ACACIUS

A while ago, my friends and I were sitting and having lunch when one of us started talking about dreams. One of them said they dreamed once about a nightmarish, eerie shadowy man with a single rhombus for an eye. And thus, this story was born; we all loved the creepy ambiguity of that figure from my friend’s nightmare, and so I decided to write a story based on her dream for this magazine.

By Genevieve Evans ‘22

I am not crazy. I’m not exactly dead, as my friends and family think. I’m not possessed, as you might think. Although, on second thought…

But I am the one who saw it.  The thing. This shadow man…

Yep. That’s right. Shadow man. And no, this is not the Princess and the Frog, and no, I am not the only one who jokes about something to cope. 

Right?

Well.            

. . . Never mind. But this… man, if you could call it that, was seriously terrifying. Like if you saw him walking towards you at eight o’clock at night, which I did, you would have nightmares for the rest of your life. Which I did. Tall and faceless, like Slenderman. Pitch black, like smoke— it even had little tendrils of darkness emanating off of it. Like it was made of shadow. Almost featureless, except for its eye: one shining bright glowing eye, on the left of its face. Rhombus-shaped.

Hence the term. Shadow. Man. Although that’s not exactly an accurate name.


Let me set the scene:

It was a dark and stormy night.

Really? Yes really. Continuing on.

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled through the empty streets and the rain pounded on closed townhouse shutters. Anyone with an inch of sense would be safely inside, curled up with Netflix and popcorn and a fuzzy blanket. Forget homework. School would probably be out from flooding tomorrow anyway, if it weren’t a Friday already. The week had settled into one of those monotonous patterns where every day seems the same. Of course, Netflix and popcorn’s the kind of thing I would prefer to be doing. But no, I was stuck outside, in the rain, walking home from school. Of all the days for my parents to come pick me up, this would have been the best. Maybe everything that happened next could have been avoided. Frustrated, (and soaking wet), I raised my head up to the sky and shouted my defiance to the world, willing the rain to stop.

It kept pouring, drops prickling on the back of my neck. Of course it did. You can’t challenge nature.

Lightning flashed bright white against the dark sky, and in the flickering glow of a streetlamp I glimpsed a shadow standing there. Looking at me with one smoldering eye. 


I blinked again and it was gone. Just a shadow.

I shivered.

I started walking again, but now the prickling sensation, I felt, could never be attributed to the rain. I broke into a run.

Amid the flashing of the lightning and the haze of the rain curtain in front of my eyes, I dashed down the street, turned the corner, and finally, finally, I was at my row of townhouses. My row of perfectly placed, identical trees. My safe house. I hurtled up the steps to my door, and fumbled with the keys. My hands trembled.

Why wouldn’t the key fit in the keyhole? I heard a faint hissing sound, the dousing of a flame when it touches water, coming from the other side of the street. Not daring to look for the source, I somehow managed to get the key in the keyhole— finally! Finally! — slip inside, and slam the door behind me. Now in the security of my own home, the safety of my dim carpeted hall, I found my courage again.

I peered out the window at the oppressive rain, scared of what I would see. The shadow-Rhombus-eyed-man-thing-I-don’t-know-what-it-was glared back at me.

Oh god.

It took a step out from under a tree, and hissed as the rain touched it and made it smoke. Of course! It made sense that a shadowy smoke thing wouldn’t be out in the rain. It would dissipate. Lose substance. I sighed, relieved. At least it couldn’t get to me here.

My phone buzzed, making me jump. One of those amber alerts; some poor missing kid. Normally I would check the message, wonder vaguely whether I knew the person, and then forget all about it. Not today. The course of events that had separated me from normalcy led my thoughts to the particularly sinister. The shadow rhombus monster was after me. I could be next. I shivered again.

I liked to tempt fate. I liked to say I live on the edge. Take risks. Thumb my nose at destiny. At conformity. We live by our own decisions. Mold the world around us. The universe is in our hands. But what happened, I think, was the opposite. What happened was fate. A bigger plan. I just didn’t see it until it was too late.

The hall elongated before me, like the scene in a horror movie. Suddenly my hall didn’t seem so safe anymore. I hurried into the main body of the house, hoping to escape the dimness and bathe myself in the warm glow of artificial light.

I felt my fears dissolve a little. There’s something about stepping into a brightly lit, dry place that makes you feel like you’re safe. And besides, it had been clear that the shadow thing wasn’t able to go out in the rain.

My parents work late. Usually they don’t get home until nine or ten, but occasionally they’ll make the effort to come home early and force me to sit down and do something with them. Like some stupid board game or something. Like, I’m sorry, but Sorry! isn’t going to cut it for good parenting. Especially if you try to work and play Monopoly at the same time. So what I would do on a normal day is ignore them altogether, unless they caught me and forced me into another “Family Game Night.”

But not tonight. This was not ordinary, and I needed somebody to talk to. I crept down the hall towards the kitchen, where my parents were sitting. But when I was in the doorway, they weren’t there. Against my better judgement, I felt a twinge of guilt that my unwillingness to participate likely caused this breach in such an incorruptible tradition. But then I saw them sitting on the couch, talking. I was ready to interrupt. They were facing away from me. And they were talking about me.

“…never listens. Never follows instructions. Has a problem with authority, Mr. Easton says. And do you know what the principal told me today? He says our boy made a rude gesture to the teacher! And not for the first time!”

“Military school,” my father was saying. “This pattern has gone on too long. What that kid needs is military school, to train him up and teach him discipline.”

The fear dissipated, replaced by anger at a much more pressing issue. Honestly, I was much more shocked than I should have been. Of course I should have seen this coming. And in my defense, the teacher wasn’t being the nicest to me either. Why should I show Mr. Easton respect when he didn’t show me any?

“Mom? Dad?” I said softly.

They whirled around.

“Oh!” My mother said. “We were just talking about you! Come sit with us?” The last part was not a question.

“Of course not!” I snapped. They weren’t going to listen to my problems. “Why do I even try? I hate you both.”

I turned on my heel and stormed upstairs to the beautiful music of my parents’ shocked faces. Who cares about that stupid rhombus demon man? Who cares about my parents? I don’t like to say that my anger blinded me to my danger, but, well…

Thunder rumbled, and lightning continued to flash as I tossed in my bed. I went to fitful sleep with teeth unbrushed, face unwashed… I didn’t even bother to change out of my clothes. I just kicked my shoes off, climbed slowly into bed and curled up under the covers like an embryo. No way I was not going to be able to sleep. Not with military school lurking in my future. That dark cloud would not let me rest. What kind of life would military school be? I didn’t know, and I was scared.

And on top of that, what about that shadowy rhombus man? Could I hardly expect to believe that it would just give up now that I had a blanket and a locked door to protect me? My fears from before returned, now that I was in the upper skeleton of my house, with the lights out, and my parents downstairs, and the rain so close overhead.

And I’ve seen horror movies. I know that things hardly ever end out well. I know that the story goes on, regardless of how many locks and how many keys are between.

No, I decided in a last-ditch effort to console myself; it would not happen to me.

I fell into a fitful sleep.

My clock ticked loudly.

How had the Rhombus Man gotten to my house from the streetlamp if it couldn’t go out into the rain?

And I dreamed.

To be continued…