Shadow : Part 3

Chapter Eight : The shadow

Justin thought it odd, when he returned home at nine-thirty, and found the apartment empty. He knew Blake would be working, but he expected Nathan to be home. Usually, Nathan would be there when Justin arrived home from work, except on Monday evenings, when he had class. Justin considered that perhaps Nathan did not know that Blake was working tonight and did not want to see him.

Maybe Nathan went to a friend’s house for a minute to unwind before dealing with Blake, Justin thought. But then, what other friends does he have except for me and Blake?
Walking up the staircase to his bedroom, Justin checked his cell phone to see if he received any missed calls from Nathan.
Indeed, Justin had gotten a missed call and text message…but they were from Ryan, not Nathan. He cringed when he recalled the storage room incident. Clearly, Ryan was stunned by the sighting and Justin spent the rest of his shift avoiding him, not saying a single thing to him, praying that Ryan would not go around and discuss with the other employees what he witnessed.

CALL ME.

Justin turned on his bedroom light and plopped on his bed.

“For what?” he asked himself aloud as he read Ryan’s simple, two-word text. He did not see the purpose of talking to Ryan. He could not think of any way to explain to Ryan what happened in that storage room. For now, the best thing to do was to just ignore Ryan until he could figure something.

He realized that this was the first time he had been alone in the apartment in months. Many times Justin wanted to invite Ryan over and yet he rarely did, because he did not want to make it uncomfortable for his roommates. Since Ryan lived with his older brother, who did not know he was gay, Ryan’s place never existed as an option. Mostly, Justin and Ryan’s sex sessions remained confined to the claustrophobic discomfort of Ryan’s car. Now Justin had the place to himself and Ryan was the last person he wanted over.
His phone rang. Justin checked the screen and saw Ryan’s name.
“This dude just won’t give up,” Justin said.

Justin considered turning off his phone. He would resolve this situation—if resolvable—some other time. All Justin wanted now was a nice long shower, a glass or two of Hennessey and Coke, and some alone time before Nathan and Blake returned home and filled the apartment with their pent up sexual tension.
Having to explain his telekinetic ability to Ryan was the last thing on Justin’s agenda. However, Justin knew that Ryan would keep calling him, until Justin finally relented and talked to him. Reluctantly, Justin answered the call.
“What’s up?” Justin asked unenthusiastically.
“What you up to?”
“Just got in a few minutes ago…you?”

Directly outside his bedroom door, Justin heard a noise.
He took the phone away from his ear briefly to listen further. Maybe he had been wrong, maybe somebody was home. “Hey, Nate…you here?” he called.
No reply.

Justin stared out of the slender opening of the door into the hallway. He saw nothing but darkness.
“Did you hear me?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” Justin lied. With his free ear, he listened for any other sounds coming from outside, but he heard nothing.
“So is it cool?” Ryan questioned.

Justin rolled his eyes. “Is what cool?”
“See, I knew you weren’t listening. I told you I just got off work. I wanted to see you.”
Chills slid down Justin’s back. “I’m not really in a horny mood right now, if that’s what you wanted.”
“I wanted to talk to you about today," Ryan countered. "Your roommates there?”
“No.”
“Good. Let me come over.”
“Kinda wanna be myself right now.”
“Come on, J. Don’t act like that. I’m already like, five minutes away from your place anyway.”

Justin sighed. “Don’t come over here expecting anything. And you probably can’t stay for too long. I don’t know when they’ll be back.”
“That’s cool with me,” Ryan responded. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Fine. Hurry up.”

As soon as the call ended, Justin regretted inviting Ryan over. There would only be two things Ryan would want: an explanation and a blow job, two things Justin did not really want to give. He considered calling Ryan back and telling him to forget about coming by, but Ryan was already on his way. Even if Justin told him not to come, Ryan would probably find another way to finagle him.
I can call and tell him that Blake and Nate just came back right now…
Someone sprinted by Justin’s bedroom door.

Justin had been partially facing away from the door, but he caught something moving from the corner of his eye. It had been so quick that it would have been easy to dismiss it as a trick of the light.
Except Justin knew he had seen correctly.
Someone just flashed by his room, silent and stealthy like a black cat in the night. Justin opened his mouth to call his roommates’ names, but he instinctively knew the figure he saw was not either of them.
Oh, shit. Somebody broke in.

