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SHADOWS
By George T. Philibin
Darkness mixed with a cool breeze always spoke to me. Tonight was no different as the chill struck my forehead and washed itself through my hair. The darkness started to scream louder and louder until my ears refused to listen, and I placed my hands over them. But I still heard, or maybe felt the shadow that stalked me from the moment of my birth. It was always there, somewhere, waiting, wanting, planning and hoping, I'm sure, for the right moment to pounce on me. But it never did, so far.
As car lights flashed and an occasional blast from eighteen-wheelers jolted me, I looked over my shoulder expecting something, but knowing that if a shadow slipped by, it might be from car lights. Car lights I understood, but a shadow darting in and around my room when I was a kid I didn't. How could I? Mom always said it was just my imagination, but I knew better especially when it said, "You're mine!" once to me as it moved near my bed with slits for eyes that started to spin faster and faster until round eyes formed, large with red hot flames that felt just like an oven door had been opened. I ran screaming, but dad found nothing; I stayed with my parents that night and many after, but the shadow always remained near, around a corner or in my closet; it followed me on my bicycle or waited for me after school. Yet, I never saw it again, but I knew that it was there.
Another flash of headlights further jolted me to reality, and I realized that the next convenience store up ahead had to be a couple of miles.
A short trip to my brother's place in Pittsburgh, a chilly windy night, a new car with only five-thousand mile on it with a full tank of gas, and I'm walking to the nearest convenience store because the engine quit half a mile back! Two sputters, a pause, an engine cough, then lights out and I drifted off the road. A dead short? I didn't know, but the car sat dead on the side of the road. It wouldn't even turn over!
The drafts that followed after the whoosh from eighteen-wheelers, tried to pull me in, and I started to anticipate the pull after I heard one behind me. Every few minutes, one or a couple traveling together sped past.
As I walked, the crunch, crunch of my footsteps got in rhythm with my heart that pounded from exertion and fear, but fear took over more with each step as shadows danced in and about and often walked beside me, or flashed in the distance.
I looked around again, studied the field next to me, looked over across the highway and scanned the tree-line, for the moon was very full and its rays became my friend.
After a car or truck passed, silence, and its void encapsulated me so quickly with a chill that I thought of water surrounding a stone after it was tossed into a lake.
I walked faster and faster, almost jogging, but slowed a little so I wouldn't trip, yet the full moon glowing brightly illuminated the way somewhat and its rays also silhouetted trees and hillsides off to the right and left of me.
Thoughts of my shadow came to me again---they were persistent tonight---and I thought about my childhood bedroom with something there, but only seen once.
Strange, I thought, as I grew older the shadow became so routine that I ignored it, especially in high school, and in college I even joked around about it, but deep down I knew that it was there, somewhere.
The sound of an SUV racing past turned my head, and I knew that the driver had had to see me, but who would pick me up? The news carried too many stories about serial-killers roaming throughout the country, or a story about a rapist or murder on the prowl. But still, someone should put two and two together when a car is disabled, and a little farther up a lone person walking? I would.
The crunch under my feet became softer after the guardrails ended, and I had to use more strength to keep up my pace. But the wind was at my back and that helped a little. Lights up ahead didn't seem to be getting closer as I marched forward, and I decided not to look at them anymore as I walked. I kept my head down a little and tried to see what lay in front of me.
As I lumbered forward, I heard a distance growl of an eighteen-wheeler behind me and I looked around. Far down the highway, headlights-- one slightly cocked sideways-- and running lights that outlined the front bumper and the insides of the front fenders, made me nervous. Maybe the unearthly drone of its engine, or the emptiness of the highway since the SUV passed, or the chill that surrounded me from all sides, or the darkness that worked to no advantage for me, tingled my spine and mixed with the dampness of the night that started soaking though my yellow jacket. The lights approached and I kept walking. The distance growl of the engine became a roar of thundering cylinders as I watched the beams from the eighteen wheeler's headlights reflect off the highway. As I braced myself against the draft, the sound of "Boom" filled the night air, and I turned around to see what it was.
