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Prince Wilhelm slept with a nightlight until he was ten years old, when his mother told him to grow up. He found the nightlight in hidden in a hall closet when he was thirteen.
His parents always labeled his fear of the dark as a childish fear of monsters lurking in the shadows, and in a way, it was. His fear of the dark had started one night when he was five years old, when his parents had taken him and Erik out to a fancy dinner.
Wilhelm hadn’t fussed at all. He had eaten his dinner neatly, quieting down when his mother scolded him for talking enthusiastically with Erik. By the time they left the restaurant, Wilhelm’s eyelids were drooping, and he was rubbing sleep out of his eyes constantly.
When the family stepped out of the doors and into the dark of the night, Wilhelm was blinded. Erik’s hand tightened on his own, but Wilhelm was scared enough to wrap his arms around Erik’s waist and tuck his face into his brother’s shoulder. The cameras snapped at him like dogs, voices calling out eager question about the new statements issued by the Royal Court.
“It’s okay,” Erik said, but it was drowned out by the reporters pushing against the barriers of the royal guards. When Wilhelm turned his face to look forward, he saw adults looming over him with large black cameras and too big smiles. One woman cooed at him and reached out her arm to him, and Wilhelm jumped and flinched away.
His father picked him up and placed him in the car. The vultures continued to swarm them, pecking at the royal family like dead meat left on the road as a free meal. When the door slammed shut behind him, Wilhelm ducked his face into his knees, bringing his thumb up to his mouth for comfort (his mother would always slap his head lightly when he did that, but he never grew out of it). He startled when the car started and the crowd grew closer, biting down on his thumb.
Oh. That helped; the thoughts weren’t as loud.
At the palace that night, Wilhelm’s father sat down with him where he was playing in his room. He told Wilhelm of “media” and “journalists” (whatever that was; he wondered why his father didn’t refer to them as the scary men they were). His mother came in to lecture him about appearances, and how he should smile at the people who photographed him.
“It’s an honor,” she said. “You’re the Prince, people want to see your face.”
As he lay in bed that night, he pulled his sheets up to his chin. His bedroom had high walls, windows running up to the ceiling and looming over him. The curtains were pulled open, revealing the thunderstorm that had formed outside. Wilhelm had always loved storms.
Then the lightning struck from outside his window, the blinding white flash illuminating his sprawling room.
Flashes. People looming over him. A clawed hand reaching for his shoulder.
He cried out and covered his face, yanking at his hair. There were vultures waiting in the shadows, waiting for him to leave the safety his bed so they could pick him apart like roadkill. He could almost see them hiding against the walls, behind his wardrobe, peaking out from his curtains.
Malin blew open the doors and rushed inside the room, looking around for the threat. Wilhelm feared for her. When the guard had established that there was no actual intruder or injury, she waved away the other guard waiting in the threshold of his bedroom. She came to sit down on the edge of Wilhelm’s bed.
“Is everything alright, my Prince?” She asked, gently. Her face was impassive, but her eyes showed fond concern. Wilhelm shook his head no, but at that moment, the crackle of thunder rang out and a bolt of purple lightning touched down near the palace grounds. Wilhelm jumped, whimpering as he shuffled down in his bed and felt warm tears trailing down his face. Malin gave him an empathetic look. “It’s okay, she said. “The lightning can’t hurt you.”
“It’s not the lightning,” Wilhelm mumbled. It wasn’t, really, at least not entirely. It was the shadows crawling along her back, trying to get the perfect angle to reach for the Prince again.
“May I ask what it is?” His guard asked.
“I had a nightmare,” he said vaguely. Malin sat quietly for a moment before nodding slowly. She rose to her feet, walking swiftly to the curtains and pulling them all closed. Wilhelm let out a sigh of relief. Then, she went to leave the room.
“Wait!” Wilhelm called out abruptly. He pulled down his blanket and shuffled up to a sitting position warily. The dark was suffocating, and he could feel the figures closing in. He was waiting for the flash. “Can you turn on the lights?”
He almost expected her to say no, but instead, she flipped on the light switch with only a moment of pensive hesitation. He let out an involuntary sigh of relief. He could see that there were no vultures lurking in the light. No, the predators plaguing him only haunted him in the dark of the impenetrable night.
“Goodnight, young Prince.”
