The Shadow's Touch

by Scott VanKirk

  Dancing? How did I get here? I was in my bed!

  Um… I could almost see her looking at the ground and scuffing one foot across the dirt in shame.

  I growled, Spring…

  Well, I, uh, wanted to go dancing and so, when you fell asleep, I got up and came here to dance.

  You have got to be…

  Suddenly, someone was yelling in my ear with excitement. “Tiger! You’re still alive!”

  I jumped about twelve feet in the air, and landed gracefully on my butt at his feet. I started screaming just as the music shut off and the house lights came on. “What the fuck!”

  A strange man stood over me. He had on black lipstick and dark eyeliner. He was wearing skintight latex pants and an odd gold-colored half-shirt, which showed off his muscular stomach and a lot of his baby-smooth chest. His thin eyebrows rose in affronted disdain. “Really, Tiger! I’m shocked. That was totally rude. I never imagined that you could be so pedestrian!” He pouted his lips and said, “I’m sooo disappointed.”

  I was shocked even more. I knew this man! He was at the McDonald’s when I was with Gregg. I was suddenly flaming in flustered embarrassment. I said, “Uh, sorry. Uh…”

  Max.

  “Max, you just startled me.”

  “Darling, I would never have even conceived you would even know such a word!” I was ready to stammer something when he smiled lasciviously and said in a sultry voice, “There is hope for you yet, Tiger.” He offered his hand. I hesitantly took it, and he pulled me up quickly, with surprising strength. When I was standing next to him, he ran his finger down my chest and said with a purr, “Really, you’re god’s own sex machine on the dance floor, Tiger, but you’ve had us all despairing!”

  I had nothing to say to that. I was rooted to the floor in horror and embarrassment.

  He laughed and slapped me playfully on the chest with his hand. “Relax, Tiger. You should know I don’t bite.” He gave me a completely unnerving coy smile. “Unless you want me to.” He rolled his eyes at my continued panic. “I swear. How you, of all people, can be such a prude.” His gaze swept the empty, quiet dance floor and said, “Now what sort of bad boy have you been?” He narrowed his eyes but was still smirking. “Did you fart?”

  I pleaded internally with Spring, What’s going on?

  I didn’t get a reply before another voice called to me.

  “Finn?” Detective Hunter stood at the entrance, gun in hand, looking around the empty dance hall. Her beautiful face was a study in astonishment.

  “Darling Victoria! Such a pleasant surprise! Have you come to rescue little ol’ me? Oh, be still my twittering heart!”

  I stammered. “Uh, Detective…”

  She gave Max an impatient look. “Down, Max. I got a call on a disturbance here.” She took me in. For the first time, I looked down at my own clothing. A ripped up black tee shirt, my black Speedo swimsuit, and my sandals were the sum total of my wardrobe. I self-consciously put my arms down to cover as much as I could. She said, “Could either of you fill me in on what happened here? I couldn’t get a coherent answer from anyone outside. I heard everything from a fire to a crazed crack-head in a ripped shirt with a gun.”

  “I certainly don’t know, darling! When I saw Timothy Hanson come in drunk and mean, I sent Jason and his boys over to rescue Tiger before Timmy killed him.” I gaped like a fish. “Really, Tiger, I warned you not to dance like that with Jonathan. Timmy is positively insane about his Johnny.”

  The detective stepped up and examined my face. My hand went instinctively up to where my face still throbbed. When I touched it, pain shot through my broken hand. I yelped involuntarily and quickly pulled my hand away, causing more pain.

  That was how I ended up, a short time later, half-naked in Detective Hunter’s unmarked car, sitting in the gravel circle in front of my parent’s dark house. After I had adamantly refused to press charges—ol’ Timmy was nowhere to be found—she had insisted on giving me a ride. First she insisted on the hospital, but I insisted that I’d be completely healed in the next couple of days and asked her just to take me home. Along the way, a chastised Spring shared with me what had happened. Apparently, she had been hijacking my sleeping body to go dancing. That very neatly explained all the mornings I had been waking up tired and sore lately. I also recalled a comment she had made about me not knowing how well she could dance. Sheesh!

