“Only children can see them,” the mother told her son while tucking him into bed.
“Who?” asked the little boy.
“Why, the Shadow Children of course,” she said, pulling the blanket over his legs. Her son had turned six the week before and would be starting kindergarten in the coming fall.
“I wanna bedtime story!” he cried gleefully.
“Well, this is your bedtime story,” the mother patiently explained. “It’s just not out of any old book.”
“Why not?”
“This is a story that is told by word of mouth only. Once it was written down, but the ink dried up and blew off the page. You see, the Shadow Children don’t want you to write about them.”
The boy looked up, interested now. “Why not?”
The mother laughed. “Because they don’t want you to, that’s why.”
“What happens if you do?”
“You get punished, that’s what. And don’t ask me how. Who’s telling this story, hmm?” She gave her son a mock-stern look. “Besides, I couldn’t tell even if I wanted to. A different punishment is given to each person. The one who wrote about the Shadow Children before, his hands became so stiff with something called arthritis that he couldn’t hold a pen or type on a computer keyboard ever again.”
“Arthur-itus?”
Again, his mother laughed her musical laugh. “Yes, author-itis. It was named after this man, who was a writer, an author.” The woman was having fun with her story, making it up as she went along. She gazed lovingly at her son. He wasn’t the only one in the family who could weave a crazy story!
“Oh,” he said, eyes widening with infinite trust.
To demonstrate author-itis, she made a claw out of her right hand and scratched at the air. “The Shadow Children are children who are stuck between two worlds. You must be a child, or have the heart of a child to see them. That means most adults cannot.”
“Can you see them, Mommy?”
“I don’t think so,” the mother said sadly. “I saw them all of the time when I was your age, though.”
“What do they look like?”
“Well, I was getting around to that, Peanut.” She grabbed his nose and squeezed it, honking as she did so. Then she pulled her hand away, thumb pressed between her first two fingers. “See, I got your nose!”
The boy laughed with delight. “No you didn’t, Mommy!” he cried. “Daddy showed me that trick before.” But to make sure, he reached up and touched his face and patted his nose.
“Darn, you caught me,” she said, making an aw shucks gesture before continuing. “The children appear as shadows. If you see a dark shape at the corner of your eye that might be a Shadow Child. They’re mostly shy, they don’t like to be seen—except by some special children, whom they like.” The mother tipped her son a wink to show that he might, indeed, be such a child.
“Oh, but I have seen them,” the boy said in a matter-of-fact tone.
The mother laughed; she had just made up the Shadow Children. She ruffled her son’s golden locks, saying, “I don’t doubt that you have, Peanut.”
She continued, “These children are about your own age. It’s like seeing a person standing in a dark room. You can’t see any features of their faces: no noses, no ears. But they do have eyes,“ she said with sudden inspiration. “They glow like fireflies at night. In fact, they’re often mistaken for lightning bugs. And when they talk, it’s like wind blowing in the trees on a summer night.”
The boy interrupted his mother, not out of rudeness but out of a fierce desire to correct her on a crucial point. ““They’re not really shadows,” he piped. “I see the little girl just fine, only I can see through her.”
“Oh?” his mother said, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes, I can see right through her to the backyard fence.”
His mother nodded. What an imagination the child had! But he was speaking of ghosts, wasn’t he? “Shadow Children are made of shadow,” she explained. “You’re talking about something else.”
He shook his head. “No, I think we’re talking about the same thing. She has a face, a sad little heart-shaped face. She told me the same thing you said, about how old people can’t see them.”
The woman covered her mouth to hide a sudden grin. She supposed that to a child anyone over ten would be considered old. What an elaborate fantasy!
“She also told me,” the boy continued, “that adults can see them. There are two ways.”
“Two ways?”
“First, they have to be like children themselves.”
“Right,” his mother nodded. “Young at heart. Check.”
“Second, they have to be close to that place where the children live themselves, to be able to see the things that live there.”
