Shadows

 

Shadows

Noel Laflin

10-08-24

I come across old photos in my phone that I just never have the heart to delete. I guess we all do. Consequently, every picture has a story, otherwise, why would we hang on to them so doggedly?

Case in point with this one here:

Years after I had locked a childhood chum inside an old dilapidated little family mausoleum one afternoon (fear not, he escaped a moment later, caught me as I tried to scale the cemetery wall, and proceeded to beat some sense into me), I returned to the scene of the crime to take a picture of its interior.

The original break-in (hey, someone forgot to lock up one day - thus, not a crime for young boys wanting to explore forbidden realms), took place over sixty years ago.

The photo here was then taken thirty years later - as the boys from the previous adventure didn't own cameras back then.

And on the day I explored once again (no childhood chum in sight), I noted that the old padlock to the rusty iron grate was firmly in place, too.

Ghosts from the past must have seen me coming and saw to it that things were more securely in place, apparently, especially the lock. So, I just shot a frame from between the bars placating those pesky, protective spirits.

The old family haunt would be cleaned out (Mary kidnapped - tossed away, no doubt), the original brick interior replastered over, the exterior spiffed-upped, a broken cross atop the ancient little structure removed - oh, heck, just made to look too nice a year later, so I am happy to remember it here as it once was - beautifully creepy, even in daylight, over a century in the making.

And no beating while trying to scale a wall happened afterwards either.

Some tradeoffs in life are worthwhile, I suppose.

"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed."

Robert Louis Stevenson