The Lovely Shadow (14 page)

The footsteps eventually made their way into
every room of the house, pausing in each one, then moving about the
room briefly before retreating and moving on to another room.

The footsteps had started at the furthest end
of the house—far beyond where the retaining wall stood sentry over
its piles of miscellaneous junk—at the far end of the crawlspace
where the main entry and living room were situated.

The footsteps worked their way steadily
towards my end of the house, however, to where the bathroom (which
was right above where the washer and dryer sat) was situated, and
to where the kitchen, which was just beyond the stairs, was
situated.

The fear that the maddening approach of
footsteps inspired in me was, in a way, a wakeup call to reality.
The fear brought me back into the real world instantly, bringing
with it an understanding that I was, in fact, very real, and that
being real meant I could be harmed.

I had not used my brain to think for several
days and my thought process had become slow from lack of use, but I
was still able to come up with a few ideas for who it might be
lurking about in the upstairs.

My first muddy thought was that a burglar had
broken in, and was swiftly surveying the house in order to be sure
that no one was home and they’d have as much time as they needed to
ransack the joint and take all our possessions.

That was a somewhat terrifying thought,
because if they decided to check the basement and found me in it,
there was no telling whether or not they would be decent enough to
release me, or malicious enough to harm me. I certainly did not
want to cry out and let them know I was present, for fear of the
second idea about their nature.

I argued with myself on the point. On the one
hand, salvation from captivity may be just one holler away, but on
the other hand, death or torture may also lay one holler away. In
the end I decided to wait and see where the situation led to on its
own.

I figured I might be able to ascertain their
real intent by some sign that they may unintentionally give me, and
by that sign I might know whether to conceal my existence or scream
my fool head off until they found me.

Of course I could not fathom one possible
sign that they could give me that would reveal their nature, short
of opening the basement door and asking if somebody was trapped in
there. And that didn’t seem likely.

The second fuzzy idea about the intruder’s
identity that crawled through my brain was even more terrifying
than the first. Perhaps it was my mother. Perhaps she had returned
from wherever it was that she had ambled off to in order to finish
what she had started nearly two weeks ago. She wanted to kill
me.

Or, perhaps, she was having a moment of
lucidity and had returned in order to rescue me from my confines,
but could not quite remember where she’d left me because the
Sickness had had complete control over her mind when she put me
there. That would explain the wandering from room to room that was
going on above me.

I was highly suspicious of the second
possibility for my mother’s return, for if she was looking for me
with a desire born purely of maternal love for her offspring, I
would hear her concernedly calling my name. All I could hear was
someone who was making very little noise, as if they wanted to
surprise me with their presence, or conceal it from me
altogether.

I was faced with the same dilemma over
whether to scream or not with the idea of my mother above me as I
was with the idea of a burglar above me. But it was worse if it was
my mother. If a burglar had come here with bad intent, I was
unknown to them and they may spare my life if they found me, for I
was not their reason for being here. But if it was my mother above
me, and she had returned with bad intent, then her only purpose for
being here was expressly to kill me.

That line of reasoning firmly cemented in my
logical mind that I would be better off to remain quiet as a church
mouse until the intrusion had passed. I lay under my covers, not
moving, and only barely daring to breathe and listened to the
footsteps as they came steadily nearer to the kitchen.

I trembled in my cotton chrysalis as the
footsteps entered the kitchen and moved around for a few seconds.
The intruder was close enough now that I could hear noises other
than footsteps and complaining floorboards. I could hear the light
switch click on and cupboard doors opening and closing. I even
thought I heard the tinkle of glass jars clinking together when the
refrigerator door slammed shut, but that sound may have been my
imagination. I didn’t reckon anybody had broken into my house
because they wanted a ham and cheddar on rye; hold the mayo, thank
you very much.

I heard the footsteps approach the door to
the basement and my heart sank. I had to cup a hand over my mouth
(much the way Joe used to do) to keep myself from screaming when I
heard the deadbolt on the door scraping as it unlocked.

The door creaked open slowly. It was just
like a creepy Hollywood cliché, the door opening very slowly
emitting a spine compressing squeal as it traveled the entire
allowable circumference of its hinges. Whoever was opening the door
either wanted to sadistically reinforce the fear of the trembling
child lying cocooned in his blanket below them, or they were
themselves, mortified of what might lie on the other side of the
door.

It seemed to take forever for the door to
open fully, and during that eternity I was able to complete
countless thoughts about all the horrible ways that I was about to
die. It seemed unfortunate to me in that instant that my brain
seemed to be recuperating and was thinking more rapidly than it had
been a few minutes before.

I could see the light from the top of the
stairs even through my blanket, and it hurt my sensitive eyes, even
as filtered as it was through the fabric. I wanted to peek one eye
out from under the blanket to try and discern what evil presence
awaited me at the top of the stairs, but lacked the courage to do
so.

Even if I’d had the courage, I’m not sure I
would have had the ability. My eyes had become so accustomed to the
dark, that I was unable to keep them open, even in the dim light. I
kept them shut tightly and listened intently for any sounds coming
from the top of the steps.

I could hear breathing, but nothing else. It
was as if the intruder was either afraid to enter and was trying to
see as much as possible from the top of the stairs in order to
determine if it was safe to proceed, or was simply standing there,
smelling my fear and savoring the scent.

I waited; they waited. I dared not make a
sound; they apparently dared not make a sound. I’m not sure how
long that muted battle of wills lasted, but the silence was at last
broken by a whisper from the top of the stairs.

“Hello?” the voice whispered. I jumped a
little at the sound but said nothing in return. The voice returned,
a little louder this time. “Hello? Is anybody down there?” The
voice wavered slightly and sounded scared, or at the very least,
apprehensive, and female. It sounded like my mother, yet not quite
like my mother. I was confused as Hell and still had no idea
whether or not to reply. I stayed silent.

