Shadows

  
    "There are no such things as monsters , Lindsay!" Shannon said , turning off the television. "Now please go upstairs and get to bed. I'm not telling you again. I'll be right up to tuck you in."

    "I don't need you to tuck me in ; I'm not a baby!"

    "Then stop acting like one , and get to bed."

    "I will if you sit up with me until I fall asleep."

    "I thought you weren't a baby."

   "I'm not. I just don't want the shadows to get me before I fall asleep."

   "What are you talking about?"

   "The shadows can't get you when you're asleep ," Lindsay said.

   "They can't get you at all , Lindsay. They're not real."

   "They are real , and if you send me up there alone , they'll get me. Will you please sit with me till I'm asleep? Please , Shannon?"

   Shannon sighed heavily , rose from the sofa and extended her hand to Lindsay. "Alright. Come on , let's see if we can keep the Bogey man away."

   Lindsay grinned and took her hand. As they climbed the stairs , she said , "It's not the Bogey Man. It's something much worse."

   Lightning flashed at the windows , followed by a low rumble of thunder. In a few minutes , the wind rose and rain began to fall.

   After Lindsay had settled comfortably into her bed , and Shannon had pulled the girl's computer chair beside it , she said ,"Why do you believe monsters are real , Lindsay? Have you ever seen one?"

   "Well , not really. But I have dreamed about them."

   "So , that makes them real?"

   "No. But it does when I keep dreaming about them , and when they keep telling me they're coming to get me."

   "What do they look like?"
 
   "Like shadows. Black , snakelike thingies."

   "Is it the same dream?"

   The girl nodded. "The same dream."

   "It's only a dream , Lindsay. What's called a recurring nightmare."

   "What's that?"

   "Having the same dream more than once. Everyone has them. But it doesn't mean the dream is real."

   "This one is ," the girl said. Shannon saw fear in her eyes.

    After Lindsay had fallen asleep , she went back down stairs and switched on the television. She thought about what Lindsay had told her. She remembered her own nightmares from years ago , and how they had frightened her to the point that she dreaded going to sleep. She had out grown her fear of the dark. Would Lindsay?

   Lightning flashed at the windows , followed by a low rumbling. She listened to the rainfall , remembering how it had calmed her as a child. Her eye lids grew heavy. In a few moments she was asleep.

   She came awake with a start. Had someone screamed , or had she been dreaming?

   "Lindsay?"

   The house was dark ; the television was off. The storm had knocked out the power. Shannon stumbled through the living room , feeling her way to the kitchen. She remembered Mr. Ambrose telling her that there were a couple of flash lights in the first drawer beside the sink. She found them right where he said  they would be , and checked to see if both were in good working order. They were. Lightning flashed ; this time there was a loud peal of thunder that made her flinch. She never did like thunder ; it scared her now almost as much as it had when she was a little girl. But she did like the sound of the rain. She could hear it now , as it beat steadily at the kitchen windows.

   Back in the living room , she stopped at the stairs and looked up. Lightning flashed intermittently , like a photographer taking pictures of a crime scene , illuminating the darkness that so terrified her as a child. She was not now so sure that she had completely overcome her fear. She didn't want to go up there , even though she had a flashlight with her. But she had to check on Lindsay. She was not certain if she had been awakened by a scream , or if she had dreamed it. Perhaps Lindsay had experienced another recurring nightmare , and had cried out in her sleep.

   She ascended the stairs , slowly , telling herself that the darkness had no substance , that it could not hurt her. It seemed to work. Reaching Lindsay's door , she shone the flash light into the room . The bed was empty.

   "Lindsay?" Had she gone to the bathroom?

   Shannon thought she heard something in the room , but she was the only  one there. Probably just her imagination. Lightning flashed , and the darkness receded for only a moment. She hurried to the upstairs bathroom ; Lindsay was not there.

   She looked all over the house ; Lindsay was nowhere to be found. She went back upstairs , remembering that there was one place she hadn't looked. Lindsay's closet.

