Monsters

None of it felt real... 

From mom’s phone call telling me that she was sick in a crackly voice, to seeing her in that hospital room days later, vulnerable for the first time in my life.

Iron and steel don’t look vulnerable and that was mom, forged from the flames of struggle. And I thought, foolishly, invulnerable. But no one in this world is that ever. For all of us, rich or poor, good or evil, death eventually comes.

Looking out mom’s window in Ashland Oregon, snow drizzling on a pasture of horses grazing, surrounded by ice capped mountains, I thought about how different this place was from the Southside of Chicago where mom raised me.

Like the captain of a ship, she guided me through its treacherous waters to a Mechanical Engineering degree from DePaul University, and I was here to guide what remained of her to a final resting place.

Oh, how she loved watching those horses! There were times I’d call her after work feeling crushed and worn out, frustrated with my boss and the world and she’d tell me about the horses, pitch black, blazing white, and every color in between galloping in that pasture. All the things tearing at me would just float away.

Almost finished. Packed up a bunch of dresses, shoes, pants, and blouses to send to Uncle Ronald’s wife, who loved mom’s style.

Then there were the crystals, tarot cards, and astrological charts she had. I didn’t believe in or understand any of it, but her oldest brother Paul wanted it all. Uncle Paul was a physics professor at Circle University in Chicago, so I had no idea why he was interested. He was a man of science after all.

Mom had eight brothers: Paul, Ronald, Melvin, James, Gerald, John, Aron, and Elijah. She was the only girl, middle child. She told me stories about having to do all the chores and babysitting Ronald, the youngest.

Back then, that was what little girls did, she’d say, and it was all they were ever expected to do.

Of course, mom exceeded expectations. Rose up the ranks from a customer service rep at Behavioral Health to Chief Financial Officer, a job she despised. But work wasn’t something you needed to love, she’d say. if it fed you, kept clothes on your back and a roof over your head, it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

The night before mom was to be cremated, I’d finally stripped her townhouse down to bare bones. All the furniture had been sold, and everything that needed to be packed up and sent off was long gone.

All the bills had been settled, credit cards shut down, streaming services canceled. And before I drove her remains to Mount Shasta, where I’d spread them in the only place she loved more than Ashland, I did one final walk through.

Out of all the nights I’d spent there sleeping in mom’s bed, there was something different about that night. Couldn’t quite put a finger on it, really. Just a feeling.

Or was it the quiet? It seemed, somehow, thicker as I walked down the steps, looked in the garage and checked around the kitchen. I saw the garbage and remembered that I needed to take it out to the sidewalk for the trash man and...

I stood still. Could have sworn I heard a door creak open. It was about as loud as a whisper, but when everything is quiet, a whisper is loud enough to make your ears ring. Far as I could tell, it came from somewhere near the steps, so that’s where I headed.

The front door, a few feet away from the steps, was shut, so it wasn’t that. I checked it anyway, twisting the knob. Locked.

Then I turned around. Near the staircase was the door to a small closet that I honestly hadn’t paid much attention to before, and I noted that this door was cracked open.

I’ve never been much of a horror movie fan. The relentless analytical brain in my head couldn’t ever suspend disbelief, so I was always bored watching them.

The town house was built back in the 70′s, so it was old. Old buildings and houses make sounds, and sometimes doors creak open, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural.

Still, as I reached for the door knob, there was a tiny part of my brain that wondered if someone or something would jump out at me...

It didn’t. I opened the door and saw nothing. No clothes, shoes, or monsters. I was sure I must have gone through it at some point and pulled everything out, but I didn’t remember. Just as I was shutting the door though, I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. Something I hadn’t noticed before.

I stooped down, pulled out my phone, and turned its flashlight on a tiny groove along the bottom half of the wall. Then I wedged my fingers into the groove and pulled. It came off; A rectangular, perfectly cut section of drywall. Inside was a compartment about the size of a small box.

I focused the flashlight inside and saw a stack of notebooks. I carefully pulled them out and laid them on the floor in front of me. They were thick and tied together with a purple ribbon. Mom’s favorite color.

Notebooks hidden in a secret compartment? It was so un-mom like. She’d told me everything: about the the drugs she’d dabbled with in her twenties, and the time she’d got arrested for shoplifting at eighteen.

