Shadowed Soul Read online

  Shadowed Soul

  Shadowed Soul is a fiction novel about bi-polar Thomas Milton, as he struggles to rebuild his life with the aid of his blind wife’s seeing-eye dog, Bailey. The compelling drama follows Thomas and his wife, Beth, as they embrace and endure the birth of their firstborn through the holiday season in New York City. Fears and anxieties that plague Thomas are personified in the form of the Shadowed Soul a demonic spectre who stalks the protagonist’s every move. As his manic-depression escalates, his expectation for more problems is answered in abundance. His life goes from great to bad to worse. With the unconditional love of watchful Bailey, Thomas grapples with seemingly insurmountable challenges as he chooses to rebuild his shattered life.

  Much of the journey through manic-depression is autobiographical, with the exception of the main character’s online pornography addiction and the demise of certain relatives. Set in the present, author John M. Spagnoli’s intention is to depict clinical depression in a way that provides a clear road map to leading a full life.

  Shadowed Soul

  by John M. Spagnoli

  with Stephen McCallum

  edited by G.G. Garth

  cover art by wordpressmerlin.com

  Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved by John M. Spagnoli

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  facebook.com/theshadowedsoul

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  Dedicated to my only love and my strength, Kami

  CHAPTER ONE

  Numb, my vision blurred over the brown liquid in my polystyrene cup, barely registering the machine’s death rattle as it spewed a thin fluid somebody had decreed could be sold as fair trade Sumatran dark roast. My twisted heart writhed deep within the recesses of my chest. What was I doing here?

  I didn’t even want coffee. All I wanted was to get the hell out of this hospital. Rancorous medicinal smells, oppressive heat, the sounds of sickness whipped me like acid rain and eroded my façade of calm. How had I held it together for this eternity? In the grim reality of my life it had been less than a day. I glanced to my left at the hospital map that tricked visitors to enter the labyrinthine maze of antiseptic death. The EXIT sign was a temptress beckoning me to betray my wife who lay moaning in pain upstairs in the maternity ward.

  Walls too close, ceilings too low, my hell: A cement cube where people came to die slowly. Those who grafted themselves onto life were only given a brief reprieve from the savaging that the act of simply living visited upon each human being crawling and clawing aimlessly across the crust of this polluted and hateful planet, our home. If I ran now I could disappear into the night. The world would wash over me, beach flotsam. I could be consumed, hidden from view and alone. At least then my arsenal of ball-and-chain would not be dragging down those who had somehow managed to find shards of charisma reflecting light inside of me. Why had Beth chosen to love me?

  Jesus, I just wanted to go. This was far too much to deal with. The one person in the world who had chosen me was transformed by pain in a hospital bed, lost to me within the arduous labor of our firstborn. If it went wrong then whom would I have? Who would have me? My family was nothing more than a warring tribe of pernicious memories, uncaring attitudes punching and kicking me for as long as I could remember. If Beth died, I would have nothing. I would be nothing. What terrified me more was the pregnancy. If the pregnancy were a success and our baby were born, then I had a life of stability and love to provide. I would never be able to do that. I would become a stranger whom my child resented, then hated because of my fears. This child would be born into a world of abuse and imprisonment, and when the small soul would look to this father, a weak, hateful coward would stare back vacantly. Even the birth of this new light was fraught with pain, steeped in a cocktail of aggressive chemicals. Doctors had elected to induce Beth not long after she had arrived on the ward. Our baby was overdue by two weeks. Beth’s muscles beat and threshed to eject the new life from her loins. As if in retaliation, our child had struggled to remain in the downy haven of Beth’s womb. Rejecting this world, the new soul had sensed a specter waited: A weak father. This new life would have an obligation of love, as I had to my mother despite her deliberate distance toward me. My mother’s brittle emotions were like a phalanx of steel pikes that forever obscured me reaching the damaged spirit inside her. I felt more an unfortunate nuisance to her than a son. Yet biology and society still dictated that I should love her. And in my own, pathetic way, I did. Love and hate interlaced spiraling threads so refined they became one emotion. I still hated her. I knew I would never be able to bear such hatred seeping out at me from my child.

