The Lovely Shadow (11 page)

I dug around the rack until I found some Pop
Tarts. Those were a perfect breakfast treat because I could easily
take them up to the top of the stairs with me and munch on them
while I read.

Chores done, and breakfast in hand, I
ascended the stairs and took up my place on the third step from the
top where I’d left my book, and sat down to finish reading.

Having read most of the book the previous
day, it didn’t take me long to finish it, and finishing it brought
more dismay than satisfaction. Bilbo had been able to escape all
the dark places he’d been trapped in, and not just escaped, but
escaped with treasure. I was apparently not as fortunate or as
clever as Bilbo Baggins.

The dismay I felt did not just come from
coveting the victories of Bilbo; I was also dismayed because while
I was reading the book, I was able to be outside of the basement in
my mind, and finishing the book placed me back into the real world
where I was still stuck in the dark basement.

There were still no sounds from the other
side of the door to indicate that my mother was in the house.
Loneliness crept into my soul like ice water, slowly spreading its
chill through my entire being. I sat on the stairs and cried for a
good long while.

When I was done crying I felt exhausted and
grimy. I figured it was as good a time for a bath as any. I climbed
to the bottom of the stairs and headed to the washer. It had long
since finished its morning cycle, so I set it up to wash in hot
water and got the cycle started so the tub would fill up.

While it was filling up, I grabbed all the
towels out of the dryer and started folding them up and getting
them organized into two piles; one for washcloths, and one for
towels. I figured that would simplify my life as well as let me
know when I was running low on cloths and would actually need to
wash laundry in the washer.

When I was done organizing the towels I set
them on the floor in front of the dryer. There was no room left to
stack them on top because of my water jars and my heater hose.

I reached into the washer and discovered that
it was about halfway full of water, which was more than enough, so
I reached over and pushed in the knob, stopping the cycle. I
grabbed a washcloth off from my pile in front of the dryer and
dropped it into the hot water in the washer.

I had not bothered to put my pants on that
morning so all I had to strip out of was my underwear and
tee-shirt. Now, stripped, I proceeded to give myself a proper
washing from the water in the washer.

The hot water felt wonderful on my tired body
and I wished desperately that I could just climb into the washer
and soak my whole body at once, but that was impossible. I could,
however, climb up and soak my feet in the drum, and that is exactly
what I did.

It wasn’t as wonderful as a full body bath
would have been, and it was kind of awkward to stand up in the
washing machine, but it was still better than standing on the cold
concrete floor while I washed.

I stood in the washer, repeatedly dipping my
washcloth in the hot water and wringing it out over my head so the
hot water could run down my body until the water started to cool.
Shivering a bit I climbed out of the washer and back down onto my
stepstool.

I reached over by the dryer and grabbed a
towel and wrapped it around myself while I sat on my stool. I
stared into the darkness for a bit, feeling melancholy. The bath
had lifted my spirits a bit, but not nearly so much as I’d hoped. I
was fiercely lonely and I knew it. My mother hadn’t been much for
company over the last several months, but at least she’d been
another warm body. In the darkness I had nothing; just the
silence.

I was so disconsolate that I would have been
happy to see even her here in the darkness. Anybody at all would
do; Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, or even Jodie, the pig faced
boy from Amityville.

I screamed out at the top of my lungs,
“HELLO…ANYBODY? CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING
GODDAMMIT!”

There was no reply. I really hadn’t expected
one, but still found myself disappointed that there wasn’t one.
Hanging my head in sorrow, I hopped off my stool and dropped my
towel on the floor. Without bothering to dress myself, I shuffled
over to the book box and dug around until I found a large heavy
book with a hard cover.

Hoping that it would be something interesting
that lasted me longer than The Hobbit, I hauled it up the stairs
and held it in the light. It was a dictionary.

“Not very exciting,” I said out loud, “but I
suppose it would do me some good to get some kind of education down
here.”

I opened the dictionary up to a random page
and started reading the entries. I found that as I read the
definitions of words I didn’t know, I also didn’t know many of the
words that were used in the definitions. I had to go through the
dictionary to look up the words that were used in the definitions,
and in those definitions would be more words I was unfamiliar
with.

That little game actually proved fascinating
to me and kept me busy for quite some time. When my stomach started
rumbling, I knew it was time for lunch, so I closed the dictionary
and left it on the top step. I picked up the four romance novels
and The Hobbit, which I’d left there earlier, and carried them all
downstairs.

I figured that just because I was in a
dungeon, there was no reason to let my space get cluttered up with
junk. And besides, down there in the darkness, clutter could be a
deadly trap.

I tossed the romance books into the empty
space behind the stairs. I had not found any reason to enter that
unused space as of yet, and figured that was as out of the way as I
could get. The Hobbit, I took more care with and set it gently on
the floor, next to the food rack where it was out of the way, but
easy to find again in the dark.

I decided that making anything fancy for
lunch was far too much effort so I found a package of Ramen noodles
and ate them dry, sprinkling the flavor pack over the noodle wafer
as I ate it, and washing the whole thing down with water.

I was still feeling low after lunch and
decided that a nap was in order. I had no energy or desire to pull
out the mattress and move my chair, so I just grabbed my blanket,
folded the lawn chair out flat, with the head slightly lifted,
wrapped my still naked body up in the blanket like a little burrito
and lay down and went to sleep.

I slept an uneasy sleep that was filled with
dreams of darkness. More endless corridors filled my sleeping mind,
but these corridors lacked deviant Snoopies and were completely
devoid of light. There were no horrors hiding in those halls. There
were, however, voices. Human voices, so quiet that they were
unintelligible, reached my ears from somewhere further down in the
darkness.

I ran towards the voices, screaming.

“Hey!” I screamed, “Hey, I’m down here! Can
you hear me?”

