Shadow Play

10

My mom was the quintessential flower child. Having flourished in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, she never fully moved on from that period. She was not limited by traditional social constructs and she viewed everyone she met as a potential new friend. Her philosophy was that everyone was different for a reason and she always managed to see the good in people. Her creative tendencies meant she was a never-ending source of fantastical ideas but she was not usually the best at actualizing what she had envisioned. We would spend weekends chasing after whatever scheme she had dreamed up that week—once she decided we needed a koi pond and without further ado, she and I headed out into the backyard with a shovel and began to dig. It turned out building a pond was a bit more complicated than she had figured and we ended up resorting to buying an aquarium with some goldfish. Dad was never too bothered by Mom’s shenanigans. Often he was too caught up in whatever project he was working on to pay much attention. Being a writer gave him loads of flexibility in his schedule; however, there were also times he would become wholly obsessed with what he was writing and hardly emerge from his office for days at a time. I couldn’t fault him for his single-minded intensity—it was a trait I was known to exhibit as well. For the most part, they were patient with each other and I grew up surrounded by love. I hadn’t had a chance to see them before I left the country and it had been almost a year since my last visit. Knowing Mom, it wouldn’t be too long before they made their way over here to check on me but I wasn’t sure yet when that would be. Despite the late hour in Ireland, it was still only early evening in Texas, so I got up and tiptoed downstairs hoping not to disturb Ashley, who had gone to bed not long after me. Curled up in a blanket on the couch with my phone in hand, I texted my mom, not necessarily expecting a response, but wanting to feel connected to her. My mother wasn’t much for cell phones, my parents still had a beige push-button phone hanging on the kitchen wall of their house with a twelve-foot spiral cord hanging below it —not even a cordless phone. All my conversations took place at the kitchen table, where anyone could listen in. Getting a text from my mom was not a good bet, but on this particular occasion, my phone pinged a response. I let her know that my first day went well and she suggested a restaurant they had been to on their trip to Belfast. We didn’t cover anything profound, but just connecting with her eased my tension. With my heart a little lighter and homesickness not weighing quite so heavily on my chest, I slipped into a restless sleep. OceanofPDF.com 5 Still in the clutches of sleep, my bleary eyes could tell that the sky was still dark and it was not anywhere near time to get up, but something had roused my consciousness. That’s when I sensed it—the feeling of a presence behind me. I knew I wasn’t alone and someone was watching me. I turned my head to verify my suspicion and took in the horrifying black form of a man looming over me. “Jesus Christ! Becca, wake up!” With my heart pounding in my chest, I opened my eyes and realized that I was in my room with Ash. We were alone, no shadow man. But he was back, the dream was back. “God, Ash, I’m so sorry,” I said as I rubbed my eyes, trying to scratch the image of his terrifying presence out of my mind. “It’s okay, you just scared me half to death. That must have been some bad dream.” “Yeah. It’s actually a reoccurring dream I used to have as a kid but it’s been so many years since I had it—I figured I had outgrown it.” “You want to tell me about it?” We sat on the bed in the dark room, the only light was the small slivers that crept in between the windowsill and the blinds. “It’s a waking dream. I feel like I’m waking up for real and there’s this man standing over me. There's not a face or any defining feature, just this shadowy man. I used to wake up screaming about once a month like clockwork as a kid. My mom believed I was being haunted by a spirit so she started burning incense in my room at night that was supposed to guard against evil. It may sound silly but she was right, there was some presence trying to reach me. After she started using the incense, I didn’t have a single nightmare. When I started going to sleepovers with friends, I didn’t have any nightmares and there was no incense so I eventually stopped using it, figuring the spirit had moved on.” Looking back on all those nights I had woken in abject terror, my body gave an involuntary shudder.

“That’s awful, Bec, I’m so sorry. I could see why you had the dream though, with all these creepy men you’ve encountered recently.” Ash spoke softly and I nodded, realizing that she was probably right. “It’s late, let’s try to get back to sleep or I’m going to be a zombie at work tomorrow.” I had received an email the previous day that my things had arrived and the postal truck would be delivering them first thing in the morning, so I was up and ready despite a lack of decent sleep. At 8:30, there was a knock at the door and a delivery man stood on the front steps beside my boxes with a bored expression. I threw open the door, thrilled to have all my stuff with me. “These parcels are a might heavy, would you like some help inside with them?” His Irish lilt was heavy and I had to focus to understand his words. “Wait, there’s four boxes here, where’s the fifth?” I peered around the boxes hoping the final one was just tucked away out of sight. He checked the packing slip and made a whistling sound like a bomb dropping out of the sky.