Jack's Shadow

Fall: Ten

It was a sinkhole. A cave. That's what it was. An underground cave that had been there in that field for ages and ages. Since the dawn of time, maybe. And the ground had finally eroded down to where it was too weak to hold itself up. That's why it had fallen in. The vibrations from the lawn mower had been the last straw, apparently. Now the earth had caved in and left a hole that was about forty yards deep, as far as the men who came to look at it could tell. None of them actually went down into it. There was still too much uncertainty. It seemed unlikely, though, that any more of the ground around the house would fall in. Because the foundation of the building was solid. There was no real worry that the Kemper house would find itself joining the ranks of the lost lawnmower underground. Even so, Mr. and Mrs. Kemper made arrangements for the boys to stay with their grandparents, who lived about a ten-minute drive away.

Jack slept fitfully the first night after the earth fell. He kept reliving the look of horror on his father's face, and he couldn't help feeling as though the ground he walked in his dreams was still trembling. In his waking mind, he knew the ground had stopped shuddering. Knew he was safe from harm at his grandparents'.

School the following afternoon, though. Students crowded around Kyle, goggling, begging for the whole story, starved for details. Not Jack. Not the one who'd actually witnessed the event. But Jack let his brother talk, and by the time Kyle told his story for the fourth time, he'd embellished enough so that it sounded as though he had been the one calling to his father and frantically spilling hot chocolate on his mother. Matt and David interjected at every opportunity, not contradicting Kyle on any part of his tale, no matter their knowledge that he'd been inside watching football with them when the cave-in took place.

It was possible that students looked at Jack in a slightly more interested manner that day. As if maybe they did want to hear what he had seen. But they never approached him, for he remained secluded on the playground, his thoughts wandering to strange places.

That evening, the twins were allowed to return home. After a bit more studying by experts, it had been determined that the only immediate danger was the fact that someone could fall into the hole. Police tape went up. A makeshift wall of boxes and sandbags went up. Jack and Kyle were presumed old enough to understand the danger of venturing too near a pit. And they were old enough to understand. Even as much as Kyle wanted to bring friends by and show them this seeming Wonder of the World, he knew it was best to show them by way of Jack's bedroom window rather than through the field.

And so Jack didn't have his room to himself until it was time for bed, and it was then that he realized even more was amiss than he'd at first guessed. Kyle had lifted his window and left it open in the process of impressing his friends. Now, bizarre sounds were filtering through the screen. Low, vibrating, rolling sounds, like wind blowing through cattails in bass, slow motion. The rolls of deep sound ebbed, like tides of seawater, creeping at first heavily into his room and then leaving in diminishing weight, seeming to go out the way they'd come in. In this strange process, Jack couldn't help feeling as though his room was being coated in some manner of gloom. A blanket of grayness that crept across the walls and ceiling, trickled down to the floors. The way his mother coated a hot pan with butter before putting pancake batter into it. The rhythmic, pulsing moans from outside—which Jack was certain were emanating from the sinkhole—were coating his room like melting butter.

It was a rather disturbing idea. Jack didn't like the pictures forming in his mind at all. He couldn't see any of the familiar shadows out of the corners of his eyes that he usually saw. They had all gone down into the pit, he sensed. Merged with the larger darkness down there. And the whisperings which had picked up so ferociously in the days before the ground fell were very quiet again. So quiet that Jack had to strain to hear them beneath the new, more frightening sound.