The Lovely Shadow Read online

  Windows ran down the length of the house, windows peeked out of the front of each dormer, and two big picture windows flanked the bright red door that was centered in the width of the front of house.

  The roof appeared to be a tar shingle roof and was a dark green color. Several red brick chimneys poked out of the roof in different locations, lending a homey appearance to the entire setting. The only thing missing was a wisp of welcoming smoke rising lazily from one of the chimneys. If one had been smoking it would have made the house seem like something out of a Dickens novel.

  The house sat confidently in the midst of a green sea of well manicured lawn that was fenced in all the way around with a weather worn split rail fence. Beyond the fenced lawn appeared to be pasture land.

  The small, one car garage sat about fifteen feet away from the house, to the left if your orientation was directly in front of the house, facing it. The garage was sided with the same three inch lap siding as the house and painted the same white color, with gray trim and a green roof.

  Two four pane windows hung in the wall along both sides of the garage, one towards the front, and one towards the back, and a normal sized entry door stood just to the right of the front-most window. One big, wooden garage door took up nearly the whole front of the garage. The door was not of the type that you open by lifting it up and in to the garage, but rather it was one that had to be rolled off to the side to open.

  It was directly in front of that door that June parked her car and turned to me as I was surveying the entirety of the scene around me in the blue light cast off by the many halogen lamps that June had scattered about on tall poles around the house, yard and garage.

  I could feel June looking at me so I cut my visual exploration of her property short and looked back at her.

  “You have a lot of lights.” I said matter-of-factly.

  June snickered through her nose and replied, “I told you I was afraid of the dark.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I was really scared of the dark in the basement, but then Joe came and showed me that there was nothing to be afraid of. I’m not afraid any more, but I still don’t like the dark. I’m glad you have lights.”

  “Well,” said June while opening her car door, “I’m glad I have such a brave little trooper in my family now. You can keep me safe until we get to the house, ok?”

  I smiled, knowing full well that she didn’t need me to keep her safe, but I appreciated the patronization nonetheless.

  “Ok, I’ll do that.” I said, getting out of the car.

  June came around to my side of the car and held out her hand. I grabbed it and let her lead me up the sidewalk to the front porch of her big farmhouse where she let go of my hand in order to unlock the front door.

  June stuck the key in the lock and struggled for a second to unlock the door before realizing that it was already unlocked.

  “Hmm,” she said, “that’s odd. I could have sworn I locked the door when I left tonight.”

  June’s eyebrows had arched down and her lips had compressed tightly, slightly puckering her face in an obvious look of concern. Though she resembled my mother in many aspects, the slight puckering of her face did not have nearly the same uglifying effect on June’s face that it had had on my mother’s face.

  “Maybe you only thought you locked it,” I suggested helpfully. “You know, like since you don’t usually lock it, maybe you thought you had it locked, but it never locked all the way or something.”

  June’s lips stayed tightly compressed, but she slid them off to the side of her face and puckered them outward slightly. She cocked her head, squinted one eye, and raised the eyebrow over her one wide open eye in a look of exaggerated thoughtfulness.

  “Yeah, Honeybunch, you’re probably right,” she said, giving her head a slight nod. “I probably just messed up when I was locking it. Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first thing I screwed up.”

  She laughed as she spoke, and as she laughed all of the confusion and apprehension drained out of her face, and was replaced by her previous radiant cheerfulness.

  “Doing stuff like that always makes me wonder if I’m losin’ my marbles.”

  “You’re not crazy,” I said solemnly. “I’ve seen crazy before, and you’re not it.”

  June stopped in the foyer that was just inside the door and turned to me, offering a sad, appreciative smile. She ruffled my hair and bent down and kissed my forehead.

  “Sweet Cheeks,” she said seriously, “I’m so sorry about what your mom put you through, and I’m gonna do everything in my power to make it up to you. You are just the sweetest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I can’t wait to get to know you better.”

  I smiled back at her weakly until a yawn forced my smile into something that must have more resembled a snarl.

  “Ok, Toots, let’s get you to bed,” June said as she stood erect again.

  June grabbed my hand and led me through the spacious house. Normally my curiosity about a new environment would have been kicked into high gear by a situation like this, but I was so tired that I paid little attention to the house as we breezed through it. All I remember is the fuzzy haze that seemed to surround every object that came into my field of vision.

  My focus didn’t snap back to attention until we entered what was to be my bedroom. The bedroom was on the second floor, (though I have no recollection of walking up the stairs) and was huge. A large dormer window sat in the center of the far wall, facing east to catch the first rays of the rising sun each morning.

  The dormer window was recessed from the main wall, sticking out towards the east about four feet, and was trimmed in a polished dark wood. A shelf, about two feet deep was built into the window frame, just below the window, and ran the full length of the cubicle that the window was set into. The shelf was made of the same highly polished dark wood that framed the window, and gave the whole area a very sophisticated appearance.

  An oak chair with a deep red velvet seat cushion sat in front of the shelf, making it look more like a tabletop than a shelf, and looked to be a very inviting place to sit and watch the sun come up.

