"Light For a Lost Boy" — A Short Story

On a dark night in the heart of a forest, a lost boy finds the light and the will to shine in the darkness. 

This was mostly inspired by Peter Crowley's "Two Souls", although Andrew Peterson, C. S. Lewis, N. D. Wilson, and a certain short story prompt also had something to do with it. 

Deep within a forest, there is a clearing where the trees form a rampart around a single small house as darkness beckons from the forest eaves. Its faded plastic siding tells the tale of a long-forgotten ocean blue, while a rusting lawnmower lies in the overgrown grass nearby the decaying wood of an ancient rain porch.

Moonlight spills through a cracked, grimy window, and just outside its pool of light lies a twelve-year-old boy on an upper bunk. His blue eyes reflect the starry sky outside, but inside him is nothing but a swirling darkness. He lay there in silence, listening to the orchestra of crickets outside, the wind playing with the curtains, and his heart beating in the quiet. For now, there is peace. 

But the boy knows it won't last.

Leaning over the bed, he glances down at his sister’s pale face in the bunk below him, ghostly white and streaked with dried tears. She is finally asleep. A glance at the alarm clock on the table below tells him that it’s a quarter past midnight.

The boy decides it’s time.

He slips out from under the covers and carefully climbs down his bunk, lightly placing his feet on the white linoleum floor. The floor reflects the moonlight, illuminating the darkest corners of the room in a gray twilight.

The boy tiptoes over a wooden threshold and into the kitchen just outside the bedroom. Faded gray curtains cover the only window above the sink, but some of the light in the bedroom finds its way over the threshold and into the kitchen. In this light, the boy sees an empty white sack lying on the island counter, and he takes it. He opens the refrigerator to the right of the counter and peers inside.

A single loaf of bread, a bag of apples, and a myriad of beer bottles are piled haphazardly on the shelves. The boy ignores the beer, sticks the loaf and a couple apples into the sack, and closes the refrigerator door.

A shadow darkens the bedroom doorway.

“Annie, you’re supposed to be in bed.”

The boy’s sister leans against the lintel and tilts her head to the side, her face expressionless in the dim light. “What are you doing?”

The sack hangs limp in the boy’s hand. “I’m… I’m leaving.”

“But you’ll be back?”

As his vision becomes accustomed to the darkness, the boy can finally make out his sister’s young face. She hasn’t seen anymore than four summers, but in her eyes there is pain and sorrow beyond her years, and her face shines wet in the dim light. 

He looks away.

“Yeah, I’ll be back,” he says. He forces a smile, but doesn't look her in the face. “Don’t worry.”

The boy steps to the door to the outside. His hand turns the cold metal knob when he hears her voice utter a single trembling question. “Where’s dad?”

He stops, her question hanging in the air like a dark cloud in the night sky.

“All’s quiet, Sis. He’s not here.” But he’ll be back.

The boy swings open the door and steps into the night.

“Will?”

“Yeah, sis?” The boy looks back at his sister, but immediately regrets it. Her eyes are sad, even as she manages a smile.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“Goodnight.”

The boy closes the door behind him and crosses the rain porch, stepping down the creaking steps onto the overgrown lawn. His bare feet brush against knee-length gray grass and he catches a glint of white in the corner of his eye. He steps closer to find the fragmented remains of a beer bottle, the clear glass glimmering dully in the moonlight. Unbidden, fresh wounds of memories rise in his mind.

Shouting. 

The ear-splitting sound of shattering beer bottles. 

The blurry shape of a man hulking over him, raising a fist to strike. 

The boy wrenches his eyes away from the shattered corpse of glass, and his footsteps quicken. None of that would ever happen again. 

He was running away, and he wasn’t coming back. 

The grass ends at the edge of the forest, and his feet find the cool, coarse dirt of a road that winds its way into the depths of the forest.

Suddenly, the boy notices how eerily quiet it is. When he’d stepped into the night just moments before, the crickets and whippoorwills had been singing. But now all is silent.

