Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  “But Alonso . . .” I raised a finger. “He was the one that didn’t fit. And of course the little boy.”

  “Dr. Alexander, you’re worrying me.”

  She had her hand on her purse. But she hadn’t bothered to get her phone. Hadn’t dialed that ambulance.

  Across the street, a man in sweats and trainers carried an athletic bag into a gym—heading for his early morning workout.

  “There are more out there,” I said. “Aren’t there? Bodies. Dozens. In a glowing ring of death. Glowing with dark light. Light that doesn’t come from the sun.”

  She just looked at me. Not like I was crazy. Not like she was confused. There was just nothing. She had no expression at all.

  “When we spoke on the phone, you said I needed to have someone I could talk to about the little boy. But . . . I never said he was a boy. All I said was that there was another victim who was seven years old. I never gave a gender. He didn’t hit the news until later, so there’s no way you could’ve known. That’s the shitty thing about text messages. There’s a record of everything we say. Just ask my wife.”

  “People use the masculine for an unknown gender,” she said calmly, like she was trying to fit me with a straight jacket. “It’s simple sexism, Doctor. Nothing nefarious.”

  “Yeah . . .” I sighed. “I thought of that, too. I mean, makes no sense, right? Just a figure of speech. But you know what? The police pulled all of Alonso White’s phone records—so they could track his movements in the weeks before his disappearance. Since he’s a principle in a public health investigation, I get access. I went through them. I’ll be damed if he was ever near the Outreach Center. Not even once those final days, which means you lied. Why would you do that?”

  A car passed on the quiet street. I watched it disappear. I didn’t look at Amber.

  “My guess, finding the bodies in the basement was an accident. But then, you all had to expect a couple of them would be found. Sooner or later. After the fact, it would hardly matter. There would be no way to tie them back to you. That wouldn’t be a problem. Noooo. The problem, as you so eloquently put it, was me.”

  She stepped up onto the curb. But still her face was blank.

  “It must have taken a lot of planning. That many dead all at once and in such a precise configuration. That means you couldn’t have done it by yourself. Those wealthy investors you mentioned. The ones who liked to use the Outreach Center as a tax write-off. Have offices downtown, do they? How many similar places did they fund? It’s a good way to exert influence over who gets hired into key positions, right? Like a clinic ‘director’ who runs a Meals on Wheels program.

  “Three years and still waiting on your license to show up from the city. I’ve heard of bureaucratic nightmares—shit, I even work for one—but that’s something else. So I checked. The city has no record of a Dr. Massey. Neither does the State of New York. Or Texas. Your license hasn’t shown up yet because one isn’t coming. Because you’re not a doctor.

  “The trays in the corner. The ones with the pink lids. Is that how it worked? You and your colleagues spend a few months casing the neighborhoods. Get to know all the usual clientele. Identify the candidates. Poorest of the poor. Runaways. Homeless. The mentally ill. Folks desperate for something to eat. In a metropolis of, what, 18-20 million? Shit . . . I bet you were spoiled for choice. And when the time was right, you slipped them a different tray. The one with the fresh mushrooms baked into a pot pie.

  “I bet it was going great, too. Until I sent out that health alert, right? Suddenly, you panicked. All that planning. No one was supposed to notice. No one was supposed to care. They never had before. You couldn’t just sit by and hope for the best. Not after all that work. Months of preparation. Years, maybe. You couldn’t just leave it to chance. You had to know what we knew, how close we were. You needed a way to keep tabs on the investigation, to know if your plan was in jeopardy. That’s why they picked you, right? To come forward. The pretty southern girl with the heart of gold trying to do good in the big city. Like something out of a storybook. You contacted me. Practically threw yourself at me, too. Of course, killing me might raise questions, or at least make it look like I was onto something. But, if you could discredit me . . .

