The Shadow People

by Joe Clifford

  I justified my reversal and decision to stay, assuring myself this was the prudent response. I didn’t have anywhere to go, or how to get there from a truck stop motel, several states over, at this godforsaken hour. I couldn’t leave a sick old man alone. Francis was a determined, gruff old-timer. He’d find his way with or without me. The truth was, in that moment, I couldn’t be alone.

  Checking in, I’d seen a computer in the lobby. I returned there, pushing open the door and making for the desktop PC.

  The clerk, balding, covered in skin tags, and too young to have such loose skin, popped his head out. “What are you doing?”

  “I was going to use the computer.”

  He scratched his head. “Do you know what time it is? Lobby’s closed, man.”

  “We checked in fifteen minutes ago.”

  “You can check in—”

  “But you can never leave?”

  He didn’t laugh, not getting the Eagles reference and what I thought was solid B-material.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s four a.m.,” he said.

  Glancing at the clock, I saw he wasn’t lying. Another hour lost.

  “Make it quick,” he said, before scurrying behind the walls, seeking solace with the other mole people.

  I shook the mouse. Took ages before a soft haze began crackling, bringing the dust-covered monitor to life.

  Fingers poised on keys, I pulled up a browser and sat there, not typing anything. As soon as I did, my world would forever change. Right now, I was Schrödinger’s Orphan. Until I put my parents’ names in that engine, both realities were true: the one I’d always known, Brandon Cossey, regular guy who’d overcome a hard start to make something of himself…and Brandon Cossey, former mental patient whose father had brutally murdered his mother; a young man whose grip on reality hung by the most tenuous of threads. And I wanted it to stay that way, keeping both possibilities open. I didn’t want to lie to myself in the long run. In the interim, however, I embraced the option—keep lying to myself, defrauding, being a fake, if only for the sake of self-preservation and convenience. I could coast a long way on plausible deniability.

  The moment I acknowledged the truth, whatever I discovered, I would be altered forever.

  My fingers went to work. Mom and Dad. The year I turned five. The name of the town and alleged crime. I typed in the information, pulling back enough to read.

  And, of course, there was nothing.

  I closed the tab, shut off the monitor, and left, unsure how relieved I should be. Nothing had changed. But nothing would be the same.

  I didn’t return to my room right away. There was a lot next door, which was filled with dirt and sections of concrete tubing, Bobcat construction machines. In a couple hours, men would trudge out in their jackhammering hardhats, doing whatever men like that did. I couldn’t imagine such a life. I had nothing against manual labor, getting my hands dirty with elbow grease for a weekend project. But nine to five, for fifty years? Sounded like prison to me.

  Turning back toward the lobby, I regretted missed opportunities. Even if I didn’t want to trace my crooked family tree, I could’ve sent an email to Sam or Mrs. Balfour, perhaps made a video call, but it was the middle of the night. That wasn’t why I left so fast. I didn’t want to be anywhere near an information portal. I didn’t want to poke, prod, dig deeper. I kept thinking about what Francis said, about how I’d come to be sheltered. My violent origins, which, if true, meant I had that sickness in me. If it were true. And I’d just proven it wasn’t. How had I let Francis plant that seed? How had he been able to make me walk to a computer and type in that bullshit? Yet I’d done it, allowing images to wedge themselves in my head, taking firm root, growing like a fungus or stubborn mold. I saw how easy that had been. You read about quack psychiatrists implanting false memories and can’t imagine anyone being that susceptible. And those are trained professionals. An admitted schizophrenic off his medications had managed the trick with me.

  I felt torn in two, an abused kid who creates alterative personalities to shield himself from factual horrors, saddles himself with dissociative identity disorder to protect a fragile psyche.

  Yes, indeed, there existed two Brandon Cosseys.

  That first Brandon had been gone so long, replaced so well, I’d forgotten he even existed.

  Now I could feel his wanting to come back and be relevant again. He was knocking at my door.

  I didn’t want him anywhere near me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The following morning, we were back on the road, fueled up, which included caffeine, gasoline, and an assortment of unhealthy snacks procured from the Food Mart. Francis lit a smoke. The window was unrolled but the acrid chemicals drifted over.

  “Do you gotta smoke?” I was trying to eat a cinnamon bun that came from cellophane, already an unappetizing undertaking.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a habit.”

  Shades of green whizzed by, all the colors from art class on a palette, emerald, olive, parakeet, and sage, one blending into the next, sometimes seamless, other times jarring, punctuated by brief flashes of chartreuse.

  I’d made peace with last night, accepting any “revelation” adhered to the Francis Factor. Whenever the old man spoke, you had to divide by four. Maybe he had been around when I younger. Something about him did feel familiar. As such, I wanted to know more about my childhood, more about when Mrs. Balfour brought me home, the particulars I’d missed. But it would come at a price.

  That image I had of an old man, my grandfather, driving me through town in a convertible, offset against postcard summer days with azure skies, orange sunshine, and wispy cotton clouds? It was all I had, the one pleasant memory of my lousy early years. I didn’t want to disturb it. Once I started asking Francis questions—questions meant for Mrs. Balfour—I’d shatter the illusion.

