House of Shadows

Felix Maratosa was what one would call a man of the road.  Just like the Roger Miller tune, he was king of the road.  Haunting the ophidian 101 highway, Felix had spent his life traveling north of south like a tumbleweed traveling on the whim of the wind. 

My name is Salvatore Rossini or just plain Sal owner of Sal’s Cafe just outside of Crescent City, California where we serve the best burger on the Pacific West Coast. Felix will come in about once every few weeks on his way to wherever the wind happens to be blowing.  We will sit and talk about his big adventures since we last chatted. Most of the time he talks about the lonely stretches of road where he stands with his thumb extended and facing the wind and rain blowing in from the sea. We have a few laughs and reminisce about past days when being king of the road was considered an honorable occupation.  

I was once one of those kings until I met Rosa, got married and became a respectable businessman.  Still there are times when I find myself longing for my old ways.  

Things have changed since the last time I stuck out my thumb or jumped into an empty boxcar. But when he told me about the house of shadows, I knew my drifting days were done.  About three months ago Felix Maratosa told me about the place up past Rio Dell.  Once Rio Dell was a popular campsite back a few decades ago when there were still real Hippies, but times change and some of the campsites were left to nature.  Up on a hill there was this farmhouse that had been left to rot and decay over time. 

After a long day on the road carrying his sleeping bag, Felix saw the farmhouse and headed toward it as shelter for the night.  When you are king of the road, you are drawn to deserted places to shelter in for the night.  Even though it had appeared to have been abandoned for quite some time, the overall structure was still quite sturdy and did not seem to pose a threat of collapsing any time soon. 

“What’s your name?” He heard a voice in the deepening dusk that made him turn around and when he did, there was nobody there.

“Looks like one of those hobos.” Another voice commented. “Like the ones that used to come around during the Depression.” 

“Yeah, yeah, they would camp up on the hill.” Yet another voice added.

Under most circumstances, a rational man would continue onward, but Felix was not known to be a rational man.  After spending most of his life on the road, the rational part of his brain was just about all used up.  Beggars can't be choosers he reasoned as he opened the creaky door.  When he stepped inside the door, he noticed that there was furniture, none of it appeared to be functional, but just the presence of what was once somebody’s belongings was still quite a revelation. Most of these abandoned houses had been stripped of anything that could be useful.

“Welcome.” It must be the wind he reasoned even though he clearly heard the word spoken aloud. Pulling out the eclectic battery powered lamp, he pushed the toggle and instantly the room was illuminated.  Having light is a great comfort to a king of the road, but what he saw was far from comforting.  As the light filled the dark room, the wall filled with shadows.  Normally shadows are formed when someone or something gets between the light source and the wall, but there was nothing in the room besides Felix.  He just stood there, mouth agape, staring at the shadows congregated on the wall, each of them moving without substance or form.  There was a faint hint of music that sounded like old Tin Pan Alley and it appeared that the shadows were moving to the music.  Yes, it appeared that the shadows were dancing.

“Oh this gin is so rough.” A voice commented as female laughter followed.

“Brewed it myself in the bathtub this afternoon.” Another voice sounded.

“Who are you people?” Felix called out feeling a cold river running up his spine.

“Did somebody say something?  Chet, who was that rude person?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Darling, I have no clue.” A man’s voice responded.  

Felix pulled out his baseball bat that he carried with him for protection and held it in his hands as if he was getting ready to hit a fastball.

“This ain’t right.” He hissed, gripping the bat even tighter.

“It happened so long ago.” Another disembodied voice was heard.

“I mixed the gin the way I always had.” This voice sounded apologetic. “I don’t know what could have gone wrong.”

“You used rat poison for fermentation, perhaps.” Each voice seemed to come from a different place in the room.  The music played on.  It was a bubbly tune right out of the Roaring Twenties.

“It was an accident.” 

“But when the police came, it was too late.  Most of us were deceased.”

Felix swung his bat, “What are you talking about?”

“Christmas party, 1925.”

“Prohibition.”

“We had to make our own.”

“Some of us were still learning how.”

“Some of us were careless.” 

