by Neil Jackson
Eddie waited, his eyes fixed. He blinked...and the second shadow was gone. He stayed rooted to the spot for what seemed like ten minutes, more likely sixty seconds.
Nothing unusual moved near the cherry tree.
He exhaled and rubbed at his tired eyes; too much stress at work at the mail depot and early morning rises must be causing his eyes to play tricks on him. He closed the drapes and headed off to bed and to his surprise fell into a fast dreamless sleep, unfettered by imaginary wraiths or shadows.
The sun shone as he opened the curtains the next morning and any silly thoughts and half-remembered daydreams of tree shadows were erased by the hot sunshine and thoughts of another long day at work.
Eddie was last to bed and first to rise, as was his habit, and now he found himself standing before the dining room drapes. An illogical primal fear crept up from his belly to his rational mind.
“Eddie, don’t be a putz,” he admonished himself in a low voice and pulled the drapes half apart, to lay the apparitions of his tired imagination to rest.
The remainder of his day passed uneventfully with all thoughts of the creature, the shadows...the Lurker, gone.
Another mundane shift passed into another mundane evening.
11.33pm. Time to lock up and then hit the pillows before continuing the monotonous circle of life.
A check of the street before checking the drapes. Just in case.
No cars. A single cat. Even the cherry tree was fine...but next to Dan’s mail box, at the edge of his lawn, lurked the strange shadow from last night. Eddie took two faltering steps back, but that and blinking rapidly for effect, did not make the shadow creature vanish.
The Lurker’s eyes flashed briefly again, like jade gems from some lost Aztec treasure haul.
Then it pointed at Eddie.
Its shadowy arms crept toward the house. They elongated until they were across the street and onto the pavement outside Eddie’s drive.
Eddie gave a most unmanly shriek. He quickly pulled the drapes shut and ran up to bed, hurriedly cast off his clothes, down to his boxers and climbed into the safety of his bed, pulling the covers over his head. His pyjamas lay unwanted on the chair next to his wardrobe and he lay shivering even though it was mild and pleasant outside.
He looked over to his wife, who had managed to fall asleep within ten minutes of her head hitting the pillows...as usual.
Eddie would not find sleep so easy to come by tonight.
The images of the creeping shadow creature stayed with him all day and only the manual work at the depot pushed it back far enough for him to function. He came home early and sought out his wife Kendra to unburden his soul. She had always been the dependable rock and hoped she could help.
“You saw what?” she asked as she continued peeling sweet potatoes over a bowl in the sink of their recently refurbished kitchen.
“It seems so stupid now, but a shadow, but not a normal shadow. It moved, looked up and pointed at me.” A millisecond after he had spoken them, his words seemed to be that of a deluded child having night terrors.
“You must have dreamt it, hun,” Kendra put down a half-peeled vegetable and peeler, dried her hands on a nearby hand towel and turned to give him her full attention.
“I didn’t dream it, Kendra, it was damned real,” he raised his voice and swore. Two things that he never did in front of his wife. Even if ‘damned’ was tame by today’s standards.
“Jeez, Eddie, what’s really wrong?” His wife noticed the stress on his face and hearing the frustration in his voice. “Is it work?”
“No, I dunno, I think I’m losing my goddamn marbles, babe.” Eddie ran his fingers through his brown hair and squeezed his eyes shut to try and clear his fogged mind.
His wife took him in her arms and crushed him in a long loving embrace. Then things began to flit into her mind and imagination, things that normally stayed buried.
“What is wrong? You can tell me?” she murmured, her long fingers going to his cheek and moving his head. Then one of those buried thoughts came to the fore and her eyes dropped. “Are you seeing her again?”
“Damn it, Kendra, no,” he pushed her arms away and stepped back,” I think I’m losing my mind and you suddenly come up with the idea that I’m dicking someone else, Jesus.”
“Well, are you?”
“No, I may be mad, but I ain’t cheatin’ no more. That is ancient history. One time, Kendra, it was one time.”