His mother stopped nodding, stopped grinning too. She felt an uncomfortable chill crawl up her back. Did her son mean an adult must be dying or be close to death? She sincerely hoped not. He was too young to be getting so morbid. “What do you mean, Peanut?” she asked, forcing a phony jauntiness into her voice.
“Oh, they’re dying, or about to die.” The little boy spoke calmly, confirming his mother’s worst fears in almost the exact language of her thoughts. “That’s what already happened to the Shadow Children.”
“Oh?” she said, her voice sounding high in her ears. She was still trying to process what her son had told her. He never talked about such gloomy subjects, and certainly not in such a candid fashion. Where had he picked this up? Was it the neighborhood kids filling his head with such dark imaginings? Well, she would have to nip this in the bud, then!
“What do they call themselves?” she asked, but could not resist adding, “Who told you about such things, dear?”
“They call themselves ghosts,” he explained. “My friend, the one I can see through, told me all about it. But I’m sure she’ll like what you call them.”
His mother had barely heard this explanation. Couldn’t one of the kids at preschool have told him about ghosts? One of the girls? That one he was always palling around with, what was her name? “Peanut, who told you all of this?” she repeated, using her not-quite-strict-but-getting-there voice. “I don’t think I like you talking about such things. Whoever it was, it wasn’t very nice telling you such awful stories and giving you nightmares.”
“But you started it, Mom!”
True, but her Shadow Children were not dead—an important distinction. Actually, she had not quite gotten to that point in the telling yet. She did not know exactly what they were, but one thing was for certain: her creations were going to be products of fantasy, characters closer to Peter Pan than The Headless Horseman. “Billy,” she said, speaking in her warning voice.
The boy began to pout, then relented. “Her name is Samantha. She likes to be called Sam, even though I think it’s a boy’s name. She lives in that old factory, the one with all the broken windows down by the river. Sometimes adults catch sight of ghosts through glass, or as reflections in mirrors, but they tell themselves they’re imagining things. Ghosts are kids who were killed,” he added. “That’s why they’re ghosts.”
How could they have gotten so far afield from the harmless fancies she had been spinning for her son’s nightly entertainment? Now Billy was talking about murdered children. “Billy, I . . . “
“Sam’s not too sad about it, though. It’s been awhile, and she says you can get over almost anything after awhile. She says the worst part about being dead is that you can’t talk to your family, tell them everything’s okay and not to worry.” He paused, then added: “They never found her body.”
Billy’s mother felt very faint.
“She’s pretty funny. You want to know what she calls herself and her friends?”
“Billy, I think this has gone far . . . “
“Milk carton kids!” He grinned. “I didn’t get it at first, but she told me all about it, and . . . “
“Billy, that’s enough!” his mother snapped. “That’s horrible!” She wondered if a six year old could be duplicitous, but one look into her son’s guileless eyes, eyes the color of a clear spring sky, shoved such alien thoughts aside. Her son was not aware that he had transgressed any boundaries, whatever was happening here. But she would get to the bottom of this.
“Is Samantha in your preschool class, honey?” she asked. The name did not ring any bells, but there were over thirty children in his group.
“No, Mom. I told you,” he said, starting to sound aggravated, “she lives in the factory down by the river, the one with that big smokestack. I asked her why she stays in such an awful place, and she told me she has no choice, that she was murdered there.”
“Oh God, son, that’s horrible!” The boy’s mother had a sudden insight. “Is that where you and your brother run off to? I told him not to take you down there, it’s far too dangerous. All of that broken glass, all of those rusty nails.” The factory, as he called it, was down by the local park beside the river, and she had long declared it off limits. The building was surrounded by iron fences and No Trespassing signs. For a teenager, Billy’s brother Robert sometimes did not show much common sense. Or maybe that was exactly the problem, that he was a teenager, just getting into his rebellious phase. Either way she would have to have a chat with him about this. She hoped it had not been him that had filled Billy’s head with such horrors. Milk carton kids, indeed!
