The Shadow Arts

by Damien Love

  Alex wasn’t listening. The mention of Harry Morecambe, his grandfather’s oldest friend, had called up a memory from the whirl of a few months before.

  Alex had been alone with Harry, and had tried to quiz him about the tall man’s identity. Finally, reluctantly, Harry had shown him an old photograph from his wallet. Alex had seen it only briefly, yet was certain of what he had seen: his grandfather, supposedly pictured over seventy years earlier, but looking only twenty years younger.

  It was an impossible riddle. But Harry had been trying to tell him something that Alex hadn’t been able to figure out. He’d become so caught up in his fascination with the tablet that he’d almost forgotten about it. Now it struck him: Harry hadn’t shown him the picture as an answer. He was trying to tell him the question. Harry had shown him the photograph so he would ask his grandfather about it. Harry was giving him the way in.

  Alex’s grandfather lifted the metal teapot to refill his mug. His face fell. “Empty. Hang on.”

  The old man crossed to the counter and stood chatting with the man in the steam. Street light made spattered jewels of rain on the black window behind him. Alex’s eyes drifted back to the plate on the table, one roll half-eaten, the other untouched. He’d never known his grandfather to leave food unfinished.

  He pulled out his phone and tried to remember the word David’s great-grandmother had screamed at him, to try a search. Just to take his mind off things. Bogor and Bocker pulled up nothing that fit. Trying Bokor, he froze at the first result:

  BOKOR

  In the Vodou religion, sorcerers who may practice both light and/or dark magic. Their black magic famously includes the making of ouanga (pronounced “wan-gha”), voodoo dolls, or talismans, which house spirits. Also, the creation of animated corpses.

  He put the phone away and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a fresh mug of tea had appeared. He watched the old hand stir in four heaped spoonfuls of sugar.

  “Get yourself around that. Sugar’ll help. Got some biscuits, too.” His grandfather put the plate on the table, then surreptitiously splashed something from a hipflask into his own mug and took a swig. “Feeling almost human again,” he said. Setting down the mug, he flexed his left hand and massaged it with the right. “Pins and needles.” He winced, then switched his gaze to Alex with new intensity. “And so. How about you, young man? How’ve you been feeling? Aside from tonight’s unpleasantness.”

  “Fine. Just, you know. Getting on with school and stuff.”

  “Mmm-hm. Anything else been keeping you busy?”

  “No, just . . .”

  “Hobbies or such?” The old man’s eyes never left Alex’s. “The old toy robot collection, for instance.” He started tapping a sharp, relentless rhythm on the table. “How’s that these days?” Tap-tap-tap-tap. “Anything in particular you might like to tell me about that?” Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  “Uh . . .”

  “Nothing?” Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. “You might like to share?”

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  “Just . . . Oh.” Alex screwed shut his eyes, then surrendered. “Okay, okay. All right.”

  He took the toy from his pocket and stood it on the table, fighting the urge to snatch it back. The decision to give it up was almost physically painful. But there was also an undeniable sensation of relief.

  “Uh-huh,” his grandfather muttered. “And there we are.”

  “Just take it,” Alex said. “I don’t want it. It’s too much. Take it back, throw it in the river. Get rid of it.”

  “Tell me, Alex.” The old man made no move to touch the toy. “What was in the box? That night, on the bridge, I saw you throw it. There was something in there.”

  “Oh. My phone. My old phone. It was broken, anyway. Just take it.”

  “Ah, what made you keep it, son?”

  “I’m not even sure.” Alex tried to be honest. “I just wanted to . . . know more. Learn more. I guess part of me thought I could use it to protect myself. I used to get bullied a bit at school. I mean, you remember the guy you saw beating me up.”

  “Ah . . . vaguely.”

  “Kenzie. Remember when I was a little kid, when I was really small. The doctors said I wasn’t growing properly—you took me and Mum on all those hospital visits for years.”

  “Of course.” His grandfather grew suddenly absorbed in studying the biscuits. “Go on.”

