Looming
How the shadow followed Zyssa home was a mystery to her.
There’s also the why and … well, just the fact that the shadow currently stood still by the door frightened her.
“You’re still here?”
The shadow didn’t respond.
Approach? Go about her evening? She hadn’t partied for at least a week so she didn’t really think this was some aftereffect from indulgences. Zyssa really was certain that this sight didn’t result from her brain becoming a magician with her body, conjuring up a sight not really there, playing with reality. That didn’t leave with a lot of pleasant options and/or realities to play with.
Zyssa put down her tote bag filled with goodies from the market, looking over her shoulder all the while. The shadow slowly gazed around the room, even if it didn’t exactly have eyes. Zyssa certainly got the sense that the shadow could see. A lot. Zyssa looked from the tote to the shadow. She thought it was in an aisle that she first noticed the shadow, first on the floor and then by a shelf flickering in and out of existence.
“Listen, uh, I know you’re a shadow and stuff, but, um, come on now. I just want to go about my evening and I’d rather you not hover there.”
The shadow slowly stopped gazing around the room and fixed its attention on Zyssa. She gulped, felt a chill course through her body.
“Could you tell me what’s going on?”
The shadow didn’t move. For a moment. For a few moments. After several seconds, the shadow shook its head as if in slow motion. The shadow reached for the door handle, pulled open the door and left.
“Crappity crap.”
Zyssa wasn’t too thrilled that the shadow left without an explanation. Zyssa was even less thrilled about not knowing where this was all headed.
* * *
Shadows exist everywhere.
Shadows canvass the planet.
They take on all shapes, fall on every object, from buildings to sidewalks, from fields to roads. Practically nowhere escapes their presence.
And that sorta explains how intolerable the next few weeks were for Zyssa. She couldn’t help looking and seeing that shadow everywhere. The shadow didn’t even seem to be preoccupied with her as much as around her. Mostly in her nabe, examining her favorite spots in the neighborhood she had resided in for years. Zyssa noticed the shadow gazing around her favorite bookstore, head titled up and surveying the room beyond the shelves. Hidden towards the back in her favorite café, back pressed against a wall, hands clasped behind its back. Sitting on a floor by the washers in a laundromat, looking to be in an almost contemplative state.
Zyssa hated how she felt when she looked at the shadow. Truly hated the feeling. When she noticed the shadow, the surrounding world became dim, very dim. Lights flickered. The world almost seemed transformed into a photo negative. Details seemed to vanish from the world and flashes interrupted her sight, visions from another place, another time. The sensation came and went pretty quickly, but they never totally vanished, she could practically see everything when she laid her head down at night.
There really was only one thing Zyssa felt she could do – do an internet search on freakin’ shadows.
* * *
“Walking down the aisle on a train, between stations, hearing all that noise, you know, the train rumbling, think someone was chatting, unwrapping a sandwich, all that stuff – and then I looked behind me. I saw the shadow standing right there. Looking in my direction, but not at me, just as if he – or she – was another straphanger. He walked up the stairs at my stop and seemed to drift in and out of the surrounding light. Before I could say anything, the shadow had disappeared into the blackness of the night.”
“Me, well, my experience was different. The shadow stood on the corner of a block for like hours it seemed. I thought I was fooling myself but every time I looked out the window the shadow was there, just taking in the street, the buildings I guess. And here’s a funny thing, that continued for days, just at a different corner.”
Zyssa sat in the café and listened to Mick’s and Shawna’s stories about their own shadow meetings. She was quite surprised that she found anyone else had such encounters, even if it required deep diving so far down the internet that she could get the bends coming up. They arranged a meet-up and here they were, all relating encounters in and around the neighborhood. Zyssa wondered what that was about. What it could be about. She was no sleuth, even if she liked mysteries starting with Nancy Drew. They all talked as if relieved to find someone else with a story, but Zyssa felt something else, as if they were being misdirected somehow. She could practically hear the ticking of a clock, even in her sleep, waking up and just hearing the seconds pass, the minutes, the hours … Zyssa spun the less than gleaming silver spoon around the tea and gazed at the tealeaves hoping for inspiration. She was going on vacation in a couple days and would rather have this all resolved somehow.
That wouldn’t happen.
Didn’t happen.
If she could turn back time, she might have known what to do.
But that was someone else’s specialty.
* * *
Zyssa didn’t like splurging for cabs, but it was a long enough ride, she was tired after the flight back, weary, the luggage was heavy enough, all that, and she, well, she just felt like an arrow zooming straight to the target that would be the taxi stand.
She should have known there was something wrong with the way the cabdriver asked her several times if she was sure about the address. She said sure, as much as her jetlagged mind allowed. Zyssa sat back and didn’t really look out the window, more immersed in the days with her family, her newly married sis.
At one point, she might have thought, “that seems strange.”
Once the cab stopped and the driver proclaimed, “we’re here.” Zyssa didn’t even know if it really hit her.
She does know that once she stepped out the cab, the sights struck her like a slap to the face.
Skyscrapers rose into the sky where her building used to be. New gleaming office buildings replaced practically everything, from the bookshop to, well, whatever.
The driver zoomed away after pestering Zyssa for payment. Zyssa stayed looking up, mouth agape. Until a shadow got her attention.
“I shouldn’t do this …”
Zyssa looked at the shadow and saw a form emerge, someone dressed in a futuristic looking business suit, circuitry running throughout the material. The face was cloaked as well as the voice so Zyssa couldn’t tell much about how he or she really appeared.
“… but apologies. This neighborhood looked so ripe for development and I had to, had to, pull some time strings.”
Pull some time strings …
“There’s some money in your account to account for dislocation, damages. A new address is sent that will be deleted in a day. Don’t bother trying to trace, etc. It’ll be like a memory soon enough.”
The form stepped back into the shadow, disappeared into a darkened corner. Zyssa thought she saw a body there, a ravaged form that had been savagely murdered somehow. A shadow that looked like a hungry beast, a monster.
She shook her head.
Looked up into the sky.
And saw the shadows the buildings cast dwarf her form and everyone else in the immediate area.
Patrick McEvoy has had illustrated stories appear in Santa Fe Review and Best of Penumbric Vol. 6 while also being included in TAG's Made in the USA exhibit in LA. "Um" has been published by Metastellar. Short plays have appeared in festivals and photography has been exhibited online and elsewhere.
