Baker's Dozen, page 15
“No! It's a lingering shadow on the wall. It floats toward me until it gets me. It can't go downstairs for some reason, though. And I think it's blocking me from my old bedroom. Don't know why.”
I had no idea what to say. My dearest friend was crazy, his mind probably gone for good. What could I say? I loved him like a brother. I didn't want to insult him by telling him the truth, but what else could I do?
“Jamison, what are you talking about? I don't understand.”
Then he looked at me horribly and nodded. “You will, Tom. You will understand. You're the only person I trust. You have to see for yourself. Then you'll believe.”
I sighed. I could not look at him. Seeing his broken face was too painful. “You want me to go upstairs?”
He saidn't a word, but his expression spoke it clearly: YES.
“Okay,” I said, standing up and stepping out into the downstairs hallway.
“Be careful. Don't let it get close to you, or else.”
Sighing once more, I climbed the stairs one by one. I wanted to see something, I couldn't deny that. If there was some ghost embedded in the wall, I hoped it was real. Then my friend wasn't nuts.
Soon, I reached the top and panned the entire upstairs hall. It was dark up here, and the light didn't go on when I flicked the switch. Didn't matter. There was still enough light to see.
“Jamison, I don't see a thing—nothing at all.” Holding onto an unsecured faith, I took a few paces down the hall, scanning the area for any unusual activity. Then I looked back downstairs. “There isn't—”
He interrupted—screamed—“Tom! Look out!”
I examined my surroundings in one swift spin. My extreme doubt was overcome with extreme disbelief; for I saw one pitch-black mass appear on the wall at the top of the staircase. It was a shadow, but the shadow of man was a somewhat inaccurate description of this manifestation. It had long, twisted arms with extraordinarily long, twisted bird-wing-like claws attached to them. The thing moved smoothly across the wall, skipped past the bathroom door, appeared on the next wall, and floated straight toward me. I could feel the malignancy emanating from it. I could sense the darkness within its darkness. I wanted nothing to do with it, but there was one big problem: it blocked my only escape—the staircase.
“Get away, Tom. Jump! Jump over the banister. Hurry!” Jamison cried.
I would have accepted a broken leg, arm, or neck rather than experience the hideous treasures of the unknown. What in the fuck was this thing?
I followed my friend's advice. Instead of backing up and being cornered by the shadow, I grabbed the banister railing with my hands and hurdled over it. I don't think I'd ever jumped that high or dramatically in my life. Fortunately, it worked. Unfortunately, I landed awkwardly, bending my wrist at a bad angle and spraining my foot on a step.
When I looked back up at the shadow, it was gone. The only shadow on the upstairs hallway wall now was that of the banister railings.
I rubbed my eyes. “I'm fucking hallucinating, man!”
Jamison told me, “No. Do you question my story now?”
I laughed heartily.
We resumed our original positions: he in the recliner and I on the sofa. This time it was me who was doing the trembling.
“What do you know about this?” I demanded.
He cleared his throat. “Very little. I came back home on Wednesday, and as soon as I went upstairs, I saw the shadow. Unlike you, I was attacked by it. It loved me and despised me all at once. Its soul, if it has one, is dark. Dark and passionate. I somehow got free and fell down the steps. Since then, I've been coming out of my skin.”
“You said you'd had dreams of this thing?”
“Yeah, every day since adolescence. In every dream, it's the same: when I'm upstairs, the shadow appears, holds me against the wall, and steals everything inside of me. I've been able to get into every room in my dreams … except my old bedroom. There's something in there that, I believe, can stop it. I have to see what's there. I can't be plagued by the shadow anymore, dreams or reality. This has to stop. This has to stop tonight.”
“You don't think it's capable of killing us?”
“No. It can do everything but kill us. Murder is not what it wants. It wants control. Domination. The only thing it can do is make us hate ourselves in the most pure way.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn't have needed your help now, would I?”
“How do we get past it so we can go to that room?”
“I have an idea. I'm not sure if it'll work, but what else can we do?”
“I'm all ears,” I said.
Though his plan sounded feasible; whether it would work or not was entirely speculative. What we were dealing with could have been any damn thing. I was afraid to encounter that shadow again, but Jamison needed my help now more than ever. How could I dare say no?
Later that night, we armed ourselves with makeshift weapons—two bright mag-lights—and headed up the stairs. If the unidentified shadow could appear—for whatever reason—then why couldn't we simply vanquish it with light? Make it disappear into whatever bizarre realm it was from? Probably a silly idea, but what else was there to do?
