The Shadow at My Door: Part 3 (Final)

Down the beaten, dusty road, I huffed and puffed, searching for relief and comfort and some peace away from this shadow pursuing me.

My iron gate, a giant silhouette of mystery in a sea of all-consuming darkness, loomed tall ahead of me, each step seeming a pull from this iron demon rather than my own will. Behind this iron demon, the house stood in brooding silence, silhouetted against the grey-blue hue of moonlight, disaffected and distant, cold and in tears. 

As I approached the gate, I looked up at my house, at the arched roof that was hands reaching out to the indifferent night sky. It wasn't a scary sight, that house. Instead, it was a broken look. Its long windows, behind which peeked nothing but darkness, were eyes empty of tears long dried. The roof hung down the rafters like the shoulders of one weighed down by unending sorrow. 

I stepped onto the cold, hard path, and as I took my first steps toward the house, I could feel that cold, unwelcoming push toward an inevitable end. I wasn't walking toward my house. My home, with its cold, ghastly hands, was pulling me toward it, reaching out for a hug to ward off the forlorn coldness it was feeling, and I, a mere puppet, had no will but to give in to this and take this hug.

The door groaned and creaked, tired and weary, as it slid off its jamb. A cold draught slapped across my face on its way hastily outside the house as though the sorrow and sadness inside it were too much to bear. That left me alone, standing at the door of the house, which seemed to stretch endlessly above and ahead of me like a castle, those walls of weeping sorrow staring coldly back at me.

Then, the scent of rosebuds and jasmine reached me. But it didn't accost as it did previously. Instead, it started off in a tentative swirl, distant but perceptible. 

I entered into the belly of this beast, of this gloomy beast who sought to devour me, not out of malicious evil nor unholy sinfulness, but out of desperation, a desperation to make things right, to correct the past.

I made it to the landing of the stairs and stared at the brooding shadows of blackness at the top. The stairs led to nowhere but a dark abyss. Unlike the first time earlier in the day, though, I couldn't feel the unseen eyes watching me. In fact, I felt as though everyone had turned their backs on me, standing facing away from me as if I was so hideous to look at.

Even the nightlife seemed to have deserted me. The wind stayed hidden somewhere in the tall grass. The frogs stayed muted somewhere in the ponds, and the mosquitoes remained silent and hidden, not even daring to suckle on this meal I had prepared for them with my short-sleeve shirt and exposed face. It was a night in which I could hear the hairs on my skin crackle as they stood up. I could hear my heartbeat echo through the darkness like a malago drum. I could hear my heavy, desperate breathing howl like the Kaskazi winds that had now fallen silent outside.

On landing at the top of the stairs and engulfed in this encumbering darkness, the bedroom door down the corridor offered a glimmer of hope. A small stream of weak, yellow light escaped through the door and framed itself in a neat rectangle on the opposite wall. The scent of the rosebud and jasmine was now stronger, and with it, the strong memories of her.

Someone gave a nasty, phlegm-filled cough and let out a short groan of pain and extreme discomfort. My wife, Sylvia. Sly, my magnificent muse and close confidant. How I had missed her.

I was now standing at the bedroom door, and there she was, lain in bed in her red, silky nightgown. This gown she had previously filled with her curvy frame now hung down her body as though it was held up to dry on the lines. The skin on her body was stretched thin, all bones in her body exposed. Her skin was like a dried-out tree stripped clean of its leaves and roasting in the Kajiado desert. Her lips, chafed, dry and white, bled with each cough. 

Upon seeing me, her expressive eyes, sunken deep under the shadow of her brows and further pulled deeper by the deep crow's-feet around her eyes, suddenly widened. Not in joy, but in anger. It was a steely gaze of angry disappointment.

"I told you not to tell that man of my illness." She said in a breathy voice that sounded like sandpaper rubbing against a tree bark.

"Sly, look at you!" I said, rushing into the room and kneeling on the bed by her side. "You are wasting away fast. I felt it was necessary to tell your family. They deserve to know."

"I can't believe this!" She gave a disdainful chuckle. She was very weak and struggling to talk, but the anger, it seemed, overpowered everything else, and she was using every bit of the little strength she had left to admonish me.

"You, Pamela, Steven, Alice. You are my family." She went on, "I was ready to die with nobody but all of you by my side. I did not need you to play savior and tell that man how I was doing."

