The Hat Man's Shadow, Part 1

This is a work of fiction by John Beechem.

Lynlea Murikami pushed herself through the doorway of Ms. Slotzky’s classroom, smashed between two tall boys who also decided to exit at exactly the same time. Twenty-five teenagers, more or less, pushed themselves through this doorway at exactly 2:35 P.M. every single weekday, except for early dismissals. Ms. Slotzky’s slight frame was pushed aside by her students as she exhorted them to clean up the random classroom detritus they left behind for her and the custodians every day. Lynlea felt somewhat sorry for her, but not enough to really pick up anybody else’s candy wrappers (or sometimes even her own).

The hallways of Franklin High School outside Slotzky's classroom were crowded, and full of the electric energy of youth on the first warm day of spring. Lynlea breathed in the relatively fresh air of the hallways, a few recently opened windows bringing in a March breeze to compensate for the massive influx of warm bodies. Her friend Julie was already at their locker, pulling out a trio of heavy textbooks and stuffing them into her black back pack. Once she zipped it up, she picked up her straps, swung her hips, and slid the heavy pack onto her back.

“There you are,” Julia said.

“Ms. Slotzky doesn’t let us leave early. Some of us actually have to wait until the bell rings,” Lynlea replied.

“Poor thing.” Julia stepped aside to let Lynlea grab her things. A collage of cut out photos and art was taped to the inside of the locker, along with a small magnetized mirror. Lynlea caught her reflection out of the corner of her eye as she reached in for her jacket. It was one of her favorite possessions, a leather relic she got from her older brother from his days in a local band, a grunge era homage to the Ramones and other 70s punk bands, undeniably cool and well-worn. She zipped it up over a thin black hoodie, and some skinny blue jeans worn through at the knees. Her fingers placed a couple of headphone buds into her ears, flipped her hood over her short bob-cut black hair, pressed “shuffle”, and then said to Julia, “Let’s go.”

They turned the corner toward an exit at the end of the east wing, and their friend Adam began walking with them, just as he did every day. Adam was an intensely hip, sexually ambiguous 16-year old (one year younger than the girls) whom they met up with every day on their way to the bus stop. He was wearing a navy blue sweater over an old denim shirt and a vintage necktie, his eyes covered in dark aviator glasses. When he saw the girls, he nodded in their direction and matched their stride.

Lynlea turned to her left and poked his shoulder with the index and middle fingers of her right hand. “Why didn’t you answer your phone last night? We were hanging out at Jesse’s. Where were you?”

“I was doing my own thing,” Adam said. “Damn, girl...”

“World of Warcraft?” Julia asked.

“Please, I gave that up months ago. But my little brother got a 360 for his birthday last night. I had a little relapse, but it was just Halo, so I think I’ll be okay.”

“FPS is so lame,” Lynlea said. “They’re all just repetative macho war fantasies. You should play something with some depth, like an adventure or role-playing game.”

“No more RPGs. WoW is what got me in trouble in the first place. I lost six months to that game. I’m not going back to that,” Adam said with a shudder.

Julia, Adam, and Lynlea finally reached the school’s exit and were greeted by warm sunshine and mottled shade on the sidewalk.

As they walked toward their bus stop, Lynlea said, “I saw an article on Cracked about how behavioral psychologists have used the Skinner Box to explain how game designers make MMOs so addictive. It was kind of like an evil genius plan to take over the world.”

“What the hell is a Skinner Box?” asked Adam.

“We learned about them in A.P. Psych,” Julia said. “They put a mouse in a box with a lever. If they give him a pellet any time he pushes the lever, he’ll only push it when he’s hungry. If you only let the pellets out at random, the mouse will keep pushing the lever even if it’s not hungry. It’s supposed to show how you can use conditioning to build addictive behavior. It’s similar to the same way slot machines work.”

“Oh, I get it,” Adam said. “Like how you only get the loot you want after you kill a hundred of the same exact enemy, or maybe only ten.”

“Yup,” Lynlea said. “Like I said, it’s an evil genius plan. MMOs make most of their money through subscriptions, so they have to build the game to make you keep paying to play. Old games only made money the day they were sold, but WoW keeps making Blizzard money. Why don’t you think Starcraft 2 is out yet, but they keep patching Warcraft?”

“Okay, that’s enough about WoW. It’s too nice out to even think about video games,” Adam said, “But what are we gonna do? This weather is giving me a hard-on.”

“Ew, gross,” Lynlea said. Julia just smiled and rolled her eyes.

“I can’t deny what Mother Nature does to me” Adam said.

“Just shut up,” Lynlea said. “I have to study tonight, anyway.”

“Lame,” Adam said. “What about you Julia?”

“I have to drive my little brother to his soccer game. My mom is even making me stay and watch. I guess I’ll bring a book.”

