by Shannon Lamb
She stared at it for a long moment, mulling over the possibilities. It was no coy dog, she’d bet her life on that. It obviously belonged to an animal of a much larger stature. If she hadn’t heard the eerie howls that ripped through the night and left her trembling, she might think it belonged to a bear. Marie stood up and turned to face Amelia, who was just walking out the door on her way to school.
“Hey Amelia, you owe me twenty bucks!”
“What are you talking about?” hissed Amelia. She was not a morning person, and it seemed like she was always in a hurry.
“You bet me twenty bucks that it was a coyote last night, and this here proves it wasn’t!” Marie gloated, pointing to the print imbedded in the ground. Amelia countered her triumphant gaze with a look of confusion.
“I think you need to get your eyes checked.”
Marie looked back at the spot she was pointing to. There was nothing there. Had she been pointing to the wrong spot? Her eyes darted back and forth, grazing the ground frantically, but she turned up nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“I swear, it was right there! Only a moment ago, I saw it! I felt it!”
“Whatever. I have to get going, or I’m going to be late for class,” Amelia rushed past Marie with an armful of books and speedily got into her car and drove off.
“I guess I should get going too,” Marie mumbled wearily to herself.
She spent most of her time at work that day reviewing the events of her morning. She couldn’t help but think about the possibility of wolves living in her area. The prospect left her feeling discombobulated. The part of her that truly considered it a possibility was too scared to go home. What if I get attacked when I get out of my car? Okay, now she was being paranoid.
She knew she was obsessing, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the mysteriously disappearing paw print. She felt it on her fingers. She’d seen it with her own eyes. There was no mistaking what she’d heard the night before, twice! Granted, she often let her imagination get the best of her and almost always overreacted. Amelia’s nickname for her was Chicken Little, and rightfully so.
“This isn’t just in my head. There’s no way!” Just as Marie began quarrelling with herself, a coworker happened to walk by and catch her in the act.
“Is everything alright, Marie?”
“Oh, everything’s fine! It’s been a long day, but I’m lookin’ forward to the weekend!” she replied with mock enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I hear ya! Well, don’t fret. It’s almost over.”
Marie looked at the clock on the wall and realized there was only five minutes left to her shift. Had she really spent the entire day thinking about this morning?
The second Marie’s shift ended, she raced home. She had to look at that spot just one more time. She thought perhaps she could find something else there – anything else – a sign that she wasn’t going out of her mind. Her biggest fear was losing her sanity, just like her mother had right after she was born.
The worst part about her potentially faltering sanity was that her mother had been the same age Marie was now, twenty-four, when she started losing her mind. It hadn’t taken her father long to stuff her mother into a mental institution, and Marie would be even less of an exception. He’d do the same to me in a heartbeat.
Marie shook her head, as if to expel the negative thoughts. She made a point not to dwell on childhood memories. Doing so would surely drive her crazy, if she wasn’t already well on her way there.
WHAT LIES IN THE SHADOWS
Marie practically jumped out of her car before it was in park, and headed straight for the spot she saw the imprint that morning. She knelt down and examined the ground, combing her fingers through the grass as she burrowed her fingertips into the soil.
The sound of footsteps slowly approaching snapped her back to reality. They came to a sudden halt as she jumped to her feet. She stood painfully straight, listening for their continuance like a doe catching wind of a hunter. Whoever was watching her was cunning enough to remain hidden in the shadows.
She turned toward the front door of the house and took a deep breath. She braced herself as she began slowly walking toward the shining beacon of safety, rubbernecked and key-ready. The light echo of footfalls grew synonymous with her own, as if to lull her into thinking she was alone, but Marie was no fool.
Runnels of sweat clouded her vision as her heart hammered in her ears, dulling the senses she so desperately needed. With every new step, she felt a sudden pull to the ground. It was as if gravity was strengthening its hold on her, making it nearly impossible to edge forward.
No longer afraid of discovery, the stranger’s pace suddenly quickened, keeping pace with Marie’s frenzied movements. In a flash of panic, she sprinted for the front door with long, weak strides. Her knees nearly buckled every time her feet slapped down on the pavement, vibrating her lungs like the ring of a gong.
In an explosion of shallow breaths, she dragged herself over the threshold and slammed the door shut. She immediately secured all of the locks, checking them several times over to assure herself that no one could get in. With shaky hands, she drew the curtains closed and pressed her back to the wall. If there was someone following her, she didn’t want to know.
Ignorance is bliss, she reasoned. She was going to pretend as hard as she could that no one had been following her, despite the faint outline of a foreboding silhouette pressing through the curtains. It’s just the shadow of a weird tree or something. For all she knew, she was hallucinating, and there really was no one there. Unfortunately, that would mean she was losing her mind, and she wasn’t ready to face that possibility, either.
Once she was certain she was safe, she grabbed the mag of cheap vodka she and Amelia kept on top of the fridge and took a swig straight from the bottle. She knew the absolute worst thing to do was to stultify her senses, but she was blind with fear and desperately needed to escape the feeling. Hard liquor wasn’t ideal, but it would suffice.
