The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Garnet kept eye contact with him for what seemed a very long time. Then shook her head and looked away. “Maybe you are a miracle worker,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally do this sort of thing, but God knows things have been very strange since you showed up.”

  Four hours later, Josh pushed himself away from the desk with a grunt and leaned back in the leather chair. Looking at the files before him made his head hurt. He had always considered himself a good student. He'd spent all of his high school years on the honor roll and carried his average over to university. He was in his second year of classes working toward a degree in electrical engineering. You did not make it past first year if you didn’t know how to study.

  Still, these files were way out of his area of expertise. There were dozens of exercises on how to access certain areas of your mind, control your biorhythms, and focus under extreme stress. A lot of the material seemed like complete Star Trek fiction: page after page dedicated to the energy fields of the body and how they interact with the global electromagnetic fields and sub-atomic structures. He found it hard to believe that a kid like that girl Jessica could comprehend any of it. According to Garnet, though, this was all pretty standard material that the other Anomalies were expected to learn in their first year. He could only imagine what the more advance material was.

  “I need a break.” He pushed away from the desk and walked into the bathroom. He went to the sink, turned the stainless steel faucet and splashed cold water onto his face. He repeated this several times until he could no longer feel the remnants of sweat on his skin. Then he dried off with one of the thick black towels piled on the countertop and turned to meet his reflection.

  “Can I really get used to this?” Only when he said the words out loud did he surrender to the notion that he would never go back to his old life. He had already registered for classes for the upcoming semester.

  “I’m never going to make it back to class. I don’t even know where things stand with me and Jan.” Would she ever want to see him again? How would she react when he told her that even now she did not know all his secrets? Hell, even he did not know all his secrets.

  He closed his eyes, thought back to that day he had snapped orders at those winged monsters. Since Jessica had helped him recover the memory, it was easy for him to remember every detail of it: the heat in his body, the anger he felt towards them, and the way they looked at him. They'd looked at him with warmth and affection because they knew his father. Because they respected and feared him.

  But which father?

  He opened his eyes and followed the lights of a helicopter as it circled a nearby building. There was only one way for him to find out. He would have to sit with Jessica one more time and see what else they could dig up.

  “But not tonight.” He turned away from the window and slipped under the covers on the bed. He left the lights on. When he thought about turning them off, the memory of those monsters flowing out of the shadows kept him from moving. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

  ***

  “Are you mad?”

  Wisdom looked over his shoulder. Echo sat up in bed, her head leaning against the headboard. She wore a piece of frilly pink lingerie. Wisdom could not decide if he liked it on her or not. Echo was far removed from the fragility the lingerie implied, but it was extremely flattering to her physique. He decided not to criticize. He finished taking off his shirt and started unbuckling his pants.

  “No, I’m not angry at you,” she answered. “No more than before. I am, however, curious.”

  “About that new one? Josh?” Wisdom walked over to a hook on the outside of his walk-in closet and took down a pair of flannel pajama bottoms.

  “Yes, about that and about your father’s sudden appearance. I’ve been around too long to believe in coincidence, Wisdom. This thing with the boy’s father, it’s not the sort of thing you usually overlook.”

  Wisdom rubbed his forehead, unable to meet her eyes. “No, it isn’t. How could I not have seen Richard Wilkinson’s son was an Anomaly? How could I miss the connection? I studied that family in depth for months before I ordered the hit. I don’t like overlooking anything. In hindsight, I should have thought something was strange when Elaine missed. She never misses, you know. It’s uncanny.”

  “The way you talk about her, Wisdom...” Echo crossed her arms and looked away. “Are you two…? I have to wonder if your relationship is entirely professional.”

  Dressed in the pajama bottoms, Wisdom slid onto the bed and drew Echo toward him. “I love Elaine like a child, Echo. A daughter. And I would be very surprised if anything I could do would make you jealous. I think we’re both too old for that kind of foolishness.”