  While my spawn struggled to resist entry into life, as if prescient of the vacuous world that waited it, a nurse had urged me to leave the room.

  “Only for a short time,” said the nurse. “While the anesthesiologist administers the epidural to your wife’s spinal cord, you mustn’t be present.”

  “I should be here,” I protested abruptly.

  “Sir, the anesthesiologist requires complete stillness to locate the nerve,” explained the nurse patiently. “Let me show you where the gourmet coffee machine is.” She ushered me by the arm. It would take a bit of time for the anesthesia to numb Beth’s labor pains from the waist down. I stood stock still against her gentle urging. The nurse looked to Beth for help.

  “Thomas, listen to me, baby,” said Beth, hair sweat-plastered to her forehead. Even though her face was drawn in pain, her brown eyes were full of love and concern for me. She had held her hand out and I had grasped it. “I’ll be fine for ten minutes or twenty, or as long as you need. Go get a coffee or a snack for yourself, honey.”

  “You sure, Beth?” I asked, hiding my relief. She smiled and squeezed my hand.

  “Machine’s just down the hall,” assured Beth. “When I need you the nurse will get you. What you need now, baby, is a break from this. I love you. Go!” Beth heaved to another involuntary surge of pain. That is why I was here; I was married to an amazing woman whom I loved beyond my imagination, a woman who, even in labor, thought of what was going to make me more at ease about this process of becoming parents.

  So, I had left for coffee. Now, if I really left, just ran the few flights down and out into eternity, then they would hate me. But my child would never have to suffer that same lifetime of disappointment that I had. It would be better to bolt now, hide and just-- Just what?

  A gasp yanked my chest open and my heart seemed to expand and bloat until it could no longer fit within the confines of my ribs. I needed to sit down but I needed to flee and I needed to get back to the ward. What if Beth and the baby were already lost? Dead. Or, what if they were thriving? I was unfit to help either of them. I didn’t deserve them.

  Beth, God I loved her but she deserved someone who could look after her and care for her, not a simpering child in an adult body. She was so beautiful; finding someone better than me would not be difficult for her.

  I stared at my coffee cup as though it was an alien artifact. The last thing I needed was coffee. Why was I here? Beth loved me. She was an island of warmth and calm. Without her I would be forever adrift. My strengths existed because she saw them in me. I would never run, not from her, not from our child.

  Our child. The thought was a sinewy knot in my gut. Nausea invaded me. Wet dots beaded my face and torso till my armpits reeked of raw fear. The cup of coffee, still nested snugly in the dispensing hatch of the vending machine, was no longer a refuge. Adrenalin coursed through me. I closed my eyes, allowing myself deep, steady breaths as I tried to fight back the pervading feeling that I might vomit.

  From the room at the end of the corridor I heard my wife heave in pain: Her first pitocin spasm before the narcotic kick
ed in to deaden the lower half of her body; the epidural was in process. I could not move from my position at the coffee machine. The raw pain in Beth’s voice threw my thoughts back to our first visit to the emergency room, nine months previously.

  At that time, we were still living in the apartment in the city. I had been in a dead sleep. Beth cried out and I grudgingly awakened, and foraged for her hand. She clutched at her side, her face painted with pain and fear. My thoughts were clouded and my panic welled; the woman I loved was in pain. At that moment, I was feeling stronger than I had in a while and as I held her I tried to formulate a plan of action. It was around four-thirty in the morning and even though the bedroom window was open there were hardly any sounds coming from the canyon cityscape outside. As Beth yelped again I imagined the sound echoing through the buildings outside and fading to nothing as it was swallowed by a surreal and uncaring world. I did care.

  “Where does it hurt honey?” I soothed, my voice cracking from lack of sleep. Functioning on two hours per night for the past week, I needed to be up early to turn in a graduate school paper. Though I focused on my wife’s pain there was a cold indifference in me I was unable to shake.

