Author: Bryan Pastor

Sitting there in a car waiting for my date to come out, it had caught my eye, standing still like the sail of a ship in a dead calm sea, trying to blend with a hedgerow in the dying light of dusk. My eyes were fixed on it, made out the details, like how it flexed its fingers in anxiety of having been spotted. Movement caught my attention, pulled me away for the barest moment and it was off, dashing across the street. I tracked it as it entered a column of light cast by an old mercury vapor lamp, it faded until it was a silvery blur, barely there, then began to rematerialize as it left the blue-green glow, sprinting across a lawn, taking a moment to glance back at me and finally disappearing behind a house.

The shadow became my obsession, even though I would never see it again. I came back to the spot over and over, long after the girl and I called it quits, even after she had moved, and some other family settled in. I came back so many times that the family finally got a restraining order and barred me from coming back. As I grew older, I kept an eye on real estate listings and when the house came to market I pounced on it. Fate foiled me. The day before settlement the house burned down. Months later a developer bought up all the land in the area and turned it into a mall. Some speculated that it was the developer that set the fire, but I know better. The shadow was toying with me.

When the mall came I was excited. The restraining order didn’t hold anymore, but I found that the spot was now in the middle of parking lot, ablaze even in the dead of night under thousand-watt bulbs that no self-respecting shadow would hang around in. Even worse, as I grew older, and the taint of years crept over me compounded by the construction I lost the sense of where the moment happened. Was it there in aisle 21B outside the Orange Julius or over there in 14 J near the salt dump?

It was with a bit of relief that I began to notice the little things recently. My razor blade moved from one side of the sink to the other, the milk carton placed in the cabinet with the cereal, the shed door left open overnight. I know it’s him, I feel him coming closer. All these years I thought I was the one in pursuit.

Maybe shadows hold grudges. All those years ago I caught him where he shouldn’t be. I take some measure of comfort in thinking that he has been as obsessed with me as I have been with him.

I know he is here. I can feel his presence, hear his labored breath mimic mine as I scramble up the steps. But the joke will be on him, I am waiting. I am ready. Make your move and we will see who is the hunter and who is the hunted.