by Keith Sutherland
On August 21, 2017 and again on April 8, 2024 the small
town of Kelso, Missouri will be in the path of totality of a solar
eclipse.
August 21, 2017:
“Do you miss your mother, Darryl?”
“I guess,” he replied.
“You’re okay with her not being around?”
He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “I have you, Dad.”
Standing on my backyard deck, I looked at my sixteen-year-old son through the welder’s glasses I wore, which were basically industrial swimming goggles with dark lenses that gave the world around a greenish black tint. Even in the eerie darkness his resemblance to me was unmistakable. Darryl, tall and thin with wavy black hair that was in need of a cut, was a slightly shorter version of me, down to his choice of eyewear. The protective goggles, necessary to safely view the eclipse obscured his eyes and the trouble that must surely lie behind them. Though he didn’t show it, I knew he had to be hurting, but there was another matter that occupied my thoughts.
What drives you?
I looked up to the heavens, the moon a circular black sphere blocking out the Sun. Only a fine thread of light circled the moon, brief flashes and bursts peeking out from behind the gigantic black orb. An eerie quiet had descended upon the backyard and the entire neighborhood that was cast into premature twilight. There were no sounds of birds or squirrels or dogs. Nothing but the black moon, Darryl and me.
I loosened my tie and rubbed the pendant hidden beneath my shirt as I thought about the question posed to me about an hour ago by one of co-workers. The question was a simple one, straight forward and utterly terrifying—not so much the question exactly, but my complete lack of an answer.
What drives you?
Almost everyone in the small office of Stevens and Lynch had taken their lunch break at about the same time, groups of friends easing the stress of another day trading bonds to converse about a range of topics, foremost among them the total solar eclipse that had just begun. Our building, located in the suburbs just outside the St. Louis city limits was in the “path of totality”—the stretch of Earth cast into shadows by the moon, the tract of land from which the total eclipse could be viewed.
The early lunch break coincided with “first contact,” the moment that the moon initially blocked out part of the Sun. Word around the office was that this partial phase would last for an hour before totality would occur, the moon blocking out the Sun completely for about seven minutes before another partial phase lasting an hour.
Though I was cognizant of what was going on around me I was merely a spectator, unable or unwilling—which I wasn’t sure—to participate. It was as if my mind was clothed in a straightjacket, my thoughts wrapped and bound to two subjects, never to stray. All I could focus on was the job at hand and eventually returning home to my son. And then, in an instant everything changed.
The mental constraints were suddenly no more; the invisible bars that jailed my thoughts and will disappeared. Without any warning or precursor I was free. The walls ripped away, my mental prison gone, I felt incredibly exposed. Memories of conscious thought, now free and uninhibited flooded back, filling me with years of recollection that threatened to choke me. I had suddenly woken to a heightened sense of consciousness that was both clearly familiar and a distant memory.
What drives you?
Standing around the water cooler, some of the younger guys were ignoring the eclipse, speaking instead of their differing wants and desires; women, fast cars, and money among the many predictable topics each had chosen to focus on. Attracted to their group as if I were a small planetoid caught in the gravitational pull of the Sun, I approached my co-workers with a strange sense of caution. Even though I had worked with them for years I realized I really didn’t know any of them.
Everyone involved in the conversation seemed incredibly surprised by my presence, and I heard more than a few wise cracks directed at me, one in particular that caught my attention.
“What the hell is going on? First a solar eclipse, now Dan ‘The Cyborg’ Walker wants to hang out with the guys.”
After the laughter subsided the group zeroed in on me.
What drives you?
Charlie Nevins was the first to ask me the question. A young trader too wrapped up in his young bachelor adventures to really get ahead in the company, he was tall and athletic, with tanned skin and perfectly messed gelled hair. He’d been rambling about all the women he had slept with, and seemed annoyed by my presence.
“So what drives you, Dan?”
The question had completely disarmed me. What did I want out of life? I had woken from a barely-conscious state only moments ago, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how I got to be where I was, couldn’t remember making any of the decisions that had gotten me to this point. I didn’t even know why I was working for this company, standing in this building. A wave of confusion washed over me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had even thought about what I wanted. The question had peeled away my newfound outer awareness, unearthing an inner vacuum.
Lost, a stranger in my own mind, I remembered the last ten years only as a fugue, bearing witness to everything that had happened but having had no conscious power to affect anything. It was as if I’d been living someone else’s life, had seen the world through a stranger’s eyes.