Her fears of a crazy stalker were suddenly confirmed when someone tried to force the door open. Just after, she heard a loud noise that she couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps it was the winding of tumblers coming undone, much like Marie herself at the moment. She took another swig of vodka and buried her face in her knees.
“MARIE!”
How do they know my name? She took another large gulp and shrank into a quivering ball.
“What the hell! You never lock the door. Give me a little warning next time!” Marie suddenly recognized the voice behind the door as her roommate’s.
“A-Amelia?”
“Are you expecting someone else? Open the door, freak!”
“C-coming!” Marie used the bottle for leverage as she struggled to stand, finding it nearly impossible to get a foothold on her balance.
She squared her shoulders in an attempt to regain her composure, and opened the door to find Amelia fumbling around on the ground as she struggled to pick up all of her books. She quickly identified that as the mystery noise she’d heard, and dropped to her knees to help. It was, after all, partly her fault.
“Why did you lock the door? You do realize coyotes can’t open doors, right?”
“Ha-ha,” Marie rolled her eyes. “I must’ve done it on accident. You know me. Always have my head in the clouds.”
Amelia finished picking up her books and stepped inside after Marie. The first thing she noticed was the open bottle of liquor on the floor.
“Been into the liquor, have we?” Amelia’s mood suddenly lightened.
“Well, it is Friday, and I’ve had a long week,” Marie laughed halfheartedly. She was feeling better now that she wasn’t alone, but she still felt on edge.
“For me too. Perhaps I’ll join you.” Amelia set her books down and immediately snatched the bottle of liquor off the floor. She took a swig and sank into their ratty old loveseat with a blissful sigh.
Not wanting to alert her roommate to her growing paranoia, Marie waited until Amelia had look
ed away to relock the door. After all, two drunk girls wouldn’t be much of a defense against whoever or whatever was following her, providing someone was. She took a seat beside Amelia and took a healthy gulp of vodka.
They passed the bottle back and forth, reminiscing over fond drinking memories between swigs. After a couple hours of reliving bittersweet tales with bursts of laughter, Marie felt as if she’d finally calmed down, and would benefit from some sleep.
“I think I’m going to head to bed,” Marie slurred over a big yawn.
“What? But it’s still early!” Amelia protested between hiccups.
“Yeah, I know, but I think I’m going to visit my mom tomorrow. It’s been a while, and I don’t really have a lot going on this weekend, so…I suppose I should.”
“Oh…Well, that’s cool.” Sympathy and understanding slowly filtered into Amelia’s befuddled expression. “Goodnight then. I think I’ll finish this off, if you don’t mind?” Amelia held up the bottle of vodka, giggling.
“Have a blast,” she chuckled, shaking her head.
Marie poured herself into bed the second she’d finished changing her clothes. She felt physically and mentally exhausted, but worried that she might not be able to fall sleep. As tired as she was, she still had an underlying feeling of uneasiness that kept her thoughts incessantly chattering away.
Much to her surprise, she quickly started drifting off to sleep the second her head hit the pillow, but was violently forced awake with a series of breath-wrenching hiccups. She waited to see if they would go away on their own, but after several minutes they were still going strong with no end in sight. She threw her covers off and stalked toward the kitchen, agitated.
Marie clumsily fumbled through the cabinets as she gathered a tablespoon of sugar and a glass of a water; a trick her older brother Junior had taught her to get rid of hiccups. She shoved the spoonful of sugar into her mouth, choking it down as she chugged a lukewarm glass of water. She waited for about a minute to make sure her hiccups had actually stopped and it wasn’t just a false alarm.
“Finally!” she shouted triumphantly over a yawn.
Marie dragged her feet back to her room and closed the door to block out the inhuman sounds coming from her roommate. Amelia was sprawled out on the loveseat, wrapped in the comatose bliss of inebriation and snoring like a beast. She slipped back under the covers and resolved herself to go to sleep, despite the distant racket. A more pressing noise that she couldn’t quite discern stole her attention away.
What is that? She shot up and gave the room a once-over.
Her eyes stopped roaming when she spotted her cat huddled on the nightstand, staring intensely out the window. Lunaroo’s hackles were fully raised as she mustered up the fiercest growl a six pound feline could manage. Marie slung the covers back and scooted down to the edge of the bed, turning to face the window.
“What’s wrong, Lulu?” Marie laughed as the cat attempted to amplify the guttural hum lingering in her throat.
Marie, apparently forgetting the reason she’d drank earlier in the first place and feeling bold because of the lingering effects of alcohol, decided to see what the silly cat was growling at. She leaned forward and slowly pulled the window panels apart, putting her face to face with the most frightening pair of eyes she’d ever seen.
With a startled scream, she tumbled off the bed and slammed her left flank into the sharp corner of the desk as she crashed to the ground. She reached up and grabbed her digital camera from the top drawer, clumsily snapping a picture of the window as she turned away in fright.
She’d foolishly squeezed her eyes shut the second she’d seen what was on the other side of the glass, and hadn’t thought fast enough to turn the flash off. As soon as she heard the camera’s high warbling pitch fade, she popped her eyes open. They were automatically drawn back to the window, but whatever it was that sent chills down her spine was no longer there. She stared blankly into the darkness, finding that it held far too much possibility.