“You girls ruin all my plans. I can’t go to Alki by myself,” Adam said.

“Of course you can,” Lynlea said. “Everybody goes to Alki Beach.”

“That’s the problem,” he explained. “If I show up by myself, I’ll look weird.”

“Tomorrow is Friday,” Julia said as the bus pulled up. “We should go then.”

“Agreed.” After a couple of minutes of waiting at a metro stop on Rainier Avenue, a bus lurched to a hault in front of them. The sliding of doors and hiss of hydraulics announced that it was taking new occupants. The trio lined onto the bus and made their way to their usual spot in the back.

The hypnotic drone of the engine and the breeze from the open windows let them relax, and they listened to their music while riding toward their homes. The familiar blur of shops, buildings, and cars flew past Lynlea's eyes as she breathed in fresh spring air tinged with the slight, oily scent of the bus's diesel fumes. Her mind relaxed as she leaned her head against the window, and the usual cacophony of thoughts was tempered by the hum of tires against the pavement. As she drowsed, her mind reached a flexible liquidity, not quite asleep but no longer fully awake. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a dark, blurred shape pass by the window. Not sure whether or not she was dreaming, she tried to focus on it. Through the dark tint of the bus windows, two ruby red points of light shone through and locked with her eyes. Lynlea tried to look away, but realized she couldn't move. Terrified, she focused every part of her will on turning her neck and averting her gaze. After a few more terrifying seconds, the effect wore off, and Lynlea could move.

Julia looked over at her from the aisle seat as Lynlea pulled her earbuds out. “What's wrong? You carsick?” Julia asked.

“I think I saw something outside of the bus,” she replied. “It was like some kind of dark blur with two red eyes that were looking at me. I was falling asleep, and when I saw it, I couldn't make myself look away for a few seconds. It was awful...”

“Aw...I think you just had a nightmare,” Julia said as she wrapped her right arm around Lynlea's shoulder and squeezed.

“It'll be okay.”

“Creepy…” Adam said. He leaned forward as the bus halted. “I’ll see you two later. Text me if you get any more visits from the bogey man, Lynlea.”

“Yeah right,” Lynlea said. “I don’t even know what I saw.”

* * * * *

After getting to her family’s modest home in the Central District, Lynlea threw her jacket onto a couch, entered a cramped kitchen, and pulled up two sets of blinds to let in the afternoon sunshine. This was one of her favorite places, especially since after a long school day she was always ravenously hungry. Lynlea pulled open the white refrigerator door decorated with magnets, newspaper comics, and the family’s calendar. As she leaned her left arm on the open door, she surveyed the contents inside. Behind a half-empty gallon of milk, she found some left over spaghetti in a plastic container and pulled it out, along with a gleaming red can of Coke, her favorite soft drink. She spun around, pushed the button that opened the black microwave door, placed the spaghetti inside, and heard the litany of beeps that chimed as she input the cooking time. The familiar hum of the microwave sang a song of sustenance to her as she walked into the living room, collapsed on a soft, gray couch and pulled off the tab of her drink.

She sighed contentedly, then began drinking some of the fizzy, cold nectar. To Lynlea, a good soft drink was a delicious, simple pleasure. She laid her head back on the couch cusion, and put her feet up on the coffee table, relishing the the forty-five or so more minutes of freedom she had before either of her parents came home and told her not to do this.

As she relaxed, waiting for the familiar ding of the microwave to tell her that her snack was ready, Lynlea thought back to what she saw, or thought she saw, on the bus. It gave her an uneasy feeling, like she had glimpsed some dark part of something she wasn’t supposed to have seen. When she was a little girl, Lynlea remembered seeing all kinds of things that weren’t really there. She imagined little elves climbing around outside with her as she explored the woods behind her house, and she even built little houses for them out of sticks and leaves. Her imaginary friend, Shoji, would sometimes even talk to her. He looked liking a glowing little pill-bug, a “roly-poly” as her dad called them. Still, he must have just been a figment of her imagination meant to fill the role of playmates she lacked as as a child. Without any brothers or sisters around, she had been by herself a lot until she started school.

The vision on the bus was like a twisted version of what she had seen as a child. Instead of the feeling of familiar comfort that Shoji gave her, the black blur she saw only gave her a feeling of intense fear. It was like that feeling she had when she was in middle school, and she and Julia would trap themselves in a dark bathroom, and chant “bloody Mary” as they looked into the mirror, only multiplied ten times over and lacking the thrill of daring she had felt.

