Darkening Skies

c.) 2024/Seaver

PROLOGUE:

It was the time when the days came and went much more quickly; that time when winter began to loosen its fervent grip on all matter of life, and the rodents stir from their long slumber. It was finally spring — a time for celebration, but not for Inga nor for her grandson, Theo.

Inga stood alone in absolute silence, staring from a kitchen window at the stubborn patches of snow that refused to yield and oblige the calendar.

Theo was in the barn, tinkering in isolation and consumed by the never-ending racing thoughts that caused him so much pain.

It was just the two of them – Inga and Theo — living on the lonely and now barren farm. The cattle had long since been sold and butchered. There were few signs of life on the 12 acres remaining from a parcel that Inga had inherited near the end of the last great war.

Inga was a very plain woman who made no effort to disguise the agony and desperation of loneliness and poverty that had been the sum of her life. Her eyes pale; her hair gathered at the top of her head. She was thin, drawn and seemed quite fragile. But looks can be deceiving, and so it was with Inga, a bitter warrior fueled by resentment and broken dreams that had died long, long ago.

The crooked house was dusty and void of any modern appliance or comfort. The wallpaper in the kitchen had yellowed and was peeling in several places. Throughout the ramshackle and neglected house, there was a distinct odor of despair as if none of the windows had ever been opened.

Few people had visited or dared to even tread upon the soil between the road and the house with a chimney that was slowly but surely collapsing.

Folks in town knew that Inga was best left alone. Theo, however, would sometimes wander off the farm in search of scrap metal or cheap bales of wire. He had learned the hard way to keep to himself, a victim of endless bullying that began when he was just five years old and continued to this very day.

Theo was just 29 years old, but had already been tried and discarded by the world in which he was forced to live. He had attended public school reluctantly. His grandmother never forced him to study or participate, but she also never defended him from the childhood goons who tormented him.

Theo completed school with the least amount of effort possible. He then joined the army.

Theo always dreamed of becoming a soldier. It was the only train of thought that gave him any respite from the bad thoughts and demons that lived inside him.

But it did not take long for the United States Army and Theo to part ways. The government gave him a general discharge less than one year after he completed basic training.

Like Pontious Pilate washing his hands, the federal government wanted nothing more to do with Private Theo Blackmore. He returned to the farm, his final dream crushed and a recommendation to seek psychiatric treatment.

Like his grandmother, Theo went out of his way to avoid human interaction whenever possible. He was tall and lanky. Though his eyesight was near perfect, he religiously wore a pair of black eyeglasses that had once belonged to his father.

Theo was little more than an infant when his father swallowed a bottle of pills near an abandoned plow at the back of the barn.

Theo’s mother had barely endured giving birth to a screeching, angry son. Only two days after Theo was born into an unforgiving world, Theo’s mother boarded an Amtrak train headed for Miami. She never made it to Florida. For reasons still not clear, she mutilated a fellow passenger with a butcher knife. During her trial, she showed no remorse and grinned forlornly at both the judge and district attorney.

Theo’s mother offered no defense nor even a reason why she killed a retired tool salesman onboard a train headed to the Sunshine State. During the sentencing phase of her trial. She uttered only one sentence: “I brought forth into this world, the most authentic form of Satan.”

Nearly five years later, Theo’s mother was able to break a window in the prison’s laundry room. She used a tiny shard of glass to slit her own throat. She died almost instantly.

Though Theo was only six years old at the time, Inga decided it was appropriate to tell him the unedited truth about his mother and her fate. He began to cry, and Inga slapped his face with great force and determination. “Never you weep for that whore again,” she snarled. And Theo obeyed his grandmother. There was nothing else to do. It was his was destiny. He had been born the perfect patsy and others had noticed.