And there was the total eclipse. The natural phenomenon was no coincidence. It couldn’t be. I had woken from the dream—or was it a nightmare?—at the start of the event, and my instinct told me that the eclipse was behind my troubles somehow, and that soon I would have the answer to the question.
What drives you?
All that came to mind was a phrase—I think it was Latin, though I had no clue what it meant. Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate. The words echoed in my head, and a terrible dream that I never remembered having while sleeping whispered through my consciousness. In the vision my wife Sally looked up at me with terrified eyes, desperate for help. The dream had come many times during the past ten years, but I never remembered it bothering me—until now.
What drives you?
I met Sally during my sophomore year at Missouri State, remembered wanting to marry her, live a financially secure life and have plenty of…children.
“I want to be a good father to my son,” I had blurted out to my co-workers, lying as much as I was telling the truth.
“If fatherhood is what drives you then why didn’t you have more kids?” Charlie Nevins sneered.
“His wife left him you idiot,” one of my co-workers said in my defense.
It was true. Sally had left me almost ten years ago, about the time I stopped remembering what the hell I wanted. I missed her so much, ten year’s worth coming at me like a freight train. Since college she had been my everything, the partner I planned to live the rest of my life with, the person I had chosen to grow old and die with. Now I couldn’t even remember thinking about her, much less missing her for the past ten years, and I couldn’t figure out why the only lucid thoughts of her were buried beneath a decade.
What drives you?
I thought about what Charlie said. Why didn’t Sally and I have more kids? We had often discussed our plans to have more children, especially after the birth of Darryl. He had brought so much joy to our lives that we planned to have more kids after I made partner at my old job. Strangely, we had taken a different course, me quitting my promising job in St. Louis, taking less money to work for Stevens and Lynch, a much smaller firm in the suburbs; and then we discarded our plans to have a larger family, all of which seemed rather ordinary, except for the fact that I couldn’t ever remember wanting any of those things.
Stranger still was the fact that Sally had loved St. Louis and had been completely supportive of my job there. I don’t know why, but I remembered persuading her to move to the rural and very secluded town of Kelso. Less than a year after the move, Sally left Darryl and me without so much as a word or even a note.
Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate.
I turned to Darryl. “Do you remember why we moved from the city?”
“You wanted to spend more time with me,” he answered matter-of-factly.
His answer made sense. I did want to spend time with him, but not at the expense of Sally and our dreams and plans for the future. Many of the good times Sally and I had shared while we were still single and then newlyweds streamed back, and the sadness that had been on hiatus for the better part of ten years tore at my insides.
I looked up at the sky and watched the small eruptions behind the silhouette of the moon.
“Those are solar flares,” Darryl informed me.
“Do you remember if your mother was happy before…before she went away?” I asked, ignoring his description of the sight above.
“I can’t remember, Dad.”
Darryl didn’t seem upset but my questions, was probably trying to hide the pain. He seemed perfectly normal, but I knew he had problems. He was a bright kid, a great student, but he didn’t go out much or have any friends. He spent most of his free time glued to two objects I bought him a few years before Sally left, a remote control car and an old book of spells.
Darryl took the RC car and the old leather-bound book everywhere he went, carrying them in his backpack at all times, even to the dinner table, which had been a major source of irritation for Sally. I remembered arguing with her about the hobbies, she wanting Darryl to get out of the house more, me wanting to support his interests no matter how reclusive and off-center they may have seemed. None of the arguments, however, were serious enough to warrant her leaving.
I looked at the unzipped backpack that Darryl wore and thought that something was out of place but couldn’t pinpoint what, was too busy thinking about his mother.
“Do you remember your mother and me fighting?”
“Not really.”
Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate.
“Look Dad. You can see Mars and Jupiter,” Darryl exclaimed.
I looked up at the planets and thought it incredibly odd that I was looking at them for the first time. They had always been there, but now because of the eclipse they were right there in plain sight.
I looked away from the majestic scene overhead and focused on the expansive and well groomed backyard. We had spent a small fortune on the landscaping and the in-ground pool with the cascading waterfall, but the centerpiece of the yard was the vegetable garden that had been Sally’s pride and joy. Somehow the deep shadows that covered the whole town seemed concentrated on the tomatoes and peppers that had not seen Sally’s loving hands in a decade.
I recalled tending to the ground for the last ten years, though I didn’t know why. I had never cared for gardening. That was Sally’s passion and area of expertise. Maybe I had just been trying to hold on to her, trying to keep the memories alive.
What drives you?
Again Sally looked up at me, her wide eyes filled with terror, silently pleading for help. Her mouth opened wide but there was no scream, no sound at all.