  Instead, I distracted myself with the practical. We were on a mission after all.

  “How do you plan on tracing Jacob’s final movements?”

  Francis whipped the LoJack certificate from his breast pocket, the one he’d bought off that drug addict who sold Jacob the car.

  “Why would that guy even put a security system in his car? He was too poor.”

  “Tweakers are thieves. Because of that, they think everyone else is too. It’s how thieves think. Like cheaters. You cheat, you believe everyone is a cheater. Don’t ever date a cheater. Tweakers? The first money they invest in is an anti-theft tracker.”

  “I still don’t understand all those cars—”

  “It’s a scam,” Francis said.

  “What is?”

  “Guy sells a car, keeps the spare key. Runs the LoJack, then steals the car back.”

  “Why didn’t he steal back Jacob’s?”

  “He would’ve. Might’ve tried. Jacob was dead a couple days later.”

  I didn’t believe it, flicking a finger at the LoJack certificate. “How do you know he even gave you the real deal?”

  “Because he knows it’s useless. If he called to report the car stolen, whatever he said to have them trace the chip, he would’ve learned the car was impounded. Meaning the LoJack won’t do him any good. It’s scrap paper.”

  “Two hundred bucks for scrap paper?”

  “Scrap paper for him,” Francis said. “For us, it’s a tracking system. After Wroughton, Jacob drove to Dearborn, where he tried crossing into Canada. Turned down by Customs, he drove straight to a gas station in Minnesota and left the car there.”

  “He left his car at a gas station?” I side-eyed Francis. “You don’t even use computers. You don’t have a phone. How are you getting this information?”

  “Sit back and relax. Go to sleep. You were out late last night.”

  I wondered if he knew where I’d gone, that I was in the motel lobby, checking on my parents. Did he think I’d learned the truth, knew for certain he was lying?

  �
�Dream of that girlfriend of yours,” Francis said.

  “She’s not my girl—”

  “Then don’t dream. Just shut up. You’re giving me a headache.”

  Francis was right. I hadn’t slept much the night before. By the time I made it back to the motel room it had been five a.m. A hint of day breaking, pink bubble swelling with the red balloon rising on the deep purple horizon.

  Leaning my head against the cool glass of the window, I felt ensconced by peace. Like returning to a warm house with a fire burning after a long day in the snowy cold.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Francis, death grip on my shoulder, shaking me. “Wake up, boy,” Francis said, squeezing. “We’re here.”

  I gazed up, drowsy, the disorientation overpowering.

  Bright white-and-yellow lights poured through the windshield. Blazing hot neon. It was dark, night. We sat parked at a service station offering twenty-four-hour towing, as evidenced by the blistering outline of a red tow truck with “24/7/365.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Black Grove, Minnesota.”

  I peered through the windshield, reading the name. Rock Something. Or Something Rock. Never mind glasses, trying to read anything after I woke up? Took twenty minutes until that skill returned, my eyes a blurry mess.

  “How long was I asleep?” I asked.

  “Since we left the motel,” Francis said. “Eight hours, ten hours ago. You know you talk in your sleep?”

  “No. What did I say?”

  “Gibberish.” Francis shook his head. “You said ‘climb the hill’ at one point.” He lit a cigarette. “Couldn’t make out the rest.”

  I wasn’t lamenting missing Chicago traffic or having been denied the scenic views and malodorous aromas of the farms and factories of Wisconsin. Just surprised I’d knocked out so long.

  Francis gestured with the lit cigarette. “The GPS from the car says this’s the car’s final destination.”

  “What do you know about GPS?”

  “Because I’m old, what, I don’t understand anything invented in the last thirty years? I don’t use the internet because the government clocks and catalogues everything you search. That’s not paranoia. That’s reality. You ever make a video call? Your face is now stored in a database, along with the rest of the criminals, and someday, when they want to find you—and they will—you won’t be able to walk two feet down a street.”

  Francis dropped the LoJack certificate on the cracked vinyl seat and climbed out of the car. A man dressed in gray overalls smeared with oil, grease, and gunk stepped out of the garage, locking us in a dead-eyed bovine stare. Walking over, the man rolled a dirty rag in his hands but didn’t extend one to shake.

  “I help you?” The man cast his eyes between Francis and me. I had nothing to add. What a strange sight it must’ve been, a well-dressed college student such as I and out-of-time greaser Francis.

  The two men headed toward the garage. No motion was made for me to follow. Fine. I was waist deep in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, at a grubby gas station, on the trail of a dead friend and trying to solve an impossible riddle. I could use the respite.

  Glancing up at the moon, I thought about Sam, how wherever she was the same moon shone down on her, which I knew was from a song I’d heard but I couldn’t remember the name. She was safe though; I knew it in my heart. Francis was right about that at least. Sam had never been in danger. So why had they told me she was? More important: who were “they”? The same men attempting to stuff Francis in a trunk? The same men who killed Jacob? Or were there others in the dark I knew nothing about?

  Francis emerged from the shadows.

