Last week, my husband killed himself. But I know the truth; it wasn’t his fault. The blame lies with the darkness that’s been following him for months.
I wish I could say there was a specific event that caused this force to attach itself to my husband, but I can’t. It just appeared one day. I saw it out of the corner of my eye when Michael came home from work; a dark shapeless mist trailing behind him like a warped shadow. When I looked again it was gone. I assumed it was a trick of the light or some smoke that got in my eye and continued cooking dinner.
Over the next few days, I’d occasionally see a wisp of the indistinct shadow trailing behind Michael but it would disappear as quick as I could focus on it. I started noticing subtle changes in his behavior, minor things that were easy to overlook if you didn’t know him well: he was much less talkative, would not finish his plate when I made his favorite foods for dinner, and started taking long afternoon naps on the weekends instead of meeting with friends and family. When I asked him about it, he said he was just stressed from work. He had never lied to me before, so I believed him.
Things took a turn for the worse when Michael lost his job a few weeks later. The darkness seemed to feed on his stress; it was closer to him, darker and less opaque. I still only saw glimpses of it, but I saw it more often. I tried to talk to Michael about the dark shadow, but it only caused him to become angry and defensive. He accused me of not being understanding; this was a stressful time for him and I shouldn’t be adding to it. He blamed what I was seeing on my pregnancy hormones and an overactive imagination. Michael and I hardly ever fought, and I was hurt that he seemed to pick a fight when I was so worried about him.
After our argument, I saw the shadow constantly and watched it slowly take form. It almost looked like a man following him everywhere he went. It started leaning toward Michael’s ear, as if it were whispering to him. Michael never acknowledged the shadow, but I could see his demeanor change when it happened. That thing would whisper to him and Michael would become irritable, getting angry at the slightest provocation. I began to feel as if I were walking on eggshells when the shadow was near him, constantly worried anything I did would set him off.
I was terrified to bring up my concerns with Michael again, the darkness had grown stronger after the last time and I didn’t want to give it any more power. I tried to hear what it was whispering in his ear, but it was too quiet. All I could see were the effects its whispering had on Michael. He started to withdraw from me more. He quit coming with me to my doctor’s appointments and would sit in his office alone, with only the whispers of an evil shadow to keep him company.
When we’d lay in bed at night, I could just barely make out the shape of the shadow standing over Michael. He started sleeping less and less as time went on. Things that used to bring him happiness, had no effect on him since the shadow joined him. He quit returning phone calls from friends and colleagues and gave up all hope of finding another job.
Finally, I had reached a breaking point. I was due to deliver in a week and couldn’t stand the thought of this shadow having access to our daughter through my husband. I reached out to his mother to tell her my concerns, but she brushed them off as stress from the combination of unemployment and impending parenthood. She assured me that once our daughter was here and he’d found a new job, Michael would be back to his old self in no time. If I had known that she would call him, I would not have mentioned anything to her.
He took the phone call from his mother badly, to say the least. He was very angry at me for talking to his mother about things he said weren’t real problems. Once again, he said he was just stressed and claimed that I was being selfish by adding to it and involving his mother. His shadow grew while we fought, it was now much taller than him and looked solid. After our fight, he said he needed time to think and stormed off, his darkness leading the way. Not long after he left, my water broke.
