Shadow Walkers

by Brent Hartinger

  This wasn’t working.

  I tried it again from the top—the long, deep breaths, imagining the stress flowing from my body.

  It didn’t work the second time either.

  Astral projection wasn’t real, just like I’d known it wouldn’t be.

  ———

  The next morning, I actually sat down at my computer and turned it on before I remembered the punishment my grandparents had given me. To their credit, they hadn’t made me move my computer into their bedroom or anything.

  Then I remembered what they’d said about taking the thing away for good if I got caught doing anything else wrong, and it was all I could do to not yank the plug right out of the wall.

  When the computer was off again, I realized I had the exact same problem I’d had the night before.

  What am I going to do without a computer for a whole week?

  I had breakfast and even washed my dishes. That took twenty minutes.

  I took a shower and got dressed. That took another twenty minutes.

  I cleaned the dead bugs out of the fixture on my ceiling—and took a broom and brushed out the cobwebs in the corners too. That took about fifteen minutes.

  When I was done with all that, it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet. How was I going to spend the rest of my day?

  My grandparents had specifically forbidden me from using my computer, but they hadn’t said anything at all about another computer. But my options were limited on a place like Hinder Island. I didn’t have any real island friends. And while there was computer access at the island’s public library, they were only open a couple days a week—and not for three more days. Plus, they limited the amount of time you could be on because there were usually other people waiting.

  I went out onto the front porch. My grandparents were in the garage shellacking a bureau, and Gilbert and Billy were across the street chasing grasshoppers. They were two blond streaks tearing around the yard.

  “Hey, Zach!” Gilbert called to me. “Come play with us!”

  Once again I was so desperate I almost considered joining them. Then I remembered the island’s Internet café. It was more like a couple of ancient computers-for-hire in the back of Hole in the Wall, the town’s lone coffee bar, but hey, it’d do the job.

  ———

  The town of Hinder was located in the middle of the island. It wasn’t far from our house—nowhere was far from anywhere else on the island. I rode my bike there and stored it in this wooden rack just outside the town center. There was no need to lock it up—no one ever locked up anything on the island, not bikes, not cars, not houses.

  Hinder wasn’t much: a few dozen houses surrounding a weird mix of businesses, some that catered to islanders, like the hardware and grocery stores, and some that relied mostly on the weekend tourists. You could tell which were the businesses that catered to the islanders, because they were the ones that didn’t ever repaint or repair their signs, if they even bothered having a sign at all.

  As I turned away from my bike, I found myself facing the open garage of one of the houses on the main road leading into town. Matt Harken—Wounded Wolf—was inside, working on some project. It looked like he was carving a canoe out of an actual log—alone, of course. I’d known he lived in that house, but I’d never actually seen him outside before.

  He hadn’t noticed me, but I felt myself flush red anyway. After he’d caught me ogling him on the beach out at Trumble Point, the last thing in the world I wanted was to talk to him.

  Okay, I take that back. I did want to talk to him. That was the whole point of the fake online name and my documenting his every move. I desperately wanted to talk to him.

  Hadn’t I always said that out of all the guys on the island, he seemed the one that I had a shot with? I mean, he was carving a canoe out of a log! If I didn’t talk to him, I’d never know for sure if we had any kind of connection. It’s not like I had to ask him out on a date. I just wanted to introduce myself, chat a bit, and see if there was any spark—find out if there was any chance he was like me. And since I was going to be offline for a whole week, there was no better time than now to finally do it.

  Weirdly, taking the idea seriously finally made my face stop turning red. I took a deep breath.

  I was going to do it. I was finally going to talk to Matt.

  I didn’t talk to Matt.

  I really wanted to, but I wimped out. I couldn’t even bring myself to cross the street. Instead, I walked to the Hole in the Wall Internet café and spent most of the afternoon online. By the time I was done, Matt was gone.

  I went back to Hole in the Wall Internet café the following day. I was still determined to talk to him.

  I chickened out again.

  The next day, the third day of my banishment from my computer, I actually made it across the street before I lamed out.

  On the fourth day, I thought I saw Matt glance over at me. I managed to nod, but I didn’t dare look at him when I did it. I was too afraid I’d be harpooned by those eyes of his.

  On the fifth day, he wasn’t even there.

  On the sixth day, he was back working in the garage again, but he went inside just as I set foot on his driveway.

  The seventh day was the last day I’d be coming to Hole in the Wall Internet café—after that my punishment was over, and I’d be allowed to use my own computer again. True, I’d run into Matt other places on the island, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk to him, one where I could plan it all out in advance.

  As I road my bike into town that day, I thought about exactly what I wanted to say. I’d pretend to be walking into town again, but then I’d look over at him. I’d casually stroll over to the driveway and say, “I’ve been coming into town all week to work on the computer, and I couldn’t help but notice what you’re doing. You’re really carving a canoe?” Whatever it was he said, I’d smile and say, “Wow, that’s really interesting. By the way, I’m Zach. You’re Matt, right? We go to school together.”

