The Lovely Shadow

by Cory Hiles

  I wondered at her insanity. I wondered if it was caused by a genetic malformation or whether it was induced simply by her inability to deal with tragedy in her life. From all accounts she’d had a happy childhood with loving parents and a delightful little sister, yet according to hints that Miss Lilly had given me, she was distant and self absorbed even then.

  June had told me countless stories about the grandparents I never knew, and they sounded like they were absolutely delightful people, full of love and understanding. I might have considered June’s interpretations of her parents to be skewed by personal bias, but Miss Lilly had confirmed June’s assessment.

  When my grandparents died, my mother had been twenty-one years old, married, and had already given birth to Joe. When she attended her parent’s funeral she had appalled most people by neither shedding a tear nor showing any type of grief at all. Instead she spent the entire day parading herself around the gathered friends and family with Joe in her arms showing him off to everybody, as if the gathering was a family reunion rather than a funeral.

  The first great tragedy in her life had not fazed her in the least. She had already outgrown the needs that her parents had filled in her youth and they were, therefore, disposable. She was so wrapped up in her perfect life with John and Joe that the rest of the world didn’t matter; she already had everything that she wanted.

  Then John died. At that point I think my mother began to realize that her perfect world was a house of glass and Time stood beyond the walls with a slingshot and pocket full of pea-gravel.

  She began to come unhinged then. Her selfish nature had for her entire life up to that point, assured her that she would always get her way. When tragedy proved that assumption wrong, she went a bit crazy and began building up defenses that would insulate her from the rest of the world. She wrapped herself in a little mackinaw of security where she had complete control over all events. She drew comfort from the skewed idea that nothing could take anything from her unless she wanted it to.

  Then I came along. One bad night for her; one night where she let her defenses down and drank herself stupid and found comfort in the embrace of a stranger. Time slung another stone through her glass house.

  She unhinged further, and became more determined than ever to control every aspect of her life. Unfortunately for her I was a constant reminder that she did not have complete control. I was a reminder that things would not always go her way, and when she looked at me she saw only the leering face of Time, waving back at her with a slingshot in his hands.

  The final nail in the coffin of her sanity was Joe’s death. Already she’d been struggling to keep the Sickness contained, flitting back and forth between her strictly regulated reality and the realms of delusion that threatened to engulf her, and Joe’s passing pushed her into the void.

  I honestly believe that the only reason she had resisted the sickness in the first place was because she understood that it would strip her of complete control, and she cherished control above all else. Control was the one way to ensure that she always got her way.

  When Joe died, however she let go of her control and instead dived headlong into a world of insanity where everything was perfect, John and Joe were alive, and I was the only imperfection on the otherwise spotless walls of her glass house.

  As I sat in the waiting room ruminating on my past and coming to revelations about my mother’s Sickness, I still had no way of knowing if the sickness was a byproduct of her selfishness or whether it was congenital. But I was more firmly resolved than ever, not to control my world, but to control my sanity, no matter the cost.

  After six hours of introspection, no sleep, no food and constant stress and worry, I began to wonder if sanity was really worth the effort of maintaining. I was beginning to think that life would be a whole lot easier if I were to become a drooling idiot, swatting at invisible bats while singing Amazing Grace to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner.

  Finally a nurse came into the room and told me that June had come through the surgery just fine and was currently recovering from the anesthesia in a recovery room and that I’d be alerted when she was moved to her private room in another hour or two.

  In my hazy mind I understood what was happening and thanked the nurse in a voice that sounded distant and hollow to my ears, and sat back down to wait another hour or two. I had only vegetated on the couch for a few minutes when I was suddenly pulled back into the real world by the overpowering scent of roses.

  It should not be odd to smell roses in a hospital since everybody seems to think that sending flowers to the sick and dying somehow brings them back to good health and fortune, but this was a particular rose scent with which I was comfortably familiar.

  I was sitting on a couch in the waiting room and though to the eye I was the only person in the room, I knew I had been joined. I felt the cushion beside me sink down as if someone had sat on it, though there was no visible evidence that the cushion was occupied.

  I smiled, in spite of my misery, and said, “Hello, Elle. It’s nice to see you out of the house. Well, not see, exactly, but you know what I mean.”

  “I have not left that house for over one hundred years, Johnny. I sat at the very window that you so often sit at and watched the men haul my body away, and in that house I have remained ever since. It is good to be out, though I am uncomfortable.”

  I was amazed by the amount of details Elle was suddenly giving me about herself, since she had previously remained so reclusive.

  “I’m glad you came, Elle,” I said, while daring to reach a hand across to where I assumed she sat and laying it on her invisible and impossibly cold leg. “I could use a friend right now.”

  Elle remained silent for a time and I had the impression that she was summoning courage to speak and so I remained silent as well, not wanting to interfere with whatever she was struggling to say.

  “Johnny, I died in sadness. I lost all hope that the sun could ever shine in my life. The man I had pledged my heart to, and to whom I gave the one gift that a woman can give only once, fled from me into the arms of another as soon as he gained the gift he sought from me.”

