The Shadow Arts

by Damien Love

  “Come!” Morgenstern led them inside and across the foyer, over a dimpled rubber floor the same vibrant green as the frame of the high, rippling window. Daylight poured in like liquid, the collision of light and color setting the air singing with emerald hints.

  They went through large white exhibition spaces. People struck curious poses to consider sculptures from various angles. Voices murmured. Phones clicked. A small semicircle of kids around five years old sat beneath a large abstract canvas, busily drawing with felt-tip pens, copying bright splotches of color onto big sheets of paper. Alex watched them with a pang. It looked like fun.

  Leaning on their sticks, Alex’s grandfather and Metz walked together like mismatched mirror images. Metz limped slightly but moved easily enough with the aid of the umbrella.

  “You feeling better?” Alex asked.

  “Much,” Metz said, taking in a deep, satisfied breath. “There is some pain in the leg, but it just takes a little mind over matter to ignore it. It feels good to be up and moving around again.”

  Eventually, they arrived in a dimmer, more traditional gallery room and gathered before a painting hanging on a burgundy wall.

  “Bohemian Landscape, by Caspar David Friedrich,” Morgenstar said fussily. “And with that, my job is done.” He turned to Kingdom. “You will be receiving a bill for the umbrella. Good day.”

  They watched him stalk off, then turned back to the painting, except Harry, who seemed more absorbed in studying the ceiling and walls.

  A landscape indeed, roughly three feet wide by two feet high. Empty green fields rolled toward a range of mountain peaks that rose in a glorious light on the horizon beneath an enormous, hazy sky. Near the center of the image, two tall trees stood side by side alone in a meadow. Darker woods lurked beyond, on the way to the distant mountains. Just a simple, silent country scene.

  “‘The deeper meaning of this work lies in its composition,’” Alex’s grandfather said, reading from a card on the wall. “‘The two old oaks in the middle distance seem to form a gateway—’ Yes. Very droll.”

  They stared closely at the frame. It looked old but, beyond a faint impression of scratches beneath the thick varnish, there was nothing notable.

  “What do you think?” Kingdom said, scanning the gallery.

  “Harry’s the man for that. So, Harry?”

  “Oh.” Harry brightened. “Yeah. Easy peasy. Smash ’n’ grab’ll do it. Can we risk waiting until the place is closed?”

  “It’s beginning to look that way,” the old man said, frowning. “Maybe they didn’t know about this picture after all.” He looked around, then knocked a knuckle at his forehead in frustration. “I’m constantly plagued by the feeling I’m missing something obvious.”

  “Smash and grab?” Alex asked.

  XXX.

  SMASH AND GRAB

  “Are you absolutely sure about this?” Alex asked for the third time.

  Rain bounced off the Rolls-Royce. Alex sat inside with his grandfather and Harry. They were parked across the street from the Staatsgalerie, in a space behind a grand building Alex’s grandfather had pointed out as an opera house. A four-lane road cut between them and the now-dark museum. Little traffic moved. It was now past nine o’clock. Night was deepening. Walpurgisnacht, Alex thought.

  “Absolutely,” the old man said. He bent forward, fastening the spring-heels around his boots.

  “Some jobs, Alex,” Harry said, “quick and simple’s best. Thing about art galleries is, they like to splash natural light around. That means skylights. Now, the power in them ’eels”—he pointed as Alex’s grandfather finished attaching the second device—“means your grandad can break through the glazing and roof structure no problem. Soon as ’e does that, alarms’ll go off. But ’e’s only after the one painting, so that’s no worry.”

  “Once the alarms are triggered,” the old man said, shrugging into a harness with dangling, strap-like attachments, “it’ll take the police at least three minutes to respond. Bags of time.”

  “But there must be guards in there,” Alex said.

  “Oh, somewhere.” His grandfather nodded. “But it’s a big place. And, in our experience, night guards at museums tend to be underpaid, undertrained, and undermotivated. They’re basically only there to call the police if anything happens.”