   She yanked open the door , and directed the flash lights beam into the darkness , revealing nothing but a young girl's ward robe and shoes. No Lindsay. Where else could she be? She had checked every possible place a little girl could hide .... or had she? Another place she hadn't looked , was under Lindsay's bed.

   She was shutting the door , when she heard a sharp thump. "Lindsay? Is that you? Get out of there right now!"

   The girl came out reluctantly shielding her eyes from the flashlight. Something had frightened her ; her eyes darted back and forth through the darkness. She was trembling.

   "Lindsay , what were you doing in there?"

   "Hiding."

   "Hiding from what?"

   "The shadows. Their here!"

  "It was just a dream , Lindsay! I told you there are no such things ~"

   An almost familiar sound came from the darkness. To Shannon it sounded like the hiss of an angry or frightened animal , but what kind of animal , she could not say. She had never heard anything quite like it before.

   She said ,"Please tell me that was a cat!"

   Lindsay was shaking her head , her eyes fixed on a spot directly over Shannon's shoulder. Shannon turned reluctantly to see what the girl was looking at , and as she did so , there was a sudden stab of lightning. In the brief seconds that illuminated the room , she saw something that she knew she would never see again ; she had a sudden premonition that she and Lindsay would not live to tell about it.
   It was  a large serpentlike creature. Shannon remembered seeing a movie called Anaconda. This thing looked almost as big as the creatures in the film. It was blacker than the darkness itself , and in it's head were two  yellow eyes ,  like those of a cat.  They shone eerily in the beam of Shannon's flashlight.  There were two of the creatures. The one nearest Shannon towered more than halfway to the ceiling. Another hovered above the girl's bed , it's catlike eyes fixed on Lindsay.

   As Lindsay and Shannon screamed , both creatures hissed simultaneously , and maws as black as the endless void between the stars , opened and devoured each of  them whole. It moments they were gone , absorbed into a darkness that was more than shadows.



 

The Hole

    Bert found the hole when he went out back to mow the lawn. It hadn't been there before. It was a small hole , about a foot wide , which led him to believe that a gopher was most likely responsible.

    "Damn gopher ," he muttered.

    He adjusted his Dodgers cap , and walked over to the shed to get the lawn mower. He would deal with the pest as soon as he took care of the yard. He preferred to deal with the gopher first , but if Martha saw him digging holes in the yard , or flooding it , she would have a fit , and Bert was in no mood to listen to the old crow bitch and moan.