“‘Night, Malin,” Wilhelm said sleepily. The encounter had drained him of his fear fueled energy.
The next day, when Wilhelm retired to his room for the night, gentle, warm light cut through the darkness. He shuffled over to the source of light curiously, navigating the room like there were landmines waiting to go off if he made one wrong step.
Looming figures. Bright flashes. Darkness.
He shivered, crouching over the light in front of him. The nightlight itself was a full moon, illuminating an astonishing portion of the bedroom despite its small size. Wilhelm turned around, noticing the closed curtains. His mother and father never tended to the state of his room.
That night, he slept well. The shadows were kept at bay by the beacon sliding across his walls, like a search light looking for intruders. A storm raged on outside, but the thunder didn’t scare him. No, the bright flash was contained outside, the shutter of a camera muffled by the barrier of his curtains.
Malin never mentioned what had transpired. She only gave him a small smile when he shuffled out of his room that morning with more energy than the day before, a bright smile on his face. Wilhelm didn’t mention it, but he hoped that she knew how grateful he was.
When his mother walked in and saw the nightlight, she huffed a disappointed sigh. Stalking over, she looked at the light disapprovingly.
“Your father should stop buying you silly things like this. He’s encouraging bad habits.” For a moment, Wilhelm was afraid she would take it, but she only left the room with a shake of her head. She let him keep it for another five years.
Wilhelm still remembered the night he walked in and it was gone.
He had been playing out in the courtyard, kicking a football around with Erik until it was late enough that sun had slipped below the horizon and their guards were ushering them inside. Wilhelm was yawning, freshly bathed and ready to crawl into his crisp sheets for the night.
When he opened the large doors to his bedroom, he was greeted by blackness. Confused, he flipped on the light switch. At first, he assumed that the nightlight had broken. It was old, so he figured it was reasonable given how much it was used. Yet, the bright light illuminated the empty electrical socket where his night light would usually sit.
Wilhelm couldn’t ask anyone. They would know that the ten year old Prince still slept with a nightlight. No, he would have to search for it himself. He ransacked every drawer and shelf in his room, searching every inch. After an hour of looking, with his nerves pulled taut, he collapsed onto his bed with tears of frustration gathering in his eyes.
He bit his thumb, considering his options. He could leave the full lights on, concerning his guards and no doubt begging for a lecture from his mother, or he could turn the lights off, beckoning in the vultures along with the darkness.
It’s fine , he told himself. After all, he wasn’t five years old anymore. He could do it.
He didn’t sleep that night, nor the next night. If Malin heard the sniffles coming from inside his bedroom, she didn’t mention it. Wilhelm was glad. On the third night, he laid on his side crying for hours before finally succumbing to sleep. Every time he opened his eyes, he would see the distorted shadows following his gaze from the walls.
Reaching. Grabbing. Pulling. Snapping.
It took him a month to fully adjust to not having his night light. It took him even longer not to tremble as he made the walk through the dark from his doorway to his bed. He would scurry to his bed quickly to avoid the shadows nipping at his heels, diving under the covers to protect his face.
Wilhelm was thirteen and looking for a spare pair of winter gloves when he stumbled upon the night like in a hall closet. It was wrapped in a dark cloth, shoved into a far corner. It was smaller than he remembered it being; it was hard for Wilhelm to imagine it serving as the beacon of light it always had been.
He slipped it into his pocket, shoving it in his bedside drawer when he reached his bedroom. He didn’t find the pair of gloves. He didn’t find the night light either, really. He found a memory that was dusty and outgrown.
Even at sixteen years old, Wilhelm still found himself curling into a ball during thunderstorms. He still stayed up on his phone rather than confronting the dark corners of his room. Instead of imagining shadows , his mind still supplied vultures . Lightning was never beautiful; it always felt too bright, too much like the flash of a camera to be enjoyable.
On a cold night during his first semester at Hillerska, Wilhelm spread his arms on a football field in early hours of the morning. He swam through the dark like the tide was low, as though there was nothing lurking out there that could harm him. He lay on the bright green grass like there weren’t vultures flying in the night who could swarm him at any time.
The drugs and alcohol clouded his mind in the most pleasant way he had ever experienced. It was the equivalent of a night light from within; a warm glow spreading throughout his body and into the night around him. As he clutched the dark beads of plastic, marveling at how fake the world around him could be, he barely realized how dark the night was.
