THE SHADOW

Kurt Jackson flipped the switch on his new desk light. It was aimed right at him, and the light from the bulb pierced his eyes with the fierceness of a small sun. His body blocked the strong beam, projecting his shadow on the back wall of his small office. He quickly adjusted the light downward so that it illuminated the fading white letters on his keyboard. In that instance, his shadow, unseen, escaped from his body and vanished from the room.

Kurt Jackson shivered and then relaxed into his high-backed chair. The hairs on his arms stood erect and sizzled a little as the bright light hit them. He sensed that something had changed--something had gone from him, though he could not fathom what. All he knew was that he felt mellow, and at peace. Usually, there was a degree of agitation when he wrote, an anxiety that bubbled up and spilled out onto the screen as if he were expectorating all of the negative thoughts that welled up inside of him during the day. Usually, he drank while he wrote, sipping bourbon as a way to calm his nerves. Now, however, he wanted a drink because he felt alone. He did not feel like writing, either, but he forced himself to type. He did not pay much attention to what he was writing. His mind kept drifting back to his feeling of contentment and emptiness. In fact, he was not writing at all. He was simply typing gibberish.

The lack of productivity had haunted him for nearly a month. While before, this had become a source of intense frustration, this evening his inability to write did not bother him. He had somehow come to accept that there was nothing left to say. That thought, and all of the decisions that were to emanate from it, gave him a sense of peace.

The shadow shrank into virtual nothingness and slid under the crack of the door, which Kurt Jackson had closed as he always did when he was writing. When the shadow emerged on the other side, it stretched itself to its full height, and higher, scraping its head against the ceiling. It moved in complete silence. The hall was dim, so the shadow blended in. Carefully, it moved up and down the hall. It knew its surroundings, having slunk through the house many times before. The shadow wandered into the kitchen, folding itself over the counter and around the refrigerator. He eyed the knives sitting on the back of the counter, but before he could explore them, he heard a noise. The shadow vanished behind the refrigerator just as Kurt Jackson's wife walked in. She walked straight to the refrigerator, looking straight at the shadow but not seeing it. Opening the door, she grabbed a soda and went back to watching television in the family room. The shadow followed her as far as the edge of the kitchen. The dark formless creature was filled with hatred for the woman. It abhorred her hair, which was naturally straight, but which she had made curly and cut short. It despised her figure, which was no longer an hourglass. Instead, it resembled a balloon. The shade hated her voice, a whiny hum that stopped only when she ate or slept. He hated her face and her hands and her feet. It hated the mole on her cheek.

The shadow inched forward, and then down four stairs to the family room where Kurt's wife had gone. She was sitting sandwiched between two children, a boy of thirteen and a girl of nine. The girl, seemingly sensing movement, looked up at the stairs. She stared right at the shade, which stood motionless, hiding against the wall. After a moment, the girl returned her eyes to the television. The shadow remained still for another moment, then slowly glided down the stairs. The girl looked up again, puzzled. Surely, she had seen something move.

Kurt Jackson sat in his study staring at the letters that he had no recollection of typing. With great effort, he rose out of his chair and reached for the bottle of bourbon that sat just out of arms reach on his bookshelf. The shelf was cluttered with books of various colors and sizes, their bindings snapped and their covers worn. The only books that were in good condition were standing upright on the shelf, side by side. These were the books written by Kurt Jackson. They had never been opened.

He poured bourbon into a dirty glass and took a sip. The whiskey burned his throat, the char flavor scratching in his throat. He shivered because of the strong flavor, and set back to work. He deleted what he had previously written and consulted his notes. Nothing moved him. He tried to edit what he had written before, but words failed to coalesce. He finished the glass of bourbon and poured another. He fiddled with the broken books on the shelf, trying to become inspired.

The shadow watched the little girl watching it. While the shadow may go unseen by adults, the innocence of children was harder to hide from. The apparition hated the little girl, because she knew what it was. She nestled into the side of her mother and averted her eyes from the shadow. With a sudden movement, the shadow flashed down the stairs and across the ceiling of the family room. It clung to the ceiling just above the heads of the wife and her children. It brought with it a feeling of foreboding. The girl looked up at the stairs, but saw nothing. The shadow exhaled, his breath flowing like a breeze on the backs of the necks of the three huddled figures. All three of the family shuddered at the same time. The boy grabbed a blanket that was draped over the edge of the sofa and spread it over them.

“It got chilly in here,” he said.

“We'll probably have to turn the heat on soon,” said his mother.

“Can I get a little more blanket?” asked the girl, tugging on the cover. “This movie is scary,” she said.

“It's not that scary,” said the boy. He was older, and less intuitive. His sense of danger had been dulled by years of the safety of family and school and society. Still, he could not shake the feeling that something was different this evening. He simply chalked it up to the movie. The shadow watched him for some time from its perch on the ceiling. The shadow despised the boy because he was not a believer. He could not see what was right beside him. He could not believe what he could not see or explain.