  As soon as we stopped at my house, I tried to get out and flee, but the door wouldn’t open. The detective gave me a poorly controlled smirk, and said, “Here we are… Tiger.”

  She regarded me closely for a moment and her slight smile faded. I quailed under her stare. I hoped she and Anderson never got together. My embarrassment just made it worse. I sat hunched in the seat with my hands covering bits that I really wished were better covered right then. In a small miracle, her appraising look didn’t even stir a peep from Spring about making babies.

  “Finn, is there anything I should know about tonight?”

  “Uh, Detective. Look, it was a mistake, I’m not gay or anything…”

  “I’m not talking about that, Finn. I wouldn’t care if you liked sheep. I’m asking about what happened. Why did that place clear out so quickly?”

  I toyed with the idea of claiming ignorance, but I could tell that would go down like a chocolate covered turd. After all, she knew about Dave the Bear and Spring, sort of. I hesitated and then said, “Well, you know how I told you that Gregg and Jen were trying to kill the dryad living in my tree?” Her face was closed and guarded when she nodded. “Well, they didn’t actually kill her. She, uh, moved in with me.”

  “I’m assuming you don’t mean your bedroom, do you?”

  I shook my head and then I pointed to it.

  “She’s… living in your head.” I nodded. She squinched her eyes, pinched her nose, and muttered, “I have got to introduce you to my grandfather. I’m going to get such an ‘I told you so. So, you’re carrying around this dryad spirit. How is that relevant here?”

  “Well, apparently she wanted to go dancing.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Uh, yeah. She did it while I was sleeping.”

  “So, she cleared that dance floor?”

  “Nooo… I did that.” Her steady regard encouraged me to go on. “She woke me up right before that guy attacked me. I woke up just as he hit me in the face. I knocked him down and was ready to lay into him, but the bouncers grabbed me, and I flipped out. I could only think about how Ricky and Chester had grabbed me so…” I looked at my hands. “I told everyone to go away.”

  “And they did?”

  I nodded, still looking at my hands, oddly ashamed even though I couldn’t tell you why.

  She added in a monotone, “Every last one of them?”

  I nodded again.

  She got out of the car and came around back to let me out. She opened the door and watched me like a hungry cat might eye a mouse. I got out and stood awkwardly when she didn’t move very far back. She said, “At least now I know what’s different about you.”

  “What?”

  “All that dancing is getting you into shape.” A short pause and she said, “Finn, I want you to promise me that you’ll come see me and my grandfather sometime in the next couple of days. Your dad knows the address.”

  I agreed uncertainly.

  Apparently not that contrite, Spring crowed. I knew it! She wants to mate with us!

  Grave R obbery

  Late the next morning, after a nightmare-filled sleep, I crawled out of bed. My arm and my face still hurt, and I wasn’t looking forward to going downstairs and facing the questions my face would bring. Hunger and inevitability won out, so I tromped down to the kitchen. To my relief, I didn’t run into my parents. I rummaged around, ignored the cornflakes, and heated up a big chunk of pot roast from the night before. I scarfed that down, and then pulled out an apple and the leftover salad. I was busy working on that when I heard a crash from the garage.

  I dropp
ed my fork and ran out to see what had happened.

  My dad was in the garage, looking at his car. Its rear end had smashed through the garage door as if he had backed it out without opening the door. He looked at me, and I had another (increasingly common) moment of harmonic dissonance: he broke out into a wide smile.

  “Dad! What happened? Are you all right?”

  “Sorry, Finn. I forgot that the back wheels spun freely if the parking brake isn’t engaged. I kind of overbalanced.” He took in my blank expression and his own lit up. “Finn, I lifted that car! Without a jack! It was amazing.”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, yes, I did! It’s these acorns you collected from the back yard? They’re like Popeye’s spinach for me!”

