31 Days of Halloween { guest author } Fire and Shadow by M. E. Patterson
When I was 11 years old, some friends and I burned a building to the ground.
It’s not an event that I’m proud of, and it sure as hell wasn’t the sort of thing we set out to do. We weren’t running around with flamethrowers, torching everything in sight. In retrospect, that would have been kind of awesome (albeit highly delinquent) compared to the truth of the matter. No, we burned down a building because we were exploring.
Now, the thing about burning a building to the ground is that it kind of sticks with you. The image of it follows you forever. The flames, billowing from the old wood, throwing thick, black clouds of spiraling smoke. The screams of fire engines. Your parents’ stunned, almost incomprehending expressions when they finally piece together what has happened. It’s exciting, and terrifying, and if you’re generally a “good kid” like I was, pretty traumatizing.
And after you cause something with such dramatic energy to come into being, it tends to cast a shadow that’s never all that far behind you.
The ancient Choctaw Indians believed that a person possessed two “shadows.” The spirit, or inner shadow, known as shilup, was something like the ghost of the person. The soul, or outer shadow, shilombish, had a little more staying power. They believed that, upon a person’s death, while the shilup would head off toward the west to some manner of heavenly paradise, the shilombish would stick around. It would haunt its former home for a while, until funeral ceremonies had been performed and all was well with its family.
But if the recently-deceased had been troubled or murdered, the shilombish departure was far less orderly. The disembodied soul would hang about the place, tormenting family members with moans and animal noises, until the unfortunate circumstances of its death were resolved.
While it’s easy to dismiss this as ancient hokum, I think there’s something more powerful at work in the Choctaw beliefs.
Shadow has been a feared thing for the whole of man’s existence. It’s the opposite half of light – and light brings us warmth and growing plants and the ability to see the predator stalking us through the tall grass. It also shows clearly those things that haunt us; light illuminates the unknown, banishes fear, and highlights our failures and weaknesses, so that we might move beyond them. Shadow hides and haunts and follows us silently.
Looking back on it now, the 11 year-olds traipsing through that old, hay-filled barn with Indiana Jones-style torches made of sticks and burlap sacks were simply trying to bring some of that light with them. In a monumentally stupid way, sure, but how much worse would it have been to have to fight our fears in that dark, musty old structure with its windows boarded up and its doors tied shut? Teenage years were looming, good grades were getting tougher and tougher to achieve, and there was this whole thing about boys and girls “liking” each other that had us freaked the hell out. Those torches made that scary old building at the top of the hill… conquerable. We were driving out the monsters, banishing the shadows.
After the fire, of course, I thought I was the worst kid ever. The fireman gave me the “you could be convicted for arson for this” speech and the owner of the old barn, generously, decided not to press charges on account of us “learning a lesson.”
But that shadow has never entirely left me.
Like the shilombish, it’s hung around far past the point where it matters all that much. But maybe that was the Choctaw’s point. We’re not just afraid of shadows because of the lack of light or what they might conceal from us. We’re afraid of shadows because of what they might say about us. We’re afraid of them because they are us. It lacks the detail and the physicality, but my shadow is mine, and no one else’s. I made a mistake, and was lucky to escape from it without hurting anyone else. But my shadow was forever altered.
The choice we have to make in life, whether your shadow is hiding something trivial like mine, or something far darker, is when and how to shine the light on that dark place. Know that your shadow is there, respect it, but refuse to fear it. Let the shilombish take its long walk. Your shilup will someday thank you, I suspect.
And kids, listen to the creepy bear in the hat. Don’t play with matches.
About the Author
M. E. Patterson is an author of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and thrillers, as well as an information technologist. He received an English/Fiction Writing degree from Virginia Tech, where he studied under nationally-recognized writers and poets. He has published short stories on RevolutionSF and his first manuscript for his book, Devil’s Hand, placed in the top five in the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest. You can visit his website at www.devils-hand.com or his blog at blog.digimonkey.com. Connect with him on Twitter at @mepatterson or Facebook at http://on.fb.me/dhnovel.
