The Lovely Shadow

by Cory Hiles

  I looked towards the dark side of the basement and waited for the usual fear to set in but was pleasantly surprised when it did not happen. Joe had cured me of my fear. He had showed me that there was nothing down here except me and some dusty old boxes.

  Sure there were a few mice, and probably some spiders, but there were no monsters, no portals to other worlds, no flesh eating beetles that were too impatient to wait for me to die before feasting, and certainly no malevolent Snoopy night lights.

  As I entered the darkness I still tread very carefully. Just because there was no longer any fear of the immaterial did not mean I could not trip over the material and injure myself. My hand was still pretty damn sore, as was most of my body, and I had no desire to exacerbate my injuries, nor incur new ones.

  I didn’t bother opening all the boxes and feeling around inside them this time around. I figured I’d be able to tell which box had the books in it by weight. I remembered the book box as being pretty heavy.

  When I came across a heavy box that was sitting slightly away from the rest of the pile, I took the time to reach inside it, and sure enough, it contained books.

  I grabbed the box by the open flaps at the top and dragged it back over to my circle of light to closer inspect its contents and see if I’d found real treasure. Unfortunately, just as the light had been too dim down there to see the contents of the food boxes on the rack, it also proved to be too dim to see the covers on the books.

  I grabbed up five small paperbacks and headed up to the top of the steps with them, where there was (hopefully) enough light to read them by. I tried to sit on the very top step with my back against the door, but this put the light source too low to see anything by it, so I had to slip my butt down to the third step. Sitting there was not as comfortable, but it put the book directly in the beam of light that flooded in from under the door and provided sufficient light for reading.

  I pulled the first book from my stack out and held it in the light; it was a cheesy romance novel, of which my mother had been a big fan before she went completely loony. The second, third, and fourth book were all of the same genre.

  I had fully expected the fifth book to fall into the same category, but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a book of a different sort. It was a tattered old copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

  I had heard of the book before, but I’d never read it. I was excited to find a book I hadn’t read, since I’d already read every book we had on the other side of the basement door—most of them more than once.

  I settled into my stair as comfortably as I could and opened the book. I read it out loud, as was my habit. Reading aloud helped me to remember what I’d read, seeming to imprint the words deep into the folds of my brain, where they could not be easily forgotten. Reading aloud in the basement also helped me to not feel quite so alone.

  “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” I read. And from that first sentence I was captivated. I read through nearly the entire book in one sitting, getting up once to pee, and finally being forced to stop for the day when my light had faded so much I could not make out the words any more.

  I stood up and tried to massage the kink out of my back. Stairs, it turned out, were not comfortable places to sit and read for extended periods. I made my way down the stairs, yawning deeply as I went.

  I had to find something for supper before turning in for the night. I could not ever remember having skipped supper in my life, and just because I was locked in the basement was no reason to start.

  Finding food turned out to be a bit difficult since the light that was dim at the best of times had winked out completely while I was reading. I made a mental note to myself to finish my reading earlier from that point on.

  I felt around on my chair until I found my hotdogs and loaf of bread from earlier. I was considering whether or not to heat the hotdogs with the dryer hose before eating them, but a full body yawn convinced me that they would taste just fine cold.

  I didn’t even bother with the bread; I just swallowed down the remaining three hot dogs cold, and decided that they did, in fact, taste better warm. With that done, I found my bread loaf and carried it as carefully as I could in the dark and placed it on my food rack. I didn’t want to trip over it in the dark.

  With dinner out of the way it was time to set up my bed for the night. Earlier that morning I had relished the chore of moving the chair and mattress around to make my accommodations, but I had been bored then, now I was just tired.

  With a little effort, a couple grunts, and a swear word or two, I got the chair put away and the mattress set up, and laid my blanket out on it. I decided that even though I was pretty tired and just wanted to sleep, I wanted to be just a bit more comfortable than I had been the previous night, so I toddled over to the linens cupboard and dug around until I found a musty smelling pillow.

  With my pillow and blanket in place on my mattress, I was finally ready. I stripped out of my jeans and climbed into bed. It turned out that the pillow was unnecessary; I think I was asleep before my head even touched it.

  I slept soundly through the entire night, and don’t remember dreaming at all, which was certainly a blessing, and awoke the following day after sunrise again.

  When I opened my eyes I could see dust particles floating lazily through the beam of light shining in from above. Spiraling and twisting, the particles appeared to be locked in some kind of waltz, dancing to music that was only audible on a different dimensional plane.

  I lay there for awhile, watching the particles, trying to focus my attention on only one particle at a time; tracing its course with my eyes until it danced out of the light, then finding another to focus my attention on.

  Finally my bladder forced me out of my comfortable trance, and I had to start my day.

  I took care of my morning biology, remembering to get a rag from the dryer beforehand this time, started the washer to remove my urine, and got busy clearing out my night furniture in favor of my day set. I was anxious to get all my morning chores done so I could finish reading my book, but was not so anxious that I was willing to skip breakfast.

