The July First Selected writer is Debra Young
Please feel free to email Debra at: dayyamae@gmail.com
SHADOW
by Debra Young
After dinner, Jen and Eric and the other couple, the Neelys, followed their hosts Anna and Gregory into the living room. They all resettled themselves into comfortable chairs in the old house.
Anna, her long face hollowed by sunken cheeks and enlivened by her bright green eyes, began telling them about her encounters with the resident ghost in the home. She prattled in a cheery tone that set Jen’s nerves on edge.
“His name was Jeremy Kurtz. Right, Honey?” Anna asked her husband. Gregory, a reticent man, shrugged and nodded. “He was a mailman, I think,” she went on. “And he blew his brains out in the dining room. No—here in the living room, I think. Right, honey?”
Jen nudged Eric seated next to her on the couch and whispered, “Ready to go home?”
He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Be nice, Sweetheart.”
“I’m sure he means us no harm.” Anna took a gulp from her gin and tonic. “I mean, I’m happy to live with him if he’s happy to live with us. Right, Honey? I’ve been thinking about reassuring him. Jeremy, I mean. Since we’re all here, we could have a séance.”
“An-na.” Jen rolled her eyes and then gave Eric an incredulous look. “We should be going.”
“No, no,” protested Anna. “Come on, stay and help me reach Jeremy’s spirit. He must have felt so alone and so afraid, you know? I mean, to shoot himself? Blow his brains out?”
“It’s getting late,” said Jen.
“I’ve got no problem with it.” Eric winked at Jen. That third beer had mellowed his mood considerably. She’d have to get the car keys from him.
“It’s silly,” she said.
Trish Neely sipped from her glass of chablis and grinned at her husband. “Oh, Jen, you party-pooper. Come on. What’re you afraid of?” They were a blond couple, rail-thin, same bleached blue eyes, same pinched-bridge nose, same thin mouth, same look of pale expectation.
“What’s the point?” asked Jen. “Who wants to talk to a dead man?”
“Anna does,” replied Trish. “You must be doing something wrong, Greg,” she teased.
“Bring your drinks,” said Anna, over the laughter, excited. “Let’s sit around the dining table.”
“This is silly,” Jen repeated to Eric.
He placed his lips against her ear. “Let’s humor Anna.”
Jen, sitting between Trish and Eric, inched off her shoes and massaged one foot with the other. She would rather be at home in bed with her husband instead of sitting around a table in semi-darkness with a bunch of people who should know better. Jen couldn’t believe five adults thought a séance would be fun.
Anna had always insisted that spirits existed all around them. Jen figured that included the spirits in the liquor cabinet.
“Come to us, Jeremy…Kurtz.” Anna’s voice took on a somber tone. “Come to us. We are your friends. Come to us, Jeremy,” Then she opened her eyes. “Help me, you guys. Say it with me. Come to us, Jeremy.”
The others joined in, their voices hesitant at first, growing stronger tugged along by Anna.
“I don’t hear you, Jen,” said Anna.
Jen pursed her lips, remained silent.
“Come to us, Jeremy,” the others chanted. Then fell quiet.
Anna’s voice continued in a beseeching sing-song. “Come to us…Jeremy Kurtz…we call to you…come to us…the way is open…come to us.”
Jen ignored Anna’s voice, intoning and beseeching. She hoped Lindy hadn’t given Grandma any trouble when bedtime came. Most of the time Lindy was a sweet four-year old, but she had her moments. When bedtime rolled around, she became the incredible rebound kid. Jen would tuck her into bed and be halfway down the hall when she’d hear Lindy’s “Mommieee!” After the glass of water, Jen would put her to bed again and in a few minutes would come the howl to go to the bathroom.
In the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a soul stirred.
Shadow fell upon shadow, took shape, and spiraled through the wavering mist toward the ring of candle-bright souls. The Valley of the Shadow of Death grayed, becoming as light seen through water, and the spirit passed over the River of Doubt, netted in the inexorable pull of the beckoning glow, hungry for the promise of a living soul.