  “My father disowned me when he discovered my promiscuity with the man I meant to marry and he blamed me for our severance. But he maintained good relations with the young man because the man’s father had considerable influence in the community.”

  “My mother died while giving birth to me and so I had nowhere to turn in my despair. I had many friends but was too ashamed of my own shortcomings to turn to any of them. In the end I decided that life had no hope of redemption for me and I…I lost the will to live, and so I died.”

  I understood what Elle had not been able to say. She had killed herself. In guilt, loneliness and despair she had lost all hope and decided that she did not deserve to live, nor did she desire to. My heart broke for her.

  “I went crazy with despair before I…died. I lost all sense of who I was, who I hoped to be, and who I should be. I have no memory of dying. My last living memory was my father coming to me in a rage, screaming at me; telling me that I ruined his hopes for prosperity by breaking the heart of the son of the biggest landholder in the county. He called me a whore…that broke me, and I have no memory of anything after that until I died.”

  “When I died, I found myself in what appeared to be an antechamber with exits on each end. Each exit distorted the view of what lay on the other side, like looking through a waterfall to see the world beyond, but I could see clearly enough to know that one exit led to eternity, and the other led back to this world.”

  “And you chose this world over eternity?” I asked, somewhat incredulously. “This world; with your uncaring father, with the man who stole your virginity and then ran out on you; this cold, hard, cruel world, Elle. Why?”

  I could see no sign of Elle’s presence but I could imagine her as she sat beside me, baring her soul, struggling to get all her words out before she lost the nerve to tell the story of what had ha
ppened over a hundred years before.

  “Because I was afraid… When I found myself in the antechamber, I was not alone. Beside me sat an infant. A baby girl who had my eyes, my nose, my lips…I understood that I had not killed only myself that day, but I had also killed an innocent who had not yet even been born.”

  “The innocent one looked up at me and smiled. It was the purest, most sincere smile I had ever seen. Then she looked towards the entrance to eternity and she got up and walked through the doorway. I was too ashamed of myself, and too afraid to follow. I knew I deserved an eternity of hopeless despair for all my transgressions, which now also included the murder of an innocent babe.”

  I didn’t know what to say as Elle went silent. Her story was pitiable and sad. I didn’t know how to make her understand that she was not responsible for the death of the innocent, nor was she responsible for her lover fleeing her, or her father’s selfish wrath. She was guilty only of loving too much and bestowing that love upon an undeserving man.

  “Elle,” I said as tenderly as I knew how, “you can’t be held responsible for things that were beyond your control. The man you gave your heart to did not deserve you, your father’s anger was not a result of your actions, but of his own selfish ambitions coming to ruin due to the boy who used you. Your heart was too big, too trusting, for their selfish ways. It is not surprising to me that you lost your mind in the face of such betrayal.”

  Elle placed her cold hand over mine, which was still resting on her cold thigh, and as she spoke I thought I detected a slight warming in her invisible flesh.

  “You are kind Johnny, for saying such things. But the fact remains that in my despair, I killed the innocent girl who had only just come to live in my womb. And that is a sin for which I have never forgiven myself, and never will. The door to eternity follows me, always in my sight, always within reach, but I fear that I shall never enter it.”

  “However, though I may never go through the door, you have offered me the hope that I may one day forgive myself for my other transgressions.”

  “Me? How, what have I done?” I asked, honestly perplexed.

  “When first you entered my home, nearly ten years past, I saw your soul long before I saw your flesh, and it shone brightly. Dear God it shone so sweetly. It was the purest light I had seen since entering the darkness. June and Lilly had souls of light as well, but even theirs did shine so bright.”

  “Then, as time went on and you began to profess your feelings to me, I could see your soul and knew there was no deceit in your words. Lies create dark spots in the soul of those who tell the lies, and you never had a dark spot. Your love for me gave me hope. You loved me when I found myself unlovable, and because of you, I have been less frightened and ashamed, but…”

  “But what, Elle?” I asked. When I got no reply I pushed the issue. “Elle, you’ve told me so much already, so much that I desperately wanted to know, but couldn’t ask. Don’t stop now. Get it all out, purge yourself of all your guilt and find joy.”

  “I have been less frightened and ashamed, but I have been afraid that when you discover me for who I really am, when you know my past, when you know that I am a whore, and a coward, and a murderer of helpless babes…I have been afraid that you will abandon your feelings when I confide in you. That is all.”

  I felt Elle pull her hand off mine, and I thought I could feel tension building in the ethereal muscles of the invisible leg beneath my palm, as if Elle was preparing to flee at the slightest hint that things were not going to go her way.

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts before I spoke, knowing that this one moment was going to be the one chance I had to make a difference in Elle’s life.

  I could imagine spending a lifetime in misery, I could not, however, imagine spending an eternity in grief, and I wanted to make sure that I said just the right things to Elle in order to make her as happy in her afterlife as was possible.

  “Elle, look closely at my soul right now and know that I speak only the truth. I love you. You are The Lovely Shadow in my life. You are guilty of nothing except love. You need not fear the door, and as much as I want you to be in my life, I think you will only find true joy and peace on the other side of the door.”