The voices kept murmuring in the distance,
making no indication that they’d heard me.

I kept running, but never seemed to get
closer to the humanity that always stayed just out of reach. I was
crying in my dream, screaming; desperate to reach the people in the
distance, to find someone, to end my solitude.

I woke up several times with damp cheeks,
sorry to find that it was only a dream and there was really no hope
of finding companionship in the basement, and then I’d roll over
and go right back to sleep and fall right back into the same
dream.

I’m not sure how long I slept, but there was
still light shining overhead when I woke so I decided to get up and
find the dictionary at the top of the stairs to pass some more time
until it was bed time for real.

Before heading up the stairs, I decided to
set up my bed for the night. I’d woken up with a kink in my neck,
and did not want to come to bed later, too tired or lethargic to
set up a proper bed.

I got my bedroom set up and headed up the
stairs. I tried the door when I got up top and was not surprised to
find that it was still locked. I had long since given up any hope
that it might actually open for me, but I figured I had nothing
better to do with my time, so I may as well try.

I settled into my third stair with a grunt
and picked up my dictionary. I flipped it open to a random page and
began my little game of chasing definitions through the dictionary.
After a couple hours of chasing words, a time in which I was mostly
able to forget my predicament, I started to encounter a new
problem.

I started running out of words in the
definitions that I didn’t know. I was learning too fast. There were
still tens of thousands of entries in the dictionary that I didn’t
know the meanings of, but the simplified words that the book used
in its definitions were rarely alien to me anymore.

I needed to invent a new game with the
dictionary if I was going to have it keep me occupied. I was
wondering what game I could invent when I noticed that the light
was starting to turn reddish orange, and was growing slightly
dimmer.

“Oop, getting late, Johnny. Time to head down
before total dark,” I said.

I closed my book and set it on the top step.
I got up to walk away, but saw that the book was slightly crooked
on the step, and for some reason that bugged me. I bent down and
arranged the book so that the bottom edge of the book was perfectly
parallel to the edge of the step that it rested on. Satisfied with
its appearance, I headed down.

I was not terribly hungry, but still wanted
something to eat. Having had a nap earlier I was perhaps, not as
tired as I would have been without it, but was still tired enough
to debate with myself whether or not it was worth the effort to
heat up some food.

I decided it was worth the effort and went to
the freezer and dug out a box with two pizza pockets in it. I
wasn’t sure how well they’d cook in the dryer vent, but I figured
they’d get warm enough to eat.

I got the dryer going and carefully placed my
two pizza pockets right in front of the vent where they’d catch the
majority of the hot air blowing over them. I laid down on my
mattress and stared up at the darkness while I waited for my supper
to heat up.

I tried to visualize Joe’s face in the
darkness, but instead kept seeing pages from the dictionary
swirling around in my mind’s eye. I decided that I was going to
need some different reading material. Learning new words was
interesting, certainly, but did nothing for my loneliness. If
anything, the stark, unemotional pages of knowledge that I had
buried myself in throughout that day were only serving to intensify
my desolation.

I needed to find books in that box that
contained people. People involved with other people, people that
had conversations, and got into situations. That was the only way I
was going to hold onto my own sanity and overcome the crushing
loneliness that was enveloping me.

I figured I would go book searching first
thing in the morning, and I felt a little better knowing that I had
a game plan for the following day. Having no idea what I was going
to do to occupy my time in seclusion was just as crushing as the
loneliness itself was.

I decided that I would try to talk to Joe
while I continued to wait for my pizza pockets. I didn’t know much
about prayer. My mother had insisted that there could be no such
thing as God.

“There is no God,” she often said to me.
“Because if there was, He would never have allowed John to be taken
from me, and He would never have allowed Katelyn to trick me into
letting your filthy father steal John’s treasure.”

I never believed what my mother had said
about God—even before I understood that she was crazy. I believed
in God, and always had. I did not, however know if I should talk to
Him directly, and ask Him to tell Joe what I had to say, or if I
could skip the middleman and talk to Joe directly.

I lay there in the dark contemplating those
deep theological mysteries for a bit before deciding that God
should be quite wise enough to know my intent and see to it that my
words would reach their intended recipient.

I was still hesitant to start speaking
because I had no idea what to say, but I knew I really needed
someone to talk to, and it was Joe that I was craving.

“Hey Joe,” I said hesitantly. “How ya doin’.
I’m ok I guess…kinda lonely, but I’m ok. I sure miss you, Joe.
Thanks for visiting me yesterday; I hope you can come again.”

I paused from my colloquy and pretended that
I was listening to Joe’s response to me.

‘Hey, Squirt,’ he said in my mind. ‘I’m doing
great. Heaven is pretty cool. I got your back Little Brother,
you’ll be alright.’

I had hung on Joe’s every word while he was
alive, and as a result I could hear his voice in my head as clearly
as if it was a high quality recording. As it had always been in
life, his voice was reassuring.

“Thanks, Joe,” I said. “Do you think you’ll
be able to come back and visit me soon?”

‘I don’t think so, Squirt,’ Joe’s voice said
in my head. ‘It uses all the energy, Bro. I used everything
yesterday. But you’ll be ok. Just hang in there—June is coming, and
then everything will be ok.’

“What do you mean, Joe? What do you mean,
‘energy?’ Joe…Joe?”

I could not force a response in my mind, and
I was really confused. I was pretty sure that I had been making up
Joe’s responses to me, but I couldn’t understand what I (he?) had
meant by using energy.

I was also rather confounded by the statement
“June is coming.” It was already June; June fourteenth, as a matter
of fact. I called out to Joe for clarification a few more times,
but there was no longer any response, except for voices I was
clearly making up in my head, and those voices had no answers to my
questions.