Shadow Eyes

by Dusty Crabtree

  As I stood there with Gregory, watching the terrified young girl with her bandages and inky black blanket, I was overcome with pity for her. At the same time, I couldn’t help but recognize the irony of the situation. There she was freaking out over the shadows surrounding family members when she was unknowingly shrouded in her own personal darkness. It made me pity her even more for her ignorance.

  The vision began to blur and shift again, but I was prepared this time for the blast of wind from the swirling scenes. What I wasn’t prepared for was the next one I had to face, as it was something I had never actually witnessed. The jolting and bouncing from the new location gave me a hint of where we were before the scene fully materialized and the guessing game was over. We were in an ambulance. I briefly scanned the inside of the vehicle and spotted my younger self lying on a stretcher. No wonder I didn’t recognize this scene. She was unconscious, having passed out just an hour earlier.

  Two other entities were in the ambulance with me, one of which did not take me by surprise as he’d been enveloping me with his burdensome weight in the previous scenes. Here in the ambulance a few hours prior to my waking up in the hospital, Lucas was already secured tightly around the younger me, covering almost her entire body from head to foot. His thick, dark form fluttered with every jolt and bump like rising steam.

  The other entity was the light figure that had apparently also been in the previous scenes, hovering in the background. But it wasn’t his presence in the ambulance that shocked me. It was that this time I recognized him, kneeling resolutely by the stretcher despite Lucas’s obvious supremacy over me. It was Gregory in his brilliantly glowing angel form. I had no idea he had been with me through this entire ordeal. For that matter, I had no idea any light figure at all had been with me. I guessed that once I’d woken up in the hospital, I’d been so distressed and confused from seeing the staggering number of shadows that I hadn’t noticed.

  My mom and Hanna were in the ambulance as well with black clouds already developing over them. As much as I tried not to look directly at their devastated, sobbing faces, I could feel Gregory’s powerful presence still beside me, with his hand lightly touching my back, forcing me to keep my eyes focused on them. He wasn’t trying to punish or torment me, though, because I could also feel his warmth radiating up my body and through my eyes, urging me to see the situation differently.

  My mother was holding my wailing seventeen-year-old sister in her arms, rocking her back and forth in the unstable ambulance ride. She was attempting to console her even as she herself could hardly breathe from her incessant tears that sent her body into convulsions.

  “I feel terrible!” Hanna howled through her sobbing as my mother continued to hold her shaking frame. “I’ve been so horrible to her! I should have treated her better. She needs to know she deserves so much more than I gave her!”

  “I know, sweetie. I know.” My mother spoke brokenly through her own tears. “She will, honey, don’t worry. She will. We’ll all have a chance to show her how much she’s really needed…And how much we love her…” Her voice trailed off as she closed her eyes and held my sister tight while more tears flooded down her face.

  I sat in the ambulance as an invisible spectator, watching and listening to my grief-stricken mother and sister cry over my former self. Tears streamed down my own face, and once more I was standing at the edge of a cliff ready to plummet into my self-made pit of shame and pity. The pit I had wallowed in off and on for the last three years. The pit I kept nearby so that no matter how much time I spent away, it was always available to embrace me again.

  I leaned in for the fall and breathed in the familiar stench of sorrow and remorse. But just before I pitched over the edge, Gregory’s warmth pulsed through my skin, grabbed my wavering soul, and yanked me firmly yet tenderly back into his secure arms. Gradually, as I stood safely supported by his strong touch, his gentle heat began to permeate my mind, body, and spirit, altering my negative perception and replacing my broken, skewed filter with a truthful, new one. For the first time, instead of feeling awful and ashamed from hurting my family so deeply, I was humbled and moved by their genuine love for me. It was like I’d put on new glasses that made me see the world in a completely different, positive way. A way I had never known existed.

  The rest of the scene was no exception. Every action my family did and every word they spoke, which could have easily been disheartening or condemning, was sent through my new filter to my transformed mind. I was able to perceive it all in a way that was actually uplifting and encouraging. Gregory was undoubtedly behind this new perception, but I was doing my best to adopt it as my own.