I wondered if the vision was my subconscious trying to tell me something. Maybe Sally had been the victim of foul play? No, I remembered the police investigation that had followed her disappearance. It had lasted over a month before the police had finally given up, chalking up her disappearance to one of personal discontent.
“What drives you?”
Not satisfied by the answer I had given them, my co-workers pressed me to explain but I couldn’t. I was covered in questions and confusion, the tempest in my mind raging violently, prohibiting any thoughtful recollection.
“Why do you call you me ‘Cyborg’?” I asked.
“Because you haven’t said a word to anyone in this office that didn’t concern work or your son in ten years, Dan,” Charlie sneered.
How could that be? In college and at my last job I had plenty of friends and had always been considered an outgoing guy. Then a terrifying thought occurred to me, what if the last ten years was really me, what if I was Dan ‘The Cyborg’ Walker and everything before that had only been a dream?
What drives you?
I raced back to my desk and studied the pictures pinned up to my cubicle. All were of Darryl and me, except for one. It was a photograph of a Sun-shaped stone carving, wavy rays that looked like hair emanating from the center. I rubbed the pendant under my shirt and stared at the pictures, unable to ease the feeling of being new to this world.
Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate.
Suddenly needing to confirm the apparent driving force in my life, I called Darryl’s school, still absent-mindedly rubbing the pendant. The secretary informed me that he wasn’t in, had called in sick, and I immediately thought something must be wrong. Darryl was an exceptional student who never cut class, so I rushed home.
During the drive I couldn’t shake the memories of who I had been and what I had wanted before Sally had left, and why that had all changed.
Sally looked up at me, her blue eyes coursing with shock and fear, her blonde hair splayed on the pillow behind her head. Her face turned bright red, and the vein on her temple protruded grotesquely. Her mouth opened, but all that spilled out was her silent plea for help.
I tried to shake the image, thought I was being paranoid. Maybe she had left because of my diseased mental state. I didn’t know. The only thing I did know was that I couldn’t go on without her. I decided I would find her and then do whatever necessary to win her back.
What drives you?
When I got home I found Darryl in his room, sitting on his bed, working on the remote of his car, the car itself on the floor by his feet.
Darryl had removed the back panel of the remote, intently examining the circuitry inside like a scientist with his latest experiment, only calmly interrupted by my presence.
“What are you doing home?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t let us watch the eclipse at school, something to do with liability insurance. I couldn’t miss it, Dad. This won’t happen again for seven years,” he reasoned.
“What’s the matter with the remote?” I inquired.
“It must be interference from the eclipse,” he said, sounding sure of the cause. “Do you want to watch it with me?”
“Sure,” I replied. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown but maybe reconnecting with the boy was what I needed to stop from going over the edge.
“Take these,” he said, giving me the large pair of welder’s goggles. “These will protect your eyes,” he explained. “They’re my gift to you.”
Shadows flashed across the backyard, visible through the bedroom window.
“Come on, Dad. The shadows mean it’s going to start.”
We put on our glasses and hurried out to the deck that overlooked the backyard. Enormous shadows streaked over the grass and the trees, like those cast by otherworldly winged beasts. And then, as if someone or something was calling me, my eyes were drawn to the heavens. The moon, almost directly in front of the Sun, was a tremendous black sphere circled by a bright ring. Adjacent to the ring the Sun’s rays flared out, making it seem as though the Sun was still whole next to the moon.
“They call that the ‘diamond ring effect.’” Darryl excitedly told me.
His knowledge impressed me, but the overwhelming sight above terrified me. Sure, the phenomenon was as natural as the sunrise, but there was something unmistakably foreboding and ominous about the whole thing, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was connected to my problem and that soon I would know….
What drives you?
I turned away from the sky, looked at Darryl and noticed that he was holding the book of spells open, the remote control resting on the oversized pages, his gaze fixed on the scene above.
Just as I had felt about my co-workers earlier, I felt like a stranger to my son. The last ten years had come and gone, and I remembered everything, at least details and events. But I didn’t really know him. I struggled to make sense of it all, and wondered if I had emotionally neglected the boy.
“Are you happy, Darryl?”
“Sure Dad,” he replied, still looking up at the eclipse.
“Have I been a good father?”
He turned and flashed a compassionate smile. “You’re a great Dad.”
Darryl seemed well adjusted, but I feared that growing up without his mother had left lasting scars on the boy. And me being out to lunch for a decade couldn’t have helped him any. Emotionally, I had lost time with him that I would never get back. But all wasn’t lost. I was here with him now and I could make things right. Just as I had to believe that I could find Sally and win her back I had to believe that I could reconnect with my son.
