The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  The bike went flying over the edge.

  The sound of its motor charged up to a high pitch wine, the rpm’s revved as the wheels spun free of the ground. The bike sailed through the air, drifting ever so slowly towards the floor of the pit, closer and closer to me.

  It was hard to see in the dark, but my vision honed into the figure on the bike like the zoom effect of a camera. It was a teenage boy. Something about him looked familiar.

  As my perspective zoomed in, the rider and bike flew apart, separated in the air. Then they both hit the pit floor, the bike a few feet away from him. I zoomed in as he tumbled across the ground to land on his back, his face frozen in a grimace of pain. He didn’t move at all, not a twitch, no rise and fall of his chest, not a breath.

  He had died in agony.

  Then I recognized him, Thomas Schroeder. It wasn’t the Tommy I knew and loved to hate, this Tommy was caked in dirt and oozing blackish blood, a broken, dead Tommy. I tried to reconcile this filthy blood-crusted kid with the Tommy that I knew. Before I could come to grips with the idea that Tommy was dead on the pit floor, that it had really happened, I jump-flashed back to the here and now with another dose of stomach churning vertigo.

  I was on the ground on my back, and my elbow hurt. I must have landed on it. The noise of the crowd came on loud and hard, shocking after the silence of the desert sand.

  Tommy stood over me gloating, a wicked sneer on his face, the crowd cheering him on. He was very much alive, and about to wail on my face. Anita and Rachelle stood there in the mix, a few feet away from each other.

  I took deep breaths as I tried to get past the dizziness and nausea. Tommy reared back to deliver a kick while I was down, but the crowd shoved into him as a teacher interrupted, “Break it up. Break it up. Get to class now!”

  Tommy was pushed along with the surrounding teenagers as they made their escape, robbed of his chance to get in another lick at me.

  I laid there dazed, in shock. Anita locked eyes with me for a few seconds, then she glanced to the Teacher, Mr. Lambden. Instead of being my girlfriend, being there for me, she took off to class with the rest of the kids. Mr. Lambden was the only one who offered to help me to my feet.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah I’m okay.” I dusted off my pants.

  “I didn’t see what happened. Who hit you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.” I couldn’t care less about the fight. I had other things on my mind just then.

  “I need to file an incident report. We don’t condone fighting here at MLHS. If you ever feel intimidated or coerced in any way we have to know about it before it becomes a larger problem.”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m fine!” I growled in his face. The fight didn’t matter. I had to figure out what to do about this vision and I needed the teacher out of my face. “I gotta get to class.” He let me go and I left him standing there.

  I couldn’t focus on either of my last two classes, Algebra and American History. Those images of my vision replayed over and over. And what I should do about it, if anything could be done? Talking to Tommy was a no go. He’d never listen and it would just end up in another fight. I had really relished the idea of beating Tommy’s smug face for all his lies, but this vision robbed me of all my piss and vinegar. A post-adrenaline funk.

  Bobby Krager hadn’t listened when I warned him directly. Bobby died exactly as I had seen it. Rachelle didn’t listen either, but my actions made just enough difference, plus maybe a little dumb luck. Three of my latest visions had already come true, Nadia outside my trailer, that guy with the tractor over at RSC, and the one of homecoming. This vision was bound to come true, very soon, probably within days, even hours.

  How do you change the inevitable? The act of trying to change it could actually cause it to happen.

  If I couldn’t talk to Tommy, then who else? No one would believe me. Probably end up sounding like some sort of death threat anyways. No one would understand. Well, no one but Rachelle Werner. Rachelle knew about my visions. She had stood in freezing water up to her neck with the truth of my visions.

  As much as I wanted absolutely nothing to do with Rachelle – who had stood by watching as her boyfriend picked a fight with me twice – I had to talk to her, like now. Right now. I could hardly wait for the end of school, I barely heard what my teachers were saying as they lectured and handed out assignments. My sole purpose for existence was to get to Rachelle Werner and somehow convince her that Tommy was about to die.

