"Hello darkness my old friend," Helen sang quietly and rather off key.  "I've come to talk with you again," she said as she opened the door of her closet.  It smelled of little girl's abandoned dreams; dusty dolls, the paper of old books that she didn't want to part with, a faint scent of plastic from pony figures that were slowly giving up their plastic bones to the air.  The Poston's house was an older one, a real hodgepodge of semi-professional additions and renovations, done by men like her father.  He did the same thing with cars, somehow making them work with parts that weren't quite original and cobbling broken ones together into a working gestalt.  The closet was originally a very small bedroom, so she had enough space to walk in turn around without touching the walls.  Someone had added two levels of shelves around the walls, and her dad had put in a closet rod on one side for hanging clothes.  Helen shut the door.  The light was already off in her room, and her blinds drawn, but light was still leaking through the not quite straight frame and the bottom of the door.<br/><br/>Helen pressed up onto her toes and undid a bow made from laces from an old pair of roller skate laces.  Carefully she unrolled the blanket that she'd thumbtacked over the door.  It crinkled as it unrolled.  Helen had put overlapping layers of aluminum foil between two blankets, then inexpertly stitched them together.  Bending at the waist without unlocking her legs, she guided the blanket all the way to the floor then smiled unseen.<br/><br/>It was completely black inside.  A cave explorer would know the sensation from when they turned off their lights in the belly of the earth.  It was utterly black and save for when she blinked and caused little purple green flashes of phosphenes, Helen was utterly blind.  It was wonderful and she hugged herself in happiness.  "I missed you," she said and sat down cross legged on the floor.  "I wish I could keep you with me all the time."<br/><br/>And she did.  Darkness had never held fear for her.  Quite the opposite, it felt good.  It was comfort and quiet and her own special place.  When other babies and children clung to nightlights and leaving the door open a crack, Helen never did.  Her absolute favorite time was when the moon as new and she could go outside, unbothered by it's glow.   There was still light, yellow cloud reflection from streetlights and cars passing by, but it was as close to perfect as it could be.  The only other better time was once when a new moon coincided with a blackout and heavy cloud cover.  She'd spent hours in the backyard, wrapped in the blanket of night and utterly joyous.  When everyone else clapped as power came back on, Helen got mad and went to her closet to sleep there the rest of the night.<br/><br/>Sometimes, of late, she felt that the darkness was almost a living thing, trying to reach out to her.  Like wisps of it were flowing onto her skin, like fog only not cold and wet.  Once she was even sure a tendril of it stroked along her shin.  She'd caught her breath and held absolutely still.  It had lasted only a few seconds, but Helen was sure it had been there.  Of course she didn't tell anyone about it.  They'd think she was capital C Crazy.  Those who knew already thought she was peculiar for having her closet set up the way it was.  Not that many knew.  Certainly no one from school.  That would be opening the door to be labeled a freak, and no teenaged girl wanted that.<br/><br/>"Are you there?" she asked softly.  "I think you are.  It's okay if you're scared.  People don't understand you.  They think you're bad, scary, but you're not."  She was anthropomorphizing it, a term she'd learned last year in English; ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects.  "You've always made me feel safe and happy.  I wish you'd trust me more."  Helen shifted and laid back.  From practice her hand found an old Raggedy Anne doll and pulled it under her head for a pillow.  She had no trouble stretching out completely.  That was about the only advantage of being really short.  You didn't get cramped for space, though your legs often hung from chairs and didn't reach the ground.  "It's okay," she whispered to it.  "Don't be afraid."  Helen left her eyes open, not wanting the distraction of phantom colors to ruin the dark, and breathed slowly and evenly.<br/><br/>There!  There it was, flowing across her bare toes and up her bare legs towards her shorts.  She tensed and it retreated.  "Sorry," she said.  "Come back.  Come on."  And it did!  The wisps of dark moved up her legs, across her thighs and settled about her tummy and just below her small breasts.  It just sat there, like a cat, only not so annoying.  Carefully Helen moved one hand and slid it down, into the dark fog.  It accepted her hand and covered it. She could feel it.  "Thank you," she whispered.<br/><br/>Helen's heart started to beat a little faster, as if she was climbing stairs.  It was just excitement she told herself.<br/><br/>She rotated her hand so it was palm up and open, like she was waiting for a boy to put his hand in hers.  "Please," she asked.  "I won't grab you," she promised.  "Please."<br/><br/>Now her heart was beating faster still and her breathing was getting faster.  Helen felt like she'd been working out, but she was laying perfectly still.  Finally she felt it.  A tendril of elemental dark slithered into her palm, then wrapped around it.  It was slender, no bigger around than a man's thumb, but it was much firmer than the wisps she felt on her lower body.  She wasn't imagining it!  This was really happening.  It pulsed slightly, like a living thing though there was no heat or cold or texture she could discern.  It wasn't slippery either, or rough.  It just...was.<br/><br/>"Helen!" her mother called, voice muffled by distance and closed doors and the blanket.  "Helen, come help me set the table!"  It was just enough distraction, enough reminder of the light world, that the tendril shot from her palm and the dark fog vanished.  Helen beat a fist upon the closet floor and was aware of sudden damp tracks flowing down the side of her head from each eye.  "It's not fair," she said and sat up, cradling her legs to her so that her chin rested on her knees.  "It's not fair.  I hate it!"<br/><br/>Helen pushed the blanket up and opened the closet door, blinking at the relative brightness of the room.<br/><br/>"Helen!"<br/><br/>"Coming," she called out.<br/><br/>"Oh, there you are," her mother said when Helen entered the kitchen.  "You look flushed.  And why are you breathing hard?"<br/><br/>"I was, um, doing some yoga," Helen lied, realizing her mother was right.  "It looks calm but it's really intense."<br/><br/>"Well, okay then," her mother said doubtfully.<br/><br/>"Mom?  Can I have a snack before dinner?  I'm really, really hungry.  I mean really hungry."<br/><br/>