Later, as Wilhelm stumbled through the dark with Simon by his side, Wilhelm said, “I’m not afraid.” Simon grunted, shifting to carry Wilhelm’s weight better as they walked. Wilhelm repeated it a few times, staring up at the black sky.
“I’m not scared, Simon, see?” He threw his arms into the air, twisting around in Simon’s hold as he tilted his head back to let the night engulf him. Simon sighed and tugged him forward, continuing their trek, but Wilhelm stopped again.
“It’s you,” he said. “It’s you, you know?” And Simon didn’t know, of course he didn’t know, because Wilhelm was on drugs and talking nonsense, but it was a sober thought. In the morning, Wilhelm would look back on the night and realize that he never felt uncomfortable. He never felt the weight on his chest increase as the sky darkened; he didn’t tuck his chin into his chest as he walked through the cool blackness.
Other nights were harder. On St. Lucia’s Day, as Wilhelm stared at his phone in the suffocating darkness of his room, he was sure that the walls were closing in. The bedroom was too small for the shadows to move freely around him; they enveloped him in their black wisps and tendrils.
Reaching. Pulling. Laughing. Cooing.
His phone hit the ground with a loud thump. He fisted his hands in his hair, pulling, pulling, pulling. Wilhelm’s lungs struggled to pull in air as he gasped, his breaths shallow and stuttering. He was sure that he must be dying. The burning in his chest must mean that this was the end, right?
Thirty minutes later, he still sat crying on his bed. He rocked himself back and forth gently, willing himself to take deep breaths, but his lungs had rocks in them. He could never seem to breathe fully and deeply; he was always left needing more air.
From that evening on, his nights continued to get worse. His thumbs were bitten raw out of anxiety, and there were purple eye bags highlighting his lack of sleep. The night after his interview, he didn’t sleep at all. He stared up at the ceiling, trembling, wondering if he had made the right choice. Wondering if he had a choice.
During the wee hours of Christmas Day, Wilhelm broke.
After only being asleep for an hour or so, Wilhelm woke up thrashing. He had dreaming of walking to the bus stop with Simon after the football game, warmth blooming in his chest (they deserved that moment) when reporters came out of nowhere, wielding their weapons relentlessly. Wilhelm had woken expecting to hear the camera shutters plaguing his nightmares, but he could only hear the stifling silence of the palace.
He shoved himself into a sitting position, gasping for breath. It was too dark. He stumbled out of bed, but hesitated in the middle of his room. He didn’t want to alert the guards of anything being wrong; he wanted to be alone. Wilhelm tried to be as quiet as possible when he swiftly walked over to one of his windows and threw the curtains open.
It was a white Christmas, illuminated by a full moon.
Heavy snowflakes fell from the sky, blanketing the trees and covering the courtyard in a thin sheet of white. Wilhelm’s chest heaved, and he let himself fall to the floor. The window was freezing against his palm.
Wilhelm’s first instinct was to call Simon. The need curled in his chest, settling there like frost on the cold ground. He ached with it; a feeling that only Simon would understand. Yet, as he hung his head, he knew there was no possibility. Simon wouldn’t want to hear from him. Not now, not before Wilhelm had gotten himself together and made up his mind completely.
Not when Wilhelm was a mess.
So he stood up on shaky legs, leaning against the cold glass for a moment before pulling the curtains closed with trembling fingers. The dark welcomed him with a deep sweep of black closing pulling him in quickly. It was all he could do to stumble blindly back over to his bed, reaching into his the drawer of his bedside table and grasping the moon hidden away.
He remembered where it belonged immediately, grasping the wall as he made his way to the space where it would sit. It slid back into its place easily, almost as if it never left. The glow was paler than he remembered, duller than the warm bright light he had become used to over the previous months.
He curled up in his bed, his back turned to the light. He wouldn’t bother anyone. He wouldn’t let them see him like this.
The night light was only a placeholder. Wilhelm dragged his blanket over his shoulder and up to his chin, feeling all at once like a lost child wishing to be held and rocked gently. Really, he thought hollowly, maybe he was still longing for that comfort to replace the pain filled chasm where his heart sat.
Until then, though, he would settle for the slight glow keeping the vultures away, even if it wasn’t the light his heart truly longed for.