The Shadow Self: A Horror Short Story

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window,” Lewis said. He shot Ben a glance from under his heavy brow.

“That’s impossible,” Ben held a book in his hand, turning it over. He squinted up at their property caretaker. “You said they were all dead.”

Lewis dug his crowbar into a piece of decking that appeared to be solid and pried it loose. The underside was a mess of spongy, rotten wood. Fresh boards lay stacked to his side. “Yes, they were, but she wasn’t. She was left.”

“But how?”

“Like these boards.” Lewis tapped one with his hammer. It rang out, clean and solid, the sound echoing over the surface of the lake. He tapped another, the sound lost, absorbed in pulpy fiber. He dug the crowbar into its side and peeled it away. Underneath, the wood was wet and dark, crawling with beetles. “My deck’s the same way. Until you test it you don’t know that the rotten part is there, eating away at what is good.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“He’s just like his father,” Ben’s mother strode down to the water and stood, her hands on her hips, assessing the evening. The sun edged towards the trees on the far shore, its reflection lighting the water in streaks of orange and red. Behind her, Ben’s older sister, Maddie dropped into an Adirondack chair beside the shore.

“I’ll have to finish this dock in a few days,” Lewis said. “Call if you need anything before then. You know where to find me.” He gestured across the lake to where a light glimmered behind a cluster of trees.

His mother glanced at him but didn’t respond. “Ben, get your suit on. I want to get in a swim this evening.” She turned and headed back up to the cabin.

Ben looked out at the water and shivered though the day was still uncharacteristically warm.

“Planning on taking her out?” Lewis nodded towards the little Sunfish sailboat that bobbed beside the dock, ready for use.

“He doesn’t even like the water,” Maddie swung up from the chair. “He spends all of his time reading Dad’s sailing book. And no time actually sailing.”

“That’s not true!” Ben exclaimed, his face flushed. But the memory of looking down into the water, seeing things moving – fish and weeds and something else, something he couldn’t quite make out – crawled into his gut and spread like ice water.

“You’ve been out, what, twice? Three times in the month that we’ve been here?” Maddie jeered at him and turned to follow their mother back to the cabin.

“It was too windy.”

“Well, some days are like that,” Lewis admitted. “But then again, it’s impossible to learn to sail without any wind.” From across the lake, Ben could see a similar small sailboat resting at the dock outside Lewis’s cabin. The caretaker rose and took up his tools. “If you love sailing, keep at it. Nothing beats experience.”

Ben nodded and shot a quick look at his boat, its sails deflated.

—

A half hour later, they made their way down to the water. The sun had receded behind the trees on the opposite shore, limning them in crimson. The air was still and heavy.

His mother waded in until the water rose to her hips and then arced over the surface and dove under. Ben watched her rise and swim out towards the far end of the bay.

“Such a show off,” Maddie said, stepping into the water. “C’mon loser.” She ran several feet, the water splashing up around her and then dove into their mother’s wake. Ben stood on the shore, waiting until she surfaced at the swim float’s ladder.

He took a deep breath and tip-toed into the water, ignoring its cold underbelly. “Just weeds,” he whispered. “And some fish. Small fish.”

As soon as he was in up to his waist, he pressed off the weedy, rocky bottom and paddled across the surface of the water.

“Took you long enough,” Maddie called where she lay, sprawled out on the float’s rough mesh surface. “If you’re serious about sailing, you’re going to have to get used to being in the water.”

“Sailors aren’t in the water. They’re on the water.”

“Yeah. Until they capsize. Or fall overboard.”

“Dad never fell overboard.”

“You’re not Dad.”

Ben treaded water, turning in a circle, drifting away from the float. A cold tendril wound around him and then left, leaving a faint chill in its wake. He looked around, his thin arms bobbing on the surface. In the distance he could see the silhouette of his mother as she cut through the water, her practiced stroke refined from years of competitive swimming in her youth. Maddie still sat on the swim float, leaning back on her arms, her face inscrutable in the gloam.