With a quick mental push, Justin shut the door. Since he had no lock on the door, he had to maintain sharp focus to keep the intruder from getting inside. His pulse raced and his hands trembled.
Don’t get scared yet, Justin instructed himself. Being scared won’t do you any good if something goes down.
The front door had been locked when Justin returned home.

Yet now that he thought about it, he could not remember locking the back door. There had been times in the past when he had forgotten to do so.
Who the hell would break in here? Justin thought.

In the year since Justin moved in, there had not been any burglaries or vandalisms in their neighborhood.
And now the one time I have the place to myself, someone breaks in, Justin lamented.
With his mind still focused on keeping the door shut, Justin slowly moved closer, putting his ear against the door, and listening for any sounds from the other side.
Nothing.

His cell phone rang. Justin flinched from the abrupt sound. He grabbed his phone and looked at the caller ID: Ryan
Please tell me he’s not here already…
He answered the phone, trying to disguise his worry. “`Sup?”
“I’m outside,” Ryan said.
Shit. Did he fly over here or something?

Justin faced a big predicament: if he went downstairs to let Ryan inside, he risked coming face to face with his possible attacker and putting himself, along with Ryan, in harm’s grasp. If Justin told Ryan to leave, then he would possibly be putting himself in more danger by being alone.

“What’s up? You there?” Ryan asked.
Justin almost forgot Ryan was on the other line. “Yeah, I’m here.” He had to make a decision, and he hoped it would be the right one. “I’ll be down there in a second.”
“Alright.”

Justin clicked off the phone but held on tightly to it.
I should call Blake or Nate, Justin thought. But too late now. Even if I called them, they wouldn’t be here in time.
The reality of being assaulted in his own home by a stranger hit Justin like an iron fist.
“Fuck it,” Justin whispered. He sucked in a deep breath and opened his bedroom door.

The darkness in the hallway felt heavy and thick, almost as solid as Justin’s body. He felt like he could squeeze it in his hands, a sensation he never experienced before. Something else disturbed Justin: the quiet. It was almost as if he had gone deaf.
I need a light in here.

The hallway light switch was located ten steps away from where Justin stood, besides Blake’s bedroom door. Because of the darkness in the hallway, Justin had been unable to see exactly which direction the thing had been going when it flashed past his room.
Thing. Somehow Justin already knew the entity was non-human.
A ghost?

The idea seemed plausible to Justin. Since a very young age, Justin had been raised by his mother who often claimed to have seen ghosts and other supernatural beings. Although his mother was a clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, Justin always believed in the validity of her claims. As a child, Justin recalled seeing figures move in and out of sight when he was alone in his room. Sometimes he remembered brief apparitions appearing and disappearing in seconds. He never told anybody about this, except his mother, who said that Justin too had been ‘cursed’ with third eye sight as well as other special 'gifts'.

The thing could have been either waiting for Justin at the end of the hallway or the bottom of the staircase. He just did not know which one.
Justin closed his eyes and imagined bright light filling the hallway, eating away all the shadows. Turn it on, he mentally commanded.
As he directed, a light flashed on overhead, providing enough sufficient light for Justin to see clearly down the hallway toward Blake and Nathan’s room.
Nothing.

But out of the corner of his eye, Justin saw a figure standing halfway down the staircase. As he fully turned around, it swiveled around, faster than anything Justin ever saw in his life and ran—no, that was not an accurate enough description—flew down the staircase, blending seamlessly into the shadows in the living room.

The doorbell rang. Justin nearly jumped out of his body. He descended the staircase. He gripped the railing tightly, his eyes scanning the poorly-lit room below him, readying himself for anything that might have suddenly popped out at him, whether it was a spirit or man.
Once he reached the bottom of the staircase, with the back of his neck freezing and his palms sweating, Justin used a psychic push to turn on a lamp in the corner near the couch. He felt relieved, at least for the moment, to see that there was nothing else in the living room with him. His eyes drifted toward the kitchen, still dressed in heavy darkness. Justin was about to switch on the kitchen light mentally, when the doorbell rang for once more.

