“Mother, what is this?”
The toddler trailed along the garden path toward her mother, checking on the ground behind her every other step.
With a heavy sigh, mopping the waterfall of sweat running down her brow with a sleeve, the mother straightened from her knees, her joints audibly creaking before ending with a pop. “What is what, dear?” She tossed down the dirt caked potatoes that would be their dinner come sundown.
Her daughter, grasping on to the itchy skirt at the mother’s aching knee, never tore her gaze from the pavement. “That.” She tapped her foot with a satisfying clack of her shoe, but she never hit the pavement. Instead, her foot tapped on dark inkiness, a black vortex obstructing her from ever touching the real world.
The mother froze at the sight, her skin going pale, before an electrifying shot of panic ran up the mother’s spine, and she swiped her child into her arms, ignoring their aching hiss. Her stare trembled, waiting on baited breath for the sinister silhouette to simply fade away.
The dark shape stayed as it was, imitating the shape of the daughter’s body sitting in her mother’s arms. It looked as though its head had been stretched, and had a slender build.
The daughter wrung her arms around her mother’s neck, ignoring the pulsing vein beneath her mother’s thinning skin.
The dark shape imitated the girl, wringing its ink arms around an unseen body.
The mother took a step to the right.
The dark mass was hauled right.
The mother took a step back.
The dark mass followed after.
The mother sucked in a breath, her weakened knees beginning to shake as she realized the terrifying thing would follow anywhere her daughter went. Her grip tightened as she let out her held breath. “The doctor can help us.” She muttered without a thought, and then she nodded as if to reassure herself that she wasn’t just rambling nonsense in her withering mind. “The doctor will help us.”
She flipped on her heels away from the creature, toward the town in the direction of the sun. With a groan, she forced her throbbing limps over the garden’s wooden barrier, and continued her dash toward the doctor.
The little girl watched with placid patience as the dark figure followed closely behind, mimicking the bounce of her head in her mother’s tired footfall, the wave of her wispy pigtails in the running wind, the dance of her fingers as they waved hello to one another. “Mother, it’s waving back to me.”
“Don’t wave at it, leave it alone!” the mother hissed through weighted breaths.
The daughter withdrew her hand from the air and tucked it beside her mother’s boney shoulder.
The crowded streets buckled and hollered as they narrowly dodged the determined mother. Behind them followed the screams and shouts of those who had witnessed the black mass that followed after them.
The daughter turned forward just in time to watch as her mother skidded to a sudden halt, only to slam onto the splintered door of the doctor’s home with a resonating bang. More screams caught up to them as the murky figure halted by the doorframe as well, and the crowd cleared a large circle around the pair, staring at them wide eyed and faint of breath, unknowing how to explain what they were witnessing.
The daughter turned back around, quizzing the terrified faces of the crowd, questioning what they were so afraid of.
The mother’s bony hand banged desperately against the hard wooden door as she pled for the doctor to let them inside.
As her knocks grew in intensity, the door swung open to reveal a young man with crinkles on his brow the size of canyons. His nostrils flaring, he turned to the mother with a large scowl. “What is it woman? What do you want?!” he barked ferociously.
He was answered with squawks and clucks from the crowd instead, each of them pointing at the menacing blackness with sheer terror in their eyes.
The rage in the doctor’s eyes melted into curiosity, but was soon modeled into horror as his gaze settled on the dark figure on the pavement. “The little girl?” he asked the mother, realizing the familiar shape that held the boundaries of the ghostly mass.
The mother nodded her head viciously, her tears finally catching up to her as her voice trembled uncontrollably. “You have to help, please!”
He beckoned her in with a wave of his hand, shutting the door behind him with the alleviated gasp of the crowd.
The pair sat by candlelight in his cobblestone room for hours as the doctor poked and prodded the little girl and the black mass that danced beneath her swinging feet. The mother watched anxiously as he hummed in disapproval, retrieving and reading dozens of bulky tomes with spines thicker than her gaunt thumb.
As loose pages scattered about the room, the doctor scratched his shaking head. “I’m afraid there’s no easy way to tell you this, but your daughter has contracted a shadow.”
The mother gasped as her chest clenched around her withered heart. “How could it be a shadow?” she asked frantically, gripping on to the thin frame of her daughter with tight fists. “Shadows don’t exist! They’re nothing but fables, legends to keep children from wandering off!”
The doctor let out a sigh as heavy as bricks before giving a tired shrug. “Those fables originate from grains of truth. Maybe in ancient times, before the rise of King Albert’s lineage, shadows existed.”
“Then how do we rid of it?!”
The doctor gave her a grave stare. “My best guess to rid of a shadow is to be left in a place where shadows cannot exist.”
Her face contorted in confusion, but she spared him the explanation she knew would be lengthy. “And where does it,” she nudged her chin toward the shadow as if it weren’t deserving of a name, “not exist?”
He heaved in a breath through his nostrils, before forcing it out noisily. “Shadows do not exist in complete darkness, with no hinting of light anywhere. A tomb, perhaps.” The mother gasped with terror. “Or a cellar or dungeon.” The doctor quickly added. “It just has to be lacking of all light anywhere. In the darkness, a shadow may never be found.”
The mother let her shoulders droop, running her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Her daughter turned up to her in disdain. “I don’t want to go to the dungeon, mother. The shadow is nice, it won’t hurt any of us.”
The mother shook her head, kissing the brow of her sweet daughter’s naivety.”How long until she would rid of it?”
He shrugged. “No accounts of a shadow have been documented in detail, until now they had just been stuff of myth. It could be days, weeks, maybe longer.” He trailed.
The mother turned away, brushing her lips against her child’s forehead, stuck on a thought. “I don’t have a cellar.”
“I do.” He offered, tapping on the hollow floor below them.
“I’d hate to ask…”
“I am a doctor, Madame. I am very capable of handling the girl, and she would certainly benefit from having a doctor so nearby, if anything happens with the shadow. I have a nurse who could check on her every now and again through the floorboards.”
The mother tightened her lips into a thin line.
“I will watch over your daughter as if she were my own.” The doctor added reassuringly.
Reluctantly, the mother nodded, and the cellar door opened with a loud groan. A low moan whispered from the bottom of the frigid cellar, like the cold breath of a corpse. The toddler squirmed in her mother’s grasp, unwilling to be locked up in the crypt.
The mother cooed at her, petting her daughter’s wily hair one last time, before kneeling down and placing her in the cellar.
“NO!” the toddler hollered, clawing at her mother’s bony back, kicking frantically at her ribs.
The doctor snatched the lashing girl and dropped her to the cellar floor without remorse, and instinctively the mother reached out for her distraught daughter.
He pulled back her outreached hand, ignoring the wails and screams of the deserted girl. “This is for her own good.” He reminded the weeping mother.
With a short, hesitant nod, the mother withdrew from the mouth of the cellar and shut the door on her blaring daughter, promising in a soothing voice of her return come morning.
With a tearful goodbye, the doctor shut to door on the face of the weeping mother, his last smile hauntingly predatory...
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