Free The Shadows: A Novel by Alex North

you’re worried about what your mother said, just … do something about it? You might be right—it might be nothing. But there’s nothing to be scared of here.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Listen to you: Captain Maybe.” She hitched her bag onto her shoulder. “ Maybe I’ll see you around?”
    “I hope so,” I said.
    And I felt that warm feeling in my chest again as I watched her walk to the door. A small light in the shadows. It was like a candle flame I wanted to cup with my hands, blow on gently, and bring to brighter life. But, of course, there was always a danger when you did that.
    Always a risk you would blow it out instead.

EIGHT
    Do something about it.
    Jenny’s words remained with me the next morning, and as I showered in the small beige stall in the old bathroom, I decided she was right.
    Oh God, it’s in the house, Paul.
    It’s in the fucking house!
    Whatever my mother meant when she said it was in the house, it was probably nothing. There was nothing to be afraid of here, and I thought that before I finally did leave this place forever, I needed to find out for certain. When I turned the shower off and began drying myself, it felt like the silence in the house was humming.
    Expecting.
    I had been attempting to do some work in my old bedroom, and my laptop was set up on the desk there. After I was dressed, I walked in and moved it to one side. Then I picked up the box of my teenage belongings and emptied the contents methodically onto the desk, one item at a time.
    The notebooks and dream diary.
    The writing magazine.
    The slim hardback book. Young Writers.
    Each item brought a flash of recognition. They felt like magical artifacts that, together, told a kind of story. I picked up the magazine, the old pages coarse and stiff against my fingers, and saw the cover— The Writing Life —then turned it over and read the back, feeling the years slipping away from me. I put it down again. Despite my fresh resolve, the narrative told by these things was not one I was prepared to follow through from beginning to end just yet. And despite what I’d suggested to Jenny, while my mother had clearly been looking through the box, I wasn’t convinced it was this she had been referring to.
    So what was it?
    Until now, I’d spent much of my time in the house tidying: wiping down the surfaces in the kitchen; removing the blankets from the front room and storing them in the wardrobe; sweeping and polishing. But rather than being productive, it had felt like procrastination. Now I steeled myself and set about trying to answer the question my mother’s words had set for me. I opened drawers and cabinets, rattling through the contents. I pulled out clothes and scattered them, and lifted cushions and piled them on the floor. After days of approaching the house with care, I dedicated myself to the opposite now: grabbing it and pulling out its stuffing, searching for anything that might explain what she’d said.
    Nothing.
    Or at least, nothing that helped. But there were memories here, fluttering out of the seams of the house like dust. Working through my mother’s clothes, I recognized items I remembered her wearing: old jeans, worn through over the years and patched at the knees and the side of the hips; the flimsy black coat she’d always managed with in winter; a bag full of shoes, paired upside down and pressed so flat they seemed glued together.
    And alongside the memories were mysteries: artifacts of a life I knew little of. In a small jewelry box I discovered rings and bracelets, and a locket on a chain that, when I clipped it open, revealed an ovalblack-and-white photo of a woman I didn’t recognize. My grandmother, perhaps, but it was impossible to tell, as even the parts of my past I hadn’t chosen to forget were shrouded in mist. It occurred to me that, when my mother died, I would be all that was left of a family I hadn’t known, and for a moment all my adult confidence evaporated and I was left feeling lost