The Lovely Shadow (5 page)

I turned my body carefully to the side and
placed my left ear against the door and listened intently for my
Mother’s footsteps or any other sound that would let me know she
was in the vicinity of the door.

Hearing nothing except the muted ticking of
the large wall clock that hung in the kitchen directly opposite the
door, I finally summoned up enough courage to open the door. I
pulled my head away from the door and released the death grip I’d
had on the banister and felt around for the door knob. When I at
last had a handful of cold brass I leaned in and listened again.
Nothing but ticking was audible on the other side of the door. I
turned the knob slowly with a feeling of apprehension growing in my
chest. I wasn’t certain why I was so terrified but I was powerless
to stop the feelings.

When the door knob turned to its maximum
limit, I heard the small click of the catch being released from its
hole in the door jam. Then a tsunami of images roared through my
head. I could almost see my mother standing silently on the other
side of the door, wearing that damned wedding dress, her face
puckered, glowering at the door; waiting.

Just standing there waiting for me to open
the door so she could begin her horrid screech. I played the whole
scenario in my mind. The door would open and there she’d be. She
would screech; she would raise her arms out in front of her and
lunge at me. Both of her hands would catch me square in the chest
and knock me backwards down the stairs. As I tumbled head over
heels down the stairs I would catch glimpses of her standing there
with her arms now crossed over her breast with a sardonic,
triumphant smile on her face.

I would lay broken at the bottom of the
stairs staring up at her and she would close the door, leaving me
yet again in the darkness. Then she would silently stand there
again, waiting, just waiting for me to climb to the top and open
the door so she could push me down again.

I blinked my eyes closed hard and shook my
head violently back and forth, trying to chase away the dark
fantasy that was playing through my mind. I only partially
succeeded but I knew it was now or never. I took a deep breath and
pushed the door hard and began rushing forward, hoping that if she
was standing on the other side, the force of the door swinging open
would knock her over and give me time to rush into the kitchen
before she could push me down.

Instead of rushing triumphantly into the
daylight of the kitchen I bashed my face right into the door which
had remained steadfastly shut. The force of the impact knocked me
off balance and I very nearly did fall backwards down the stairs
but my grip on the doorknob saved me. My sweaty palm slipped a bit,
but in the end remained attached to the doorknob allowing me to
pull my flailing body back from the abyss.

After righting myself at the top of the
stairs I stood there staring blankly at the door, breathing in big,
gasping breaths. It took me a bit to shake off the fear and
confusion that had resulted from my near fatal plunge down the
stairs. My fear of my Mother hiding on the other side of the door
was slowly draining out of me and being replaced with another
fear.

Hoping against all else that my second fear
was as unfounded as my first, I tried the door again. I turned the
knob very slowly until I heard the click and the knob refused to
turn any further. Then I pushed gently against the door. It didn’t
budge. I pushed a little harder. It didn’t budge. I pushed as hard
as I could. It didn’t budge.

My heart sank as the realization set in. The
door had a deadbolt set high up on the other side, a cautionary
device that my Mother had put in years before to ensure that us
kids would not accidentally get the door open and fall down the
stairs. Now it appeared that instead of using the deadbolt to keep
me out of the basement, my Mother was using it to keep me in.

Fear flowed up inside me like water gushing
out of an artesian well, overriding my previous state of shock. I
now know that although the television shows tell you to cover a
shock victim with blankets and lay them down and elevate their feet
and all manner of other inane crap, none of this is necessary. If
you simply scare the bejesus out of them it works as an instant
shock removal system.

I was more frightened at the prospect of
being locked in the dark than I had been of any of my Mother’s
irrational beatings and behavior. I gripped the knob again and
shouldered the door. It didn’t budge. I hate to admit it, but I
freaked out a little bit at this point.

I hit my shoulder against the door again and
again with no results. I tried to kick it but nearly lost my
balance and tumbled down the stairs so I quickly gave up that
tactic. I began screaming a primal scream, with no words, no
articulation at all, and went back to slamming my shoulder into the
door. Sweat began to roll down my forehead and into my eyes. My
hand started slipping on the knob as sweat broke out on my palms,
making them greasy. I could feel my eyes bulging out of my head as
they were sprung open to their maximum limit. And still I screamed
bloody murder and slammed my shoulder mercilessly into the
door.

I continued this way until my strength
finally left me and I had to give up my molestation of the door and
sit down. I was too tired and sweaty to continue. I felt depleted
and defeated.

I don’t know how long I waged that fruitless
assault against the door, but I know it was a good long while. I
think that during that battle I was as close as I have ever come to
becoming insane like my mother. The only thing that differentiated
my mindset from hers was that in the back of my mind I held onto a
gossamer thread of sanity that told me I was acting
irrationally.

In short, I knew my efforts were useless and
I was not deluded into thinking that I would somehow get a
different result by continuing to use the same course of action,
whereas my mother never knew she was being irrational. That
knowledge may have been a small difference between me and my
mother, but it is a difference that saved me from being like her
and I have often thanked God since that day that I’m not insane
like my mother.

Sitting at the top of the stairs in the dark,
my situation began to come into focus more clearly. My mother had
beaten me until I blacked out, then she carried me to the basement
and locked me in. She was utterly insane, with no hope of recovery;
I was trapped in the dark with no hope of escape—wounded, hurting,
and tired.

I began to cry again. That crying session was
not the same as all the previous ones I’d had that day, (I thought
it a miracle that I had any tears left in me at that point, but
apparently I did). That was not a session of tears that was brought
on by pain or fear; it was a session of plain old indulgent self
pity.

