Inga had always thought that feeling of being incomplete was because she’d been adopted and didn’t know anything about her mother. As she opened the door and saw her sister, however, something clicked within her, and finally she felt whole for the first time in her life as she embraced her sister.
Inga knew now that Meg had been her mother, had heard stories of her, seen videos, and learned quite a lot about her. But even as Anne’s tears flowed as Beth walked into her arms and as Scott and Cathy watched, holding hands from their seat on a couch as they watched, Inga knew that all three of the women, all of the women that had fallen victim to Doctor Nelson and Nurse Pracket had been her mother. But especially those first three.
For a moment, as she stood watching Anne and Beth she thought she saw two extra people in her living room. Two women, a blonde and a woman with light-brown hair and a gentle smile stared back at her with tears and a happy smile full of pride at Inga. Her heart swelled as the images of Joan and Meg, themselves holding hands, turned away and disappeared into the wall of Inga’s living room.
Inga blinked, trying to hide the tears that filled her own eyes. They all had peace at last and though Inga and a group of adoptees were still looking for answers for the other children Doctor Nelson had stolen, she knew that Joan and Meg, and now Anne, had been given the justice they deserved. A little bit of the world had been made better and Inga looked over at her sister, knowing her life had just become better than she’d have imagined it could have when she started this project.
“Let’s eat people and get to know each other. I think it’s about time, don’t you?” Inga looked around at the happy faces filling the room and felt her own peace at last. This was better than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays being all rolled into one. She had family again and that was more than she could have ever hoped for.
The End
The Shadow Man
Horror
About the Book
Sometimes we see things out of the corner of our eyes. Dark things that may only surprise us. But sometimes those dark shadows, those hints of things unseen, can be terrifying. For Clara the shadows are only dust in her eyes, or the imaginings of her own mind. She has more important things to worry about. Her mother is moving in and her mother has Alzheimer’s disease. When her girls pick up a new imaginary friend Clara thinks it’s just a phase her girls are going through, a way for them to connect with the grandmother that no longer recognizes them.
But for Clara’s mother, Betty, those shadows are real. Those shadow figures are real and they are terrifying. For in those shadows lay darkness, death, and memories best left alone, or forgotten. But the answer to Clara’s birth, and her parentage lies in Betty’s mind, and perhaps the answer to how to save them all. Can Clara convince her mother to tell her the truth before it’s too late? Before death, or something worse, claims Betty and perhaps all those she loves?
Chapter One
Present Day
Charlotte, North Carolina
The storm clouds were finally clearing over our old farmhouse on the outskirts of Charlotte. The white two-story building had weathered another storm and I gazed up at the receding clouds with happiness. It was going to be a good day after all, even if our lives were about to be turned upside down.
“Clara, what time is your mother arriving again?” I turned to see my husband, Wes Slade, coming out onto the wide screened off porch that spanned the front of the old clapboard house. His grey eyes were laughing as our twin daughters, tiny and blond at eight years old with curly hair the same as me but with their father’s dark grey eyes, danced around his long legs, playing tag. This was my world in dark and light. I ran my fingers through Wes’s dark brown hair and gauged the length, narrowing my own green eyes as I measured. Time for a haircut, I would have to get my scissors out later.
“Hi babies! She should be here in a couple of hours Wes, her friend Stella is driving her down.” I gave him a grateful smile, knowing this was going to be a huge change for the family.
My mother was developing Alzheimer’s disease, a disease that stole your memory and made it hard to function in life. My mother had been a nurse all of her life and when she started to have problems I swore I would never put her in a nursing home, though it seemed the popular option these days. Put Mom and Dad away and the problem disappears until visiting day. Not for my mother, I loved her far too much and respected her, I was not going to allow her to go to a nursing home until it was necessary. Not after some of the stories she had whispered to her friends when she thought I could not hear her while I was growing up.
“Good, I am going to take the girls out to the park on this fine Sunday morning so they’ll arrive home quiet and exhausted. How does that sound?” He pulled me close to his side and bent down to inhale the scent of my own curly blonde hair. “Mm, I do love how you smell munchkin.”
Wes and I have been married for ten years now. We met in college and married a few years later. The girls came a little later and now we are settled into our dream home at 34 years old. We even have our dream careers, Wes as a public administrator for the city and I have my own career as a freelance photographer. I mainly do jobs for the local papers and magazines but I am taking some time off to settle Mom into our home and transition my family into our new lives.
“Well, if you promise to behave, Tall, Dark, and Handsome, I will let you sniff more of me later. But for now, yes, get these girls to the park!” I hugged them all as the girls shrieked in happiness at an outing and I went back into the house to make sure nothing else needed to be done.
I walked in from the porch, going into the hallway that lead off to multiple rooms: a parlor, a living room, the kitchen in the back, and the downstairs bathroom. Upstairs we have three bedrooms and an office. The parlor had been transformed into a bedroom for my mother and the bathroom fitted to suit her needs. I had arranged for a home-health nurse and a personal care assistant to come and monitor my mother’s health and to help me as her disease progresses over time. I want Mom used to both by the time her symptoms get to the later stages.