  “Yeah, well, he started picking on me then, at primary school. Then, dunno. It just became, like, his hobby. I thought, if I had the tablet . . . I just wanted to see what I could do.”

  He fell silent. This was the first he’d had a chance to talk about the tablet at all, but it occurred to him there was another reason he had kept it, one he couldn’t bring himself to say. This old toy and the power it held were his sole connection to the strange other life his father had abandoned everything for. Abandoned him for.

  “I wonder if there wasn’t something else,” the old man mused. “If it was entirely your decision. Maybe the tablet simply didn’t want to be destroyed. The power has been woken and doesn’t want to go back to sleep and . . .” His grandfather let the thought trail off and sat back, glancing from Alex to the robot. “And so how have you been getting on with it?”

  Alex looked up. “Huh? How do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean, young man. Have you”—the old man leaned forward—“been able to use it?”

  “Oh. Sort of. A little. At first. If I got in trouble, like a fight. If someone was going to hurt me, I could make them stop. Make them go away. I mean, I wasn’t doing anything bad.” His mouth was dry. He tried more tea. “But I didn’t really know what I was doing, how I was doing it. I tried to learn. But then, well. It just went away.”

  “Went away?” His grandfather was following intently.

  “That’s the only way I can explain it.” Alex shrugged. “When I tried to . . . contact it, I couldn’t find it. There was nothing. For weeks now. Months. Well, not until . . .”

  “Until?” his grandfather prompted.

  “Tonight. At David’s.” He told his grandfather about it. “The feeling, the power, it just came from nowhere. I didn’t try to use it, I didn’t want to use it. It just started, and I almost couldn’t stop it. I don’t even know what it was going to do. What I was going to do. You really didn’t see those heads back there?” Alex blinked around the café. It suddenly felt weird, sitting in a room full of strangers.

  His grandfather sat chin in hand, gazing at the toy. “Well. What you just said about not being in control. That’s one possible explanation for what happened on the street. That attack. It might not have been an attack. Not from outside, I mean. There’s a chance you might be doing it to yourself. Playing with things you don’t understand, making ripples. Opening doors. You said the heads you saw were all him. The, ah, tall man.” The old man sighed heavily. “He only had custard creams.”

  “Huh?” Alex blinked.

  “Chap who runs the café.” His grandfather nodded to the counter. “Nothing left but custard creams. On the biscuit front. Never was much of a fan of the custard cream, but any port in a storm, eh?” He crunched one and offered the plate. Alex scowled, shook his head, and sat straighter, listening for his chance as his grandfather went on.

  “So, yes. It could simply have been a nightmare you conjured up for yourself, Alex, and you gave it the tall man’s face because his face has been on your mind. On the other hand, if it was from outside, it seemed relatively weak, maybe directed at you from afar, or . . .” He broke off, pursuing a thought, then put down his biscuit, only half-eaten. He tapped the robot and smiled sympathetically.

  “Really should have chucked it in the river, Alex.”

  “Yeah. Well, you can do that now. Just take it back over there and get rid of it.”

  “Hah, yes.” His grandfather pulled at an ea
rlobe. “Well, that would be the long-term plan, certainly. But, thing is, Alex . . .”

  “Everyone thinks it was destroyed, anyway. That night,” Alex continued, barely listening. He stared at the toy, weighing the idea of never seeing it again. Not a bad idea at all.

  “Mmmm. Well, I had my suspicions. Couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about you, Alex. Some kind of glow. When you’ve been around this business long as I have, you develop something of a sixth sense for it. Might have been what David’s great-grandmother picked up on tonight. But I felt you’d been through enough without a grilling from me there and then. Alex, I really meant to have this out with you long before now, but my plans got . . . derailed. It was a lot to leave you with. I truly am sorry about that, old chap.”

  “It’s okay. I—” Alex couldn’t go on. Memories from that night on the bridge in Prague were washing over him again. “After all that,” he whispered, “how could you just leave me to . . . ? He jumped, he . . . I killed him. Both of them. Him and the girl. Zia, he called her. Her name was Zia.”

