The Academy of Shades 1: Secrets of the Blackwood

Larissa

“What do you mean, you aren’t my mother?!” are words I never thought I’d say.

Yet here I am, staring at the haggard woman who raised me. The air stinks of cigarette smoke and cheap vodka, mingling with the wet scent of mildew from the old, peeling wallpaper. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she sways on her feet, a familiar sign of inebriation. Overhead, a bulb flickers—the only light in her filthy bedroom. It casts shadows across her face, accentuating the deep lines that etch her skin—more wrinkles than a thirty-five-year-old woman should bear.

It started a few hours earlier, when I stumbled across a tattered photo album in the attic. Inside was a picture of my mother in a hospital bed, holding a baby who looked nothing like me.

In the photos of my infancy I’ve seen, I’m dark-haired and pale-eyed, so calm I look more like a doll than a living child. But this baby in the album had light, wispy hair. In every photo, its mouth was wide open, face scrunched as it cried.

“I’m not,” she says, voice a cracking rasp. She pauses for a moment, shoulders sagging, as if this confession is a physical weight she carries. “But I was a teenager. My parents were shit. Your father—”

Her voice catches on the word. The mistake.

“My boyfriend,” she amends. “He knocked me up. Dumped me. I was alone and terrified. Willing to do anything to make it.”

Her glassy eyes meet mine. There’s nothing but disgust in their watery depths. “Even trade my own squalling brat for you.”

A bitter laugh escapes her chapped lips before she reaches for the bottle on the nightstand. She takes a hearty swig and spills a little. It glistens on her chin. “You were quiet, at least. Slept through the night and never cried.”

“Mom, enough,” I say, trying to ignore the hurt ripping me open from the inside. Instead, I focus on my frustration. She’s always been unhappy, even cruel. But never like this.

I reach for the bottle. “You’re hammered. You need to sleep it off.”

She jerks back, clutching the bottle to her chest—hugging it close in a way that she’s never once hugged me—and backs away on wobbly legs. But her bedroom floor is littered with trash: crumpled fast-food wrappers, moldy dishes, dirty clothes. Her feet catch in the chaos. Arms pinwheeling to keep her upright, the bottle slips from her hand, crashing to the floor with a dull thud. Cushioned by the mess, it doesn’t shatter, but a steady glug, glug, glug sounds as the vodka spills out, soaking into the soiled carpet.

My mother collapses to her knees. Grimy, unkempt fingers scramble to right the bottle, but it’s too late. Nothing remains of the liquor but a wet spot on the carpet, and the strong fumes of alcohol filling the air between us.

For a moment, silence reigns. This room that has seen so much unhappiness seems to hold its breath, waiting to see her unravel further. And she doesn’t disappoint. She falls back on her haunches, face crumpling, eyes squeezing shut. She screams. There are years in that sound. Years of regret, despair... hatred.

I take a single step toward her, and her eyes shoot open, pinning me with a glare that takes my breath. “Get out!” she snarls.

I raise my hands in a placating gesture. “Mom—”

“I’m Teresa to you. I’m not your mother, you... thing! Get. Out!” Each word is a venomous hiss. Each syllable a knife to my gut.

Shocked into numbness, a chill spreads through me. The room—the trash, the grime, the ruined woman amid the chaos of her own creation—blurs. Again, the faulty bulb flickers, casting eerie shadows that huddle around her as her words echo through my skull.

I’m not your mother. Get out, get out, you thing, GET OUT!

I stagger back, my own feet twisting in discarded clothing. An empty beer can crunches beneath my sneaker, but all I see are those shadows, writhing around the sobbing woman who raised me with such constant, casual neglect. Who has always looked at me with such disgust.

The shadows pulse—swell. I’ve felt them before—always on the periphery of my senses. But the darkness has never felt so strong. So much a part of me.

And right now, I hate her.

They answer that hate.

They erupt. Not wild or erratic—but focused. Hungry.

The air turns frigid. When I exhale, it fogs the air in front of my face.

“You’re pathetic,” I whisper, my voice a furious tremble. “And you did this.”

The shadows thicken, swirling around her like slithering, starving snakes.

She screams again—but this time it isn’t rage. It’s terror.

I keep backing away, fists clenched so tight my nails bite into my palms, until I cross the threshold into the hall.

But I can’t take my eyes off the shadows. They surge across the room, swallowing the bedroom door like a dark, angry tide.

My mother’s scream turns bloodcurdlingly shrill—filled with heart-stopping agony.

But then it does stop. Finally, silence.

Cold sweat drips down the back of my neck as the shadows recede. But I don’t look. I can’t.

With no other thought in my head, I run. I run, and I don’t turn back.

Out the door, down the gravel drive until an empty, night-darkened street stretches before me. It’s only when the road leads me onto a busier avenue that I pause beneath the flickering glow of a short-circuiting streetlight. I bend over, a stitch in my side making it hard to breathe—my racing heart making it even harder—and try to gulp down oxygen.

It’s then that I see them, in the streetlight’s harsh glare.

The shadows.

They follow me. They return to me.

Adrenaline floods my veins, filling my mouth with a sharp, metallic taste. My body should spring into action—but it doesn’t. Feet anchored, I watch the shadows slither toward me, as beautiful as they are terrifying.

At my feet, they pause. Then they pool together, gathering into a dark mass, shifting and merging, stretching until they form an unmistakable shape.

My shape.

And that’s when the truth slams into me.

Oh God… what have I done?

No—worse. What am I?

Nausea coils in my gut. My hands won’t stop shaking. A car rumbles past, bass so loud it vibrates in my chest. Wind from it tosses my hair back—sharp, grounding, real.

But then—movement across the street.

My head snaps up.

And for one awful, breathless second, I think I’m caught. Someone heard the screams. Saw the shadows. Called the cops. They’re here to drag me off in handcuffs for something I can’t explain.

But it’s not that.

There’s someone there. Someone standing in the flickering glow of their own broken streetlight. An expanse of cracked pavement separates us, but it doesn’t matter. And even in the dimness, I can tell—something about them is wrong.

They’re too still. Their shape both too hunched and too angular to be anything natural.

I tell myself it’s just a junkie, or a working girl claiming a corner. Both are commonplace in this shit neighborhood. But then—

Flashes of light. Orbs flickering to life in the darkness.

Eyes? But not two. More.

Whoever—whatever—this is, it’s not human. And it’s not here by accident.

It’s here for me.

Because it knows.

My mother’s voice rings in my ears, jagged and full of hate: You thing. You thing. You thing.

And now I know.

This thing across the street?

It’s the same as me—

A monster.