Part 1

There exists between light and dark an eternal battle. The light pushing back the dark, and the dark ever chasing the light. As day follows night, this barely seen battle has raged throughout millennia without end.

Between Darkness and light lies the boundary known as twilight. Neither wholly of the light nor wholly of the darkness, and despised by both. The darkness chases and consumes the twilight, giving it neither pause nor rest. The light chases and burns away the twilight, allowing no reprieve.

Such exchanges are both visible and invisible to the people. All see the change in the light, and many see such creatures of it, though none have seen them all. All see the approach of night, though few have braved all the horrors it hosts. Even fewer have seen the twisted beasts of twilight, and all the implacable wrongness that they are.

I have had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune, twice in my life to have witnessed them en mass, and I think I should not be able to stomach a third.

The first came shortly before my fifteenth birthday, and is an experience I can never forget, much as I would like.

At the time, I, unlike many children, had continued the hobby of collecting rocks. Had things not gone the way they did, likely I would now be some form of geologist, or mineralogist. Fate, though, seemed to have other designs.

My Grandfather had a habit of arriving several days early, bearing gifts from the market in his home town of Finnley Bay. He always seemed very fond of me, though I have no idea why. I was neither the most intelligent, nor the most stupid, neither the eldest or the youngest, and indeed had nothing really that made me stand out.

Perhaps it was to give me a taste of culture, or perhaps it was to indulge his own curiosity. But, nonetheless, every year shortly before my birthday, my Grandfather would turn up, and would bear a gift of artwork. Being fond of him, I would always accept it, and it would always have a place in my room.

That year was no exception. A few days before my birthday, my Grandfather turned up at my family’s home holding in his arms a box of gifts. I forget what he gave the rest of my family, but what he gave me, I cannot forget.

He handed me a steel box, shined and polished. A simple latch held the thing shut and was easily removed. Inside the box, nestled in a bed of crimson velvet lie a statue. It was a beautiful and terrible affair. It was at once breathtakingly gorgeous, and disturbingly hideous. It was made of a form of crystal that I had never seen the like of before. Rather than being white, it was a dusky grey color. It had seemingly straight sides that rose to a point at the top like a small monolith. However, when you ran your finger along these sides, you could feel no point, and the sides seemed to curve in ways that didn’t seem possible.

Examining the statue proved mesmerizing, and evoked a feeling of wrongness about the statue. You would study and area, getting to know its impossible curves, and them look away for but an instance, and then return to the area, only to find that the area had somehow changed without seeming to move. Where impossible curves seeming to make more than a full circle once lie, angles of impossibility now lay, seeming to be nothing of what we could describe.

My grandfather looked at me as I examined it, and leaned forward, a strange smile on his face.

“I picked it up at the market near my home,” He told me, “Merchant was a little reluctant to give it to me. Though, he seemed at the same time to not want anything to do with it either. Not sure if he were the artist or not. Thought you might find that interestin’ is all.”

“Thanks, Grandpa.” I replied sincerely.

I truly did love the old man, and so it was that the statue found its way onto my bedside table, where I examined it for several hours before drifting off to a sleep filled with strange nightmares.

It was shortly before dawn that I woke. I heard a noise from outside my window, which frightened me, as I slept on the upper room of my home.

I looked out the window into the darkness but could see nothing. The clouds overhead neatly blotted out the stars, and even the moon had seemingly gone to bed, such was the hour. Yet something stirred in the inky blackness beyond my window. I kept a flashlight by my bed, but daren’t use it, for an unknowable fear, sudden, and irresistible had struck me, and I dared not, could not shine a light into that darkness.

But, there is a saying, and a true one at that, that it is darkest just before dawn. Slowly, imperceptibly, the light slowly began biting into the darkness, chasing it away with the unstoppable march of time.

I wish now that I had not stayed up to watch it, for it would have been better had I not. For with coming dawn, in the twilight that preceded it, strange shapes suddenly became visible, traveling away from the light. They defy description in most senses, but I shall try my best to convey the impossibility that I saw that dawn.

A myriad of shapes of incalculable number passed by my window, not stopping, as if running or chasing something. Alongside them passed what could only be described as a great beast of indescribable side. They passed alongside, or through anything that they came across, as if they were not wholly there.

I let out a gasp, catching the attention of one of the shapes. It seemed to turn towards me. I could see it clearly, its form pulsated with strange lumps that seemed more impossible, and fibers seemed to form most of its body. It reached out a hand, and seemed to float towards the window, towards me.

To be continued