The Lovely Shadow (29 page)

As I considered the gift it seemed to me that
its potency might be increasing as my body raced towards maturity.
When I had been younger, I had seen glimpses of shadows, and
experienced some rather uncanny events, but I had never had an
experience as real and material as the one I had just had in the
kitchen that morning.

My thoughts eventually drifted towards the
rose smelling spirit and the note that had been left to me so long
before. I realized that I had a strange longing in my heart for
that particular spirit to manifest itself again.

Though I had never seen the spirit
responsible for the note and the scent, I was convinced that it was
the spirit of a young lady and could still recall the impressions
of supreme femininity that had pressed upon my mind as I read the
note that she’d left behind for me.

I stared out the window for only another
minute before deciding that the chances of encountering that Lovely
Shadow again were slim. It had been seven years since her last
investigations into my life, and it seemed that she must surely
have moved on by now.

Sighing, I grabbed up my book off the counter
by the sink and headed for the door, forgetting all about the
banana and water that I’d originally been seeking. I had seen
enough of the dead for one morning and decided that some time spent
in my book would be time well spent.

When I got to the pond I looked around the
base of the willow tree, searching for footprints or other evidence
of Louie’s presence but found nothing aside from some goose
droppings on the far side of the tree.

Across the pond, at the furthest edge of the
property I could see Miss Lilly walking beside a shadowy form. As
usual, she appeared to be having a wildly animated conversation and
was using her arms as much as her mouth to get her point across. I
smiled at the strange couple in the distance as I sat down beneath
the tree.

I opened my book and stared at the pages. I
read nothing. I looked up towards the house and saw movement in the
kitchen window. Assuming it was June getting ready to start her day
I went back to staring at my book.

I tried in vain to read for at least thirty
more minutes before giving up completely and heading back to the
house. As I entered the front door, June was just coming down the
stairs, with her hair looking frighteningly Medusa-like and her
eyes still squinted mostly shut.

“Morning Babe,” June stammered out in a yawn
choked voice.

It was obvious that June was only just
getting out of bed, and Miss Lilly and Louie were out walking the
far corners of the property, which led me to wonder about the
movement I’d seen in the kitchen.

After offering a very distracted—and
squeaky—good morning back to June, I headed for the kitchen to
investigate. Nothing appeared to be out of place, or out of the
ordinary. There were no shadow figures walking around, and no
traces of any odors besides the fresh brewed coffee that Miss Lilly
had made earlier in the morning.

I was sorely disappointed, which confused me.
I could not understand why I should be disappointed that there were
no dead people in my kitchen.

June entered the kitchen only seconds behind
me and distracted me from thinking much about the reasons for my
disappointment. She grabbed a cup of coffee and headed over to the
small table in the corner to sit down and enjoy it. I grabbed a cup
and joined her there.

Over the previous seven years, June and I had
developed a ritual in the mornings. The ritual had been one of my
favorite things on earth. The ritual was simply sitting with June
at the kitchen table and chatting, early in the morning, before the
worries of life had a chance to intrude for the day.

I had been afraid that as I grew older I
would find the morning ritual tiresome or less pleasant than I did
when I was younger and would eventually give up on it altogether,
probably hurting June’s feelings in the process. That did not seem
to be the case however, and as I grew older, I found that, if
anything, I had grown to enjoy our morning ritual more than
ever.

Occasionally Miss Lilly would join us for
morning coffee, and that was always a wonderful time, but I think
she felt that the morning ritual should be a private time for June
and I, and more often than not she chose to take her coffee in the
dining room where she could “read de paper an’ find out what kinda
trouble all dem dum-dums in de gov’ment was gettin’ into.” That is,
when she actually got up early enough to have an opportunity to
join us.

On the morning I met Louie, June was able to
sense right away that I was distracted and immediately began trying
to get to the source of my discomfort. I tried in vain to brush it
all aside, not knowing how she would feel about having Miss Lilly’s
dead husband for a new roommate or my longing for a shadow girl I
had not even thought about for years. But June’s concern for me was
deep enough that she would never be content to just let me have a
problem without her knowing exactly what it was.

Finally I just decided to come out with it,
or at least part of it. “Do you believe in ghosts, June?” I asked
seriously, proud that my voice had not cracked one time during the
question.

June cocked her head to the side a little and
looked at me before responding, as if she was trying to discern
whether or not I was honestly getting to the real reason for my
discomfort. “Yes, Johnny, I do. I’ve never seen one, but I reckon
they exist. Why?”

Figuring that her belief in the walking dead
was a good enough reason to continue I went ahead with the rest of
my story about how I’d found Miss Lilly that morning, and Louie,
and the goose, and the walk that Miss Lilly and Louie were
currently on.

After spilling the whole story—with the
exception of my longing for the girl I was calling Rose—I sat back
and waited for June’s response. I have no idea how I was expecting
her to respond but I know that I had never considered that she
would respond the way she did.

“Oh, how wonderful!” June said, smiling
broadly and clapping her hands together. “I’m so glad that he
finally found her. They haven’t seen each other since she moved
here, you know.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head,
completely shocked by June’s response. “Wait!” I said
incredulously, “You knew about Miss Lilly’s husband being a
ghost?”

June looked at me like I was stupid and said,
“Of course. Lilly told me about Louie before she moved in here, she
was afraid that he might get lost trying to find his way here.
Turns out she was right to worry.”

I was completely flummoxed. “You…You’re ok
with the idea of a dead guy living here?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not as bad as all that, Hon.
He’ll come and go of course. He’s not entirely trapped in this
world like so many other ghosts, or at least that’s what Lilly
says, but it’s not like he’s gonna be watchin’ us every minute.
Fear not, Soldier, you can still shower without voyeurs.”

