Running With the Shadows of the Night

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

Wait a minute. Is this a ghost story?

Yes.

Oh.

Do you have a problem with that?

No. Just give me a sec to get comfy.

Ready?

Yes. Go on, please.

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

Why a candle?

What?

Why a candle? Why not a lamp?

Um. Because there wasn’t any electricity.

You mean this happened before electricity was invented? Or there was just none to the cabin?

None to the cabin.

Ever or because it had been abandoned for so long?

What difference does that make?

It makes a difference to me. To my imagination.

Okay. There had never been electricity to the cabin.

It was off the grid?

Sure.

Okay, go on.

Are you going to interrupt me every few seconds?

No, I promise. Go on. I won’t interrupt you unless I have a really important question. Tell me about the cabin in the woods with the candle in the window.

Okay. So, on this night—

Wait!

Oh, my god! Now what?

Is this story true or are you making it up?

Oh, it’s true. It’s very true.

Really?

Yes.

Oh.

Can I go on?

Can you hand me my teddy bear, please? He gets scared sometimes and feels better sitting with me.

Here you go.

Thank you. Okay, we’re ready now. Go ahead, please.

Right. So, cabin, woods, candle, window….

On this night, of all nights, a man stood in the very center of the single room of the dusty cabin. He was tall, and thin as an Aspen tree. Not basketball player tall, but taller than your average man. He wore an expensive pair of jeans and an elegant cashmere pullover, the lightweight kind that you can unzip to show chest hairs if you want. His was unzipped to a tasteful level, and all his clothes fit him as if they were made for him. Which, come to think of it, they probably were.

He stood motionless, shoulders slumped and head hanging. There was such a downcast slackness to his entire stance that it was a wonder he could stand at all. He heaved a sigh and ran a hand through the tangled curls of ebony hair that formed a curtain in front of his face, momentarily sweeping them back and out of the way. For a brief second, his face was revealed. His features showed strength and refinement. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, prominent cheekbones, thick brows lurking over vivid blue eyes, a sharp nose that must have been broken once, lips full and soft, tender and luscious—

Ew.

What?

Too much sexy stuff. Get on with the story.

Right. Sorry. Okay, well, we’ve established that he was gorgeous.

Whatever. What happened next?

Immediately, the dark curtain of his hair fell to obscure his face. He sighed again and, with what appeared to be a superhuman effort, moved to the wooden table beside the window and sank wearily into a rickety chair, resting his face in his hands.

The sounds of a scuffle drew his attention to a dark corner of the cabin. Something thumped against the far wall. More shuffling noises. A high, sharp scream, cut off. Then silence. The man kept his gaze fixed on the corner. Almost at once, the shadows seemed to swirl and a lighter shadow detached itself from the utter darkness that haunted the edges of the cabin. A silver-gray cat stepped delicately into the faint candlelight, a small rat hanging limply from its jaws. The cat padded soundlessly to the table and in one fluid, effortless move leaped to the tabletop. He sat in front of the man, and the two regarded each other steadily, dispassionately. The rat, held securely by the middle, dangled from the cat’s mouth, front paws and pointed nose on one side, rear paws and tail drooping from the other. The cat blinked slowly at the man, then leaned forward and dropped the rat neatly in front of him. The man sighed once more. “Thanks,” he said, and picking the little rat up, he popped it neatly into his mouth. There was a crunch and soft slurping, then the man spat the rat into his hand and laid it in front of the cat. It had been transformed into a dry sack of meat, bones, and fur. Every drop of blood had been drained from its little corpse.

Cool!

Sh! Just listen.

The cat reclaimed the rat and, dropping easily from the table to the floor, carried it back to the darkness to enjoy in private. For some minutes, delicate crunching and gnawing came from the shadows.

The man continued to sit, head in hands, though now some color had come into his cheeks. Eventually, the cat resumed his seat on the table, solemnly regarding the man, slowly blinking whenever the man’s eyes met his. Finally, the man sighed once more. “Alright, Luna XXII—”

Luna?! I thought the cat was a boy.

