Twenty three months ago, I was hit from the driver’s side by a tractor trailer going 80 mph on I-95.
I’ve told you this before.
When you are in a coma, you are only one step removed from death, and often, no one can tell the difference. Not even you. It is safer to assume you are dead and stuck there, should you ever find yourself there, or you risk going insane.
Let me tell you about the howling. Once the driverless car ferrying you from the living word stops on the main road, you will be on the path. Do not listen to anyone who tells you that the path reaches some kind of destination. They may be hopeful and oblivious, but more likely they are trying to lure you somewhere, and it isn’t Heaven.
Aside from the black and yellow A-framed house, you may stop anywhere along the way as long as you return to the path by nightfall. You see, the point is that death is the path. The path is death. You belong there and only there, with your feet planted firmly on the packed earth and your eyes set forward. This is where you are safe.
The dead do not need to sleep, but you will find that most of them settle in for the night anyway, if only to break the monotony of walking. I also think everyone, at least in the beginning, is afraid when the sun goes down, and the closeness of sitting in a tight circle around a campfire provides a little bit of comfort.
This is where you will learn the names and the lives of your fellow travelers- how they died, how they lived, who they left behind. You will realize that even though you may have only walked one or two days from the main road, not everyone you meet up with will have started at the same time. Though you are all walking in the same direction, some of them will have been walking for a very, very long time. I know it will seem impossible. Try not to dwell on it.
At night, find a large group and stay in it. Let the stories and the quips of the more seasoned journeymen lull you into calm, and lean in to listen so you can hear them over the howling.
The howling starts when the moon is directly overhead - it is always full moon in death. From deep in the woods surrounding you on all sides, you will start to hear a long, mournful howl, then another, and another until there is a full chorus of them. This noise is not coming from wolves or dogs; that will be obvious quickly. Too high-pitched to be wolves. It almost sounds like human beings trying to sound like wolves.
It will get gradually louder. In the beginning, it sounds somewhat tragic, but now it will be angry. Aggressive. Whatever wild animals you wrongly believe to be the source, you will start to get the distinct feeling they are hungry.
As the howling gets more intense, you will no longer be able to hear your companions. I always tried to find someone’s eyes to meet anyway, just to exchange a wordless ‘good luck’ over the dying embers of the fire. I would nod, smile, and then I would bow my head and pray when the fires would all go out at once.
I have no advice for this part. Sorry. When the fires go out, the howling will become deafening as they swarm you- they being whatever howls out there. You won’t be able to see them. I am not a particularly religious person so I only knew one prayer, which I would mutter over and over and over, despite its glaring irony:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the lord, my soul to take.
I died before I woke, so I suppose that was my way of trying to get the lord to take my soul instead of those things.
When the sun begins to rise and there is enough light to see the others again, you will notice that some of them are gone. It’s never that many, and you won’t have heard any distinct cries of fear or protests in the night, but one or two or three will just be gone, with no trace they were ever with you. Acknowledge this grimly with those who remain, then get up and start walking again.
Where do they go, you ask? Do the howlers take them? I don’t know. Each night, I pressed my eyes shut and hoped it wouldn’t be me, so I was too relieved in the morning that it wasn’t to ask why. Some people theorized that the people who were taken in the night had been taken to ‘the end of the path,’ the final destination, Heaven, whatever you want to call it. They felt that the missing had somehow proven themselves and were able to leave the purgatory they assumed the path to be, but that would imply that the howlers were some kind of angels and I don’t know why but I have a gut feeling they aren’t.
Oh, another thing: the fires. You don’t start them. Nobody starts them. When it begins to get dark, you will see them up ahead and you’ll know it’s time to stop for the night, if you choose to do that. They will already be lit.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I know what I saw and heard. Take it as you will and remember: follow the path.