Shadow Stations: Unseen

by Grant, Ann

  Cover photograph by Ann Grant

  Cover design by Kealan Patrick Burke

  Book design by Kealan Patrick Burke

  Published by Expedition Books

  © 2012 by Ann Grant

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For my father

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  “All war is deception.”

  Sun Tzu

  Chapter 1

  I saw the stranger on Long Lane when I climbed over the rise in the field. The good looking blond was in his late twenties or early thirties, ambling through the fog in jeans and a hunter green coat. He raised an eyebrow. Wondering if he’d heard me ranting about my boyfriend’s car accident, I shortened my German shepherd’s leash to give him time to pass us. Ever since the accident I’d been taking my dog out to isolated areas where I could throw every swear word I knew at the sky. The last thing I wanted was some guy listening to me.

  Nikki pricked her ears and moved her wolfish body through the tall grass to the pavement. Usually the road cleared when I took her for a walk, but not that day. The man slowed down by the fence as if he wanted to say something. By then I couldn’t avoid eye contact, so I gave in and nodded.

  “Beautiful dog,” he said, staring at me.

  “Yeah, she’s my best friend,” I replied, walking by him.

  “I’m looking for Meade Road.”

  I turned around. A tourist. No camera, but I should have known. Somebody who’d driven here in the dead of winter to see the battlefield.

  “I’m house sitting near Meade,” I said. The second I said it, I couldn’t believe I let that out. “Are you driving or walking?”

  He gave me an amused smile. “Walking.”

  I flushed under his gaze. Of course he was walking, but I’d thought maybe he’d parked nearby. There was something odd about his right hand. He had six fingers. A polydactyl, some kind of birth defect. I didn’t want to stare and turned to the field.

  “Meade’s over there on the ridge.” I pointed to the foggy horizon. “You can walk across the field or you can follow Long Lane around to the Rec Park and cut up through the Armory. There’s some snow in the field so you might want to take the road.”

  Nikki made a low noise in the back of her throat and nosed my leg.

  “We expanded here this year,” the man said. “I own the Grasslands.” Both of his hands had six long, perfect fingers, not just the right one. I’d never seen anything like it and caught myself staring again. “You’ll have to come out when we open.”

  So I was talking to local royalty. The Grasslands was a resort under construction in the middle of wild nowhere off Route 15. The plans for a soaring dome and an open-air restaurant surrounded by exotic ornamental grasses had been all over the newspapers. The Grasslands was supposed to revitalize the area, but I didn’t get it. The place was too remote. And six weeks ago, Ben had died in a terrible car accident on the same rural road. I had no intention of ever going out there.

  “Amy Wong,” I said. “I missed your name.”

  His eyes flickered to a Honda as it passed us. “John Savenue. You live here?”

  I hesitated. “I’m from D.C., but I go to Gettysburg College. Look, I’ve got to be someplace right now.” Which was a lie, but I’d picked up a faint taunt behind his eyes and didn’t want to stand there any longer with him. I nodded goodbye, reeled in my dog, and took off in the opposite direction, intending to take a roundabout way to the Rec Park in case he went the same way. I’d left my Jeep in the parking lot when Nikki and I began our hike.

  Something told me to glance back. The six-fingered man was still there, staring at me, and then he loped across the field. Strange guy. When he reached the creek, something fell out of his coat on the bank. I almost called after him, but I stopped myself. He was too far away to hear me.

  “Come on,” I told Nikki. “Let’s go see.”

  He’d dropped his cell phone. It took me a while to find it in the ice-encrusted grass, but the cover wouldn’t slide back or flip open. I put it in my pocket. John Savenue. I’d look him up when I got to the house. It was the decent thing to do even though he gave me the creeps.

  * * *

  I was house sitting for my Chinese Lit professor, Richard Wu, who was snorkeling with his new wife in the Florida Keys over the Thanksgiving break. The fog had burned off by the time I pulled up to his home in Fairfield. That’s the next town over from the battlefield. It has one main street surrounded by miles of cornfields and pastures.

  Luna, the professor’s ancient Husky, greeted me at the door. The two hundred year old fieldstone house had a million books, beautiful contemporary furniture, and stood in thirty acres of woods, which was the main reason I’d agreed to watch it. I could lie on the couch all night with the dogs at my feet and listen to Ben’s favorite jazz without having to answer to anybody.

  A message was on the house phone.

  “Hey, Amy.” Mike, one of my roommates. “How come your cell phone’s off? I’m in the Giant and thought I’d share some Chinese takeout with my favorite Chinese chick. Eggrolls, broccoli with garlic sauce, lo mein. Call me in the next five minutes.”

  Too late. He’d called an hour ago. I’d get back to him after I thawed out. I pulled off my damp socks, started a pot of coffee, found rawhide bones for the dogs, and called 411. The system paused when I said John Savenue’s name and kicked me over to a human being.