“Who are you people?” Felix was frantic.

“All that’s left of us are these shadows on the wall. Doomed to dance the dances we did back then.” 

His next swing he hit his lamp full on, knocking it across the room.  When it hit the wall, the light went out.

“Now what did you do that for?” Felix could feel a breeze on his face that made him flinch.

Even without the light, Felix sensed that the shadows on the wall were still there and he began to feel ill at ease.

“Do you dance, handsome.” A phantom finger ran under his chin.  He jumped when he felt the eerie sensation.

“Handsome?  Who are you?” He swung the bat again in the dark.

“My name is Evelyn.  I was single.  I was just twenty  three.  They found me by the stairs over there.” 

Felix saw the stairs even in the dark.  The steps were painted white and shown in the scant moonlight. 

“The pain was terrible, you know.” Evelyn ran her finger around his ear and once again he jumped.  She had no substance.  She was nothing more than a shadow.  They were all shadows.  It was a house of shadows, but even without light they were there as if it was Christmas 1925 all over again.  

“I drank a lot and threw up blood.” A voice replied in his left ear. “My name is Nick, what’s yours?” 

“Felix.” He answered.

“I went to Harvard, you know.” Nick chuckled.

“Nick, I can’t even see you right now.” Felix gripped his bat ready to swing at Nick.

“Silly chap, I am just a shadow you can’t see or strike with your bat.” He laughed, but the laugh sounded like it came from a very evil place. Felix swung his bat and shattered a lamp that was on an end table.  He doubted the lamp had been used in over fifty years. 

“Someone will have to clean up that mess.” A woman said indignantly.

“Where are you going?” Nick asked Felix as he picked up his bag.

“Away from here.” He answered.

“Don’t go.” Nick whined, “It’s been so long since we’ve had someone new join us.” 

“But you are all dead.” Felix blurted out.

“It’s all my fault.  I’m Oliver.  I brewed the gin.” 

“Oliver, you really screwed up.” Felix opened the door.

“Where will you go?” Evelyn asked, running her fingers through his greasy hair.  Felix pulled away from her. 

“You can’t leave.” Someone said from across the room.

“Why not?  You people are just shadows on the wall.” Felix sihed.  He was tired and the thought of facing the elements out on that deserted road where the wind blew an icy rain over everything that had no shelter.

“It’s cold out there.  You don’t belong in that.” Evelyn's voice was soothing and brought Felix to a pause.  When she was alive, Felix pictured Evelyn as charming and seductive.  Nick would not be a friend of his with his Ivy League manners, but even with his upper crust etiquette, there was something endearing about the young man. Even Oliver, the one who had unintentionally killed them all from drinking his poison bathtub gin seemed like a decent sort.  

“You know, a few years ago, I hung out in Haight. One of the guys cut some heroine.  Now I don’t ride the horse, but a lot of my friends did and by the morning six of them had overdosed.” Felix had never told anyone that story.  He was so ashamed, he walked out without reporting it to the authorities.  He didn’t trust them anyway, but he was always weighed down by the guilt of it all.  

“You poor man.” Evelyn comforted him.  

“Yeah, that’s rough.” Nick said sympathetically. 

The music stopped.

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to ruin your party.” Felix bowed his head.

“Our party was ruined almost a hundred years ago.” Oliver sighed heavily. 

“So what’s your deal?” Felix asked.

“We are what’s left of this celebration. We all planned to come out to California for the holidays to get away from our families and really kick up our heels, but now you have seen what happened to us.” Chet chuckled. 

“We thought we had our whole lives ahead of us, but that did not happen.” Cindy sat on the arm of the couch next to Felix who was still holding his bag.

“After the war and the epidemic, we wanted to have a blow out to celebrate our youth and vitality.” Oliver smiled or so it seemed since he was only a shadow.

 “What is ironic is that most people spend their lives as shadows. They walk through their lives as only a shadow of what they were meant to be.  We were determined not to be like that, but as you can see, it didn’t work out so well for us.” Evelyn let out a small giggle. “In the end we were no better than what we tried not to be.” 