  The window in the dormer had a set of wooden venetian blinds, each slat about two inches wide. The blinds were a slightly lighter color than the rest of the wood trim in the area, and were rolled down, offering a rich, warm, contrast to the dark wood trim that dominated the area.

  A huge, queen sized bed sat against the wall just beside the dormer window to the right. The head of the bed was up against the eastern wall and the foot of the bed was out towards the center of the room, towards the entry door.

  The bed was covered with a thick, plush comforter, deep red in color, which hung nearly to the floor on three sides of the bed and covered a mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.

  To the right of the bed, up against the eastern and southern walls sat a small night table made of a wood that was so deeply stained and polished that it appeared black in color. The four legs of the table were ornately carved, with shallow fins that spiraled down their entire length, and similarly carved cross members offered support to each leg in the center of their length on all four sides.

  A small white porcelain lamp sat on the table, glowing softly through its stained glass lampshade, illuminating the entire room in a warm multi-colored light. Images of wildlife decorated the shade, as well as the porcelain body of the lamp.

  Along the northern wall, to the left of the dormer wall, a spacious closet ran nearly the full length of the wall, with two big sliding doors made of the same highly polished dark wood that framed in the dormer. The doors met nearly seamlessly in the middle of the closet.

  All the walls as well as the ceiling of the room were painted a soft cream color and were accentuated by wooden moldings that ran along the bottom of the walls at the floor, as well as at the top, against the ceiling. The wood moldings were of the same dark wood color that most of the other wood in the room was, and gave the room a nice continuity that did not distra
ct from the inviting atmosphere the room created.

  The room was carpeted in a plush soft carpet; deep red in color, almost an exact match to the color of the bedspread.

  I observed the entirety of the room in only a few seconds, but my eye was compulsively drawn to the bed over and over. I was as tired as I could ever remember having been in my life and really only wanted to sleep in that big soft bed.

  “I don’t have any pajamas for you, Sweetie,” June said sympathetically. “I have some big old tee shirts that I use for P.J.’s though, would you like me to get you one?”

  I shook my head. “No thank you, June. I’ve become accustomed to sleeping nude, but I think I’ll just sleep in my underwear, if that’s ok?”

  June smiled and said that would be just fine. Then she kissed my forehead and turned politely away as I stripped and climbed into the bed. Once I was snuggled in, June turned back to me and kissed my forehead again.

  ‘If she keeps doing that, she’s gonna wear a hole in my forehead,’ I thought to myself with a smile. ‘That’d be ok though. I’d rather lose my mind through a hole in my forehead created by love than by the Sickness that took Mamma.’

  “Ok, Gorgeous,” June said as she started away from my bed, “you sleep tight and I’ll see you in the morning. You want me to turn off the lamp?”

  “No!” I said sharply.

  Light was a novelty to me at this point and I figured that as long as it was in my power to be in the light, I was never going to step into darkness willingly again.

  June smiled and said goodnight and I repeated her valediction. Then I rolled over and snuggled in. I was already nearly asleep before June reached the door.

  Just as June was starting to close the door behind her, I bolted upright in bed, suddenly wide awake; my eyes as wide as my wakefulness.

  “JUNE!” I shouted.

  June nearly broke herself in half trying to get her body to twist back towards me and came back through the door, half stumbling in her urgency to make sure I was ok.

  “What is it, Dumplin’?” June asked, speaking rapidly and breathlessly in her concern.

  I felt a moment of guilt, because it was not really an emergency that caused me to scream out in alarm; a scream that nearly made June disintegrate in her gusto to get back to me. But it was important to me so I looked sheepishly at her and said meekly, “I forgot my dictionary in the car. I’m sorry, but could you get it for me?”

  I had expected to see June’s countenance change into a looked of eye rolling exasperation, or perhaps to see her features contort into a mask of thinly veiled anger, but I did not expect to see what I did see.

  June’s expression, which was wide eyed with concern as she burst into the room and to me bedside, morphed into a look of radiant beauty and joy. Relief spread across her face like the rays of the rising sun spreading slowly over the land as it creeps over the top of distant mountains.

  A smile spread rapidly across her face and she laughed a little as she said, “Jelly Bean, you nearly scared me half to death! Yeah, you betcha I’ll go get it for ya’. I’ll be right back.”

  With that, June hurried out of the room, and I listened to her footsteps as they thumped down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door. I waited to hear the car door off in the distance, but I fell asleep before June made it to the car.

  CHAPTER 14

  I awoke the following morning just as the sun was beginning to peek through the slats in the blind over my window. As I sat up I found that my dictionary had been placed on the bed beside me, and it nearly tumbled to the floor when I moved, but I reached out and caught it with all the skill of a professional football player making an amazing one handed grab in the end zone.

  I placed the book carefully on the nightstand, making sure to line up two edges of the book with two edges of the table, and reached over it to turn out the lamp.