While Kurt Jackson slowly got drunk in the next room, the shade let its rage fester. It crept along the ceiling, waiting. When the movie ended, Kurt's wife encouraged the kids to bed. The boy knocked gently on the door of Kurt's office.

“Sorry to bother you, dad. We're off to bed,” he said.

Kurt, clearly inebriated, answered the door. With the bourbon bottle still in his hand, he gave his son and then his daughter a hug. His wife stood by, clearly angry with Kurt's drinking. Once the kids had gone to bed, she confronted him.

“You're supposed to be writing,” she said. “Don't you have a deadline?”

“Don't you worry about it,” Kurt replied.

“What about your short stories? Have you sold any lately?”

“Oh, lay off,” Kurt said angrily. “We're doing okay. Writing is not as easy as you think. I can't just make up stories off the top of my head. I have to think.”

“You mean you have to drink,” said his wife.

The shadow, which had followed them into Kurt's office, witnessed the exchange.

“Ah, go away, you hag,” Kurt bellowed. He was a mean drunk. He tried to close the door on his wife, but she stood in the doorway.

“Wouldn't you like me to go away!” she cried. “But someone has to keep you in line.”

“Ah, go away and let me write,” said Kurt Jackson, taking a swig right out of the bottle.

His wife moved from the doorway. “I'm going to bed,” she said. “You can sleep at your desk.”

The shadow stretched itself across the wall like a grin. It listened, and it heard. It followed Kurt's wife into the bedroom, slipping through the door just before she closed it. He watched as the woman undressed and slipped into her nightgown. For a while, it just sat and watched her, concealed in the darkness. When the shade was certain that her breathing was regular and shallow, it morphed into a line and slid effortlessly through the crack under the door. It heard Kurt still in his office, talking to himself in slurred speech and typing aimlessly on the keyboard. The shadow then swirled around like a puff of smoke and worked its way through the keyhole of the daughter's room. The girl was on her back, asleep. The shadow could feel her breath as it hovered just above her face. It began to take form, slowly solidifying. Suddenly, the girl awakened. Her eyes focused on the shadow and she gasped in fear. She tried to let out a cry for help, but the shadow covered her face with its dark image. How he hated her! In the moment, the shadow confirmed everything that the girl thought about it. She knew its darkness, and although she had tried to avoid it, she was trapped in the house with it and could not escape. The shadow pressed down against her face. The girl tried to scream, but her voice was muffled by the darkness. Slowly, against great struggle, the little girl drifted back into sleep. The shadow continued to press, making sure to finish what it had started, feeding on her loathing and fear.

When it had finished with the little girl, the shadow slunk into the son's room. The boy slept soundly on his side, snoring lightly and occasionally talking in his sleep. As the apparition coalesced at the foot of the bed, the son began to mumble “why? Why are you doing this?” almost in a premonition. The shadow hated him. The boy believed in nothing--at least nothing he could not see. He lacked imagination. He was storm of nihilistic denial, and the shadow knew that the boy could never--would never--believe in the absolute absence of light until it was too late.

The shadow moved carefully behind the son, formed two dark arms that enveloped him, and then began to squeeze. The son popped awake and struggled against the darkness, thrashed under the covers like a madman, but he was not strong enough to resist. Slowly, the life drained from him and fed the shadow, who began stronger and more bold. When the son finally stopped struggling, the shadow released him, and his breathless limp shell lay in the bed, no longer mumbling.

At last, the shadow crept back into the main bedroom where Kurt Jackson's wife lay. Of all of them, the apparition hated her most of all. She was everything that the shade was not--loud, present, visible. She was the opposite of silence. Worst of all, she kept the light, the voice of reason and sanity. She was sobriety. The shadow summoned all of its strength, all of its rage, and directed it at her. Its black tendrils wrapped around her throat and began to squeeze. Her eyes bulged from her head. Her hands moved up to her throat, attempting to release the vice, but she found nothing to grab on to. She gasped, tried to form words, but the loss of air disallowed any comment. At last, the shadow thought, she is silent. Her lips turned blue, then pale purple. Her arms flailed, scratching at the air. Her tongue protruded from her now black lips, wagging against her chin. Even after she was nothing more than a lifeless doll, the shadow kept squeezing and squeezing, collapsing the trachea and snapping the hyoid bone.

With these deeds done, the shadow moved fearlessly down the hallway. Kurt Jackson was silent as the shadow slid effortlessly back into the office. There, it rejoined with its maker. Kurt Jackson, drunk and barely able to stand, shuddered at the merging. He put the nearly empty bottle back on the shelf and turned off his desk lamp. He staggered down the hall to his bedroom, fell into bed, and passed out.

The next morning, when he had seen what he had done, Kurt Jackson and his shadow put a gun to his head and fired.