simply cohabitate the night with us, the majority asleep and oblivious. Is our daylight demise a violent act, does the heat sear us with its intensity until we vanish with not even a tinge of vapor? Are we allergic to the light, to the heat it brings forth, for either will dispatch us more readily than any virus detrimental to those who still breathe? Call it allergy, or call it sensual overload, the heat and light stimulate us beyond comprehension so that we must escape to oblivion, such that we may once again arise when the darkness and the accompanying cool returns. But what of our new compatriots, of Madeline and Thomas, advised of their options by us, the keepers of the secret realm? Thomas has moved on, as most undoubtedly will, following his mother in her choice as so many before him and so many yet to come. They yearn for loved ones gone ahead, and often not finding them within our ranks, chose to stay in the grave and await their next journey, hoping for reunion with those previously lost. We do not hold any grievance against their decision, nor lament our loss, for the choice is given freely and without ramification. Those of us who choose to stay may rescind that decision at any time, though the same cannot be said for the alternative. What lies on the other side of that veil, who can tell. Be it heaven, hell, a reincarnation or just nothingness, none have ever returned to expound. But Madeline, she of the silenced soprano, has chosen the alternative path, our path. To become, for as long as she desires, a disciple of the darkness. We welcome her to our spirit realm with open arms. Former peasants and pharaohs, slaves and queens, the life you leave behind has no meaning or value here. With no powers to subjugate and no limits to measure and rate one against the other, are all equal and as one, here in the inviting darkness.