  After killing the lamp, the room seemed pretty dim, so I got up and headed to the dormer window. Finding the louver adjustment rod for the blind dangling at the left side, I spun it in my fingers, letting the sunlight shine in and the room brightened appreciably.

  After that I headed for the door. I was eager to explore my new environs. Halfway across the room I realized that I was still in my underwear and now that I was in the company of human beings again, that was not an acceptable dress code for wandering about publicly.

  I went to fetch my clothes from the pile on the floor beside the bed where I’d abandoned them the previous night, only to find that they were no longer there.

  ‘Well, that’s odd,’ I thought to myself. ‘I know last night is a bit fuzzy, but I distinctly remember leaving my clothes here. I wonder where they’ve gotten off to. Maybe June decided that they needed a good washing, though they were fresh from the drier when I put them on last night.’

  Deciding that June had most likely taken them somewhere and that I could not wander around her house mostly naked, I decided to peek in the closet in hopes of finding a tee shirt or something that I could cover my modesty with.

  After sliding one of the large wooden doors off to the side about a foot and a half and poking my head into the closet, I realized that the closet was like a whole other room all by itself. It was about four feet deep and ran about ten feet down the length of the approximately fifteen foot long wall.

  It was uncomfortably dark in the closet and I could not see much except for what was directly in front of me. I could not bring myself to enter into the darkness. I pulled my head back out and looked up into the open doorway. The closet ran all the way to the ceiling, which was about ten feet high.

  There were two shelves in the closet, one about five feet up from the floor, and another about two feet above that. Both shelves appeared to be empty from what little I could see of them with only one door slid only partially open.

  I pushed the already open door along its track, opening it up another foot or so and then slid the other door open the full two and a half feet that the rail allowed. With both doors opened to their maximum distance, the entryway into the closet was about five feet wide and let plenty of light into the large space.

  In the fresh light I could see that there was a pull cord dangling down right in the front of the closet, just inside the opening. I tugged the cord and the closet lit up, illuminated by three light fixtures, spread evenly along the entire length of the closet, that were mounted on the closet wall that faced the rest of the room, just above the doors. The lights were cleverly mounted so that the light they generated shone into the closet, but did not shine in your eyes while you were toiling in there.

  With the light on in the closet, I could clearly see that the closet was, in fact, empty, apart from my clothes that had been tossed into the far back corner on the left side of the closet. I almost didn’t see them at all, and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t thought I’d heard a faint whisper of sound come from that direction and decided to walk in a little deeper to investigate.

  There was nothing in the closet that could have made a noise, and the noise was so slight as to be an incomprehensible intonation and I did not concern myself with it for long, deciding that it had probably been my imagination.

  I walked over to where my clothes had been unceremoniously crumpled into a ball and shoved into the corner and scooped them up and walked back out of the closet to get dressed.

  I yanked the pull string for the light as I exited, and closed the two doors, still puzzling over why June would hide my clothes like that while I was sleeping. I pushed thoughts of malicious intent aside and started shaking the wrinkles out of my clothes so I could get dressed and go exploring.

  As I was shaking my clothes out, I noticed a faint odor coming from them. It smelled similar to roses, or more accurately, similar to the rose water that my mother used to leave in glass bowls around the house before she took leave of her senses and still concerned herself with the appearance and aroma of her abode.

  I stopped shaking my shirt and held it to my
nose and inhaled deeply. It definitely had a hint of roses emanating from it. It wasn’t a strong smell, but just a hint of odor, like a diluted perfume.

  I assumed that June probably wore a rose perfume and some of hit had rubbed off on my clothes as she was moving them into the closet.

  As I got dressed, I looked around the room more earnestly than I had before. I judged from its clean, tidy, and inviting design that June was likely obsessed with maintaining a clean home that could be open to unexpected visitors at any time without fear of embarrassment, and she’d probably moved my clothes as a matter of routine; viewing them as a blemish in an otherwise perfectly clean room.

  I glanced at my dictionary that was perfectly alineated with the straight lines of the tabletop at the lower corner and smiled. I understood perfectly June’s desire to maintain order, and decided I would not mention the clothes for fear of offending her or sounding as if I were accusing her of treachery.

  Once I had my clothes on I realized that I had never grabbed my shoes from the basement. I hadn’t worn my shoes since my first night in the basement and had, quite honestly, not even considered the need for them since taking them off in the darkness.

  ‘Well, I won’t need them unless I go outside,’ I thought. ‘Maybe June will have something I can wear for awhile, until I can get some new ones.’

  I headed out the door into the hallway at the top of the stairs and was suddenly overcome with the urge to pee. I stood there for a second, wondering where the washing machine was kept before realizing that I could actually use a toilet again. I figured there was likely a bathroom upstairs somewhere and I set about looking for it.

  My bedroom was at the near end of the hallway, nearest to the stairs that led to the first floor. Directly across from my bedroom door was another door that was standing slightly ajar. I peeked into the room adjacent to mine and saw that it was almost a carbon copy of my room, only with the dormer facing west rather than east.