When I think about the dark, I think

about the game that I used to play

as a kid.

I'm here, in a house that is not

mine.

I'm here with my friend.

I'll call him... Mario.

I'll tell you later why.

I'm 11, he's one year younger than me.

Mario has a fascinating family.

First of all, they come from the mainland,

and this is always a bit of a

sensation for us islanders.

But there is more.

His mom is divorced, and she lives with

Mario's father, but they are not married.

I'm pretty sure that Mario's mother is the

first divorced woman I met in my life.

And she even has an older daughter from

a previous relationship.

Wow.

Adults talk about Mario's mom in a whisper.

And there is a certain initial reluctance to

welcome them in the neighborhood.

I remember once we were at his place

and I had to go to the toilet.

I went and I saw a condom floating

inside the toilet.

Terrifying.

Fascinating.

So, there is a game that Mario and

I play constantly during the summer when I'm

eleven.

Here is how it goes.

You'll need a house without parents or adult

supervision, windows with heavy shutters, a record player,

scary music to play. Instructions for two players.

Once you are home alone, close all windows,

draw the curtains and close the shutters so

that the room is dark.

Play the scary record on the record player.

Start running around the room screaming at the

top of your voice.

We play this game a lot with Mario.

Did I tell you already that there is

an unspoken mystery around Mario?

I mean, besides his mom being divorced and

all.

Well, Mario is always pale.

I mean, all children from mainland are pale

for us islanders, but Mario is pale in

a specific way.

I find out the meaning of that specificity

one day that someone bullied him at school

and he came home with a cut on

his eyebrow.

He was paler than usual and scared.

All adults were scared, they were fussing around

him, worried, and then they whispered words, hurt,

murmur.

That's what I think was the main issue

with Mario,

the reason why his mother always recommended that

I make sure Mario doesn't strain himself by

performing any activity that makes him sweat.

Sweating was strictly forbidden for him.

I'm a kid, I'm not sure what it

means to have a hurt murmur, but I

take my role as a big sister with

enthusiasm, glad to have an excuse to ignore

those annoying rules that they start telling me

on how a female must behave in puberty.

So here we are.

We have closed the shutters and the room

is dark enough for us to see everything,

but grey.

It is disquieting, because in the dim light

we can easily make out the contour of

the furniture.

I remember a large bed, so it must

be in the master bedroom, but terrifying shadows

follow us behind every corner.

It feels like we stepped inside a real

life black and white movie, but stranger, uncanny.

I don't remember how or who came up

with the idea of this game.

I don't even think we gave it a

name.

I only know that we have been playing

it compulsively, forever and ever, always at his

home, because Mario, unlike me, is very often

home alone.

Anyway, we place the record on the record

player, it is Profondo Rosso, the soundtrack from

the latest Dario Argento horror movie, a movie

we haven't seen because it is rated 16,

but his family has the record of the

soundtrack and we listen to it at an

impossibly high volume, while running around the dark

room and screaming at the top of our

voice, running and curling up on the carpet

next to the bed and occasionally hiding under

the bed, all the while screaming and screaming

and screaming until the song ends, and then

we run to the record player to stop

it before the following song starts, because there

is only one soundtrack for our scary game.

In my memory we have played this game

during the entire summer.

That strange summer when so many strange things

happened to our families.

No one took the time to explain what

was happening to us, the kids, no one

told us why, the strange behaviors by the

adults.

Our game played in the dark.

Although, now that I think about it, I

have the impression that Mario was scared of

darkness, because in that strange summer it happened

that he did several sleepovers at our place.

I mean, this per se was really, really

strange.

He lived around the corner and sleepovers weren't

common back then.

But I remember Mario sleeping in the guest

bed, and I remember him asking for a

nightlamp because he was scared of sleeping in

the dark, and I also remember that he

could only fall asleep if he rolled violently

his head on the pillow from right to

left, from left to right, for what it

felt like hours.

I remember listening to that unfamiliar sound in

the dark of my room.

After all what happened on that summer, our

families lost contact.

His family moved back to the mainland and

we haven't seen each other or spoken since.

I confess that I did think about contacting

him, but then what?

To ask him whether he remembers when we

scared ourselves to death by running like crazy

in the dark, listening to Profondo Rosso?

One last thing.

I haven't explained yet why I didn't reveal

his real name.

I did it on purpose, because I searched

for him on the internet, hoping to find

him, and well, I did find him.

It turns out that, despite the paleness of

his youth, Mario became first Italian and then

European champion in a quite violent contact sport,

so he is well known among people who

follow that sport.

There you go.

From darkness to light, Mario must have overcome

whatever demons he had that didn't allow him

to sleep well in the dark.