“Do you still want to be a magician, Darryl?”
“It’s wizard, Dad. And yes, it’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“After college you could open up a magic shop or you could perform. I know the guy your mother hired for your sixth birthday made real good money,” I said, wanting to be as supportive and helpful as I could.
“I don’t think so.”
“You love that RC car. You could open up a hobby shop,” I offered.
“No thanks, Dad. The car is special but only because you gave it to me.”
I looked at him, and then at the remote on the pages of the opened book, and then it hit me, what had been out of place before. Darryl’s remote control car was no where in sight. The last time I had seen it was in his room.
“Where’s your car?” I asked as I rubbed the pendant beneath my shirt.
“I don’t need it, Dad,” he told me flatly. “I’ve never really needed it.”
“Then why do you have the remote?”
“I used the book to cast a spell on it.”
“To drive the car?” I asked, my confusion complete.
Darryl turned to me, his goggles reflecting my own bespectacled face, and he spoke not with the innocent voice of a child but with that of a much older man who knew precisely what he wanted.
“I use the remote to drive you Dad.”
Still holding the book of spells he chanted the phrase that had infested my mind, his enunciation of the words coming from a distant place that was not of this world or time. “Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate.”
I grabbed the book from his hands, the remote falling to the ground. I looked at the opened pages that were filled with words I didn’t understand, but the pictures that resembled hieroglyphics were clear, even through the green tint of the welder’s glasses. On one of the yellowed pages was a picture of two men, one genuflecting before the other, the standing man placing a necklace around his subject’s neck. And on the opposite page was a drawing of a mask that was identical to the picture that hung in my office.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“Ancient priests believed they could harness the power of the Sun to control things around them,” Darryl said with a devious look in his eye. “Even people.”
I reached under my collar, ripped the necklace from my throat and looked at the pendant, a smaller version of the familiar sun-shaped stone carving.
“The remote control car was your gift to me, Dad,” Darryl started. “The necklace was my gift to you. Both are talismans, objects used to focus the power of the spell I use to control you.”
“You can’t…why would you want to?”
“It’s as natural as the eclipse,” Darryl began in a parental tone. “So many have tried but only a few have come close.” His eyes burned with confidence and fierce determination as he went on with his bizarre explanation. “One day I’m going to rule the world, Dad. For now I have you.”
I started to feel dizzy. The whole thing was impossible, yet there were so many things that were slowly falling into place. With every ounce of my sanity I fought what he was telling me.
“If you can really cast spells,” I sputtered, “then why couldn’t you stop your mother from leaving? Why couldn’t you bring her back?”
“She’s not gone, Dad,” he said with a smile. “She never left.”
Sally looked up at me one last time, her beautiful blond hair spread out on the pillow, her blue eyes screaming out to me to make it stop, to make the pain go away but I was powerless to help her. Her mouth opened wide, spilling out deafening silence. As if I were right there over her, I watched the vein in her temple bulge from her skin, the blood trapped in her face, turning her skin bright red. And then I could finally see what had caused her so much pain and terror. Around her throat were hands, a man’s hands. They squeezed tighter and tighter until they crushed her windpipe. And then she was still.
I raised my hands up and looked at them through the greenish tint of the goggles, suddenly unable to breathe.
“What have I done?” I whispered aloud.
“It’s not your fault Dad. Mom wanted to take away the book, so I made you do it.”
Bolts of anger coursed through my fingertips. This time I felt the conscious urge to set my hands to work. I had one hour to make things right, to do the unthinkable. I had one hour to kill my son.
The Sun peeked out from behind the moon, the diamond ring of light now on the opposite side. I moved toward Darryl, and he picked up the remote, stopping me dead in my tracks.
“I know what you’re thinking, Dad. But it’s over. With you this close and wearing my new gift the remote will work fine now,” he said knowingly. In a moment of panic I remembered what he said about the talismans. But before I could remove the goggles he chanted the foreign phrase, “Sole iuvante tua potior voluntate,” followed by the English translation, “By the power of the Sun your will is mine.”
And just as the Sun had reappeared, peeking out from behind the moon, shining its rays on the backyard, sweeping aside the shadows that covered the garden and Sally’s grave, I realized that I wouldn’t grieve her death or even miss her again, at least not until the next solar eclipse almost seven years from now.
About the Author
Keith Sutherland lives in Farmingville, New York. A father of two and a student at SUNY Empire, he spends his midnight hours exploring the dark corners of his mind, writing of monsters real and imagined. You can visit Keith here.
©2010 Keith Sutherland
