The Lovely Shadow

by Cory Hiles

  Turning to the right, down the length of the hallway, I saw three more doors. Two at the far end of the hall, directly across from each other, just like my bedroom and the one across the hall from it, and one more door in the middle of the hallway, on the same side as my bedroom.

  I decided that the two doors at the end were most likely more bedrooms and my best bet for a bathroom was the middle door.

  I plodded silently down the hall in my stockinged feet and found the center door was opened and that my assumption of the room’s purpose was correct. It was a full bathroom, complete with a large claw-foot tub, pedestal sink, and most importantly, a toilet!

  I admired the bathroom as I stood there taking care of business. It was a pleasant room, sparsely decorated with only two pictures hanging on the wall on either side of the large oval mirror that hung over the sink.

  Both pictures were of landscapes, one showing a seemingly endless field of grain flowing in the wind, and the other showing a plowed field with an old rusted tractor sitting idly in the midst of the dirt sea.

  The large claw-foot tub had a shower installed and a circular railing hung from the ceiling, encircling the entire circumference of the tub. A shower curtain hung from the rail and was currently pulled open at the front, to reveal the spotless interior of the tub.

  The shower curtain was not brightly colored or gaudy, but rather a plain tan curtain with no artwork or embossed patterns to decorate it.

  A pipe ran up from the floor at the head of the tub, and extended up about 6 feet above the bottom of the tub. A shower head was affixed to the top of the pipe, and about halfway up the pipe, a basket was fastened to it. The basket held a washcloth, bottle of generic shampoo, and a bar of white soap.

  The bathroom floor was covered with vinyl flooring, embossed with tan colored squares that were a nearly perfect color match to the shower curtain. The squares were about six inches on all sides and were accentuated by white lines that gave the appearance of grout around each square.

  Aside from the two pictures, there were no other decorations to distract the busy patron of the room.

  The room was painted high gloss white and was lit from a single bulb light fixture in the ceiling.

  The room should have appeared medicinal, boring, or uninviting, however, with the warm shades of tan against the white backdrop, and the two homey pictures on the wall, there was just enough appeal to make it inviting without being too busy or distracting.

  I figured it would be a very relaxing room to poop in when the time came, and it was most definitely a pleasant place to pee in; of course some of that appeal may have come from the fact that this was the first time I’d used an actual toilet in two weeks.

  After finishing my morning pee, I headed out to explore the rest of the house. I started with the two rooms at the end of the hall. The first room I looked in was the room on the opposite side of the house from mine, (the westward facing side of the house).

  The door was opened about three inches so I didn’t worry too much about poking my head in and finding June getting dressed or some equally embarrassing predicament. I went ahead and pushed the door open a few more inches and stuck my head inside.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was a flowery sort of smell that made me think of the color purple. It resembled lavender, or perhaps lilac and I thought that it must be the essence of June. The smell was a manifestation of her clean, gentle nature; fresh and inviting, with just a hint of mystery, and full of an honest beauty that needed no cosmetics to make it appealing.

  The room was only barely more decorated than my own room. It was laid out just like mine with a bed beside a dormer window and a nightstand beside the bed. The nightstand beside the bed appeared to be a duplicate of mine and must have come as part of a pair.

  A few paintings of horses adorned the walls, and a medium sized dresser with a television set on top of it stood beside the entry door, angled just perfectly to allow comfortable viewing from the bed.

  The closet appeared to be an exact duplicate of my own closet, and the carpet, woodwork, and window coverings were exactly like my room.

  The main difference between my room and June’s room was the addition of a door in the wall opposite the closet, which I assumed led to a private bathroom, which if it had had a door outside in the hallway, would have been directly across the hall from the public bath door. I chose not to investigate the bathroom, since that seemed somehow like a much bigger invasion of privacy than simply snooping through her bedroom.

  I left the bedroom without investigating further. I’d seen enough to settle in my own mind that it was June’s room, and after all she’d done for me already, she deserved a modicum of privacy in her own home.

  I went to explore the final bedroom fully expecting to poke my head into it and find it similar to my own room; sparsely decorated with a simple elegance, and an inviting nature. I was sorely mistaken in that assumption.

  The outline of the room was the same as mine, and the other three bedrooms, with the same woodwork, closet, dormer window, and red carpeting, but the interior decorator of this particular room seemed to be as crazy as my own mother.

  Shelves, dressers and tables lined the walls. All of the available flat surfaces on those pieces of furniture were covered with a vast array of different items, some creepy—some innocuous.

  A bookshelf near the bed was overflowing with at least a hundred hard cover books, many of which appeared to be bound in leather. I could not escape the idea that some of the leather may have been made from human skin, and a chill shivered down my spine as I peered at the books from the safety of the doorway.

  A small table sat beside the bookshelf and was covered with dozens of glass vase candles, all depicting various images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or the crucifixion. In the center of the table was a black and white photograph of a middle aged Negro man. The picture was framed in an ornate brass frame, and had a set of Rosary beads draped on it.

  There were numerous crosses and crucifixes scattered in between the candles and leaning up against the framed picture, as well as a couple dozen brightly colored stones and a few scraps of tattered cloth scattered about. The whole scene looked like some kind of ominous shrine.

