The Lovely Shadow (12 page)

I was still pondering the implications of
making up concepts that I didn’t understand myself when I was
nearly frightened out of my skin by the buzzer on the dryer. My
pizza pockets were done.

The last vestiges of daylight had vanished
from the door overhead and I fumbled my way to the dryer blindly. I
found my supper there and tootled back to my bed to eat.

Although the pizza pockets had thawed out and
warmed up all the way through, they had not gotten sufficiently hot
enough to melt the cheese and they were not exactly wonderful. But
they did satiate my hunger and allowed me to go to bed with a full
belly.

When I slept that third night, I slept
dreamlessly, but still woke on my fourth day with a strange
uneasiness in my heart. I thought hard about my night, but could
not find any memory of a nightmare or of any other dream that would
cause me to wake up feeling weird.

I set about my morning ritual of waste
removal and bed removal, and hoped the unease would pass as I
distracted myself. It did not pass.

I found another package of Pop Tarts and sat
down in my chair, munching and pondering. I finally let my thoughts
wander back to my prayer the previous night, and the cryptic things
my brain (Joe?) had said.

“What the heck do energy and June mean, Joe?”
I said out loud, spitting out a few crumbs as I spoke.

There was no response.

The more I considered those two mysteries,
the more I was convinced that I’d come up with an answer for the
energy bit at least. I remembered a book that Joe had owned and I
had read. It was about all sorts of paranormal mysteries like
mythical monsters, UFOs, witches, Stonehenge, and the like. It also
had a large section devoted to ghosts.

According to the book, ghosts were the
lingering souls of people who had died, but who could not, for one
reason or another, leave this physical realm and move on to the
spiritual realm. Many theories were presented to try and explain
why these spirits hadn’t departed.

One theory was that the ghost was not aware
that it was dead. Death had apparently come over the person so
swiftly that they never knew it had hit them.

Another theory was that the spirit had some
urgent, yet unfinished business that it needed to take care of
before it could move on. Perhaps the person had been murdered, the
book had postulated, and wanted their killer to be brought to
justice before they would move on.

A third theory was that perhaps the ghost
remained behind because they were too afraid to enter into the
other side.

The book presented several more theories on
why ghosts existed, but presented precious little in the way of
speculation regarding how a ghost was able to actually exist.

The only theory on the day to day existence
of the ghost that the book presented was that a ghost needed energy
to manifest itself or to manipulate objects in the physical realm.
The energy required by the ghost would most likely be absorbed from
the environment via electromagnetic fields.

The author suggested that lightning storms,
running water, and even batteries could all be excellent sources
from which a ghost might draw energy, but once the ghost had
depleted the energy it had stored up from these sources, it would
be unable to interact in the physical realm again until it had
replenished its stores of energy.

There was no evidence, according to the
author, to indicate how long it took a ghost to recharge its energy
supply, nor even how a ghost stored energy.

The author went on to suggest that knockings
and voices were the most prevalent form of supernatural activity
because they were forms of communication that required the least
amount of energy.

If what was said in that book was true, that
would mean that Joe had used tremendous amounts of spiritual energy
to manifest himself to me in the basement, and even more to
illuminate the space.

Perhaps that was why he never spoke when he
was present. He needed to conserve all his energy to materialize
and illuminate; two things he felt were far more important to my
needs at that moment than speech would have been.

Those philosophies of energy consumption
would also explain why he had dimmed slowly, rather than remaining
fully visible until he departed. His energy was being slowly
depleted during his entire visit, draining him of the ability to
remain fully visible.

Those same philosophies would explain why he
dimmed so suddenly and disappeared completely when he got angry
about our mother. Anger is generally a wasted emotion that uses
tremendous amounts of energy.

It must have been a huge drain on Joe’s
energy reserves to light up the basement and show me that there was
nothing to fear in the darkness.

When it dawned on me how much Joe had
sacrificed himself to help me, I was so overcome with love for my
brother that I broke down. My chest seemed to swell with warm
pressure, expanding from the inside, filling up with my love and
admiration for Joe the way a drowning swimmer’s chest fills up with
water when he tries to take that last breath.

I sat in my chair and cried for nearly half
an hour, choking out broken thanks to my brother in between giant
sobs. I tried to get myself under control, but my attempts were
unsuccessful. I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t get
all my appreciative tears out.

When I was finally able to calm myself I was
more convinced than ever that my brother had visited me in the
basement two days before. I was not convinced, however, that it was
really his voice I’d heard the night before while I was
praying.

I could have very easily had an unconscious
memory of what that book had said about ghosts and energy usage
floating about in my brain, planting suggestions into Joe’s
imagined conversation.

I pondered all the information I could
remember from the book for a little bit, trying to remember each of
the various theories it had presented regarding why ghosts even
existed. I couldn’t fit Joe’s appearance into any of the opinions
expressed in the book.

Joe was not a spirit with a vendetta. He did
not have anybody to blame for his demise. He had been killed when
the car he was driving slid on some black ice as he came around a
corner too fast on a rural back road and slammed through the
guardrail. His seatbelt kept him from being thrown from the
vehicle, but the whiplash he suffered during the impact broke his
neck.

While the broken neck did not kill him, it
did cause massive swelling which slowly cut off his air supply
through his windpipe, causing him to suffocate before anybody could
find him and alert the paramedics.

Having died somewhat slowly, Joe was not a
candidate for the Sudden-Death-Spirit-Doesn’t-Know-He’s-Dead
philosophy. Joe knew he was dead, or at least I was pretty sure he
knew.