  “As old as you are, Wisdom, you should know something about women by now.”

  Wisdom cupped her face with his hand. “No one could ever take your place.”

  Echo leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. “What are you going to do about the boy, Wisdom? Are you planning a visit tonight in the Dreaming?”

  Wisdom reached his free hand down between her thighs. “Assuming you don’t wear me out, yes. If things go badly tomorrow, tonight may be our last night together. Are you finished talking now?”

  Echo answered with a moan.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Josh sat on a tiled floor, cross-legged. He played Jacks with Tommy Delonki, vaguely aware that something was not quite right. He stared at Tommy for quite some time before it hit him.

  “You’re dead,” he said. Yet he saw Tommy, 12 years old, dressed in the Star Wars pajamas he wore that night when the Edimmu came for him. Josh was dressed in blue jeans and a black t-shirt but he was the right age: 20.

  “I’m dreaming aren’t I?”

  Tommy smiled and bounced the pink ball against the tiled floor. In a single swoop he gathered up three jacks.

  Josh looked around. They sat in the middle of the Eaton Center. The mall was deserted, even though the bright lights that shone through the glass ceiling showed it was the middle of the day. The Canadian Geese sculptures slowly flapped their wings, flying but going nowhere.

  “You want to get away from it, don’t you?” Tommy bounced the ball again and took four jacks.

  “Get away from what?” Josh felt a chill against his chest. He looked down and saw he was naked to the waist. He wore only the pair of plaid Joe Boxer bottoms his mother had bought in New York, only they were now big enough for his adult body.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” Tommy threw the ball over his shoulder and it bounced away into the distance. With each bounce the light around them dimmed. By the time the ball stopped, there was almost no light coming down from above.

  “What do you mean? In Toronto? I do not know. Didn’t we come here on a school trip in grade 8?”

  “Yep. We got to share a room. You, me and that Brian guy. I never liked him, you know. He used to call me a nerd. Made fun of me a lot. Do you remember what happened here?”

  “Um…”

  “Think, Josh. Don’t you remember that guy you saw? The one that made you run back onto the bus? It was outside the ROM. Do you remember now?”

  Suddenly the Eaton Center was gone. Josh stood beside Tommy on a street corner. Cars drove by at turtle speed and a cold wind blew his hair. On the opposite side of the street, a steady flow of people stalked up and down the sidewalk. Then his eyes fell on a figure standing as still as a monument. A tall dark man dressed in a red suit.

  “Wisdom.” Josh put a hand over his mouth, confused. The wind picked up. The cars and the other people disappeared. Suddenly it was just him, Tommy and Wisdom. “I saw him and I knew him. Knew what he was. And it scared me. That’s why I ran back to the bus.”

  “How exactly did you know me?”

  Josh looked to his left. There was Wisdom. This one was not dressed in red. He wore a long charcoal grey robe that swirled in and out of the shadows like oil in water. His forehead shone lightly, almost like a halo hung around his head. He s
eemed much more solid than anything else in the dream.

  “How…?” He took a step toward the new Wisdom. The city slowly faded away until it was little more than mist.

  “Jessica isn’t the only one who can pop into people’s heads, Josh. I thought it was time for us to have a little conversation, the kind best had away from the others.”

  “You tried to kill my father.” Josh found he had a sword in his hand. It glowed like a lightsaber. Heat and strength ran through his body as he tightened his grip on the hilt.

  Wisdom glanced at the sword but did not seem threatened by it. “I’ve killed a lot of people in my life, Josh, some for a lot less reason than I had to kill your father. I can apologize for it, if it would make you feel better. Sorry. Now can we focus on the matter at hand? How exactly did you know who I was? If I am reading the situation right, you were about 12 years old, right? That would place this little memory about four years before Lebanon. That would be about three years before I was aware of your father and how his little gang was getting in my way. I’m not used to being in the dark. So, how did you know me?”