  “So, yeah,” Harry went on, counting off points on his fingers: “’E bounces up onto the roof. Smashes a nice big ’ole. Drops down inside. Nips along and pries the painting off the wall. Straps the frame over ’is back with the ’arness. Then ’e runs back along, jumps back up through the same ’ole, and bounces away. Soon as we see ’im coming out, we get movin’, and then we all meet up in the park ’alf an hour later.”

  “It can’t be as easy as that,” Alex complained.

  He supposed that the idea of his grandfather breaking into the museum would have set his nerves buzzing under any circumstances. The pressing sense that the tall man’s gang lurked somewhere multiplied his anxiety infinitely. He held the old toy robot in his pocket, readying himself to begin reaching out. Better to be prepared.

  “Maybe I could do it,” he suddenly said.

  “Eh?” The old man and Harry looked at him.

  “Like, I could turn myself invisible or something. I’m sure I can do it now. If you just give me a minute to work it out.”

  “What? And spoil my fun?” His grandfather tutted, raised a foot, and turned his ankle so the street light caught the apparatus around the heel. “No, no. This is my job, Alex. You know, Harry, I’d almost forgotten how much I used to enjoy this.”

  “Like old times.” Harry beamed.

  The old man lifted his cane, pushed open the door, and stepped outside. Rain danced around him. “Okay, Harry. What does Evelyn say?”

  Harry lifted his phone. “’Ow’s it looking?”

  “All clear,” Kingdom’s voice came over the speaker from where she was positioned as lookout behind some abandoned roadworks farther along the road.

  “And, Metz, Alex?”

  “Uh, hello?” Alex said into his own phone to Metz, who was stationed off in the street behind the big museum. “Seen anything?”

  “All quiet.”

  Alex’s grandfather turned away, considered the buildings across the road, then suddenly turned back. He had slipped his black eye mask on. “Listen, do you hear?” he said, cocking an ear toward the opera house. Beneath the sigh of rain on the streets, Alex caught a distant swell of music.

  “They’re doing Puccini. Shame we’re busy. Ah well. Here goes nothing. Although, eh, you shouldn’t really go around robbing museums, of course, Alex.”

  He crouched, then leapt, touched down briefly in the middle of the road, then sprang again, to land near the museum’s raised entrance.

  “That really is quite impressive,” came Kingdom’s disembodied voice.

  “Harry,” Alex said. “Do you think he’s up to this? I mean, he’s been getting weaker and . . .”

  “I know. But ’ave you ever tried talking your grandad out of something, Alex?”

  They both sighed. Alex held the toy robot and prepared to begin his process of contacting the power. A thought struck him. “Did you ever remember the other thing you found out, Harry?”

  “Eh?”

  “When you left the message for Grandad before . . . before your accident. You said ‘two things, it’s not.’ One was about the frames. What was the other?”

  “Oh.” Harry thought for a second. “Nah. Sorry.”

  A third jump and the old man stood on the roof above the museum doors. Alex placed his phone on the seat alongside Harry’s. As he did, he noticed a new message. When he’d checked earlier, hoping for more cryptic clues from Kenzie, there had been nothing. This was from David.

  Sort of bad news here. Kenzie Mitchell’s in a coma or something. They just
found him in his room. Can’t wake him up. Guy’s an idiot, but not good stuff. Doctors don’t know what it is yet. Tricia Babcock says it’s touch and go. Weird biz.

  You okay? What’s happening there?

  Alex stared at the screen. It felt as though everything was draining out from him. He sat staring at the dark floor of the car. In the shadows there, he saw Kenzie staggering away as he pushed him through the door in his mind, Kenzie falling backward, disappearing into the roaring light. He let go of the robot as if scalded.

  “There ’e goes,” Harry muttered, jolting Alex from his thoughts.

  Alex grabbed the binoculars Harry proffered. It took a moment to find his grandfather, a faint gray phantom in the dark, moving toward a wall where the level changed again. Another great leap and he was poised on a much higher roof. A glazed skylight ran the length of the building. The old man padded along in a catlike crouch, hunting for a particular spot.

