The following story by Elena Koestel ’23 was written for a unit in her English class, focusing on a fantastical narrative of a young woman named Lucia.
We Fall In The Darkness
“I was one of those stupid kids, you know.”
“Well you’re here alive today, so I don’t think you were,” Lucia replied, as she drew the curtains in the hospital room closed, blocking out the too-bright lights from the street outside. The only remaining light was the yellow hue from the lamp in the far corner.
The older man lying under the clean white sheets of the hospital bed chuckled, but when Lucia turned around his face was pulled into a slight frown.
“Señor Santos?” she asked, pulling away from the window.
“I’d barely call this alive,” he joked before sobering up again. “No, I mean I was one of the stupid kids that dared them to go into El Bosque.”
El Bosque, the forest that surrounded the entirety of Lucia’s home, Arabol, was nothing but an easy path to death. Lucia had been aware of this fact from the moment she was born, courtesy of the many strides the government took to warn everyone, but especially children, of the dangers of simply getting close to El Bosque. People had been disappearing since forever; children too curious to stay put and adults too confident to believe they couldn’t make it through. At one point, the government realized a few simple caution signs weren’t going to work— more and more parents were coming to them crying about lost sons and daughters— and they began building the fence.
A project that started more than 60 years ago, the fence was a towering and completely electrified steel web completed by Arabol’s best engineers and electricians. The leader of the electric team was none other than Roberto Santos, now an old man confined to a hospital, though his normally cheery demeanor would easily fool anyone.
“Señor Santos, you were what, nineteen at most?” Lucia said. “It was not your fault, people make their own decisions—”
“Ah, spare me the nice words mija,” Roberto cut in, “Tell me how bad my condition is and then let me sleep.”
Lucia huffed at the impatient tone but inwardly smiled, glad to see her patient back to normal.
“I already told you yesterday, they’re doing the last checks on the cure and then it’ll be safe for use. You’re going to be back up and healthy in a few weeks,” she answered, checking Roberto’s vitals and writing them down on her clipboard.
“Yes, yes, well let me remind you that the last time you said that, your so-called ‘cure’ failed the safe-use test. I might have more luck surviving in El Bosque than in this hospital!” he mock-complained.
Every night, Lucia and Roberto would get to this point in their conversations, and every night Lucia would ignore his theatrics and tell him to have a little bit more faith.
“Get some sleep Señor,” Lucia said before turning off the light.
“You too, Lucia. Thank you,” Roberto managed to say before the door closed.
Lucia pushed the door to her apartment open with her hip, her hands busy with carrying the dinner she’d bought from the corner store on her way home. It was already late but she would need the energy to finish all of the schoolwork she had not been able to finish before her shift. She flipped through the worn-out textbook to get to the section she wanted, recognizing her cousin’s tiny annotations in the margins of each page.
Lucia had lived with her older cousin, Carmen, ever since her mother passed away, and under Carmen’s influence, she’d gotten into med school. Carmen had graduated from the same school years ago and was now a head doctor at the hospital Lucia worked part-time in, originally to fill her required work hours, but now because she’d grown attached to her patients, however stubborn some may be.
Finally finding the right section, Lucia picked up the takeout box of rice and beans, her eyes never leaving the page as she started eating. Can’t focus on an empty stomach, she reminded herself, using her mother’s words.
Lucia finished her food long before she was close to finishing her homework, and sleep claimed her soon after.
Lucia woke up to the shrill bell that was her ringtone, so startled she spilled the glass of water that was still on the table since last night. Shit. It was still dark outside so it couldn’t possibly be morning, and the non-stop ringing of Lucia’s phone was not making it easier for her to concentrate. Realizing she should probably answer, Lucia reached around her homework to check who was calling her at the ungodly hour of 3:46 in the morning, she soon found out. Carmen.
“Carmen let me just remind you that it is 3:46 in the morning, what the hell is wrong with you.”
“Luci, I was nervous you weren’t going to answer, thank goodness.” Carmen breathed a quick sigh of relief, completely ignoring Lucia’s complaint, before launching back into action.
“What’s wrong?” Lucia’s tone changed instantly, worry taking over.
“No, what?” Carmen answered. “Nothing’s wrong— we did it. It passed the test!”
Lucia’s brain was still trying to understand what was happening after being so abruptly woken up. “What passed the test?”
“Lucia, what is wrong with you right now? The cure!”
The speed at which Lucia stood up caused an instant splintering headache, forcing her to sit back down. She stood up again, much slower, and grabbed her jacket before rushing out of the apartment.
“I’ll be there in ten.”
With the help of some yelling to the bus driver to hurry up, Lucia was able to get to the hospital in under eight minutes. She ran in, texting her cousin she was here, and immediately went to see her patient, Roberto Santos, not caring about the time.
“Señor Santos! I told you, I told you to have faith and—” Lucia blinked at the light that had been turned on before her arrival.
And the empty bed in front of her.
