Shadows Passing

SHADOWS PASSING

 

 

 

The children sat huddled over the Ouija board in the blown-out home of their youth. Since James was only 12 and Mary a mere 10, their youth did not encompass many years in the former house. Still, it was the only home they had known—until the war began, the bombs had dropped, and they became homeless. It seemed a lifetime ago. And now their parents were dead.

The Ouija board had actually belonged to their granny Matilda, who had died in the distant past, memories of her blurred by time for both children. They had not been allowed to play with the game, and why their parents had kept the board was a mystery to them. James had discovered it while rummaging through the rubble during one of their several daytime visits to the old site.

Mary, wide-eyed, was sitting cross-legged in front of the board, staring at Jimmy. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this; Mother never allowed it,” she said.

Jimmy was kneeling across from her, the triangular-shaped pointer in his hand. “What difference does it make now?” he replied, bitterness evident in his voice. “Besides, I kinda remember how it works. Granny Matilda showed me until Momma took it away from us and hid it, even though it belonged to Granny.”

Mary looked at the gathering twilight filtering through the cracks, crevices, and holes in the walls and roof, fear growing in her eyes. “But Jimmy, it’ll be dark soon, and we need to get back.”

“We’ll just ask one question, then go; it’s just a game. We can always come back and play some other time,” he said.

Mary sighed but said nothing.

He looked intently at his sister, and taking her silence as an affirmative, Jimmy continued, placing the pointer in the middle of the board. “Now place your fingertips lightly on the pointer, like this….” Jimmy demonstrated, “…I’ll ask a question, and maybe Granny will answer by pointing to the letters.”

“I’m scared,” Mary mumbled.

Her brother ignored her. “My question for Granny, or whoever guides it, is: Will we lose the war?” They waited, but the planchette failed to move. He frowned, waited long seconds, and tried again. “Okay then, will we win the war?” As before, the pointer refused to move towards either the yes or no. More interminable seconds passed, the silence a palpable weight in the broken room. Jimmy squinted at the board, chewing his lip in frustration. “Okay, Granny, last chance. Is there ANY way to know if we will win or lose the war?” he asked, his voice subdued with weariness.

Suddenly the planchette jerked and began wandering almost aimlessly around the board as it searched for letters. Jimmy whispered them as the pointer paused at each letter—S T P A U L. It finally ceased moving. Mary jerked her hands away.

“What did it spell, Jimmy?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“St Paul,” he answered, his brow furrowed in thought. “But I have no idea what it means. Are we supposed to pray to him, or what?”

Mary looked behind her. A chill breeze had drifted in and touched her through a gap in the wall where a window had once been, announcing the encroaching night. “Hurry, Jimmy, it’s getting dark!” she yelled.

Her brother grabbed the board and planchette and placed them under a wide piece of wood that had once been part of their kitchen table. They hoisted their bags over their shoulders, scrabbled over the rubble, and headed out into the disappearing day.

Dusk was upon them. Their small sacks heavy with purloined apples, the two children raced along the cobblestone path through the park toward their destination of safety. The wind chilled them beneath their flapping coats and whipped the bright orange and yellow leaves around their legs and over their fleeing feet. The city’s great clock struck the hour in an ominous warning of the impending darkness—an added incentive for their tiring legs to keep moving,

Their youthful chests heaved with exertion as they dashed across the deserted road, turned the corner, and spied the converted schoolhouse at the end of the street, high on a hill. Jimmy glanced back at his sister, who trailed him. “Hurry up, Mary. It’s almost dark. It’ll start soon.”

Mary had stopped, moving the sack of apples to her opposite shoulder. She glanced around at the disappearing twilight, still panting from their mad dash. “Maybe nothing will happen tonight, Jimmy.”

As the last echoing strike from the city’s clock was still fading in the chill air, they could hear a faint humming from the east, an ominous drone that slowly grew. Warning sirens wailed into the early night, foreshadowing the approaching death. “Hurry, Mary, run! We have to get to the schoolhouse!”

By the time the youngsters burst through the school’s front door, a pulsating thunder had enveloped the large, two-story building and the over two hundred tired and hungry people cowering there. Gasping, the siblings dashed into a classroom on the right, dropped their cache of apples on the floor, bent over with their hands on their knees and tried to catch their breath. Only an oil lamp illuminated the room as the twenty or so occupants finished darkening the windows. The biggest window was painted black, the smaller ones fitted with heavy curtains. With those shut and any illumination sealed in, an adult turned on the lights.

A man approached the two recovering children. His voice boomed, “If your parents were here, they’d skin you alive for being out so late!” His expression at once turned to one of regret. Jimmy and Mary’s parents had been killed the prior week, and their Uncle Benny—somewhere in the schoolhouse—had been trying to care for them as best he could. The rueful man ruffled the youngster’s hair gently and stared at the pair of apple-filled burlap bags. “You young scavengers have made a good haul on the apples. We should parcel them out; food has been scarce in this sector. Where did you find them?”

