Shadow People

Little confusion over this blog entry, so it's a day late. I'm also not sure if the previous post was done right or even necessary. Oh well.

I know we were supposed to combine one of our mini-stories with an urban legend, but my imagination got so carried away with the idea of "Shadow People" that I ended up writing about an experience with them. Info on the legend here.

- - -

We are smoking our first menthols behind a cheap gas station when the buzzing halogen above our heads pops bright blue and dies.

"Woah, shit," Hunter observes from behind a cloud of smoke.

My eyes adjust, and I notice how dark the rest of the block had become. The only light comes from the waning moon and the porch light above the stoop of my house.

"We should start heading back," states Hunter. He kills the last drag on his cigarette and drops it in a puddle. "Snatch oughta be done downloading."

"Yeah, dude," I say. "I love that movie. 'I don't want that dog dribbling on my seats.'"

"'Your seats?'" Hunter quotes back. "'Tyrone, this is a stolen car!'"

Our laughter echoes down the street, bouncing between the line of symmetrical houses until the sound is absorbed by the woods that circle my neighborhood. We continue walking down the street toward my house, the lone light near the front door like a light house.

"Hang on a sec, dude," I say, "I gotta take a leak."

I walk between two houses up to the tree line. No need to worry about the neighbors; most of the people left this street over the past couple of years. It's a bit unnerving, though. Standing behind me are two empty husks of life. There should be a family sleeping inside, filling the rooms with soft breath. Nightlights illuminating flower-covered curtains. Instead a dead, cold black stares at my back through the glass panes. A quote from Mark Twain drifts to the top of my thoughts, something about staring into an abyss and having it stare back at you, but my mind is interrupted when I turn around and Hunter is gone.

"Dude? Where'd you go?" I call out. "Quit dicking around, man, I'm hungry. Let's go."

Silence. Something moves in my peripheral vision, a figure, I think. I turn to see what I think is a head and shoulders but there is nothing but space between me and the curb. I step out to the street and strain my eyes looking for a sign of my friend.

Hoping he just got bored and went to my house without me, I start walking towards my house. Something drops on the asphalt behind me, making a wet, meaty noise I'd only heard in a butcher shop.

I twist around and gasp, "Hunter?"

Darkness answers instead, a darkness so thick and deep that my mind thinks to reach out and touch it. The moon is shoved aside by clouds and black shrouds the streets. The world has shut off, it seems.

I turn back towards my house and do not see the porch light. Instead I see a figure in the center of the road. A faint glow circles his frame, highlighting him against the darkness brought. I again feel the sensation of something empty and dead staring at me, staring within me.

Panic pushes blood to my legs and I run. I can't see anything past the fog of darkness in front of me, but still I run. I must. I can feel him staring at my back. Suddenly I trip, and I'm falling, falling, falling. Past the ground I was running on. Past my sense of consciousness. I fall deeper into the darkness I ran from, and black slithers into my brain and I sense no more.

"Dude, you ok?"

I wake up to Hunter standing above me. I'm laying in someone's front lawn.

"Where'd you go, man?" Hunter asks. "You went for a leak, and then you didn't come back for like fifteen minutes. I wondering around looking for you and finally found your lazy-ass sleeping right here."

"Sorry, Hunter," I apologized. "I'm really tired, man, let's just go home."

I look down the street at the light above my front door. It's on and it's bright. Good. We continue on down the street, and I can't shake the feeling that something I can't see is staring directly at my back. I remember the rest of that Twain quote: "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."