She walked forward, hoping to see Roberto hidden behind the wall, standing somewhere. Maybe his bathroom? No, the door was open and she couldn’t hear a thing. She kept going until she reached the bedside table, hoping to find a note saying he’d simply gone up to get water, anything.
All Lucia found was a small drawing of a criss-cross pattern with what looked like triangles on top. She stared at the paper, trying to form a connection, cursing her brain for being so slow in the mornings—
El Bosque. This criss-cross pattern was the fence, the triangles the trees. He had talked about this before, he mentioned it every day. Why didn’t Lucia pay more attention when she saw his demeanor fall every time she visited him, when he looked out his window to the forest in clear view, when he talked about giving up…
She crumpled the paper in her hand, tearing the room’s curtains apart to reveal the silhouettes of the trees, the pure blackness ever so slightly disturbed by the moonlight reflecting on the steel of the fence. No matter what the government did El Bosque claimed lives.
Tears blurred Lucia’s vision, and the small drawing fell out of her shaking hands. Before she could pick it up, a huge burst of light and sparks exploded from the edge of the forest.
“Luci!” Carmen burst into the room, a few nurses behind her. “Someone disabled the electric fence, they’re asking for help on the edge; some guards got shocked.”
Carmen slowed, taking in the empty room and Lucia’s tear-streaked cheeks. Everyone in the room seemed to remember that Roberto Santos was the leading electrician in building the fence at the same time.
“Come on,” Carmen took her cousin by the arm, out of the abandoned room. “We have to help.”
Lucia could barely concentrate on the guard whose burnt arm she was meant to be bandaging. Not when there was a person-sized hole in the no-longer-electric fence right in front of her. It was tantalizing, feeling the cooler air from the forest brush her skin and seeing the darkness between the trees waiting to be explored. She could just walk in—
“How do you resist?” she asked instead.
The woman she was helping met her eyes, wariness and confusion written all over them.
“I mean about El Bosque,” Lucia amended. “It feels like…”
“Like it’s calling you? Yeah, you get used to it with time.” The guard flexed her arm, testing how far she could push it. “We never let newbies patrol alone,” she explained. “One of us has to stay by their side for the first two weeks.” She winced after touching the bandages but stood up to join the others anyways, not asking for any more attention.
Lucia mumbled a ‘thank you’ she wasn’t sure reached the woman, and redirected her gaze to the tall trees, letting the forest breeze mess with the loose strands of her hair.
Everyone always told Lucia how strong she was, how she didn’t let a single thing throw her off balance. But she always saw the pity a second before she turned away, the inner thoughts that labeled her as ‘motherless girl hiding her pain well’ instead of ‘strong’. If she went in, if she was able to find Roberto and bring him back, no one would be able to think she was a fragile girl. Lucia could change it all.
No one was watching her as she made her way to the useless fence. In a moment of weakness, she turned around, seeing the nurses she worked with each day comfort some of the younger guards. She saw Carmen, a calming force among the chaos around her, handing out materials and words of advice. Lucia steeled herself, borrowing her cousin’s strength.
No one was watching as she disappeared into the darkness.
The immediate feeling of being lost overtook Lucia’s body, and something inside of her told Lucia to turn back around. She turned only her head, just to make sure she could still see the fence, and sure enough, the glittering metal was still visible. It would have been so easy to run back, but Lucia’s body was moving forward on what felt like someone else’s accord.
Trees blended with the night sky, black on top of black until it was impossible to tell one apart from the other. The only thing that was clear was the sound of the wind, sharp yet gently pushing Lucia forward through the forest.
Luci.
Lucia whipped her head around, looking for the source of the faint voice. It was nothing but the presence of the wind, she realized, calming herself down. But the glow from the fence was gone now too, and she couldn’t figure out where she had come from— or where she was going.
She forced herself to keep walking forward, weaving her way through the trees with her head tilted up, trying to follow the slivers of the moon she could see through the treetops. But in unknown territory, it’s always best to keep your eyes towards the front. Lucia’s feet caught on something in front of her, the wind leaving her body as she hit the ground.
She quickly flipped herself around, making sure her foot wasn’t in any substantial pain, then inspected what seemed like the fallen tree trunk she had tripped on. Reaching out to brush the leaves out of the way, she wondered how a trunk this short had fallen amid what seemed to be an undisturbed forest. One swipe of her hand gave her an answer.
“Fuck.” Lucia could barely hold in a louder scream after uncovering a human face under the dead leaves. “What in the… fuck.” Her head spun, and she let her body breathe again, taking in a shaky breath that barely did anything to alleviate the whirling sensation. Her medical background pushed her to check for a cause of death, and she carefully crawled back towards the body. She surveyed the body, her eyes focusing on an almost indistinct movement— a rise and fall in the chest.
Lucia scrambled backward, pushing herself up to her feet and started running. She ran and ran until she was sure there was no way she could find her way back to the body— the living breathing body— lying there. What had she done? She was a nurse and she left a dying body on the ground. Lucia choked back a sob and kept running, begging for the moon to show her the way out.