  “Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,” I repeated. “John Savenue.”

  “In Gettysburg and the surrounding area, there is no listing for a John Savenue,” the operator said.

  “Well, then, the Grasslands. It might be near Cashtown.”

  “One moment.” A beat, and then: “There is no listing for the Grasslands.”

  I hung up. The Grasslands was still under construction. How did anybody get in touch with the guy then? It was getting too complicated. Well, I wasn’t going to worry about the phone. I could mail the thing if I ever found an address. Or maybe I’d just throw it in a drawer.

  I headed upstairs, changed into dry jeans, a black turtleneck and hoodie, and fastened my long hair in a ponytail. I’m told I have a pretty face with bold eyes. My mother’s Chinese-American, my father a mystery. I have her eyes and high cheekbones, but I don’t know if I resemble my father or not because she took a pair of scissors, cut his face out of all the photos in the family album, and destroyed the digital pictures of the two of them together. He disappeared five months before my sister and I were born.

  A scrabbling sound in the hall interrupted my thoughts. Nikki had probably padded upstairs, but I didn’t see her around. When I heard it again, I cracked the hall door to the attic. Small wings fluttered up into the darkness.
A bird must have trapped itself up there, or even a bat, which should have been hibernating.

  I found a flashlight, crept up the narrow stairs, and pulled the light string. A bare bulb clicked on and threw its low light across the long attic floor. No wings, no ugly little bat face under the rafters. A couple more steps and I shone the flashlight over a painted chair, some luggage and cardboard boxes, and peered into the deeper shadows beyond the chimney.

  No sign of anything. The lights must have driven it into hiding.

  “Look, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said and opened one of the tiny windows on the closest wall. Icy air gusted inside. Whatever was in the attic would probably leave as soon as I did. Mission accomplished. I pulled the light string. The attic fell into darkness, and then I stumbled over a box. John Savenue’s cell phone slipped out of my hoodie and rattled across the floorboards.

  “Wonderful,” I blurted, expecting to spend the next half hour crawling around trying to find it, but the flashlight beam picked up the phone in the dust. Thin lines rippled across the surface. Surprised, I shone the flashlight on it again, not sure what to think.

  The thing was light sensitive, and whatever it was, it wasn’t a cell phone.

  Solid lines flamed along the rim, followed by brilliant red symbols that resembled the Greek alphabet: a backwards E with a snaking tail, an upside down U, a triangle, a trident. Curious, I touched the triangle to see if it would open the cover.

  Seconds later, a silver probe shot out and seized my wrist.

  “Oh, my God,” I gasped and dropped the flashlight, which spun around in a crazy, wobbling circle. Distorted shadows flew over the walls. When I tried to pry the probe off my wrist, it tightened even more.

  Chapter 2

  Tingling pain spread through my hand. The shadows on the walls and the flashlight beam dissolved away and I found myself beside a hooded man on a rocky plain under a high sun. My mouth went dry. Just as a scream rose in my throat, I realized I could still feel the attic floor beneath my feet. The scene had to be an illusion or a projection of some kind.

  Then I lost the feeling of the attic floor altogether and floated behind the man as if I were a ghost. My heartbeat was so loud I thought it would make him turn around, but he didn’t seem to realize I was there. I couldn’t see his face and couldn’t move past him. A small silver box between his shoulder blades seemed to link us together. For a terrifying moment I wondered what would happen if the link broke. Maybe I would float up into the hard blue sky and drift away forever.

  The slender man wore a short-sleeved gray jumpsuit with a black cloth hood and held his sunburned arms behind his back. His wrists were tied. A prisoner.

  Someone behind us gave him a rough prod with a stick.

  “Go on,” a man’s calm voice said with mock politeness. My heart leaped again. Did he see me? Another man laughed and said something about a race to the finish line. They spoke English, but their voices were distorted, as if they were underwater or talking from a tremendous distance. I tried to turn to see their faces, but couldn’t, and they didn’t seem to see me, either.

  The prisoner began to cross a black lava field covered with fissures. As I floated after him, trailed by his tormentors, I wondered what he’d done. Maybe he was a murderer, or this was the bad end of a drug deal gone south, or perhaps he was a political prisoner about to pay the price for speaking up. He stumbled several times, trying to balance himself without the use of his hands, and hesitated before a wide fissure.

  One of his tormentors struck him in the shoulder with the stick.

  The prisoner drew a sharp breath, lost his footing, and fell on his knees and side. I braced myself to hit the rocks, but my phantom face passed through his shoulder and the lava field and came up again. When he rolled, I rolled with him, still attached to his back. Then he caught himself and, breathing hard, struggled up in mute dignity.

  “Oh, he’s dancing,” the man with the calm voice said.

  The other man laughed. Their shadows lengthened as we went on. For a while one man carried the stick behind his head with his elbows up and his hands casually looped over it. Then he lowered the stick, pretended to strike the prisoner, and laughed again.