He drew in his breath and leaned back, picturing himself as a boat, immune to the unseen depths, at home there, his sails unfurled, picking up the wind, always on the surface. But his senses were drawn back to the water. The slippery feel of it against his skin; the faint smell of fish and wet, warm earth; the soft whoosh it made as he pulled his arms into his body and then cast them back out. Both his parents were water lovers – his mother a champion swimmer, his father a seasoned sailor. Maddie tolerated it. But for him…

The water beneath him pressed him to the side, the surface rocking as something passed by. Something large. Ben sat up, his legs dangling down into a pocket of cold. His toes brushed against something firm, fleshy. He pulled them up, his breath catching in his throat. Around him the water rippled and then slowed, settling to a glassy smooth surface that reflected the scudding clouds and emerging starlight above. He exhaled, his chest loosening, his fists unclenching.

Cold fingers grasped his ankle and pulled him under. Heavy water, thick with minerals filled his mouth. His flooded sinuses burned. He flailed. Casting about for anything to hold, to grasp. Nothing. He kicked and thrashed against it and then, finally, curled his body down to tear at the hand that held him.

It released him and he clawed his way up, breaking through the surface, vomiting water, a coughing spasm seizing his body, sending aching pain down his arms and legs. In the distance he could hear his mother calling to him. He could see Maddie standing on the float, looking in his direction. He turned and swam as hard as possible for the shore.

—

“We would have seen someone,” Maddie insisted.

Ben sat at the kitchen counter wrapped in a towel, his throat sore, his hands wrapped around a mug of tea. He buried his thoughts in the smell of chamomile, lemon and honey.

His mother just shook her head. She turned back to the stove where oil sparked and sizzled as she dropped a pile of chopped vegetables into a pan.

Ben didn’t respond. They didn’t want believe him. He could see that. He took a sip of tea and looked up at his mother as she stirred. Her arms flashed in the cabin’s warm lighting. Twisting right and left, stirring in a circle, rubbing her hands on the front of her sweatshirt.

There they were. Red scratches on her wrist. He looked up and caught her watching him. “You cut yourself,” he said, glancing at her arm.

“Yes. Swam too close to the rocks.”

At the far end of their property, the land jutted upwards in a rocky crag that looked out over the lake. It wasn’t terribly high, but the submerged base was a mess of boulders and rocks that kept it from being a local diving point. She had been swimming near there. He’d seen her there shortly before he went under. And immediately after.

Still.

He nodded and took another sip. She turned back to the stove.

—

The next morning, he wheeled his BMX bike back down the long, dirt drive to the cabin, past white pines and maples. He had risen early and ridden the lake road that encircled Bear Lake. From his family’s cabin, tucked just inside a bay that made up the bear’s front paw, it was roughly halfway around the lake to Lewis’s cabin in the arch of the bear’s back.

It was always a quiet lake, no motors allowed other than small fishing motors, but as he passed the lake homes, they seemed quieter than usual. The lights in most were dark, the yards and drives – when visible through the trees – devoid of cars or people. Around him, a breeze shook the aspens, filling the air with the sound of rain.

Lewis’s house was dark, his Jeep missing from the driveway. For several minutes, Ben stood beside the front porch, staring at the door, his shoulders slumped, his feet heavy. Then he took a deep breath, picked up the bike from the pine-needled ground, and rode back the way he had come.

By the time he returned, he remembered the book. When Maddie found him, he had spread out a beach towel on the repaired section of the dock, a plastic bag of Atomic Fireballs beside him, his eyebrows gathered in concentration.

“Wow, must be good,” she said, her flip flops slapping on the wood. She bent over to read the cover upside down. “Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. Good Lord, Benny. I know you’re smart, but…”

“Lewis loaned it to me.” The words came out around the sucking sound of the fireball in his mouth.

“Hmm.” She dropped onto the corner of his towel. She fell silent for a minute though he could feel her looking at him. “You think there was really someone or something out there?”