  I dug around the rack until I found some Pop Tarts. Those were a perfect breakfast treat because I could easily take them up to the top of the stairs with me and munch on them while I read.

  Chores done, and breakfast in hand, I ascended the stairs and took up my place on the third step from the top where I’d left my book, and sat down to finish reading.

  Having read most of the book the previous day, it didn’t take me long to finish it, and finishing it brought more dismay than satisfaction. Bilbo had been able to escape all the dark places he’d been trapped in, and not just escaped, but escaped with treasure. I was apparently not as fortunate or as clever as Bilbo Baggins.

  The dismay I felt did not just come from coveting the victories of Bilbo; I was also dismayed because while I was reading the book, I was able to be outside of the basement in my mind, and finishing the book placed me back into the real world where I was still stuck in the dark basement.

  There were still no sounds from the other side of the door to indicate that my mother was in the house. Loneliness crept into my soul like ice water, slowly spreading its chill through my entire being. I sat on the stairs and cried for a good long while.

  When I was done crying I felt exhausted and grimy. I figured it was as good a time for a bath as any. I climbed to the bottom of the stairs and headed to the washer. It had long since finished its morning cycle, so I set it up to wash in hot water and got the cycle started so the tub would fill up.

  While it was filling up, I grabbed all the towels out of the dryer and started folding them up and getting them organized into two piles; one for washcloths, and one for towels. I figured that would simplify my life as well as let me know when I was running low on cloths and would actually need to wash laundry in the washer.

  When I was done organizing the towels I set them on the floor in front of the drye
r. There was no room left to stack them on top because of my water jars and my heater hose.

  I reached into the washer and discovered that it was about halfway full of water, which was more than enough, so I reached over and pushed in the knob, stopping the cycle. I grabbed a washcloth off from my pile in front of the dryer and dropped it into the hot water in the washer.

  I had not bothered to put my pants on that morning so all I had to strip out of was my underwear and tee-shirt. Now, stripped, I proceeded to give myself a proper washing from the water in the washer.

  The hot water felt wonderful on my tired body and I wished desperately that I could just climb into the washer and soak my whole body at once, but that was impossible. I could, however, climb up and soak my feet in the drum, and that is exactly what I did.

  It wasn’t as wonderful as a full body bath would have been, and it was kind of awkward to stand up in the washing machine, but it was still better than standing on the cold concrete floor while I washed.

  I stood in the washer, repeatedly dipping my washcloth in the hot water and wringing it out over my head so the hot water could run down my body until the water started to cool. Shivering a bit I climbed out of the washer and back down onto my stepstool.

  I reached over by the dryer and grabbed a towel and wrapped it around myself while I sat on my stool. I stared into the darkness for a bit, feeling melancholy. The bath had lifted my spirits a bit, but not nearly so much as I’d hoped. I was fiercely lonely and I knew it. My mother hadn’t been much for company over the last several months, but at least she’d been another warm body. In the darkness I had nothing; just the silence.

  I was so disconsolate that I would have been happy to see even her here in the darkness. Anybody at all would do; Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, or even Jodie, the pig faced boy from Amityville.

  I screamed out at the top of my lungs, “HELLO…ANYBODY? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING GODDAMMIT!”

  There was no reply. I really hadn’t expected one, but still found myself disappointed that there wasn’t one. Hanging my head in sorrow, I hopped off my stool and dropped my towel on the floor. Without bothering to dress myself, I shuffled over to the book box and dug around until I found a large heavy book with a hard cover.

  Hoping that it would be something interesting that lasted me longer than The Hobbit, I hauled it up the stairs and held it in the light. It was a dictionary.

  “Not very exciting,” I said out loud, “but I suppose it would do me some good to get some kind of education down here.”

  I opened the dictionary up to a random page and started reading the entries. I found that as I read the definitions of words I didn’t know, I also didn’t know many of the words that were used in the definitions. I had to go through the dictionary to look up the words that were used in the definitions, and in those definitions would be more words I was unfamiliar with.

  That little game actually proved fascinating to me and kept me busy for quite some time. When my stomach started rumbling, I knew it was time for lunch, so I closed the dictionary and left it on the top step. I picked up the four romance novels and The Hobbit, which I’d left there earlier, and carried them all downstairs.

  I figured that just because I was in a dungeon, there was no reason to let my space get cluttered up with junk. And besides, down there in the darkness, clutter could be a deadly trap.

  I tossed the romance books into the empty space behind the stairs. I had not found any reason to enter that unused space as of yet, and figured that was as out of the way as I could get. The Hobbit, I took more care with and set it gently on the floor, next to the food rack where it was out of the way, but easy to find again in the dark.

  I decided that making anything fancy for lunch was far too much effort so I found a package of Ramen noodles and ate them dry, sprinkling the flavor pack over the noodle wafer as I ate it, and washing the whole thing down with water.

