It is late in evening. I am kneeling beside your rusty iron bed, basking in the cold electric light of a 40 watt incandescent bulb. Screwed into an old wall lamp with a Soviet era quality mark embossed into the back of it. I am kneeling on the floor which still carry faint signs of having once been lacquered. My black jeans and a damaged pock-marked floor. Once a long time ago, all this had seemed so big. We even played war one or twice, throwing wooden blocks. But after that, you no longer wanted to play.

I am still stroking the green dress covering you from neck to ankles. Also your arms. You always liked such dresses which had both long sleeves and a long skirt. I see your long hair, which has now turned gray. I see your pale skin. Was it as pale back when you ran into the woods on the night of the Blue Moon not a year ago? I cannot say.

Your chest slowly rising and falling, following the slow and steady breaths. Pulse at a steady 50 beats per minute. I do not know whether you are sleeping or just unconscious, but I know you are somewhere peaceful, be it at or beyond the red line.

It doesn't really matter whether it is possible to return from the other side or not. You are strong, you always have been. I get up and give your face a final glance. You have not aged a day since. But should you have? You never wanted to get old and die, only to be young and beautiful. I step by the window and try to look outside. Instead I find myself focused on the casting defect within the glass panes. Cheap glass which some traveling salesman had been selling, obviously stolen by the hundreds from some unnamed military installation hidden within the forest.

The inner frame of the window was still retaining a triangular shard, the edge of which was covered in your dried blood. This was before we nailed the windows shut, as the nails held the windows far better than rotten wood. I look outside. The yard, the garden furniture now home to some climbing plants, and overgrown pond and a small American made SUV right under the window. It's a pity that the window is facing this way, away from the sunset, from the lonely dirt road disappearing into the fog dyed pink by the setting Sun. Black fields freshly plowed were responsible for the fog. The sound of a lonely tractor doing the last plow for the night, popping out of the dense fog for a moment, only to disappear once more.

And of course, the neighbor's garden. The neighbor has long since disappeared, already before you did. Only his past actions here still remain. An overgrown, almost forest-like yard, two tall birches standing side by side. I can still remember the sun passing their top limbs when it rose in early mornings. A long and drawn-out Nordic rise, which begun far and slow, behind the neighbor's red brick toolshed. It then rose above the mossy fiber cement roof of the shed and touched the ventilation stack of the wooden outhouse right next to it. Turning from the pale white shine in the early morning to an almost burning red glow in the evening.

I turn and see again your seemingly lifeless body. The stove is warm, although the fire has already gone out. I sigh, again, and sit by your desk. I switch on all the various boxes and devices and watch the electronics wake up and warm up. The indicator lamps become fully lit as well. Once these lights had been little incandescent bulbs, but at some point you decided to disassemble everything, and solder on LEDs to replace the bulbs that needed replacing far too often, at least for you. I also switch on the speakers.

The sound the old reel to reel recorder was producing was the same it had been on the night you disappeared. “That’s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...” The last word repeating on the air forever until it was claimed by the noise floor. This sound had started again, on a certain night.

*

A line of small bulbs lit up behind a fabric backdrop. A dull light that warmed a red plastic indicator peg, currently aligned with blue scale painted on glass, indicating roughly around 666 kilocycles. But there was nobody to see it. Right afterwards, there was a click. The speakers switched on as if some invisible force interacted with the heavy toggle switch and moments later the oscilloscope followed suit. The screen of the oscilloscope revealing the patterns in the voice as it spoke.

I awoke to that damned sound that wanted to haunt me until the end of times. I was on the cold floor, next to your bed, in your grandparents' old house. I never wanted to lay down, never wanted to heat up the stove. Without you, I just wanted to spend my summer here, sleeping in this house. A house that was left to you. After you had found your grandmother dead in the corner bed downstairs.

I got up and looked around. The screen on the oscilloscope was the first thing that caught my eye. I crawled to the desk and unplugged all the radio and signals equipment. But this terrifying voice, this one sentence forever repeating, part of a person's being, his nature, his soul. It was still repeating in my ears. Your fine-tuned equipment had found it on the air, picked it out amongst the thousands of other messages. It had recorded it, filtered it out and was now torturing me with it.

It took me some time to really wake up before I fell back into a dream of continuing my sleep. To forget the voice and once again wake to escape this damnable dream. It took me too long to understand that I was not sleeping, that I could not sleep. And that the equipment was not plugged in, even the oscilloscope, which was still functioning. And that the sound of the sentence being repeated was not emanating from the speakers but rather from somewhere else, somewhere outside. I took a look towards the small hole in the roof through which water was dripping. My first thought was that it was only light rain, but the wet floor, the peculiar smell of ozone and the clear skies told me something else. This also revealed how the various devices had perhaps started functioning. A thunderous rain storm had directly passed over.

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I walked past the stove and descended the stone staircase which was more than century old. The steps had worn smooth with age. This was your home. Your nest. Your cave, as you referred to it. An old farm house with blackened interior walls, where it was always dark inside. Because you had nailed all the doors and windows shut, save but one window beside the door, which now had shutters on the inside. Like this, the whole bottom floor of the house was as if a separate world, distinct from everything outside and everything above. And it truly was a cave, as you only needed the upper floor. The downstairs was something you never even wanted to temporarily be in.