In the last years of her life, she even confessed the real reason she’d lost sight in her right eye. It wasn’t the result of playing with matches, something she’d told me when I was little and asked “what happened to your eye mom?”

She’d actually been attacked.

I thought I knew everything. Maybe the notebooks belonged to the folks that had owned the townhouse before she did. I blew a thick coat of cobwebs off them. Through the cloud of dust I saw, written in black ink on the cover of the first notebook, “Book 1 The Shadow.”

I carried them upstairs to her room, set them down on the bed, then just sat staring at them. Regardless of whether they were mom’s, or someone that had lived here before her, it was obvious that they didn’t want them found.

So then, why not just shred or burn them? I reached out and carefully removed the ribbon. I’ll read a few paragraphs from the first notebook, I thought, and if it isn’t mom’s writing I’ll shut it and put them all back where I found them.

I flipped on a lamp near mom’s bed and opened the first one...

Well, the handwriting was relentlessly neat and perfectly spaced. Definitely mom. At the top of the page:

My name is Lucy and if you’re not me STOP. This is for my eyes only.

So I stopped. Mom never raised her voice growing up, but when I messed up, there was this look.. In my fifties, a grown ass man, and I’m still scared thinking about it. Then I smiled. 1958. Mom was born in 48, so she was ten. Ten when she wrote this.

“Keep going,” I heard from some place in my head. Or was it a feeling? “It’s ok to keep going,” so I did:

September 10th 1958

The following are my wishes in order:

I wish for lighter skin, lighter eyes, and long skinny legs with a nice round rear end.

I wish that my job is a model on the cover of Ebony Magazine with a pearly white smile. But that is on Saturdays and Sundays. Monday through Friday I’m an architect and I make the most amazing houses in the history of Chicago.

My third wish... to know who the shadow was that walked into the bathroom when I was in the tub last night.

It was 2am, the time I always like to take a bath cause my stupid brothers are always in there during the day stinking it up, and combing their stupid hair. Little Ron burned the skin off the top of his head trying to straighten it with a hot comb by himself once, and I swear I laughed so hard. Momma whooped me.

At 2am there were no crowds. Just me, most of the time, and when the shadow appeared the lights flickered, so I knew something different was happening.

With spirit beings there was none of that. I’d just be taking a bath and they’d say “hi Lucy.” It’s not scary cause I’m use to it, just like I’m use to living above a funeral home. Been happening to me since... I was six. That was the first time I saw one. Her name was Eleanor, and she had just passed away a few days before.

She had these thick white glasses, and a big floppy white hat, and a long flowing purple dress. The dress was pretty, and seeing that was the first time I knew purple was my favorite color.

She talked about her life that night. How it was good, but she couldn’t stand her husband cause he snored too loud, and it was right up against her ear every single night, and that when he passed she didn’t want anything to do with him.

At first, knowing I could see them, the spirits, was a little bit scary, but that was because they’d just be there suddenly. I didn’t expect it. Other than that, they looked just like normal people, so it wasn’t scary to see them. Not at all.

But the shadow... It didn’t look like a spirit. Didn’t have eyes, or a mouth, or a nose, and it didn’t say “hello Lucy.” Just stood there. I kept taking my bath cause I knew momma would be up soon to pray. She always got up around 3am, and I knew I had to be finished by then and in bed.

After a while I asked what its name was. I say “it” cause I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl shadow. It didn’t say anything. Maybe shadows don’t speak.

Eleanor spoke, but she didn’t always move her mouth. Sometimes I’d hear her in my head, and sometimes I didn’t even hear words. It was just feelings.

I could hear somebody in the kitchen. Momma was getting up. I blinked and the shadow was gone.

September 11th

I hate my school. Not cause of lessons. I like to learn. Math is fun. I love numbers. English is ok, and science is boring, but Till elementary school is falling apart. The floors inside the halls are cracked and dirty. The ceilings have got cobwebs, and the lights are always flickering or burned out.

But that’s not the worst part. There’s this girl named Gina in my class, and she won’t leave me alone. Today, just like every other day, she always says, “good morning, I see you got the Holy Ghost again, Hallelujah!”

At first I thought she was crazy, but then I saw her looking at my stockings. They’re white, and I don’t have many pairs, so momma washed them a lot and they got tiny holes in them. I thought they were too small for people to see, but Gina saw them.