“He used to take me there, but he’s too old to see Sam. We stopped going a while back, ’cause someone fixed the fence and we couldn’t sneak in anymore. But that’s okay, ’cause my friend comes to visit me now. She doesn’t have to worry about fences. Sam goes right through ’em. I wish I could do that!”
“Did your brother tell you these stories?”
Billy gave her an extra-exasperated look. “No, Mom. I told you . . . ”
“Yes yes, Sam told you.” She gave her son a stern look, the real one this time. “You and your brother don’t go to that old factory anymore. I have your word on that?”
“Yes, Mom,” he told her, then shrugged. “The fence is fixed, but it doesn’t matter ’cause I don’t need to go there anyway. Like I told you. Sam can do all sorts of cool stuff besides walking through walls. She can fly . . . “
His mother stood up. She was going to have a chat with the preschool teacher tomorrow, and a rather harsh sequence of words with her eldest son, the one who should be old enough to know better.
“Mom?” Where are you going? What about my story?”
She sat back down. “I suppose I can finish it first.” She sighed, clicking her tongue. “Though I really should let you finish it, since you’ve already told me so much.” She smiled at her son. “But dead children are something you shouldn’t talk about. It disturbs people, okay?”
“Well, I don’t have much else to say. Sam got herself murdered,” he glanced at his mother, expecting her to protest, but her face looked as stiff as a statue’s, so he hurried on in case she should change her mind. “It took a long time for her to realize what happened. She found herself wandering around the factory, figuring something was weird when she hadn’t had to eat or go potty,” he giggled at his casual reference to bathroom functions. “But she finally found out for real when she lifted her hand to her face and saw right through it.”
His mother wanted to tell him to stop, but she was curious despite herself and wanted to see how far this would go. Could all of this really have come from another child? Maybe he’d gotten it from one of those trashy comic books his brother left lying around. She would have to watch more carefully what Billy got his hands on.
“Nothing more to tell you, sorry Mom. Ghosts are stuck in one place, mostly, but like I told you, Sam comes to visit. They can go different places, but it’s hard. Even if they really want to , you see; they’re tied to one spot because of what happened to ’em. But Sam wants to visit me, so she comes a lot.”
“She comes over a lot?” her mother repeated.
“Yep.” Billy grinned, staring past his mother to the bedroom door behind. It was disconcerting after all he had told her, the final creepy touch. He pointed with glee and shrieked, “Here she is, right behind you!”
The mother nearly jumped out of her chair. Billy might only be trying to scare her. Well, if that’s the case he’d done a splendid job. Served her right for coming up with a concept she called the Shadow Children. His story had been a setup from the word go and she’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. He had certainly taken her idea and run with it. Hard to get angry at him for such a creative display of his storytelling skills. Still, she felt a curious sensation akin to fear, the hairs along both forearms prickling as if with static electricity. On top of this, she found it almost impossible to resist turning to look.
Billy was still gazing past her towards the bedroom door.
“Hi,” he said, before switching his attention back to his mother. “Sam likes to come for my bedtime stories. She misses them from her own mother.” He cocked his head, apparently listening, and said, “Sam told me to tell you she liked the part about the fireflies for eyes. It’s very . . . pretty.”
Was it her imagination or had the wind picked up outside, whipping around the eaves? Billy’s story had really gotten to her. It almost sounded like . . . “How come I can’t hear her, dear?” she managed.
“’Cause you’re not a kid, Mom!”
His mother turned abruptly. Standing in the open doorway, against the darkened hallway, was the semi-transparent silhouette of a small girl dressed in a plain white dress of a fashion thirty years gone, her pale hair in pigtails. The mother blinked, but the figure did not vanish, instead remaining where it was with obstinate tenacity. What was it Billy had said? The only way to see a ghost was to be young at heart? No, that wasn’t the only way. To see a Shadow Child as an adult one must be dying.
“Sam tells me to tell you that she likes your stories and wishes she could tell you herself. She says she doesn’t know about other ghosts, but she doesn’t mind if you write stuff about them down.”
James Arthur’s book Different Brilliant Colors, was published this year by 96th of October editions, and is available from Amazon.