He was.

You can’t name a boy cat Luna.

That’s awfully close-minded of you.

It’s just a fact.

Well, the man did.

I don’t like it.

Look, I told you this is a true story. I can’t just change the name of the cat because you don’t like it.

Why Luna twenty-two?

Because this was the man’s twenty-second cat.

And they were all named Luna?

Yes.

Oh. So maybe some were girl cats and some were boy cats, but he just kept the same name?

I guess so.

I see. That’s a lot of cats. Did he have a bunch of Lunas all at the same time?

No. Each cat was an only cat.

And he had twenty-two of them?

Yes.

How old was he?

Just be patient. That’s part of the story.

Finally, the man sighed once more. “Alright, Luna XXII,” he said. “I’m ready.” He picked up the cat, tucked him in the crook of his arm, and blew out the candle.

Just like that, the cabin was empty.

Or so it seemed. As soon as the man and the cat had left, plunging the cabin into total darkness, the shadows in another corner seemed to swirl. A lighter shadow separated from the impenetrable darkness and walked into a shaft of dusty moonlight that found its way into the cabin through a hole in the roof. As the moonlight filtered around the figure, it became apparent that it was a young woman, though perhaps that wasn’t exactly the right word for her. It will do for the moment. She stood thinking, hands in the pockets of her hiker’s shorts. This man, this cat were the first beings she had seen in several years, other than the forest creatures who lived around, and sometimes in, the cabin. She crossed to the chair just recently vacated by the man and took his place. Resting her hands on the tabletop, she felt for any lingering effect of his presence. Nothing. Where the cat had been sitting, a slight warmth remained. She made a sound deep in her throat as an aching sympathy filled her. How lonely the man must be. How solitary his existence. She understood something about loneliness. She understood a great deal, in fact.

How do you know that? How do you know what she felt?

Just listen.

Daylight filtered through the forest trees as the sun rose on the world, dispelling the shadows, then welcoming them back as the sun made its way across the sky, and darkness filled the cabin once again. The sun rose, passed across the sky, and set, over and over and over. The woman moved through the shadows, watching as disoriented bugs trapped themselves behind the window panes, battered themself against the glass for hours, and finally died with their salvation in sight, but mysteriously unreachable. She saw does and their fawns come to nibble at wildflowers around the cabin, then saw those fawns grow into mamas themselves, and their fawns have fawns. Storms came to fell ancient trees that were then replaced by saplings. All this and much more the woman observed as she kept to the shadows of the cabin.

And then, one night, the candle in the window sprang to life once more.

The woman pulled back into the shadows as she had done before.

The young man stood in the very center of the cabin. Crooked in his arm, he held a small ginger cat. Once again, everything about his posture screamed dejection, defeat, despair. He set the cat gently on the floor and went to sit in the rickety chair by the table. While he stared into the candle flame, the cat started to make an inspection of the cabin. It was obviously young, no more than six months old. It still clung to its kittenish features, eyes too big for its face, large ears that it would surely grow into. It, or he to be more accurate, sniffed delicately at the floor in front of his feet, then began a circuit around the edge of candlelight, peering curiously into the shadows.

Suddenly, every muscle in the cat’s body tensed. His green eyes, already large, expanded to the size of half dollars. Whiskers bristling, ears forward, he arched his back and every hair stood out. It would have been comical, given his size, except for the weird, guttural, rising growl that filled the cabin. The cat was staring into the shadows directly at the woman hiding there.

The man spun around in his chair, immediately alert. The cat didn’t glance his way. He paused his wild growling only to hiss, then picked it up, running the octaves from low to high. The man peered into the darkness, but even his eyes could see nothing. Still, he trusted the cat. “Who’s there?” he barked. He stood quickly, tipping the chair off its legs so it tumbled over, clattering against the floor. “Come out!” he ordered like someone to whom disobedience is unknown.