Jen sniffed, the air smelled like firecracker smoke. She opened her eyes and peered at the faces around the dining room table, luminous in the glow of a single lamp. Anna’s voice rose and fell in wheedling and mournful intonation. Eric’s eyes were closed, his hand clasped Jen’s, warm and dry, unlike Trish, whose fingers clutched Jen’s hand in a clammy hold.
Eric’s hand trembled. Jen opened her eyes again. Eric’s grip tightened, squeezing her hand. His eyes were open and he stared blankly. Cold swept through Jen. In the pit of her stomach, nausea swirled. Darkness hung between them like smoke.
Jen found her voice. “Stop!”
Her command cut across Anna’s chanting, sliced it into silence. She shook her hand to relax her husband’s grip, which was starting to hurt. “Eric? Sweetheart?”
Jen grabbed his shoulder. “Eric!”
Someone turned on the light. Jen touched Eric’s face. His skin was cold as stone. Her heart missed a beat.
“All right, Eric?” Anna grinned sheepishly. “I guess this wasn’t a good idea. Sorry.”
“Quit putting us on, Eric.” Jen punched his shoulder. “Let’s go home.”
“Did I faint or something?” said Eric.
“You looked like you were sick or something. Are you feeling okay?”
“Yep.”
The party broke up. Relieved to be heading home, Jen turned the heat up a notch and stared beyond the window at the twin beams of illumination brightening the shadowed road ahead. Eric’s face had been like ice and the dark had shifted, melted over him in the seconds before the light came on.
She rested her head on Eric’s shoulder. It was nothing. An illusion like when you wake up in the middle of the night and the dark seems to move before your eyes. Her imagination was too lively for its own good. “Anna gets weirder every year,” she said.
*****
Eric woke with the fragments of a dream floating in his mind like black confetti, fading shreds of a desolate plain beneath a black starless sky, wind flicking what felt like ashes against his face. He leaned toward his sleeping wife. His chin brushed her hair and she moaned.
He stole out of the bed. Barefoot and without putting on his robe, he left the bedroom and paced down the hall. He passed his daughter’s bedroom, hesitated then remembered she was spending the night with her grandmother.
He went on, sharply awake. Pushed by a desire to feel the night, he passed through the living room, went into the kitchen, circled the butcher block counter, and wandered into the dining room, the wood floor smooth and cold against his soles. It was pleasant to walk through the house in the hollow of night. His house. While his wife slept.
He went outside, stepping into the night-chilled grass, damp against his naked toes.
He could start over. He wasn’t who he had been, and he wasn’t Jeremy Kurtz either. Or maybe he had been Jeremy, but death had changed him, stripped him of humanity, left him freer than he’d ever been when he was a sack of miserable flesh.
He wouldn’t screw up this time. This time he’d be tougher. He wouldn’t invite Death, not for himself. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The worm ball of writhing angers and seeping despair would not destroy him this time. He’d go one better. He’d be a death incarnate.
He strode to the middle of the yard. A streetlamp scythed the fuliginous dark with light. Eric/Jeremy stared at the faint sheen of stars in the sky’s cloudless depth, and grinned at eternity.
Going back into the house, he paused in the kitchen and slid the wedge-bladed chef’s knife out of its wood block, the razor-edged steel hissed against the wood as he pulled it free.
In the door of the bedroom, he stood a moment, anticipating.
The woman in the bed stirred, sat up. The new man could almost see the white of her eyes.
“Eric?” she said.
“No,” the new man answered, entering the room.
A Louisiana transplant to Southern California, Debra Young grew up traveling in the USA and Europe, and now lives in Long Beach, California, a happy sun-bunny. She writes fantasy and horror, and is also a member of Romance Writers of America.
In 2009 The Horror Zine published her short story, “Ghost of Roses,” and she’s also been published in Dark Fire Fiction and wrote an anthology of horror short fiction, Grave Shadows. She’s currently at work on more horror stories and a dark fantasy novel.