She was snickering more than usual with her girlfriends, passing notes and looking at boys, but none of that mattered to me today cause I couldn’t stop thinking about the shadow. Who was it, and why did it come see me in my bathroom?

I thought hard. It wasn’t the only strange thing that happened to me lately.

Last week I started hearing this sound. It was around 2am, my bath time, and it wasn’t momma. I knew momma’s footsteps, and these creaks weren’t that.

They were more like the creaks you might hear on an old wooden ship at sea and it got louder and louder, then softer, until it was gone. Before that --

“Seven times seven?” I looked up. Mrs Moore, my teacher, was staring at me, waiting for the answer. So was the whole class. “Seven times seven?”

“Forty-nine,” but I didn’t stop there:

“Seven times eight--fifty-six, seven times nine--sixty-three, seven times ten--seventy, seven times eleven divided by seven,” and on and on. Mrs Moore didn’t like that and I almost got detention for sassing.

Lunch Time

Peanut butter and jelly with a bottle of milk. And before I took a sip, I closed my eyes and imagined it was poured from a carton with a picture of a cow’s head. Not white powder stirred with water.

I don’t care how much momma says powdered milk tastes just like regular milk. It doesn’t.

And where was Larry? I didn’t see him, and he always came by my table. It’s why I sat alone, and prayed no one else would sit with me.

Larry was in 6th grade, and he loved talking about two things: Martin Luther King Jr, the civil rights activist, and poetry.

These were things I didn’t think much about, but I cared when Larry talked about them.I liked how his face got. His skin was like beautiful burnt toast, but I swear it lit up when he read a poem, or talked about reading a book that I never heard of.

I liked how he took his glasses off when he was serious about something, like the way black folks were treated in this country, and I knew he was the only one I could talk to about the shadow.

Right before I met him last year, his daddy passed away from cancer. It was 2:50pm, ten minutes before class was over, and this tall man with a gray beard and smiling eyes was suddenly standing by my desk. I was use to them coming to me in my bathroom, but I’d never seen a spirit at school.

And I knew what he was cause nobody else saw him, and spirits have this way about them. Hard to explain if you never seen one. You just know.

He stooped down and whispered this name... “Larry.” And he wanted me to give him a message. That he needed him to be the man of the house. That he needed to take care of his mother and little brother. That he loved him more than he could ever imagine, and there was this look in his smiling eyes. Like I wish he could have been my daddy.

He told me what Larry looked like and after school, I caught up to him.

How do you tell somebody their dead father gave you a message to give them? I didn’t think about that. Just told him.

And he stared at me. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I was hoping he didn’t get mad and punch me in the face...

He didn’t. Just walked away.

For weeks after that, if I saw him in the hallway he didn’t look at me. Didn’t say a thing. Then, on a Friday I think. A hot Friday, right before summer break, he sat at my table at lunch and --

“If you can’t run, walk, if you can’t walk, crawl, but whatever you do keep moving forward.”

I looked up. There he was, finally, right in front of me.

Larry was like a spirit being. Just there. Never really said hi or bye. Would just start talking where he left off, and yesterday he was talking about Martin Luther King’s visit to Northwestern University a few months back.

“That was the speech he gave” Larry said, taking a bite of his ham sandwich. Then he took off his glasses and said one day he’d look Mr King in the eye and shake his hand. I believed him. Or I should say, I believed in him. Larry could do anything if he put his mind to it.

I sipped my milk, then started telling him about the shadow.

“A shadow?” he asked. “Your shadow?”

“No, no” I said, “not my shadow.”

Then behind me I hear, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? Only The Shadow knows.”

Who said that? I turned and saw Gina. She giggled. No idea how long she was standing there.

Her and her girlfriends sat down by us, and the rest of lunch was ruined. The worst thing was, she kept smiling at Larry, and he smiled back, and oh, I’m not sure why this was making me so mad.

September 12th 2:00am

Finally , I could breathe... and the water felt nice and warm. Maybe the shadow would come back. Maybe it would say something this time.

But it was getting late.

I thought about Gina. I was so tired of her. So tired of those stupid stockings. My eyes felt heavy. I was gonna get out this tub and get into bed. I was gonna sleep and sleep. Just another minute in this warm water...

Was it raining? I could hear it against the roof. I opened my eyes. Wasn't in the bathtub anymore.