The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  He grieved still.

  On the far side of the cemetery, up the grave-studded slope, something shifted. His gaze ticked upward and there, in the shadow of a marble tomb, he saw the shadow man.

  Despite the sun and the blue sky and all of the people around him, Will felt a cloak of darkness enfold him that was far colder than the October air, and he inhaled sharply. In the sunlight the shadow man rippled like the wind across the surface of a pond.

  A larger ripple passed through that night-black figure, and then it disappeared.

  WILL AND BRIAN WERE SILENT as they drove back from the cemetery. For the second day in a row they had stayed awake all night, standing vigilant outside the homes of Tess O'Brien and Bonnie Winter. On Tuesday they had slept most of the day in their room at the Red Roof Inn in Westborough, not far from Papillon. That night they had met up with Ashleigh, Young Will, and Young Brian for perhaps twenty minutes.

  Young Brian had Dark Gifts in his backpack and had seemed to be struggling with the weight of it. None of them commented on this oddity. By now even Ashleigh knew that the Gaudet book had properties that were unsettling. The seventeen-year-old Brian had already scrawled a message inside the book, a fact that alarmed Will at first. At least, it alarmed him until he read the inscription and recognized that handwriting. It was the same as it had been the first time he had seen this message. The instructions to Kyle were identical. It seemed his theory had been correct; the moment Will had begun to realize that someone was altering the past, this particular event had become inevitable. Every possible unfolding of circumstances included Young Brian writing those words and the book ending up in Kyle Brody's hands and delivering it to Will eleven years hence in the parking lot of Papillon.

  Kyle. Will had barely thought of him at all and he wondered how long—by Kyle's reckoning—he had been gone. He hoped that the kid was all right, that his parents hadn't found that bloodstained circle under the porch . . . and, most of all, that no one had damaged the circle.

  Young Brian had also written the words Don't forget on a scrap of paper and slipped it into an envelope, upon which he had scrawled more instructions for Kyle. It was Ashleigh who had pointed out to all of them what should have been obvious. If the note and the book were just stashed in their respective hiding places, they would surely be discovered too soon. They had worried at this problem for a while, comforted by the knowledge that it was a problem they were destined to solve.

  At length Brian recalled a spell he thought might help. It took him several minutes to locate it in Gaudet's text, and then the book and the envelope were transferred to Young Will's backpack, and the rest was left up to him. He would get them where they needed to be, and perform the spell that would make them invisible and intangible until the very day they were needed. Will knew just shunting them forward in time wouldn't be enough. When Kyle had found them, they had been yellowed and covered in dust. And they would be again. It was the one thing they could be certain of.

  Will replayed all of this on that somber drive back from burying Mike Lebo. His eyes were bleary from staying up all night playing watchdog. It was chilly enough for them to need the heat in the car, but for five hundred dollars, they had gotten what they had paid for: the heat didn't work at all. And the radio only played AM stations.

  Classical music hissed with static through the speakers in the back and they said not a word to one another. Until they stopped the guy Will had started to think of as the shadow man and set things right, there was very little for them to talk about. A cloud seemed to follow them as the Buick rolled through downtown. Before returning to the Red Roof they both needed something to eat, but there would be no stop at Athens Pizza, no visit to The Sampan. Nothing familiar. Will had longed to drift through the Comic Book Palace and Annie's Book Stop, to do the pop-culture archaeology he had always loved as a kid. Now he felt that such an excursion would be morbid, that if he set foot inside Athens Pizza or that comics shop, he would become violently ill.

  “He was there,” Will said, voice gravelly from disuse.

  Brian turned in the passenger seat and stared at him, waiting for more.

  “The shadow man. I saw him at the cemetery, watching the funeral.”

  “Huh. I guess I didn't think he could come out during the day.” Brian shook his head. “How stupid is that? Like he's a vampire or something.”

  “It's not stupid. That's magic. It always seems more possible at night.”

  “You've gotta wonder, though,” Brian replied.

  Will kept his eyes on the road, driving a little faster now, happy to leave Eastborough behind. “Wonder what?”

  “Was he watching the funeral? Or was he watching us?”

  ASHLEIGH SPENT THE BALANCE of the week so much on edge that the creak of a floorboard would startle her and an unexpected tap on the shoulder would make her jump and cry out. The latter could be terribly embarrassing when it occurred in biology lab. But a small dose of humiliation was not enough to soothe her nerves. Never in her life had she been so aware of each intake of breath, of the rhythm of her heart, of the faces she passed in the halls and on the street.

  Yet days went by that were dreadfully uneventful, such that now, with Friday night upon her, she was perversely relieved. Tonight was the night Will's “shadow man” was supposed to attack Tess. No more waiting.

  But she was still holding her breath.

  It was the night before the Homecoming game, and the committee was preparing the float in the parking lot behind the high school. Ashleigh had been Tess's shadow all afternoon, from cheerleading practice to pizza at Papa Gino's and now back to school to finish up the float. There were two or three dozen kids in the lot all being herded by Mr. Murphy, the committee's faculty advisor. Every year the Cougars made a float that was a cougar. This year's committee insisted upon doing something a little different, so they designed a float that was a giant football . . . with the image of a cougar on the side of the ball. Ashleigh thought it was silly, but everyone else loved it, so she kept quiet.