Justin backed up in the direction of the front door without taking his eyes of the kitchen. He felt confident that if someone—or at this point, something—was in the apartment, it would be in there. While his telekinetic capabilities gave him a stronger self-defense advantage, it would have been helpful to have Nathan’s telepathic and extrasensory perception skills to know exactly what he was dealing with.
Open the door, Justin willed.

The lock on the door disengaged and the door opened slowly. Initially, Justin only saw a tall, dark shape standing on the opposite end of the door. He held his breath and waited. He was ready to send the assailant flying back out of the door as hard as he could. Thankfully, once the light touched the figure’s face, Justin was happy to see Ryan standing there, still dressed in his work slacks, a burgundy polo-shirt with his name badge still pinned on, and his cap.
“What took you so long?” Ryan asked. “It’s hella cold out there.”

When Ryan stepped inside, he saw the nervous expression on Justin’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked.

Above trying to explain how he could move boxes without touching them, now Justin had the task of trying to explain how there might be an unidentifiable entity in his home.
“Nothing,” Justin answered, his voice cracking a little. “Let’s go to your car.”

Ryan removed his hat and ran his hand over his short brown hair. “For what? Thought you said your roommates weren’t here.”
“I don't want to be here right now. Let's go to the Dinos.”
Ryan’s forehead furrowed. “You look spooked about something.”
“No, it’s just that—”

A loud crash sound emanated from the kitchen: a glass or plate shattering on the floor. Both Justin and Ryan jumped in alarm.
“I thought you said you were here alone,” Ryan said, his eyes locked on the dark kitchen.
“No…” Justin whispered. “I thought so too…Ryan, we need to get outta here.”
“I don’t get it, what’s going on?” Ryan looked past Justin toward the kitchen and his grassy-green eyes grew wide with fear. “Justin, what the fuck is that?”

The thing revealed itself. It sleeked out of the shadowy kitchen, black as a moonless night, with absolutely no discernable features that would indicate if it was a person or ghost. It was in the shape of a man. The closer Justin examined it, the more he realized it was the shadow of a man, a fully three-dimensional shadow.

“Run,” Justin replied.

When Ryan did not act, Justin grabbed him by the arm, forced the front door open with the power of his mind, and pulled Ryan along as they bolted out of the apartment, into the wintry night, toward Ryan’s car. In all the commotion, Justin forgot about the cell phone in his hand. As soon as they were in the safety of the car, if safety was even possible, Justin needed to get in contact with Blake and Nathan.

Justin reached Ryan's the car before Ryan. He looked over Ryan’s shoulder, at the open doorway and saw the shadowy figure standing there.
“Ryan, hurry up and unlock the door.”

Justin watched as Ryan frantically dug in his pockets for his car keys. His eyes alternated between Ryan and the figure standing in the doorway. Justin could not tell for sure because of
the lack of light, but it appeared to be drifting toward them like a column of black smoke.
“We don’t have time for this shit!” Justin yelled. “Open the goddamn door!”

Both the driver and passenger doors unlocked according to Justin’s mental command. Ryan, not fully aware of what happened, still searched for his keys.
“It’s already open,” Justin explained. “Get in the car.”

Justin did not wait for Ryan to follow his suggestion. He opened the passenger door and hopped in. He pushed Ryan’s door open from the inside and Ryan climbed in as well, holding the key in his hand.
“Let’s go!” Justin ordered.
“Where are we gonna go?” Ryan asked.
“Any damn place but here.”

Justin did not wait for Ryan to stick the key into the ignition. With one short push of mental energy, he turned the engine on. Ryan stared dumbfounded as the headlights and dashboard lit up.
“Put your seatbelt on, put this shit into drive, and let’s go!” Justin screamed.

Ryan did as he was told, albeit very visibly shaken. He shifted the car into drive and tore down the street, his tires screeching like a wounded banshee. “You need to tell me what the fuck is going on here!” Ryan exclaimed. “I didn’t know I was coming over here to this shit.”
“Well, I didn’t know I was coming home to this shit, either,”
Justin responded.

Justin turned around and looked out the rearview window. His heart skipped. Maybe it was his imagination, or maybe just panic. But he saw the shadowy figure, standing in the middle of the road, watching them as they drove away. Even when they rounded the corner and it disappeared from view, the image did not dissipate from Justin’s mind.
It would be permanently printed on his memory.