The woman felt something whisper around her, as if his command carried a power greater than volume and imperiousness. She hesitated. It wasn’t that she feared the man. She didn’t. What she feared was that she might step into the candlelight, and he wouldn’t notice. She had existed so long in the shadows that she was almost inured to the grinding loneliness. If she stepped out of those shadows now, she would be acknowledging the aching, stifling pain of unending solitude. And if he couldn’t see her? If she stepped out of the shadows and was still alone, how would she endure? How could she go back to that existence knowing that she would never again be seen? Because if someone like him wasn’t able to perceive her, no one could. Maybe, she thought, I’ll feel ready to try next time he comes. Her mind went to the months and years she had endured since his last appearance in the cabin. Finally, the horror of spending more months and years, this time wondering if he would ever return so overwhelmed the other fear that she found herself pulling away from the deep shadows of the cabin’s darkest corner.

The little cat hissed. As he squinted into the darkness, a flicker of fear crossed the man’s face. “Darius?” he whispered, taking a step backward. She didn’t want to scare him. She reached deep within herself to find her voice, unused for seasons. “No,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure he heard her until he said, “Then who?”

Gathering her courage around herself like a comforter on a frosty day, she took a tentative step into the faintest touch of the candlelight. Her eyes sought the slightest changes in the man’s expression. She saw the tension leave his face, the fear die from his eyes to be replaced by open curiosity. She saw him looking at her, looking into her eyes. A joy greater than any she had ever experienced ripped through her with palpable pain. Whatever else happened during this night, she was no longer alone.

She looked down at the cat and smiled. It had stopped its operatics and was now calmly licking one of its back paws, as if it had known all along there was nothing to worry about. “Hello, Luna XXIII,” she whispered. The man gave a startled grunt, but the cat just paused in its licking to look at her and blink, then resumed its bath.

“You were here when I came before.” The man wasn’t asking. She looked at him, taking in the curly hair, the high cheekbones, the crooked nose. She imagined he expected her to respond somehow, but she had no idea what to say. Loneliness had bleached idle chatter out of her. There was no need to fill a silence; silence was crowded enough already. “Who are you?” he asked.

The question perplexed her, too. She was no longer sure how to answer. Once, she was a woman, vibrant, athletic, fun-loving, adventurous. But that was so long ago. And he hadn’t asked her, “Who were you?” He had asked, “Who are you?” I am a creature of shadow, she thought. I am a spirit of forever. I am native to the silence and the dust. I am grateful you perceive me. I am no longer alone. But she didn’t know how to say any of this to him, and so she softly said, “I think you can call me Senka. And you?”

He tipped his head to the side, assessing her. She guessed he found her answer odd. Finally, he responded, “Silas.”

“Why are you here?” She took another step into the light, watching him closely.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he shot back, jamming his hands into his pants pockets. The gesture made him look so young, despite the obvious truth, that she almost smiled and her first, somewhat snippy and territorial reaction softened. Instead, she said, “I wouldn’t know how to answer you if you did. I believe I must be here.”

He looked at her in silence for a moment, then turned back to the table and, righting the fallen chair, sat and rested his head in his hands. Senka moved quietly over to the table and sat across from him, enjoying the sensation of sharing a table with someone. She said to him, “You’re sad when you come here. Dejected, I think.” Silas lifted his head and met her eyes. She could see that he was trying to decide whether to acknowledge her invitation to talk. “There’s someone I am…responsible to,” he started, tentatively. “Beholden to.” He paused.

“Yes?” They watched each other across the table, she reveling in the conversation, he clearly not ready to trust her. “You know,” she said, leaning forward, arms on the table, “I used to wonder if beings like you were real. And if the books were right about you. Funny how memories come back.”

Silas turned his eyes away from her and stared at the candle flame. “My memories are never far from me,” he said.

Senka smiled gently. He sounded like a teenager drowning in adolescent angst, but he had to be several hundred years old. “I had people I was responsible to,” she told him. “That was pretty long ago, though. Who's yours?”