I opened the shutters and climbed outside into twilight dusk. Or was it dawn? In summer it was nigh impossible to tell. I felt the rain drop from the roof onto my head and neck. The clear rainwater was also running down the tinted side glass of the green Jeep ZJ.

Then I realized it. I had left the keys for it inside, onto your desk on the second floor. Who knows where they had ended up now. Just like your radio which was always set to 666 kilocycles when switched on, as if somebody had moved the dials unnoticed, nothing in the house really stayed in its original location. I lifted my head towards the sky, just to see the rain clouds dyed pink by the setting sun. And the towers of steel scaffolding carrying the high tensions lines which seemed invisible from this distance. A row of steel towers disappearing behind black forests on both sides of the horizon.

In truth, the SUV was yours as well. To buy it, we had to sell the old caterpillar tractor. And then we had barely enough money to buy this old piece of junk which was now used to get into town or go to the woods. First came the car, and only then the insurance and all that crap. I walked across the wet grass. Due to the rain and the twilight, the grass looked dull and gray. Likewise the fence looked ominous and black, it had become water-logged from the rain storm. The gray lichen growing on the fence was almost unnoticeable.

I headed towards the front gate passing the old well. Few months before his passing, your grandfather had found and brought home a large decorative metal circle made of welded together sections. He had set it down around the well. It was told that this was the reason for his passing, him dragging this home, that he had gone to that place at all. He had sternly forbidden us to go to the forest, but he himself went. Apparently the rocket fuels still left there were more poisonous than he had thought.

The Forbidden Forest. While on his deathbed, your grandpa had still insisted that we never went there. But we never cared. A lonely yet wide forest road, muddy tracks worn in and grass growing on the center section between them. This road led far, to the large concrete fields, where tall grass was growing between large slabs of reinforced concrete. The road itself was muddy only on the surface, hidden a few feet down were large slabs of limestone brought here from the Northern shores of the country.

Having walked down this road a few hundred meters, having soaked my shoes and pants in the mud, I turned to a smaller forest road on the left, littered with small rocks, forming a makeshift cobblestone patchwork. The surface of this road was also about half a meter below the surface of the main road. This was still meant to be traveled by vehicles. I quickened my pace.

Somewhere from here, one could reach a small forest track which led to a series of large concrete domes. The domes could be pushed off deep silos. The wheels and the rails they ran on, although very rusty, were still in place. There was also another road, leading to an old foundation and walls made of large granite field stones. There was also a lot of broken stone and metal which almost looked like part of a large cross. We could only guess whether it had been a church or not. In any case, it had been a fun place to play at.

I headed down a smaller track on the side. No stone paving of any kind here, just tall grass and hard-packed ground. Tall nettles and hemlocks or various sorts lined the road, looking like a forest that felt impassable even when just thinking about it. I continued onward, towards the Blue Moon. Soon, I saw the small Forest Lake. This was our own name to this place. Going by it's size, it was nothing but a large natural pond, maybe about a thousand square meters in size, but considering everything, it was something much more than just a body of water.

I stopped. The Moon was lighting up the whole area of the lake and some of the surroundings. From the moonlight 4 maidens descended and became corporeal, the four of them were also carrying a fifth maiden with them. The surface of the lake changed. It was no longer part of natural lake as it became part of the moonlight. And again I could see the sauna stove, the benches and some wooden buckets.

Four maidens with curly hair made of moonlight were repeatedly visiting the lake for water made of moonlight, their hair hovered around their heads as if they were underwater. Despite the lake shining like the Moon, it seemed they had trouble gathering the water, as they were visiting the pond very often and rushed up the staircase made of moonlight when returning. And then they washed, not just themselves but also the fifth, unconscious maiden. Every spot they touched while washing her lost its shine. As if the moonlight was slowly receding from her body, turning it earthly and material.

After they had thoroughly washed the unconscious maiden, they lifted her up and carried her down the stairs of moonlight. At that moment I noticed, that the hair of the firth maiden was still made of moonlight. The unconscious maiden was gently placed into the moonlit waters of the forest pond.

Just as they had managed to place her floating in the lake, the four maidens of moonlight went out. A massive cloud blocked to moon and erased everything. The maidens, the stairs, the sauna. The only thing that remained, was a girl, gently floating in the water, her face just barely above the surface. She was slowly floating towards a darkened spot in the forest lake. I knew that spot. You were afraid to swim to that spot. You had also never let me to swim to that spot. Seeing me swim to that spot once, it was the only time I ever saw you scared.

My clothes were still on, as I rushed into the water.

I reached you and brought you ashore. You were alive, breathing slowly and calmly. You felt so light in my hands. And then I noticed it. Your hair was no longer dark brown. It was now grayish white. Stilled colored by the moonlight that was never washed away. That same night I brought you home.

Still I remember the good times, sitting on the hood of the green Jeep ZJ, our feet resting on the front bumper, holding each others hands and looking at a sunset. A faint sound of tractor under the burning sky, which acted as a backdrop to the row of high tensions masts. We were sure that this view, this moment always repeating, would outlast out lives. I want these moments back, and probably you do as well, even though you are still so far.

I am still kneeling beside your bed. Still watching your long sleep. I wish you would awaken and come back to me. Please, wake up...