Shadows: Another One

Alexander Hill turned onto Pearl Street and came to a stop in front of house 719. He retrieved his cellphone and double-checked his notes and, satisfied he had the right place, put the cellphone back in his coat pocket and exited his car.

The suburban home of the Bright family looked like many of the other houses in that neighborhood, two stories tall and painted an unassuming color. He noted, though, that the lawn was several inches taller than the neighbors’, and there was an ignored newspaper on the side of the driveway that the elements had reduced to mulch.

Alexander approached the door and knocked. Seconds later, he heard footsteps approach, and the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman who was surely Judy Bright.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Bright. My name’s Alexander. We spoke on the phone.”

After the briefest moment of thought, the woman smiled, nodding in recognition and waving him inside.

“Oh, of course, please, come in.”

“Excuse me,” he whispered out of habit before entering.

After walking inside, he glanced around the entrance hall and into the adjoining rooms, a living room and a dining area, and observed that the house was modestly furnished and well-kept. He wondered if that was because of diligent cleaning or lack of use.

“I’ve just made some coffee,” Mrs. Bright said after closing the door, “Would you like some?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Bright,” he replied. “If I may, I’d prefer to get right to it.”

“Of course. Ashley’s room is upstairs, I’ll show you there,” she said, leading him up the flight of stairs. “You didn’t have any trouble finding the place, did you?”

“None at all.”

“Oh, that’s good. Still, I’m sorry you had to come out all this way. After the last one, she has just refused to see any more psychiatrists.”

They reached the second floor and turned down a hallway, bare aside from the checkered rug running down its middle.

“Mrs. Bright, just to be absolutely clear, when she recommended me to you, Mrs. Wilson did say that I’m not exactly a psychiatrist, yes?”

“Yes, she did, but she also said you helped her with her situation, so I figured it can’t hurt to try. And honestly, I don’t know what else to do. Things haven’t been easy since her father… left. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing her.” The woman sighed. “This is it, here.”

They stopped in front of a white door. Mrs. Bright knocked.

“Ashley? You have a visitor.”

There was no answer inside. Mrs. Bright opened the door and peeked inside to make sure all was proper, then nodded to Alexander. He entered, and for a second had a vision of the room he had spent some part of his own childhood in.

The bed was in one corner of the room, as far away from both the door and the window as it could be. Beside it was a black dresser and a simple table with a closed laptop resting on top, its charger cable snaking down to an outlet, and beside them a thin black bookshelf filled to capacity. The walk-in closet on the opposite wall was closed, peculiarly, with a lock. The walls were white and barren, the floor covered in beige carpet. There was nothing making a mess of the room, but also nothing decorating it: no posters, no photographs, no plushies, not anything that wasn’t black or white.

There was not even a single mirror.

The teenage girl herself sat in a beanbag chair with an open book in her hands. She was facing the window, with her back towards them.

“Ashley, Mrs. Wilson’s friend is here to talk to you. Like we talked about, remember?”

The girl didn’t reply or even glance over her shoulder. After a few seconds, Mrs. Bright simply shook her head and turned away.

“Just call if you need anything,” she said in a low voice to Alexander.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bright.”

The woman left, closing the door behind her. Alexander turned back to the girl.

“Hello Ashley,” he said, “My name’s Alexander.”

For a moment he wondered if she had even heard him. She stirred but didn’t reply. Alexander walked forward until he was standing in her field of vision, so they could face each other.

Ashley was pale, skinny, and of average height for her age. She had short dark hair and chestnut brown eyes that gleamed in the sunlight coming in through the window. The tired look in those eyes and the dark circles underneath them made her look beyond her years.

“Can we talk, Ashley?”

The girl closed her book and looked up at him with a frown.

“Look, just so you know, I didn’t agree to this,” she said, “I told mom to call it off. But whatever. We don’t even have to talk. Just wait a while, pretend we did, then go and tell her I’m crazy and we can all get on with our lives.”

“Why would I tell your mom you’re crazy?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes, “I’m sure she told you everything.”

“She told me many things, yes,” Alexander said, “but I want to hear your side of it.”

“Ooof course you do,” Ashley sighed and rolled her eyes. “I know how this goes, okay? I’m going to say everything you already know, just maybe a little differently, and then you’ll tell me what you think I should do, then you’ll go talk to my mom, then you’ll leave, then she’ll lecture me for an hour. I’ve been through this so many times. Can we please, just once, skip all the crap?”

Alexander listened calmly until she had finished, then motioned to the chair by the table.

“May I sit?” he asked.

Ashley shrugged. “Whatever.”

Alexander pulled the chair out from under the table and sat.

“I want to help you, Ashley,” he said, which drew a scoff from the girl. “Yes, you’ve probably heard that many times, haven’t you? But if I’m right, I believe I can truly help you. Because if I’m right, then I know exactly what you’re going through.”

“You have no idea what I’m going through,” she protested, indignant.

“I don’t?”

“No, you don’t,” she insisted. “No one does.”

“All right, then, talk to me. Tell me about what you’re going through.”

“Oh for–” Ashley threw up her hands. “Always the same– okay, fine! I guess I’m not getting out of this, so fine.”

The girl threw her book aside and stood up.

“Tell me if any of this is familiar,” she said, pacing back and forth and counting items off her fingers, “I don’t help my mom with chores, I stay in my room all the time, I barely get any sleep, I’m always acting out, I listen to music way too loudly, what else… Oh, at school they make fun of me every day, I have no friends, plus I’m getting bad grades, and the principal hates me.”

Ashley snapped her fingers and turned to Alexander.

