The Boy of the Shadows

It was a creepy cemetery, at the back of our house. It was a small piece of land lined with old gravestones bearing forsaken names that no one dared to read aloud. No one venture that far since the place was a blanket of nightmares, as dark as a moonless night, a land the sun refused to touch. 

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when it was quiet enough, I swear I could hear voices whispering words that had not been spoken for ages.

In the beginning, I would tell myself it was the wind. Then, I started hearing whispers of my name. Ancient whispers carrying deep secrets of the world. Sounds that probably were older than evil, darkness, or light.

My sister, Mika, said that the cemetery was where the People of the Shadows had been banished.

“The People of the Light cast them out,” she would always say as we stared at the cemetery through the window at the back of our house. With excitement in her eyes, she would add, “That was a long time ago when they threatened to destroy the new days.”

Mama said Mika didn’t know what she was talking about and that the cemetery belonged to the previous owners of the property.

Grandmama said they were both wrong and that the cemetery was the dwelling place of evil.

Glancing towards the window and whispering in fear, she would say, “That place is where the Devil and his kin fell when they were thrown from above.”

“Above where and thrown by whom?”  I asked once before she shushed me. “Boy, shut up before the devil hears us.”

I used to think she was senile, which is why she was afraid of things that did not exist. But I was young, and I did not understand.

The more I stared at the cemetery through the window at the back of our house, the clearer the whispers became. Mika said she could not hear anything and that I was just imagining the sounds. Mama supported her, and Grandmama told me to be wary of the Devil.

“Never let your guard down boy. You never know when he might strike,” Grandmama insisted.

Then the voices started coming frequently at night, and the air in my room would feel heavier than usual, as if someone was watching me. Then the air started feeling like I would suffocate, and that is when I started seeing her during the day when staring through the window. At first, I could only see her from the corner of my eyes, and she looked like a shadow. Just a blurry figure that would appear at the far end of the cemetery and would move closer every day.  

Then she started appearing clearer and more vivid. The woman from the shadows. A dark, tattered figure, ghostly and semi-transparent, with a haunting, unsettling god-awful smile that made my skin tingle and blood run cold.

When I looked at her directly, I immediately knew her name and her story. When I looked away, I forgot everything and only knew of her as the woman from the shadows.

 “Do you see her?” I once asked Mika, pointing through the window while the woman stood close enough, smiling and waving at me.

“See what?” she asked

“The creepy woman,” I said

Mike looked at where I was pointing, then responded, “I only see a tree there. What are you talking about?”

That night, the woman came into my room.

She stood by my bed, a dark, massive figure with a suffocating, stale, damp smell.

I remained sitting on my bed, transfixed, petrified, and unable to breathe. The comic book I had been reading fell from my sweaty hands. A cold sweat prickled at the back of my neck, and my vision became blurry. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach, while in my chest, my heart pounded like ancestral drums beating to usher unholy times. I tried closing and opening my eyes because maybe I was dreaming. But there she was. A solid figure standing in the darkness at the edge of my bed, staring at me with green evil eyes that glowed in the dark.

I felt helpless. I tried opening my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My throat went dry, as if all words had deserted me. Then she spoke. She had a layered voice that sounded like that of many people trying to become one.

“They are not like you,” she whispered

And that was the beginning of my adventure with the woman of the shadows.

Every night, she would come from her grave, float through the cemetery, and come into my room through the wall. Sometimes she would just stand by the corner staring at me with those evil eyes. Other nights, she would talk about things I did not fully comprehend. The secrets of old, which I would forget once she stopped talking to me. 

She told me I was chosen. To free the People of the Shadows. That I was not like normal people. She said I was unique and that is why I could see her, a shadow that transcended the physical reality of the world.

“You are different. You are special. You see the truth,” she said, speaking like a sound that had been locked away since the beginning of time.  

Afterwards, I started noticing the eyes of my family members. They were not special, and that is why they could not see the shadows that lived outside our reality.