“Sorry, Eddie. I’m sorry.”
“Look, humour me okay. Stay up with me tonight. We’ll watch a movie and then look out the window together, okay?”
“Okay, I’d do anything for you Eddie, you know that.”
They embraced once more, yet Eddie held back a little, annoyed that his brief spells of madness were a sign of infidelity to his wife. She may have forgiven him, but she sure enough hadn’t forgotten.
11.33pm. The pair of them stood before the closed drapes and shared a glance at the other. Then slowly, Eddie pulled them back to reveal the drive, the front lawn and their mail box. All were covered by a mix of darkness and moonlight. Many shadows lay across everything.
They both studied the street.
“So where am I looking?”
“Well, first it was over by the tree in Dan’s, then by his mail box But I can’t see it now.”
“There now, doesn’t that say everything? I don’t see anything. It must be stress. I’ll ring Dr Michelson first thing in the morning and get you an appointment, I’m sure he will help.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, I need a break, or maybe Dr Mike can give me some sleeping pills.”
“That’s more like my Eddie,” Kendra put her hand lightly on her husband’s shoulder blades and kissed his cheek. “You coming up now then, cos I’m wide awake, babe.”
Eddie saw the glint in his wife’s eyes and smiled.
Now that was a stress buster.
He pulled the drapes shut and hurried his wife upstairs for some matrimonial pleasures.
Outside on the Vaisey’s lawn, a thin shadow man, elongated and strange, hopped out from his hiding place behind their mail box and stared up with blazing eyes at the light that clicked off in the master bedroom.
The next day Eddie felt on top of the world again. He whistled to the latest sounds on the radio as he drove to work. And once at the depot, every crisis or problem there he seemed to handle with ease...and he had a definite spring in his step. He ate his lunch outside in the park and the sun shone down like it was only out for him. His wife even sent him a text message. ‘Appointment made. Love you, Stallion. xxx.’
He smiled. Stress was leaving the station already.
Friday night. Pizza for the family and the chance to chug down two or three beers, while watching CSI. Kendra was tired after yesterday’s late night of passion and Eddie sent her off to bed with a cheeky smack to the rump as she went.
11.27pm. Eddie ate cold pizza and drank another beer, belching loudly as he watched a highlights programme of last week’s game he had already seen. The Sandman was beginning to take hold. The beers were beginning to aid in his work and sleep was calling, again.
He grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the fridge to take up to bed and approached the drapes of the lounge, once again. He had renewed confidence in himself now, and the Dutch courage of four beers. He quickly pulled the curtains as wide as his outstretched arms would allow.
He yawned and looked across his lawn, over the street to Dan’s place, but saw nothing out of place.
“Fucking stress ’ll kill ya,” he muttered and went to pull the drapes again.
A black shadow shot up from its hiding place outside and underneath the window, the Lurker was wide now and its eyes dazzled bright like jade neutron stars.
Eddie fainted on the spot...a mix of booze, tiredness...and fear.
An hour later he woke and shaking from head to foot, he crawled up the rough carpet of the stairs and into bed, where sleep took him...eventually.
The kids woke him at nine the next morning after their mother had sent them up to fetch him for a cooked breakfast. Eddie pushed his shocked children away and ran to the en-suite toilet to throw-up. Kendra took the kids out for the day to the mall, leaving her sickly husband curled up in the sheets of the bed. There he stayed staring out at the white puffy clouds that moved slowly across the blue sky, for many an hour. He finally got up at ‘something after one’ and took a hot bath instead of his usual shower, then had some strong black coffee and doughnuts to raise his sugars levels.
Blaming the beers, he apologized for ruining their Saturday, but the kids had new games for their consoles and weren’t bothered that their dad had suffered from ‘grizzly beer’ head.
Eddie vowed not to touch the drapes tonight.
Whatever was out there could do whatever it wanted; just leave him out of it.