  I rushed out the door of American History right as the bell rang, raced down the hallway to Rachelle’s locker. I shoved through the milling crowds as the afterschool hallways filled with the chaos of students going every which way. Some of them cursed at me, but I just kept going.

  She wasn’t there.

  I waited five minutes, anxiety driving me mad. I lost patience and jetted out to the parking lot to try to catch her leaving campus. No such luck. Tommy’s Jeep Wrangler was already gone, they had probably left together.

  That’s when I recalled I had Rachelle’s cell number saved in my contacts on my cell. Although I hadn’t tried to call her in forever, the number was there at my fingertips, beckoning. I dialed her, instead of a ring tone she had a song by Ke$ha that played for several seconds while I waited for an answer. The call forwarded to voicemail when she didn’t answer.

  “Hey Rach, it’s me Mike, I need to talk to you right away. It’s really super important. It’s serious. And I don’t care about the fight. I need to talk to you. I mean it. Call me back right now.”

  I waited a couple minutes for her to call back then decided to send her a text message when she didn’t respond.

  Mike: Need 2 talk 2 U right now!

  About ten minutes passed, and she finally replied.

  Rachelle: Leave me alone!

  Mike: Need 2 talk F2F. Its a life or death situation.

  Rachelle: RBTL (Read Between The Lines) leave me the fuck alone!

  Mike: Remember when we fell through the Ice? ILT

  Rachelle: WC? (Who Cares)

  Mike: Something really bad is going 2 happen. Need 2 talk F2F now!

  She didn’t reply immediately. It was no use. She wouldn’t listen. “Fuck, nobody ever listens!”

  Then about five minutes later she came back.

  Rachelle: 8:00 skatepark

  Mike: No! That’s 2 late! Now! Where R U?

  Rachelle: RUNTS? (Are You Nuts)

  Mike: No! Totally serious! Right now!

  Rachelle: Not now. Cant. 8:00 skatepark.

  Mike: OK.

  That was probably as good as it gets. At least she agreed to meet.

  I burned up the hours waiting for Rachelle, skating back and forth across the halfpipe, practicing grinds and tricks. For whatever reason, I hadn’t seen or heard from Anita since school let out, and she didn’t show up at the skatepark as usual. I didn’t bother to call or text. I wasn’t very happy with her at the moment, and didn’t really want to talk about relationship crap. In light of Tommy’s busted up corpse at the bottom of a pit in the sand dunes, everything else had become trivial.

  The guys at the skatepark seemed withdrawn. I might as well have been a leper the way they treated me. I didn’t care. My focus was narrowed down to a single objective: find a way to explain the situation to Rachelle so that she would somehow convince Tommy. Locked away in my own internal world, maybe I was avoiding everyone as I skated, mumbling to myself.

  Rachelle finally arrived late, 8:30 p.m., on foot. I had a hard time picturing her walking all the way to the skatepark from her house, just to meet me. As she approached, I put all other concerns out of mind. This was my one shot at making a difference. If I blew it with Rachelle, Tommy was dead meat.

  She fidgeted nervously, looking around. Rafe stood there watching me out the corner of his eye.

  Great, more shit to deal with when I see Anita. He’d be sure to tell his sister I met Rachelle. No time to worry about that right now.
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  I started in on her immediately, opting for the direct approach. “I had a vision about Tommy.” Rachelle kept glancing around like she was looking for someone else, not really focused on me or what I had to say.

  “Are you listening to me? I had a vision that something really horrible is gonna happen to Tommy. It’s like the day we fell through the ice. I know it’s gonna happen soon, in the sand dunes.”

  This seemed to grab her attention, “What are you saying?”

  “Listen dammit! I’ve said it twice already, pay attention. I’m telling you we gotta convince Tommy to stay out of the sand dunes. He won’t listen to me, but he might listen to you.”

  “What’s gonna happen?” Now she was listening intently, and so was Rafe.

