Adelaide had no idea what was happening but she knew something was changing. Hope filled her heart as she waited for the light to dim. Maybe the Lord had decided she’d suffered enough and was bringing her to heaven. The world went completely blank for a moment and a falling sensation took over, as though the world had disappeared beneath her feet.
Adelaide started to scream once more but then awareness swooped in. She was awake. She was awake, in a bed, there was a light out in the hallway. She wasn’t at home but she was awake. And her brothers were at her bedside, as was her father. She smiled up at them, her brain fuzzy and confused.
“Where are we? What are we doing here? What are you two doing here?” The men hadn’t been paying attention to her as they talked together but now they all turned, rushing to touch her and check her over. “Where’s Momma?”
“You’re in the hospital, Addy.” Her father told her, tears in his eyes as he saw her clear eyes and heard her clear speech. “You’ve had a time of it my little darling, but you’re getting better now. The boys came in from California and fixed you right up. It was just in time too, you had a lot of problems in that head of yours. Stuff I don’t understand but they’ve fixed you up right good.”
Malachi looked over at his sons proudly as they checked her eyes, had her move her limbs, and asked her several questions about how she felt. He wasn’t sure what it was all about but he was happy as he could be that they were there. Addy’s main problem had been a piece of her skull that had lodged in her brain and caused a lot of problems such as swelling. And they’d explained the fits had been something called seizures.
Apparently seizures came in a variety of forms and Addy had displayed a few. Samuel the surgeon still working in research to study how the brain worked and doing a lot of experimental research, had found the problem with a simple x-ray and had gone in to fix the problem quickly with surgery.
“You’re going to have a slow recovery, Addy, and you may have epilepsy for the rest of your life, but we’ll see about controlling that. Dad explained what happened to your wrists, and though we don’t agree with what Momma did, we can’t really hold it against her.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Adelaide asked, looking down at the stitches in her wrist.
“Momma was doing some kind of ritual, trying to expel demons from your soul. She and Daddy convinced themselves you were possessed. Nonsense but they didn’t know any better.”
Adelaide felt a chill go through her but couldn’t explain to them what she’d experienced. She’d forgotten it until the boys spoke but now it all came back. She looked over at her father with a question in her eyes. His looked back at her, the boys could think what they liked but he knew. He’d been there, he’d seen it. She shook her head in agreement. They’d talk about that later some time.
“You were near to dying, Addy, but the boys fixed you up.” He said out loud. “Apparently we’re all going to California with them too. They have a nice big house out there.”
“Yes, we did so well in school we finished early and we were both given contracts with the government. We had a rather nice sign-on bonus with that and we bought a house with that part. We’ve been planning to come and get you all but haven’t had time to with our work. But we’re here now and you’re coming back with us, all of you. No more wandering around in the woods to find food to survive on, you can just get it from a local store. Plumbing and electric heating await you. Just as soon as you’ve both healed and we’ve sorted Momma.”
“Both healed. What’s wrong with you Poppa?” Addy turned to her father noticing for the first time the chair he sat in was a wheelchair. “Poppa?”
“I’m fine darling. A bit of heart trouble but the boys know a doctor out there that can fix me right up. Don’t you worry. You just rest up so we can get out of this cold and head out to those warm breezes and the ocean.”
Adelaide smiled up at her father and brothers, her tiredness suddenly making itself known. She was safe now. Finally safe.
One Month Later, Southern California
“Momma, I know you weren’t trying to hurt me. And I don’t care what the boys said; I was locked in some kind of Hell. I saw the white evil ones. You were only trying to save me.” Adelaide looked down at her now scarred wrists and then up at her mother. “Please stop apologizing for trying to save your daughter.”
Eva doubted her daughter’s words, thinking she might have made up the story so her mother wouldn’t feel bad. Maybe Adelaide heard her mother and father talking and that had influenced her unconscious mind. Eva’s faith had been shaken, as it had never been shaken. Her attempts had failed but her boys’ modern medicine had saved Adelaide. Perhaps if she’d listened to Doctor Avery they wouldn’t have had to go through all of that. She’d sent him a letter of apology the week before. He’d seen them off, happy that everything had worked out but she was still carrying a large amount of guilt around.
“Well, your wrists were infected already when they came in. That wasn’t helpful. Gracious, that could have been what finally killed you.” Eva kissed her daughter’s hand as they walked along the beach and guided her back to the path that led to her boys’ house. It wasn’t just a house, it was an old Victorian mansion on a cliff and Eva loved it dearly.
“I’m telling you for the last time, Momma. Stop it. I’m doing fine now. I’m still having seizures but the boys are working on finding the right medicine. I can walk, I can talk, I can see, and I can think still. You might have saved yourself some trouble if you’d let Doctor Avery take me off to the hospital but who’s to say what you did didn’t bring them in to save me? You can’t say that, so stop feeling guilty."