  I was pretty nervous as I placed my bike in the rack. But I was determined to see this through. It was just talking to him. What was the big deal?

  I took another deep breath and turned around to face the garage.

  He wasn’t there. The garage door was open and the half-carved canoe was still inside. But Matt wasn’t around.

  Well, that’s that, I thought. I wish I could say I was disappointed, but the truth is, I was totally relieved.

  I stepped out on the sidewalk—and crashed right into Matt himself. He must’ve crossed the street behind me and was now walking into town. I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Oh!” I said. “Sorry! Geez. Sorry.” I’d really collided with him. He smelled like cedar sawdust and sweat, both clean.

  “S’okay, man,” he said, barely even glancing at me.

  He wasn’t alone. He’d been walking with this girl—Leigh Walsh, someone from his class. She was pretty in a cheap, beer-on-the-beach kind of way. She smelled like something sweet, but not clean—something sticky, like taffy.

  She and Matt were holding hands. That’s who Matt was looking at even now.

  Matt had a new girlfriend. He was so caught up in her that I’d walked right into him, and he’d barely even noticed.

  But Leigh had noticed. She laughed out loud. She didn’t actually say, “What a dork!” but she might as well have. It’d been a long time since I’d been this embarrassed—not since, well, the week before when Matt had caught me ogling him out at Trumble Point.

  I immediately turned and headed into town. But Matt and Leigh were going into town too, so they ended up walking right behind, like the three of us were walking together.

  “Ask for no foam,” Leigh said to Matt. “They always give me too much foam.”

  They were going to Hole in the Wall too—it’s not
like Hinder had more than one coffee bar. But the last thing in the world I wanted now was to spend time around Matt. So much for my making small talk, for my finding out if he was like me.

  I stopped at the first store I came to and immediately ducked inside.

  Outside, I heard Leigh laugh. At least I didn’t know for sure that she was laughing at me.

  ———

  It was a New Age shop called The Crystal Unicorn. I knew this because it was one of the stores in town that had a sign. Still, I’d never been inside before. In the window to one side of me, there was a collection of stone goddesses, all different, but all very fat. The air smelled of patchouli and cat box.

  I looked around. It seemed to be deserted—I didn’t even see the cat. A nearly dry fountain gasped from somewhere beyond the racks of angel greeting cards.

  Even now, I wasn’t willing to give up on the Internet café completely, but I needed to give Matt and Leigh some time to get their coffee and go. So I worked my way deeper into the store, past a table stacked with different kinds of incense and glass cases full of colorful jewelry—the kind you’d see on an Egyptian queen or a Florida retiree. One hexagonal case held small crystal figurines—dragons, sea monsters, and, yes, a unicorn—but the light had burned out, so they all looked drab and dusty.

  The back wall of the shop was covered with small mirrors with odd shapes and brightly colored wooden frames—African maybe.

  A cloth curtain hung over a doorway into the back of the store, with a curtain of beads dangling down over that. Now I smelled something decidedly non-New Age—something frying in oil. I wondered if there was some kind of apartment in back.

  Below the mirrors, there was a table with a basket full of handmade soaps, each in a yellow wrapper with a drawing of a crescent moon. I picked one up and smelled it.

  “You’re Gilbert’s brother,” said a voice.

  I jumped, startled. It was the shopkeeper behind the counter. If she’d come from the apartment in back, I wondered why I hadn’t heard the beads rattle. Maybe the cloth curtain had muffled them.

  She was a large woman—a little like the stone goddesses in the front window. She had frizzy red hair in a bun, freckles, and a big blue sun dress. I’d seen her around before. I take back what I said about Matt being the only person on the island I’d never talked to. I’d never talked to this woman either.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am.” I wasn’t surprised that she knew who Gilbert and I were. It wasn’t just that everyone knew everyone else on Hinder Island. Here Gilbert and I were the Boys Who Lived With Their Grandparents Because Their Parents Were Dead.

  “He’s such a cute little boy,” the woman said. She paused. “You like how that smells?”

  “Huh?”

  “The soap.” She meant the one in my hand, the one I’d been smelling.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure. It’s nice.”

  “It’s made with lemon, cedar, and rosemary, which all have purification powers. That means that soap doesn’t just clean the body, it also cleanses the soul.”

  “Ah.”

  She smiled at me. “Too much for you, eh?”

  “No,” I said. “No, it’s interesting.” I put the soap back.

  “It’s okay,” the woman said. “I didn’t always believe in all this either.”

  “Well, I wanted to believe, but—”

  “What?”

  I glanced back at the sidewalk. It was still too soon to go back outside—I didn’t want to run into Matt again. Then I thought, well, why not tell her the truth?

  “Last week, I found this book on astral projection,” I said. “And I tried it, but it didn’t work. For me, anyway.”

  “How long have you been meditating?”

