The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

Hiram looked around at the old cinder block walls. They were stained with rust from the old catwalk around the edges. Hiram’s vampire eyes could see beyond the white orb of light into the darkness. Max was doubtless Garrett could as well, but to him it looked like little more than a ring of light in the middle of a sea of black.

  “I know this place….”

  “I thought you might,” Max replied. “If you recognize it, then you know what it’s for.”

  “This is bullshit!” Hiram struggled again. He looked at Max with wide, wolf-like eyes. All the color in his cheeks drained. His trembling upper lip made his moustache shake. “You work for Moonshadow?”

  Max shook his head. “For once, our interests intersect. She lent me the place.” He gestured around.

  “And the muscle?” Hiram glanced at him. Garrett grinned.

  “I don’t work for the parasites,” Garrett answered. He didn’t move, but his voice made Hiram flinch like he was about to slap him. Max found it amusing.

  “I don’t even know what you are,” Hiram said, shaking his head at Garrett. “I’m not even sure I want to know—”

  “Maybe we should tell him?” Garrett asked. Max shook his head. “Yeah, you’re right. He’d probably faint again.”

  “Faint?” Hiram shook the chair. “I didn’t faint! You punched me in the skull. You’ve got fists like a pole sledge.” He looked between the two of them and the color drained from his face again. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Right now I need to know something that you know,” said Max,

  “About Moonshadow?”

  “No. About the kids you sell for the Aryans out of Joplin.”

  “Oh, that…” He shook his head. “Hell, I can’t talk about that! I snitch on Moonshadow I can just move. I can’t run from the Aryans. You think I want to sell kids for a bunch of racist hayseeds? I have some standards—”

  Max slapped him across the face. The vampire snickered as Max pulled away, hissing and shaking his hand. He stopped laughing when Garrett stepped in and slapped him in the jaw. It wasn’t much of a swing, but it turned the vamp’s face red and ripped open his cheek.

  Max nodded at Garrett and looked back at Hiram. The vampire flinched and spat out a wad of blood. It ran down his lips and over his chin.

  “You won’t have to worry about the Aryans, Hiram.” Max looked at his knuckles and flexed his fingers. Slapping him was like backhanding a tree. Max was going to leave the punching to Garrett from now on.

  “Anything…I’ll tell you anything you want, just let me go!”

  “We’re not letting you go,” said Garrett. “These walls are the last thing you’ll ever see. Welcome to your crypt.”

  Hiram screamed and shook the chair.

  “That isn’t going to help, and you know it.” Max had to shout just to hear his own voice over the wailing vampire.

  Hiram eventually stopped screaming and gave them both a fierce look.

  “Why would you tell me that? Why would you tell me that? Why would I tell you anything if you’re just going to kill me?”

  “Because we don’t have to kill you right away, Hiram.” Max put his hands on his hips and tilted his head. “You know how far out in the middle of nowhere this place is. You know how many dead bodies are buried in the sink hole out back…you might have even put a few there—”

  “Oh…Jesus!” Tears and sweat ran down his cheeks. Hiram shook his head and closed his eyes. He wailed and intermittently spat out words that seemed to string together into a coherent line, almost like a prayer. “You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children’s children unto the third and fourth generation…” He repeated it.

  “What’s that?” Garrett asked, crooking an eyebrow. “Is that Catholic?”

  “Mormon,” Max answered. “He’s a Mormon. I should have figured with a name like Hiram Smith.”

  “A Mormon vampire?” Garrett laughed. “That’s… wow. I wouldn’t expect Mormonism to be compatible with being a vampire.”

  “It isn’t compatible with child sex trafficking either,” Max said as he stepped back from the chair. “But like most men of faith, Hiram’s religious conviction grows in inverse proportion to the amount of life he has left.”

  “Hmmm…” Garrett popped his knuckles. “Shall we let him finish?” Max shook his head. Garrett nodded. “Right. Let him think he’s still going to Hell.”

  “Hiram,” Max said, stepping forward. “Hiram, listen to me.” The vampire’s sobbing broke, and he looked into Max’s eyes through a curtain of tears. “We’re going to torture you. It’s going to be really, really unpleasant. But we’re very good at it, and we know you can take a lot of punishment—”

  Hiram shook his head and screamed. He splattered tears and spit on Max’s face.

  Garrett grabbed the vampire by the cheeks and held him still. Hiram looked up at him with wide, trembling eyes and made one last desperate attempt to burst his bonds. He failed and slumped in the chair before degenerating into soft, pathetic sobs.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” Max continued. He walked behind Garrett and bent over to take a digital sound recorder out of a bag. “Every time you answer a question to my satisfaction, Garrett won’t hurt you.” He stepped in front of the light and cast his shadow over the bloodied vampire. “I don’t think I have to tell you what happens if you refuse to answer… or if I think you’re holding out. Do I?”

  Garrett released Hiram’s face so the vampire could shake his head.

  “What happens…” He swallowed a lump in his throat and looked up at Garrett. Max stepped out of the light. Hiram squinted again when it hit his face. “What happens when it’s over? If I cooperate?”