“Yeah. It pulled me under.” He didn’t tell her any more than that. All of his suspicions. She just nodded. After a minute he forgot she was there, lost in trying to understand Jung’s theory. It was too much for him. He wished he was older, not twelve. That he knew what to think about what had happened in the lake.

When Maddie spoke again, he jumped. “You want to go out sailing later? I’ll go with you.”

“You hate sailing.”

“So do you.”

Her expression was open. No sign of mocking or pranking. He shrugged. “I guess.”

“You know, Dad’s a jerk. He wouldn’t have left if he wasn’t.”

He didn’t respond. Just looked from her to the lake. When he looked back, she was gone.

—

Late that night, Ben and Maddie huddled beneath a basswood tree two properties over from their own. They’d waited until they heard the sound of their mother softly snoring. Then they had slipped out the door.

“I don’t know what to think,” Maddie said, still panting from the adrenaline.

“I swear they were there last night!” Ben glared at her, his expression so typically inscrutable was fierce, impassioned.

“I believe you. I do. Especially now.”

The scratches that Ben had seen on his mother the night before – sharp red lines just above her wrist – were gone. Her skin showed no scabbing, no scars, no white lines, no marks of any kind. As if they had never existed.

“I remember you asking her about them. I didn’t see them. But I heard you,” Maddie said. “And now the boat. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

After lunch they had untied the Sunfish and crawled into the tiny cockpit. Ben had skippered the boat under a strong breeze, his fear drawing the line in tighter and tighter until the boat heeled at a dangerous angle and threatened to capsize. Every thought of his had focused on the depths below him. Of lakes that stretched down hundreds or even thousands of feet. Of sharks that swam upstream into fresh water and were found hundreds of miles from the ocean.

When Maddie finally grabbed the line out of his hand and released it, the boat immediately righted, coasting to a drift, the sail flapping loosely. But by then they were hundreds of feet from shore. From that angle, everything looked foreign, remote, as if their cabin could be in any direction. Worse, an inch of water stood in the bottom of the footwell, creeping up over the tops of their feet.

At the memory, Ben could feel his vision closing in, a cold tremor passing through his chest and across his back. The drain on the back of the boat, a drain that he had checked before lunch, was open. The plug nowhere to be found.

He’d managed to steer them back towards shore, but by the time they neared the closest property, the hull was dangerously low. Water sloshed over the top and into the footwell, compounding the problem. In the end they had had to jump into the water and pull the boat the remaining one hundred feet to the shore and beach it there. They’d made their way across land to the lake road where they had found an address and reoriented themselves.

By the time they’d returned home, it was nearly dinner time. They were both shaken. Ben’s body trembled, his breath came in fast, shallow intakes. Their mother said nothing. They told her nothing. If she noticed that the sailboat was gone, she didn’t mention it.

“If we’d gone any further. If we hadn’t stopped so soon…” Maddie started to say.

She didn’t need to finish it. It was a large lake. They could have been stranded, their boat sunken beneath them. They could have drowned. Ben shuddered at the thought.

“But Mom?” Maddie asked.

“I don’t know. The scratches were there. Now they’re gone,” he repeated. “I can’t figure it out, but it has something to do with it. I know it.”

“But why? Mom doesn’t hate us.”

“No. I don’t think so,” Ben agreed, although some part of him reached out as if seeking for something. Something just beyond his reach.

“What do we do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“This thing…monster…seems to be after you most of all.”

That’s true, he thought. Maddie shouldn’t have been on the boat. She never had been in the past. And she hadn’t been pulled under the water.

“We need to know who’s doing this. But how…” His mind raced. “I have an idea.”

An hour later, they tiptoed down the creaking cellar stairs, the heavy yellow flashlight clutched in Ben’s hand. Cobwebs hung overhead. Thick black spiders and leggy brown speckled ones perched in the corners. Watching them.

Before they reached the bottom, something scurried out of sight, frantic scratching and a pointed tail darting from the corner of their eyes. It’s like another world down here. A bad one, Ben thought. His mind drifted back to the book Lewis had given him. The book and the cellar had something in common, something he couldn’t pin point yet.

