The Lovely Shadow (9 page)

I got the pants down in time and squatted
over my bucket and did my business. Although I thought that I had
been clever up to this point, I realized as soon as I had done my
dirty deed that I had not thought this process through completely.
I had nothing to wipe with.

I thought for a second and remembered the
dryer full of towels. So I shuffled over there with my feet as far
apart as I could get them with my pants around my ankles. I made it
to the dryer without incident and dug around until I found a small
washcloth in with the bigger towels.

I used the cloth to clean myself and got my
pants back up. Then I wondered what I should do with the cloth. I
didn’t want to throw it in the washing machine just yet because I
still needed to get water out of there and the idea of doing that
with a poop soiled rag at the bottom of the tub struck me as just a
little bit gross.

I likewise didn’t want to leave it on the
floor for fear of accidentally stepping on it in the dark, not to
mention that I didn’t want my dark world to smell like an outhouse
if I could help it.

I sighed…I was going to have to go back into
the dark on a guerilla raid for more supplies. I needed the picnic
basket that I knew was back there. I also wanted to find some
canning jars I could use to stockpile water, and hopefully a lid
for my potty bucket.

I stood there staring into the darkness for
some time, telling myself that there were no unspeakable monsters
lurking in the dark, but my courage kept being usurped by the
memory of the horror that hid in the dark, just out of sight, in my
dream.

“Don’t be an idiot, Johnny.” I said aloud.
“You’ve been back there before and the worst thing you ran into was
a tiny mouse.”

My voice sounded strange to me in the quiet
darkness, and my imagination immediately began trying to convince
me that something in the dark was going to answer my not so
convictive argument.

Wanting desperately to not hear that response
from the dark, I kept talking out loud.

“There you go again, Johnny; being stupid.
There is nothing back there but mice, and maybe a bug or two.”

As soon as I said the word ‘bug’, I knew I’d
done a great disservice to my bravery. At once my memory brought
forth an image of flesh eating beetles I’d once seen on a nature
show; Dermestid beetles, they were called.

There was nothing inherently wicked in their
appearance, they looked like any normal, run-of-the-mill beetle;
small, black, maybe a half inch long, with a hard black shell. The
creepy part was the way they seemed to swarm over their prey.
Thousands, maybe millions of them, in an undulating black mass were
crawling over a dead cow.

The cow in that show had been dead for a
while. It had bloated and split open, and the beetles were swarming
all over its outer flesh, as well as traveling to and fro through
the opening that had appeared in its belly when it burst.

The cow’s eyes were still open, but its
eyeballs had disappeared, leaving fleshy sockets, into which flies
and beetles were crawling about, feasting. An occasional maggot
wriggled out of the rotting socket and fell to the ground where it
ran the very real risk of being run over by the never ending hoard
of beetles that were still en route to the smorgasbord.

The unfortunate cow’s mouth was open and its
tongue lolled out and rested on the ground. The tongue was no
longer pink, but had turned a sickly brown color and had shriveled
a bit, making it look almost like a gnarled chunk of driftwood.

The woody appearance of the tongue did not
dissuade the persistent beetles and flies, however. If anything,
this seemed to add a layer of decadent delight to the feast, and
the insects munched quite contentedly on the rotting flesh.

The program went on to show time lapse
photography of the cow as the insects finished their work. In a
space of twenty seconds of real time, all the fleshy parts of the
cow vanished. The skin looked like it was dissolving; great chunks
of it disappearing beneath black, wriggling masses of beetles and
white, wriggling masses of maggots, revealing pink meat
beneath.

The holes in the skin spread outward in all
directions at once, constantly spreading until it was completely
gone. At the same time the insects were devouring the outside of
the cow, they were also devouring it from the inside, making the
shape of the cow undulate as the remaining flesh bulged and then
burst, spilling out its grizzly inhabitants.

The beetles, flies and maggots moved about
jerkily as the time lapse put them into fast forward motion. Great
chunks of the cows flesh vanished beneath the carnivorous devils
until bones began to appear through the gaps in the flesh.