  “My side, Thomas, oh, God, it’s like I’ve been stabbed,” cried Beth, her eyes full of plaintive hope implored me to help her. Her body trembled as another spasm of pain burned through her. She needed me. Though life had prevented me being of use to anyone on many occasions tonight I would be. I had to. I loved her.

  “I can call the hospital,” I suggested, as her face twitched with reluctance.

  “Hate hospitals,” groaned Beth, doubled over.

  “I’ll search the internet,” I said. “Symptoms?” She nodded and tried to smile but pain held her hostage.

  “It’s like giant needles in my side, Thomas,” gasped Beth. “Never had this before!”

  My laptop was next to the bed so I did not have to get up, not that getting up should have been an issue, given Beth’s condition. I rarely kept the computer out, but because of my late night finishing my paper I had not been motivated to lock it in the cupboard. Our neighborhood got robbed a lot, thus the lock-down. As I searched the internet Beth kept her pain as dignified as she was able. Instinctively, she knew I could not focus if too many distractions nagged at me. The first waves of panic lapped at my feet; no matter what combination of words I input, I was presented with indecipherable options. A cursory glance indicated a life-threatening ailment.

  “So many damned choices!” I hissed at the computer. Beth nodded her breathing thick in the crepuscular light.

  “Keep looking, Thomas!” Beth gasped again, wincing with each movement. “I’m calling my mom.”

  I chucked a resentful glance at Beth and immediately regretted it. Never having had a mother who cared if I needed help, my reflex was inanely childish. And I was hurt that my computer help was not sufficient for Beth, even though I had been torn from my short sleep. Dragging my fractured thought processes back together I continued to search online, more than anything to mask my shame. Rows and rows of sites increased my anxiety. Excluded from Beth’s phone call with her mother, my resentment blossomed like nightshade. The bastard demon that stalked my every move expanded around me.

  “She’s got a mother who cares and you don’t, Thomas,” reminded my demon as he breathed spittle on my neck and scratched at my shadow. In an instant my mood had worsened. I was aware of the murmur of Beth’s voice but not the immediacy of her words when she hung up with her mother.

  “Didn’t you hear me, Thomas?” wheezed Beth. My wife clutched at my arm unexpectedly giving me a snap of static. “Mom says I need to go to the hospital! Now!”

  I blinked a few times to coalesce my attention away from the seething mockery that was my distorted conscience. Beth cried out again, more intensely this time from the delivery room at the hospital. The epidural was in full swing, and although the morphine softened the pain from the waist down, the pitocin was too aggressive for her organs to handle.

  “Do you want to run away now, Thomas?” asked the demon, curling his talons around my brow and throat. I realized I was back in the maternity wing of the hospital. Do I stay and become a father? “Run away now, Thomas. Last chance!” I wiped his saliva off my ear and neck as the Shadowed Soul clung to the back of my head.

  My father had never been there for me; I had no training whatsoever as a dad.

  “Piss off,” I whispered at the demon. “You’re nothing but a shadow of my soul.”

  “But, Thomasssss!” whined the demon malevolently. “I’m as real as you.”

  I brushed him off and sprinted down the hall toward the delivery room, the noxious Sumatran in the dispenser forgotten. My feet grew larger and slower and my heart felt gargantuan as it beat faster. My clawed phantom capered at the periphery of my vision, along the seam between ceiling and wall. I cursed him and myself. I would not abandon my wife and child. I might be a man whom people found easy to hate, God knows I detested myself, but deep inside, I still had a spark of the person I was once born to be. At times I felt that bright soul had been bound and gagged, and struggled to break free so that he could free me from my demonic Shadowed Soul. Remaining helplessly mute, the darker aspects of me ran roughshod over my joy. I had lost hope that the happy boy I once was would ever again find his way back through the damning maze and into the light. I would forever remain a speechless child under the control of the mad emperor who squired my every move. Perhaps the birth of my own child would tip the scales toward fresh-faced freedom.