“I’ve never spoken it aloud before.” He looked as if he felt queasy. “My…master. My…Maker.”

“Ah,” Senka breathed. She tried not to show that she was a bit appalled. She wanted to pull away from him but was afraid that might break their nascent connection. The mention of his Maker felt too foreign to her, too intimate. Too brutal. “How,” she began, then faltered. She tried again, “How does that,” she waved her hand vaguely in the air, hoping to include the making, the transformation, the connection, all of it in such an inadequate word. “How does that all work?” she finally managed.

“It’s complicated, the relationship between us and our Makers. Mine is possibly a little more complicated than most.” He glanced up at Senka and sighed. “He…disapproves of me. He’d like to unmake me.”

In his eyes, she saw both pain and anger. She couldn’t tell which was winning out. “Do you mean he wants to kill you?”

He waggled his head back and forth to suggest both yes and no. “Well, terminate me, yes.”

“And so you hide out here?” Senka gestured to the cabin.

“I’m always hiding from him. He is always searching for me. I come here when he gets too close.”

“Why here?”

“I was made here,” Silas answered quietly, without emotion. “We can always go back to where we were made, just by thinking of the place.”

Senka was surprised. “You were made here? In this logger’s cabin?”

He waggled his head again. “There has been a cabin, or something like a cabin, in this spot almost since the beginning of humankind, and centuries ago, I lived here. The little hut I lived in rotted long ago.” He fell silent, brooding as he stared at his hands resting on the table.

“And so you come here when you believe your Maker has tracked you down…in the world?” Senka prompted him.

He looked up at her again, more miserable than she had yet seen him. “He can’t reach me here. I can regroup, start again, go somewhere new. Though each time, I lose all that I’ve built.”

“Except Luna,” Senka said, her eyes finding the cat as he slunk into the corner following the quiet scufflings of some prey.

“Except Luna,” Silas agreed.

“If he’s just going to keep hunting you,” Senka ventured, still observing the cat’s movements, “why don’t you get to him first?”

Silas laughed bitterly. “I can’t,” he spat.

“You still care about him?” She couldn’t quite make him out. It had been so long since she’d had the opportunity to study body language, to read tones of voice. And she wasn’t sure how his condition might influence those normal aspects of communication. She recognized in herself her inability to use the actual word that defined him. It scared her too much. Even so, she knew how ridiculous it was to be scared of a word but not of the being who sat before her and embodied that word. Neither could harm her, she knew.

Silas had sat back in his chair and was looking at her as if she were an idiot. “No, I don’t care about him. I hate him! I mean I physically can’t. I am literally incapable of ending him. Just as he cannot follow me here, I cannot terminate his existence. Even if that weren’t true for our kind, I’m not sure I would have the strength to beat him. He’s enormously powerful.”

From the darkness of the corner, Luna’s deep growl filled the cabin. It was low and menacing. Senka felt a crawling tingle at the back of her neck. Silas leaped from his chair, as he had earlier, and scanned the dark places of the cabin. Senka stood, too. “What is it?” she asked him. He shook his head, not sure, but any response he might have made was cut off as Luna’s growl became a menacing yowl, climbing the octaves into a piercing shriek. Silas was clutching at his hair, his eyes flicking wildly around the cabin. “He knows I’m here!” he gasped.

Senka made a complete turn, taking in all aspects of the single-roomed cabin she knew so well. At first, she couldn’t see anything unusual. But then, she saw it. A darker something in the half-shadow under the cabin’s roof. It moved, slipping and slithering through the gaps of broken shingles, coiling and twisting, a greasy, gray fog, flowing downwards towards the center of the room. As Silas stood, transfixed and horrified, eyes bulging, mouth agape in terror, Senka withdrew into the darkest of the shadows. Luna, still in his corner, had gone silent. In fact, the whole world seemed to have gone utterly quiet. The peeping of night frogs, ever-present beyond the cabin’s walls, had stopped, as if the frogs were drawing into themselves in horror. There was no sound anywhere as the fog came on, swirling, twisting, forming itself into the figure of a man.