10.32pm. He and Kendra headed up to bed. This was very early for him. No booze. No pills. Just Kendra’s warm body next to his. They just cuddled and Eddie felt so secure in her warm embrace, the Sandman worked his magic.
At ten to twelve, his bladder told him to get up and he headed to the main bathroom so as not to wake up his wife, by using the en-suite. He was halfway across the landing by the stairs, when he heard their cat suddenly hiss from below.
“Molly, what’s the matter?”
Then he saw what was spooking the family pet.
A tall thin stickman of a shadow detached itself from the dining room doorway and seemed to wave at Eddie before disappearing into the dark room...and nothing.
The cat recovered its composure and Eddie stood, unable to move.
He needed no excuse to visit the bathroom. He’d already unburdened himself. He turned around, sensing he was being watched. Kendra was standing at the bedroom door.
Dr Michelson had always had a soft spot for Kendra and agreed to visit on Sunday after golf and see Eddie. He hardly recognised the fit thirty-five year old, shivering in his bed with dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. The doctor gave him a sedative and some sleeping pills...and stressed to Kendra that Eddie must visit the surgery, first thing on Monday.
For the remainder of the day, one half of Eddie Vaisey behaved like some catatonic mental patient, the other half was hiding in the recesses of his mind like a frightened child.
He took his medication at eight and was asleep by nine
Now it was Kendra’s turn to stay up late worrying, while her husband slept.
She came to bed at something just after eleven, with two Bacardi’s to aid her sleep...and nerves. As she climbed into bed and turned off the light.
Darkness.
Eddie slept...uneasily. His dreams became a mix of memories past, some good, some not so.
His mother sat on the end of his bed trying to protect and educate when explaining the death of his own father. Eddie was only nine years old. His father, just thirty-eight.
No reason for it. Just plucked from the prime of life.
Mom had done a good job, just enough educating, just enough protection. Miss you, mom.
3.33am. From the corner of the room. In the darkness. In the gloom. It stepped.
Eddie rose up on his elbows. Something inside told him not to disturb his wife. She would be fine.
The world seemed to whirl and twist for a few moments, but eventually his eyes settled on the shape in the shadows. Slow deliberate steps. Each movement carefully considered. The creatures glowing eyes seemed as fire coals from the deepest parts of Hell.
The Lurker rose to its full height and remained at the bottom of the bed. Eddie watched with petrified fascination as the shadow creature’s right arm reached out for him. The hand with long, bony, pointing fingers moved along the bed. Eddie suddenly realised he could no long move or breathe. The fingers stretched up over his quivering chin, over his agape mouth and nose and into his eyes.
Then it went dark
..and with the darkness went the fear of the Lurker.
5.53am. When Eddie awoke again, it was still dark, but he found he wasn’t in his own bed any longer. He was swaying in a strange manner on Dan’s lawn next to the cherry tree. He looked in fascination at his own house across the street and wondered how he came to be outside and why the Lurker thing had not killed him.
In the dining room window in his house, the drapes were suddenly pulled back and he was shocked to see a face he recognised instantly...his own. His own face staring out across the lawn at him.
From his house.
Eddie reached out a hand and screamed at the long spindly limb that was now his own as he pointed to his doppelgänger and saw the jade eyes glowing right back...at him.
OLD SLIPPERY - Stuart Neild
Max didn’t believe in spooks or ghouls. He didn’t believe in Father Christmas. And he certainly didn’t believe in monsters. As if he would listen to his stupid Grandad, or his dozy Gran. Ok, he liked the fact he got to stay with them when he was on his holidays. But he was seven years old now, and the stories they came out with were not fooling anyone.
“Stay away from the water.” they said.
A bit tough, he often thought to himself, when their place was surrounded by the stuff.
He liked the water, and seeing as there was not much in Max’s young life that he had a good word for. As such, the water was highly honoured.
