The Woman In The Shadows

Part One - Contact

In the shadows she stands guard, watching the twins as they play. Aidan and Adrian, identical from their blond hair and blue eyes to the toddler Converse shoes their mother had tied on so diligently that very morning.

She stands in the shadows, watching, waiting for their mother to turn a blind eye – to neglect the boys, if not for a moment, so that she can reach out and take them.

Leave this house! She whispers through the void, loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to make one think it was the wind's whispers through the trees that surround the place she once called home so many years ago.

The house she died in – her drunken husband holding her son's head below the water of the outside rain barrels before tying her to the bed, leaving her to starve.

She begged, screamed, clawed and punched – she did all that she could to stop her darling child from drowning.

As his limp, delicate body fell to the grass – green as green could be – she fell to her knees, weak and powerless – without breath or rational thought as her husband looked down on her current state and laughed.

He found this funny.

After all, it wasn't his son. She was a cheating whore – so he said. Since the beginning he denied his son as his own. They looked nothing a like. This boy, he would never be a man – not like her husband, anyway.

"Give it back!" Aidan yelled, shoving Adrian against the wall.

The two squared off in the middle of the toy room, their mother yelling from downstairs for them to quiet down.

To behave.

"Look." Adrian said, pointing past his brother's shoulder. "She's there again." He continued, Aidan turning in the direction of his twin's tiny finger.

No! No don't look at me!

Her tormented soul, looking through the portal, her figure burned in the shadows that fill the room. She slammed her hands against the wall, the picture frames falling to the floor as shards of glass littered the hardwood.

"What did I say!" their mother – Claire – yelled as she stormed up the stairs, each footstep louder than the last.

As she reached the summit, the door to the toy room slammed closed, scaring Claire, making her lose her footing as she fell down four of the steps that led to the toy room.

"Mommy!" Aidan yelled while Adrian looked on. "Mommy, help!" He yelled louder, tears forming from his large, boyish eyes.

"Adrian what did I say about tormenting your brother!" Claire yelled, regaining her footing as she reached for the copper doorknob.

"She's still there." Adrian whispered, eyes wide as he continued to look at the dark corner of the room.

"You're scaring me." Aidan whimpered, refusing to look back in the direction that held his brother's attention so tightly. "Stop it, I'll tell mommy!" He insisted.

"Just look." Adrian continued, the sounds of their mother pounding on the other side of the door.

"Boys, unlock the door!"

"Mommy!"

"Boys!"

LEAVE THIS PLACE!

The windows vibrated, the glass on the floor danced as the tremors of her screams moved from wood panel to wood panel of the century old floor.

Claire froze, the voice too deep – too loud – to be from either of her children.

"Adrian! Aidan! Open the door!"

Her heart raced, smashing against the insides of her chest as she struggled to breathe – the instincts of a protective mother clouding her judgement as she held firm to the doorknob, charging her shoulder against the solid oak door.

"Open the door!" She yelled, another shoulder forced hard against the door.

With each bang of her body crashing against the door, the woman in the corner became more enraged.

She screamed, her voice terrifying the two boys.

Tears ran down Aidan's cheeks as he stood, a trickle of urine running down the inseam of his tiny trousers.

"Adrian, make her go away." He begged, wiping the tears that ran down his rosy cheeks.

Adrian stood, still – lifeless – as the colour in his skin began to fade. What were once glowing red cheeks, the complexion of a toddler, was now reduced to the porcelain tea cups his mother had been collecting since she was a girl.

As the woman in the corner screamed, Adrian's feet began to lift from the ground – his head tilted back as his eyes rolled back into his head, the whites of his eyes turning red as one after another, each tiny capillary began to rupture as if somehow under pressure.

LEAVE!

"BOYS!" Claire yelled, one last shoulder driven hard against the door as the frame cracked, the door breaking through as it crashed along its trajectory into the wall.

Claire stumbled through the door, landing on her hands and knees. As she looked up through the strands of her disheveled hair, a sense of panic she had never felt before began to fill her as she looked at her little boy suspended above the floor – his tiny feet dangling as his body began to rotate along a longitudinal axis.

"MOMMY!" Aidan yelled, looking beneath his brother's hanging feet and into his mother's terrified eyes.

The woman in the shadows took the only opportunity she had, racing across the floor towards the little boy that refused to look at her.

Claire's screams filled the room as shrill as those of the woman in the shadows as she tried to get to her son – the shadowed woman snatching Aidan as he screamed, dragging him to the far corner of the room, hiding him in the shadows she now called home.

As she entered her world, she left behind Claire – Adrian remain suspended for a moment longer before falling to the ground, his elbow bent uncomfortably back beneath his tiny body as he screamed in fear and agony.

"AIDAN!" Claire screamed as she helplessly watched her little boy vanish in the shadows – the familiar shape of a woman in rags dragging him away.

"Mommy!" Adrian screamed through tears, "Mommy help!"

Claire crawled to her son, scooping him from the floor and holding him tightly against her racing heart.

With one of her pair held close against her chest, she backed out of the room – the door of the toy room slamming closed, sending her tumbling down the stairs with her son in her arms.

The two tumbled, one over the other until they met as a heap at the foot of the stairs, Aidan's young tears and struggled breaths filling the air as Claire attempted to hold on to consciousness, her vision blurring as she saw the figure appear at the top of the stairs.

There she stood – the woman from the shadows – her torn dress blowing in the breeze as she held her hands before her, her wrists torn and bruised like you'd imagine would happen from rope being tightly wrapped around them.

As she descended the stairs, Claire felt herself drift. With each blink the woman became closer until she stood above Aidan.

"Please – " Claire struggled through panicked breaths. "Please, my boys..."

The woman stood above her, Aidan unconscious in her arms as she looked down, a sense of eerie sincerity and assurance as she spoke.

Your boys belong to me now.