At the end of twenty seconds all the insects
had gone, most likely to find another buffet, since all that was
left of the cow was a skeleton, with yellowed bones, and a few waxy
brown remnants of tattered flesh.

With that image in my head, I stood and
stared at the dark wondering how long it would take the bugs in the
dark side of the basement to strip me of all flesh, leaving my
yellowed and waxy skeleton behind. I was sure it would be longer
than twenty seconds.

“Stupid,” I said, finally gathering my
resolve, and started treading into the dark.

As I entered the dark, I transfixed my inner
eye on the face of my brother. Joe had been my best friend and my
protector, and I figured if anybody or anything could keep me safe
as I traveled through the dark places in the world, it would be my
brother, or at the very least, his memory.

As we’ve already discussed, I have a pretty
powerful imagination, so when I imagined my brother, I could
actually see him standing beside me. At just shy of six feet tall,
he was nearly two feet taller than me. His blonde hair was straight
and fine, all cut to the same length, and hung down to his
shoulders, without a hint of curl anywhere, and it swung about
freely with the slightest movements of his head, causing him to
constantly reach up and tuck it back behind his ears to keep it out
of his face.

Joe was thin and tall, but not lanky. It
seemed to me that every feature of his body fit perfectly together,
so much so that there were no awkward parts on him, as there were
on most teenagers I had seen.

As I imagined him standing beside me in the
dark, he seemed almost luminous. A light seemed to shine forth from
him, illuminating the darkness, and I was surprised to find that I
could actually see the objects in the dark around me.

I was able to find the wicker picnic basket
without any trouble at all, because I could actually see it! The
light that was shining in the darkness was not painfully bright,
but it was still brighter than the grey-filtered light that I had
near the stairs.

I grabbed the basket and smiled up at my
imaginary brother. He was looking down at me and smiling the
saddest and most lovely smile I’d ever seen. His bright blue eyes
sparkled with tears that ran freely and unashamedly down his
angelic cheeks.

“Thanks, Joe”, I said excitedly. “Do you know
where the jars are?” Joe pointed to a box that was sitting on the
floor right at the edge of the storage rack with all the food on
it, back in my light circle.

I jogged over to the box with no fear of
tripping because the basement was so well illuminated. I lifted the
flap on the cardboard box, and sure enough, it had about a dozen
quart jars, complete with lids and rings nestled comfortably inside
it.

Smiling at my convenient treasure, I placed
my basket down next to it and turned back to my brother. I was
dismayed to see that he was growing dim. When I first imagined him,
he appeared as solid as a stone, but now he seemed to be fading
slightly, and I could see through him to the boxes stacked behind
him.

My distraction at finding my treasures seemed
to be breaking my ability to concentrate on my brother, making him
disappear slowly, ‘like the cow vanished’, I thought with a mild
shudder.

When I realized that Joe was going away, I
hollered to him, “Wait, Joe! I still need a lid for my bucket! Do
you know where one is?”

Joe, dimmer than he was even a few seconds
before and still crying freely, shrugged his shoulders and shook
his head. I took that to mean that there was not one down here.

As Joe continued to dim, he walked over to me
and ruffled my hair as I looked longingly into his piercing blue
eyes. While he ruffled my hair he mouthed silently to me, and I
could read his lips perfectly; “I love you, Squirt.”

“I love you too, Joe. Do you have to go now?
I’m awful lonely and scared down here.” Joe smiled sadly again, and
a fresh round of tears leaked out of his eyes as he nodded at me,
assuring me that he had to leave.

Joe put his left hand on my right shoulder
and turned his right hand palm up, and swung it out in a horizontal
arc, gesticulating towards the entire area that was encompassed by
the basement. As he did this the whole basement lit up as if there
was a light turned on, and I could clearly see that the basement
was devoid of monsters, and flesh eating beetles.

He returned his right hand from its arc and
placed it on my left shoulder so that both his hands were on me. He
looked directly into my eyes and held my attention while he gave a
slow shake of his head. I understood his meaning perfectly;

‘There is nothing to be afraid of in here,
Squirt.’