The microwave dinged, interrupting her rumination and she spun around the entry to the kitchen and popped open the door. Delicately, Lynlea pulled the container from inside, her fingers barely gripping the hot plastic. As soon as she could, she dropped it onto the kitchen counter, pulling open the lid as a cloud of steam escaped. She placed her nose over it and took in the aroma of the tomatoes and oregano from the sauce. Lynlea opened the fridge door again, and took out a green plastic cylinder of powdered Parmesan cheese. She opened the cap and covered the noodles and sauce in it, then grabbed a fork from a drawer before bringing the spaghetti into the living room with her. She gripped the remote, and began scanning channels as she ate forkfuls of cheesy spaghetti. Lynlea savored her solitude, relishing the chance to relax on her own terms before her mom came home from work. Then her homework, usually a considerable amount due to her heavy load of A.P. and honors level courses, would give her a reprieve from her prying mother and distracted father.

* * * * * *

Lynlea stood in front of the kitchen sink, her forearms covered in soapy suds, as she worked a sponge over the remnants of food clinging to the oven dish from her mom’s chicken casserole. She looked at her dad, Ryu, who was standing next to her, drying the dishes she handed him with an old white towel. He looked like he was peering outside through the small window over the sink.

“What are you looking at, Dad?” she asked.

Ryu looked startled for a moment, and then smiled. “Oh, I’m just thinking about work, I guess. I can’t seem to get the details of this case out of my head, even after I come home.”

“What’s so special about this one?” Lynlea asked.

“It’s her age,” Ryu replied. “A patrol on 3^rd Avenue found a teenage vagrant, stiff on the street, this morning. She had been suffocated. There have been a lot of Jane Does lately.”

“That’s awful,” Lynlea said. “but I guess homicide detectives don’t get to choose their cases.”

“No,” her dad replied, “no more than high school students get to choose their teachers. How are your classes?”

“Eh…” Lynlea said. “They’re not too hard, but there is so…much…work to do. Between classes, college applications, and hanging out with people every once in a while, I feel like I barely have time to breathe anymore.”

“Do Julia and Adam feel the same way you do? About school?” Ryu asked.

“Adam doesn’t care about grades. He’s not worried about scholarships, and just coasts through his classes. Julia…she does a good job, but she only has a couple of honors classes, so it’s not as hard for her. I swear, I could scream at mom for getting me to sign up for three A.P. classes. Even my counselor thinks I’m crazy.”

Her dad reflected on this for a minute, the gleam of the full moon through the window shimmering on his glasses like silver dollars. “Your mother is crazy,” he said simply.

Lynlea began laughing, hard. Her body shook as she looked at her dad, a mischievous grin on his face.

“What’s so funny in here?” her mom asked as she walked down the steps from the second floor into the kitchen with her coat on. “I was just about to leave to pick up groceries when I heard Lynlea all the way from upstairs.”

“We were just talking about how much we love you,” Ryu said with a wink as he leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek.

Lynlea’s mother, Carmen, gave him a doubtful look and muttered “Mmmhmm. That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me everything. I’m out of here. Lynlea, don’t forget tomorrow’s Friday; I need you to take the trash out before you go to school.”

“Got it.”

Carmen seemed like she wanted to say something more, but then doubt crept into her features, and she left. In a few seconds, Ryu and Lynlea could hear her start the car in the driveway and headlights came in through the kitchen window as she backed out.

“She just wants you to do well, Lynlea. Your mom loves you.”

“I think she just blames me for dropping out of college,” Lynlea replied.

“No, trust me, she blames yours truly.” Ryu said. He had gotten Carmen pregnant when he was only 21, just after he got his B.A. in Criminal Justice. Carmen was a couple of semesters away from an English degree, but dropped out so she could have Lynlea and look after their child while Ryu worked.

“At least she gave me a good reason not to have sex,” Lynlea said. She looked over at her dad, who was grinning. “Don’t look too happy, Dad.”

“No, it’s not that. Well, it’s partly that. I just think of that girl we found on the street this morning, that runaway, and I’m glad you feel safe here. Stressed, but safe.”

“Stress is one word for it. Dad, do you ever see things that aren’t really there?”

“Do you mean like a hallucination?” he asked.

“Maybe…or maybe a ghost or something. I don’t know. I saw something through the window of the bus today. It looked like a black blur with red eyes, and it was staring at me. I was half asleep when I saw it, and I couldn’t move for a few seconds. You know how that happens sometimes when you wake up from being half asleep and you can’t move right away? Anyway, it scared the hell out of me. Adam and Julie said it was a nightmare, but I don’t think I was really asleep. At least, not completely.”

“It sounds like a shadow man,” Ryu said. “I learned about them last year after the ‘firestarter’ case, when I went through my obsession with magic and the occult.”

“O yeah, the pyro,” Julie said, remembering her father telling her about the gangster who burned his victims alive. Her dad was somehow convinced the boy could make his own fire; what Wikipedia called ‘pyrokenesis’. Lynlea called it science fiction, but at least thought her dad's idea was an interesting one.