  Besides, tonight she had other priorities.

  It was not quite as cold as it had been midweek, but still chilly enough that Ashleigh wore a light sweater under her jacket. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers. The football itself was crepe paper, but the cougar design on either side was indeed a floral creation, mostly thanks to hard work by Tess herself. Ashleigh had lent a hand, but Tess was the one who had pushed for the inclusion of the flowers and she really made it work. Most everyone else was occupied with painting white lines onto the brown crepe paper to represent the laces on a football. It had taken the presence of the captain of the football team to remind them that the football needed laces. Even now Tim Friel was up on top of the float helping Tess add daisies to the cougar.

  The strangest sight was Will and Brian—her Will and Brian—helping out with nailing down the green plastic grass carpeting that would cover the rest of the float. The players and cheerleaders would be riding there, and it was supposed to look like a football field. Instead, it more closely resembled the fluorescent grass that came in Easter baskets. Though Will and Brian weren't part of the committee, they had come down and offered to help. And though surprised, Mr. Murphy was more than willing to accept their help. Their job was to keep an eye on Bonnie Winter, who wasn't really helping, but was instead using her time to flirt.

  The other Will and Brian—she would never get used to them—had not arrived yet, but she figured they would be here at any time. Ashleigh figured they had slept through the day again and probably gotten something to eat before heading over. She hoped that they would arrive soon, because she desperately needed to pee.

  “Hey, Ashleigh.”

  She turned from her spot on the float, where she was painting EASTBOROUGH COUGARS in the school colors. The wind blew her hair across her eyes and she pushed it away with the back of her hand, the smell of paint in her nostrils. Then she smiled.

  “Lolly. What's up?” Ashleigh glanced past t
he other girl. “Where's Pix?”

  “What, I can't go anywhere without her?” Lolly asked, the parking lot lights gleaming off her caramel features.

  “Like peanut butter without the jelly.”

  Lolly rolled her eyes and cocked out her hip in that completely unconscious, sultry way that she did. “I'm meeting up with her and Caitlyn in a bit. I told them I'd stop by and see if you wanted to come with. We're just doing a little window-shopping at the mall.”

  “I can't. Don't want to abandon the rest of the committee. I'll see you guys in the morning, though.”

  “All right. We'll just have to shop on without you.” Lolly glanced upward. “You're praying for no rain, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah. That would suck.”

  The pressure in her bladder had been growing, and now Ashleigh hopped down from the float and laid her paintbrush across the can. She wiped the paint from her hands on the threadbare jeans she had worn for precisely that purpose and shot Lolly a bashful grin.

  “Girl's gotta go.”

  “Then go, girl, go. And I'm gone, too. See you tomorrow.”

  Ashleigh hurried across the parking lot toward the double doors of the high school, waving to Mr. Murphy to let him know where she was headed. He nodded in return. She paused just inside the door and tried surreptitiously to get Will's or Brian's attention, but to no avail. They were too busy hammering nails and watching Bonnie Winter. With a sigh she glanced at Tess, who was still up on the float affixing daisies. There were dozens of students around her. Anyone who wanted to hurt her would have to get through all of them to do it.

  Unless they were magic.

  The shadow man had become a wisp of darkness right in front of her eyes. Who was to say if he might appear from nothing, grab Tess, and disappear the same way?

  Ashleigh hesitated another moment, but her bladder won out. She raced inside the high school, hurrying down the stairs. Halfway down she slipped and nearly fell, catching herself on the handrail just in time.

  “Get it together, Ash,” she muttered to herself, her voice sounding hollow and distant in the stairwell.

  Then she pushed in through the door of the ladies' room. It echoed with the drip of a leaky faucet and one of the lights was burnt out. Any other night she would have been uneasy about going in there alone in an empty school, but tonight she didn't have time for that kind of thing.

  As quickly as nature would allow, she was hurrying back up the stairs. In the back of her mind she had painted terrible images of what might await her when she returned, but when she stepped back out into the lot, nothing had changed. Some of the kids were working, others were just flirting, laughing, and screwing around. Bonnie Winter was demonstrating one of the cheers their squad would use at tomorrow's game. Will and Brian had given up the pretense of work to watch her.

  Tess was gone.

  Ashleigh could not breathe. She glanced around, saw Mr. Murphy talking to Tim Friel, looked closely at every girl, just in case. But none of them was Tess.

  “Fuck,” she whispered, sprinting across the lot. She wanted to scream at the guys, tell them to stop watching Bonnie Winter's tits bounce, but everyone would have thought she was a freak. Instead, she ran to Tim and Mr. Murphy, both of whom glanced at her with nearly identical raised-eyebrow expressions.

  “Ashleigh?” Mr. Murphy began.

  But her focus was on Tim. “What happened to Tess?”

  “She had a date.” He shrugged. “She just left.”

  Will and Brian had finally noticed something was up and they strode across the lot toward her. Ashleigh focused on Tim.

  “Did she say who with, or where she was going?” she asked, panicking.