  Josh shook his head. He looked down at his hand. The sword was gone. “I don’t know. There is so much I don’t know. Can you help me remember? Like Jessica did?”

  “That’s why I’m here. Just make sure you’re able to deal with whatever we find. I don’t want to go through this and have you wake up in the middle of it because it is too scary. Are you ready?”

  Josh looked back at the misty figure of Wisdom from his memory and nodded.

  “Then follow me.”

  Wisdom pointed to the left, toward a red-painted wooden door with a shiny blood-red doorknob. He motioned Josh to open it. Josh looked down and saw that he was dressed in a set of black robes similar to the ones Wisdom wore. Everything seemed much more real than a dream. He could almost hear himself breathing. He walked over to the door, turned the knob and pushed. It opened to Tommy Delonki’s room. He saw the scene Jessica had helped him remember. There was Tommy on the bed. Over by the closet was the 12-year-old version of himself pointing a finger up at the Edimmu. Nothing moved. It was like walking into a wax museum.

  “Now this is different,” Wisdom said. “The way they are looking at you. I haven’t seen that expression on an Edimmu since I was a child. I’d almost think…”

  “They loved me.” Josh knelt down and studied the frozen face of his memory-self. “I felt it. They cared about me, like I was a nephew or something. How is this possible, Wisdom? How can a person block this much stuff out of their mind? Until a few days ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself. Now it turns out it was all a huge lie.”

  “And how would you have gone about the day-to-day routine of your life if you knew all this? Would a 12-year-old boy really be able to focus on his schoolwork if he knew he was pals with the monsters that came out of the closet at night? It’s one of the interesting things about the human mind: its capacity to dis-remember is almost as great as its ability to store things. Humans block out much more prosaic memories than this. Rape, murder, adultery. It’s obvious, to me anyway, that you – or at least a part of you – decided not to remember certain aspects of your life because it did not fit in with what you thought your life should be. So let’s not focus on the ‘whys’ or the ‘hows’ of you not remembering. For now, let’s focus on the ‘what’. Shall we see what’s on the other side of that closet?”

  Josh felt his head swim. The images around him became foggy and distorted in a blur of motion. Then they snapped back into place even more solid than before.

  “Focus, now, Josh. I have a bit of control over what’s going on here, but if you are going to lose it, we might as well stop right now. We haven’t even seen the fun stuff yet.”

  “I can hardly wait.” Josh maneuvered his body around the frozen memory of himself and the Edimmu and walked into the closet. Whatever he had expected, he found something else.

  Instead of clothes hanging from hooks or toys scattered like landmines on the floor, he found an entrance to a cave. He stepped past the threshold and looked back at Tommy’s room. It looked so bright and human compared to where he was now. The cavern floor was smooth and grey, covered with dirt and pebbles, but the walls were sharp and jagged. Stalagmites jutted down like teeth while the rocky wall reached out toward him like claws and barbed wire. The ceiling was only about 12 feet from the ground, and the cave was no more than 6 feet wide. It left him feeling claustrophobic, as if he was literally walking through an esophagus and into the belly of the beast.

  “Well, I didn’t expect us to get here so quickly.” Wisdom still stood at the threshold. He surveyed the cave, hands on hips.

  “Where is here?”

  “Nowhere on Earth.” Wisdom stepped forward and motioned for Josh to walk with him. They moved away from the door, deeper into the cave. Josh had to duck several times to avoid the sharp teeth hanging from the ceiling. “Some call this place Axeinus. Others call it the Black Sea. You could call it a prison if you want. Close enough for our purposes. Remember Elaine telling you about the Orpheans, the demons that made you all Anomalies? This is where they live.”

  Josh felt a shiver run through him. The knowledge that he could feel something at all, even though this was supposed to be a dream, made him feel all the more vulnerable.

  “But…”

  “Yeah, I know. There’s not supposed to be a connection between the Edimmu and the Orpheans. If anything, given their past, they should be mortal enemies, not in bed with each other. But what I’m most curious about is how you, a human, found your way here. We would only be here if you had a memory of this place, a dimension where no physical being should be able to go.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my father was right. I am an idiot. Someone changed the rules of the game and I know nothing about it.”