Eva looked over at her daughter, not sure the girl was right but she wouldn’t say any more about it. Eva knew in her heart that it was her boys that saved her girl. She’d begged and pleaded with God and nothing had worked. It took Doctor Avery going out and finding her boys to finally save her daughter. Some might say that was the Lord working but Eva knew her daughter had been left for dead. It took people that didn’t even believe in God to save her child and that spoke volumes. Science had saved her daughter, she knew that in her heart and for now she was happy enough just having her girl.
With a toss of her newly cut hair, a present of the boys, Eva let the fresh ocean air blow her worries away and helped her daughter up the path to the house. Either way, whatever had happened, she had her daughter back and that’s all she truly cared about.
Adelaide smiled as she watched her mother toss her head then walk proudly up the hill. It didn’t really matter what any of them thought. She knew where she’d been. The boys could tell her it was part of her illness, an illusion, hallucination, whatever, but she knew where she’d been and what she’d seen. And she remembered her father coming for her, just as he remembered being there with her. And that’s all she needed to know. She was safe out here, she was growing stronger each day, and it was over. Whatever had saved her she was free of the Moon-eyed people. That’s all that mattered; she was free and with her family. She couldn’t ask for anything more.
The End
The Shadow Man
Horror
About the Book
Sometimes we see things out of the corner of our eyes. Dark things that may only surprise us. But sometimes those dark shadows, those hints of things unseen, can be terrifying. For Clara the shadows are only dust in her eyes, or the imaginings of her own mind. She has more important things to worry about. Her mother is moving in and her mother has Alzheimer’s disease. When her girls pick up a new imaginary friend Clara thinks it’s just a phase her girls are going through, a way for them to connect with the grandmother that no longer recognizes them.
But for Clara’s mother, Betty, those shadows are real. Those shadow figures are real and they are terrifying. For in those shadows lay darkness, death, and memories best left alone, or forgotten. But the answer to Clara’s birth, and her parentage lies in Betty’s mind, and perhaps the answer to how to
save them all. Can Clara convince her mother to tell her the truth before it’s too late? Before death, or something worse, claims Betty and perhaps all those she loves?
Chapter One
Present Day
Charlotte, North Carolina
The storm clouds were finally clearing over our old farmhouse on the outskirts of Charlotte. The white two-story building had weathered another storm and I gazed up at the receding clouds with happiness. It was going to be a good day after all, even if our lives were about to be turned upside down.
“Clara, what time is your mother arriving again?” I turned to see my husband, Wes Slade, coming out onto the wide screened off porch that spanned the front of the old clapboard house. His grey eyes were laughing as our twin daughters, tiny and blond at eight years old with curly hair the same as me but with their father’s dark grey eyes, danced around his long legs, playing tag. This was my world in dark and light. I ran my fingers through Wes’s dark brown hair and gauged the length, narrowing my own green eyes as I measured. Time for a haircut, I would have to get my scissors out later.
“Hi babies! She should be here in a couple of hours Wes, her friend Stella is driving her down.” I gave him a grateful smile, knowing this was going to be a huge change for the family.
My mother was developing Alzheimer’s disease, a disease that stole your memory and made it hard to function in life. My mother had been a nurse all of her life and when she started to have problems I swore I would never put her in a nursing home, though it seemed the popular option these days. Put Mom and Dad away and the problem disappears until visiting day. Not for my mother, I loved her far too much and respected her, I was not going to allow her to go to a nursing home until it was necessary. Not after some of the stories she had whispered to her friends when she thought I could not hear her while I was growing up.
“Good, I am going to take the girls out to the park on this fine Sunday morning so they’ll arrive home quiet and exhausted. How does that sound?” He pulled me close to his side and bent down to inhale the scent of my own curly blonde hair. “Mm, I do love how you smell munchkin.”
Wes and I have been married for ten years now. We met in college and married a few years later. The girls came a little later and now we are settled into our dream home at 34 years old. We even have our dream careers, Wes as a public administrator for the city and I have my own career as a freelance photographer. I mainly do jobs for the local papers and magazines but I am taking some time off to settle Mom into our home and transition my family into our new lives.
“Well, if you promise to behave, Tall, Dark, and Handsome, I will let you sniff more of me later. But for now, yes, get these girls to the park!” I hugged them all as the girls shrieked in happiness at an outing and I went back into the house to make sure nothing else needed to be done.
I walked in from the porch, going into the hallway that lead off to multiple rooms: a parlor, a living room, the kitchen in the back, and the downstairs bathroom. Upstairs we have three bedrooms and an office. The parlor had been transformed into a bedroom for my mother and the bathroom fitted to suit her needs. I had arranged for a home-health nurse and a personal care assistant to come and monitor my mother’s health and to help me as her disease progresses over time. I want Mom used to both by the time her symptoms get to the later stages.