  “Then you die,” Garrett replied. “But it’ll be fast. And it won’t hurt… much.”

  Hiram nodded and looked down at his knees.

  “Good,” Max said as he activated the recorder. “Now, tell me about the kids.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sadie was asleep in front of the television when Max got home. If he woke her she’d notice it wasn’t dark and get mad at him. He snuck up the stairs and went to the bathroom to clean up.

  “What happened to your hand?” She would have startled him if he weren’t too sleepy to react. She stood in the door with a white blanket over her body. With her pale skin she looked like a ghost.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he answered, weighing his odds. He could tell her he’d been home for hours, but he didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. Also, she had a magical power that told her when he was lying so, there was that…

  “Did you punch a wall?” She took his hand after stepping into the bathroom. Max was surprised, she didn’t seem angry, just concerned.

  “Vampire.”

  She gave him a sympathetic look then turned on the faucet. His fingers were swollen but hadn’t turned brown yet. That would come later. When the sink was half full, she lowered his hand to the water. It was cold, but soothing.

  “You smell like smoke.”

  “Yeah...” Max looked at her through the mirror. She still didn’t seem angry. “We burned a body.”

  Her eyes widened. Max kept his hand in the sink while she rubbed his arm.

  “Did Garrett dragon out?”

  Max might have laughed if he hadn’t been so tired.

  “No. We used gasoline and a road flare.”

  “You torched a dead body?” She gave him a surprised look. Still not mad, just concerned. Max looked down at his hand in the cool water. The throbbing faded.

  “Not exactly.”

  She met his eyes in the mirror, her lips parted. He expected her to recoil, but she was full of surprises tonight.

  “C’mon,” she said, pulling his hand from the water. “You need to get out of these smoky clothes and into a shower.” He raised
his arms as she unbuttoned his shirt. “You have to be at work in less than an hour—are you even going in?” Max shook his head as she pulled off his shirt. “Good. You look exhausted.”

  “Mercedes,” he said as she unbuttoned his jeans. She ignored him. He said her name again and touched her face.

  “What?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Being supportive?” She pulled down his jeans as she went to the floor and started unlacing his boots.

  “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yeah.”

  “Because I realized something today.” She pulled off his boots and helped him step out of his jeans. She stood up and put her arms around him when he started to shiver. He was naked now, but she was warm. “You’re going to do what you do because it’s part of who you are. I can’t stop it. I can either turn into the skid or jump off the scooter.” She’d wrecked her moped before so it was a fitting analogy.

  “Is that what you consider our relationship? A controlled skid preceding an inevitable wreck?”

  “Aren’t they all?” She grinned at him and put her face against his bare chest. “I don’t think the wreck is inevitable. That’s why I’m staying on. If I jump, we both get hurt. If I stay on and steer into the skid—”

  “I’m the moped in this metaphor, right?” He yawned.

  “The moped is the relationship, jackass.”

  “I’m sorry… I think I’ve got it but…” He yawned again. “I just really need to sleep.”

  She smiled and guided him to the shower. After she had the water running, she took off her clothes and got in with him. He almost fell asleep standing while she lathered up his body and washed every trace of dead vampire smoke from his skin.

  The shower was invigorating, or maybe it was just the damp towel run from the bathroom to his bedroom. Whatever the case, by the time he got into bed and had Sadie’s little body pressed against his under the sheets, he was hit with a second wind. Against his better judgment, he gave in to her request to share what he’d learned from the recently immolated vampire.

  “Vampires like kids as victims because their minds are simpler and easier to control.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I got that.”

  “So having a kid around you can feed on is kind of the best thing for a vamp. If the vamp also happens to be a pedophile—”

  “Oh, my God…” Sadie’s own experience with pedophiles, namely her stepfather, crafted an unpleasant reaction in her body. Max hadn’t been through anything like that, but his job had brought him into contact with more of them than he would have wanted.

  “Selling kids to pedophiles isn’t anything new. Pedophiles trade them between one another like baseball cards.”

  “Why would they trade them?”

  “They get tired of the kid, or they need the money, or the kid reaches a stage of development that causes the pedophile to lose interest.”

  “What?” She gave him a confused look.

  “If the pedo likes little girls, he isn’t going to be happy when she hits puberty and starts growing boobs and pubic hair. But there might be some other pedo out there who—well, that’s their thing, girls just barely entering womanhood. So the first pedo trades the kid to the second for money, or a younger kid if he has one.”

  “This happens?” She winced. He nodded. “This happens in America? In the United States?”

  “Yeah, it happens everywhere.”

  “But you’re not just talking about vampires, are you? You’re talking about human beings doing this to children?”

  “I’d say the majority of it is human. Vampires are a small part of the problem… they’re just better at staying hidden.”

  “And better at keeping the kids quiet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This happens in Joplin?”

  “Especially in Joplin.” Max twisted one of the locks of her black hair around his finger. “We’re right in the middle of the continent. I-forty-four runs right through us, and Highway seventy-one turns into I-five-forty after Fayetteville. Truckers crossing the country can plan a meet-up right here for whatever they want, meth, lot lizards, drug deals… and children. Why do you think meth is so prevalent here?”