She jerked the curtains closed and crawled back into bed, swaddling herself in the sheets as she pulled the blanket over her head. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me! She began sweating profusely as she clutched the camera tightly in her shaking hands, feeling it occasionally slip from her grasp. Lunaroo continued to pitch a fit, which by no means helped Marie forget what she’d just seen. As if she could forget, anyway.
She lay there for hours, unable to free her mind of the haunting image. The pair of eyes was burned into her memory. Unearthly silver eyes with menacing black pupils encased in blue flame. Who, or what, has eyes like that? She must be seeing things.
Then it hit her. What had prompted her to look out the window? Her cat. Lunaroo had stopped growling by now and was happily curled up by Marie’s feet, but she was the reason Marie had thought to investigate. Before she fully accepted her rationalization, however, she came to the conclusion that she couldn’t base her sole reasoning on a cat that often attacked her own shadow.
Marie suddenly remembered what she was still clutching in her hands. Her camera. It had been hours, but she was still too terrified to look. The idea of a pair of eyes just outside her bedroom window was terrifying, but so was the possibility that she was losing her mind. She wasn’t sure which prospect was more terrifying.
Marie squeezed her eyes shut as she turned the camera on. She held it up to her face, took a deep breath, and slowly opened her eyes to look at the screen. While she’d managed to capture a picture of the spot she was aiming for, the only thing she had to show for it was her startled reflection. She felt relieved and disappointed at the same time. She’d never know if there truly was something out there, but perhaps she was better off not knowing.
One thing was certain, she was definitely going to visit her mother first thing in the morning. She wanted to find out all she could about her mother’s condition and how it started.
She tossed and turned for the next few hours, desperately trying to fall asleep, but she couldn’t relax enough to drift off. When 7 a.m. finally rolled around, she accepted defeat and rolled out of bed.
She quickly got dressed, skipped breakfast, and hit the road; though not before checking every nook and cranny of her car for potential lurking creeps. Thank god Amelia was too busy sleeping off her bender to notice Marie’s frazzled state, or she’d drive her to the mental institution herself.
Depending on the traffic, it was a two to three hour drive to where Marie’s mother was hospitalized – Syracuse Smiles – and she wanted to find out everything she could, as soon as she could.
The second her tires hit the asphalt, a million dark thoughts raced through her head, and she found herself burning rubber to keep pace.
She thought about the things she’d seen and heard these past few days; things that no one else seemed to be aware of. She had nothing to compare her experience to, for her mother was taken away before Marie was out of diapers, and her father refused to speak of the time.
Marie had never even gotten the chance to meet her mother until she was old enough to move away from her father, John Sr. When she was a child, he would visit her mother every chance he had, but Marie was never allowed to come. He told her outright that he blamed her for her mother’s condition, and bitterly reminded her of it every chance he could.
Prior to her unexpected pregnancy, Melissa Waller was a highly esteemed lawyer. She took a bad turn as soon as Marie was born, and had never recovered. Marie often wondered if John Sr. missed the abundant cash flow more than Melissa herself. He wasn’t exactly the sentimental type, nor was he what one would call a hard worker.
Because of her father’s unreasonableness, Marie wasn’t able to get to know her mother until she was eighteen, when Melissa was nothing but a mere husk of her former self. Marie made a constant effort to never think about that mean, miserable old man who’d deprived her of a mother. Yet here she was, driving back to the town where he probably still lived, making it unavoidable.
“This has no
thing to do with him!”
Marie hadn’t talked to her father since she’d moved out six and a half years ago. When she left, she never looked back and that suited both of them just fine, though it didn’t sit well with her brother, John Jr. He still talked to their father frequently, and was angry that Marie made no effort to involve herself in their lives.
Her brother thought of her as a selfish kid that would never grow up. He often told her she needed to get over it, not that he had any idea what it was. Marie blamed her rocky relationship with her brother on her father as well. He passed his rotten genes onto Junior and treated him like the golden child while he treated her like dirt, and was clever enough only to do so when no one was around.
“If Junior only knew half the things he’s done to me!” Marie said through gritted teeth.
She was thankful for the reprieve from her thoughts when she finally arrived at the hospital. Thinking of her past was only making her angry, and she needed to be as calm as possible to face her mother. Melissa’s condition required the utmost patience and endless understanding, and both came at a price.
Marie took a deep breath and entered the hospital as if nothing were bothering her. She ambled up to the front desk with a big smile on her face, preparing herself for the worst. She didn’t recognize the receptionist, though that came as no surprise. She hadn’t been to see her mother in several months, and suddenly felt a sharp pang of guilt as she was reminded of that.
“Hello! Welcome to Syracuse Smiles,” the receptionist beamed.
“Hi,” Marie smiled at the petite blonde woman behind the counter. “I’m here to see my mother, Melissa Waller.” Before the receptionist could answer, a deep voice with a thick southern drawl boomed from the adjoining room.
“Is that Miss Marie I hear?” A hefty, middle-aged woman with dark cocoa skin and slate gray hair wrapped tightly in a bun came running out.
