There were no more Shadows after that. I ate my eggs and tried to make conversation with Dad, but his head was still in poem-land. All I got was monosyllables and the occasional excited “Holiness!” or “Devastation!” I sat there eating in silence while Dad scrabbled for his notebook, making fevered adjustments to his poetry. Usually, I would have looked over at the Shadows and rolled my eyes, sharing my frustration with them. Today, they’d annoyed me too much.
When we’d finished eating, Dad walked me to the bus stop.
“Keep yourself safe, Lena,” he said. It’s what he always said. Not “Be safe.” Always “Keep yourself safe.”
“Just going to school, Dad,” I sighed. “School’s a pretty safe place. Nothing’s going to happen to me there.”
I climbed on the bus and sat in my usual seat — the single one next to Neil, the bus driver. I always sat there. None of the other kids wanted to sit next to Lena the freak.
I always read on the bus, mostly because I took every opportunity to lose myself in a novel. There was an added benefit, though. If I kept my nose in my book, it made it seem as though I didn’t mind so much that I was on my own; that being an outcast didn’t worry me at all. I was halfway through a novel about fallen angels. I liked reading about things that were fantastical and impossible. It made me forget about the real world. Just a little bit.
As I reached into my bag to pull out the book, my fingers came into contact with something warm and sleek like satin. My hand jerked back. A Shadow. There was a Shadow in my bag.
I clipped my bag shut, slowly, and pushed it away from me.
I knew I was the only one who could see the Shadows, but I still didn’t want to let one loose in the bus. Especially if it was in a naughty mood.
I started humming to myself, trying to calm my nerves.
“What is she doing?” I heard Hannah Crawford say. She was sitting in the seat behind me. I’d avoided her eyes as I sat down; they were heavy with mascara and revulsion. Hannah Crawford hated me, and I hated seeing the way her face twisted when she looked at me. I saw her taking in my boldly clashing clothes, and the lank hair falling over my face. Hannah Crawford thought I was a slug, and when I looked into her eyes, I felt like one.
I couldn’t avoid her snaky voice, though, or the hate-filled words that slithered their way over the seat back into my ear.
“She’s such a freak.”
I was still looking, red-faced, at my feet when it popped out. Just a small one, slightly translucent, and ragged at the edges. It was a harmless baby, but it still startled me. Usually, a Shadow emerging from my bag wouldn’t fluster me at all — annoy me perhaps, but not fluster me. But today, I was already wound up. I let out a scream that echoed around the bus.
“What the hell was that?” Neil roared, craning his neck to look around at us with his beetroot-red face.
“It was Lena,” Hannah called out, her voice plump with smugness. “She’s just being a mental case, as usual.”
Neil’s face softened. He looked at me and shrugged, before turning back around to watch the road.
“No wonder her mum left,” Hannah muttered.
My hands clenched. A fire burned in my chest. I didn’t get angry very often, and I’m not certain why I got angry then. Maybe I’d just bottled up all my annoyance at the behaviour of the Shadows that morning, and it exploded all over Hannah instead. Maybe there was still so much anger bubbling inside me over my mum’s disappearance that it was inevitable some would boil over eventually.
Maybe I was just sick of Hannah being such a bitch.
I whirled around to look at her and raised my hands in the air. I wasn’t going to hit her or anything. It was a gesture of frustration. I started to say something. Something about not being a freak. Something about how she should leave me alone. Before I could say anything, though, Hannah opened her mouth and let out a scream of her own, even more blood-curdling than mine had been.
“Hannah, what’s wrong?” asked Gemma, gripping Hannah’s arm.
“I don’t … know. I just … it was like I was having a bad… A night … nightmare…” She shook her head. “Never mind. My brain just went weird for a minute. Forget it. I had the worst dream last night so I’m a bit, like, sleepy and stuff.”
Hannah rubbed at her temples.
I lowered my hands, slowly. The tips of my fingers were tingling, like I’d scalded them with boiling water.
Hannah looked confused, and she did look really tired but there was something else. Something about her face. Some haunted look. It tugged on my brain — a memory calling out for attention.
But she wasn’t hurt. She was fine. I hadn’t done anything to her.
How could I have?
“Hannah Crawford and Gemma Kendall!” Neil called over his shoulder. “You girls be quiet right now or I’m reporting you to your principal!” Hannah and Gemma shut their mouths, but their eyes were still narrowed, glaring at me. I turned back around in my seat, feeling squeamish. My fingers were still tingling.
What had just happened?
I looked out the window of the bus. I couldn’t see a thing. The windows were filled with Shadows. And then, for a moment, the window cleared and I saw just a glimpse, a flicker, of someone watching me. Someone who looked like my mother. And, all around me, the Shadows were laughing.
I stood, shaking, and took one small step, then another, towards the front of the bus. Towards a light that seemed too bright and false.
“Freak,” Hannah whispered as I passed.
“Crazy,” hissed Gemma.
I took another small step. A boy pushed me and I stumbled. “Haha,” he crowed. “Weak.” There was a buzzing in my ears. A hissing. A cackling. Freak. Crazy. Weak.
“What rhymes with shadows, Lena?” The Shadows laughed. I closed my eyes.