  “What do you think would have happened that day on the ice if I hadn’t gone with you? You’d be six feet in the ground right now. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had let you take that walk alone.”

  “Are you saying Tommy’s gonna die?” Sheesh, not an ounce of appreciation. What a bitch.

  “Yes, exactly, if you don’t keep him out of the sand dunes, he’s toast. Are you gettin’ it yet?”

  It was right then, at the moment Rachelle had truly begun to listen to me, that Tommy pulled into the parking lot with three other guys in his Jeep Wrangler. Rachelle’s face said it all. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes as she started to back away towards the Jeep. She had laid a trap, and my stupid ass stepped right into it.

  “Fuck!”

  She just kept backing away. “Remember what I said, Rach! It’s on you now!” I pointed straight at her. And I already knew what this meant. I had failed again. “Rachelle, if you don’t do something, the consequences are on your head! And I hope you can live with it.”

  Tommy caught the last bit of what I said to Rachelle and put his own spin on it, “Now it’s on your head, Mikey! Like I told you, I’m gonna kick your ass from one side of this park to the other!”

  The ramifications of the situation started to sink in. Tommy was gonna die. There was nothing I could do about it. And the one person I tried to reach out to, the very person whose life I’d once saved, had betrayed me. Rachelle didn’t even know that the price of her betrayal was her boyfriend’s life. My frustration flared into rage.

  It was all so fucking pointless.

  Why should I be cursed with these visions? Why know these things if I couldn’t make a difference?

  As I stood, self-absorbed, Tommy’s buddies fanned out to surround me. Justin slinked up from behind and darted in to snatch my skateboard from my hand. “You won’t be needing that!” He snickered.

  Tommy took this as his cue. He moved in, malicious hatred glowing in his eyes.

  Stealing my board was the last straw. A switch clicked. I no longer cared what happened to Tommy or anyone else. I was so flaming pissed off, and Tommy made a perfect target.

  “You want a piece of me!” I screamed at him. “Come on motherfucker! I don’t give a shit if you die! Bring it on!”

  Tommy stepped within reach, seemingly moving in slow motion as I exploded in a fury of punches, pummeling him back. Tommy retreated, trying to block with his hands up, but he wasn’t fast enough. I nailed him two, three, four, five times; left, right, left, right, wild haymaker swings, and hook punches. I reached past and through and over the top of Tommy’s lame defense repeatedly, adding several kicks to the flurry.

  Tommy could barely defend himself, let alone get in a strike of his own. Blood splattered on his busted lips. His nose blossomed into a red splotch. One of my hits cut his cheek open, another blood smear. He kept backing away, trying to escape my insane flurry of punches. Tommy tripped and fell on his back. I was on him like flies on shit, punching him in the face as his head bounced off the concrete. I had him good, seated on his stomach. I just kept on punching over and over. Tommy’s hands flailed everywhere, but it was useless. Fueled by the insanity of rage, I unloaded into Tommy’s face.

  Suddenly I was up and off him, being dragged backwards by two wrestlers, one around each arm. They held me in their damn grapple-grope grips. I tried to break free, but they had me good.

  Tommy gasped and wheezed, spitting blood as he fought to catch his breath and stagger to his feet. He looked like hell, bloody lips and nose, a drool of blood running down his chin, a cut under his left eye that would surely be a nice shiner by tomorrow.

  Tommy spit gobs of blood on the concrete and called out in a voice distorted by busted, swollen lips, “Hold him still.” Tommy lunged forward and kicked me right in the junk. Agony erupted through my groin and gut and I doubled over with the nauseating pain. Tommy stepped up into me with a knee in the face, catching my head down as the wrestlers still held my arms. My nose exploded as my head snapped back with the impact. I saw some serious stars on that one, and then I was gone. Out for the count.

  I swam back to consciousness like a drowning man slogging to the surface. Sounds were distorted, slow, coming from all over. I heard a girl screaming “Stop! He’s knocked out!”

  Her words were punctuated by another whopper kick to the gut, shoving all the air from my lungs in a wheeze.

