The Lovely Shadow (38 page)

I vaguely remember one of the men clasping a
strong hand on my shoulder and asking me if I was going to be ok,
and I think I gave him a vague reply indicating that I’d make out
all right, I just needed some time to settle into reality of her
death.

The men loaded the gurney into the back of
the ambulance and drove down the long driveway. I watched them
pulling away and Elle stood beside me, with her head on my
shoulder, offering me all the comfort she could and watched with
me.

June had been determined to see me graduate.
She was far too weak to make it to the ceremony the previous night
but I brought home a video-tape of the ceremony and sat on the edge
of her bed with her while we watched it together.

When the tape revealed me in my cap and gown,
shaking hands with the Dean and claiming my diploma, June wept
openly.

“I am so proud of you, Baby,” she said in a
weak and tear choked voice. “You are so special to me Hon, I hope
you know that.”

I looked at her frail, skeletal face, and
wept just as freely as she was weeping.

“I know, June. I really do know. And I love
you more than words can ever say. You are my hope, my salvation…My
true Mother. I would be either dead or worthless if it had not been
for you June.”

“I love you too Sugar-Pie. I love you
too.”

With those words she let her head sink deeper
into the pillow and fell asleep. I leaned down and kissed her
feverish forehead and whispered to her that I loved her, and I
crept silently out of the room, closing the door behind me.

The dust cloud that the ambulance had kicked
up had already settled when I snapped back from my memory and I
wondered how long I had been standing there staring out the window
but not seeing the world.

Elle was still beside me, trying to comfort
me, trying to snap me out of my daze, trying to save me from
drowning in the deep lake of despair that had welled up suddenly
inside me.

I understood that June had held on longer
than necessary, suffering the pain willingly, just so she could see
me off into adulthood. Once she saw me safely across that
threshold, she let go.

I was lost. I wasn’t even sure where I was
at. I wandered through the empty house, room by room and marveled
at the silence that pressed in on me from the oppressive walls and
high ceilings.

Elle followed me and I could see her lips
moving but I seemed to have become deaf, for I could not hear her
words.

I wandered into Miss Lilly’s bedroom and
stared at the empty space. I wept for her. I missed her. Next I
wandered into June’s room. The smell of death still hung in the
air, June’s body having voided itself when her muscles relaxed in
death, but I could only barely smell. I called her name and was
strangely surprised when she did not reply.

I heard Elle screaming at me to stop, to look
at her, to snap out of my grief before it consumed me, but I wasn’t
listening. I wanted the grief to consume me.

I wandered through June’s bedroom and
confirmed to myself that it was really and truly empty before I
crossed the hall to my own room. I sat at my window and stared
outside.

Spring was just beginning to make way for
summer and all the flowering bushes, shrubs and trees were wearing
their most regal outfits of the year, ushering in the summer with
all the pomp and circumstance of a royal coronation.

As I sat and stared out the window, Elle
seemed to have given up trying to speak and instead just stood
behind me with her hands on my shoulders, weeping quietly. I
reached up and put a hand on one of hers and stared blankly out the
window for awhile before speaking.

“The blooms are beautiful, Elle. It’s like
nature sent a bouquet for June’s funeral, isn’t it?”

Elle responded but all I heard was a
murmur.

I turned and looked at Elle.

“You are beautiful too, my Love. You are the
most beautiful, precious person that has ever graced this world,
Elle. I am glad I have you. I’m truly glad, my Dear.”

I heard another murmur from Elle.

“Elle, did you know that June was the last
physical thing in this world that ever mattered to me? My
brother…dead; my mother…dead; Miss Lilly…dead; June…dead; and you,
my Love…dead. What is left for me here my Love, but emptiness and
sorrow?”

Elle murmured.

I looked at Elle and said, “Of course, Dear,”
even though I had no idea what she had just said. Then I said
“Well, my Sweet, I’ll see you in the antechamber.”

Then I jumped onto the window shelf and leapt
through the glass panes of my second story window. I plummeted to
the ground and landed squarely on my head, breaking my neck and
dying instantly.

From Elle’s description of the events
following death I had fully expected to find myself in an
antechamber with exits on either end. I was certain that I would be
able to see Elle standing through one blurry exit, and I would go
the her and grasp her hand, and together we’d walk hand in hand
into the antechamber and through the other blurry doorway and find
ourselves in eternity, happy and carefree, surrounded by loved
ones.

Instead, I found myself in the dark. I was
surrounded by absolute darkness without so much as a single photon
to illuminate even a tiny speck. The darkness seemed to have a
physical presence to it and I found it suffocatingly familiar. I
was in the basement, in the pitch darkness of the dead of
night.

I screamed in terror. I could not imagine a
worse fate. My voice carried no weight, but instead sounded hollow.
The darkness seemed to absorb my scream even as it flew from my
lips.

I began to panic. Although I had never been
claustrophobic before, I was suddenly overcome by the sensation
that I was being pressed in upon from all sides at once, trapped in
a shrinking box.

I tried to relax, tried to calm myself, tried
to assure myself that this wasn’t real. My assurances carried no
more weight than my voice had. I knew where I was and what had
happened with absolute certainty.

Although I was in the basement, I was not
really in the basement. I was in Hell.

Hell is not, it turns out, a fiery lake of
burning sulfur. At least it’s not for me, and I imagine that for
millions of other souls trapped in the pits of eternal suffering,
Hell does not resemble fire and brimstone either.

Hell is the eternal embodiment of those
things which we fear the most while we are alive. It is different
for each person. For one man, Hell may be a pit filled with giant,
hairy spiders, and glass smooth walls that can never be climbed,
for another it may be a pit of snakes. I imagine there is probably
some poor lost soul who’s Hell is a small room filled with leering
clowns.