Grandad had been left in charge of him for the afternoon. This caused worry for his Gran and that made her talk loudly to Grandad. She often talked loudly. There were other times when she would ask Grandad a question and he wouldn’t answer or wouldn’t give the right kind of answer. Gran would then answer back for him with the right kind of answer.
Max liked that.
It was like the old people were putting on a puppet show and Grandad was the puppet and Gran was the puppetmaster.
With Gran away at the doctors, Max found himself to be the voice of the puppeteer du jour.
“Can I go down to the lake, Grandad?”
“You can if you want Old Slippery to get you.”
“So does that mean yes?”
“He lives at the bottom of the lake, Old Slippery they call him. He waits and waits, and when the time is right he strikes. He eats children, naughty children who go near the water.”
“What’s Old Slippery, Grandad?”
“He’s an eel, a big giant eel. A monster.”
“What’s an eel?”
“It’s a big snake-like thing in the water.”
“A big snake in the water that eats people?”
“That’s right boy, keep away from that water or he’ll get you.”
As if. Max didn’t care what his Grandad thought and seeing as his Gran was away he went down to the water anyway. Sure he knew his Gran would go mad at him when she got home, and saw him all muddied up like he always got, no matter how he tried not to. But it didn’t matter. Grandad would get in more trouble. He would be the one that got really shouted at, after which his Gran would start crying and then ring his mother to say that Grandad was getting worse and she didn’t know what to do. This always surprised Max. If anything it was his Grandad who didn’t know what to do. Like the time a couple of days ago he got lost and some people found him and brought him back. Grandad had done tons of funny things like that, so it didn’t really matter Max thought, that he had disobeyed his elder and gone to the water.
As Max sat at the edge of the lake, peering into the depths, he tried to imagine what a monster snake-thing would actually look like. He couldn’t imagine what an eel looked like because he didn’t know what one was. Maybe it was just one of those silly words Grandad made up now and again.
Max fidgeted on the grass. Damn, it was wet. He hated it when he got the seat of his pants wet. He hoped it wouldn’t rain anymore. He couldn’t stick the rain. Even though he always seemed to get soaked and muddied up, he didn’t like the feeling of it.
Still there was no point in him going home yet. His Grandad wouldn’t get him changed or k
now where his clean clothes were. Max looked down at his left leg, a great big streak of mud rose up it like a snake. Boy, would Gran be angry at Grandad when Max did get home. Of course Max didn’t want to stay out too long. Then his Gran might get the police like she did when Grandad got lost the time before last. Yep he sure was stupid. A stupid old man that thought a big giant snake, sorry, an eel lived in the water. Wait a second, Max thought, he didn’t just call it an eel, he said it had a name. Old Slippery. Max stood and moved closer to the water.
“Old Slippery”, he shouted in between giggles “are you there?” The words reverberated round the desolate lake.
“Old Slippery, Old Slippery, let me see you”, Max shouted before exploding into fits of laughter. God, his Grandad was a fool. Anyone had to be a fool who kept getting lost and believed in monsters. Max never got lost and as for monsters, he…
Something caught Max’s attention in the water.
It must have been a big fish. Max’s dad had often talked about big fish. He’d told Max all about the fishing trips he’d been on when he caught the biggest fish possible. Max hadn’t seen his dad for a long time. A long, long time.
There it was again.
A prize of a fish, his dad would have called it. Max lay down on his stomach pushed his head nearer still to the water, at least this way he wouldn’t topple into the water and he could watch the big fish, without it seeing him. Maybe it would even come nearer that way. ‘That was the trick’, Max’s dad always used to say, ‘never let them see you till its too late’. He was a mighty fine fisherman, even if sometimes his mum would say he wasn’t a man at all, and he should pay for Max. Max didn’t want paying, he would happily hang around his dad for free. And how proud his dad would be now, his son, the fisherman, watching a big fish.
But wait a minute, Max thought, to be a real fisherman you had to catch a fish not just watch it. He looked around, he had no fishing rod, he would have to make do with what he could find.