  The sun had moved down the sky to our backs, so we had to be walking to the east. Which told me nothing, but I was determined to identify the place.

  Hills covered with rainforest began to rise beside the lava field. A huge stone wall emerged from under the green tangle of trees to wind unsteadily into the horizon. The wall grew higher as we went on. Loud insects chirred in a lazy crescendo and vines with blood red flowers snaked up the trunks of the towering trees.

  The shadows lengthened again. We were heading downhill now. The lava field opened up to reveal waves crashing over a rough shore. I expected to breathe in salty sea air, but couldn’t smell anything. Just as I had no sense of touch, I had no sense of smell, either.

  Steam rose from the water, which meant the lava was still flowing. So we were on an active volcanic island. Where were islands like that? In Hawaii? Indonesia?

  The lava field sloped downhill. A small crowd of people with brown legs and bare feet had gathered on the beach as if they were waiting for the prisoner to arrive. I strained to see their faces, but the prisoner’s head blocked my view.

  The wall seemed impossibly high here. Finally we came to a recessed gate that someone unlocked and dragged open, revealing an overgrown trail that disappeared into green gloom. An unseen bird shrieked behind primordial ferns that overshadowed more blood red flowers.

  “One last time, who did you tell?” the calm tormentor asked.

  The prisoner shook his head.

  “Not too smart.” The tormentor’s voice rose. “Give me the name.”

  When the prisoner held his head high, the second tormentor squealed with laughter.

  “Go on, then, go in.” The first tormentor struck the prisoner on the shoulder with the stick again. I floated behind, helpless to intervene. They were forcing him through the gate with his hands tied and no food, no water, no weapons, nothing. He was going to some terrible fate, just as I’d dreaded.

  Someone on the beach began to chatter in an excited voice. Thick fingers grabbed at the device on the prisoner’s back. More fingers shot in.

  “Don’t touch that,” the first tormentor said, and pressed a symbol.

  He had six fingers.

  * * *

  I came to in the dark attic, gasping on the floor. Freezing air blew through the window I’d opened ages ago. My legs were so stiff from sitting that it hurt to stand. My body had remained in the same position the whole time while my consciousness had been elsewhere.

  Another six-fingered man. His calm voice filled my mind like a dirty membrane.

  Nausea hit me. Struggling to hold myself together, I pried the monstrous device off my wrist, slammed the window shut, and somehow made it downstairs. The house was as dark as the attic. When I crashed into a table and turned on the lamp, poor Nikki was standing there, wagging her tail with joy to see me. I buried my face in her fur. Normal. Back in a normal house with my normal dog. Luna snuffled against us, grinning.

  Still nauseated, I examined my skin under the lamp. My right wrist had a thin red mark where the probe had wound around it.

  The kitchen clock said seven hours had passed. The coffee was long cold. No messages on the house phone, but a string of texts from Mike and my sister and two voicemails showed on my cell.

  “It’s me.” Karin, my twin, also my roommate at my own house. Her light voice sounded so wholesome it seemed unreal. “Turn on your phone. The jeweler called. Mom’s watch is ready—my checking account’s really low right now, so is there any way you can pick it up and I’ll pay you back?” We were going in together on the watch for Christmas, and of course Karin had blown all her money again, but for the first time in my life I wasn’t ticked off at her.

  Second message. Mike. “Hey, I haven’t heard from you all day. You okay out there in the s
ticks? Give me a call, okay?”

  I texted them back. I couldn’t handle talking to them. Then I took the dogs outside and watched them run along the fence. The lights from Ski Liberty and the houses beyond its slopes shone in the darkness. Normal and safe. All my senses had returned. I breathed in the icy air and crunched up the gravel driveway all the way to the road to take in the night sky.

  Ben was up there somewhere among the glittering constellations. I knew it. I picked out the brightest star over the woods.

  “That must be your star because it’s the best one,” I whispered. “I miss you, sweetheart.”

  I could hardly stand to think about the prisoner and his fate. He’d witnessed something, but whatever it was, he’d chosen to go into that nightmare jungle rather than give up a name. I called the dogs while the uneasy questions kept coming.

  The six-fingered man on the island had to be related to John Savenue. They had the same mutation in their hands and the same mockery in their voices. Maybe they were brothers in a cartel or an international crime family. Who the hell else would tie a guy up and throw him behind a wall?

  The dogs emerged from the woods with gleaming eyes and followed me toward the house. Whatever the answers were, John Savenue had to know about the prisoner. The device between the man’s shoulder blades was identical to the one I held in my hand. I closed my fingers over the cool metal and felt certain about one thing. I wasn’t going to give it back.

  Chapter 3

  I hid the device in the shadows under the bed, then behind the mirror on my dresser, and then inside a coat of mine that I shoved in back of all the other coats in the downstairs closet. No place seemed secure enough, even though I argued with myself that John Savenue couldn’t possibly know I had it.