I've had locks placed high on all of the doors, ordered a system to help track her if she starts to wander off, done all of the research I could think to do, arranged a doctor here for her, and child-proofed the house. I sat down on the bed in her room, gazing at the quilt I had made just for her. The white, pink, and light blue star-burst pattern was intriguing and looked far more complicated than it was. I had to push back tears as I thought about the sudden reversal of our roles. Once upon a time Mom had prepared a room like this for my arrival. Now it was my turn. I knew she had a hard road in front of her, as did we all, but I wanted her last years to be good, even if they were heart breaking. I would keep her here for as long as I could.
Swallowing away the sadness, or trying to, I went in to the kitchen to prepare a jug of tea. Mom’s favorite drink was unsweetened ice tea. I had bought a new box, just for her, of the brand she preferred. Sitting down as the water boiled I looked around the large country kitchen and hoped Mom’s health remained good and that her memory would not start to falter too quickly. And I prayed the behavioral changes would not take place. Not the ones I had read about anyway.
I love my mother but my daughters would have to come first in that situation. Sighing I reminded myself that my mother needed my help. It was alright to worry but I had to remember she was my mother and I owed her far more than I could ever repay. Pushing my shoulder length curls out of my face I pulled my slightly plump body out of the chair and poured the hot water over the tea bags. We’d just have to wait and see how it all went, that is all we could do. And approach the day positively. Starting out on a negative approach was going to make the whole thing fail.
Putting a smile on my face I left the tea to brew and started a cake for my family. Lindy and Twilla, my twins, loved German Chocolate Cake and their Mom was the only one out of all of their friends’ mothers that even knew how to make the frosting. It was simply down to country living and being raised by a single mother. I had a different upbringing and learned how to make do, it did not mean I was better, it just meant I had learned a lot of things others had not, I told the girls. The cake was also my favorite. I needed to brighten my own day a little, too.
I thought about my mother as I mixed the ingredients for the cake. I had never had a father, not that I knew of, and even my birth certificate listed the man as unknown. As a child I had tried to ask her about my father but she would always turn pale and a sad, haunted look would come over her. She would not speak to me for the rest of the day and I quickly learned to stop asking about the man that had helped to create me.
I had also learned to avoid questions about it. There was not such a stigma about it now, not like there’d been so many generations ago, but people liked to know that you were normal. And even now children who do not know who their parents are, are looked down on as pitiful waifs, or somehow unfortunate. I had made the man a hero in dozens of different ways until my teens, and then I had figured out that something was off.
My mother and I shared a close relationship. She never went on dates or spent time out with friends; she preferred being at home with her daughter. We did everything together, trips, crafts, holidays, cooking, everything. If my mother was not telling me the one truly important thing about who my father was, she had a good reason and I likely did not want to know what that reason was.
I stopped my imaginings about the great war hero or the time-travelling man from the future that had come back to make sure I was born so I could save the human race and focused instead on studying and boys. Then I met Wes in a Latin American history class and my world changed. My Mom had been pleased for me when I started at the university but it had taken some time to get her to warm up to Wes.
We’d lived in Charlotte even then and I had gone to a local school for my university education because I just could not do without my best friend, my mother. If Wes and I hadn’t hit it off so well from the beginning I would probably still be living at home with Mom, we were just that close. She had given me away on our wedding day, gladly placing my hand into Wes’s much larger one before walking away, happy tears filling her eyes.
And now she was coming to my home. Wiping at a tear that had escaped my eyelids I washed my hands so I could begin cooking the frosting of the cake. She had worked so that I could go to school and saved throughout my childhood. I came out of school without debt and started my married life on the right foot. She had been there when the girls were born, coming to stay until we could all cope, and now we were all going to look after her.
Pouring the frosting on the cake after it cooled for a little while I went into the bathroom to get properly dressed and put on a little makeu
p. I was not normally one for primping, Wes liked to be able to touch my hair and my face without a bunch of goop in the way but I felt as though I needed it today. I needed that painted mask to hide the sadness from Mom, from Wes, from the girls, and from myself.
I looked in the mirror after putting on a pale pink summery dress and noted that my skin had darkened from my time in the garden and my waist was a little smaller than it had been last year. The dress was not as tight as it had been then and my hair was shorter than it was last year, too. My green eyes still sparkled though and my round face still had very few lines. I was aging well, at least, even if I did like to eat more than one piece of cake a day and did not think of exercising as a religion.
I chewed at my thumbnail, messing up the manicure I had got yesterday. No, maybe jeans and a t-shirt would be better today. It would be less formal and would put Mom at ease. Changing swiftly I ran downstairs as I heard Wes’s SUV pulling up. My girls came running in the house, screaming for their Grams but she was not here yet.
“Girls, go in and wash up and put on some clean clothes. Grams will be here soon enough.” I smiled as the girls ran back to the bathroom and began to giggle as they washed up.
“How are you babe?” Wes asked, sitting down beside me on the beige couch in our living room. It was long enough for him to stretch out on, one of the main reasons we’d bought it.
“I am alright, handling it so far. I am just worried. So many things could go wrong.” My words tapered off as I began to list possibilities in my mind.
Thriller: Horror: Conceived (Mystery Suspense Thrillers) (Haunted Paranormal Short Story) Page 31