  “Let’s go,” he said, sliding in the driver’s seat.

  “Was Jacob here?” I asked as he backed up without an answer, squealing into the road, peeling out, no side cameras to assist with navigation. He burned rubber like an angsty teenager.

  He didn’t respond to my question, checking his mirrors.

  “Francis?”

  “Yeah, he was there.”

  I could see Francis running over the story in his head, as if it didn’t make sense. If it didn’t make sense to Francis—the man scaled walls of improbability quicker than Spider-Man—what was I going to do with the details?

  “Jacob stopped in the night before he was killed,” Francis said. “When Stauch—”

  “What’s a Stauch?”

  “That was Stauch. Owner of the station. Maybe it’s a nickname. I don’t know. Shut up and listen. He said Jacob stopped in, complaining about car trouble. Stauch asked for the keys. And that’s when he discovered Jacob was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Jacob had the wrong keys.”

  “What do you mean wrong keys?”

  “The keys Jacob gave him weren’t for the car he was driving.”

  “Then how had Jacob driven to the garage?”

  Francis shrugged. Despite passing it off as nothing, Francis was as tripped up by this information as I was.

  You can’t drive a car without a key. Unless it’s hotwired, but we’d met the man who’d sold Jacob the car. I’d seen the bill of sale and copy of Jacob’s license, which apparently he did have. Did Jacob lose the car key along the way? We had the spare with us. Why would he hand the man the wrong keys? Other than the simple fact Jacob was out of his mind. Who knew what the voices were telling him to do?

  “Do we know where Jacob went afterward?”

  “Motel. Closest one. Super 8. About three miles. Caught a taxi. Plan was for Stauch to tow the car there once Jacob called.”

  “And?”

  “Jacob never called.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Super 8 sat on a desolate, dilapidated, rundown, weathered strip, as cheap an overnight option as one was liable to find. On the other side, down an embankment, the highway ran in both directions, super fast cars and trucks zipping past, shielded by the canopy of green trees, which for the rider created an illusion of separation, a barrier, a means to feel superior. Black Grove, Minnesota made Upstate New York downright cheery by comparison.

  Along the frontage road, the Super 8 split the distance between a takeout Chinese restaurant and a tire shop, both closed for the night. Farther ahead, in the direction away from town, weak lights threatened the black night.

  Few cars filled the motel lot. This wasn’t part of a big complex like ones on the interstate. This was a dumpy place where drunk, philandering husbands were sent to sober up in shame. Maybe a few folks missed their exit, jumped the gun, got off one too soon, too tired to correct their mistake. Under normal circumstances I’d have to be bleeding out of my eyes to stop here.

  The bright lights from the small foyer spilled onto the sidewalk where groundskeepers had taken the time to plant a row of yellow flowers. The odd touch of beauty in the dirt felt like cheating.

  A girl smiled when we walked in, a girl too young to be working alone in a motel this deserted and low rent. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, corn-fed and wholesome, but the sadness had already settled in her eyes. I stepped closer and read her nametag. Nadine. Such a strange, old lady name for a girl so young. Come back to Black Grove in twenty years, and she’d still be here.

  “Would you like a room?” Nadine asked. Even the way she asked was sad.

  “No,” Francis replied, before explaining the reason behind our presence, which included a rough time frame and loose physical description of Jacob, nothing more. I was about to step in and elaborate—there was no guarantee the poor girl was working that night, and Francis hadn’t given her much to go on.

  “Oh yeah,” the girl said, surprising me. “I remember him.”

  “He rent a room?” Francis asked.

  I thought Nadine would have to check registration files, dig out a book, log into the computer. I was wrong.

  “Mmmhmm,” she said. “Yes, sir, he did.” Nadine paused. “Sorta.”

  “Sorta?”<
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  “He paid for the room but he never stayed in the room.”

  “But you’re certain this was Jacob Balfour?” I asked.

  “That’s the name he gave. Wasn’t long ago. Description matches. Your grandfather said he’s a…big fella…and we don’t get a lot of people here during the week. The weekends can get busy. Weekdays are dead.”

  I didn’t want to know why the denizens of Black Grove saw reason to congregate at the Super 8 on weekends. Didn’t want to know what went on behind closed doors, didn’t want those thoughts in my head.

  “How was he acting?” Francis asked.

  “Strange. That’s why I remember him.”

  “How so?”

  “Nervous? Troubled. He came in, asked how much for a room. I told him. He paid me but he never went in the room.”

  “How you know?”

  “He never took the key card.” Nadine leaned over the counter, staring out toward where our car was parked. “Your friend kept stepping outside like he was looking for something, someone.”

  “Did you see anyone out there?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all he did?” I asked. “Pay, look out the door, and then…?”

  “He went in and out about five times, and then the sixth time, he didn’t come back.”

  “Do you have video surveillance?” I asked. “Recordings we could look at?” I nodded at the cameras pointed toward our faces and the door.

  “They don’t work,” Nadine said.

  Francis shoved open the exit door, bulling out of the lobby. I smiled at the girl, who hadn’t done anything wrong, and followed him into the parking lot.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s not her fault.”