  When the ambulance finally stopped, my mother came alive with so much motherly instinct that, if the situation had been different, would have been embarrassing.

  She wiped her eyes and put on a brave mask as the paramedics began to pull and jerk my stretcher out of the vehicle. “Now, be careful! That’s my baby you’re handling! She’s very precious. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They were polite enough, but, naturally, they could only be so careful in transferring a heavy stretcher from the back of a vehicle to the ground and rolling it inside the hospital while at the same time trying to hurry in order to quickly get to the emergency room.

  Gregory and I followed without moving as the setting shifted for us from the ambulance to the emergency room where Jenny and Austin were anxiously pacing the half-filled waiting area. Since their house had been closer to the hospital than ours, they’d been there a full five minutes already. The stretcher came through with Hanna and my mother following, while my mother chanted hysterically to the paramedics and anyone else in the hospital who would listen, “Take good care of her. Please, take good care of her.”

  Jenny rushed over to it and burst into fresh tears. She knew I was out cold, but for some reason she started talking to my young body lying limp on the rolling bed. She ran with the stretcher before it rushed through double doors and left my anxious family behind.

  “Iris, you hang in there. Do you hear me? I love you, Baby Sis. Don’t you forget that! Jenny loves you!”

  She had to yell the last part through the double doors, which swung back and forth. Intermittent glimpses of the paramedics still running with the stretcher were all they had left to cling to, until the swinging finally stopped and my family stood staring at blank, white doors.

  The uncomfortable silence seemed to magnify their helplessness, as if forcing them to acknowledge the fact that they no longer had any control.

  My mother’s phone rang abruptly and startled everyone. She glanced at it and looked at my sisters. “It’s your dad.” She took a deep breath, put on her brave mask again that barely covered her hysteria, pushed a button as she walked slightly away from everyone, and held the phone up to her head. However, instead of sounding frustrated or annoyed like she usually did when talking to my dad, she actually sounded compassionate and caring as though they were still married. It was unusual hearing her talk to him that way.

  “Hey…Yeah, we just got here…they just took her back…I know, I told them. Trust me, I told them! If they don’t do everything possible for her, they won’t want to answer to me!…I know. Nothing else matters right now but Iris.” She put her hand to her forehead and sighed. Then, after a long pause, in an indication that what she was hearing was terribly painful, she closed her eyes and slid her hand down from her forehead to her mouth. The mask came with it.

  “No. No, Frank, you’re wrong.” She was emphatically shaking her head now as if to disprove what my dad was saying and to fight back the tears that were stubbornly breaking free. “Don’t you blame yourself! It’s not your fault. She knows you love her. Our divorce has nothing to do with this!” She hung her head and continued crying softly while the phone remained by her ear.

  At long last, she took a deep breath and lifted her head, wiping her eyes with her free hand. “Yes…I know you’ll get here as soon as you c
an…Don’t worry.” Her mouth formed into a feeble smile. “She’s strong. Just like you…I will. But you can also tell her yourself when you get here…Yes…You too…Bye.”

  I had never thought of my father or myself as strong, but hearing my mother say it with such conviction made me start to believe it myself. I was certainly starting to feel strong now. Stronger than I had in a long time, despite the pain of hearing my dad blame himself. A lot of it was Gregory’s influence and even more was being able to see my family’s immense love and concern for me through my new perception, but there was something else. Something different. I wasn’t sure what, but whatever it was, I wanted more of it.

  My mother’s face and then the hospital waiting area began to ripple and warp until the whole image spun away from me in a flash. This time, the wind from its swift departure didn’t faze me as I stood my ground resolutely, though I was still anxious and apprehensive about the next scene. I somehow foresaw it as the final memory we would visit. With that unexplainable knowledge, I braced myself for what promised to be the toughest thing I would ever have to witness and the last thing I wanted to relive. Nonetheless, if Gregory was taking me there, it was necessary. And I was ready.