  “Whoa, wait.” The old man grabbed urgently at Alex’s arm. “Alex. Listen to me. None of that. It wasn’t your fault. My fault, for dragging you into it. You only did what you had to. You saved me, son. The girl jumped. He jumped after her. They got themselves in that situation, and they’ve been in far worse places before. Believe me, they wouldn’t have thought twice about—”

  “But he was—”

  “Alex, listen,” his grandfather broke in. “I’m truly sorry I’ve not been in touch. I should have been here to help you. Talk to you. But, well, y’see, things got a little busy. Ever since Prague, Harry and I have been—”

  There it was. “Harry,” Alex said. “I need to ask you about Harry—”

  “Well. That makes two of us. It’s Harry I’m here to talk to you about, Alex. Harry’s . . . Harry’s in a very bad predicament.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously, Alex. Bad trouble. Literally life and death.”

  The clamor of questions in Alex’s head was silenced as thoughts of Harry came slicing through. He had spent only a few intense days with the man, yet he thought of Harry as one of the best friends he’d ever had. Harry had told him they had actually met once years before, at a time Alex couldn’t remember, back when he was still that very small and sickly child, the object of curiosity for countless baffled doctors. Knee-’igh to a baby grass’opper, Harry had put it.

  He thought again of the photograph Harry had shown him: Harry a child himself, maybe six or seven, standing by Alex’s grandfather in their vanished black-and-white world. His grandfather wore a military uniform and looked somewhere in his fifties. Harry had been orphaned during the Second World War, hiding among bombed buildings in London. He’d said Alex’s grandfather had taken him under his wing.

  It didn’t make sense. The old man and Harry looked roughly the same age now. But it suddenly hit Alex: if what Harry said were true, then Harry was more than an old friend to his grandfather. He was practically an adopted son.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened to Harry?” Alex said.

  His grandfather spoke very quietly: “They got him, Alex . . . Your tall man. Zia.”

  “What?”

  “They didn’t die that night. I don’t suppose I ever believed for a second they were really gone.”

  “Alive?”

  “Bad as ever,” his grandfather went on. “Worse. And they’ve got Harry. We need to get Harry back, Alex. You and I. I need you to help me get Harry back. You and that.” He pointed at the old toy standing between them on the table. “You’ve used it before. You can use it again.”

  Alex tried to answer. But all he could focus on was the robot’s reflection in the tarnished metal teapot, the way it stretched and bulged grotesquely, the way it kept grinning out at him from its dim, distorted dimension.

  VI.

  A GODDESS AMONG GARAGE CATS

  The next afternoon Alex sat on a train, foggy after a sleepless night. Damp French fields slipped by outside. He could sense other people in the carriage, their comings and goings. None of it seemed real.

  He traced his thumb over the toy robot in the pocket of his hoodie, closed his eyes, and tried reaching out to it with his thoughts. He let his body go slack, bobbing to the train’s rhythm, but kept his mind alert, tight as a drum skin, poised for the faintest shiver of response. Empty minutes went by, ending in nothing.

  Alex abandoned the attempt. He couldn’t concentrate. His grandfather’s news had sent feelings rippling through him in too many different directions. Excitement, worry, hope, fear. Some emotions he couldn’t find labels for.

  His mum had been reluctant about letting him skip school to go on a journey so soon after Easter break. But his grandfather had, in his words, “worked the old charm.”

  “Marvelous luck,” the old man had whispered to Alex the previous night, after speaking alone with Alex’s mum and Carl in the kitchen. “Your mother has been very worried about you, young man. Shutting yourself away in your room, getting all moody. I told her not to worry: it’s just what happens when they become teenagers. But I suggested it might be an idea if you came along with me for a little trip. Get you out of yourself. Told her we were throwing a surprise birthday party for Harry.”

  Now his grandfather sat spread across the seat opposite, hidden behind a newspaper. Occasionally he would lean forward to cross-reference his reading with a heap of other newspapers and clippings on the table. Sometimes he scribbled in a battered black notebook. Champagne fizzed quietly in a glass near to hand.