I've had locks placed high on all of the doors, ordered a system to help track her if she starts to wander off, done all of the research I could think to do, arranged a doctor here for her, and child-proofed the house. I sat down on the bed in her room, gazing at the quilt I had made just for her. The white, pink, and light blue star-burst pattern was intriguing and looked far more complicated than it was. I had to push back tears as I thought about the sudden reversal of our roles. Once upon a time Mom had prepared a room like this for my arrival. Now it was my turn. I knew she had a hard road in front of her, as did we all, but I wanted her last years to be good, even if they were heart breaking. I would keep her here for as long as I could.
Swallowing away the sadness, or trying to, I went in to the kitchen to prepare a jug of tea. Mom’s favorite drink was unsweetened ice tea. I had bought a new box, just for her, of the brand she preferred. Sitting down as the water boiled I looked around the large country kitchen and hoped Mom’s health remained good and that her memory would not start to falter too quickly. And I prayed the behavioral changes would not take place. Not the ones I had read about anyway.
I love my mother but my daughters would have to come first in that situation. Sighing I reminded myself that my mother needed my help. It was alright to worry but I had to remember she was my mother and I owed her far more than I could ever repay. Pushing my shoulder length curls out of my face I pulled my slightly plump body out of the chair and poured the hot water over the tea bags. We’d just have to wait and see how it all went, that is all we could do. And approach the day positively. Starting out on a negative approach was going to make the whole thing fail.
Putting a smile on my face I left the tea to brew and started a cake for my family. Lindy and Twilla, my twins, loved German Chocolate Cake and their Mom was the only one out of all of their friends’ mothers that even knew how to make the frosting. It was simply down to co
untry living and being raised by a single mother. I had a different upbringing and learned how to make do, it did not mean I was better, it just meant I had learned a lot of things others had not, I told the girls. The cake was also my favorite. I needed to brighten my own day a little, too.
I thought about my mother as I mixed the ingredients for the cake. I had never had a father, not that I knew of, and even my birth certificate listed the man as unknown. As a child I had tried to ask her about my father but she would always turn pale and a sad, haunted look would come over her. She would not speak to me for the rest of the day and I quickly learned to stop asking about the man that had helped to create me.
I had also learned to avoid questions about it. There was not such a stigma about it now, not like there’d been so many generations ago, but people liked to know that you were normal. And even now children who do not know who their parents are, are looked down on as pitiful waifs, or somehow unfortunate. I had made the man a hero in dozens of different ways until my teens, and then I had figured out that something was off.
My mother and I shared a close relationship. She never went on dates or spent time out with friends; she preferred being at home with her daughter. We did everything together, trips, crafts, holidays, cooking, everything. If my mother was not telling me the one truly important thing about who my father was, she had a good reason and I likely did not want to know what that reason was.
I stopped my imaginings about the great war hero or the time-travelling man from the future that had come back to make sure I was born so I could save the human race and focused instead on studying and boys. Then I met Wes in a Latin American history class and my world changed. My Mom had been pleased for me when I started at the university but it had taken some time to get her to warm up to Wes.
We’d lived in Charlotte even then and I had gone to a local school for my university education because I just could not do without my best friend, my mother. If Wes and I hadn’t hit it off so well from the beginning I would probably still be living at home with Mom, we were just that close. She had given me away on our wedding day, gladly placing my hand into Wes’s much larger one before walking away, happy tears filling her eyes.
And now she was coming to my home. Wiping at a tear that had escaped my eyelids I washed my hands so I could begin cooking the frosting of the cake. She had worked so that I could go to school and saved throughout my childhood. I came out of school without debt and started my married life on the right foot. She had been there when the girls were born, coming to stay until we could all cope, and now we were all going to look after her.
Pouring the frosting on the cake after it cooled for a little while I went into the bathroom to get properly dressed and put on a little makeup. I was not normally one for primping, Wes liked to be able to touch my hair and my face without a bunch of goop in the way but I felt as though I needed it today. I needed that painted mask to hide the sadness from Mom, from Wes, from the girls, and from myself.
I looked in the mirror after putting on a pale pink summery dress and noted that my skin had darkened from my time in the garden and my waist was a little smaller than it had been last year. The dress was not as tight as it had been then and my hair was shorter than it was last year, too. My green eyes still sparkled though and my round face still had very few lines. I was aging well, at least, even if I did like to eat more than one piece of cake a day and did not think of exercising as a religion.
I chewed at my thumbnail, messing up the manicure I had got yesterday. No, maybe jeans and a t-shirt would be better today. It would be less formal and would put Mom at ease. Changing swiftly I ran downstairs as I heard Wes’s SUV pulling up. My girls came running in the house, screaming for their Grams but she was not here yet.
“Girls, go in and wash up and put on some clean clothes. Grams will be here soon enough.” I smiled as the girls ran back to the bathroom and began to giggle as they washed up.
“How are you babe?” Wes asked, sitting down beside me on the beige couch in our living room. It was long enough for him to stretch out on, one of the main reasons we’d bought it.