"That man is your father, Sly -"

"Says who?" She fired back, almost raising her head from the bed, "Says who, eh? Since when, eh? Since he disowned me, eh? Since he asked me to leave his house as a teenager? I thought you loved me." 

Her voice broke, and she began sobbing. I rushed to her side.

"I love you, baby," I said, this weight of sorrow dragging me down in supplication as I kissed her bony arm.

"Then why wouldn't you respect my dying wishes? Now the man I loathe is coming over to see me. He is bringing his wife too. Do you wish to kill me so soon, my love? What did I ever do to you for you to hurt me so by inviting my sworn enemies to my death bed? Do you not wish me peace in my journey home?"

I wailed and cried at her words. A bag of sorrow was pooling on my neck, bringing a flood of tears into my eyes and sending them down my cheeks in a stream of grief and contrition. I am sorry, Sly. Forgive me, please. That is what I wanted to say. But words couldn't come out of my throat. I was drowning and gasping for air.

"I was only trying to do the right thing," I stammered amidst sobs and whimpers, but Sly was not having it. She had turned away from me, staring blankly out of the window, at the tree, cast in the evening sun, gently swaying to the gentle breeze.

"Your good intentions, Henry, they sometimes cross boundaries." She said, tears streaming down her eyes, though the rest of her face remained static. "And I always told you. You want to be helpful, but you must also respect my wishes. Now I won't die in peace, knowing that he will forever be aware of my death and how I die, even if you now tell him not to come. Umeharibu safari yangu ya ahera."

"Forgive me, my love. Sly, aki nisamehe!" I cried, pulling her closer to me and burying my head into her chest, feeling her bony ribs press against my face. I could hear her heartbeat - distant, faint, weak, but also violent and impatient. I hoped to feel her hands wrapped behind my back in embrace, but they remained stuck by her sides.

"Go!" Was all she said.

I looked up at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She had turned away from me and was staring outside the window again. My sobs and whimpers hadn't moved her. I watched her through the blur of tears welling in my eyes, streaming pain and anguish down my cheeks.

A knock at the door startled me. Her nurse, Atieno, was at the door, here to care for her through the night as I was on night duty at work.

"Good evening, Mr. Mungasa," She greeted. The smile on her face quickly dissolved into a frown on seeing the tears in my eyes.

"Enda," Sly said, still not looking at me. I could feel the hatred and anger seep through her thin skin and reach out violently toward me.

I got off the bed, adjusted my tie, and picked up my car keys. I started planning on doing something big for her when I came home from work the next morning, a significant act of contrition to make up to her for going against her dying wishes.

I would never get that chance. 

Seven minutes to midnight, I received a call that nobody ever wishes to receive. I didn't immediately jump to my feet and drive over. I couldn't even bring myself to get to my feet. Instead, I remained seated, numbed and lost in thought. A blissful life of marriage, now ending in tragedy, no, not because she was dying of cancer, but because I had broken her trust in the worst way possible. Now, I could never ever make it up to her.

I keeled over and sighed, that pool of grief beginning to choke me and sucking the life out of me once again, sending the warm tears through my eyes and flooding my chest with grief, squeezing my heart and crushing it into a puddle of blood, pus and countless regrets.

There in our marital bed, in the darkness, in the quietude of that melancholic sadness, I sat, drenched in tears and drowning in sorrow, gasping frantically at everything and anything I could get my hands on until sleep washed over me. 

I don't know how long I had been crying or even how long I had slept, but the next time I opened my eyes, it was seven minutes to midnight. I looked at my bedroom door, wide open, a wall of deep blackness just outside it. That feeling of being watched was over me again. Something was watching me. I had yet to see it, but I could feel it.

My shoulders tightened in dread, and a sinking feeling of despair and anguish was pulling me down from the inside. The strong explosion of rosebud and jasmine once again violently accosted my nose.

Then I saw it. In the shadows, half buried in the blackness of the night, stood the tall thing, bleeding into the room a cold chill of dread and a heavy air of misery and pain, watching me, this time I could see the bright glow of its eyes pierce through every inch of the thick darkness and into me. 

I could not escape it. I had to learn to live with this shadow.

THE END

The Shadow at My Door: Part 2

 

Still the shadow at my door. Photo - Dall-e

Seeking a Human Face

A mess of nerves and dread, I rushed back into the house, picked my phone and wrench still in hand, hightailed it out of my house like a mad man whose demons had finally caught up with him. My destination - my neighbour's house.

