I could tell you this story: I was born one sunny October day. I weighed ten pounds and had a full head of hair. But this isn't a story it's a memoir, so that isn't it. This is: The first thing I remember was the man in my hallway. I was two maybe three when I started talking to him. He'd appear in the hall between my room and my parents. I called him Shango. I don't know what it means but that's what he told me in my head. And that's what I called the dark shadow of a man. Shango was close to seven foot and that's all I remember is his height. He'd tell me secrets and tricks to his world. A way to see my relatives anytime and dream wonderful things I could control.
When I was five I run down the stairs into the basement on chubby legs. Tristan promised me we could build a fort. He commands me to go get the blankets out of the old wood closet. I insist there aren't blankets in there but I don't want to argue with my brother. He might be my age yet he's bigger than me. So I walk tentatively through the basement to the back corner. I stand on tiptoes so I can flip on the light when the door slams shut. I hear the dead bolt slide from the outside and dread fills me. I see Shango in the corner. Something is off. No, it's not that he's wearing the outline of a fedora. It's the fact he's putting images in my head. Images of rooms full of blood and people getting tortured. I start to scream out loud, banging my small fists on the wall. The images continue in a gruesome slideshow. One after the other, mostly of my family.
Age six winter The leaves crunched under my furry boots as I followed Tristan and Kylee to the creek. Shango still followed me on occasion and this was one of them. Photographs as puppies and kittens replaced "I'm sorry's". I had blocked him out for two years. Two long miserable years. Little gifts of drawings showed up in my desk drawers. I started to refuse to sleep with my door closed. I lost sleep. At six, I looked like a tired old man. Tristan suddenly stops and so does Kylee. We had reached our destination, the randomly placed cement stairs with a chipped railing. We ran down it that day, desperate to get to the creek before Derek and Nick. We wanted a good fort on the frozen creek that day. We were gonna have our winter stick wars before the snow started to stick. I froze in place on the bridge. Shango had sent me a word. A single word. That word will haunt my brain forever. Eleven. Yes, his words branded 11 into my head. Forever. When I close my eyes I still see it.