  I was surprised to find that I had started crying as I spoke, for I did not realize that my feelings for Elle were quite so strong. I was even more surprised to hear a choked and muffled sob coming from Elle.

  There was nothing more for me to say and I knew I would have to wait for Elle to respond to my words before I would know whether or not my words had had a positive impact on her or were instead detrimental—whether I could scatter ashes in this place or not.

  Elle and I sat beside each other silently for several moments before she placed her hand back over mine one more time. There was no mistaking the warmth of her touch this time. Her hand felt as soft and as warm and as real as any living human being’s hand had ever felt in mine.

  I was still waiting for her to speak when I was startled by another voice. I had been so focused on Elle that I had almost forgotten that I was in a hospital waiting room, waiting for June to get out of the recovery room so I could visit her.

  “Mr. Krimshaw?” the voice repeated.

  Elle whisked away so rapidly that I could almost imagine a swirl of dust or smoke slowly dissolving from the place where she had sat. I blinked at the empty space for another second before turning towards the nurse that had been calling me.

  I rubbed a hand down my face and blinked my burning, bloodshot eyes a few times before replying. “Yeah, sorry, I kind of zoned out there for a minute I guess. Is everything ok?”

  “Yes, Mr. Krimshaw. Everything is fine. I’ve just come to inform you that they’ve moved Miss Devon to room five-one-seven, and you may go see her, though I must warn you that she is still groggy from the anesthesia.”

  I leapt to my feet, suddenly feeling rejuvenated and positively buzzing with nervous energy. I barely had time to thank the nurse as I bolted past her on my way to the elevators. I looked down the hallway and saw the elevator doors closing.

  ‘Damn it!’ I thought to myself. I didn’t have patience to stand there and wait for the elevator to make its slow journey floor by floor until it could come back and carry me up a few stories so I turned left at the elevator and kept running down to the end of the building, where a nondescript door stood closed. Beside it, a small blue and white sign declared “STAIRS” in letters, raised Braille bumps, and a pictograph depicting a flight of stairs.

  I burst through the door and ran up four flights of stairs until I reached the fifth floor. I burst out of the stairwell, nearly killing the poor nurse who was standing perilously close to the door as I slammed it open.

  I apologized breathily as I ran past him and rapidly looked left and right for a sign that would tell me which direction room five-seventeen lay.

  I saw a sign on the wall to my right that declared that rooms five-ten through five-thirty lay directly ahead and I ran in that direction. I was receiving contemptuous looks from all the hospital personnel I encountered but I didn’t care.

  At that moment I was too pumped up with emotion to give a great green rat’s ass what they thought. I ran all the way to June’s door and stopped outside it, panting and trying to catch my breath before entering.

  As I stood there wheezing it dawned on me that I was in horrible shape, and for all the time it was taking me to catch my breath again I probably could have walked to June’s room and still been able to go in sooner.

  Finally I regained enough composure to feel ok about going in. I pushed the door open quietly and stepped into the room. The curtains were closed and the lights were off, giving the room all the shadowy ambiance of a tomb.

  In the center of the room June was laying on her bed, propped up at an angle with her eyes closed. Her skin was pale and looked damp and her hair was pulled back tightly away from her face making her forehead appear far too large.

  Every wrinkle that had ju
st begun to appear in June’s still lovely and young looking face over the last couple years had suddenly grown into full blown trenches of age, increasing her perceived age not by single years, but by multiples.

  Tubes and wires appeared to be everywhere. There were tubes running into her nostrils, there were tubes running into each of her arms, there was a wire attached to a clamp on her finger, racks containing the I.V. bags and equipment stood sentinel beside her bed with tubes and wires hanging off from them and running towards June in tangled masses.

  Everywhere I looked there were tubes, wires, gadgets, and gizmos some with silently flashing lights and some that beeped quietly in the gloom of the room.

  June managed to open one eye halfway up and she raised an eyebrow slightly when she saw me and tried to give me a weak smile. I wondered for a brief second if it was normal for a young man that was pushing seventeen years of age to weep as often as I did as I smiled back at June through the tears that were running out of my eyes.

  June tried to speak and I shushed her, telling her to go to sleep and that I’d be here for her when she awoke. She nodded almost imperceptibly and immediately closed her half open eye and went to sleep.

  I sat down in the large chair beside her bed and fell asleep myself. It was about four-o-clock in the afternoon when I dozed off in the chair and I didn’t awaken again until eight-thirty the following morning.

  CHAPTER 29

  When I awoke I looked immediately to my left to see if June was awake. She was, and she looked horrible. Her face appeared lumpy and swollen, large black bags hung sloppily beneath her heavy lidded eyes and her mouth was slack, allowing a slight trail of spittle to run from the corner.

  She was staring at me when I woke. I jumped up and went to her and gently grabbed her hand. She gave me a weak smile and a weaker squeeze on my hand.

  “Hey June,” I said quietly, “How are you feeling?”

  I know it was a stupid question but I didn’t know what else to say.