But not utterly a man. Tall and spectrally thin, it appeared more absence of light than solid form. The candle flame bent towards it, as if this creature had a gravitational pull of its own. The form began to solidify, and as it did, the stench of graves flowed from it. Slowly, softly, almost sensuously, it turned toward Silas and held him in its gaze. Silas seemed paralyzed. Almost in slow motion, the creature raised an arm and brought it crashing against the side of Silas’ head. The magnificent force lifted him off his feet and sent him slamming against the far wall. The thunk of his head as it dented the wooden boards reverberated throughout the cabin. Silas crumpled to the floor. He looked up at the creature, defeat already in his eyes.

The creature looked down at Silas, a twist of sneering disgust on its features. “Are you not going to fight me?” Its voice was like the grating of rusty graveyard gates. “You are useless!” It turned its back on Silas and oozed away from him. “Get up,” it commanded with loathing, not looking at him. Silas staggered to his feet, his eyes fixed on the creature. As soon as he was upright, the creature whirled to kick Silas hard in the ribs. Silas slammed into the opposite wall, his arm flying out and shattering the window there. Luna streaked from his hiding place as glass fell around him, taking shelter in the shadows behind Senka. A ragged triangle of window pane jutted from the back of Silas’ hand. Blood spattered the wall and floor. As Senka watched, Silas pulled the chunk of glass from his hand and the wound healed.

Silas stood again, squaring his shoulders, and faced the creature. “What do you want?” His voice sounded stronger than Senka would have predicted. The creature only laughed, then was on Silas in a blink, grabbing him by the throat and hurling him against the far wall with such force that half the wall gave way and Silas tumbled onto the ground beyond the cabin. The gash across his forehead was deep enough to expose the bone beneath, but within moments, the gaping edges of the wound had met and the gash disappeared, leaving only a smear of blood across Silas’ face. He dragged himself upright once more and climbed back into the cabin. “You know you can’t end me this way,” he shouted at the creature. “Do what you need to do and get it over with.” Senka was shocked. How could Silas take his existence so lightly that he would ask for it to end? No matter how long he had inhabited the earth, surely there was more he wanted to see, to experience. But the creature laughed again. “Oh, that moment will come,” it said. “I will end you, to be sure.” There was no tone of threat in its grinding voice. This was a simple statement of fact.

Once more, it was on Silas, though Senka hadn’t even seen it move. It wrapped one huge hand around Silas’ head, digging its fingers into his eyes. With the other hand at the waistband of Silas’ pants, the creature lifted him above his own head and hurled him to the floor. The thick wooden floorboards splintered with a shriek of rending wood. The table, half its legs no longer supported, tipped sideways, sending the candleholder sliding down the tabletop and onto the floor. The candle dislodged and rolled into the corner where Luna had been hunting. The flame found years of tinder-dry rats’ nests and ignited them in a crackling rush. A yellow-orange snake quickly climbed the old walls, reached the roof, and spread into a roaring fire that encompassed one wall of the cabin. The creature lifted Silas from where he was wedged into the floor, scattering broken boards, and flung him towards the flames. Silas hit the burning wall and sailed through it, scorching his shoulder and one side of his face. The creature followed after him and, grabbing a fistful of his long hair, dragged Silas back into the cabin.

“This is ridiculous,” Senka muttered between gritted teeth. Luna looked up at her, his wide eyes reflecting the leaping flames. She regarded the cat for a moment, then slipped out of the cabin. For a heartbeat, he turned back to Silas, then slunk out after her.