Joe had faded to almost invisible, and the
light that he brought with him faded along with him, slowly
returning the basement to darkness. “Wait Joe,” I said. “Do you
know where Mama is? Is she gonna let me out soon?”

Joe’s nearly transparent face darkened
immediately, his eyes flashed, and I could see that he was angrier
than I’d ever seen him before. He pursed his lips and shook his
head slowly back and forth in tiny movements.

While he was still shaking his head, he
disappeared completely, leaving me alone, back in the dark, and
wondering what had made him so angry and what the last head shake
meant.

I stood in the dark after he was gone, and I
wondered if I had really seen him, or if it was just my imagination
kicking into overdrive. I was staring into the dark side of the
basement as I contemplated that puzzle and it dawned on me suddenly
that I was no longer afraid of the darkness before me.

With that revelation came a belief that Joe
had really been there. He might have been dead, but he was not
gone, and he was watching over me, keeping me safe. That knowledge
made me smile in the dark, but at the same time made me all the
lonelier, trapped as I was, in the dark.

Sighing, I turned around and grabbed my box
of jars and my wicker basket and dragged them over to the washing
machine area where my bucket and rag sat, befouled, and smelling up
my cell.

It was much harder to see in the gloom now,
after having experienced the basement in full light, but the light
had served to flash a complete image of the basement into my mind,
and I could bring that image to the front of my mind at will, which
helped me to avoid tripping over any obstacles.

I got my soiled rag picked up and placed it
into the basket and closed the wicker lid. Then went to the dryer
and got a full sized towel to drape over my bucket. I figured that
without a lid, the next best thing was a towel.

When the evidence of my earlier bowel
movement was all taken care of, I turned my attention to my jars
and getting a water supply stored. I dragged them all over by the
washer and turned it on.

I filled all but one jar and put a lid and
ring securely on each of them and set them on top of the dryer. I
guessed that would be a good place for them. I filled the last jar
but did not close up with a lid. The morning had left me rather
parched so I drank it, refilled it, and carried it over beside my
chair. I left the washer on to finish its cycle and wash away my
morning urinations, figuring that I could always start it again at
bedtime.

I wandered over to my pantry and dug up a box
of Ritz crackers and a jar of peanut butter. I returned to my chair
and ate one entire tube of the crackers, dipping each one in the
jar of peanut butter.

As tasty as the snack was, my body was
craving something more substantial than crackers and cereal, which
was all I’d eaten in the last couple days. I went to the freezer
and pulled out a package of frozen hot dogs, and a frozen loaf of
bread.

I had no way to thaw the hot dogs, and
certainly no way to cook them.

It’s gonna take hours for them to thaw out,’
I thought, ‘and by then I will have starved to death!’

I sat down on my chair, holding the hot dogs
and bread, feeling deflated, and listening to the washing machine
chunking through its cycle. I muttered a few curse words as I sat
in the dark, lamenting my predicament.

As I listened to the washing machine, I
thought to myself. ‘It seems pretty wasteful to run the washer with
nothing in it. I should have at least washed my wipe-rag…Yeah, but
still that would have been wasteful; to wash one rag, and then
throw one rag in the dryer. THE DRYER, OF COURSE! The dryer would
work to heat up my hot dogs!’

With my sudden burst of inspiration, I jumped
out of my chair so fast that I nearly lost my bread and hot dogs. I
managed to hold on to them somehow, and rushed over to the dryer. I
considered pulling the towels out, but then decided that the towels
would help cushion the hot dogs as they spun around and around,
riding the sides of the dryer’s drum up to the apex, and then
tumbling back down to the bottom. I really didn’t want to have to
smear my hot dogs onto my bread when I made my sandwich.

I started to throw my bread in the dryer with
the hot dogs, but quickly realized that would be a bad idea. For
one, the heat would dry out the bread and make it crunchy, and for
two, it would squash the bread. And besides, I’d just had a better
idea.