  Alex could make out some of the scattered headlines, printed in French, German, Italian, one in English:

  GERMAN GALLERY PARTIALLY DESTROYED

  BY MYSTERY THIEVES

  BAROQUE MASTERPIECE PAINTING STOLEN IN MUNICH

  As his grandfather bent for his drink, he caught Alex’s gaze and tapped the newspaper. “Been following this at all? The stolen paintings?”

  Alex frowned. He vaguely recalled something in the news. But that had happened in Britain. Cambridge, maybe. He shook his head.

  “Harry and I have spent the past few months chasing this.” The old man put down the paper and gestured at the others. “There have been several pieces taken, all across Europe. No one else seems to have spotted any connection. It took me a few weeks to realize: It’s them, Alex. It’s them stealing these paintings.”

  “The tall man?” Alex sat forward. “Are you certain?”

  “Without a doubt.” His grandfather shrugged. “I just, eh, haven’t been able to work out why they’re doing it.”

  “Well—for money?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no.” The old man shook his head. “He has little need of that. And if he did, he has more subtle ways. That’s one of the things that worries me about this, Alex. They’re risking drawing attention. And they’re getting increasingly reckless. Far as I can tell, eight paintings have been taken since Christmas. They seem in a desperate rush.” He stared out over the industrial landscape now flitting by and repeated quietly to himself: “Desperate.”

  After a moment, he started to gather his papers and put them away. “Clearly, it’s for some purpose,” he continued. “Something on—y’know—the sinister side. I have the feeling it’s a very bad business indeed.” He paused, pursing his lips doubtfully. “Ah, how about Shadow Gate, Alex? Ever come across anything about that anywhere?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Just an old story I heard one time,” his grandfather said. He blinked away his dark look and smiled. “Long time ago. Well, half a story. Not even that much. I’ve been trying to remember it.”

  A tinny voice sounded above, welcoming them to Paris.

  “Tell you about it when we get to Harry’s office.” The old man was already standing, pulling on his coat, eager to get moving.

  *
* *

  • • •

  “PRUDENT TO EMPLOY the standard precautions,” Alex’s grandfather muttered as they threaded through the echoing din of the Gare du Nord. Outside, traffic thrummed, cars and coaches, trucks and bikes, an ambulance, a hearse. They took a taxi across the city center and got out on a bustling side street.

  After a few minutes’ walking, the old man hailed another cab for a snaking ride back toward the Gare du Nord. He had the driver drop them a few streets beyond, beside a Métro entrance. He paused, scanning the road. Half-hearted rain flitted around them.

  “Keep alert,” the old man said as he started down the stairs.

  It was lunchtime. The underground was busy. Instead of heading for the platforms, his grandfather led him through tunnel-like corridors to another exit and out. After another long, weaving taxi ride, they were standing on a derelict-looking gray street beyond the city outskirts, watching their cab drive away.

  “I really don’t think anyone’s following us,” Alex said, scanning the road. Even as he spoke, he realized his own queasy sense of being followed had diminished. In fact, looking around the unfamiliar landscape, he sensed himself coming into focus for the first time in months. Caught in his lonely experiments with the old toy robot, he hadn’t realized how much he had wanted to go on another trip with his grandfather. Despite the tumult and danger of their last adventure, and the ominous mood surrounding this new mission, he felt sharper, looser, than he had in a long time. The air seemed sweeter against his skin, an undeniable prickle of excitement.

  Shabby walls around eight feet tall ran on either side of the road, shielding the buildings behind. Alex’s grandfather stopped at a large, weathered gate. To judge by the flakes of paint clinging to the wood, it had once been green. A smaller door was set into it, beside an unmarked buzzer.

  “Top man in Paris,” the old man said as he pressed the button. “Harry swears by him. And sometimes at him.”

  A laborious shuffling of feet on gravel approached from the other side, there was a sound of latches being pulled, and the door opened a crack. A suspicious, bloodshot eye appeared. Beneath it, a hollow cheek sporting gray stubble and a mouth turned down in a sour pout around a half-smoked, currently unlit cigarette. The red eye scowled, scrutinized, then widened.