They found the Camcorder on a rickety shelf beside a fishing tackle box. Both were covered in dust. Ben grabbed it and shook it frantically, picturing millions of crawling insects covering his body.

“Hey, don’t kill it,” Maddie said, grabbing it out of his hand. “We need that.” She paused and looked at him. “Now what do we do?”

Ben shrugged. “Set up a trap.”

—

It took almost two weeks before they found what they were looking for.

After Lewis had hauled the Sunfish home and replaced the drain plug, they tried setting up the camera outside, hidden in the bushes, aimed at the dock. Days passed. Ben took the boat out several times, never far from the shore and only after checking it over carefully. Nothing happened.

He moved the camera behind an artificial plant on the screened-in porch where he often spent the hot afternoon hours reading and listening to his Walkman. Two days later, he stumbled into breakfast, pulled the Rice Krispies down from the cabinet, and poured himself a bowl of cereal. It wasn’t until he’d poured the milk and raised the spoon to his mouth that he saw something move. When he dropped the spoon, he discovered that the cereal was crawling with maggots. Bile rose in his throat, gagging him. He vomited stomach acid until the blood vessels in his face and eyes burst, leaving him looking wan and diseased.

He moved the camera to the kitchen, hiding it behind a cluster of kitschy lake-themed tchotchkes. Several days later, he set out for his tree fort in the side yard. The ladder hung where it always had, its base resting on the soil, its top secured to the entrance into the fort. He made it nearly to the top before the steps, their nails pried loose, gave out beneath him.

He gripped the wood rails, his body crashing down, slipping on the lower steps until he hit a step and bounced off, rolling onto the ground. His knees were scraped, his ankle twisted. Maddie spent over an hour picking the splinters out of his hands.

But then he veered off course and struck gold.

Rather than moving the camera to the yard overlooking the fort, he picked a random place. An obvious one. His bedroom.

He propped its bulky frame behind his GI Joe figures on the shelves that his father had built into a recessed section of the wall. Next to his series of Hardy Boy novels. Though the picture was partly obscured, he could make out most of what happened in the room.

Four nights later, he lay on his bed, trying to read a Spiderman comic – Revenge of the Sinister Six. His body felt weary, battered. His hands still bore the scrapes from the splinters. Parts of his face, especially around his eyes, still looked spotted, sickly.

But outside a chorus of crickets and frogs and the occasional hoot of an owl, soothed his burdened mind. His bedside lamp – a kitschy, camp-style one with two scouts standing before a canvas tent – flickered lightly. The night air, redolent with the scent of pine, wafted into the room. His eyes grew heavy. He drifted into a deep sleep.

Sometime later, his eyes jerked open. The room was dark. But he felt someone there – a presence hovering in the darkness – filling the space with his knowledge of it. Its awareness of him. Before he could reach out and turn on the light, a rush of air pressed him back. Hands gripped his throat, pinning him to the bed.

The blood rushed to his cheeks and into his eyes, filling his vision with a red cast. He pummeled the arms, scratched at the hands, beat the sides of what held him. He dug his back into the mattress. Lifted his legs to kick and shove. It did no good. Whatever held him was too strong.

A lightness filled his mind, disorienting, otherworldly. He clutched at the table beside him. A glass fell to the floor, shattering. Books careened off the edge, hitting the wall. His hand opened. Clutching. Grasping. Finally, he took hold of it. The lamp. He tensed his muscles and swung the heavy base. Ripping the cord from the wall. Slamming it into his assailant’s head.

The hands loosened around his throat. Enough for him to gasp for air. He swung the lamp again. And Again. He could hear the carved wood meeting bone.

In the distance he heard the cabin coming awake. Saw a faint light in the hallway. The silhouette of the figure that had choked him turned, paused for a moment and then rushed from the room. Less than a minute later his mother and Maddie clustered around the bed, patting his back as he choked and coughed, smoothing back his sweat-drenched hair, holding his trembling body.