  “Everything okay?” Harry spoke to both phones at once.

  “All clear.”

  “Clear.”

  Alex’s grandfather had stopped. Rain blurred in the binoculars’ lens. With a curious combination of movements, he lifted one leg and slammed a foot down, then repeated the action. Alex heard no alarms, yet he felt them going off. Then his grandfather was simply gone, having dropped down through the hole he’d made.

  “Three minutes,” Harry muttered, checking his watch.

  Alex glanced around. Harry was clearly going through every moment of the job along with Alex’s grandfather, acting out the movements. His head nodded silently as he counted off the footsteps from the place where the old man had landed to the wall where the painting hung.

  From the corner of his eye, Alex caught a change across the road. Lights had come on behind the crazy window of the museum’s foyer. Shadows flitted inside.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Eh?” Harry looked up, then dismissed it. “No worries. Two minutes twenty.”

  Continuing his mime of the robbery, Harry lifted his hands, turning them as though working with some tool.

  “Hurry up,” Alex whispered.

  Harry ignored him. He slipped off an invisible harness, worked to secure it to the invisible painting, then pulled it back on. He paused, motionless for several beats, then started nodding again, marking each step of Alex’s grandfather’s return to the point where he had broken in.

  “Here we go,” Harry murmured happily. “Back out any second. And still a minute left.”

  Alex trained his binoculars on the museum again, trying to locate the right place. A distant siren sounded. Rain stirred restlessly.

  “Do you see something?” Kingdom’s concerned voice suddenly sounded over the phone.

  “Where?” Harry said gently and seriously, lifting his binoculars.

  “On the roof. Wait. Maybe it was just the rain.”

  The siren was getting closer.

  “Metz?” Harry said.

  “No sign of anything here.”

  Alex shifted his glasses frantically. The only movement was the steely shiver of rain—then he tracked back. There was something else, behind the rain.

  “Oh no,” Kingdom breathed.

  A dim, massive figure rose from a crouch and stepped stiffly toward the broken place Alex’s grandfather had gone in.

  “Bloody Nora,” Harry whispered.

  “What’ll we do?” Alex said.

  “Too late.”

  Alex lifted his binoculars again in time to see his grandfather come springing up through the hole in the roof, wearing the painting like a flat turtle-shell on his back. The old man landed lightly and bowed theatrically in their direction. The tall man came forward, fast, lashing out.

  Alex’s grandfather must have heard something. He ducked, not quite far enough. The swiping stab caught him on the shoulder, sent him spinning, tripping toward the roof’s edge.

  Alex threw open the door. “Grandad!”

  Up there, his grandfather recovered, balanced, then jumped, springing from the high roof to a flat section beneath, where he instantly leapt again to escape the dark figure bounding down behind him.

  Alex grabbed for his rucksack and frantically searched until he found the flier. Then he was running, already in the road, ignoring Harry’s calls.

  He hurdled the barrier in the center, dodged a lone car that swerved around him, horn blaring. All the while he squinted up, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the two vague figures bouncing around the museum complex’s roofs.

  His grandfather suddenly changed direction, springing back the way he had come, flying past his pursuer. Mid-leap, at the peak of their arcing jumps, the two dark figures struck out at each other. The old man’s thrusting cane caught the tall man under the chin, snapping back his head. At the same time, Alex’s grandfather shuddered and spun from an unseen blow.

  Both fell, disappearing from Alex’s sight. He was too close to the building to see them now unless they were at the very edge of the roof. Far along the road to his right, he caught the blue glimmer of a distant police car’s flashing light.

  Almost by instinct, he pulled out the old toy robot. It grinned up at him.

  Kenzie. He couldn’t do it.

