Shadow

‘There’s someone else in the flat!’ she whispered with an urgency that suggested terror, anger or both.

I had told John to stay out of sight. I really liked Lucy and people didn’t tend to take well to John being there. I felt bad about wanting to keep him hidden and I knew it upset him as well but what choice did I have? I had a good feeling about where my relationship with Lucy might be headed and, to my shame, knew that introducing John to her too early would, as had happened too many times before, scare her off.

‘It’s just us,’ I soothed her.

‘I just fucking saw someone else,’ she snapped.

‘You saw someone?’ I pressed her.

‘Not them, no,’ she admitted, ‘But their shadow.’

I went into the hall and called back to the living room that there was nobody there. Lucy screamed.

‘He’s right here!’

I dashed back into the living room and, sure enough, there was John standing on the wall beside the TV.

‘Where the fuck is he?’ Lucy yelled, looking around the room in panic.

It was always a moment of disorientation for people when John ignored everything I tried to explain to him and let himself be seen. I get why they react like that. John it seems, even after twenty years, still doesn’t.

‘I can see the shadow,’ Lucy said as she grabbed my arm, ‘But where the hell is he?’

‘Let’s head over to the park and I’ll explain,’ I suggested.

‘Is this some sort of weird joke?’ Lucy asked, reaching behind herself to grab her jacket from the sofa without taking her eyes off the shadow on the wall.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I’ll explain.’

Lucy almost ran out of the flat and into the hallway. Checking she was out of earshot I went to the lamp, placed my finger on the switch and looked over at John on the wall.

‘Just once, John,’ I said, ‘Just once is all I asked.’

The shadow of John’s right arm rose, his hand waving a “No”.

I turned the lamp off with a feeling of self-righteousness. I tried to ignore the guilt that also swept in as the shadow on the wall disappeared with no light to feed it. I followed Lucy out of the door and we went down the stairwell while I searched for a way to explain who, or what, John was. Maybe the eclipse would put the incident out of her mind. Desperate times call for desperate clutching at straws. Of course she wouldn’t forget seeing a shadow with no person. I would have to grit my teeth and tell her the truth and then hope she could come to terms with the fact that my best friend was a living, breathing shadow.

It was twenty years since the last total eclipse and the same twenty years since I had begun to protect and shelter John’s shadow. We had grown up together, his shadow and me. To be more accurate, John and I had grown up together until we were eight years old. After that, the shadow was all that was left of John, although we both believed that would change some day. We held fast to the thought that John’s shadow would be reunited with John at some point. Nothing else made sense.

For two eight year old boys the impending total eclipse was perhaps the most exciting thing that could have happened. We read everything about eclipses, from the scientific reality of them through the myriad beliefs and myths surrounding the phenomenon. We made several pairs of viewing glasses for our families. We persuaded our parents to persuade John’s doctor to give permission for him to be outside for the event. The doctor was reluctant at first. It had not been long since the last bout of chemo and she wasn’t sure that he would cope with the strain of being outside. I wrote a letter to her detailing the precise time he would be out, based on the articles we pored over in the newspapers, and including a solemn vow to get him back inside as soon as the day returned to normal. I detailed the number of blankets we would take out for him because we knew from our research that the temperature would drop once the shadow of the moon began moving over us. John and I both signed the letter, sure that our case had been presented well and that no sane person would deny us the permission. We were so excited when the doctor said we could go ahead with our plan but that we must not deviate from it by even one minute.

John’s dad set the table up on their back lawn and I carried out the trays of our cosmic picnic. Moon cakes, buns sprinkled with Popping Space Dust and Capri-Sun pouches for everyone. Five minutes before it was due to turn dark John and I stood in his hallway pulling on our fur-lined hunter hats, the wearing of which was part of the deal. We both tied the ear-flaps under our chins and grinned at each other. We hugged, broke apart and both took a deep breath before beginning to hum that tune from that weird movie.

‘Duuum, Duuum, Duuum…Da-Daaaam!’ followed by the bum-bum-bum-bum of the drums.

I reached out and pulled the back door open as we continued our rendition. We stepped out into the sunlight, thanking the weatherman for choosing a cloudless sky for this important day. I had as many blankets draped over my shoulders as John did, him through medical necessity, me through loyal sympathy. We walked slowly towards the lawn where our parents stood smiling and applauding, all four of them wearing the protective glasses John and I had made. I felt like we were two astronauts walking out to the launch pad before our interstellar mission that would save the world. Our slow walk was nothing to do with John’s condition; it was down to our shared flair for the dramatic.

I hadn’t noticed the birds singing until they stopped. The sun looked like it was still all there when the temperature dropped. The temptation to take off the protective glasses was strong but, with this adventure so steeped in medical strictures, I decided to be patient instead. When the light level started to drop John grabbed my hand. It was three in the afternoon but looked like dusk when I peeped out from behind the dark lenses for a moment, not looking anywhere near the sky, of course. I squeezed John’s hand when we could see the first side of the sun being covered by a black curve. Even beneath the layers of blankets I shivered. The silence was mind-blowing. No traffic noises, no children playing, no birdsong. Both our mouths hanging open in wonderment as the darkness crept across the sun. Each moment of the encroaching total eclipse was more thrilling than the last. John’s hand slipped from mine as totality was reached. I stared at this magic in the sky as I heard a thud beside me. Not interested in anything but that shimmering absence above us, I ignored it until I heard John’s mother scream. I smiled at first, thinking she had also read some of the more frightening explanations for the eclipse our forefathers had come up with. I glanced towards John to laugh with him at the silliness of his mother but he wasn’t there. The darkness started to lift as I looked into the space John had just occupied. I felt hands on my shoulders as I was tugged away from where I was standing. The light level rose. John’s mother was on her knees on the lawn, yelling. John’s father was there now, kneeling down as well. I could see now that John was lying on the ground as my mother pulled me into her grasp. John’s father was shaking his son, calling out his name. My father was dashing inside their house shouting about an ambulance. I strained in vain to get free from my mother’s hold. Birds started to sing again. John’s head flopped to the side and I could see his pale face staring at me. I had no idea what he was doing but was sure we would have a good laugh about it later.