My mum had been gone for six months. And things were … black. But then they always had been, hadn’t they? Because the Shadows were always there.
They’d been there, too, the night she disappeared…
One small step towards the memory calling my name.
My mother, standing over me, one hand on hip, the other holding my report card, decorated with rows of As, but graffitied with the words my mother spoke aloud, her voice thick with disgust:
“Lena does not work well with others.”
“Get a move on, Freak,” someone growled behind me.
I moved.
I looked around me. The windows were free of Shadows now. And what I saw beyond them made my stomach constrict. My mother. Over and over and over — my mother, eyes blackened, mouth open in a silent scream. She was surrounded by Shadows. They bit at her, clawed at her, punched and grabbed and slapped…
I stepped off the bus. I held my folder tight to my chest. On it was the picture of another Hollywood star.
His eyes, watching me.
∞¥∞Ω∞¥∞
That night, after an ordinary day at my ordinary school, I returned home.
My father sat at the kitchen table when I walked in. He was scribbling a poem. He didn’t acknowledge me. I ducked under a Shadow to make myself a sandwich at the kitchen bench. I went to my room.
I did my homework.
I lay on my bed. The posters stared down at me. My own eyes closed.
I stepped into a dream.
“Lena does not work well with others.”
My mother shook her head. “Lena, I am so disappointed. You are failing me. You are not trying hard enough. You are weak.”
My cheeks glowed. My mother was often critical of me but she’d never been quite this … cruel. “I’m not,” I mumbled. I cursed my fragile, trembling voice. I was weak.
“Weak,” my mother repeated, throwing the card in a crumpled ball to the floorboards. “Your classmates think you’re crazy, Lena. They think you’re a freak and you do nothing to stop them. I’ve been too soft on you, I can see. I thought I had time. I didn’t realise they are already with you.”
“Who are…”
I trailed off. My head was buzzing, whirring.
“You’re just like your father,” my mother said. “Unfocussed. Head in the clouds. Head in the shadows.”
“What did you say?” I whispered.
“You heard me.” My mother’s voice was lower now. More sinister. “I know, Lena,” she said. “I know you’re just like him. Both shadow people. Both weak people. I’d hoped you would be different. But you see them too, just like your father.”
“My father doesn’t see the Shadows,” I said, firmly. “I know.”
“Read his poems, Lena,” she said. “He sees them. And he knows you do as well. He has a black soul too.” My mouth dropped open. My mother leaned forwards. “He has the devil inside.”
“I don’t have the devil inside me!” I protested. And my father … my flighty, floaty, poetic father … he definitely didn’t have the devil inside him.
“Can’t you see it in his words?” my mother whispered. “That’s where he puts the devil.”
The buzzing was louder now. The whirring was more intense. And my hands… The tips of my fingers were tingling, like I’d scalded them with boiling water. And then the Shadows came. Creeping. Stalking. Hissing and moaning and writhing like so many dark, sharp-toothed snakes.
And, just like Hannah’s had, on the bus that morning, my mother’s eyes widened. And then, they shifted away from me. They looked behind me. “I knew you’d come,” she said.
A Shadow hovered in my bedroom door. I knew the shape of this Shadow. I knew his shape, so well.
“Turn around, Lena,” he said. “Look at your posters. Look into their eyes. Don’t look back. It’s just a bad dream. Just a shadow. All of this is just a dream.”
“Just a dream,” I whispered to myself. And in the dream there was screaming.
I opened my eyes. Light streamed in. I was in my room, surrounded by my posters; a hundred eyes, looking down at me.
A nightmare. Only a nightmare and now…
A seeming-usual morning. But the screaming was still there.
I ran to my father’s room; pushed open his door. His eyes were fixed shut but his mouth was open and out poured a howling. “Inga…” My mother’s name.
“Dad,” I shook his arm. “Dad. Wake up. You’re having a nightmare again.”
His eyes fluttered open. “Lena,” he whispered. “I just dreamed a poem of you.” His voice was hoarse.
“In the half-light of the gloaming
We live, half-seeing, half-hidden
You lived always in the light
Your fingers twisted moonbeams
and made of them marionettes
You caught the Shadows
and made of them strings
You gave me luminance
My child
She with the hair like shimmering spider webs
and eyes of stardust
Then, the shadows took you
but you left the stardust child
Lena
and we cling to each other
as Shadows creep in
We scribble them into nothing.
We won’t let it happen again.
My stardust child,
She holds them at bay
One small step
And then run away”
Around us, as he spoke, Shadows gathered. But that was normal. A curious kind of normal. They’d always been there. They’d been there before she disappeared. They never went away. There was a kind of comfort in that. I suppose you get used to even the strangest things, given enough time. The craziest things. The most devilish things.
My dad smiled. “Come downstairs, Lena. I’ll make you some eggs. And then I have to write.” My father held out his hand. We pushed past the Shadows, as we did every morning. One small step, from dreaming to real, or real to dreaming. We were never quite certain which. I hoped this was the real world. Because, behind my eyelids, she was screaming.
Behind my eyelids, her eyes were black.