Jimmy, his face dirty and tear-streaked, spoke, his voice still hitching. “There’s an abandoned nursery with a small fruit orchard north of the park. A lot of the apples are still in pretty good shape, we—”

They froze as a deafening thunder enveloped their sanctuary, shaking it to its foundation. Glass shattered in the distance. Echoes of Hell continued to descend upon the building’s inhabitants. Screaming shrieks, great booming reverberations, the crump, crump, crump of explosions, and the roaring sounds of death overhead joined in an almost incomprehensible, mind-numbing cacophony.

People screamed and scurried for cover, hid under desks, chairs or cowered in corners as the glass from the windows blew in, and a section of the ceiling collapsed. Plaster and debris from the second floor plummeted down into their crumbling refuge. Electricity failed, and the lights went out as the building took another direct hit. The overwhelming din increased in intensity, building to an almost impossible crescendo. Jimmy and Mary huddled under a table stacked with clothing, their hands clamped over numbed ears as more of the ceiling collapsed.

After an eternity of deafening chaos, the horrendous sounds abated. An eerie rose-colored glow suffused their demolished room, the air thick with plaster dust. Amidst the moans and cries of the injured, brother and sister crawled side by side to a nearby window. A warm, smoke-clogged breeze was wafting through the glassless opening. Together, holding hands, the two gaped wide-eyed at the devastation before them.

Fire surrounded the majestic St. Paul’s Cathedral to the north, cloaking it in a burial shroud of smoke—the fires of Hades licking at the great English landmark. The entire horizon of the great city was aglow with scores of blazing fires. Buildings nearby were burning; a few near enough crackling flames could be heard. The sky above the blazes was an angry red, the cloud of smoke enveloping the city a dirty pink veil of cotton candy. Their world seemed illuminated by this hellish glow. The burning buildings along its shore highlighted the mighty Thames River to the west. Flashes of light and flame on the ground identified new explosions.

The pulsating, grinding drone grew once more. Jimmy and Mary covered their ears but couldn’t pull themselves away from the spectacle before them. They stared at the returning black smudges high in the air, lethal pinpoints of light exploding around the deadly shadows. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the ethereal phantoms retreated eastward before the onslaught of the city’s defenders in the air and from the ground.

With trembling hands, brother and sister plucked an apple from several that had rolled nearby and, with minds bordering on shock, bit into the meager fruit. Seconds later, they paused, their eyes widening, grim expressions blossoming into smiles of hope as they stared out at the domed St. Paul’s Cathedral in the distance. The autumn winds were dispelling the smoke concealing it, and the grand cathedral emerged from the fog like a giant ship, unscathed from the bombs and fires. A miracle revealed the hellfire brought to bay—a beacon of survival for their city and nation.

Mary, her eyes moist and wide, stared in wonder. Slowly, the thin line of her lips blossomed into a grin. “I get it now, Jimmy. It’s still there, the bombs couldn’t get it, and they can’t get us,” she whispered. She looked quickly at her brother. “Did I get it right?” she added.

Jimmy was still staring off into the distance, his mouth agape

In the eerie silence, a radio flickered to life. The broadcaster’s voice, scratchy with distance and strained from stress, rattled off an almost unintelligible report sprinkled with terms like the London Blitz, Battle of Britain, and German Luftwaffe. But Jimmy and Mary understood his final words clearly, “… but the spirit of the British people will never be broken.”

As the radio voice died away, a man crawled to their location through the gloom and settling dust. It was their Uncle Benny. “Are you two all right?” he asked, concern evident in his voice. “You should get away from that open window.”

The two children looked at each other, smiled, and stared out at the unscathed St. Paul’s Cathedral in the distance. “I don’t think the Germans will be back much anymore,” Jimmy said, turning toward his Uncle.

“Why do you say that?” Uncle Benny asked, bewildered.

“Because they’re going to lose the war,” Mary chimed in. Both children were beaming.

Uncle Benny smiled in confusion. “Let us pray it comes to pass. Where did you hear that?” he asked gently.

Both Jimmy and Mary pointed off in the distance at the great cathedral. Their voices grew solemn. “Granny Matilda and St Paul.”

 

 

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Impressum

Texte: John C. Laird
Bildmaterialien: Cover image by Alexandra Laird (http://gracefulwings.deviantart.com) with stock by Rafael Carrazco (http://rafaxx.deviantart.com/) and Melissa Offutt (http://melyssah6-stock.deviantart.com/)
Lektorat: Valerie Fee, Alexandra Laird
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.10.2012

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