  “Who’s Popeye?”

  “He’s the sailor who gets very strong when he eats spinach! You had to have seen that cartoon.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Well, anyway, I noticed that basket of acorns, and it smelled really good. So, I cracked a few open. They make me feel so alive! I felt so strong I thought I could lift the car, so I did.” He looked ruefully at the garage door. “Unfortunately, it started rolling backward, and I overbalanced.”

  He gestured me over. “Come on, Finn, we need to get this fixed before your mother gets home. If she sees it like this, she’ll kill me.”

  I just sighed. Just how weird could my life get? So much for my plans for the day.

  “Hey, son. What happened to your face?”

  “Long story, Dad.”

  “Anything I need to know about?”

  There was a lot more to that comment than it seemed. He was telling me that he felt I was adult enough to deal with my problems, but that he was still there for me. It made me feel good. I thought about that for a few seconds. I shook my head and said, “I think I’ve got it covered.”

  “Okay, then. Did you see the paper I left on the table for you?”

  “No, I didn’t. Sorry.”

  “Looks like somebody did another number on the Seaman Mound.”

  I stared at him blankly. “The Seaman Mound?”

  He pointed his chin to my chest and said, “The mound we helped excavate—where you got your magic stick.”

  “Oh, right. What happened?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve been following it, but Hatzer’s son donated the land around the mound to the Feds for conservation. Someone went down there during the night and did some more digging on the east and the north sides of the mound. The local Shawnee kicked up a big fuss about it. Turns out whoever did it committed a federal felony.”

  The memory of my—the shadow’s—final battle against the four warriors flashed into my head. There had been four of them—the snake, the bear, the eagle, and the cougar. I knew then that whoever had been digging was after the eagle and the cougar totems.

  I shared this with my dad, and he gave me an odd look. He said, “What makes you think there is an eagle and a cougar whistle there?”

  I said sheepishly, “Well, that’s long story.”

  “I think I need to hear this one.”

  I nodded and told him about my vision of the battle with Wendigota.

  When I finished, he regarded me for a long moment before he started to say something. He stopped, shook his head, and made another unsuccessful attempt before simply saying, “I’m so sorry, Finn.”

  “Not your fault, Dad. Nobody was holding a gun to my head for any of this.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t here for you. I’m sorry that I made it impossible for you to bring this to me.”

  I had nothing to say to that so I just gave him a hug. I needed to remember that I wasn’t the only one carrying a backpack full of guilt.

  Afterward

  A couple of weeks later, in spite of continuing nightmares, things had calmed down a bit. Jennifer and her parents were gone. Jen had actually been able to talk her father around a bit. He wouldn’t tell me himself, but he no longer felt that everything was my fault. Even so, he had already accepted a job elsewhere, and neither he nor his wife wanted to stay in the same house with all its reminders of Gregg. It made me sad, but I guess I understood. On the plus side, Jen and I were texting each other constantly. Il Saia seemed to have left some memories behind. We spent a lot of time talking about it.

  I’d been putting off talking to Detective Hunter and her grandfather, but she was putting the pressure on, and I would have to go see them one of these days.

  Erik Parmely was awaiting trial for the murder of his father. In the strange but true department, Erik, the guy who had terrorized our entire grade, was younger than nearly all of us. They would try him as a juvenile. On top of that, Dr. Anderson planned to build a temporary insanity case for Erik. He wanted me to testify for Erik.

  I had some seriously mixed feelings about that. I was waffling between, “In your dreams monkey-boy!” and “What have you been smoking?”

  On the most excellent side, I was getting a little sister. Holly had moved in with us with Dr. Anderson’s blessings. Once my mom and dad met Holly, they just about fell over themselves to get the paperwork started for the adoption. She fits right into a hole in our family that we never knew existed. Speaking of which, the holes that I had created in my aura seem to be slowly healing. When I realized that, it was a relief from a fear that I hadn’t realized I had.