Then in the distance, the sound of a train horn splits the stillness.

The sound of freedom.

The boy surges ahead, his feet padding against the earth even as his eyes wander to the midnight sky. Through the ceiling of leaves high above, he can see the moon beaming and the stars shining distant and clear. But a shadow blots out their light, and a stiff, brisk breeze caresses his face, whispering dark things through the trees.

Suddenly, the wind stops, and all is silent and in total darkness.

Then the boy hears something that makes his blood turn cold. Dead leaves crunching and twigs snapping in the darkness to his right, sounding closer with every thudding heartbeat.

“Hello?” he calls out, willing his voice not to tremble. “Is anyone there?”

The darkness gives no answer, and the thing in the darkness comes closer. 

The boy runs into the forest. But it pursues.

Scraggly branches claw at his clothes as rough vines and dead trees seek to trip him in the dark. And still the shadows deepen and the thing draws nearer. The boy can hear its breathing, the sound of its feet thudding on the forest floor. He can feel its presence, ever-closer, reaching for him through the dark.

Suddenly, his ankle snags on something, and he falls to the rough, leaf-littered ground. It smells of wet and decay—the smell of things that die in the shadows, away from the light. The boy can no longer hear his pursuer, only his heartbeat pounding in his ears like a hammer against an anvil. Slowly, he raises himself up from the ground and looks up.

All is darkness, except for her.

Through the shadows of ferns, he sees a girl astride a white stag standing in the midst of a pool of pale golden light. The light emanates from her, and her dress looks as though it was made of dreams and starlight. She looks only a little older than him, but her blue eyes twinkle with wisdom and gaze into the depths of his soul.

“Friend, I know why you run,” she says, her voice echoing across the darkness, strong and clear. “You are afraid of the dark.” 

She dismounts and steps toward the boy, gliding through the parting ferns like a ghost. “But the night only grows darker as you run from where you belong.” The girl reaches her hand toward the boy, and he takes it. Her grip is firm as she pulls him up and her eyes look into his, gentle and strong. “She needs you. You are the only light she has, and she is where you belong.”

Tears rise up in the boy’s eyes, shining in the girl’s light. “I’m sorry, I just... didn’t know what to do.” 

Her gentle smile warms the boy's soul like the radiant beams of the sun on a summer day. “Do the right thing,” she says, “And take courage, dear heart, for you are never alone.”

The girl averts her gaze, and her blue eyes stare into a night that now seems less dark to the boy. She points a single finger into the darkness, and the boy’s eyes follow.

“Home is ahead,” she tells him. “You need only follow the light.”

Through tears, the boy squints into the inky blackness. “But I don’t see anything.” 

The girl smiles and squeezes his hand. “Look closer.”

He does, and in the midst of the darkness, he sees a single speck of white, impossibly far away.

“Do you see it now?” she asks, laughing as he nods. “Come, I will walk with you.”

The girl steps into the darkness, the white stag at her side. The ferns part to let her pass, and the boy follows in her wake. But as the light in the distance grows brighter, he quickens his pace and leaves her circle of light. His foot catches on a dead branch in the dark, and he falls, but the girl is there to help him up. 

“Walk in the light,” she says, her radiant smile shining down on him.

Finally, they step out of the forest and into the moonlit clearing with the little blue house quietly waiting. The boy laughs and runs toward it, but stops. He turns and looks at the girl and the white stag standing at the edge of the forest.

“I am always here,” the girl says. “Look for me, and you will find me.”

The boy nods, and he smiles. He turns and walks through the grass and up the ancient steps to the rain porch. His hand is on the doorknob when he looks back.

The girl and the white stag are gone. 

Smiling to himself, he opens the door and steps inside.

Deep within a forest, there is a little blue house standing in a small clearing. Shadows beckon from the forest eaves, and sometimes, clouds cover the moon and stars and the forest is shrouded in darkness. But there is always light even in the darkest night, as long as just one person is brave enough to shine.

Thanks for reading!