The Shadow Series

THE SHADOW SERIES

By

J.E. Deegan

A cloudy, moonless night has finally arrived - a perfect night for satisfying this delightfully rapacious craving, one that will absorb me within its dark, protective plumage while I hunt. I eased myself from you and silently slipped into the darkness outside where I can move about unseen.

I easily found a careless female walking alone and killed her.

I prefer females.

Afterwards, I returned to you unnoticed. You shifted slightly when I reentered, and I feared I had awakened you. But you quickly settled again into sleep. You can sleep peacefully, my friend; there is no onus on you. Not yet anyway.

I dwell within you and can be drawn out only by certain slants of light and by the moonless nights when I search through the clutter in your mind for the depravity simmering in its remote recesses. Unknown to you, I feed on your cloistered wickedness before slipping unseen from you into the dark obscurity of night, my mission to fulfill our macabre desires.

I am your dark side.

I am your shadow.

Someday I will share our secret with you.

But not this day.

***

This morning your wife’s head shook like a voiceless carillon as she read the paper. “Another girl murdered,” she said petulantly. “What sort of monster does this?”

Deep inside you, I laughed silently: If you only knew!

***

That persistent need deep in your subconscious… the one you’ve buried among the dregs of other prurient cravings... the one that both frightens and arouses you. You felt it stirring today when that attractive woman from down the street strolled by.

What affects you affects me, thus I too feel that restless, roiling desire you’ve managed to control – thus far.

But I am not subject to your restraints.

Tonight, I again shall free that ambient need of ours and slip from you into another moonless night that provides concealment in its darkness.

My journey will be short.

And though asleep, you know my prey, don’t you?

***

Gratification - a deliriously delicious sense of fulfillment. You felt it upon learning that the cute little biscuit down the street had been murdered. You won’t admit it to us, but you, albeit for a short time, reveled in its luscious horror before hiding it beneath your bogus mental quilt of rectitude. But that exquisite gratification still simmers within you, doesn’t it?

I too feel it.

And another sensation now haunts you; one asserting that you somehow were involved in that horrific crime. Confusing, isn’t it?

Despair not. Suffice it to say that all will soon be revealed to you.

***

You awoke suddenly, and I, startled, slipped from you into the darkness of the room. Something fretful, I suspected, had seized you. I watched you spring upright, and my puzzlement increased while observing your widening eyes and trembling hands. Sweat blossomed on your face and was transmogrified by moonlight into tear-shaped beads the color of ivory sea-glass.

Then I knew. That demand you lovingly loathe had finally found release.

I smiled and eagerly reentered you while you dressed in dark clothing. You wore gloves and I was impressed by your attention to detail.

Minutes later we were hunting as one.

***

Lamont Cranston used to say: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”

I know of your restless hunger… and I know it has been liberated. How will you feed it?

I remained within you as you drove to a seedy part of town and stopped by The Goldfinch, a tumbledown lounge that peddles perversion. Though late, a few hookers hung about, hoping to extract one more score from some drunken chump.

A skinny whore stepped toward the car.

You stiffened. Breath caught in your chest. Your face colored to tallow.

You quickly sped away.

“Damn it!” I silently shouted. “You finally free the bewitching need in you, yet given a chance to gratify it, you respond as though you’d inadvertently grabbed a pit viper! She’s a whore, man!”

You didn’t answer of course, and venting my frustration did naught. You drove quickly, both hands welded to the steering wheel. Your eyes swept continuously across the windshield as if the vista of darkness outside held a threat.

Needing time to myself, I slipped from you into the darkness as you entered your house.

Minutes later you reappeared.

What’s that you’re holding? A… gun?

“A GUN!?”

Kept invisible by the moonless night’s protective shroud, I watched as you paused on the lawn. You raised the gun; stared at it. An odd smile found a perch on your lips.

You strode decisively toward your car.

What, I wondered, had arisen from your mind’s shameless depths?

Then I knew.

You were returning to The Goldfinch to shoot that whore... or another.

Not my preferred method of delivering death, but to each his own.

I hurried to the car, anxious to witness your ‘coming out’… so to speak.

You pressed the gun to your temple.

“NO!” I soundlessly screamed.

*** The shot shattered the night.

Dread filled every inch of me upon realizing that you were gone. “You were my refuge… my asylum,” I mutely moaned. “Now I’m just a dark parody of you… a shadow without a source.”

Suddenly, a revelation: Wait! Were I within you when you died, I wouldn’t be! I wouldn’t exist! But I do! I still am!

But I must exercise caution until I find a new footing. Can I enter a new host? Must I still hide from angles of light that would expose me?

Those questions notwithstanding, I shall continue stalking prey on moonless nights.

Like tonight.

***

I had every intention to hunt as I crept from your corpse that night, but I soon realized that my deliriously delightful desire to kill was waning. Not for lack of a potential harvest though, for throughout the night and the next I came upon many suitable females.

But the exhilarating panache that accompanied draining life from someone had evanesced.

Perhaps because I no longer have a lecherous host feeding me.

Perhaps…

***

I have concealed myself in thick, dark woods where shadows can remain unseen. A baffling sense of misery and sorrow have me wondering if a shadow can kill itself. I somehow recall that a student of Pavlov sat by his deathbed and recorded details of his dying.

I’ll die alone, if a shadow can die. Or perhaps I’ll just permanently remain imprisoned within the ebony existence I discovered in this abandoned tunnel deep in the woods. Here, totally removed from everything earthly, there are no sights, no sounds… nothing but the tranquilizing comfort of silent blackness. Here, thankfully, there is no need for dialog with myself about my past.

Still, I do feel something about my crimes. Regret or a dark sense of satisfaction?

Hell, it no longer matters.

***

I’m at my computer, fingers stationed above the keyboard, ready for work. My mind, however, sits inert, blanketed by gloom as dark as a Victorian insane asylum.

I’m a writer... that’s what I do. I write sci-fi and horror stories. But why this sudden feeling of emptiness… a feeling I’ve never experienced before? Is there nothing more I can create about a man and his sinister secrets… about his murdering shadow and the delicious power that comes with causing death? But after all, I did execute the shadow’s host in the last episode of this tale. Perhaps The Shadow Series has run its course.

I attempted to rise, but couldn’t. Something pressed on my shoulders and a voice behind me whispered. “We are not done yet.”

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