“You know, Lena,” my father said, as we walked down the stairs. “I never could stand to hear your mother say you’re weak. You’re strong, Lena. We both are.”
I looked sideways at him and I knew behind his eyelids she was screaming too. I knew I hadn’t been alone in my room, that day the devil came out; the day the Shadows played. I took his hand. “I might write too,” I said. “I have things I need to let out.”
My father didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He knew.
Behind us, as we walked downstairs, the Shadows followed.
They were always there.
Ever behind me,
the Shadows haunt,
Dark and silver,
fat and gaunt.
Ever behind me,
my only friends,
the Shadows mould me
and I bend.
I lift my foot,
one step I take,
waking to dream,
dreaming to awake.
Ever behind me,
they titter and squeal,
my secrets, my dark things,
Shadows of the real.
In the half-light of the gloaming,
They crouch and they hide.
But I know they’re still with me:
the Devil inside.
∞¥∞Ω∞¥∞
Original by Penelope Love
adj. belonging or relating to the origin or beginning.
n. a primary type or form, from which varieties are derived.
Tek’tek skidded the last few metres. His hindquarters slid out from under him as he took the turn. All four legs scrabbled for purchase and his claws dug into the floor. He swung his weight back into alignment and wedged himself through the door.
“Sorry I’m late, Professor Xi,” he gasped. He’d been too focussed on football last semester and he had to pass a summer unit to stay on. Being late for the first class was a bad start. Fortunately Professor Xi was busy. He didn’t even look up.
There was one other student in the tute. Sara. He mentally pumped air. Sara was the reason why he’d decided to go with Anthropology 404, despite a daunting reading list. Sara had never looked at him twice, not even when he’d wowed everyone else at the break-up party with his new patch, shoulder-mounted night vision eyeballs.
Sara had spiky white hair, chocolate skin, green eyes and elfin features. Her rangy three metre tall frame meant the top of her head was level with Tek’tek’s chin. Her ancestors had adopted an avian spike to deal with the staggering heights of her home planet. Her breastbone was a ship’s keel, a necessary counterweight to the bronze wings folded shimmering on her back. She was gorgeous and a real brain. Today, she was wearing nothing except spray-on glitter and perfume. Surely if they were studying together he could ask her to go out with him. She might even take pity and have sex with him. Tek’tek was a simple man.
Even Sara’s perfume could not disguise that the room reeked of old dust and mould, with another layer Tek’tek could not identify; eyeview reported rotten cellulose. The tables were piled with boxes filled with thin, flat sheaves of stuff he’d never seen before. Eyeview analysed it: “paper, n. substance made from rags, straw, wood or other fibrous material, used in ancient times for writing and printing.”
He stepped carefully, focussing on his hind legs to avoid knocking anything over. He was at home on the football field, able to take a ten metre mark with full body slam, but he was too large for this room. He picked up one of the papers.
“Is it supposed to smell this bad,” he asked.
“Don’t touch it!” Sarah yelled.
He jumped, startled, and the fragile sheet tore in his hands.
“Now look what you’ve done!” She snatched it from him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, running his hands sheepishly over his chiton-plated scalp. Anthropology 404 was not off to a good start.
Eyeview lit up. “Please only handle these original documents while wearing gloves,” Xi scrolled.
Xi had body-swapped with
a magnellan five years ago so he could research on their home planet, where the bone-crushing gravity was too severe for even the most spiked human body to tolerate. They hadn’t got around to swapping back yet, so Xi remained a fifteen metre long, metre high, armoured millipede with curved mandibles. He had no features, no expression and no voice, so he communicated entirely by eyeview. Half his glistening length was coiled on the wall of the tutorial room to keep it out of the way. Xi passed over the gloves. “Have you done the reading?” he asked.
“Um, I had a look, yeah—” Tek’tek conjured the reading on eyeview as he sprayed his hands and waited for the gel to set. He scrolled rapidly in the hope of bluffing his way through. Genomes, nucleotides and chromosomes, recessive and dominant genes he took in at once, that was all patches and spikes basics, but he stumbled at Mendelian genetics. It was too big a subject to swallow in one gulp.
“I thought this was anthropology, you know, alien races and stuff,” he protested.
Xi sighed. “For the benefit of those who haven’t done their reading — Sara, you may keep sorting — the purpose of this class is not to study aliens but to study ourselves, our origins, with an anthropological survey of the Originals. The Originals rejected modern technology. The latest they accepted was the steam engine, a contraption so outdated I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
Eyeview was keeping up, even if Tek’tek wasn’t. Hero of Alexandria, James Watt, the Rankine cycle and the Industrial Revolution passed before his bewildered vision.
“Eventually the Originals were considered so much at risk from superior technologies that they were placed in reservations for their own protection. We have a local Original community. They used to send their young people to university, using the rail line down the mountain, to give them a taste of modern life.”
Tek’tek had seen that ancient line. Around its rusted rail the grass grew long and green. “How old were they when they went to uni?” he asked, intrigued.
“Eighteen or nineteen years.”
“My baby brother is that age!” Tek’tek protested. “My parents would never let me loose on the world that young. I was forty before I could even go to the Deepmall with my friends.”
One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries Page 14