“Shadow people look like living shadows,” he said as he put his towel down. The dishes were finally done, and they were standing together in the kitchen. Ryu opened the fridge door and grabbed a beer. He popped open the tab and took a sip.

“They look like shadows, but they don’t come from blocking out light. In fact, they hate the light. Shadow people look like silhouettes with glowing eyes. Sometimes people think they’re ghosts, but in fact, they’re demons. They prey upon people as they’re falling asleep, giving them nightmares, and feeding on their negative energy.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Lynlea asked.

“I didn’t, at least, not until I researched them. I was reading about occult powers, trying to figure out how that boy who burned me could create fire without any source. People who practice black magic can try to use the shadow people, at least according to the sources I found.”

“That certainly is creepy,” Lynlea said. “Did it say anything about how to stop them?”

“I…I don’t know. I could check,” her dad said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I have to finish studying anyway. Thank you for talking to me.” Lynlea leaned in and gave her dad a hug from the side, feeling her stubble on his cheek as she squeezed his shoulder.

“Any time,” Ryu said as he took another sip of his beer. “Any time…”

* * * * *

Lynlea was reviewing parts of her A.P. World History textbook, next to a study guide for the test her mother had bought her. The glow of the desk light warmed one side of her face, and the dark side was held up by her left hand. A pencil in her right hand was loose in her grip. The monotony of studying was becoming unbearable, but Lynlea pushed herself to continue until she finished a chapter on the Han dynasty.

“Lynlea…” she heard a whisper.

Lynlea spun around in her desk chair and looked into the inky blackness behind her. What she saw clenched her heart. It was the shadow of a man dressed in a black cloak. He stood about six feet tall, and placed himself just outside of the glow of the lamp. He looked like he was wearing a strange hat, one with a wide, straight brim and a tall, rectangular cap. There were no features on his face except for two red glowing eyes.

“You’re not dreaming,” the shadow man said. Lynlea tried to speak, but felt paralyzed again. This time, it was because of fear, not the grip of sleep.

“Y-y-yes?” she finally croaked.

“I can sense your power, girl. You saw one of my underlings today, didn’t you?” it asked.

Lynlea thought back to the bus ride home, and the glowing eyes that matched this creature’s. “I don’t know what I saw,” Lynlea replied, still terrified.

“Most of you can’t see us,” the shadow continued. “and those that do usually try to ignore us. They are foolish. I can offer you anything you want, Lynlea. I can make it so that you never have to study again. I can make men want you. What is it you want?”

Lynlea was beginning to take back control over herself. As surreal as this experience was, she was beginning to convince herself she might actually be dreaming this. “I don’t make deals with the devil.”

“Hahaha…you flatter me, child. I am not the devil though I suppose you could think of me as one. I am not often denied what I want, and I am a tempter.” The shadow extended its hand toward Lynlea, and “touched” her forehead.

Lynlea closed her eyes, and felt a horrible fear gripping her chest. It was like the fear of a nightmare, but she still couldn’t be sure whether or not she was actually dreaming. Trying to form any kind of rational thought was difficult, but in her panic she asked blindly for help. In her mind, she repeated ‘Ohmygodhelpmehelpmehelpme…’ as the fear sank its teeth even deeper inside. For some reason, she saw her old buddy, Shoji, glowing behind her closed eyes. It calmed her, at least enough to look around the room.

There was nothing there. No sign of the shadow man, no sign of anything really. There was a small sliver of drool on her chin, but whether it was from sleep, terror, or both, she could not tell. She looked back down at her book, and saw that she was on exactly the same page she remembered seeing before her vision. ‘I must not even have been asleep,’ she thought to herself. ‘I can remember everything too clearly, even now that it’s over’.

Lynlea crept out into the dark hallway, fear gripping her again now that she was outside of the glow of her lamp. She flipped on the switch for the hallway light, something she had stopped doing during trips to the bathroom once she had gotten into middle school. The bathroom door was open with a nightlight glowing inside. Behind the mirror on the medicine cabinet, Lynlea reached in for a bottle of night time cold medicine. She poured out a dose into the plastic cup and gulped it down, chasing it quickly with a glass of water. Her reflection stared back at her in the mirror. For a moment, she thought she saw something behind her reflection, but when she turned around, all that she saw was the shower curtain. Lynlea splashed water on her face, dried it with a towel, and then went back into the hallway. As she entered her room, she flipped off the hallway light switch, and then went to bed the desk lamp on. The aftertaste of the cold medicine was still in her mouth. As she closed her eyes, she pictured Shoji again, as a glowing roly-poly perched upon her forehead. Her body stopped trembling with fear, and the calmness of nostalgia and cold medicine lulled her into a deep sleep.