  I was still feeling low after lunch and decided that a nap was in order. I had no energy or desire to pull out the mattress and move my chair, so I just grabbed my blanket, folded the lawn chair out flat, with the head slightly lifted, wrapped my still naked body up in the blanket like a little burrito and lay down and went to sleep.

  I slept an uneasy sleep that was filled with dreams of darkness. More endless corridors filled my sleeping mind, but these corridors lacked deviant Snoopies and were completely devoid of light. There were no horrors hiding in those halls. There were, however, voices. Human voices, so quiet that they were unintelligible, reached my ears from somewhere further down in the darkness.

  I ran towards the voices, screaming.

  “Hey!” I screamed, “Hey, I’m down here! Can you hear me?”

  The voices kept murmuring in the distance, making no indication that they’d heard me.

  I kept running, but never seemed to get closer to the humanity that always stayed just out of reach. I was crying in my dream, screaming; desperate to reach the people in the distance, to find someone, to end my solitude.

  I woke up several times with damp cheeks, sorry to find that it was only a dream and there was really no hope of finding companionship in the basement, and then I’d roll over and go right back to sleep and fall right back into the same dream.

  I’m not sure how long I slept, but there was still light shining overhead when I woke so I decided to get up and find the dictionary at the top of the stairs to pass some more time until it was bed time for real.

  Before heading up the stairs, I decided to set up my bed for the night. I’d woken up with a kink in my neck, and did not want to come to bed later, too tired or lethargic to set up a proper bed.

  I got my bedroom set up and headed up the stairs. I tried the door when I got up top and was not surprised to find that it was still locked. I had long since given up any hope that it might actually open for me, but I figured I had nothing better to do with my time, so I may as well try.

  I settled into my third stair with a grunt and picked up my dictionary. I flipped it open to a random page and began my little game of chasing definitions through the dictionary. After a couple hours of chasing words, a time in which I was mostly able to forget my predicament, I started to encounter a new problem.

  I started running out of words in the definitions that I didn’t know. I was learning too fast. There were still tens of thousands of entries in the dictionary that I didn’t know the meanings of, but the simplified words that the book used in its definitions were rarely alien to me anymore.

  I needed to invent a new game with the dictionary if I was going to have it keep me occupied. I was wondering what game I could invent when I noticed that the light was starting to turn reddish orange, and was growing slightly dimmer.

  “Oop, getting late, Johnny. Time to head down before total dark,” I said.

  I closed my book and set it on the top step. I got up to walk away, but saw that the book was slightly crooked on the step, and for some reason that bugged me. I bent down and arranged the book so that the bottom edge of the book was perfectly parallel to the edge of the step that it rested on. Satisfied with its appearance, I headed down.

  I was not terribly hungry, but still wanted something to eat. Having had a nap earlier I was perhaps, not as tired as I would have been without it, but was still tired enough to debate with myself whether or not it was worth the effort to heat up some food.

  I decided it was worth the effort and went to the freezer and dug out a box with two pizza pockets in it. I wasn’t sure how well they’d cook in the dryer vent, but I figured they’d get warm enough to eat.

  I got the dryer going and carefully placed my two pizza pockets right in front of the vent where they’d catch the majority of the hot air blowing over them. I laid down on my mattress and stared up at the darkness while I waited for my supper to heat up.

  I tried to visualize Joe’s face in the darkness, but instead kept seeing pages from the dictionary swirling around in my mind’s eye. I d
ecided that I was going to need some different reading material. Learning new words was interesting, certainly, but did nothing for my loneliness. If anything, the stark, unemotional pages of knowledge that I had buried myself in throughout that day were only serving to intensify my desolation.

  I needed to find books in that box that contained people. People involved with other people, people that had conversations, and got into situations. That was the only way I was going to hold onto my own sanity and overcome the crushing loneliness that was enveloping me.

  I figured I would go book searching first thing in the morning, and I felt a little better knowing that I had a game plan for the following day. Having no idea what I was going to do to occupy my time in seclusion was just as crushing as the loneliness itself was.

  I decided that I would try to talk to Joe while I continued to wait for my pizza pockets. I didn’t know much about prayer. My mother had insisted that there could be no such thing as God.

  “There is no God,” she often said to me. “Because if there was, He would never have allowed John to be taken from me, and He would never have allowed Katelyn to trick me into letting your filthy father steal John’s treasure.”

  I never believed what my mother had said about God—even before I understood that she was crazy. I believed in God, and always had. I did not, however know if I should talk to Him directly, and ask Him to tell Joe what I had to say, or if I could skip the middleman and talk to Joe directly.

  I lay there in the dark contemplating those deep theological mysteries for a bit before deciding that God should be quite wise enough to know my intent and see to it that my words would reach their intended recipient.

  I was still hesitant to start speaking because I had no idea what to say, but I knew I really needed someone to talk to, and it was Joe that I was craving.

  “Hey Joe,” I said hesitantly. “How ya doin’. I’m ok I guess…kinda lonely, but I’m ok. I sure miss you, Joe. Thanks for visiting me yesterday; I hope you can come again.”