100TWC - Day 75: Shadows

Geoff, Randolph and Narsi sat staring at each other through the blue fug that filled Nightowls Den. It was a garden shed really, but to them it was their den. A secret place for secret things. Geoff passed the spliff to Rand.

"Are we gonna wait all day?"
"They'll be here. Chill."
"Who are we waiting for?" asked Narsi, who had only moved to the street the week before and not yet experienced a full meeting of the Nightowls.
Rand exhaled, adding another plume to the thick atmosphere in the den. "Pete said he wouldn't be here for the tales. He's coming across later. But Ned should be here by now."

The shed door opened as Rand finished speaking and Ned entered.

"Sorry. Sorry. Mum had me putting ALL the groceries away before I could get a pass," he said. He fell into a corner of their broken down sofa and let out a sigh of total satisfaction and relaxation. "But I'm here now, and I need a pull."

He held out his hand, and Rand passed over the joint.

"Is it story time?" he said before taking a massive toke.
"Yeah. Let's make it a good one. It's Narsi's first time. This is Narsi, by the way.

Ned waved, still holding his breath. Narsi smiled and turned to Geoff. "You've not said much about these tales," he began.
Geoff interrupted him. "Telling tales about the tales is verboten," he wagged his finger. "You have to hear the tale to get the full effect. Anything else violates the 'Owls code."
"Whose turn is it?" asked Rand.
"Mine," gasped Ned, exhaling at last.
"That's why we were waiting," Geoff explained to Narsi. "We take it in turns."
Rand stood to draw the blackout blinds on the two small windows while Geoff lit a single tea-light and set it on the small table in the centre of the floor. Drafts from under the door set the light flickering. Shadows danced around the pine walls.

"Perfect lighting for the story I'm about to tell you," Ned began, lowering his voice and adopting a traditional Vincent Price graveyard tone, "because it is about shadows."

The others settled themselves into their seats. Rand extinguished the weed.

"Since a time before time," Ned went on, "our earliest forebears have known that shadows are not what they seem to be. It's true that demons and ghouls seek out dark places. They can often be found lurking in shadows and corners. But those shadows in which they hide are static. They are cast by buildings, or artefacts. Things that have never lived or walked the Earth. They are merely the absence of light. Umbra and penumbra are they, and they hold no terrors of themselves, only by association with the things that hide within them."

Another light breath of wind under the door made the tea light gutter once again. A tree branch scraped against the wall outside. Everyone jumped.

"What our forebears knew," said Ned, warming to his story, "but which has passed out of memory for all but the fewest scholars of the arcana, is that there exist a race of beings with souls blacker than the blackest night. In ancient times they were named the Umbrae, and it is only in relatively recent times that they have given their name to the ordinary shadows that we see around us today."

With a dramatic flourish, Ned swept his hand around the interior, indicating the quivering shadows from the tea light.

"The Umbrae, whose name used to strike dread at its very utterance, do not hide in shadows. They inhabit them. They take them over. These darkest of the spirits from the underworld can use the shadows of living creatures to wield unspeakable evil, wresting control of them from their owners to enter our world for their own ends. Once inside the shadow of a man, they can go wherever he goes, hear whatever he is listening to, influence his mind and those of his friends, with only one purpose in their stygian souls: to perform evil works. To maim and wound, kill and torture, fetch the horrors of the deep and visit them on our world, when we least expect it, and in ways it is impossible to defend against.

"Who would believe us? Children cower in their beds at the shadows in their rooms--"

The door of the shed burst open. Haloed by the bright orange light of the setting sun which streamed across the garden from the West,  Pete stood in the doorway, his arms braced against the door posts, his baseball cap twisted sideways on his head.

"So, are we staying here or shall we go shoot some pool?"

The others didn't move. They were staring in transfixed terror at the floor. Pete was standing completely still, but on the smooth wooden boards of the shed floor, his shadow was moving.