Longest Night, The

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"It'll be all right, love," says Mum, blue eyes dancing with her glowing, blonde hair, flickering in the threatening darkness.

            She skitters down the staircase, clutching on Eric's cold, slippery hands.  Eric Lowell, eleven, remembers the untypical look on his mother's face, knowing immediately that something's different.  It's just different.  It feels different.  It even smells different…

            With contorted fingers, he wipes his eyes, digs his knuckles into the corner of his eyes to clear its disturbing dryness.  He drags his feet down unwillingly with Mum to the living room where Dad is waiting for them.

            "Come," hollers Dad, a glumly dark voice breathing off his unmoving lips, "Hurry!"

            He grabs his son's shoulders tightly.  In cold fear that strikes on him suddenly, Eric breaks free and scampers towards the blacked-out window.  Removing the cardboard from the windowpane, he widens his little eyes.

            "No, Eric," cries Dad, his words seem stuck on his grey moustache, "Come!"

            He clings onto Eric's little body, whispers wordless mumbles into his soft ears.  But Eric remains cold and still, gazing through the window upon the dark sky.  There are no stars; the moonlight withers away with the grey clouds that soon blend into total darkness.  From the distance the air screams into his ears, breaches into his skull.  Whilst his hands shiver in shock, his heart trembles and boils with the unbeatable sound of approaching sirens…

            The sound of the German propellers emerges slowly into existence.  Eric stares upon the pitch-black sky to notice the little dots of planes roaring slowly into sight.  In the air the sirens wail madlya baby screaming into a loudspeaker, perhaps.  Now that the sirens begin to fade, the engines and propellers in the air are relatively near, circling in the night sky.

            Above them the clouds seem to be darkened by the heart-throbbing shadows of the Luftwaffe.  Shells of the ack-ack blast into the misty sky.  Barrage balloons hover midair over the Thames to mount over the Tower of London…  Blast!  The explosion is near…

            "Under the table!"  Dad swings Eric away from the table.  Outside the blasts begin to glow red, and layers of smoke glide above them.  Eric hunkers down under the glimmering shadow of the table.  He shut his ears with soft palms, fold his eyes abruptly with the sound of enclosing explosions.  Blast!  It's much louder now, and it's clear.  Cheeks in tears, Eric holds on now to his knees.  His mum chews on her prayers.

            Minutes.  Eric cries silently, hiding under his arms as the sky begins to clear.  When the screams of the people begin to die away in the night's battle, his heart has almost stopped beating.  Whimpering still, he crawls forward in shudders, wipes the dirt and tears off his eyes and gazes upon the smoky debris and dying flames that gutter over the rubbles that vastly cover the blitzed city.

            Looking out into the morning sun that begins to rise in the far horizon, Dad, glasses hanging over his nose, limps across the room sullenly.  Noticing the stillness of the air, Eric leans against the near, rickety leg of the table, shedding tears from his droopy eyes.

            "It's all right, son," says Dad, removing the broken glasses from his face, "It's over now."

            The sirens quieten gradually into the cloudy dawn, leaving no trace of the planes that once controlled the sky.

            Standing unsteadily on fragments of shattered glass, Eric eyes his mum and dad briefly, wheezing.  Under the tension that forms over the half-wrecked house, Eric decides to whimper most painfully, "No Dad.  It's just the beginning..."

            So it begins...