  For Josh, it felt like they wandered through the dark cave for hours. Like a normal dream, reality moved in a strange way. His movements felt doubly removed – more like watching stop action photos than a movie of himself. Each footstep was a moment in time placed side-by-side with the others without any sense of continuity. It was impossible for him to judge the distance they travelled. At times, Josh was certain they were spiraling downwards or walking sideways even though the path before them continued to move in a straight line.

  Eventually the air in the cave grew brighter.

  “There’s something up ahead.”

  Wisdom nodded. “Let’s hope it’s an answer.”

  Abruptly, the cave ended. They stood on a cliff at the edge of a large cavernous valley. The ceiling rose high above Josh, disappearing into the shadows. The ground dropped sharply at least forty feet to the floor of a vast mechanized area that reminded Josh of a factory. The valley spread out as far as he could see in all directions. He also noticed they were no longer alone. Hundreds of workers moved about on the floor below. He was so overwhelmed by the numbers that it took him several moments to realize the workers were not human. Most of the creatures had horns, and a few had tails. Aside from the grey overalls they wore, the workers had almost nothing else in common. Some had blood-red skin while others looked like solid shadows, animated patches of night sky moving among the machines. There were also pockets of Edimmu, some in their angelic disguise – all blond hair and white-winged majesty – but the majority were in their natural reptilian form. Their black wings hung limp on their backs. Several flew or hovered near pipes that ran along the ceiling. Most of the valley floor was filled with conveyor belts and robotics, large metallic arms moving metal parts from one belt to another, streams of sparks where mechanical devices welded objects together. He followed the flow of the assembly line until his eyes fell on something that looked like flesh.

  “What the hell is that?” Josh saw patches of red that glistened like raw meat covered in blood stretching for yards. At the edge of each patch was a row of metal rings and thick wires.

  “You
’re looking at it too closely,” Wisdom said. Something in the tone of his voice made Josh shiver. He glanced at Wisdom and saw the man’s lower lip quiver slightly. “If you keep looking only at the parts, you’ll never see the big picture. That’s what Propates meant. I have been so stupid. Look higher up and take in the whole thing at once.”

  “The whole thing?” Josh let his eyes race to the top of the machine. It was several kilometers above him and it took his brain a moment to process what he was seeing. He covered his mouth. He was not sure if he was going to scream or laugh. “That’s … that’s not possible.”

  At the top was a head. From this distance, it was hard to judge how big it was, but he guessed it was as large as a football stadium. Now that he acknowledged what it was, he could easily make out the flicker of eyelashes and the slight flare of the nostrils as it took in each breath. Even though this was a dream, he was absolutely certain that what he was seeing actually existed. At the same time, he knew there was no way it could exist. A gigantic ring of metal encircled its very-human looking head and another ran around its chin. Large metal spears jutted out of each of the head’s temples. These were connected to tubes that ran down to various parts of the machinery below. There was no skin on the face. It glistened like a recent scab, blood glistening over blue veins and tender tissue. Josh shook his head, not wanting to believe what he was seeing. The whole area beneath it, all the way to the ground, was a humanoid body, also skinless and punctured with metal tubes. Small tumors protruded from various parts of its body, tumors that moved like dreaming eyes behind closed lids. Josh prayed the creature did not open its eyes.

  “Unless I’m mistaken,” Wisdom said, “that is Propates. The real one. I think I’m beginning to see what’s going on here. This might be a good time for us to leave. Technically this is a dream but you never can tell how real things like this are. Shall we?”

  Josh was about to leave when something caught his eye. Over by one of the machines was a figure he recognized: a man in a tuxedo of maggots and beetles, a man with eyes that were far too much like his own. Around the man were a number of Edimmu, their wings tight against their backs.