  “I thought it was just because of all the white trash.”

  Max grinned. “Yeah, that too. But, this is a pretty decent hub for illegal trading. If the humans use it, you have to figure the vamps will use it, too. And the Aryans run the meth trade in North America. Southwest Missouri is one of the only places in America where a skinhead can live without worrying about a rival ethnic gang. Joplin, Missouri: come for the racial intolerance, stay because you’re hooked on crystal meth.”

  She didn’t laugh. Max expected it was because she’d heard him say that before.

  “So the little girl you’re looking for, Penny, is she-?”

  “The vamp didn’t remember her.”

  “Does that mean they don’t have her?”

  “No, it just means they haven’t sold her yet. The skinheads keep the kids out in a compound in the woods behind the Hagshead trailer park. Hiram told me he was in town to arrange the trade of the kids to some pedo-vamp truckers coming through. That’s why Leroy was at the lot last night.”

  “What does the church have to do with any of this?”

  “The church owns the trailer park. They lure poor families with kids there by promising to give them cheap rent, and then the vamps take the kids and wipe the parents’ memories.”

  “So the church is running this?”

  “I think it’s the other way around, the skinheads are running the church. The church is just a front. I don’t know if they’re in on it willingly, or if the vamps have them all charmed. I think it’s probably the former, because Moonshadow’s predecessor had a similar arrangement until the Aryans moved into Hagshead, which was the church’s idea, and was likely ideological.”

  “So they’re a white supremacist Christian church?”

  “It looks like it. They wouldn’t be the first in the area.”

  Sadie was quiet for a little while, but Max could feel a question humming under her skin.

  “How did you know Hiram was going to be there?”

  She was so clever.

  “Moonshadow’s contacts in other areas follow his movements. They know about the Aryan vampires but can’t do anything about it. That doesn’t mean they don’t watch them.”

  “So you’re working for her now?”

  “More with than for.” She gave him a serious look. “I’m not happy about it either, and if I can find enough evidence, I won’t have to rely on her for any more help. But if I hadn’t gone to her I wouldn’t even be this far.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his chest with her arm. “I know.” After a time she asked, “Won’t they notice this Hiram guy isn’t around?”

  “According to him, they weren’t going to meet again until Saturday night. If they don’t hear from him before then, they’ll just assume he’s gone back on the road or found something else to do.”

  “So you have to shut all this down by Saturday night?” Max nodded. “Can you do that?”

  “I can try.”

  “But, if the kids are out there in the woods…in a meth lab, can’t you just have the cops go out there and bust them?”

  “Based on what? The only witness we had was a vampire, and he’s ashes and bone chunks now.”

  “So kidnap one of the human skinheads and torture it out of him!”

  “Honey, I can’t kidnap a human. Even if he confessed, they’d still arrest me for kidnap and torture. The only reason I got away with kidnapping a vampire is because we killed him right afterward. Besides, I don’t know if Garrett would agree to help me kidnap a human.”

  “But the parents—”

  “None of the parents know they even have a kid, otherwise they’d have reported it themselves. The only reason I know about it is because an old lady called us, and none of them would bother with her because everyone t
hinks she’s crazy.” “Isn’t there some way to make a parent remember?” She put her chin on his chest. “The memories are still there, they’re just repressed. If you shove it in their face enough, they might remember.”

  “That’s the thing, I don’t know which of the people in that park have, or had, kids stolen, except for the Winnans. And I don’t-” Excitement rushed through his exhausted body. Sadie reacted to it like she’d just been jolted by static electricity. “I know where I can get one!”

  “One what?”

  He sat up, almost knocking Sadie off as he did. He needed a bigger bed if she was going to be staying here every night like this. She grabbed his shoulder and gently pulled him back.

  “Whatever it is, it can wait until you’ve slept. You’re exhausted.”

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  “No, you’re not.” She kissed his cheek and pulled the comforter over their bodies. “Go to sleep. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s starting to bother me, and I can tell it’s bothering you.”

  Max nodded and squeezed her close as he yawned. The dim sunlight filtered through the curtains and turned the room blue. Max stared at the ceiling until his eyelids fluttered shut, long after Sadie’s breathing had lengthened into her sleeping stride. Feeling her body against his filled him with peaceful warmth. It lulled him into sleep.

  “I love you, too,” she muttered as he drifted away. He was too far gone to reply, if it mattered.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I don’t know how many more crimes I want to help you commit this week.” Frank said as he pulled his red Vibe to the curb just out of the pale glow of the streetlight. “This is the last one. Probably.”

  “You aren’t really helping me commit it,” Max explained. “Unless you want to go in there with me?”

  In there was Michelle’s apartment. The crime in question was burglary, assuming he found and was able to take what he needed. Otherwise, it would just be breaking and entering. If he got found, it might become murder, his own.

  “She let you in before, why wouldn’t she let you in again? She’s so doped up on meth she probably wouldn’t even remember you being there.”