Escape Africa (12)

 

12. Shadow People:

It began in my childhood, this haunting curse tethered to
my spirit, the moment they arrived. Shadow people as I later discovered,
clearly recalling two figures standing in the doorway of my parent’s bedroom
staring at a terrified child desperately burrowing deeper beneath the covers. I
remember to shapes silhouette from the light coming from the bathroom, one
adult and one child standing motionless. They did no harm to me, they did not
move; It was as if they stood silent watching me, a feeling I sense to this
present day whenever there are shadows in the darkness. I never saw them again,
at least not in that form or in that doorway or during my childhood years. I
did encounter shadow people again, as a presence unseen in the dark corner of a
room watching me as I slept or maybe disturbing me from sleep. Sometimes I felt
their presence during times of personal tragedy but I cannot conclude anything
more than I would on occasion feel a presence watching me from the dark corner
just beyond the corner of my glimpsing eye. They still make me feel unsafe but
never have they harmed me. There was a definite wind blown into my ear as if
someone had stood beside me, taken a deep breath and blown a short sharp gust
into my right ear. I almost crapped my pants. It was a mild sunny afternoon
just before the official arrival of spring time in my mid adolescent period, I
was at home studied, or what resembled it, for my year end exams. Deeply
focused on whatever the subject material was I was blank to everything around
me, including my cat performing a vocalized rub up against my leg and then a
more prominent demand for attention by leaping onto my study desk t sit dead
centre of my study sheets. A light head scratching appeased her felineness as I
shooed her along. I remember our first meeting. I was a boy of five, maybe six
years of age wrestling with sleepless nights in a new house my family had moved
into. My troubled sleep found comfort in the middle of the giant double bed in
my parent’s bedroom. Nestled between mom and dad I felt safe. One night I could
not settle into sleep, laying in bed between my parents the dim light from the
hallway shone through their open door. Standing in the doorway were two shadow
figures, one adult and one child; clear edged outlined shapes standing
motionless staring at me. I felt nothing, no fear nor dread to familiarity. I
saw them as they saw me and within that moment I quietly fell asleep. After
that night I occasionally saw shadows move across doorways in a brief glimpse
from the corner of my eye or I watched shadows move within shadows like an
effect of illusion. Sometimes in dark spaces I felt their presence in the
shadows surrounding me. I never attempted interaction, as I kid I was nervous
of them and I sensed they were following me. I saw them again in my teen years.
I woke one night from an uneasy haze of summer heat to see a single shadow
figure crouching on the floor beside my bed. I lay on my side facing the window
staring blanking at this shadow in full form crouching. It paused, turned as if
to look at me when again I saw it as it saw me then it was gone. I knew we had
acknowledged each other’s presence. At moment later the shadow stood upright on
the outside of my bedroom window before vanishing into the darkness. Thereafter
my viewing of these shadows was limited to the top corners of dark rooms,
either above doorways or window frames. A life, a gift buried nearly thirty
years ago when a young boy shut out the shadow people standing in the doorway
of his parent’s bedroom. An ability that curses the innocence of youth, hags
through troubled adolescence and robs adulthood of free will; this ability a
young boy learned how to ignore, to shut out and to switch off. Shutting out
the darkness and switching off the light, the curiosity so many plays with
lightly or foolishly. For a boy having made his mind a prison to keep it all
back, contained and controlled and frustrated; a boy’s demons clawing and
scratching to get out have left the deepest scars and a boy’s demons fighting
to get in and open all the closed doors. These moments are infrequent but
continuous throughout: the premonitions of déjà vu, the voices on air calling
out, that movement out the corner of your eye. He fought it all back, ignoring
the fierce pulling of his spirit by the universal forces of an existing
experience.