June could see that I was shocked by her
complete acceptance of the supernatural and reached across the
table and grabbed my hand. “Johnny,” she said, “It’s ok to be a
little afraid of ghosts. They’re beyond our complete comprehension,
but I promise you they are not to be feared. Besides, you have a
gift—the ability to see them far more so than most other
people…Yes, Lilly told me about your eye a long time ago—so you
among all people need to be ready to accept them for who they
are.”

I wanted to tell June that I was not afraid
of the ghosts but I had been afraid of how she would respond when
faced with one. But I decided that it would be kinder to let her
think that I had been afraid of the supernatural, and that she had
assuaged my fears.

So I thanked her for the talk and told her
how much better I felt. And that was true, I did feel better, but
only because I understood that life was getting weirder and weirder
and it was a comfort to know that June was ok with that.

I still had Rose on my mind and felt like I
needed a little time to myself in order to fully process what was
rapidly becoming the weirdest morning of my entire life, so I
excused myself from the table and went upstairs to think.

When I got to my room I sat on my bed and
went to my dresser where I kept my old battered dictionary. I had
not used the dictionary for several years, but had never forgotten
its importance in my life. It was bound to be a priceless treasure
that I would keep until my dying day.

I opened up the dictionary, not to find a
word, but to find a note; a note that I had stuck inside of it
years before. Because the note had been kept for so long inside the
dictionary, it was still in remarkably good condition.

I took the note and placed the dictionary
back in the drawer. Then I walked over and sat on my bed. I sat
there for quite some time just staring at the note, reading aloud
softly, over and over.

La tristesse se lave l'âme, mais il peut se
laver l'âme de suite.

Having studied French on my own and at the
Academy, my French had gotten rather good and I could have
translated the note verbatim even if I had not already known what
it said. As it was, I was able to read it aloud in French with very
little accent.

After reciting the message several times, but
being unable to conjure up the sensual imagery that had accompanied
the note in my youth, I lay back on the bed and stared at the
ceiling feeling glum.

I whispered to the ceiling, “Where are you,
Rose? Where did you go? I want to see you once more.”

Deciding that lying around feeling sorry for
myself because I could not see nor contact a dead girl that I was
not even certain existed was a bad idea, I got up and set the note
on my night table and headed back downstairs.

I still had a new book to read, summer still
belonged to me, and I did not intend to spend it pining away on
imaginary romance.

By the end of the day I had managed to read
most of my book, take in a few hours of television, cook supper for
the family (Miss Lilly seemed to be pretty busy that day), and
almost forget about the yearning I had been overwhelmed with
earlier that day.

Louie apparently had decided not to join us
for supper, or perhaps had been unable to join us, for Miss Lilly
was alone when she came to the supper table.

She seemed to be in a strange wistful, yet
joyful mood through supper, but she did not say much. June and I
had enough courtesy not to pester her with questions about her day,
and instead we began discussing our favorite books, many of which
all three of us had read at some point in our lives.

After supper Miss Lilly and I did the dishes
together and she opened up a bit more about her day, telling me
about the talk that she’d had with Louie, and how he’d managed to
materialize for her three more times that day, though only for a
few seconds each time.

I had developed a new fascination for how the
spirit world worked and had a million questions for Miss Lilly as
she washed and I dried.

Miss Lilly seemed happy enough to answer my
questions as best she knew how and I learned many things about
ghosts—or Shadows as Miss Lilly referred to them.

One thing I learned was that a wandering soul
is not always trapped here; she used Louie as an example.

“Now my Louie,” she said, “him is no’ stuck
here in dis world. Him be able to come visit often, but him free to
travel between dis world and de spirit world. But him not be able
to stay long in dis world. It use all him energy to be here, an’
him has to go back to de spirit world sometimes to charge up him
batteries, cause him not be learnin’ how to charge up all de way
here yet.”

I also learned that it takes a spirit, or
soul, ghost or Shadow—whatever you choose to call it—a very long
time to learn how to control the energy in their new spirit
body.

The spirit body is pure energy, and just as
it takes an infant a long time to learn to control their physical
body, it takes the dead a long time to figure out how to control
their new spiritual body.

Generally the spirits learn to manipulate
objects first, then they learn to manifest themselves into a
physical appearance, and finally they learn to communicate vocally,
but it takes them a very long time to achieve all three steps. And
it takes a tremendous amount of energy to achieve any behavior that
would alert us to their presence.

I was fascinated by all the information that
Miss Lilly was giving me and I considered her to be quite an
authority on the subject, so it startled me a little bit when she
suddenly stopped washing dishes and started asking me
questions.

“Boo,” She said, “dis mornin’ you done told
me dat you could smell my Louie, even b’fore you could see
him.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I replied, “I could
smell pipe tobacco, really strong. It was almost like someone had
actually just lit a pipe right next to me and had blown the smoke
into my face.”

Miss Lilly put on a contemplative countenance
and said, “Hmm. Den you says you seen him when I could no’ see
him?”

I pictured the scene from the morning in my
mind and answered, “Yeah, I could see… like a shadow of him,
standing beside you with an arm around your back. But I could not
see any features or anything. He was just a transparent one
dimensional form of a man, kind of gray colored.”

“I ain’t never done heard of no one wit’ de
eye also havin’ a nose for de Shadows, Boo. An’ I always been
considered strong in de eye, but I could no’ see nothin’ dis
mornin’ when you could. I tink, Boo, dat you eye be de strongest
eye I ever done hear tell of, an’ you gonna have great power with
de Shadows. You gonna be helpin’ many o’ dem where others can no’
help.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was
uncomfortable with the idea of being better than anybody at
anything, and especially when it came to the supernatural and Miss
Lilly. I did not think I wanted the responsibility of having some
strange gift that let me see the dead where others could not, and
certainly did not want the responsibility of helping the dead.