He let them. The smashed lamp lay on the floor. Red finger marks still stood out on the skin around his neck. His windpipe felt bruised, sore. His head ached. But he knew he had what he needed.

—

As soon as their mother went back to bed, Ben checked the clock. Only three o’clock. He and Maddie crept out of the house and biked around the lake to Lewis’s cabin. The caretaker opened the front door in a thick blue and gray striped terry robe. His face bore the shocked look of a wild animal face-to-face with its own reflection.

“We need to talk to you,” Ben said, his face resolute.

They inserted the video into the VHS and waited. A grainy image appeared on the Panasonic. Ben’s bedroom. He fast-forwarded the video, pausing when he fell asleep, pausing again when a figure slipped into his room and turned out the light.

“It’s Mom,” Maddie said.

But then the figure left the room. They could see Ben asleep, the comic book lying beside him on the bed. They fast-forwarded again.

“Wait! There!” Maddie pointed at the screen.

Ben backed it up. A figure had entered the room. Had crept over to the bed and stood there. Watching him. For minutes it waited. Ben’s skin crawled. Then it moved forward. Leaned over him. Gripped his throat. The sensation filled his body again as he watched, sending waves of pain through his back, his shoulders, his head.

When it ended, Ben looked at Lewis’s ashen face. He looked back, drew a sharp intake of breath. “Wow.”

None of them said what they all knew – from the back, the figure looked like their mom.

“Wait. There’s more,” Maddie said.

“What?” Ben asked.

“We came in the room. Mom and I.” Her voice wavered. “Where’s that?”

He hit the Play button. A light came on in the hallway, filling the screen with an ethereal glow. The figure turned towards the door, its face passing within view of the camera. Ben gasped. Hit Pause.

It was his mom. On the side of her head where he’d struck her, her hair looked matted, wet in the grainy image. Her words filled his memory. He’s just like his father. A man she despised. Resented.

“Keep going,” Maddie urged.

He hit Play again. She flashed out of the screen. And then they were there. Maddie. And Mom. But this time her hair was dry. Her arms bore no scratches. Her body showed no sign of any physical fight.

“It’s her. And it isn’t her,” Ben whispered.

Lewis leaned back and covered his mouth with his hand. He looked down at them, his eyes wide. Then he cleared his throat. “Did you read the book I gave you?”

—

“So she’s…what?” Ben stared at him, incredulous.

Lewis shook his head. “It isn’t so much that she is something. It’s that something within your mom has risen up and is in the process of taking over.”

“What does that mean?” Maddie asked.

“Jung argued that there’s a dark nature within each person. That this side – a shadow self – can’t be ignored. To do so is potentially disastrous. In her case, it appears to be. It’s consuming her. Consuming the part of her that you know. Becoming the dominant aspect of her persona.”

“Then what?” Ben asked. “What’s left?”

Lewis blinked and looked away before answering. “If it’s addressed early enough, it can be controlled. If not…the shadow is all that’s left.”

“Like the deck boards,” Ben said. “Rot spreading from within.”

Lewis nodded. “Yes. In her case, the self has already splintered. Both are walking, breathing, living per se as separate beings. At this point, she couldn’t control her shadow even if she knew that it existed.”

Ben gathered his direction at once. “So we’ll have to…”

“Yes. At this point, the only way to stop it is to kill it.”

—

A solid thump sounded from the front door.

Lewis pulled a small revolver from a drawer and led them away from the family room, into a windowless pantry. “It’s not surprising that she’d appear now,” Lewis explained. “Darkness conceals shadows. Gives them a place to hide. We can’t see them, so we forget that they lurk there, attached to us, following our every move.

“We’ll have to hit her where her pride is the greatest. That’s her weakest point. The only spot that’s likely to kill.”

Ben nodded, his stomach sick. His heart pounded, filling his ears. His fingers trembled, restless. Behind him, Maddie crouched, her body radiating heat.

The door shook with the sound of a fist pounding. They waited, their breathing loud in the preternatural stillness.