Jamison led the way. I trailed him by inches. We both shined our flashlights around, the beams fully open and diffused. Hundreds of watts of tungsten lit every inch of the upstairs hall, illuminating the hell out of it. We were two steps from the top and had seen nothing yet.
“Just make sure we stay close,” Jamison instructed me. “Whatever happens, get to my bedroom. Don't go downstairs.”
With that awful bit of advice, we finally reached the top. Both of us were nervous, obviously, our flashlight beams dancing about in response to our trembling hands. There were ordinary shadows. They shifted with our movement, but none were alive.
That I knew of.
“Okay, let's go. Hurry,” Jamsion said.
I thought we'd creep our way carefully toward the room at the end of the hall, but my dear friend hurried toward it—probably a better move than creeping. I followed, our paces in unison in long, fast strides. We were almost there when it showed itself again. It materialized on the wall before the room, as if it were the room's atrocious guardian. Jamison and I stopped. We both aimed our flashlights at the black-black shadow, and, by god, they made the thing go away. There was no scream and no dramatic disintegration. The heavenly beams of light swallowed the hellish outline of black death.
Afterward, we entered Jamison's old bedroom. It was just the way I remembered it, untouched for several years. A burgundy-colored carpet blanketed the floor; a twin-sized bed, covered with a designer quilt, was still in the same place: against and under the mantel, on which model airplanes were displayed.. A Star Wars poster and a Reservoir Dogs poster gave some interest to the the dull-green walls. The only thing out of place in the room was—and it was big—a transparent, see-through ghost of a little boy. It wasn't just a little boy. I could definitely tell who it was—the birthmark on his cheek easily gave him away. It was the same man who was standing beside me today. Jamison Cryly. This was him as a child, and he was currently moving around little Matchbox cars on the floor. The toys, too, were transparent.
Adult Jamison rubbed his eyes. I blinked my own several times. Neither of us could believe what were we seeing. More importantly: what did this mean?
The little boy sitting on the floor made audible crashing sounds as he slammed a tiny car into a slightly bigger car. And though we were obviously noticeable, the child had no idea we were there. This ghost couldn't see us!
“Kabooooom! Woosh!”
“Jamison,” I said, “is that you?”
“I don't—I guess it is. That's me when I was little.”
Suddenly, daylight poured through both the windows in this small room. The posters on the wall disappeared, replaced by Transformers and Gi-Joe posters. On the mantel, model airplanes were replaced by stuffed animals. The quilt tucked into the bed dissolved into a kid's race-car blanket. We were in the past. We had regressed to an earlier time many years ago. The only question I could ask myself was the same: why? What was the purpose of any of this?
“You little somabitch!” a voice bellowed. It was a man's voice, and it sounded, besides drunken, furious. It scared me, Big Jamison, and Little Jamison. Big Jamison knew exactly whose voice it was. I did not, at first.
The apparition of Jamison's deceased father burst into the room, right between us, and went to the little boy. He was much thinner, and with more hair on his head than I remembered. He was far more belligerent. A skin-tight wife-beater clothed his upper half; his lower half was unclothed, except for socks. His long erection bobbed up and down as he went to my undeveloped best friend. I could smell the liquor on his breath.
Today's Jamison watched what happened to his previous self. He watched it as if it was altogether new to him, but I couldn't. I wouldn't dare observe what that father did to his only son, except to say that it was abusive in every sense imaginable. Physically. Verbally. Mentally. Spiritually. Sexually. I could, in some metaphysical way, feel what was happening to him. I could hear the moans of pleasure and the groans of pain. It never stopped. It went on and on. The crying was the worst part—those unrelenting pleads that would go on deaf ears. I was almost to tears, myself.
I knew what the shadow was just then. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was Jamison's years of lost innocence, conformed into a being of its own. It was the depletion of every good thing within him—stolen by his loser father. It was, too precisely, the personal demon of his past.
Now he was forced to confront it.
“Noooooo! You motherucker!” today's Jamison screamed, running over to his transparent father and throwing punches at him. No fist hit anything; there was nothing really there. It was all a prerecorded event from twenty years ago.
As he continued to swing, trying to knock out a ghost, I began to see shadows appear in the room. They were the same as the one from the hallway, literally coming out of the walls and woodwork, growing and becoming strong. Their twisted forms bent across the ceiling, the floor, off objects. They were closing in on my best friend.
And they were going to destroy what was left of his soul.
“Jamison! Jamison!” I cried. My words fell on his deaf ears. He kept swinging, kicking, cursing.
Like a shock of electricity, I suddenly knew how he could defeat the shadows and his father. There was only one way, but I doubted he had it in him to do it. These ominous shadows were getting what they wanted from him—fuel for their own fires. Fuel in the form of revenge.