For me, Hell is darkness; darkness and
silence and caustic loneliness. And this is the Hell I found myself
in shortly after committing suicide.

Another interesting note about Hell; Hell
exists outside the flow of Time. While in the physical world, Time
is a cruel master to whom all mankind finds themselves enslaved.
Humans will never, in the physical world, find a way to overcome
the ravages of Time and exist happily or eternally.

I think, perhaps that when Adam took a bite
of the fruit in the garden, he unleashed much more than knowledge
and death; he unleashed the demon, Time.

The irony is that in the physical world the
existence of Time is merciless, causing much grief and sorrow
throughout all humanity but in Hell, it is the absence of Time that
causes much sorrow.

In the absence of Time, a minute lasts a
thousand years, and a day is infinity. There is simply no way to
comprehend how long one has been imprisoned in the pits of despair
and every moment—if moments exist at all—is an incomprehensibly
immeasurable unit which intensifies the hopelessness.

I struggled in the dark to understand just
why I had entered the darkness instead of the antechamber. The only
answer that came to me was that it was because I had committed
suicide, which apparently was, as the Catholics had been
proclaiming for centuries, an unforgivable sin.

The problem with my suicide theory was that
Elle had also committed suicide, and yet instead of Hell she had
found the antechamber and eternal bliss was only a doorway away for
her at all times.

Unfortunately her fear had left her incapable
of entering that bliss.

As the centuries passed every single second,
I had plenty of time to unravel the mysteries of death and of
ghosts.

In death, the consciousness seems to expand,
allowing more comprehension of all things, physical and spiritual,
than is possible while tethered to our earthly bodies.

Suicide, I decided, was the reason I’d been
sent to Hell. The reason Elle had not been sent was because she had
gone insane prior to killing her flesh. By releasing her sanity,
she had also released her consciousness, and had, in reality,
already died, even though her body was still functioning.

The body is a biological specimen that exists
in three parts: the physical, the spiritual and consciousness.

The physical body is easy to explain; it is
the flesh and blood and tissue and water.

The spiritual is also easy enough to explain,
it is the soul. The soul is the battery that powers the body.

The consciousness is more difficult to
explain, but it is to the soul what the brain is to the body.

When one gives way to insanity, they separate
their consciousness from their soul and body. Most of the time the
consciousness and soul—both being ethereal—will reunite after the
death of the body releases the soul from its fleshy captivity.

They are drawn together like magnets which
have their opposite poles turned towards one another. I’m not
certain if the consciousness and soul are even aware that they were
separated or that they have been reunited.

Once reunited, the spiritual being is once
again whole, and unless they would have already been destined for
Hell before their insanity set in, they will find themselves in the
antechamber and faced with a choice.

When a consciousness is unable to reconnect
with a soul after death, the consciousness is doomed to remain
trapped in the physical world until Gabriel blows his horn and all
bits and pieces of all humans who have ever existed are called
forth from all realms in order to stand judgment before the throne
of God.

At that moment, souls, consciousnesses, and
bodies will be reunited and reassembled, but until then, a lost
consciousness is an alien wanderer in the physical realm—or, in
other words, a ghost.

A ghost is not the soul of the deceased, but
the very essence of the deceased; an essence separated not from its
physical body, but separated from its spiritual body.

Perhaps it would be easier to describe the
consciousness simply as the soul of the soul and allow you to
assume that a ghost is a lost soul.

A soul that has lost its consciousness and
does not reunite after death becomes a poltergeist. Many assume
poltergeists to be malevolent spirits, but they aren’t. They are
simply masses of ethereal energy without a consciousness to guide
them. As a result they become destructive, unable to control
themselves.

A poltergeist is like a car. A car is not
malevolent, but a car in motion without a driver to control it
becomes a destructive force that is best avoided.

In short, for every ghost that is trapped in
the physical world, doomed to wander restlessly until it either
finds its soul or hears Gabriel’s mighty horn, there is also a
poltergeist wandering about blindly, causing destruction without
knowing it.

Since Elle had separated her soul’s soul from
her physical body before killing herself, she was no longer
responsible for anything that her physical body and soul did in the
physical world. Her soul no longer had a brain—or a soul of its
own, rather—and was therefore no longer controlled by Elle in any
way. That lack of control made her innocent of suicide, unlike me,
who knew full well what I was doing when I jumped out of the
window.

Had I been insane I would have been allowed
to stay behind as a ghost and could have walked into eternity hand
in hand with Elle.

Dear God, how I wished I had been insane.

Instead, I am afraid I remained completely
sane, and well aware of my actions. Despondency is not nearly the
same as insanity and therefore my moment of selfish weakness cost
me my life as well as an eternity of bliss and doomed me to an
eternity in the dark.

Even worse, my actions had cost Elle an
eternity of joy as well, for I was certain that she would not find
the courage to enter into eternity alone.

A hundred thousand years in the darkness, or
perhaps only a second. I’m not sure, there’s no Time in Hell.

The more presence one has in Hell, the more
terrifying it becomes. I must call it “presence in Hell” because
one does not spend “time” there.

Eventually (however long it was really was I
can’t say) I was no longer alone in the darkness. I felt the tiny
feet of Dermestid beetles scurrying across my body. One does not
wear clothes in Hell and the beetles had plenty of places where
they could taste my flesh.

I swatted and scratched incessantly but could
not ever seem to scrape the little bastards off of me. I could feel
them biting me. They clawed, they squirmed, they bit and scratched
without ceasing, for thousands of years in the darkness, or perhaps
only a second. I’m not sure, there’s no Time in Hell.

Eventually, along with the sound that
millions of chittering beetles were making while chewing on my
flesh, there came another sound. Distant voices that came from
everywhere and nowhere reached my aching ears.