A crack shook the air. Splintering. The sound of glass falling onto the tile floor.

“Quick. Follow me.” Lewis led them out the back door, into the night. They slipped from bush to tree, slinking in the shadows, watching the house for movement. Nothing.

Suddenly shadows leapt in the night. Lewis shoved Ben and Maddie aside. They fell, rolling, down a small ravine. Above them, the gun cracked, splitting the silence. A flash of light. Maddie collided with Ben and slid to a stop in a muddy creek. “Ugh,” he said, his ribs aching from the fall. 

They could hear Lewis gasping, grunting. Another shot rang out. They looked up and saw him struggling. And then another crack. This time bone. The sound of a neck breaking. Then he went down.

The shadow of their mother looked down, saw them, sprinted forward.

“Run!” Maddie screamed.

They flew down the creek, their feet sliding on the mossy stones. Behind them Ben heard a rush of wind. The sound that he had heard in his room. A sob quavered in his throat.

The creek spilled out into the lake. Lewis’s little sailboat stood there. And beside it, on the dock, his crowbar amidst his own pile of new decking. Ben knew what he needed to do.

He ran through the water and reached up, gripping the crowbar. Maddie tore the loosened line free. They both scrambled into the boat. Ben gripped the tiller, pulled the mainsheet taut and waited.

 “Come on! Please. Please. Come on!” He gripped the sheet harder. For a moment nothing happened. And then a gust caught, the sail snapped full and the boat took off. Behind them, he heard the sound of splashing, of someone cutting through the water. Someone fast. An expert swimmer.

The boat sailed out at least a hundred feet or more. The wind was good, but not strong enough to gain a lead on what pursued them. A crunch sounded in the water. The bow rocked. The stern pivoted. The tiller shook in Ben’s hand. Another crunch. The tiller shot out of his grip. The boat turned, the sails losing the wind. The boom swung wide, smacking him. Nearly knocking him out of the boat. He ducked and reached out for the tiller. Grasped it in the darkness. Pulled it near. The boat slowed.

Another crunch sounded, followed by a terrible crack.

“The rudder,” Maddie yelled.

He looked back to see the rudder broken, torn away from the boat. The shadow of his mother clung to the boat, panting, pulling herself towards them. Her hand reached out. Ben gasped, his mind blank, fear filling his vision. And reticence. My mother, he thought.

But then the moonlight shifted. He saw her hair matted with dried blood. Her arms and hands covered with scratches. Maddie screamed. It grabbed her, pulled her overboard. She flailed in the water, her hands slapping at the shadow being. Ben shook himself and pulled out his pocketknife. Cut the knot at the end of the mainsheet. It came free from the blocks. Flapped in the night air. He reached for it. Held it fast. With the other hand he grabbed for the crowbar.

He drew back and then drove it into the hull. Again. And again. Water rose around his feet. Then he dropped the crowbar and looped the line. Tied a slip knot. Took a deep breath, pushing down all fear, and dove towards the creature. His arms encircled her in one final embrace. The line fell around her neck. He pulled hard, tightening the knot, choking her.

“Kick hard!” He screamed to Maddie.

For a minute the shadow turned, reached for him. Her nails scraped his face. And then she sputtered, pulled under, her arms waving, frantic.

Ben lunged away from her and swam for the shore. Stroke after stroke devoid of thought. Behind him, he heard the suction of the water pulling the boat down. And the shadow of their mother with it. Near the shore he turned and treaded water, looking out over the lake, empty save for the ripples on the surface.

—

They sat against the back step into the ambulance, headlights lighting the night, heavy blankets wrapped around them. The police had taken their statements. Ben avoided looking towards the yard where a group crouched, photographing the body of his mentor and friend.

Over the next few days, teams drug the lake, bringing up the battered sailboat and the crowbar. The severed mainsheet hung off of the boom, its knotted circle empty. Ben’s mother was never found. Neither was her shadow. Some say that she crawled in from her watery grave. That she lurks in the shadows, moving from cabin to cabin. Hungry.