  Struggling to breathe, I heard Rafe, “Let him go or I’ll shove this board so far up your ass it’ll have to be surgically removed.”

  Somebody else yelled, “I’m calling the cops!”

  The hands that held me suspended in the air suddenly let go. I just flopped, limp. The back of my skull bounced off the concrete, a resonating drum pounding through my already aching head.

  But Tommy delivered a final kick, right in the ribs. Just when I thought I was already hurt so bad it could never get worse, the creative little bastard found a way to add to it.

  Fucker.

  I heard his busted lip slur. “We’re outa here!”

  Rachelle yelled at him repeatedly, “Leave him alone you son of a bitch. Can’t you see he’s already down? What a fuckin’ man you are. Need all your buddies to win a fight with one skater!”

  This nutcase, schizophrenic blonde I used to worship swam into my blurred vision, tears streaming down her face. What the hell? She set me up, and then whines about it? Rachelle was one twisted girl.

  When Tommy snatched her arm and pulled her back away from me, she screeched, “Don’t touch me!”

  Rafe was there, standing over the top of me. “Just go. You’ve done enough. He doesn’t need friends like you.”

  Though I couldn’t see her anymore, too blurry and it had already grown dark out, I heard the guilt and regret in her voice. “I’m sorry Mike. I didn’t …”

  “You didn’t what? Get the fuck outta here. He doesn’t need anything from you.” Rafe laid into her.

  Tommy’s slurred voice came through, a wet, mushy sound, “Come on Rach. Now! The cops are coming!”

  Rachelle piled into the Jeep with them. “You’re such a pigheaded prick. I hope you’re happy. You look like shit.”

  And though it hurt to move my face, I smiled. And then everything started to spin, along with my stomach.

  I closed my eyes to stop the spinning, but Rafe kept shaking my shoulder. “Mike, wake up.”

  And then I felt her there, her hands touching my face delicately, cradling my head in her lap. My angel, Nadia. She stroked the hair off my forehead.

  All the other skaters standing around with questioning looks, asking if I was okay, faded into the background as I focused on her. My wonderful Nadia.

  My nose bled all over my face and down to the side of my neck, my groin and stomach ached horribly from that wicked kick to the gnards. My right side ribcage throbbed with a spike of pain every time I breathed. Luckily, my face didn’t really hurt too badly, as long as I didn’t move.

  Nadia caught me with those magical eyes, held my gaze steadily and spoke in a slow even tone, “You must rest. I’ll take care of you. Sleep now.” And instantly the weight of exhaustion pulled my eyelids closed. The very last thing I heard was Nadia calling to Rafe, “Help me get him
into the car.”

  * * * *

  I dreamed of being in bed with Nadia, she was slip-sliding-snaking around me again. This time she licked my face and all over my lips, turning my head from side to side, an inspection of sorts. She eventually worked her way down my throat and chest. She licked the knuckles of each of my hands, taking time to suckle on each individual finger. Then she licked my ribs on the right side, tickling me right where all the bruises and abrasions were. She even licked my elbows, attending to all the little scrapes and cuts she could find. Some were only recent skate injuries from the spill and tumble at the halfpipe.

  At each point I could feel the soreness and pains subside, her beautiful little pink tongue was like a magic painkiller. Several times she returned to my face, licking again at my lips and nose. She smiled at me. Seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

  Nadia repeatedly worked her way down to my hands, my abraded knuckles that ravaged Tommy’s face. Then she reached down to undo my zipper, pulling down my pants and boxer shorts, stripping me. In my dream I winced with the agony of my bruised balls as she carefully inspected me for injuries.

  This soon became the best dream I had ever experienced. Nadia administered her peculiar version of first aid to my groin, taking away all the pain and replacing it with wonderful waves of pleasure.

  There was no hiding how much I enjoyed it.

  Then the dream got really freaky. All my bodily aches and pains were completely forgotten under the sublime wonders of Nadia’s mouth and tongue.