  “The Alonso file wasn’t lost. It wasn’t lost because there never was one. Because his lawyer was right. Alonso White was never sick. You made it up. But the best lies have just enough of the truth to be convincing. My mom taught me that. That’s why you used a real person, one who really had gone missing, a neighborhood saint whose shocking disappearance had even made the local papers. Someone we had to care about, at least enough to show up at your door. But someone you knew we’d never find. Because your people had already taken him. I sent out my health alert, and you replied. Sent your report to the DoH. And I jumped. Mr. Eager-to-Please. I showed up that same day. And now you knew who was running the investigation. Alonso was your colleague, you said. Your patient, even. So you had legit reasons to ask all kinds of questions. You were good, too. Really good. I never once suspected. And why wouldn’t I share? We’re all on the same team, right? That’s how science works.”

  I shook my head. “Jesus. Ollie tried to warn me . . . And you found exactly what you needed. You found out you had nothing to fear from me. I told you straight up that the investigation hadn’t even been opened. Not officially. That I was acting on my own time. So it all looked cool. No reason to worry about one eager beaver from out of town who’d be gone in a month.

  “But then ICE found the bodies in the basement, and we got the EAP. That damned health alert started linking things together that should’ve stayed separate. I got the case officially opened, which meant a lot more people would be looking into things. You had to shut it down quick. Throw us off the scent. Shouldn’t be hard, right? I mean, what sane person will believe a story about a carnivorous jungle fungus? All you had to do was give the nice, reasonable city managers over my head a genuine reason to doubt.

  “Most people don’t even have a clear idea of what chemotherapy is, let alone where to get the cocktails. But a ‘doctor’ would. Wouldn’t be too hard either, if she was bold and unscrupulous. And pretty.”

  “You’re actually deranged,” she said softly. “Listen to yourself. You’ve been working too hard, ‘Che.’ You should get some rest.”

  “What’d you all do?” I asked. “Camp out on the street until you found the cutest little made-for-TV face you could? Someone who looked like my brother even? That was a nice touch.

  “He was groggy when he got home. Passed right out. Because you sedated him. Not enough to put him under. Nothing that would show up on the labs. Maybe just a whiff of ether. Wouldn’t take much with a seven-year-old. He didn’t tell his babysitter he’d been injected with something because he didn’t know. You went in through his back, where he wouldn’t see the mark, and into his abdomen, where it would mimic the symptoms of a tummy ache. I bet you even waited with him for a bit. Just to make sure he came out of it okay. Did you walk him home? Hold his hand? Ask him questions about school? Send him upstairs so he’d be sure to be found when the time came? Yeah. I bet you did. Such a nice stranger lady. It’s never a woman, right? Stranger danger. It’s always a dude.

  “Jesus . . .” I shook my head. “You killed a little kid just to wind me up and drag a red herring across the trail. But I gotta hand it to you. I really do. It was brilliant. It fuckin’ worked. He was the outlier, and the only one anyone cared about, and nothing I did would ever make him fit my theory.”

  I stopped, mouth open. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “What are you gonna do?” she asked calmly. “Call the police?”

  “And tell them what? That you’re part of some cult or something that’s growing a human toadstool ring thirty miles wide? That you ritually slaughtered an innocent man, a saint, so you could open a doorway to Hell?”

  “Ha!” She laughed. Genuinely. “Is that what you think? That we’re some kind of devil worshi
pers?” She shook her head. “There are older gods than devils, Alex. Before The Masters. Before Christ. Before Moses. Before the high priests of civilization took it all for themselves. Real gods. Powerful gods. Who don’t hide in some distant heaven. We were promised the earth. And we will have it. Whose universe do you think this is, full of darkness and pain? We belong to them, Alex. We always have. Some of us are strong enough to admit it.”

  I knew I was right when I showed up. I’d figured it out the night before. Lying awake. Trying to make sense of it all. But there was still some part of me that wanted to believe I was wrong.

  Seeing her face then, it made me sick.