“Oh! Did mom tell you I almost got expelled last month? There’s this girl at school called Samantha. Total bitch. She and her clique of skanks loves picking on me. They were doing that in the halls one day like they’d done a thousand times before, but that day I just decided I had enough. I walked over, and just knocked her out. She never saw it coming, it was actually kind of beautiful.” She smirked, making a fist and placing it just under her jaw. “Pow. Hit ‘er right here.”

Ashley looked at Alexander expectantly, but he had listened to everything with an impassive expression. He took a deep breath before responding.

“I guess this is the part where I thank you for sharing that,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, clearly underwhelmed by the reaction or lack thereof. “Don’t forget the part where you analyze me.”

“Right,” he said, “So let’s get straight to that, why don’t we? Your acting out, all the things you’ve just told me — many of which your mother told me, yes — those are just the symptoms. I’m more interested in the cause.”

“The cause is that I’m crazy, okay? I’m depressed, I have ADHD, bla bla bla, whatever you guys wanna call it this time around. I’m crazy and that’s all there is to it.”

“There you go, calling yourself crazy again. Do you really believe that?”

“Well, what else would you call someone like me?” Ashley asked, and for the first time she seemed to hesitate. “Someone who… who–“

Alexander leaned forward in his seat, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.

“Who can see things no one else does?”

In an instant, Ashley’s anger dissolved. She stared at Alexander with wide eyes. And in that reaction, Alexander knew that he was right.

“What?” she asked, easing down onto the corner of her bed.

Now it was Alexander who stood.

“You asked me before if any of this is familiar,” he said. He looked around the room and chuckled. “I know it’s not exactly what you meant, but the answer is: you have no idea how familiar it is.”

He ran a hand over a section of the bare wall.

“It’s like after watching a horror movie, isn’t it?” he went on, “After you start seeing them, it’s as if your mind actively looks for them even where it shouldn’t. Suddenly, everyday objects like, say, a toy or a poster on the wall might take on a sinister aspect, especially in the dark. You think you see things that aren’t really there… except they might be. Myself? I took to sleeping with the lights on.”

“Are you…?” Ashley started, “I mean– what exactly are you saying?”

“I think you know.”

He let that hang in the air. For a moment Ashley just stared, leaning back on the bed, but then she stood up and started pacing again.

“No. No no no, you must be trolling me. Mom told you that I used to talk about monsters when I was little, didn’t she? You’re just pretending to believe me to get me to trust you or something.”

“There’s no pretending going on.”

“No! You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Alexander said, “You’ve seen them with your own two eyes. Haven’t you? Perhaps a cat that was more than a cat, or a man or woman with impossible proportions, or a shadow that moved with a life of its own…”

Ashley sank to the ground, resting her back against the bed and wrapping her arms around her legs. She was still shaking her head. Alexander kneeled next to her.

“I know what it’s like, Ashley, because the same thing happened to me,” he said, “You see something terrifying, that no one else will even acknowledge. Or maybe they do, but it’s clear they don’t see what you see. Their minds can’t comprehend or accept the true nature of reality, so they substitute the next best mundane thing. No one you tell believes you, and over time, you convince yourself that you must be crazy. Over time, you just stop talking to people about it.”

Ashley’s chestnut brown eyes looked up at him, and he could see tears welling up in them.

“You see them, too?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“I know it’s not a pleasant thing to hear, that ‘monsters’ are real,” he said, “but hopefully, knowing that you’re not alone — and that you’re not, in fact, crazy — is some small consolation.”

For a minute, neither of them spoke. Ashley used her sleeve to dry her eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Alexander asked.

“Um… I don’t know,” she sighed, “Honestly, I still don’t know if I believe you, but I am a little relieved, I guess. Also a little scared. Though I guess I’ve always been scared.”

“Well, that’s all understandable.”

Alexander felt his cellphone vibrating in his coat pocket. He fished it out and read the message he had received, which made him narrow his eyes. He returned the cellphone to his pocket and sighed.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

Ashley’s eyes widened. “What? Already? But you just got here.”

“Something came up. I have to go deal with it.”

He moved to stand up, but Ashley leaned forward and gripped his sleeve.

“Wait! Will–” she hesitated, a hint of shyness suddenly in her voice, “Will you be back?”

“Yes. I’m sure you have questions. There’s much that you should know, and people that you should meet, other people like us. We’ll get to all of that in time.” He patted her hand. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

Alexander walked to the door and opened it, then looked back.

“I can’t promise it will ever be easy, but it does get easier, Ashley,” he said. “For now, try to settle down, yes?”

Ashley nodded.

Her mother was quick to meet him out in the hall.

“How did it go?” she asked, anxious.

“It went well, Mrs. Bright,” Alexander said, “She’s open to meeting again.”

The woman clasped her hands together, beaming, and said, “Oh my gosh, that’s wonderful! You weren’t in there long, so I was expecting the worst.”

“Yes, I would stay longer, but unfortunately something else came up,” he said, “I’ll call again soon, though, so we can arrange another meeting.”

“Of course. Oh, I’m so relieved. You’re sure you don’t want payment?”

“I’m sure. I went through some rough times in my own childhood, and I only got through it because I had help from some special people. I’m just trying to pay it forward as best I can.”

“Well, thank you, thank you so much.”

The woman accompanied him to the door, where they bid each other farewell. Alexander walked back to his car, and as he reached it looked up to see Ashley watching him from the window of her room. He gave her a nod, then entered the car.

As soon as he was inside he took out his cellphone and sent a brief text message: Found another one.

He started the car and drove away.