  The impression the table gave was very busy and disturbing, but at least none of the candles were lit, which was a great relief to me as it implied that whoever had erected this creepy tribute had not been here in the very recent past.

  Next to the table was a medium sized hutch with glass doors on the four cupboards upon it. There were two large cupboards on the top portion of the hutch, and two smaller cupboards at the bottom. The top and bottom cupboards were separated by a large tabletop, or shelf. Between the two bottom cupboards, running down the center of the hutch were three drawers. All the wood surfaces of the hutch had been painted black.

  I could see, through the glass doors, that each cupboard held an assortment of strange, twisted figurines. Some appeared to be ceramic, some wood, and some were made of cloth. All were undoubtedly disturbing to look at.

  Some of the dolls were made in the likeness of humans, mostly black humans, though some were white. Some dolls seemed to be a representation of some strange mostly shapeless beast I’d never seen before, with large black button eyes and only a slightly humanoid shape. The majority of the dolls seemed to be images of corpses or skeletons.

  Almost all the dolls were exquisitely dressed with bright colored silky fabrics and plenty of shimmering metallic accents. Wild hair and oversized dark eyes were another dominant trait that most of the dolls shared.

  Scattered intermittently between all of the dolls were small pouches of varying size, colors, and fabrics. Most of the pouches were tied off with black strings, concealing their contents from my prying eyes.

  The tabletop shelf of the hutch was like a tractor beam to my wide-eyed snooping. Sitting on the tabletop were copious numbers of various bones, mummified animal feet, and brightly colored paper and
cardboard coffins.

  Most of the bones were small and it was not possible to discern the originating animal they came from, but I silently prayed that they were not of human origin, even though many resembled fingers.

  There were a dozen or so mummified animal feet mixed in with all the bones. Some looked to be monkey paws; some resembled rabbits feet, some bird feet, and one large, clawed foot that looked like it came from an alligator.

  Scattered among the hodgepodge of bones and feet were many small skulls. Some were undoubtedly from large birds, though many appeared to be rodent skulls. But the one skull that served as a centerpiece to this macabre display was the large human skull that sat in the center of the tabletop, like a gruesome sentinel, watching over all the other bones to make sure they did not take a fanciful idea into their minds to go off wandering.

  I stared at the skull for several seconds, unable to move from the spot where I’d been rooted in abject horror, before I saw that it was plainly not real. It was made from plaster and all the details had been grossly over defined, giving it an almost cartoonish appearance.

  I let out a small sigh of relief and let my eyes wander upwards to the ceiling where there were many more oddities to entertain my curiosity.

  Scattered about in a seemingly random pattern, various items hung lazily from the ceiling on black strings. Many feathers were strung about. Some were single feathers, others were grouped into clusters. Most of the feathers were black, but some had been dyed bright, vivid colors such as red, yellow, and blue.

  There were many dried plants hanging about in various locations as well, but their species was incomprehensible to me as I’d never cared much for botany.

  I diverted my eyes from the ceiling and looked toward the bed. The bed looked just like mine, with the exception that the bed spread was black instead of red, and had an intricate pattern of skulls, and humanoid figures with big dark eyes, embroidered into it in bright colors.

  The nightstand beside the bed was different from mine and was nothing fancy. It was just a plain table, about two feet square, and painted black. Upon the table there was a small lamp, with nothing sinister in its appearance, a large open Bible, and a pair of reading glasses sitting on the exposed pages of the open book.

  Continuing my swift visual exploration of the room, I ascertained that the rest of the room held no more bizarre treasures with the exception of the shelf beneath the dormer window, which had nothing on it except a small mortar and pestle.

  The room had a dark, musky smell to it. Like damp earth and dry weeds, and brought images to my mind’s eye of muddy rivers, flanked with cattails and tall yellow grasses. The smells coming from the room seemed almost alive and filled me with a strange inexplicable excitement and fever for adventure.

  Deciding that I had probably been cursed by some kind of black magic that was trying to draw me deeper into the strange, chapel like room, I decided to back out of there as quietly as I could, fearful that too much noise in that place would not be appreciated.

  I had backed almost completely out into the hallway when I thought I saw a shadow pass in front of the dormer window. The louvers on the blinds had been only partially opened. Just far enough to allow a dim light to effuse into the room, offering just enough luminescence to see by, but not so much that anything looked bright.

  My eyes had been pointing towards the window on my way out of the room, though I was not actually looking at it. I saw a small dark shape dart past the window, from the right (near the bed) to the left (towards the closet). By the time my brain registered what my eyes thought they had seen and my muscles responded to the order to whip my head to the left and focus my eyes in that direction, the shadow was gone.

  I stood there for several seconds, looking all around the window and closet area, trying to spot more movement. I saw nothing, but the damp earthy smell that had been dominating my nostrils was joined by a third smell…roses.

  I backed the rest of the way out of the room and closed the door quietly. I was still filled with an exuberant energy that I could not explain, but was now also filled with a sense of queer awe; a sense that I’d just witnessed something out of the ordinary realm of explanation, and something that was special and meant for me alone.

