Hero+Story+-+The+Shadow

Harry Evans Mr. Wright English 4B 21 November 2010

The Shadow

It was never the “Wild West” for ol’ George. In fact, he had secured his land out west to //escape// anything “Wild”. A veteran of the Civil War, George had set out towards Texas following its end, where he saw the promise of a new life. He and his faithful dog both survived the journey and settled down on a ranch in the western part of the state. George didn’t have neighbors. Even if he did, though, he wasn’t looking to make friends. He felt he had lived his life and that now he was merely closing it out. He didn’t know for sure his age, only how many years it had been since his wife died. After living on his ranch for eighteen years (Which meant it had been twenty-seven years since his wife died), George had just about forgotten what he himself or anyone else even looked like. He just woke up every day to milk the cows, feed the chickens, and sit on the porch and watch for coyotes. His dog Buck never left his side. He owned a lot of land. His arrival on the property had been before the mass migration west; George had been able to claim enough land that even he could not reach every corner of it every day to check on his fields. George didn’t appreciate anything that would throw of his typical day. These kinds of days would often leave him in a horrible state. One day he may wake up to slaughtered cows—the next, a barn fire. George was a tough man, though, so he always would resolve problems and move on. He was a man planning to go out on his own terms. One of these dreadful days culminated in something that ol’ George was never prepared for—his dog’s death. Buck had always seemed the companion that would never leave, the one who would help George through every day. George took it rather badly. This was a man who had cried once in his life, and that had been after coming home to a murderer over his dead wife. As George walked out to bury his dog, fat tears rolled down his weathered face. George knew where he had to bury the dog--his favorite field, out past the chickens before the forest. This was the only place one could find Buck besides George’s side. Boy, did that dog like to dig in that field. The dog never found anything nor caught anything. It just dug. George smiled as he thought back to his days in Virginia, when he had first gotten the dog. He had saved a boy after he had been bitten by a rattle snake. The boy had nearly died, but George had been able to rush him to the doctor in time for treatment. The boy and his family had been rotten, though, and they gave George a puppy for their reputation only. Last thing George heard about the family was that the boy had been questioned by lawmen on the death of his uncle. George sighed as he reached a good spot for the grave and broke ground. He knew he would need a good sized whole for his bear of a dog. He chuckled at this thought and dug deeper. He jammed his shovel downward when—//bang//. Thinking his ears had tricked him, he drove his shovel into the spot again—//bang//. This puzzled George, but was the first mystery he had to solve in years. He dug around the object and raised it out of the ground. He picked it up and examined it. It was a small black box, metal and very tough. He figured it was old work of Indians. He often found shards of pottery, arrowheads, and so on, but never something like this. He dropped the box to the ground and smashed it with the shovel. The shovel actually bounced back with such force it knocked George to his feet. He swore. At this, he realized it was the first time he had spoken aloud in weeks. He got to his feet and picked up the box. As he wiped the dirt off of its side, he revealed an inscription of some sort. To him it appeared to be English—DO NOT FEAR IT. As George tried to remember what fear felt like, he blacked out. As George woke up the next morning, he was trying to shake off a bad dream. He had had vivid dreams about burying his dog, finding a box… he had seen his wife’s death as though in playback. He walked through his front door and looked across the field. What he saw brought tears to his eyes. A grave lay in the field his dog had loved, with a headstone. George searched his mind for how it could have been built, but he had no idea. The dreams were real? How much of it was real? The box was not anywhere around the grave. George walked away from the field and to a spot he rarely went. There was a lake on the far end of his property. He rarely went through here, as he had dedicated it in a way to his wife. He strode towards the lake, thinking about seeing his reflection for the first time in years. He looked down in to the clear water and saw a strained man. As he examined his reflection, strange things began to happen. A shadow drifted across his face to begin with; George thought it was nothing more than something passing under the water. But his reflection began to change as he watched it. His body was changing, he could feel it and it was painful. He writhed around on the lakebed as he felt his body elongate and his shoulders widen. After a while the pain stopped. The man sat, panting, and rolled over once more to examine his reflection. He was looking face to face with his greatest fear at that moment—his wife’s killer. Once again, he fainted. George woke up on what he presumed was the next day to a horrible sight. A horrible storm was over head, and lightning was cracking down all around him. Thunder boomed and the rain was pounding him. He remembered all of the events before he passed out, and this time he knew they were real. Lightning struck the house first. A small explosion was what it was, really, as the house splintered and caught flame. The fields were beginning to go up when George decided to run. A strange thought for a seventy-some year old man, but he did not think twice. He tore away from the lake towards the forest, hopping his dog’s headstone on the way. He was feeling young, limber, and fast. He gave credit to adrenaline. He ran for hours, sprinted without stopping. He wanted to escape his old life and its most recent events. Something inside him had changed. He stopped after he reached a town. He supposed he had been running east by the sunset. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he dragged himself into the town. As he walked down the streets, he felt overwhelmed by the people there. After all, he hadn’t interacted with another human being since his wife’s death. He saw a sign reading “Saloon” and pushed through the swinging doors to escape the rush of people. It was worse inside. To George it seemed like there were people hanging from the ceilings it was so packed. All activity stopped as George entered. He shuffled over to the corner and sat down, dying for the babble to start up again. It didn’t. A man separated himself from the crowd and addressed George—“What’s yer business here, sir?” drawled the man. George simply looked at the man and squinted his eyes, trying to remember where he knew this man from. The man stepped closer, and put his hand to his revolver at his side. “I’m speakin’ to you.” George chuckled as he remembered where he knew the man from; he was the boy from the rotten family he had saved from the snake so many years before. Jack had been his name, and Jack came closer. He drew his pistol and pointed it at George. “One more chance. Talk.” It happened very quickly, as if instinctual, for George. He leapt to his feet, and he felt the pain once more. His body elongated, longer and longer. What was happening this time? George fell on his belly. He felt stupid, but nobody was laughing. The pain stopped. He went to move his leg. It rattled. His arm. There was nothing there. He whipped his head around towards his body and saw scales. He snapped his head forward everyone was screaming sprinting out of the bar. Jack remained before George, on his knees. He was crying. George burst through the side of the saloon and sped away. A snake. He had turned into a snake. He knew strange things were happening since the box, but he never imagined something like this. He went on for a while and realized he was running on legs. He had changed back. He did not wish to risk going into a town again after that incident, so he set up a makeshift camp like they used to in the military and laid down to sleep. Very telling dreams came to him that night. He dreamed of his wife’s death as he often did, but it went further. As his dreams continued, a shadow followed him wherever he went. George spent days doing nothing but thinking, running over events in his head, trying to make connections. As George woke up in a cold sweat one night after his dreams, he thought about fear. He knew he feared the man who killed his wife, but he did not know why. He obviously had pure hatred for the man, but the fear was strange. He realized he feared the man more than anything else in the world. This is when the extent of his powers hit him. He thought back to saving Jack from the snake—when asked why the boy didn’t run from the snake, he said he was petrified in fear. George knew at this point what he had been cursed with. He knew that he took the form of his enemies greatest fears. To learn how to control it, George knew he would have to go into towns once more. He remembered both times he changed that a shadow seemed to overcome him. If he could control the shadow, he would be fine. George set out to go a town far away from the previous one, continuing east. George didn’t know yet that he was walking right back into his life before the war. George spent days roaming through his old town without knowing he had even returned. This all changed the day he saw his wife’s killer. He could not restrain himself when he saw the man—he was young again. George tore toward the man, his fear of him gone. He wanted to change. He invited the shadow, waited for it to come. It did, but he felt no change. He didn’t have time to care. George tackled the man with ease. Once on top of him, he put his knees into the man’s chest and began beating him to a pulp. George left the man without knowing whether he was alive or dead. It did not matter any longer. What gave George the deepest satisfaction was what he realized once he had fully mastered his powers. Once he sees the shadow, he has become the person’s greatest fear. This means that George had taken the form of the killer’s greatest fear—but it had been himself. There were no arrests made, though George was known to be the one to have done it. The killer had terrorized the town for years, he had done a public service. From this point forward, George truly embraced who he was. The fact that his “power” had gotten him his revenge made George want to experiment even more. He decided to live in his old town just like that. People did not fear him, but they feared the shadow. George vowed that he would keep the town and its surrounding areas safe until he could make peace with himself and move on. Some “Wild West” it was for him.