“Back when we were young, we thought we’d live forever.” Chet’s voice seemed to float away in the wind.

“That didn’t turn out like we planned.” Cindy nodded. 

“At least here we can get together every night and relive what was taken from us.  We never expected anyone else would ever join us.” Oliver added.

“Well, I have no intention of joining you.” Felix looked around the dark room and in the moonlight that was peeking through the window, he noticed the cobwebs hanging from the window frames. “My journey still continues.”

“We’d ask you to take us with you, but as soon as the sun comes up we all disappear as if we never were.” Cindy said with a catch in her voice. “It reminds us of who and what we are.  Sometimes I wish that the sun wouldn't rise in the morning, but it always does.  It always does.” 

Felix gave what she had said some consideration.  He had never thought about shadows before, how they can only exist if there is someone connected to them, but once the person is no longer there, neither is the shadow. Each of them had lost their substance, they were all confined to this house of shadows, a house that wasn’t meant for occupation.  

“You wouldn’t mind if we continued our party?” Chet asked as the music started playing again. “There is a room upstairs.  You can close the door while we continue to dance.” 

“Sure...sure.” He nodded and took his bag up the stairs, into the bedroom and then closed the door behind him. He could hear the music muffled behind the closed door.  In only a few short minutes he was asleep and dreaming strange dreams of what he had encountered.  

The next morning he awoke as the sun was making its first appearance over the horizon.  He slept well, so well he had nearly forgotten the shadows from the night before.  Walking slowly down the stairs, he saw the lamp still lying shattered on the floor. Glancing at the flowery wallpaper, there was not a single shadow to be seen anywhere that resembled the silhouette of a human being other than his own.

“Hello.” He waved to his own shadow feeling silly, his shadow waved back. He would leave and start walking up the road to where he saw a small greasy spoon facing the bay.  With ten dollars in his pocket, he figured he’d have enough for a good breakfast.  With any luck he’d be in the Bay area where he could panhandle some real cabbage before finding a comfortable place in the park to spend the night, but nights could be cold in San Francisco.  What did Mark Twain once say?  Oh yeah, “the coldest winter I ever had was the summer I spent in San Francisco.”  Still he would make the best of it.

Before leaving he sat on the porch.  Rolling some tobacco in some rolling papers, he lit himself a cigarette before hitting the road.  It was a good omen when he saw a string of semis roll down the road.  He tossed the match and began his walk toward the road.

On his first try, one of the truckers pulled over and let him in the passenger’s side of the rig.  The driver’s name was Horace and he was running coast to coast on a run of building material.  He was from Cleveland and he could not stop talking about the Indians until he rolled up to a truck stop just outside of San Francisco.  They parted ways and Felix walked the ten miles to the city.

He worked a corner of Mission and 16th Street where he made some good coin and decided to find a bus to Golden Gate National Recreation Area where he bought a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper that he could use as a pillow.   When he opened his bag, a letter slipped out.  He pulled it from a yellowing envelope.

Dear Felix,

Thank you for coming by and spending the time with us.  It does get sort of lonely at times, but having you come join us was a real highlight to our celebration.

Each of the shadows had signed the letter.  He stretched out on a bench where he could see the harbor lights.  A low fog was settling in, but there was a streetlight overhead.  Unfolding the paper, his eyes fell on an article that read, “Old House in Rio Dell  burns to the ground.”  

He thought about his discarded match.  Surely as it fell the wind blew it out.  Surely.  

What if it hadn’t?

What if it sparked in the dry grass around the porch? 

There would be no more parties.

The house of shadows would no longer exist.

The next morning he headed north buying a bus ticket with the money he had panhandled.  As the bus passed Rio Dell, he saw a big black spot where the house of shadows had once stood.  He knew that he was responsible for the fire.  There was nothing that could be done.  

When he got to my café, I served him lunch and listened to his bizarre story.  Most of the time, I don’t put much stock in what these kings of the road tell me, but I could see in his eyes, he was telling me the truth.  I nodded a lot, but the detail to his story was so real, I knew he had seen something paranormal in that house.  Say what you will, there are some things that cannot be so easily explained, if you know what I mean.