Stephen was a good old friend of mine whom we had known each other since college. We had applied for jobs together, tarmacked together and propped each other up until we now lived as neighbors. Our wives also happened to have been college friends when we met.

Once I was outside my gate and beyond the buzzing security light of my compound, the darkness enveloped the earth with malice. There was a blue-grey hue all around, as the pale crescent bathed the earth from behind the palls of cloud that kept scudding in front of it in intervals. I turned on my phone's flashlight, but the focused thin bar of light seemed to further accentuate the darkness and made it easy for me to see those thin tall figures emerging from the darkness just beyond.

So, I turned it off and pelted into the darkness like a mad man, darting my eyes all around me, to the tall grass performing a creepy dance of menace in the darkness, at the moonlight's deathly smile upon the grey earth below. From the periphery of my vision, I saw them - these tall lanky men dancing in the shadows, inching closer with each dance they made. When I turned, they would then turn into grass.

I almost screamed. But I didn't. I don't know why. But I did whimper and sob. I heard the voices behind me, echoes of screams and whispering voices. Suddenly, I became aware of just how far from my house Stephen's home was. It never was this far. Had it moved? Or was I even moving as I ran?

I turned back to make sure that I was moving. Behind me, my house stood in solemn silence, a silhouette casted in dark shadow against the cloud night sky, bathed in the pale blue glow of the eerie moonlight. It was a haunting visage, as though I was staring at an old, haunting memory that refused to fade into the darkness that surrounded it.

The wind howled past me, and I felt, with each breath, the cold hands of these unseen spirits grip me all through my body, the voices within the wind whispering right into my ears. I ran faster. This was no place for a man, and I could not stand any more of this dreadful darkness and the sickening howl of this seemingly cursed wind that seemed to carry with it voices of the damned.

I made it to Stephen's gate and called him, all as I also banged on his gate like a wrestler spending the last of his strength.

"You are what now?" He asked, "Are you the one banging on the gate?" He asked to which I cried to him to let me in.

I peeked through the gaps on his iron gate, then looked back from where I had come from. I shone my phone flashlight down the path from which I had come from. The grass continued to give an ominous whisper as the wind howled and bayed across the land. I saw the tall shadowy figure come right round the bend, emerging from the sprawling darkness around it.

Behind me, the gate creaked, and I barged in, closed the gate behind me fast and scampered into the house, all before Stephen's bemused self could utter a single word.

"Henry! Henry!" Stephen called, rushing after me as I stumbled into his house, where his wife, Pamela, was standing, an alarmed look on her face. She stumbled back in shock as I made my way into the house, out of breath. I urged them with frantic gestures to close the door behind me.

"Who is following you?" Stephen asked.

"What happened, Henry?" Pamela asked just as her husband was asking me his question.

"Someone...something is in my house! An intruder." I said as I tried to catch my breath.

"Shit!" Stephen said, "Let's go deal with this guy."

He was getting ready to get back out there, his eyes displaying that kind of fury that I had come to know of him. Stephen was never one to back away from a confrontation. He was my polar opposite. I often would avoid confrontations at all costs, even when justified. I was perhaps a coward by definition, but I liked to think of myself as easy-going. Besides, why would I ever need to be the confronting one when Stephen was there? Even my wife had been more combative, so why would I be?

I reached out and put a hand on Stephen, shaking my head as I tried to catch my breath.

"Do you want some water?" Pamela asked, her concerned eyes on me. I shook my head.

"Please, just stay with me." I begged them.

"Well, then, tupigie polisi." Stephen said.

"I think they are now gone, surely. I...I made a lot of noise. Maybe I scared them away!"

I know very well that was not true because try as I might, I could not convince myself that what I saw was even human. That shadow looked like it came from another realm, another dimension. But I needed to believe that that was an intruder, a human intruder.

Despite my pleas, Stephen called the police, who responded typically - they would come over as soon as they got 'mafuta ya gari'. They wanted their greasy hands greased.

"Useless!" Stephe said as he threw his phone onto the coffee table.

Pamela's piercing eyes of concern and sympathy made me feel a little exposed and I felt uneasy. Could she know that I had lied about the intruder? She often had this uncanny ability to read people, which made sense. 

She had majored in human psychology in campus, though she would pivot hard after completing university. After graduation, she focused instead on nurturing her cupcake business, which she had started in her first year in campus and had now turned into a blooming business. She was the one who made the cake to my wedding with Sylvia.