  “What? Oh, I haven’t been. I mean, I just tried it for the first time last week.”

  She laughed. “You’d been meditating for one day, and you’re disappointed that you can’t do astral projection?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Astral projection is really hard. Didn’t the book tell you that?”

  I kind of shrugged. “Yeah. I guess it did.” To enter the astral state, most people require a daily meditation regimen of a half hour a day for at least three months, the book had said. But I’d ignored that part.

  “And even then—” she started to say.

  “What?”

  She fiddled with a rack of pendants. “Well, what most people think of as astral projection is just a form of dreaming. Oh, they see into the astral realm. Sort of. But they’re not actually there. I think we all enter the astral realm a little bit when we’re dreaming. Most folks who claim they do astral projection just do the same thing a little bit more consciously.”

  This was basically what Celestia Moonglow had written in that book—that astral projection was a form of dreaming. Big deal.

  “You said that’s how most people do it,” I said. “So some people do it differently?”

  The woman in the sun dress looked up at me and smiled. “Maybe.”

  “You?” I said.

  “Truthfully, no. It’s not my thing.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “But I know how it’s done.”

  “How?”

  She glanced around, as if to make sure the store was still empty. Then she bent down behind the counter. I stepped closer and saw that she was rummaging around in a big satchel on the floor, almost like a carpet bag. Finally she pulled out a bundle of incense sticks wrapped up in a plastic baggie. She pulled them out of the plastic, maybe twenty sticks in all. Unlike the incense on that table, these weren’t neatly wrapped in paper or packaged in boxes, just gathered in a rubberband.

  I knew it was stupid—it was just a bundle of incense sticks—but the woman’s secretive nature, this whole interaction with her, was exciting somehow, something dangerous in a place where nothing dangerous ever happened.

  “Try this,” she said, placing the incense sticks on the counter.

  I picked them up and took a whiff. I didn’t recognize the smell, but it reminded me of a forest, rich and complicated.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a special recipe. Very difficult to get.” At that exact moment, I noticed a strange under-odor to the incense, like something rotten.

  “Is it legal? And safe?”

  She laughed. “Completely.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “A hundred dollars,” she said.

  Now I laughed. “Uh, no thanks.” How had I not seen that coming?

  “It’s worth it,” she said. “It really works!”

  “I’m sure it does,” I said, starting for the door. Matt and Leigh had to have their coffees by now, and even if they didn’t, I could go in some other shop.

  “Tell you what,” the woman said. “How about I give you a free sample?”

  “No, thanks.” I really wasn’t interested.

  “No strings! You take it home and try it. If it works and you like it, you come back and I’ll sell you more at the full price.”

  I stopped.

  “It’s free! What do you have to lose?”

  She had a point.

  “Here, take three sticks,” she said. “I can afford to be generous, because I know you’ll be back.”

  I took them, and I really did intend to try them.

  But the thing is, that was the day my punishment came to an end. And when I got home that night, my grandma said, “It still makes me sick to think about what kind of person you might run into on that computer of yours.”

  And my grandpa said, “But you upheld your end of the bargain. So we’ll uphold ours. You’re free to use it and your phone again.”

  So I put those three sticks of incense in the drawer of the nightstand in my bedroom,
and I forgot all about them.

  Soon the weeks of summer turned into months, and I was still stuck on my own personal Alcatraz. Now that I knew that Wounded Wolf—Matt—was straight, I didn’t even have him to fantasize about.

  But at least I had my computer back.

  One morning in mid-July, I tore myself away from the monitor to take the garbage out. I hate to say it, but my grandparents’ punishment had worked: I hadn’t forgotten to take the garbage out even a single time since then.

  My grandparents were battling slugs in the garden out back, but Gilbert was on the front lawn playing with one of the neighborhood cats.

  “What you doing?” I asked him.

  “Playing fetch,” he said. He held up a stick.

  “You play fetch with a dog, not with a cat,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah? Watch!” He tossed the stick across the grass. The grey cat bolted after it.

  Gilbert beamed.

  “But he isn’t bringing the stick back,” I said. The cat was busy clawing at the wood. A second later, he forgot the stick completely and pounced on a nearby leaf. “See?”

  “He still fetched it.”

  I wasn’t going to argue. “Where’s Billy today?”

  Gilbert looked glum. “He and his mom went off-island.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said as I turned back for the house.

  As I sat at my computer, I could hear the sounds of the island through my open window.

  Crows cawed.

  A neighbor’s wind chimes jingled in the breeze.

  Gilbert squealed with laughter. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he really had taught that cat to return the stick.

  By early afternoon, I was still sitting at the computer. Outside my window, a truck rattled by, and a bell rang in the distance.

  I realized I’d been inside all morning. Plus, it had been weeks since I’d taken any photos or videos of the island—supposedly my “thing.” Some neighbor-friends of my grandparents had given me permission to borrow their rowboat whenever I wanted, so I decided to take it out into the bay.