“I am alright, handling it so far. I am just worried. So many things could go wrong.” My words tapered off as I began to list possibilities in my mind.
“I will be here to help Clara. You can count on me. And it may be a long time before she starts to go downhill more than she has. Just do not forget I am here for you, alright?” Wes kissed my hand, his eyes telling me he spoke from the heart.
Wes was referring to one of my bad habits. I would sometimes forget I did not have to solve all of the world’s problems alone and would take on far too much myself. The habit sometimes led to an argument when I started to feel overwhelmed but it was something we were both aware of and worked on together.
“I promise to talk to you, Wes. I think they’re here.” I said my voice suddenly nervous and my heart racing.
I do not know why I was nervous, it was not as though I was going into a job interview but that is what it felt like. Clenching Wes’s hand I stood up and went out to the porch as Stella’s car pulled into the circular driveway. I waved my right hand and stepped down as the car came to a stop.
My Mom’s friend Stella stepped out of the car in her normal flamboyant way with a flourish of her hand, a yoo-hoo at the top of her voice, and a circle to show off her flamingo pink square dancing dress. An odd choice but Stella was an odd person.
“Yoo-hoo, Clara, we are here!” As if I did not know that already. “Your poor Momma! She had such a hard time saying goodbye to her old home but I told her we’d go back to visit if she wanted to.”
The older woman ran around to the other side of the car just as I stepped to open the door. Stella opened the door and Mom got out of the car blinking as the sun beat down into her eyes.
“Clara? Oh good, I had forgotten where we were going for a moment. Honey get Momma’s bags and let’s go in. I hear the beach calling my name.”
And so it began. Clara smiled sadly as her mother walked into the house, the other woman apparently thinking they were on vacation down in Myrtle Beach. Clara wondered how old she was today, in her mother’s mind, and pulled the boxes out of the car that Stella had carefully stacked. Wes grabbed some as well and they all headed into the house.
“She is not too bad today, Clara, truly she is not. It took me fifteen minutes to convince her she knew me this morning. Then another hour to convince her she had been planning this move for a month. You have your work cut out for you but it is not too bad today. You just have to wait it out most of the time.” Stella plastered a smile onto her face as they approached the house, her words cutting off so Clara’s mother would not hear them.
“Momma.” I called out, taking Stella’s words to heart. “Where are you honey?”
“I am in the living room with Wes, Clara. I swear girl, when are you going to marry this boy? He sure does need fattening up!”
I blew air out from between my teeth as I sat the boxes down. Wes had gone ahead of me into the living room.
“Momma, Wes is fine as he is. The man already has more muscles than a body builder. You stop picking on him.” Just act like things are normal I told myself. Maybe they will be if you keep pretending.
Chapter Two
I shifted in the bed as I woke up. Something had stirred me from my dreams but I was not sure what. I waited, listening for the sound of one of the girls calling out for me. It had been a long day of keeping Mom in the house once Stella left and trying to keep the girls from pestering her to death.
They could not understand what was wrong with Grams, though I had tried to explain it in terms a child could understand. When it was time to put them to put Wes and I had both had to answer more questions and wipe away a few tears. Their feelings were hurt because they thought Grams did not care about them but it was not that at all.
The sound of their sobs had kept me awake for a long time and now I could see I had only been asleep for a few hou
rs from the red numbers of the clock on my nightstand. What had woken me up? I listened for a few more minutes then put my head back down, dismissing the whole thing as a dream.
Slowly I settled back in, repositioning my head before flipping the pillow to the cool side. Suddenly I became aware that something was wrong in the room. Something was blocking the red light of the clock numbers. The light was not penetrating my eyelids. Something was in the way of the light.
Which meant something was standing beside me. My still body froze and suddenly I was too afraid to even breathe. Who was blocking the light? An irrational fear took over, despite knowing it was probably one of the girls. But why did the child not speak? Wes was beside of me, Mom was in bed. That left an unknown person.
I was about to sit up and turn on the light, overcoming my fear as I reminded myself of my children, when a cold delicate hand reached out to touch my arm.
“He knows where I am.” The words were spoken as the hand touched me and I jumped from the bed, flicking the lamp on beside of the bed.
“Mom! Oh my God, you scared me Mom! What are you doing?” My voice sounded angry but I was more relieved than anything.
My mother was standing there, not speaking and her eyes blank.
“He knows where I am.”
She then turned around and left the room, heading off in the direction of the stairs. If she was sleep-walking she could fall!
Wes stirred behind me and I soothed him before heading out to steer Mom back to her bed, guiding her down the stairs. Yeah, I was going to need a nap tomorrow because it was going to not only take me some time to get her settled but to calm myself down from that scare.
I settled Mom back into her double bed, pulling her quilt up to protect her from the chill of the air conditioner, and watched as she fell back to sleep. What had woken her up? She had had a sleeping pill. I knew because I had gone through her pill box to see what she was taking. I smoothed Mom’s white hair down as she closed her eyes, and her breathing evened out. She was asleep again.
Thriller: Emily Page 19