“You say that there is an intruder?” Pamela asked.

I nodded, still uncomfortable with the fact that she seemed to be staring deep into my soul and trying to extract the truth through the labyrinth that was my emotional alcove.

“Ama ni Spiderman? He has been on a rampage lately.” She said.

Spiderman was a burglar who had been giving city residents sleepless nights for about two months now. What had started out as a regular burglary turned into a persistent thread of break-ins caught on CCTV cameras. He especially targeted various high-end apartments in Kileleshwa, Lavington and Westlands. In these security cameras, he was a figure of the night, a shadow dressed in all black from head to toe, with a balaclava on his head with holes for eyes to complete his 'spiderman' look. He also always carried a backpack for his loots. He was a figure that was as skilled at climbing wall as he was at evading capture.

But as much as I knew that that shadow of the night was not the one tormenting me, I desperately wanted to believe it was, because the alternative would be that I had seen a ghost.

“Hmm,” Stephen said, “But why would Spiderman come to Kajiado? So far, his operations have been limited to areas around west sides of the city.”

“Maybe the police are closing in on him, so he moved to a new place.” Pamela said.

“I woke up earlier tonight and there was a shadow standing at my bedroom door. A tall thin figure.” I said, trying to convince myself that this was what was true and not the fact that the shadow at my door was an ethereal presence, a figure with an aura or death and torment.

“I mean, surely that must be him. It’s Spiderman.” Stephen said. Then he turned an alarmed look to his wife. “Did you shut the back door?” 

“I don’t know! Weren’t you the last to come through it after sitting in the backyard.” Pamela threw it back at her.

“Oh fuck!” Stephen said as he rushed out of the living room toward the kitchen. 

Pamela turned to me, and I did not like it. She knew I was lying.

“Are you okay, Henry?” She asked, sitting next to me and putting a hand on my shoulder, “Sylvia's death really took a toll on you, and I can’t imagine how much stress this intrusion is putting you under.”

I sighed and closed my eyes as the warm tears began to gather behind those closed eyelids. I shook my head and just sank back in resignation. A heavy weight pulled down on my shoulders.

“You can spend the night here. Let’s see if the police will come and comb your house for the intruder.” Pamela said. I nodded, glad that she did not press me further.

"But could there be more going on?" Pamela asked, "I mean, your face - the color is gone, and your eyes show trauma of someone that seemed to have seen a ghost or something."

Before I could respond, Stephen came back panting, a relieved look on his face.

“Turns out I had indeed closed the backdoor.” Then he turned to me, “So, Henry, what do you want to do now?”

“I was thinking that he could spend the night in the guest room, just to feel safe.”

“Oh, okay, yeah. Sure.” Stephen said.

He led me to the guest room, which was on the ground floor of his house, further down the hallway from the living room.

“Well, rest here my brother. Let us see what tomorrow holds." He said, patting me on my back, "Good night.”

“Thank you, Stephen. Good night pia.” I said, walking into the room and closing the door as soon as Stephen was gone.

I began checking the room - under the bed, where there was nothing but a thin layer of dust on the carpet, under the bedsheets, in the closet, behind the desk at the corner of the room. I checked to see that the windows were shut. I looked out into the backyard, where the pale moonlight shimmered on the dewy grass and the leaves of the mango tree. Under this mango tree, was a swinging seat, which swayed with faint squeaks to the wind softly humming outside. 

Yet, despite checking the room, I still felt uneasy, as if something unseen was watching me. I crept into bed and spent the next few minutes on my phone, alternating between Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, trying to keep sane a mind that was going insane.

I Saw Her Face

The sound of a twig cracking startled me. I tore my eyes from the glowing screen of my phone, where I was watching some Real Ghost Sighting videos on YouTube to calm down and looked at the window. The curtains were drawn, but a small gap on the edge of the window close to my bed allowed me a glimpse into the grey night outside, where the moon continued to bath the land in that eerie pale light.

The trees danced their thin shadows on the curtain, their shadows like tall thin figures dancing around behind the curtain. The swing was now creaking loudly, as if someone was actively pushing it to the edges of its limit.

I curled up further in bed and tried to stay as still as I could.

Bug then, I heard the twig crack again. Surely that must be the wind. Surely. I sat up and listened again. The wind had picked up pace once again and the creaking of the swing chair grew louder and was rhythmic, meaning that it couldn't be swinging to the wind. Someone was moving it in slow, deliberate swings.