    The mower was a John Deere. He had spent a small fortune on it , and Martha had squawked plenty about that , too. But Bert didn't care how much it cost. One of the reasons he had bought it in the first place , was to piss Martha off , because he knew that she was even more of a tight wad  than he was.
    As he pushed it from the shed , he thought of the perfect solution to get rid of the pest. He would drown it out. He wished he could find an easier solution to getting rid of Martha.
    It was a warm , spring day , the perfect time for yard work. The sky was clear  and birds chirped in every tree. Starting the mower , Bert looked up and saw Martha on the back porch , sipping daintily through a straw from a glass of lemonade. He frowned. When you saw Martha for the first time , your natural reaction was to flinch. She wasn't exactly what you would call a handsome woman. To Bert , she looked too much like the actress , Anne Ramsey , from the movie , Throw Momma From The Train. They had been married almost fourty six years , and Bert still hadn't gotten used to that face.
    On the patio table  stood a tall pitcher of ice filled lemonade , which was already half empty , depending whether you were an optimist or a pessimist. Bert was a pessimist by habit. He knew that by the time he finished with the yard work , every drop of lemonade would be gone.
    He switched off the engine and climbed the porch steps to pour himself a glass.
    Martha eyed him suspiciously. Every time he came near her , she gave him the evil eye. Bert knew it was because she liked to pass gas when she was alone , and didn't want anyone near her.
   "What are you doing , Bert?"
   "What does it look like I'm doing?"
   "Stalling , that's what."
    Bert finished his drink with an exaggerated sigh of content , and plunked the tumbler down on the surface of the table , almost hard enough to shatter it. Martha glared at him. The table had been a wedding gift from her mother.  She loved putting it out every spring and summer. It had little piglets in Tu - Tu's dancing across the glass surface. Bert hated it ; he thought it was a stupid wedding gift.
   He started the mower again. As he passed the hole , he noticed that while he had been enjoying his lemonade , the hole had gotten bigger. It was now three to four times as big as it had been. He switched off the engine again , and climbed off to have a closer look.
    As he stared at it , it widened several more feet , and his eyes widened in surprise. Dirt spilled from it's sides and fell away into the hole. "That son of a bitch better be having fun ," he said. "It doesn't have long on this earth."
   "Leave that gopher alone , Bert , and get busy! The yard ain't going to get mowed by itself."
    Forget the yard. He was taking care of that gopher now ,  while he still had a yard! He ran to fetch the garden hose and turned it on.  Hurrying back to the hole , he managed to trample through Martha's prized petunias , slopping water all over himself.
   Martha screamed when she saw him stomping through her flowers.  Dropping her glass , she hurried off the porch , heading straight for Bert with a murderous glare. "What are you doing to my tunies!?"
   Bert always laughed when she called them that. But he wasn't laughing now. He was so intent on getting rid of the gopher that he hadn't noticed that the hose had become entangled around his feet. Martha had sank to her knees before her tunies , sobbing and screaming. Bert tripped over the hose and fell flat on his face , inches from the hole , also managing to squash at least a dozen tunies , as well. He gasped when he saw it. It was now over six and a half feet in diameter. Dirt fell from it's sides as it slowly continued to widen.
    "That must be a damn big gopher!" he croaked. Then he heard the strange noises. At first he couldn't tell where the noises were coming from , because Martha was making so much noise herself. Then he realized they were coming from within the hole.
    A thousand moans ...
    A thousand screams ...
   Demented laughter. The hairs on his arms stood on end. He peered into the hole and saw only darkness.
    "That ain't no damn gopher!" he whispered.
   Martha was still kneeling by her tunies , moaning and sobbing. "Damn you , Bert! Look what you did! You ruined my tunies , you bastard! Now they'll never win first prize!"
    Still sobbing , she went into the shed , and in a moment , reappeared with a shovel. "You know what I'm going to do with this shovel , Bert?"
    "Dig another hole?" he croaked , and laughed.
   "Laugh it up , funny man! You won't think it's funny when I smash your head in with it , and then shove it up your ass!"
    She raised the shovel high above her head , and Bert rolled aside to his left. Before the blow could fall that would bash his brains all over the yard , Martha's feet stumbled over the hose. For a few seconds she staggered precariously over the edge of the hole , with a look of surprise on her face .... and fell in. Her screams didn't last very long.

    That night , Bert dreamed that Martha had come back. Her silhouette stood framed in the bedroom doorway , her hands behind her back.

    "I forgive you for ruining my tunies , Bert ," she said. "But I can't forgive you for killing me. For that , you have to be punished."

    She came into the room and stood beside the bed. She removed her hands from behind her back. She no longer had the shovel. This time it was an ax. And this time the blow would fall.

    He awoke with a sudden start ; he was drenched in sweat. He noticed at once that he was not alone.

    "Martha?"

   He switched on his beside lamp. When he saw her , his first impulse was to scream. But he remained silent.  He wasn't sure he could scream. She stood just within the doorway , her hands concealed behind her back , as she had in the dream. Bert knew what she was hiding. But it wasn't that she was concealing an ax that troubled him. Bert could deal with the fact that she wanted to split his head open. And it wasn't that she was naked. He could deal with that , too - under normal circumstances.
    What Bert could not deal with , were the small , disgusting  insect like creatures that crawled upon her skin , which had rotted through to the bone in several places. He could see their mandibles tearing off chunks of her flesh ,  and burrowing into her skin - which Martha did not seem to mind , or even notice. 
    "I can forgive you for destroying my tunies , Bert ," she said. "But not for killing me."
   "Oh , God!" he whispered. He wanted to beg forgiveness. Instead , he closed his eyes and waited for the blow that would split his head in two.
    He didn't have long to wait.