The Shadow People

There are places where shadows long linger, their morphic resonance cast upon edges and in-betweens. The house I grew up in had many such shadows.

When my youngest brother was born, my sister and I moved into the basement of our family home in the suburbs of Virginia. The house was built as a ranch home in the late 60’s, built upon a slope that revealed half the house above ground and the other half, the basement, below into the cold clay earth. The upstairs felt light and swimmy, the half where we ate meals together and told stories and played music. We all slept up there for many years, before the family got so big some of us had to move down below. Before the family began breeding secrets and the house became very, very dark. The basement was made up of several small dark rooms that became a den, laundry room, computer room, and guest room. Each room had a heavy chill to it that never left, now matter what time of year it was or how many lights you turned on. That basement was, well, well it was both full and empty. I hated it down there, and I hated it even more once it became my bedroom. I hated it for the collective grief and angst that seemed to paint the walls. For the odd smells of other people. For its voluminous thickness with other.

I was 5 when we moved into that house, my sister just a wrinkly newborn, and my brother no more than a toddler. The house had an odd feel to it I never got used to, but at 5 I loved the curious things it introduced. An intercom system that let your voice carry through the walls from one room to another, and would sometimes buzz to life with whispers even after it had been broken. A massive red plush snake that extended the length of the entire basement staircase, adopted after it was thrown out by a neighbor kid who died of a serious illness. The red shag carpet that would swallow the smallest of legos and reveal old buttons and pennies and crumbs... and every once in a while a silvery hair tangled deep within the fibers. I’d pull it out and marvel where it had come from, for it matched no one in my family.

It felt haunted before I even knew what the word meant. I was fixated on who lived in the house before us, and of the hidden stories that we carried in our own suitcases. Those suitcases eventually unpacked into the downstairs closest. Early memories remind me of strange glimpses and sensations in the basement caught in peripheral gaze. In the dark reflections of the mirrors and in depths of the closets I’d find shadows. I never saw anything with my eyes, but I felt the presence with my whole body. I thought of them as the leftovers, the shadow people. They lived down there in the humming darkness.

I could not sleep without a light on, even well into my teenage years. Each night at bed time my sister and I would click the light on and run as fast as we could to get into the beds, trying not to look at the closet or in the mirror or at the cracks in the walls. I slept with my entire body plastered to the railing of the top bunk bed and one watchful eye always open. The smell of that wooden rail is still with me. For years our own clothes mingled with the smell of the old clothes that occupied it before that. That deep volume of closet, swallowed by old clothes that carried memories that weren’t ours. And letters we were not supposed to read, but did anyway.

The house taught me how to feel otherness. It was pregnant with sensations I couldn’t help but sharpen an awareness of. It let me practice how to see without looking, feel without touching, listen without hearing. It taught me to recognize imprints, the shadows left behind. How to recognize shadows in other people that hides behind the bright light of a dazzling smile or charismatic charm. And it taught me to recognize shadows in myself. How to recognize my own imprints I left behind that were both bright and shadow. That house taught me how to be in the dark. And most of all, it taught me when to turn on the damn light.

This story was written for #specterandtravail2020, a 2020 Samhain story collective by @thesplendorandtravail.