Silas lay on his back, exhausted. He had lost enough blood that he was no longer healing as quickly as he had before. He looked up at the creature that towered over him. “Go ahead!” he shouted over the roaring flames. “Bare your teeth and end me!” The creature smiled smugly, then allowed its smile to grow, revealing razor-sharp triangular teeth arrayed in three curving concentric rows. It inexorably bent its gaping mouth towards Silas’s face, and the reek of ancient corpses filled his senses. He turned his face to the side. It was enough to accept his end; he didn’t need to watch it come for him. But his eyes remained open. He would keep a piece of his dignity about him as he ceased to exist. Even over the roar of the fire, he heard the creature laugh gloatingly in his ear. Silas clenched his fists and waited for the final bite.

Without warning or explanation, the creature’s head was suddenly facing him on the floor a foot or two away. Silas raised himself up for a better vantage. Just the head lay oozing its contents onto the broken floor an arm’s length away. Silas looked to his other side. A body, the creature’s body, was evaporating into oily smoke and disappearing into the increasingly raging fire. Silas scanned the cabin for the cause of this development. His eyes landed on Senka. She stood looking down at him, a massive rusty axe gripped in both her hands. With a look of grim determination, she raised the axe over her head and brought it slamming down, cleaving the head of the creature in two. She threw the axe to the side and neatly kicked the two cranium halves into the fire. Then she turned back to Silas and, reaching down, helped him to his feet and out of the cabin.

Senka, Silas, and Luna stood at a safe distance and watched as the cabin burned to the ground. Eventually, Senka said, “So, are you safe now?” Silas turned to her and she could see the confusion on his face. “Your Maker is dead, right? You don’t have to hide anymore.” Silas was uncomprehending. “That wasn’t my Maker,” he said. “I told you, my Maker can’t follow me here.”

She was astonished. That creature, that powerful creature wasn’t his maker? “Then why didn’t you fight back?” she asked with a touch of anger.

He dropped his gaze, then let his eyes return to the dying fire. “What was the point?”

“The point?” she exclaimed. “The point would be to go on. The point would be to stand up for yourself.” She waved her hands with the futility of trying to explain it to him. “I don’t get you.”

“That is because,” he said wearily, “you are not me.”

She looked at him for a long while before saying, “What are you going to do now?”

“Start again,” he said with a sigh.

“Alone?”

He turned to her, startled. “Would—” he started, then stopped. He tried again. “Would you come with me?”

She looked around the clearing, then at the bit of the cabin that remained. “To be honest,” she said, “I don’t know if I can. In my own way, I was made here, too. Since then, I haven’t left the cabin.”

“But now there is no cabin,” he reminded her needlessly.

“Yes. So maybe I’m free to go somewhere else. And you know,” she added, “now that I’ve saved your—existence, I’m curious to see what you do with it.”

“What if I choose to do nothing with it?” he asked with an edge of impatience.

Her mouth became a grim, tight line. “Oh, you’ll do something,” she said. “You owe me now.”

He started to respond, but Senka saw that something in him softened. She wondered if he had realized the same thought that had occurred to her: if they were able to leave here together, existence would no longer be so desperately lonely.

Silas leaned down and picked up Luna, tucking him into the crook of his arm. He turned to Senka. “Shall we see what happens?” he asked. She gave one last look around the clearing. To the wreck of the cabin and to the trees she whispered, “Oh, please, let me go. Let me not be left behind.” She tucked her hand into the crook of Silas’ free arm and closed her eyes in wild hope.

Just like that, the clearing was empty.

She went with him?

She went with him.

What happened then?

It’s late. The next chapter of the story will have to wait till tomorrow night.

Aw!

You can hardly keep your eyes open.

I can, too!

Well, your teddy bear can’t. He’s falling asleep.

He is? Okay. I don’t want him to miss anything.

Goodnight.

Wait!

What?

How did she do it?

Do what?

How did the shadow woman lop the creature’s head off? He seemed pretty tough.

Oh, he was. You know, even Silas didn’t understand how that had happened at first. A long time later, they learned that the creature could only be destroyed under one condition.

What?

Someone has to have the courage to help.

I see.

Do you? Good for you.

Promise you’ll come back tomorrow night and tell me the next part of the story?

I promise. Goodnight.

Goodnight.

____________________

Go on to Chapter 2