  She smiled.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Junkies and homeless die in droves. Immigrants are trafficked. Women are driven into prostitution. Every single day. And no one cares. They wish it wouldn’t happen, sure, but they don’t do anything about it. You know why? Because those people aren’t worth caring about. Not really. Dozens of them just went missing and there’s not a single story on the news. People are more worried about whether or not some celebrity farted on stage, or what the President had for lunch, and they always will be. So go back to Atlanta, Dr. ‘Alexander.’ Go back to your wife. Tell her it was all your fault. Beg her to take you back. Raise your child. Because that’s the best you’re going to have.” She stepped close to me. Her face was within inches. I could smell her toothpaste. “You can’t stop us. We’ve been here since the beginning. We’ll be here at the end. The world is ours now, and there’s nothing you can do. Because you’re just like the rest of them, an insignificant little worm.” She breathed the word into my face.

  She had me there. I used to think I was a pretty smart guy. But Milan was right. Now it felt like I barely knew anything.

  “You’re right,” I said with a slow nod. “I am.”

  She smirked condescendingly.

  I nodded toward the sidewalk behind her. “But he’s not.”

  Amber spun and saw the chef standing stone-faced with his hands in the pockets of his fantastic coat. He was pale. He looked worse than I did in the greenhouse. But he was alive.

  She stepped back toward her house—right as Mr. Dench stepped out through the front door. He’d gone in and cleared it from the rear. Amber tried to get past me then, but I stepped into her path as Milan, in the Jaguar, slowed to a halt in the street. The big engine growled like a jungle cat. We had her on all four sides.

  I glanced to Dr. Massey’s neck and saw the symbol on a chain, the same one I’d seen on the wall in Jersey—an upside down triangle with swooping ends tipped in tiny circles. I guess there was no reason for her to hide it now. Dench came down the stairs and she eyed him defiantly. I could see the bulge of his gun in his coat pocket. I’m sure she could, too. She gripped the amulet around her neck, closed her eyes, and whispered softly in fervent prayer. She repeated the words, over and over, and all I could do was stare as the wackest shit I’ve ever heard came out of her mouth. Words that made my skin crawl.

  Dench took her arm. “In the car,” he said.

  Dr. Massey turned for the black Jag, but Dench stopped her.

  “Not that one.”

  He meant her car.

  She looked at him again, shocked. I think she understood then. She understood that Amber Massey, MD had quit her job the day before. She’d told everyone she was moving away and said her goodbyes. She’d packed up her belongings early one morning and drove off from an empty apartment. She wouldn’t be missed. Not for months.

  The chef approached her. “You will tell me everything of the coven.”

  “Go to hell,” she sneered.

  “I’ve been,” he said flatly. “You may yet give them my regards.”

  She pulled. But Dench held on. He pushed her into the car.

  Étranger looked at me. Like he was waiting to see if I wanted to come.

  “I don’t wanna know,” I said.

  He nodded and got in after his companion.

  Milan was smirking at me playfully from the driver’s seat of the Jag. “Don’t look so dour,” she said through the open window. “You’re still the clever man.”

  “You know, it’s rude to mock people.”

  “I’m not mocking. We found them again. Thanks to you. It wasn’t the chair or Granny or some costly spell. It was you. That’s all that matters.”

  I stood in the street and watched the others drive away in Amber’s car.

  “What are they gonna do to her?”

  “Trust your instincts, Doctor. You don’t wanna know.”

  My face flushed with guilt.

  But then I thought about Alonso White. And the Chinese couple, who wanted nothing but a better life, holding hands in death. I thought about little “Alvin” with the cherub face and the dimpled smile.

  Fuck her.

  I got in the Jag.

  “Maybe it doesn’t feel like it yet,” she said. “But you were a soldier today.”

  “Soldier?”

  “In a war. A very, very, very old war.”

  “Granny said the war ended.”

  “Lots of people think that.” She looked down the road after the departing car. “But a wise man once told me that civilization is just one long war, punctuated by brief interludes of peace. You picked a side today.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  “Cemetery.” I sighed. “There’s someone I need to see.”