  The whirling movie reel slowed to a stop, more gradually this time, and we found ourselves in the empty living room of my old house back in Cloverdale. I quickly surveyed the doleful remnants of my sad, little fourteenth birthday party. A few bits of wrapping paper lay crumpled on the barren living room floor. Almost an entire leftover cake remained on the dining room table, uncovered and forgotten. Four plates and cups sat in front of four deserted chairs. I remembered how pitiful the party had been.

  The only people who’d bothered to show were my sister Hanna who had been pretty blatant about not wanting to be there, my neighbor Shelby who, although she was my closest friend, had never truly understood me, and my mother who was embarrassingly trying to overcompensate for the meager number of guests there to celebrate my birth.

  After the divorce, my dad didn’t attend many birthdays, and Jenny and Austin had said they were busy. I’d had a feeling, though, they just hadn’t wanted to be around me. Not that I completely blamed them. I had been quite a depressing downer the last several months, although nobody had seemed to notice or care enough to do anything about it besides avoid me. Even my friends, aside from Shelby, had ditched me to hang out with more chipper people.

  I had opened three impersonal presents. My mother had served cake and ice cream that I hadn’t touched as my stomach had been in anxious knots. We’d played one round of torturously silent Yahtzee. Then Shelby had gone home and the rest of us had gone to our bedrooms. My hope for a pain and anxiety-free life had been resting on an already dilapidated and flimsy foundation. After that bleak party, the whole shoddy, empty shell had come crashing down.

  The scene began to shift to my bedroom, and Gregory and I wafted through the closed door into my old room. It was dusk outside and the lights in my room were off, but a faint glow shone from the penguin night-light on the left wall, making my room look deceivingly childlike and carefree.

  It only took one peek toward my tall dresser on the far side of the bed for that impression to drastically alter. Hovering over someone or something hidden behind the furniture was a raging, black funnel cloud that was descending as the vision slowly floated us toward the other side of the bed. I cringed as we approached, knowing full well the dreadful sight that awaited us around the corner.

  Sitting and leaning against the wall, her legs crisscrossed and her left arm out-stretched on her leg, was my fourteen-year-old self weeping bitterly with a razor blade in her right hand. She was slicing dangerously deep into her left wrist as blood ran down in streams on either side, staining her jeans a dark crimson. The dark, spiraling shadow over her was hastily wrapping itself around her torso and face in a repulsive slithering motion as it whispered and hissed in her ear.

  Still, amidst all the turbulence and chaos of that shadowy whirlwind, my eyes stayed focused on the bloody razor blade. I recognized the blade. Remembered the feel of it in my hand and the piercing, sharp edge of it on my wrist. I even tasted the acidic sting of physical, mental, and emotional pain as it crept into my mouth and infected my spirit. Like a drug you place on your tongue and allow to infiltrate and conquer your body and mind.

  The swirling shadow coiled itself further around its victim who sat hacking away at her other wrist. My eyes eventually moved from the razor blade back to its writhing, black form, allowing me to examine it for the first time. I should have known it was Lucas. Seeing him clinging adamantly to her frail, weakened body made me burn with disgust and hatred, which worsened as parts of him poured down her arms, willing her to continue and finish the horrible task she had set out to do. A wicked smile spread across his face, and his eyes even flicked up to Gregory and me as though he were taunting us. My heart nearly stopped. But he couldn’t see us. Could he? With his eyes still fixed in our direction, he continued to flaunt how much he enjoyed her agony. How much he savored the ecstasy of twisting himself around her wrists and lapping up her blood.

  I had seen enough. I wanted to scream and run to her to rip Lucas off. His evilness was more than I could bear. Seeing him manipulate and torture this young girl. Realizing that the same sinister shadow had been surrounding me ever since, causing needless damage to both me and everyone I had ever cared about over the past three years.

  I doubted I could effectively do anything to stop him since this was only a memory, but I was about to try anyway when a blast of blinding light and wind rushed into the room. Instinctively I backed up and shielded my eyes with my arms crossed over my face as though reacting to an unexpected helicopter landing. The blazing light had also caused Lucas to shrink almost to the size of the girl he was now hiding behind like a terrified, cowardly criminal who’d just been caught.