I felt the hand of fear grip me such that I could not move and every cell in my body began to tremble in violent spasms of fear. I covered myself head to toe in the bed and began whimpering. What did these spirits want with me? What wrong had I done?

I put on my earphones and began listening to music, hoping to use the music to lull myself to sleep. But then another sound startled me. It felt like a tap on the window. I gasped and took out one earphone, just to ensure that the sound wasn't really.

But it was real indeed. There was a gentle tap on the window, followed by a low, painful, almost inhuman groan. I whimpered and cowered further in my fetal position, my knees barely inches from my nose. The hum of the wind outside seemed to now be inside, whispering right next to my ears. I thought I felt a presence hover just above me, waiting to unleash unspeakable horrors to me if I even dared to peek even a crack.

But I could no longer keep my sanity. I was sinking in a sea of violent trembles under the bedsheet, and it was becoming increasingly hot the more I stayed buried in there. I was dripping sweat like a leaking faucet, such that even the sheet began clinging onto me.

Maybe all this was nothing. Perhaps all I needed to do was just check the window, see that it was all the wind's doing, and that peace would put me to bed. So, I sighed deeply and decided that I would jump out of bed and pull aside the curtain to rest my fears.

At the count of three, I threw away the duvet and rushed for the window. On my periphery, from the darkest corner of the room, I thought I saw a shadowy figure emerge from the darkness and begin to make for me.

Pulling back the curtain, the moon was gone. The mango tree was stiff as a corpse, standing unmoved like a sturdy railroad. Everything was still, as though the night had also held its breath in anticipation of the horrors about to unfold. Everything except the damned swing chair. Its creaking hinges echoed into the silent night, swallowing up every other sound.

My legs almost gave up on me when I finally saw what was making the swing move. That shadowy figure sat, slowly rocking back and forth on the seat. I gasped and let out a loud scream. I turned on my heels and made my way toward the door. It was at this moment that the shadowy figure I had seen emerge from the darkness inside also tried to reach out and grab me. I felt these cold, deathly hands grab me and begin to pull me down.

I stretched with all my might and managed to just about reach the tip of my finger on the light switch and turn the light on. The hands let go instantly and I collapsed to the ground in exhaustion and fear. Every cell of my being was screaming in terror. on my hands were grab marks. It was real!

I struggled back to my feet and opened the door to the corridor. The lighting from my room spilt out into the corridor but only lit the corridor halfway. The rest of the corridor was soaked in this partly lit darkness. I couldn't bring myself to run down that hallway. Then, it hit me - the swing had also fallen silent. Now, this eerie pause blanketed the earth. I turned back and looked at the window, half expecting the shadowy figure to emerge from it.

But it was not from the window that it emerged from but from the hallway. Down the end of the hallway, just beyond the rays of light from my bedroom, I saw it - the tall, thin elfin apparition making its way toward me in these ethereal steps, almost as though she was walking in a different dimension. It seemed she was walking in slow motion, her walk eerie and disturbingly elegant, her footsteps echoing a split-second after she had taken her step.

My trembling feet almost gave way, and I could feel sweat break out from every pore in my body. My hear threatened to rip through my chest and I

"Pamela?" I called out, still in denial at what I was seeing.

Silence.

The wind picked up pace again, this time, it started rattling the windows, as though someone was trying to prize them open. There was a persistent knock at the panes, and the shadow of the trees on the curtain danced with feverish excitement, their whispers incoherent and more fiendish.

On turning back, the figure was just beyond the grasps of the light pouring from my room, almost as though it had teleported through time. I screamed as I jumped back into the bedroom and latched the door. The sound at the window grew more fervid, more violent. The trees cried in ghoulish voices and the room rattled alongside the dancing shadows.

The banging on the door grew more intense, more distressing and I screamed even louder, until through all the noise, I heard people calling my name. Under the bedroom door, I saw two shadows moving at my door, fervidly moving about as they banged on the door.

“Henry, wacha hizo. Open this door!” Stephen called. “What is happening in there? Nini mbaya?”

It was Pamela and Stephen. I gathered my scared self and scampered for the door. Pamela and Stephen rushed in, him with a metal bar while she carried with her a knife.

“What is going on?” He asked as I let them in and went to huddle on the bed, crying and shaking like a leaf in a windy storm.