  He stuffed it away, pulled out the flier, unwrapped the sock from its eyes, and rammed home the lock of his hair from his jeans pocket. He hesitated as his skin remembered the sting of salt on his fingertips in the hotel the last time he had used it. “Always a price to pay,” he whispered. Very well. He’d pay it. He steadied his mind, then threw the little machine up, building his mental bridge faster than ever, chasing the flier with a thought that took it higher.

  A vague aerial view of the roofscape came to him in staccato flashes. Two figures fighting and jumping wildly. His grandfather was trying to head toward the old section of the museum. The tall figure crouched and sprang, hurtling ahead, cutting him off.

  Alex sent the flier plummeting toward the tall man, barely thinking about what he was doing. Seconds before he struck, the figure turned his face up, sunglasses staring. The distraction was enough for the old man to hop away, but he was caught by a vicious swipe from somewhere as he jumped—it seemed to have come from behind, but Alex couldn’t work out how. The tall man was too far away. Did he have a flier of his own in the fray?

  Alex abandoned the question as he went into attack with his own machine, striking out with his hook and blade. The dark figure flinched, dropping his knife to clutch at his face with both hands. Then Alex was struck by another wicked blow he hadn’t seen coming, and sent spinning sickeningly through the air.

  Below, the real Alex sprinting along the street stumbled and fell as his mind flooded with pain. His vision bled to black. He lay groggy on the damp pavement, then pulled himself up and stumbled in the direction his grandfather had gone.

  The old museum extended to a corner where another road cut across. Alex looked up, hunting the roofline, then down, scanning the ground. A border of tangled bushes and trees ran along the other side of the street. In the shadows beside it lay an odd, motionless heap, half on the road.

  Alex ran over and knelt. His grandfather was out cold, facedown on the wet pavement. The painting remained strapped to his back. The fingers of one outstretched hand still curled loosely around his cane

  “Grandad. Grandad!”

  He shook the old man’s shoulder. Nothing. Trying to contain his panic, Alex bent to the old man’s mouth and listened. A thin breath. He tried rousing him again, to no avail. He looked back to the roof looming across the road. Nothing. Yet.

  Beyond the corner, the whooping police siren abruptly fell silent.

  Alex searched around, hunting for inspiration. Traffic was coming along the road at them, fast. He grabbed his grandfather’s shoulders and hauled him safely onto the verge as a truck rumbled heavily past, inches away.

 
With difficulty, Alex slipped the harness from the old man and propped the painting against the bush. He took the old toy robot from his pocket, thinking hard about his options.

  He could try to connect, rush to find the light, work some mighty blasting wonder, end all this now. But that might end Kenzie with it. He was almost certain of that.

  Even before, when Alex had used the tablet barely conscious of what he was doing or how, Kenzie had started growing quieter, weaker. Now that he had started using it consciously, calling up greater and greater forces—creating the blast at the château, raising Harry—Kenzie had fallen into a coma. Somehow what Alex was doing with the tablet was taking a toll on Kenzie.

  There’s always a price to be paid. The memory of his grandfather’s words hit him again like a dead weight. Maybe Kenzie was paying the price that Alex should have been for using the tablet.

  He crouched, frozen, looking at the old man lying helpless before him. Sacrifice Kenzie to save everything else. That seemed to be the choice.

  “No,” Alex said to himself. Then again. “No.”

  He wouldn’t do it. He refused. And he couldn’t risk having the tablet near him. He might use it by accident. Or in desperation.

  He slipped the old toy into the inside pocket of his grandfather’s coat. Then he rolled the unconscious figure into the undergrowth as far as he could.

  Alex looked back. A chill ran through him as a silhouette came striding to the edge of the museum’s roof and paused. The tall man stood against the bulging charcoal sky, head turning slowly, hunting.

  He only had a few seconds before he was discovered. Save his grandad. Save the frame. Save everything. How?

  He looked to the corner, hoping for Harry or Kingdom. The road was empty. The painting stood to his right. Pattering rain drummed pleasantly on the canvas. To his left, his grandfather’s feet stuck out from under the bush. The spring-heels glinted dully.