The Shadow

I am 80 years old in two weeks’ time, my mind returns to this story, like an abscess in your mouth, you know you should leave it alone, but you can’t stop tonguing it. My mind returns, casting over it, worrying it, considering it from different angles, as though the passage of time might cast light on it, when infact the opposite is true. It just gets more and more shadowy.

Willow Way, Willow Way, Willow Way. So satisfying to say, at 8 yrs old, I took to repeating it whenever I heard it said. After my mum on the phone to a friend – ‘Willow Way!’ After my dad talking about the neighbours – ‘Willow Way!’ and to my sister when we talked about our new home – ‘Willow Way!’. I’m sure it was annoying, but when you’re a kid, that doesn’t matter, all that matters is the joy of the thing. The pleasing sound it makes in your mouth.

We’d been living there for a few months, long enough for the big cardboard boxes to have been unpacked, long enough for all the army furniture to have been placed in appropriate places and long enough for us to feel that this was home.

We moved every two years, I remember being terrified of being ‘posted’ I imagined us being squashed paper thin, stuffed into an envelope and pushed through a letter box. This house was not unlike the other army houses I had lived in. Generic carpet, white walls but big, they were always big spacious houses so whenever you spoke there seemed to always be a lingering echo. We needed a big house, I have two sisters, and we liked to spread out. I remember building dens with a huge pink blanket and slipping into pillow cases so we could slide down the stairs. It was our playground.

This house was different. We felt compelled to play in our room, there it seemed safer, I remember playing marbles under the light of the window. I shared a room with my younger sister Lottie whilst my older sister’s room was right next door. My parent’s room was miles away, or so it felt, it was on the other side of the staircase, you had to trek along the corridor to get there.  

We had bunkbeds, I was on the top and from there I could look out over my kingdom, the huge window directly ahead, the build in cupboard on the left and then the door way. On the right, our bedside cabinet and the chest of drawers. Simple furniture, it came from the army. It was made of wood with a white Formica surface, it had a pattern of grey leaves etched into it. Lottie was easy to share a room with, she was a pretty blonde thing, three years younger then me, she took the quiet roles when we played make believe, she’d be the pet dog where myself and my older sister Rose would be intrepid explorers. Sometimes I was like she wasn’t there.

That house had made me nervous. Even though I share a room with my sister, I didn’t feel safe. She was a heavy sleeper, she didn’t seem to notice the things I noticed, not until that particular night.

We slept with a night light on and we played audio books, I would fall asleep at almost the same exact point in one of our fairytale tapes. I knew three of the stories off my heart but would swear I had never heard the final two. Perhaps they invaded my dreams, perhaps not.

If falling asleep was easy, staying asleep was not. I would awake, I would always wake up at some point in the night. I never made it all the way through, never. I would wake and wonder what had woken me. I would sit up and stare around the room. With the nightlight on I could see easily, we also kept the hallway light on for forays into the bathroom. I would sit poised, tense afraid, staring into the gloom, and I would listen. Footsteps, I could hear footsteps, soft on our carpeted floor, they would walk from the hallway, sometimes they would walk into our room and stop. Sometimes I might even hear a click, as though someones bones had clicked as they changed position. And I imagined them standing there, invisible, right in the middle of our room. Looking at us, watching us.

Barely breathing I would freeze, straining my eyes and my ears for more, where exactly were they? Would they suddenly appear.

Some times it was more intense, on those nights I would scream for my father. One night, as I sat, having been woken up for god only knows what reason. I hear an abrupt bump on the stairs. As though someone had fallen, missed a step and landed heavily on a step about halfway down. Or worse, as though someone had stood in the middle of the staircase and brought their fist down hard on the step. If it had only happened once I would have tried my best to forget it, maybe in my childish way, find some explanation. But it came again, and that was all I could take, I could not lie in bed and listen to one more bang, I wouldn’t. I screamed for my dad – ‘Dad!’

There was a pause, I felt my sister wake, I heard the rustlings from my parent’s room, and his very real, very safe steps coming across the landing.

‘What is it?’ He totters into the room, still half asleep, as he comes closer, his head is in line with my bed as I huddle there on the top bunk. He sounds kind, he always sounds kind.

‘I heard a noise on the stairs and I can’t sleep.’

I don’t recall what he said that time, or the many other times I called him out of bed. But I do know that I always went back to sleep and that was it. I would awaken once in the night, but no more then that. It was like a pattern, whatever it was needed me awake and screaming for my dad, as soon as this ritual was complete, we had confirmed I was safe. It left me to sleep.

I’ve described this part to a handful of people over the years. I think the hardest thing to convey is how terrified I was, it wasn’t only what I was seeing was strange, it was the feeling that accompanied it, I felt as you might feel staring down at a rotten and decaying body, cut open brutally and writhing with maggots. That feeling that what you could see was wrong, it should not be seen by it’s very nature.

I woke this time to a tapping. I realised on the instant I opened my eyes that the nightlight had gone out. I felt betrayed, personally offended that this object that I needed and relied on so much was gone.

The tapping though, the tapping was new, I had never heard tapping before. I got up and lent on one elbow and looked out across my darkened kingdom. As my senses adjusted to this new gloom, I realised the tapping was coming from the chest of drawers. On it I had left my toy typewriter out. It was a plasticky yellow and red, and it did work, though I had left no paper in it. My toy typewriter was tapping.

I again strained my senses, was I hearing this? What could I see? The loyal light from the hallway cast a long beam into the room, it lay across the floor under the window which emitted it’s own pale glow.

I gradually made out a shadowy figure standing at the chest of drawers, I could just see it’s head leaning over the typewriter.

I screamed for my dad the very moment my mind registered this figure. ‘Dad!’ I screamed his name loud and long, desperate for him to appear.

The figure seemed to look towards me, it crossed the room and went into the cupboard.

At this point I was inconsolable, my dad rushed in sensing something was different this time. After checking the cupboard and finding nothing, he relented and carried me into my parent’s room to finish the night.

 At breakfast, things seemed normal again. I liked breakfast, I liked choosing cereal, I liked the cool refreshing milk and the crunchy cereal, and like any kid, I’d moved on in my mind.

Lottie was her usual quiet self, she sat next to me, eating her toast and marmalade. She perked up suddenly and broke through the usual chatter between my parents to say, ‘What was the shadow thing then?’

She’d seen it to. Awoken by my screams she’d also watched as the shadow figure crossed the room.

I stared at her, I thought about how we’d left her alone in the room after I’d been rescued by my dad. I thought about what might have happened if this shadow figure had come back. I slid off my chair and gave her a hug, she loosely gave me one back, not really understanding.

Those houses on Willow Way were all knocked down by the army. They rebuilt brand new ones on the same spot, but you wouldn’t recognise the estate anymore. I’m not saying it’s related, but I’m not denying that there was something odd about those houses.