Strange Pilgrimage, part 3

How does one describe a venture into that realm of darkness where one encounters newly lost souls, the ones freshly aware of their state of being?
An atmosphere of anguish?
A constant throb of loneliness?
A desperate grasp to clutch and not forget that thing too fast slipping from their memory: hope?

In fact, much of what they knew was fleeting, for with the loss of God they had lost the well-spring of all wisdom, humor, foresight...
The only thing they still seemed to clasp firmly was the lingering awareness that all was not well with them, never would be well again...

They were faintly visible, like glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on a child's wall or pictures woven into his little t-shirt--the glow that offers a last remnant of a previous exposure to light. And as they drifted near me, they reached for me, but not like creatures in a horror film would do. Not with a zombie's mindlessness nor a demon's viciousness; more with the grasp a drowning swimmer tries to put on the confident strokes of a strong one. But the sudden panic that struck me at the sight of their ghostly hands soon faded; for gone was any internal force once bestowed by grace for the benefit of direction and guidance. And so moaning, they swiftly forgot why they craved the nearness of me, and they drifted away. In fact, like a desert of wind-blown tumbleweed they moved with a randomness that told the depths of their loss: no remaining sense of purpose and no valuable memory.
Yet having these tragic creatures see me at all made these verses wash over me in deeper hue as I happen across them a few days later:

Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish, and they will be driven into darkness. Nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first He lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, And afterward more heavily oppressed her, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. Isaiah 8:22-9:2

But no sooner had I found my footing in this place when the unction came: go deeper.