Luci? The wind. It was just the wind.
Luci.
Lucia froze. The wind shouldn’t sound like that.
“Mama?”
Come here, Luci.
“Mama where are you?”
Follow me mi vida. Follow my voice.
“Yes. Yes, okay, I hear you.” Lucia let her ears lead her around the trees, not caring about the branches she walked into and leaves that scraped her face. A tranquil smile took the place of the fear she had felt moments before, the calm her mother always brought with her wherever she went reaching Lucia.
Don’t leave me again, Luci.
“I promise. I love you mami,” she said, looking up to see if her mother was possibly in the trees above her. No matter what, she would stay here for her. That’s why she’d come here, Lucia realized, to find her mother, and she would stay forever until she did.
“I knew you guys would be here,” a foreign voice murmured. It wasn’t her mother’s voice, so Lucia couldn’t care less.
“I’m sorry I waited so long,” the voice continued, getting considerably closer. It wasn’t the voice she wanted to hear, but the familiarity in it pulled Lucia out of her own mind for a second, long enough to look down, away from the night sky.
Roberto’s face stared back at her. Stared with glassy eyes that looked right through her, eyes open but unseeing. Lucia saw her face in the pupils of his eyes, the scratches on her cheek that she started to feel the sting from, the messy hair that was no longer tied back, and then nothing, her vision blurred.
“No, no no,” Lucia said, frantically wiping at her eyes in fear that she was losing herself and her sight of the world in the same way Roberto had. Her hands came away with tears instead. For him, for her stupid mind, for believing that maybe, just maybe, she could finally get what she wanted.
“Señor Santos…” she whispered, waiting—hoping—for a reaction.
Ignore him. He is not real. The wind swept up the leaves at her feet.
She ignored the voice instead. “Roberto!” He emitted no reaction, a gentle smile and vacant gaze plastered on his unblinking face.
Listen to me.
“Get out of my head,” Lucia mumbled. The wind grew stronger, pushing against her.
Lucia, listen to your mother.
“Get out of my head!” Lucia screamed. “You died, you’re not real so get OUT OF MY HEAD!”
The dried leaves and broken branches the wind had picked up spun with dizzying speed in the air, throwing themselves at Lucia, cutting through clothes and skin. Wincing in pain, Lucia gave one last desperate attempt to wake Roberto up, yelling his name through the deafening sounds of wind through trees. He walked away, unbothered, his mouth moving with words Lucia couldn’t hear. Feeling tears threatening to fall, Lucia brought her hands to her face, at once wiping her tears and protecting her eyes from the rough branches being thrown her way as she started running.
You can’t outrun me, Lucia. I’m a part of you.
Lucia’s feet hit the ground with such force it was a miracle her bones were still supporting her body. She ran and she ran and she ran, chased by a voice she’d been trying to ignore for years.
LUCIA.
But it was a voice she knew wasn’t real anymore. She didn’t stop running, not as the trees grew thicker and the wind grew stronger. She wouldn’t let herself stop— but a towering fence did. Lucia slammed into the hard material, her body screaming in pain before she realized what this meant for her.
“Let me out! Please, someone let me through!” The wind roared all around her, swallowing the frantic pounding that gave her hands splinters and the cries for help.
The raking sobs that found their way out of Lucia’s throat made her voice grow hoarse, her body grow weaker, her breaths grow shallower. Her body couldn’t take it anymore. Lucia could feel her vision darkening, desperately trying to take in the air she needed to stay awake but her entire body was so heavy.
The sound of voices grasped the last strands of consciousness Lucia had left, though it was hard to tell if they were real or her brain’s final attempt at soothing her desperate body as they invaded her mind in the last moments before darkness claimed her.
“Call me over when she wakes up, alright?”
Lucia blinked up at the faces above her, both of them blurry enough that the idea of her dreaming didn’t seem so far fetched. She tried to move but an excruciating pain, like a bolt of lightning hitting every nerve, froze her body even as it tensed.
Lucia’s body slamming into a wooden fence. Wooden? Arabol’s fence was made of steel. Splinters cutting into her palms. It was definitely a wooden fence. Where was she?
Lucia tried to move again, this time forcing her upper body to sit up. The wind throwing itself at her. Looking down, her arms were adorned with a myriad of deep red cuts, and she assumed her aching legs looked the same.
“Take it easy lady, you just made it through.” A curious yet concerned pair of eyes met Lucia’s, and after a brief staring contest, the young woman handed Lucia a wooden cup filled with water. The second the cool liquid rushed down her throat, Lucia found her voice again, expressing her gratitude through a low hum. After draining her cup, she asked the first question in her mind.
“We’re not in Arabol,” she said, more a statement than a question.
The unfamiliar woman shook her head in response, a small smile crossing her face.
“Welcome to the Other Side.”