The ambulance came quickly. My mother let me go as she went over to John’s mother and helped her up. The ambulance people did some poking and prodding before they lifted John onto a stretcher with wheels. My mother helped John’s mother into the back of the ambulance, following John in. The doors slammed and my parents ran with John’s father to their car. My father waved me over and told me to go into our house and wait there. He would call Mrs. Lyons to come over but for me to stay indoors until she could make it. I asked what was happening and he told me it would be alright. It all happened so fast that it seems like a blur when I recall it. Next thing I knew I was opening our front door to let Mrs. Lyons in. She gave me one of her all-encompassing hugs as she too told me that everything would be alright. She settled herself into a kitchen chair with her magazine and a cup of tea. I told her I would wait in my room and stomped up the stairs so she would know I had gone up there. Then I crept back down without a sound and slipped out of the front door and ran over to John’s house.

The eclipse was over and you wouldn’t have known it had happened at all. The picnic on the table sat there untouched. I glanced up at the sun which shone down just as normal. I walked over to where John and I had been standing. I looked down at the patch of lawn where John had been lying, searching in desperation for anything that would give me a clue as to what had happened.

I knew he had gone off in the ambulance but right there where we had been standing John’s shadow lay across the grass, right beside my own. I looked up, expecting to see John standing there but the garden was empty save for me and the shadows of two best friends.

‘John?’ I whispered to the lawn.

The head of the shadow looked like it turned towards me.

‘John, is that you?’

The shadow started shaking and the shadow arms looked like they were holding the shadow’s sides. The shadow was laughing.

I told the shadow that I was supposed to be in my room and that we had better go there and wait for the actual John to get back. We snuck in and up the stairs, accepting the situation without question. We had never been told that a shadow needed the person to be there. We also knew from Peter Pan that shadows had minds of their own.

John’s parents came back from the hospital without their son. John had died during the eclipse.

When John’s shadow spoke I couldn’t hear anything but, as long as my own shadow was visible, I knew what he was saying. Our shadows could talk and then, somehow, the information was in my real head. John’s shadow was, understandably, upset that his person had died but we were sure it was only temporary. We puzzled over the strange situation, knowing it had to be linked in some way to the eclipse. Reading everything we had studied before the event we were optimistic that there would be a reasonable explanation. We were on the verge of giving up when John’s shadow finger pointed in excitement at an article relating eyewitness accounts of previous eclipses.

All of the accounts we read mentioned that there are no shadows during an eclipse meaning John’s shadow was not around when he died. When the sun came back so did John’s shadow, not knowing that his person was dead. It sounds like a sad situation but the shadow and me worked out that if the shadow still existed then John must also still exist somewhere. All we had to do was wait until John found his way back to his shadow. And so we waited.

While we were waiting I grew up. I went to Secondary School and on to Uni after. I got a decent job and moved into a flat in the city. John’s shadow was with me every step of the way. As I grew physically, so did the shadow. We worked out a system of living, for want of a better word, without his existence being known to anyone else. Except, of course, on those occasions when John’s shadow felt excluded or lonely and he broke every rule we had agreed upon.

It never went down well when John’s shadow made an appearance. Because the truth was so bizarre nobody who saw him believed it and labelled me as a weirdo pulling weirdo tricks to freak people out.

Now, twenty years later another eclipse graces our shores. I calmed Lucy down and we watched the eclipse together on the banks of the river surrounded by a massive crowd. Memories of that day when we were eight flooded through me. The stillness, the silence, the shared experience were all exactly as they had been for the two eight year olds on the back lawn. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I wondered who could be so disinterested in the eclipse that they would message me during it.

Once the sunlight and some warmth had returned I told Lucy our story. Whether she came back to the flat with me because she believed me or because she wanted to humour me I do not know, but come back with me she did. I put my arm around her as we entered, calling out John’s name. He did not appear. I turned on all of his favourite lamps but he remained hidden. I called out that I was sorry for earlier and Lucy echoed the sentiment with her own apology for her reaction. Nothing. It was not like John to sulk in this way even after our angriest rows. I remembered the buzz of my phone earlier and checked it. It was a notification from my video doorbell. Someone had called while we were out, during the totality of the eclipse according to the time stamp. I pulled up the footage.

I almost dropped the phone at the shock of seeing John standing outside our door. Not the shadow. John, my eight year old best friend. He still had the hunter hat on with the ear flaps tied down. I stared at the boy staring into my camera. Something in the light shifted, the figure on my screen brightening. Someone had opened the door to the flat. The boy stepped back from the bell and I watched, not sure what I was seeing, as John’s shadow appeared on the floor in front of the child. Little by little the shape of the shadow began to shrink. After a few seconds it had morphed from the shape of a twenty-eight year old to that of an eight year old. My heart sank as I realised that the shadow now matched the young boy standing in the hallway. He looked up from the shadow in front of him and looked into the lens of the camera. He smiled, raising a small hand which he waved back and forth. He mouthed a word. Goodbye. He turned and walked towards the stairwell and began to fade as he approached it. Just before he vanished completely he turned towards our door again with John’s cheeky, mischievous smile. Then he was gone.