  On top of that, there seemed to have been no fall-out from the incident at the dance club. That was another relief.

  Dave found me doing pull-ups off one of the new oaks in my back yard. The first I knew of his presence was his exclamation.

  “Jesus, Finn! Are you pumping steroids or something?”

  I tried to jump in several directions at once and landed on my butt yet again. “Crap, Dave! A little warning next time? You just about gave me a heart attack!”

  His self-pleasure bubbled over. “Nothing that you aren’t gunning for by taking all those steroids.”

  I said with exaggerated patience, “I’m not taking steroids, Dave. I’ve just been working out.” When he gave me a disbelieving look, I added, “A lot.”

  He plopped down beside me in the grass. “Finn, nobody loses that much weight and builds that much muscle in two weeks. You’re cheating!”

  I’d been caught. Spring and I were using some of the knowledge left behind by the shadow to try and encourage my body to grow. It was working, scarily fast, but it gave me a voracious appetite. I considered that a bonus. I love eating.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but think about how the shadow’s bodies had twisted and deformed. I was really hoping that it was the shadow’s presence and not necessarily the changes wrought with the help of the caduceus. What can I say? I was an idiot.

  “Show me the rule book that says I’m cheating! Besides, I think you could do it, too. You have that bear totem. You could use that to help you. I’m pretty sure that the bear totem gave me the strength to throw Erik across the driveway.”

  “Hmm. I think you’d have to loan me Spring for a while.”

  I snorted at the same time Spring did. “In your dreams, monkey boy!”

  He leered at me. “That’s just it, I want to have your dreams.”

  I’d made the mistake of telling Dave and the others how Spring could create a virtual world for the two of us. Now, they wouldn’t stop ribbing me about it. I sighed, but it was worth the price.

  “So, inquiring minds want to know: How did your English final go? Are you a graduate?”

  “Sorry, I thought I had texted you about it already. It went great. I passed with a D.”

  “Way to go, dude!” He offered me a high five, so I obliged him.

  “So, why didn’t you just hoodoo her into giving you an ‘A’?”

  I squirmed a little at that because I had spent a lot of time thinking the same thing. I finally gave him my winning argument. “I felt bad enough making her let me take the test over, even though I felt justified doing it. I just couldn’t bring myself to push it fur
ther. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Either way, you can now call me ‘college boy.’”

  He squinted his eyes at me and said, “After all this, you’re really planning to go to college?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what else to do, when I move out of here, I’ve got to make a living somehow. Anderson keeps asking me to come work for him, but I’m not going near that place.”

  “What’s he want you to do?”

  “Scrape the shadows off the rest of the patients there.”

  “You’re kidding, right? He knows what just happened, right?”

  “Nope and yep.”

  “Tell him to screw off. You don’t need that kind of grief, and you don’t need college. You’re a superhero now, and I know how you can make a cool million dollars real quick.”

  “Forget it. I’m not robbing a bank.”

  “I’m not saying you should rob a bank. Have you ever heard of the Randi Prize?”

  “Sure, he’s the debunker guy who has offered a million dollars to someone who can show him a bona fide psychic ability.”

  He saw the look on my face. “Ah, the light dawns.”

  I grinned, thinking about what I would do with my million dollars when I won it. Things were looking up.

  Dave said, “Once we win the million, then we can get started.”

  “With w hat?”

  “Obviously, we will let that prize be the seed money for our new league of superheroes. A million won’t get us very far these days, but it is a start.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dave, that’s just goofy. We’re not superheroes.”

  “Sure we are. We’ve got a good start. You’ve got your stick, I have the bear, and Jim has the snake.”

  “Did Jim get it to work for him?”

  “Naw, but I think he’s just scared.”

  I could never turn down a chance at sarcasm. “I can’t imagine why the thought of turning into a giant, killer snake would scare him.”

  My sarcasm was either lost on or ignored by Dave. “Me neither. I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “I know you would. You’re insane. How is turning into a snake or a bear going to make criminals quake in fear?”