The Shadow Period

The next couple of nights were quiet. That's not to say nothing happened, it just wasn't in my room. The morning after I'd heard the voice saying my name, I had to drag myself out of bed. If that Language Arts project hadn't been so important to my grade, I might have played sick and stayed home from school.

As I stumbled from my room to the bathroom, out of the corner of my eye I caught a shadow at the end of the hall near the stairs. When I turned my attention that way, I expected to hear one of my sisters either running up or down the stairs. Instead I saw nothing.

The same thing happened on the way back to my room. At the time I shook my head and laughed. I was overly tired and jumped at shadows, right? Now I'm not so sure, but then that was a perfectly plausible explanation. I figured the voice in my room was caused by me being in a half-sleep state, so the shadows were just as easily dismissed.

On the way to the stairs, I saw the shadow again, this time head-on. By the time I both noticed and comprehended what it was, it was gone. It hadn't moved or anything else. It didn't fade or anything like that. One second it was right there in front of me, and the next second it was gone. I'm not sure how I knew, but it had been the shadow of a man. Not me, of course, as I hadn't stopped walking until it was gone. My thoughts turned to Dad, but he never came up here in the morning. I took a minute or so to check all around the area, but I couldn't see any source of light that would have caused it. When I went down for breakfast, I found out Dad had left for work early, and hadn't been home for the past half-hour. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I heard that.

I consider the rest of that school week the shadow period. Every time I turned around, no matter what part of the house I was in, it seemed I caught a glimpse of a shadow out of the corner of my eye. I didn't see any more shadows head-on, but I saw enough glimpses of them to know something weird was going on. That weekend, it got revved up a notch.