  I visited the little boy’s grave. I prayed, though I don’t know why. It seemed like the right thing to do, after everything I’d seen. I wasn’t praying to anyone or anything in particular. I just hoped someone or something was listening. If there were dark gods, maybe there were light ones as well. I went back to my hotel. Turns out no one was looking for me. Not yet, anyway. Ollie figured I was off brooding somewhere, as much about my career as the rest. Marlene thought I was mad at her for not mentioning the whole work thing sooner. She thought I was ignoring her out of spite, which made her mad as well, so she ignored me in return.

  I asked to leave my appointment early. There were some half-hearted attempts to get me to change my mind, but nobody really fought it. The day after I got home, I walked into Sowell’s office and told him I quit before he could open his mouth to fire me. Ollie and I spoke one last time on the phone. He said he didn’t know what was up with me but warned me to stay away from the chef. The way he said it, it was like he had personal experience, like he knew way more than he’d let on. After the call, on a whim, I sent him an email with all my data. I didn’t say much, just said that there seemed to be a pattern—something nonrandom—and it was my guess he’d find many more bodies if he was inclined to look, although by then I was sure the mushrooms had ceased flowering. There would only be decay. I’d be surprised if he did anything with it. But who knows.

  I wrote my paper. Only the fourth yet on Mycena lucifera. I even gave a short talk at a local university. I didn’t lie. But I don’t feel like I told the truth, either. After stepping up to the lectern, I stood in front of my colleagues for a long moment, completely unable to speak. They looked so confused. And I realized how all those people must feel—the ones who’ve seen lake monsters or ghosts or been abducted by aliens.

  Not crazy. Just alone.

  Terribly, terrifyingly alone.

  I tried to talk to Marlene about it, but she didn’t want to hear about the occult. No one does. Makes you seem crazy. She wanted to hear how I was going to pay the mortgage without a job. I said I’d figure something out. Mostly, though, I spent time with Mom. As much as I could. It’s funny how fast everything changes. I’d been so angry at her for so long. Yet, letting go of that took less than a moment. Knowing she was never likely to leave that hospital room—I dunno. She was still my moms.

  After a couple weeks, she took a turn for the worse. When the doctors said the end was near, I finally got the nerve to ask the big question, the one I could never shake.

  “Ma?” I
t came out like the bleat of a sheep.

  She was lying in bed, doped up to her eyeballs, and she grunted through the haze.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  A nod.

  “What happened to Bug?”

  She shut her eyes and tried to shake it off.

  I took her hand. Her eyes were closed. Minutes passed and I thought she was asleep. I bent over in my chair and rested my cheek on the bed. I’d been banished to the couch at home and hadn’t been sleeping well. I was tired.

  I woke to her voice.

  “They found him in the old church,” she said. “Behind your auntie’s house.”

  I didn’t sit up. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to do anything that might make her change her mind. I stayed there, leaning over the bed covers, and listened.

  She put her hand on my hair, like I was fourteen again and crying ’cuz my little brother was dead, crying ’cuz it turned out I was just another punk who couldn’t look after his family.

  “Your brother was . . . He was naked. And the tips of his fingers was bloody. Worn to the bone. He’d done it to hisself. The inside of that big wood door was all scratched. And bloody.” I could hear her lips quiver with the word. “Like he was trying to dig his way out. From that place. Like he just wanted to get home to his mama. And he had these . . . marks all over his body. Like insect bites. All over. Long ones. Short ones. And some round ones, too.”

  She paused.

  “They said he died ’cuz he ain’t had no water. Like he was trapped in there for days and days. But Susan said he wasn’t gone but a afternoon. Otherwise she’d’a’ called. Right away. But the doctors said that couldn’t be ’cuz he was dehydrated already. He’d lost too much water.”

  Another pause.

  “Your uncle was the only one home at the time. So he got arrested. They couldn’t say he’d done nuthin. Just child endangerment. But your auntie swore it wasn’t true. He got probation. Lost his job. They lost the house. And she wouldn’t never talk to me again. None a’ them would. Like I done it. Like it was my fault for askin’ if he could stay there. Like it was my fault we had them boys shootin’ at us.”