Title: Maybe, Maybe Not
Author: cathyrn
Email: cathyrn.geo@yahoo.com
Rating: General
Warnings: Violence, death and horror. 
Spoilers: The Forbidden Game
Disclaimers: The concepts and characters of The Forbidden Game
belong to L.J. Smith.

Summary: Capturing Shadow Men in your closet maybe isn't a good idea.

Comments: LJSanta fic for Incanto.

Machinery of the new generation clashed with that of the old, as his
new fangled cordless telephone shared the uneven surface of his desk
with an eye of god and a bodhi bell. All manner of protective
contraptions were collected here in this room, and they reflected the
inner torment of its soul inhabitant. An old man who sat wringing his
hands, and staring intently out the tiny basement window. The sun was
setting and sadness grew inside of him as he watched the light being
claimed by the dark. 

'In the dark,' he mused silently. 'All people speak of is the light,
and there is a war in this world between what people see with their
eyes and what is really there. Yet, people can only see in light, and
what resides in the dark, the true dark, has only ever been
discovered by a select few. Those who never lived to return and tell
their tales.' 

He was lost like them, in a sea of hopelessness, one that feared
that the light of day might never again return to this world. His
only comfort was his tiny desk lamp, but its futile efforts only
seemed to make the dark shadows gathering in his room seem all that
much darker and dimmer. Vexed almost to a panic by the stillness, his
hands compulsively paced the small length of his sloppy desk and then
back again.

As evening drew its curtain of darkness down over his home he did
not know if he wanted to stay here in the basement, or make his way
back up to his bedroom and wait out the night there. Leaving here
seemed like such a pleasant idea that he almost felt himself rising
up from his desk chair, but instead he poured himself over his
journal rereading aloud once again the words he had so meticulously
copied from ancient texts, eyes coveting the tiny lamp light. 

Even as he performed his daily chants the old man tried to convince
himself that an atmosphere of perfect harmony and sanity prevailed
within his home, even though it was rapidly becoming obvious to him
that it did not. He could feel them now, even through the closet
door. 

He could feel the decay of them, and every breath he took drew their
evil into his lungs where it festered like an incurable disease. An
aberrant hive of bees swarming inside of him and beating their
stinging wings in a frantic flurry. The toxic residue of them wilting
his lungs to a tar colored black.

The Shadow Men, they were the darkness that crowded between the
stars in the night sky. Innocence and youth were claimed by them in
the dark. A single Shadow Man had the capacity to render a man to
less than nothing. They could undo the very fibers of the mind with
mere words, and render a person beyond hopelessness. 

He was the one who had trapped them, tricked them into going inside
the closet, and sealed the door closed behind them. He never opened
the door to the closet anymore, not after the last time, when he had
seen them for all that they were. One glimpse in at them was all it
took.

People liked to say petty things; like how a person could have no
soul or soulless eyes, but he knew the truth. He had seen their faces
in the darkness and knew that their eyes were darker than any night
sky he had ever seen. There was nothing there in those eyes; he could
not see anything there at all.

The ice and cold, like everything dark and cruel, were bound to
them, and the old man could feel a chill all around him. Sheets of
blue ice had accumulated on the walls inside of the closet, along
with mounds of powder fine white snow which gathered in sad little
piles in the corners of the room and upon the shoulders of the more
material and less mobile of the Shadow Men. They had been horrible,
gruesome atrocities, but the way they had huddled together was
reminiscent of pack animals seeking one another out for comfort and
warmth.

Silently, the old man pondered this. He wanted to make note of his
thoughts, and jot them down in his journal, but he was apprehensive
to do so at this late hour. It wasn't failing eyesight or arthritic
hands which deterred him; instead it was something much more ominous.
What he feared was falling asleep before he could complete his
journal entry.

Some time ago he had come to the realization that when writing in
his journal he must end every sentence with a period. If he did not
do so, then the sentence would continue on, and keep writing itself,
or answering his idle questions, even when he wasn't there to control
what was written. The hand which picked up on his writings and
completed all of his unfinished sentences turned them into terrible
things.

The autistic child next door had started talking, only hers lips
weren't moving. Her mother found her swinging from one of those hooks
that people used to nail to the backs of their doors and hang their
coats on. The child's words weren't flowing from her lips, because it
was the hole in her throat that was talking. 

As the wound cried in pain and begged for help, the flesh would
pucker and protrude like a human mouth on every syllable of each word
around the tiny steel ball of the hook punctured through the little
girl's throat. And even after they had pulled her off that hook, the
wound in her throat kept on talking. 

It talked after the paramedics pronounced her dead, and was still
speaking after the coroner finished with her autopsy, and it
continued on talking right up until the little girl's body was shoved
into the incinerator to be cremated. Then for awhile, it screamed.
Finally, when there was nothing but silence there wasn't a man in the
world who was any more grateful for the quiet than those in the
funeral home on that day.

The old man knew all this because there it was, written in his
journal. 

Then after nodding off on another day, one of the younger children
in the neighborhood ran out into the busy street and was struck down
by a speeding car. Red marks like velvet carpet streaked the road, as
the child was pulled along for almost three blocks. The journal told
him that the child screamed the whole way and that the driver never
stopped. It only took one glance at the morning newspaper to know
that all the entries written in his journal were true.

The old man knew what was happening; they were slowly creeping their
way into reality. The longer the Shadow Men resided inside their new
"home" the more accustomed they grew to it. Literally. They started
seeping into the walls and adhering themselves to the floorboards and
foundation of the house.

One of their favorite pastimes was to catch little animals wandering
in unawares of the malevolent creatures residing within the house.
The old man would find tiny piles of bones lying in shadowy corners.
There were hairline fractures along all of these bones, because the
Shadow Men had ravenous hungers which led them to seek and suck out
the bone marrow of their victims as well as consuming all their flesh
and internal organs. The old man often felt pity while looking down
upon these tiny remains because he knew a death like that must have
been horrible.

Yet, that wasn't the only reason why he felt remorse for the little
animals and their terrible fate. He knew that the soul was eternal,
that it could not be pierced or burned and that knowledge was what
the Shadow Men delighted in most. They loved to torture the souls of
those that they caught and those poor souls were theirs for all of
eternity. 

That was the reason why the old man collected all his protection
charms, said his daily chants, and feared the setting sun. Because he
didn't want to end up a pile of cracked bones lying in a darkened
corner, or a tortured soul, one to be played with, forever.

That was the fate of all those who had ever laid eyes upon the
Shadow Men, but maybe he'd be the first one ever to have a happy
ending. Maybe. So in the end, he chose to sit here and wait for the
dawn, and laid all his hopes on a maybe. 

Fin.