  “Jesus, no,” Tim said. “Chill out, Ashleigh.”

  “Don't fucking tell me to chill out!” she snapped, heart pounding, eyes burning. She had barely escaped the shadow man. The idea that Tess might be in his hands even now was too much for her.

  Mr. Murphy frowned. “Ashleigh, what is it? What's wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Did someone pick her up?”

  “Nah, she was walking. She only lives on the other side of the lake.”

  Ashleigh wasn't cold anymore. Adrenaline blazed through her as she spun and nearly ran into Brian Schnell. Will was right behind him. Mr. Murphy called after her but she grabbed the guys by their arms and tugged them along in her wake as she started to run out of the parking lot.

  “She's walking home. Around the lake. That's nice and deserted, don't you think?”

  Will swore and picked up the pace. The three of them raced out onto Townsend Lane, which ran beside the school and deadended in a tree-lined circle that screened out most of the view of Gorham Lake. It was barely large enough to be called a lake in the first place, but walking even halfway around would take a little time, and bring Tess through backyards and then through some woods that were part of a state park where people came to swim in the summer. The only people likely to be down there were young lovers with nowhere warm to go.

  Headlights washed over them from behind. Tires skidded as the three of them spun around to see Will—the older Will—jumping out of the driver's seat.

  “She's gone,” Ashleigh announced before they could say another word. And she explained about the lake and that Tess's house was almost precisely on the other side.

  “Shit!” the future Will snapped, and he slammed his fist against the roof of the Buick. “I remember where her house is.” He ducked his head into the car. “Brian, get out.”

  Future Brian complied instantly.

  “Ashleigh, you and . . .” Future Will looked fondly at her Will “. . . you two go to the right. Brian and Brian will go left. I'm staying in the car. I'm going to check every street that goes past the lake. If he has a car . . . if he needs a car . . . maybe I can find him. Otherwise I'll get to Tess's house and start backtracking from there.”

  WILL HADN'T EVEN ASKED how they had managed to lose track of Tess. The truth was, the facts were searing themselves into his mind as memories as they happened. This was a night he would never forget. He only wished he knew how it would end.

  Even as he guided the Buick, its engine snarling as it tore along Punch Street, it was as though he was in two places at once, his mind mapping the memory of Young Will's trek through the lakeside woods with Ashleigh, simultaneous with its happening. He could remember fearing for Tess and for Ashleigh and feeling guilt for not having paid more attention. Ashleigh had paint on her jeans and the denim was shredded at her knees.

  “Get the fuck out of my head,” Will grunted, gripping the wheel as he reached the circle at the end of Punch Street. There were no cars parked there, nothing left behind. He paused a moment, staring through the trees along a path that led to the lake.

  Other memories warred in his head, images of Tess as Homecoming Queen and then of her riding in the parade years later during their reunion weekend. He didn't want to think of what might have been happening to her, the pain and humiliation, but one snippet of imagery played over and over in his head like the newsreel of some catastrophe: Ashleigh's face, changing before his eyes as the past was altered, going from happy, successful, sweet woman to numb and hollow.

  He had saved Ashleigh from that, or helped to.

  No way was he going to let it happen to Tess.

  Jaw tight, breath coming in sharp bursts, he raced the Buick back up Punch Street and headed for the next cut in toward the lake. There were three, maybe four, before he got to Tess's road. Will prayed he would catch up to the son of a bitch before he reached her.

  Against the backdrop of his memories, his younger self rushed through bare autumn trees, pushing low-hanging branches out of his way. One of them slipped from his fingers and snapped back, slicing his cheek just below his left eye.

  Will braked out of reflex, just for a moment. There was no pain, but he could remember the pain.

  He put a hand up to his left cheek, and one finger traced the line of a thin white scar he would see
the next time he looked in the mirror.

  WILL HISSED IN PAIN and turned his back to the tree. One of the branches jutted into his back as he touched his fingers to his cheek. They came away streaked with blood that looked black in the moonlight that streamed through the branches from above.

  “You all right?” Ashleigh whispered urgently.

  He nodded. “Let's go.”

  They started off again, sprinting nimbly along a path that was barely a path at all. Will was in the lead, but Ashleigh kept up with no problem. She had always been more agile than he was. His face was cold from running through the chill night, and the blood was warm where it dripped like tears on his face, but he ignored it, did not even try to wipe it away.

  In his mind, all he could see was the image of his own face, eleven years older. He was afraid for Tess; seeing the dark man, Ashleigh's attacker, disappear into nothingness on Monday night had freaked him out completely. But as he hustled through the trees with the soft hush of the lake lapping its shores, he still could not erase that older image.

  Me. It's me. All week those words had been echoing in his mind, and he could not be rid of them. He could also not shake a terrible dread that had snowballed inside him, a horrid certainty that he and Brian had started all of this. Magic didn't just pop into people's lives, he knew that for sure. You had to invite it in. And once you did . . .

  Now he was faced with a visitor from a future he both yearned and feared to know. Himself. Will James. Every time he thought of it, his mind froze up a little. I look good, he thought. I seem like I'm not too big an asshole. But then there's this. I have to go through this.