“It's not his fault, Jamison! It's not yours, either. Let it go. Forget this. Forgive him!” I said.
“Forgive this bastard? After he did this to me? No! I will kill him!”
“He's already dead. The only to end this is to denounce him. Forgive your father, or they're going to get you!”
He still didn't see the shadows coming for him; or maybe he saw them and didn't care.
To intervene, I stepped forward; but as soon as I did, something jumped off the wall and wrapped its cold arms around me. I couldn't move. I could only feel hopelessness.
“It was a long time ago! Let it go! Let him go! Let the pain go! All you have to do is forgive him.”
“Yes, Jamison!” his father said. “Right there! Just like that! You little fuckface!”
Whap!
“Jamison! Leeeeet goooo! Forgive him!”
Still, he swung his fists, hitting nothing but thin air. His face, wretched with anger, was dripping with sweat. Saliva flew from his mouth every time he cursed.
“I was a kid! You were my father! Look what you di-hi-hid!”
I squirmed to get out of the shadow's grip, but it was no use. It had me pinned.
More shadows came; they crept along every crevice, corner, and recess of the room, all zoning in on the adult Jamison, and had probably been after him since he was the little boy sitting on this floor.
Long, black arms reached for him. Dark nothingness surrounded him. His dad was almost done abusing him—this time—and today's Jamison was losing energy trying to fight off his worst enemy. I had no energy to help him anymore, either. The thing holding me had drained me.
“Jamison ...” I muttered. “Forgive him … or he's won. He beat you all these years. Don't let him beat you now, today. You're the only one who truly holds power over him. You are stronger than him.”
As I was saying this, my friend heard every word. I knew he didn't want to accept it. I knew he didn't want to forgive such a monster; but monsters thrived on fear. Power. What better way was there to stop them than to pardon them? By doing so, the victim gets the power back tenfold.
Father stood up to leave the room. Before he did, Big Jamison gazed at the back of his head. It wasn't an unrelenting gaze—not anymore—but one of remorse and pity.
“Dad ...”
His father actually stopped. Turned. He looked right into Big Jamison's eyes. Had he heard him? Had the past and the present converged?
Clawed hands grabbed Jamison's every limb. I watched as he lost weight in real time, grew powdery-pale and ill-looking all at once.
Father and son stared at each other for a long while. It could have been minutes, seconds—I'm not sure. All I knew was that I was dying along with my friend, slowly, inevitably, horribly.
“I … I …. I am sorry for what you done to me, but I don't hate you, dad,” Jamison said. “I … forgive you. It was just a mistake. Everybody makes them. I hold nothing against you any longer. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't think about you and mom. You are my parents, my family. I hope that where you are, you're okay now.”
It was by far the most difficult thing he’d ever had to say, I could easily tell.
Jamison's father smiled, and a single tear streamed down his liberated face. “Thank you, son. I can finally go now.”
Everything changed instantly: the sun shining in through the windows (turned back to night), the bedroom, the things in the bedroom, the shadows, and the two ghostly beings. We were standing in Jamison's bedroom like we had been moments ago. Now, unlike before, there was a sense of peace and redemption radiating throughout the house. All was back to normal again—better than normal, Jamison would tell me later that night. He'd defeated the thing that had ruined the first two decades of his life. He was a child again, free to explore the world without chains to bind him any longer.
The past is a funny thing, I tell myself every day. Just by holding onto it can make your present and future a prison, a self-made hell created by an obtuse fear of letting go. These days, I try to forget everything about the day before, and the day before that. I also try not to hold grudges, realizing that they are one of the worst things a human being can ever hold onto. The more tightly you squeeze it, the more energy it drains from your closed fist.
Jamison ended up having that old house bulldozed. And from what I heard, he moved back to Los Angeles and landed a few big acting gigs alongside some A-list actors. I guess he is married now with two kids: a little boy and a little girl. I just hope he teaches them in the beginning what his father hadn't taught him till the end. Maybe one of these days I'll even get the nerve to go out and visit him.
Before You Go…
Please Rate and Review this novel! Share, if you like it, and if you don’t, I thank you for reading it anyway. I’m always trying to improve as a writer, and my readers’ input is highly appreciated!
Troy McCombs has been writing since the age of nine, when his third-grade teacher made her students write a story for class credit. He fell in love with the craft then and has not stopped for the past twenty-three years. His genre of choice is horror, but he also likes to write drama and coming-of-age stories. Troy suffers from an acute social anxiety disorder, a vice he has been struggling with all his life. He lives with his mother and best four-legged friend, Lolly, in West Virginia.
Troy McCombs, Baker's Dozen