I started paying more attention to Mika’s eyes. I wondered how their movement and blinks were different from mine.

“Unlike you, she is blind,” the woman whispered to me one night.

“Can you make her better? Can you make her special? Can you make her see as I do?” I asked.

And that is when she gave me an idea.

I invited my sister to my room after school the next day. We sat on my bed, where I asked what she thought I should do if I found something special that she didn’t have.

“Share with me, dummy. I am your little sister.” She said

That is when I cornered her. At first, she looked confused and kept asking me what I was doing. I told her it was for her own good. That she would finally see. I asked her to remain still and silent. I removed a knife from my pocket and started moving it towards her eyes. She started screaming. An annoying scream that made my head hurt, so I tried to quiet her. I kept hitting her head on the wall to shut her up, but she kept screaming louder.

Then there was noise everywhere, and everything else happened fast. Doors slamming and feet moving towards my room. Mama was shouting as she pulled me from Mika. I was pinned against the wall, then ropes tightened against my arms.

Mama sat across the room, crying. Mika hid behind her, face wet with tears and blood and eyes wide open with fear. She was terrified. Terrified of me, her favorite older brother. Or was she repulsed? Maybe both. 

But she didn’t understand. All this was for her own good. I wanted her to be special, too.

Grandmama said the Devil had migrated from the cemetery and was dwelling in my heart. Mika said I was now the Devil.  

Grandmamma started, reciting the Bible, praying loudly, calling something out of me.

I remained calm, looking across the room, watching the woman from the shadows who stood at the corner and kept smiling, her evil green eyes flickering with approval as she told me not to worry because I was special. I started laughing out loud. A strange laugh that sounded primal and accursed. 

My family sentenced me to solitary confinement in the basement. They said I needed an exorcism. Alone, I became best friends with the woman from the shadows. Her attention replaced that of my sister Mika and my family.

With writhing mass of tongues that coiled over one another and dripped of black goo, the woman taught me how to hiss and how to move without sound. She taught me how to dance and slither around and how to laugh a strange primordial laugh of the damned. What peculiar days those were, and how I would laugh with her and dance gliding in smooth coils and hiss to mama and grandmama. 

Grandfather came to visit me once, just once, and he wept like a broken child. I didn’t understand the reason for the tears. The woman said it was funny, and together we stood at a corner, pointing and laughing at him while calling him names and high-fiving each other.

In the basement, time lost its meaning and days blurred. The woman told me she would free me from the world. It was best to live as a shadow person.

Then came the nightmare. I don’t remember how it started or even if it was truly a dream. All I know is that I was in my room again. I was sitting on my bed with the woman beside me.

My grandfather stood at the door with his friends. They looked like shadows. I could not see them clearly as they looked blurry. They held a giant knife, moved towards me, and began pushing it into my mouth. I began to speak, but black goo came out of my mouth and eyes. 

Then they started pointing and laughing at me while the woman smiled.

I woke and found myself surrounded by white walls, soft light, and strange silence. I was in the hospital. Mama sat beside me and told me I was sick and not possessed, as grandmama had said. She said the woman I was seeing wasn’t real, but a hallucination.

She said I had tried to kill myself with a fork and that’s why I had been rushed to the hospital. I do not remember any of that.

She gave my condition a clinical name. Something called paranoid schizophrenia.

Together with the doctor, they told me I would go to a mental health facility until I was well. Mika stood beside Mama, looking at me with sad eyes. She asked for permission to hug me before they left.

Those days scarred me. The memories remain.

On some quiet nights, I still hear the woman calling my name, urging me to come home.

But I plan not to.

I have a new friend. The man with the long tail and many eyes.

I intend to keep him a secret since I am special. I am not sick. So I do not tell Mama or the doctors.

Maybe that is why the doctors still keep me here. But that’s alright. It works in my favor because I have a new friend and I will finally free the People of the Shadows.