The eighteen-wheeler was swinging back and forth as it searched for the road, its passenger side headlight lower than the other, and when it headed for me, the driver blasted his horn. I stood frozen as I watched it near and before I could think, something grabbed and pulled me out of the eighteen-wheeler's way. What grabbed me that night I should always be thankful to, but I can't. No, never! I should have died there, quickly on a lonely highway leading to Pittsburgh, but I didn't and for the rest of my life I'll live in agony from a realization I now know.
I flew maybe thirty-feet by a hand that pulled me, and when it let go I fell onto a field, shaken but very much alive.
The eighteen-wheeler rumbled off the road and came to rest in the field about one hundred feet from me. As its air brakes sighed and the odor of diesel fumes crept my way, I rolled over and sat up, startled. An eerie glow surrounded the truck, it seemed, but as my eyes adjusted I discovered that the moonlight reflected off the truck's paint scheme to produced an unnatural color that could only be witnessed under conditions of a full moon with no artificial light near. I've seen "Moonlight Reflecting" a few times before, but tonight the display captured me for all the lights on the eighteen-wheeler went out just before it stopped. And it sat there alone like me beside the highway that didn't have any vehicles on it at the present, and its engine emitted a snarl more that an idle.
I got up, brushed myself off, and headed for the truck, but in front of me the darkness outlined another darkness, solid and blacker than the night, that blocked my view of the truck! As I slowed, I moved sideways thinking that it might be a tree, possibly, or an old outhouse, abandoned years ago and slowly crumbling, but it moved with me. I stopped. It stopped, and within the constraints of the moment, the night, and the moonlight that didn't reflect off it, slits for eyes, long and straight, beamed towards me, but after a second they started to spin around, and around, and around, until two eyes, red with cold but hot laser-penetrating light, found me. And it spoke words that buried themselves into the caverns of my mind to be recalled over and over again for the rest of my life: "You're mine, little boy of the bedroom. All mine, little man of the night. You were promised to me in the beginning, at the beginning my little man."
I froze. It laughed. Then silently we stood. And with eyes that projected themselves out to within a few inches of my face, I heard, "But not tonight! Tonight is not the night for you! Your time, my young fellow, is in the future, and it will be fulfilled when I need you then------ and fabulously! Ha, ha, ha, ha," the shadow roared, but added, "Think of me as your --------guardian angle if you want!! Ha, ha, ha."
The eyes baked themselves upon me for a moment, then---poof, they vanished, and the idling truck had its lights on, and the driver was out walking around his rig.
I can't remember the walk over to the truck, but I do remember the driver once I got there, for he asked, "Are you Ok, buddy? My front left tire blew-out! What a night!---Boy I'm glad that you have a yellow jacket on----you stuck out good. I must have basted the horn just in time because you jumped like one of those Olympic Champs.
"Are you sure you didn't hit your head? You look awful pale! Really buddy, are you all right," the driver asked.
"Yes," I answered like a Zombie, but the driver accepted my answer, and he changed the subject.
"Was that your car back there?"
"Yes," I answered again.
"Well, looks like you're having trouble too? What happened?" the driver asked.
"T-the engine quit."
"Looks like a new car?" the driver asked.
"I---I-only got it a month ago," I answered again like some Zombie who was frighten back to life.
"Hey buddy, I know you're shaken-up. Hell, I'd be if I were in you shoes. That truck weighs forty-tons and believe me I would not have felt it if I hit you, but thank God you had a yellow jacket on. Hell, I've seen guys walking along the interstate looking like some vampire--dressed all in black, know what I mean? You used your brain by wearing a yellow jacket.
"Boy this night just isn't ours, is it? Me, I got loaded late-I'll miss my next pick-up now----just called a service center and they should be here in an hour---I know they'll charge me at least five-hundred---but to tell you the truth, I'm sick of driving. Fuel is too expensive--rates far too low, and with the state police pulling you over almost every day----well, the future doesn't look too bright anymore, does it?
"If you want to use my cellphone, go ahead. Call your wife or a buddy? You can use it if you want," the driver said.
I thanked the driver and called my brother, for he lived only about ten-miles away.
The driver, a natural philosopher and proud of it, took his cell phone back, but as he held it, he said, "The future really doesn't look too good for any of us!" I think that I must have turned many different shades of pale if one could, after hearing him say that!
" Know what I mean? Now you take these big corporation who have all the politicians in their pockets, why a working stiff like me and you...."
**The End**
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