“I saw her…it.” I stuttered as tears began washing down my face.

“Saw who?” Pamela asked, the two of them standing over me sitting at the edge of the bed.

I shook my head and closed my eyes, running my mind through what had just happened.

“It was very vivid, very…real, this nightmare!” I cried, trying to hold it together, “I am sorry for disturbing your peace. I… I think I should head back home.”

I looked at the time on my phone. It was seven minutes to midnight. 

That did not make any sense! It had been seven minutes to midnight when I had startled awake in my house to the shadow at my bedroom door.

“This can’t be real. Do any of you –” I never completed that sentence because as I looked up at Pamela and Stephen, their faces were no longer theirs but the lifeless faces of my wife - her vacant, sunken eyes, the sad uncanny look still plastered on her face, her sunken cheeks and thinned hair, staring down at me–

I screamed. Another loud banging came from the door. I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on my bed. I was all alone. The light was on, and outside, the wind still bayed and howled. Pamela and Stephen were borderline knocking the door down, screaming to know if I was okay.

I rushed to the door as I put on my clothes, unable to keep myself still. On opening the door, I couldn't bring myself to trust them, as they now suddenly seemed to not be the Pamela and Stephen that I knew. Something strange was happening this night, and they too were in on it. I couldn't trust them.

“We heard you screaming! What is happening?” Stephen asked, barging into the room as his wife followed. Pamela eyed me with a look that seemed a mixture of fear and concern. But it all was an act, I could feel it.

Stephen went about checking the room as I cowered against the wall, keeping them firmly in my eyesight, fearful that if I showed them my back, they would reveal their true form. I checked the phone for the time. It was half past three. I pinched myself just to confirm that I was awake. It all felt real.

“I will go back home.” I said, still eyeing them suspiciously.

“What? Now?” Pamela asked, peeking through the curtain outside.

“Yes. I think I may have disturbed you all for nothing. I probably had a vivid nightmare back at home too. There was never any intruder. I am sorry for disturbing you, but I have to go back home now.”

As I hastily tried to make my way to the door, Pamela stopped me.

“Henry,” She said, putting her hands on my shoulder, “Losing Sylvia was a big blow for you, but I think you never truly mourned her loss. Could it be that the pain you kept so pent up is what is haunting you right now?”

“Come on, Pamela, you aren’t going to psychoanalyze me here, are you?” I asked, struggling to pull myself free from her grip, which seemed to tighten around me with each passing second.

“You are right, I am sorry. Old habits,” She said, letting me go, “But I still think you did not truly mourn her, considering how much she meant to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about Sylvia, please. Let me just head home. Sorry for disturbing you over what had simply been a bad dream. Good night. Tuonane kesho Mungu akipenda.”

“Okay, let me come with you to make sure you are safe.” Stephen said, rushing after me as we came up to the front door.

I turned and pushed him away.

“I will run all the way.” I said and with that, asked him to open the gate for me.

Stephen grabbed me by the arm and brought me to a dead stop. It was a firm grip, and I feared looking at him because what if he had turned into that monstrosity with my wife's dead face?

"You can't keep doing this, Henry," Stephen said, "It's hard for you, I know, but you can't keep pushing us away like this."

"I am not pushing you away. I just want some time alone."

"Henry, you don't have to do this alone," Pamela said, coming up next to her husband, "We have always told you that."

"I feel like I want to be alone. Is that too much to ask?"

"No, no it's not," Stephen said. Pamela shook her head. "But as your friends we also cannot, in good conscience, watch you implode without intervening. Sylvia's death -"

"Don't mention her name, please."

"See, that's why you need help," Pamela said, putting a hand on me. "You are trying to distance yourself from her death and it's hurting you. You don't have to run away from your pain, and you don't have to hide it from us, Henry."

I closed my eyes, feeling the tears well inside them. My throat constricted with pain, and I sighed deeply as I began trembling internally, a sign that I was about to open the floodgates.

"Whatever I did cannot be undone. She is no longer around to forgive me."

"We are here to help you live with that." Stephen said.

I shook my head, almost in tears. I did not want them to see my tears. I tore myself from Stephen's much more relaxed grip and rushed to the gate, leaving them calling desperately behind me.

As soon, as the opened the gate, I bolted off into the shadows, as my own house began looming in the darkness, rushing ever closer toward me like a memory that I wished to forget but which I still could not bring myself to let go.