“If you’re down there, I really wish you’d
say something. I’m afraid of the dark, and I can’t find a light
switch. I don’t want to come down in the dark.”

The voice was now at a normal decibel, and
had lost some of its fear, perhaps assuming that there was nobody
in the basement after all. The voice had also taken on the
sing-song quality that many adults used when talking to small
children, accentuating the end of each sentence in a slightly
higher octave as if always asking a question.

Thoughts raced through my rapidly unclouding
mind. It seemed that a good scare is not just useful for forcing
someone to come out of shock, it’s also good for reuniting one’s
brain with reality when that brain had recently retreated from such
a material place.

If that person were my mother, she would not
be ignorant of the light switch’s location, but then again, if it
were my mother, she could be lying. But it didn’t sound like my
mother, and yet, it did.

I’d never heard of a woman burglarizing a
home before, so I assumed that the woman that was sing-songing
about her fear of the dark from the top of the stairs could not be
a burglar, which led me right back to the ‘it’s my mother; it’s not
my mother’ quandary, and I plucked imaginary flower petals in my
mind as I debated.

The woman at the top of the stairs spoke
again, and stumbled upon the only thing I can think of that she
could have said that would have made up my mind about her
motives.

“I think you’re down there, Johnny. I saw you
in a dream. My name is June Devon, and I want to help you.”

At the mention of the name, ‘June’, I no
longer had any choice in the matter of whether or not to remain
concealed. My shock was so great that I threw the blanket off of me
and sat bolt upright, staring towards the top of the stairs for a
split second, before the brightness that shone through the doorway
blinded me and forced me flinch and squeeze my eyes shut.

The sudden brightness and the discomfort that
accompanied it surprised me nearly as much as did the mystery woman
revealing to me that her name was June, and a small cry escaped
me.

“Ahh!” I cried out as I covered my already
squinting eyes in the crook of my elbow on my right arm.

Burnt into my retinas was an image that I was
having trouble deciphering. I could see the doorway as a bright
fire of light, but in the middle of the doorway was the silhouette
of what appeared to be a woman.

The woman was shaped creepily similarly to my
mother. She shared the same height, same build, and same general
shape of my mother. I could see her shape clearly with my eyes
closed, although it was impossible to focus on the image for long,
as it seemed to keep shifting away from wherever I tried to focus
my closed eyeballs.

The sudden movement and unintentional cry
that escaped me frightened the poor woman at the top of the stairs
nearly as much her sudden appearance in my house had frightened me.
She let out a blood curdling scream and reeled backwards so hard
that she fell over.

She continued to scream all the way to the
floor, where she landed flat on her back with a solid thud. She
stopped screaming when she hit the floor, but not because she was
no longer frightened. She stopped because her wind had been knocked
out.

I heard the scream, I heard the thump, and I
was able to intuit what had happened. The whole scenario struck me
as deliciously funny. I, who had been so longing for human contact,
was terrified at the prospect of making contact. June, who had
apparently been searching for me had been terrified when she
finally found me.

Of course my sudden appearance, rising out of
the blackness with all the speed of a trained assassin, and then
hollering an instant later had not helped to put June’s mind at
ease. And now she was lying on her back in the kitchen, at the top
of the stairs, making funny gasping, and gulping noises as she
struggled to recapture her breath, and I sat on my mattress at the
bottom of the stairs, giggling.

My giggles started small; tiny snorts of
laughter escaping me through my nose. The more I tried to contain
my giggles, the more intense they became in response. Soon enough,
there were big snorts escaping my nose, and finally laughter began
escaping from my mouth in loud guffaws.

I could not remember the last time I had
laughed at anything. It was certainly before my incarceration
began, and probably quite awhile before at that. The laughter felt
fantastic. It spread through my entire body, until my whole body
was jiggling like a bowl of Jell-O.

Warmness was spreading through me with the
laughter, and soon I was howling with laughter. Not just laughing
at the irony of my fear, and June’s, but laughing just because it
felt so damn good to laugh.

Pretty soon, I was gasping for breath, just
like June had been doing at the top of the stairs a few moments
before, but I still couldn’t stop laughing. I was laughing so hard,
with my eyes still closed, that I neither saw, nor heard, June
descending the stairs to stand beside me.

Suddenly, I heard a woman’s laughter beside
me and a hand settled upon my shoulder. The sudden appearance of
the noise and touch scared me half to death and converted my
shrieking laughter into a shriek of terror.

I fell over backwards and got all tangled up
in my blanket as I instinctively tried to scrabble away from my
perceived pursuer. June laughed even louder and harder as I flopped
around like a fish out of water, trying to get free of my
blanket.

After a second or two, my fear locked brain
unlocked and I realized who it was beside my bed, and that they
meant me no harm, and I quit struggling and flopping. I lay there
panting for a few seconds, listening to the rapturous sound of
sweet laughter beside me.

Tears began leaking from my still clenched
eyelids. I was afraid to dare to dream that this was real. That
June had found me, and that the solution to my (Joe’s) odd
statement, “June is coming, and then everything will be better”,
was sitting beside me on my dirty mattress.

As I continued to lie there, still tangled in
my blanket, I felt a soft hand tenderly stroke my naked and exposed
back, and the giggling beside me began to subside. I didn’t dare to
unwrap my tangled head from the blanket and look at my new
acquaintance.

Her hand rubbed my back gently, but firmly,
and it felt so amazing to have a hand touch me tenderly, and with
such apparent love that I could not help but cry. It had been so
long since I’d had any human contact, and even longer since I’d had
any contact that felt like love, that I could have died in that
moment, and that would have been ok, because all of my life’s
ambitions were being met at that very moment, by a simple caress
across my back.