  I stood in the hallway and shook my head powerfully, trying to shake away the faint traces of earth, rose, and weird that were still filling my head. After a nice, violent shaking, my head seemed to be as empty as it normally was, and I was able convince myself that there was nothing weird going on behind that door.

  Turning back towards the stairs I took a deep breath of the fresh air in the hallway and smelled the unmistakable perfume of bacon wafting up from the downstairs. My stomach rumbled rudely at me and I realized that I was starving. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten anything that actually required a pan to cook it properly.

  I made the snap decision that exploration could wait until after breakfast and jogged down the hall to the stairs. I descended the stairs two at a time, gripping the handrails on both sides of the stairs as if my life depended on it, and at the speed I was travelling it probably did.

  A quick glance around at the bottom of the stairs revealed a large living room that was decorated sparingly, yet invitingly, with a western theme dominating the tone of the room. There were two tan leather couches with matching overstuffed chairs flanking them. The two couches sat facing each other with a large dark wood (possibly cherry wood) coffee table between them.

  Several pictures adorned the walls, but at the speed I was traveling in search of bacon I could not discern what images were displayed in those pictures. Hell, I couldn’t even tell if they were photographs or paintings.

  I blew through the living room like a small tornado ripping through a trailer park, and woe be to anything that dared to get in my path, and headed for the double swinging, louvered half doors that were set in an entryway in the wall furthest from the stairs.

  I slowed down only slightly when I reached the doors, with common sense telling me that exploding through the swinging doors could have disastrous consequences if anybody happened to walk past those doors on the other side at that moment, but with ravenous hunger telling me to damn the consequences.

  I came bursting into the kitchen, slobbering like a rabid dog, with bacon dominating every thinking part of my brain. I had fully expected to burst in there and see June hovering over the stove, looking as lovely as a spring day, but as often happens in life, what we expect is not exclusively what we get.

  Standing at the stove was a short, plump black woman who appeared to be in her mid fifties. She was wearing a full length black dress adorned with bright floral patterns, a white apron, and a bright yellow and red head-wrap that was open at the top, allowing her tight black braids to spill out of it like a bucket full of snakes.

  She was turned towards me as I entered, holding a spatula up in the air as if she was getting ready to swat a troublesome fly with it, and smiling broadly, showing many large brilliantly white teeth and a couple of gold ones. She must have heard me thundering through the house like a rhinoceros, because she looked as though she were expecting me.

  Shocked by the sudden sight of something so many miles away from what I had expected, I tried in vain to stop moving forward. Unfortunately for me the combination of forward momentum, stockinged feet, and vinyl flooring served up a malicious cocktail of sliding feet, flailing arms and experiments designed to test all of Newton’s theories of gravity. I landed flat on my butt and slid right up next to the big black woman.

  I looked up at her from my position on the floor and saw that she was staring down at me, her dark eyes twinkling joyfully and her broad smile growing even broader. She burst out laughing. She had the loudest most raucous laugh I’d ever heard. Her laughter was rough, and coarse, like sandpaper grinding against sandpaper, but was at the same time the purest, most honest laughter I’d ever heard.

  She laughed so hard that tears sprang up in her eyes as she reache
d her hand down to help me up. She continued to laugh as I took her hand and stared at her with wide eyes and an open mouth. She tried to make words as I was standing up, but she couldn’t manage any type of enunciation and instead broke out into fresh bursts of laughter.

  When I was standing fully erect and my shock had begun to wear off I couldn’t help but join her in her laughter. We stood together in the tidy kitchen, laughing uncontrollably together for several minutes, until my sides ached with the revelry and my eyes were watering profusely.

  Finally we both managed to calm down to a point where we could make words. The black woman set her spatula down on the stove and used both hands to wipe the tears off from her big round cheeks, and said “Boy, you done slide into ‘dis room like a big ol’ swamp rat squirmin’ into him’s mud-hole.”

  I’m not sure how describe her voice. It was as brown as her skin (if we could hear in color, she would sound brown) and it flowed from her like liquid chocolate. She spoke with a thick French Cajun accent and her soothing tone immediately removed any doubts that her warm smile and infectious laughter may have left about her intentions and made you trust her.

  “You alrigh’, Child?” she asked, (she pronounced child as chy-uhl). “You din’ break you’s self now didja?”

  I rubbed my bottom with my sore right hand and replied, “Well, Ma’am, I might have broke my butt a little bit, but I’ll be ok.”

  The woman broke out in a fresh burst of laughter and slapped her robust thighs as she cackled.

  “Ha ha ha ha! Da Child done bust him butt! Fo’ sho’ dat’s what him done did! Ha ha ha!”

  As the woman continued to cackle, apparently unable to stop, June came through the swinging doors into the kitchen dressed in a very smart, professional looking outfit, consisting of a pink blouse, cream slacks, and black shoes. She smiled as she took in the scene before her and said, “Well, it appears the two of you have gotten off to a good start, eh Johnny?”

  I smiled and nodded my head.

  “Have you two been properly introduced?”