He didn’t seem to be puzzled at all by his
own sudden appearance in the basement. He knew he was there, he
knew I was there, he seemed to know how I’d gotten there, and he
knew why he’d come there. He was a man on a mission—or a
manifestation on a mission I should say.

Joe also did not strike me a candidate for
the Too-Scared-To-Move-On category. In life, Joe had been the
bravest man I knew. Always a man of action, he never let anything
stand in his way.

I remembered the evening of Joe’s first real
date with a real girl from school. He had been terrified to go, but
did not let that fear stop him from going out to pick her up and
take her to the movies. That was only two weeks before he died.

‘No, Joe’s not in the scared category,’ I
thought to myself. ‘So where does his appearance fit in?’ I
wondered.

I finally decided that there must either be a
category from the book that I could not remember, or one they had
failed to include. The missing category should be the ‘Guardian
Angel’ category.

Sometimes, the people who have died love the
people they’ve left behind so strongly that they keep a watchful
eye on them from the afterlife, and when they see a desperate need
in a loved one, they find a way to come to them and offer whatever
help they are able to.

That category (after I invented it) seemed to
me to be a perfect fit for Joe’s appearance, and disappearance as
well. Joe had moved on, this world was no longer his home and he
could not stay here.

I was glad for Joe that he had moved on. I
was so lonely that it seemed to almost cause a physical pain in me,
but I would suffer a thousand lonesome pains before I asked Joe to
leave the comfort of Heaven to stay with me. If anybody deserved a
blissful eternity, it was my big brother, Joe.

I had long since finished my package of Pop
Tarts, and decided that I wanted the last package that still
remained in the box. Deciphering supernatural mysteries had turned
out to be hungry work.

I grabbed the last package and dropped the
empty box onto the pile of garbage that was rapidly accumulating
beside my chair/bed area.

‘Hmm,’ I thought, while munching on my
frosted fruit filled treat, ‘I’m really going to have to find a
better way to manage my trash. I’m not a pig, and I’m not going to
become one in the dark! Besides, the trash may attract mice, or
even bugs.’

I shuddered a bit as I visualized flesh
eating beetles swarming over empty Pop Tart wrappers, hot dog
wrappers, empty cereal boxes, and whatever other trash I had thrown
in my little pile. I made a mental note to clean up as soon as I
was done with my ratiocinations.

I had made logical sense of my (Joe’s)
mention of energy from the previous night, but still could not wrap
my brain around ‘June’. I had no idea what it could possibly
mean.

“June is coming, and then everything will be
better.”

Saying it out loud did not help to reveal the
solution to the riddle. Sighing, I got up exasperated and decided
that when the time was right, the mystery would reveal its own
solution.

I moseyed into the pitch blackness of the
back of the basement and found an old garbage sack filled with
clothes I had long since outgrown and dumped it out, being careful
to dump the clothing far enough away from everything that I would
not be likely to stumble over them later.

As much as I had developed a new found need
for tidiness and order in the world around me, that need did not
extend into areas of the basement into which I could not see the
disorder, and I felt no shame in making messes back there.

I brought the bag back into my dim sitting
area and picked up all my trash. I then carried the bag over to the
trash can near the dryer and emptied it into it. Since I was
already near the appliances I decided to do some laundry. I really
didn’t like the idea of my soiled rags just sitting there in that
basket, drawing flies.

I dumped my rags, and yesterdays towel into
the wash and figured I may as well throw the clothes I had been
wearing in with them. That was when I realized that I was still
wandering around naked.

It frightened me to find that only a few days
in the dark had already robbed me of enough civilized culture to no
longer notice, or care, that I was naked.

‘Well, I’ve been naked this long, I guess. A
little while longer won’t kill me,’ I thought as I scooped up all
my clothing and tossed them in the washer.

I climbed up and got the soap from above the
washer, dumped it in, and set the clothes to washing.

With the washer going, breakfast eaten,
bedroom put away, day room set up, and all my garbage cleaned up, I
decided it was a good time to try and find a good book in the box
I’d dragged over.

I scooped up several books and headed up the
stairs with them. I set them on the top step and tried the door;
still locked, just as I knew it would be. I had become fairly
certain that my mother was gone, and may not be coming back.

I tried not to think of how this situation
would turn out if she never returned, and instead sat down to see
if I’d dug up any treasure in the book box. The first book I picked
up from the stack was Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

It was another book that I’d never read and
did not appear to be a romance novel, so I was instantly intrigued.
I flipped it open and read the entire book in a matter of a couple
hours.

It was marvelous. The relationship between
George and Lenny reminded me so much of me and Joe that it made me
just a little weepy.

George was always there for Lenny, no matter
what stupid thing Lenny did. Sometimes George was a little harsh
with Lenny, but only when he had to be, kind of like when Joe would
have to punch my arm to keep me from opening my big mouth and
getting into trouble with our mother.

I had originally thought that Lenny was just
retarded and I could easily imagine myself in his role, but when I
got to the end of the book and realized that Lenny was hearing
voices, I tried to disassociate myself from him because he had gone
a bit crazy, and I was NOT going to be crazy like my mother.

As much as I disassociated myself from crazy
Lenny, I still empathized with needy Lenny. Lenny needed George
just the way I needed Joe. Lenny looked up to George the way I
looked up to Joe.

There was a little part of me that wished Joe
could save me from my troubles by putting me down like an old dog,
the way George had done to Lenny. But it was only a very small part
of me. My desire to continue living was still pretty strong at that
point, but I wasn’t sure how long that desire would hold out down
there in the basement.

Deciding that I did not like the morbid
course my thoughts were taking, I decided to skip lunch and get
back to my dictionary for a little while. Having lunch would only
give me time for introspection, and I had no more desire of
that.