I sat there crying as I marveled at how
unfair life had been to me thus far. I had no father, I had lost my
brother, and my mother had become increasingly abusive as she
succumbed to her Sickness. Now I was locked in the dark, alone and
broken, with puke on my clothes, and no response from my psychotic
mother on the other side of the door.

When I finally grew tired of bemoaning every
little detail of my life I decided it was time to get moving. Since
the light switch was on the other side of the door, I was going to
be stuck in the dark. And since I couldn’t budge the door, I was
stuck in the basement.

Those were very unpleasant circumstances but
I knew I couldn’t just sit there at the top of the stairs for God
only knew how long, waiting and hoping that my mother would come to
release me. And besides, I was hungry. All the action from the day
had made me quite ravenous.

I stood up and felt every muscle in my body
creak and groan in protest of the movement. I turned carefully away
from the door and gripped the handrail on my left in a death grip,
and slowly plodded my way back down the stairs being every bit as
meticulous as I had been on the way up.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I reached the
bottom, I decided the first order of business should be locating
that infernal stool that had caused me so much recent discomfort. I
stared straight ahead and moved forward slowly, shuffling my feet
across the ground rather than lifting them up until I bumped into
the stool. I picked the stool up (no easy task with bent, sausage
sized fingers on one hand) and carried it over to the drier and
placed it on top, out of my way.

That task done, my next task was to try and
find food. I turned toward the rack with all the dry and canned
goods and was surprised to see that I could almost make out its
shape in the darkness. Just enough light was shining down from the
bottom of the door to cast the rack in a very faint grey wash.

I looked around me and found that I could see
very faintly all around. The light from the door spilled all the
way down to the floor to a distance of about six feet out from the
bottom stair. The back end of the basement was still in complete
darkness, but the area around the stairs had some light. I smiled
wide; that was the best thing that had happened to me since
finding, and falling in love with, Kim Basinger. That discovery of
gloomy light might have actually been even better than the
discovery of Kim.

Still smiling, I shuffled over to the food
rack and began to root around for something I felt like eating.
That was a rather difficult task because although there was enough
light to make out the general shape of the objects on the shelves,
there was not enough light to actually read the labels to see what
food was contained within the packages.

I picked up a box I guessed was graham
crackers and gave it a shake. I’m not sure what was actually in
that box but it didn’t feel or sound like graham crackers so I set
it aside and found another box. Shaking that box, I decided that it
likely was graham crackers, and tore it open with gusto. It turned
out that it was indeed graham crackers.

I had pulled a pouch of cracker from the box
and was just getting ready to tear it open when I decided that
there was no reason I should be uncomfortable while I ate. I set
the crackers down and made my way carefully to the back of the
basement where I knew there were a couple chairs, including a
folding lawn chair that reclined back into several positions.

Finding the wall of junk in the dark was easy
enough, but finding the chair I wanted amid the bramble of junk was
less so. As I searched I began to get creeped out, feeling like I
might not be alone in the dark end of the basement, so I sped up my
search as much as I could.

After I located the chair I had to dig it out
of its ensnarement within the tangle of accumulated but seemingly
unneeded possessions. With my right hand hurting so bad that it was
virtually useless, I had to do most of my pulling, moving, and
digging with my left hand only. It was quite a chore and when I
finally freed the chair I wasn’t certain it had been worth the
effort.

I dragged the chair back over by the stairs,
where I could just fit it into the circle of grey light that was
filtering down and got it all set up the way I wanted. I had the
back slanted backwards and upwards, and the feet slanted up. I lay
down in the chair with my head tilted slightly back, my box of
crackers in my lap, and my feet propped up and I felt amazingly
good.

I imagined I was a king laid out on his
throne with a multitude of servants about me to serve me my daily
allotment grapes. It is surprising what a small modicum of comfort,
a tiny little bit of light, and a lap full of your favorite snack
can do for your disposition.

I munched contentedly on the crackers until I
had eaten the whole box. I patted my belly and smiled in the dark
and thought about just how wonderful my little prison might be.
Then I noticed how thirsty I was.

‘Well of course you’re thirsty ya big dummy,’
I thought to myself. ‘Ya done cried out all the water in your body
today.’

I started to get up so I could go get some
water but stopped halfway through. It had just dawned on me that I
did not have a sink or any glasses down here. I could not get
water.

I slumped back into my chair with a groan. I
had just a moment where I started to panic but managed to swallow
the panic back down my dry throat. I figured I’d done enough
panicking for one day.

‘No, Johnny,’ I thought, ‘you’re not going to
panic this time. You’re going to sit here and think about this
situation logically until you come up with a solution.’

So I sat there. I no longer felt so great and
certainly did not entertain any more delusions of grandeur as I
sat.

I sat in my chair for about 10 minutes,
staring blankly at the grey outline of the washing machine in front
of me and trying to ignore the fact that I was thirsty.
Unfortunately, it seemed like the more I tried to forget my thirst,
the stronger my thirst grew. Soon I felt like I couldn’t swallow.
My mouth dried up like I’d filled it with cotton and absorbed every
drop of moisture that was in it.

My tongue felt like sandpaper against the
roof of my mouth. But I didn’t panic. Instead I sat and tried to
think. I was growing increasingly frustrated the longer I sat
there, convinced that I was going to die of thirst, with no ideas
for solving my dilemma coming to me. Finally I gave up being
frustrated and went to being pissed off instead.

I was pissed off at the washing machine, of
all things.

“You piece of crap old tub!” I hollered at it
as I jumped up from my seat and prepared to give it a swift kick.
“You think you’re awful smart don’t you? Just sitting there waiting
to dump your precious water all over some dirty laundry while I’m
sitting here dying of thirst!”