  Once the initial blinding brightness wore off and I lowered my arms, I immediately recognized the light figure as Gregory. He glared at Lucas for a brief moment with holy daggers in his eyes as Lucas attempted to appear confident with an arrogant smirk in reply. The intense silence between the two adversaries lasted only a few seconds while they hovered in sedate repose, motionless apart from the trembling of Lucas’s black, robe-like silhouette and the fluttering pulse of Gregory’s bright aura. I could feel the eternity in their gazes as I glanced back and forth in suspense, waiting for the battle to begin.

  In a flash almost too fast for my human eyes, Gregory bolted across the room to Lucas, leaving a streak of light in his path, tore him away from the girl, and wrestled with his squirming form. The girl was ignorant to the forces of good and evil above her fighting a monumental battle for her soul and proceeded to carry out her chosen fate. But not for long. Somehow, in an incredible show of strength and power, a glowing arm extended from the massive tangle of light versus dark, wrapped around the girl, and restrained her hand, stopping her from cutting herself any further while the rest of the glowing mass simultaneously continued the ferocious fight.

  I had never seen anything like it. This brilliantly glowing angel was half lion, fiercely gripping and attacking his foe, and half gentle father, tenderly wrapping his arm around the girl in a protective embrace. As if that wasn’t astounding enough, I was puzzled even more when, a few seconds after he grabbed her hand and was holding it back, a burst of light gushed from his hand to hers, making her whole body glow for an instant before fading again.

  I looked at my former self still clutching the blade and holding it inches over her already heavily injured wrist. She was so exhausted and fatigued from straining against Gregory’s pull in the opposite direction. I remembered the weariness of that instant. I had wanted to finish and was struggling to, but for some reason I had no more strength to carry on. Seeing the scene from a different angle, I now recognized why. And I was exceedingly grateful.

  At last, the girl dropped her blade and moaned, staring at her mangled wrists. But before Gregory had a chance to ful
ly retract his arm back to the flickering chaos of light and darkness, a transparent duplicate of the girl’s arm detached from her physical form and rose from her side. The ghostly hand grabbed at the dark shadow and pulled it close about her, allowing it to envelop her like a heavy, black cloak while she shook and sobbed.

  Gregory was left alone, fervently hovering to and fro in an effort to remove Lucas from his willing hostage, but to no avail. He became frustrated. I could see the distress in his eyes, trying every angle he could think of to get at the menacing shadow but knowing there was nothing he could do since she was purposely choosing to embrace the darkness.

  Lucas smugly settled into his permanent position as a burdensome, oppressive cloak around her. And I was suddenly that timid little girl again, experiencing the same emotions that had been running through her mind. Nobody understood who I really was or how I really felt because I was so different. No one even cared about me. I was worthless and pathetic. I couldn’t control or fix anything around me, like my parents’ marriage, which was mostly my fault for causing so many of their arguments in the past. I also couldn’t fix the way my sisters treated me. Or the way my parents didn’t seem to understand me or want to spend time with their unlovable daughter. On top of that, because I couldn’t control or fix those things, I was afraid and anxious all the time. My anxiety had become the norm for me since my parents’ divorce, but I had since let that fear and panic devour me and eat away at my sanity. Having a normal life free of pain and worry had seemed impossible, and I had given up.

  I remembered sitting there, sobbing, leaning against the wall and letting my blood pour out onto the carpet while I sensed my life draining with it. The hopelessness of my situation and the guilt and shame spawned from the realization of what I had just done weighed on me so heavily I could hardly breathe.

  I stood beside the moaning girl and watched her bleed, getting consumed in the heaviness of her emotions and almost feeling like giving up myself. In my anguish, I failed to notice the inky blackness surrounding her suddenly begin to expand and widen in an effort to stretch out past the young Iris over to me. It was as if it sensed not only my unseen presence but also my pain and was drawn to it as a shark is drawn to blood. It had grown to four times its original width and was looming over me, darkening my entire view, when I finally snapped out of it. I jerked up my head and cried out as it and all the agonizing emotions from that moment engulfed me like a deadly squall at sea, threatening to knock me over and drown me.