  Waiving urgently, a nurse came at me in the hallway from the delivery room.

  “This way, please, Mr. Mitchell! Your wife and child need you now.” A node of hope and fear, I followed the nurse through gelatinous haze toward Beth’s room.

  Nine months ago, Beth was still in extreme pain when we reached the emergency room. Her face took on a grey hue as we had filled in the endless paper work. She was brave; her life had given her a resolve that would shame many others. In contrast to the diaphanous psychological world in which I perpetually lost my way, my darling wife was rooted in a world of perpetual darkness. Legally blind, Beth had started losing her eyesight at age seven. At first it had been one eye. She learned to cope and was reasonably functional. The moment she had adjusted, fate, being the psychotic clown that it is, decided that it would be funny to take Beth’s other eye, too. She still saw a little, but she described her vision as being like the echo of a half forgotten dream. Shapes moved and occasional colors registered. As she grew older her body had been plagued by a succession of illnesses that had weakened her physical form but had strengthened her tenacity.

  Enduring the severe pain in her side, by eight in the morning, Beth was exhausted from the battery of tests by a clockwork parade of medical professionals. I marveled at her fortitude. She held my hand and I felt a rush of love surge through my tired frame. Beth was my anchor.

  “I’ll be fine Thomas,” assured Beth, smiling wanly at me, and I managed to smile back. “I’m sure it’s nothing, okay, baby. We’ll be fine.”

  “You’re right,” I croaked in reply, my mouth and throat dry with the heat of the hospital and my medication. The prescription I took to prevent me from being swallowed by the slavering demon often paled in its effectiveness when my anxiety mushroomed under extreme stress. Beth squeezed my hand; despite her pain, she leaned forward to kiss me lightly on the cheek.

  Beth’s mom had not been able to reach the hospital yet.

  “Gridlock in New York. She’ll be here soon,” I reassured Beth. It was terrifying to me how people could live in the same city yet find it impossible to travel across it quickly. The metropolitan area was designed like arteries and veins that thread through the body. But the madness of human design against natural design meant that to travel from one artery to another you had to go the least direct route possible. Or, walk.

  “Flying from out of state would be quicker than driving from her place,” I remarked. Beth wanted her mom
here. My belligerent inner-child churned. “If it was my mom then I’d assume she went late night shopping at Macy’s, instead. To calm her nerves, you know?” Beth laughed a little and that made me smile. “Unlike my mother, your mom loves you. She’s coming. She’ll show.”

  “I know, Thomas,” said Beth, softly placing her head on my shoulder. “It’s late out there. I’m worried about her. My mom’s not a young woman anymore.”

  “Dorothy’s tough,” I assured Beth, smoothing her hair with my free hand. “I’d be more worried about anybody that looked at her the wrong way.”

  Even though I couldn’t see Beth’s face I knew she was smiling and this was enough to calm me. She leaned against me for nearly thirty minutes and fell asleep. Every so often her body would spasm in pain.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Milton?” inquired a tall, harried woman in a white coat. “I’m Dr. Matthews. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, my voice trembling a little as I spoke.

  “We’ll discuss it in the treatment room,” said Dr. Matthews. The doctor’s reassuring aura warmed me; though tired she still exuded a serenity I felt was tangible. “This way.”

  She strode the long hall, pausing briefly as she realized I was guiding Beth through a new environment. The doctor showed no impatience or embarrassment, she simply raised her eyebrows and smiled a little.

  “Are you okay there?” asked Dr. Matthews.

  “Yeah, we’re fine, Doctor, thank you,” answered Beth with her customary grace. Dr. Matthews nodded. Walking ahead she opened a door and allowed us to enter first. The room was small but functional. With space at a premium in this city the room was surprisingly welcoming and clean. We sat down and waited as Dr. Matthews looked at a chart on her desk.

  “What’s wrong with me, doctor?” asked Beth. She had never been one to hide from the truth.