Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  I stared at him with such an odd look. Anger. Doubt. Fear. Resentment. All in a jumble.

  “No,” I said.

  “Is that the truth?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He unfolded a paper. There was some writing in pencil, but it was messy and I couldn’t tell what it was. I had no recollection of it. I had no recollection of any of it.

  “What about this?” he asked.

  “That’s mine,” I stood from my chair.

  So did two of the nurses.

  “You can’t just go into my room!” I yelled. “That’s not fair. That’s mine. You can’t just take my things.”

  “Why was it hidden in a book?” he asked calmly.

  I was still on my feet. I took a step forward and the nurses seemed to brace themselves.

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “You can’t just take my things. That’s not right!”

  “Harriet, calm down.”

  “No!” I took another step. My fists clenched. “It’s not right. It’s not. You can’t just steal things all the time. I’m not lying. I’m telling the truth.”

  “I believe you’re—”

  “No! You think I made it all up. But I didn’t. It’s real. The wolf is real. The monsters are real. They’re coming!” I was getting louder. And my face was turning red. “They’re coming. We have to stop them. You can’t keep me here. It’s not right.”

  I was clenching my fists so hard that my fingernails, which were trimmed, cut into the skin of my hand. I looked down at my hands. Not on the video. I looked down at my adult hands. There were a couple of tiny slit scars on the palms. I had no recollection of how I’d gotten them.

  “It’s not right! Let me go.”

  My younger self started toward the doctor, fists raised, and the nurses came and grabbed me. There was an awkward struggle. To their credit, they were trying not to hurt me, but I wasn’t making it easy. I kicked and flailed and yelled “Let me go!” over and over.

  Almost instantly, I started convulsing.

  “Seizure!” one of the male nurses yelled. He ran to a medicine cart off to the side.

  My fists clenched on and off as the nurses lifted my head and tried to lay me straight on the ground. My hand went up and scratched the face of one of the women. She let go and turned away. I had drawn blood. Three tiny cuts near the corner of her right eye.

  My entire body was locked in spasms. My eyes rolled back into my head. Then I started screaming gibberish. Not like baby sounds. It sounded organized, like words, but in no language I recognized.

  The needle hit and I shut down instantly, like they’d flipped the switch on my brain.

  “What did you do?” the doctor yelled at the nurse. He ran over to me in a panic. “What did you do? Jesus, how much did you—”

  The tape stopped in another burst of static.

  And that was it.

  Captain Morrison cleared his throat. “Detective Chase, you should know that after reviewing this tape, which Lt. Miller tells us was mailed anonymously, it’s Dr. Caldwell’s opinion that you may have been given an obscenely high dose of anti-psychotic medicine as a child, and that that may explain a number of aspects of your mental health history. We’ll be handing this over to the Department of Health, who have the appropriate resources to conduct an investigation and bring any charges, should you wish them to do so. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “However, the question before us today is, what impact does this have on your ability to enforce the law? Unfortunately . . .” He took off his glasses. “The reality is not very good. The District Attorney’s office should have no difficulty securing convictions on your arrests where there’s ample physical evidence, but as you well know, Detective, police officers are often called to give testimony at trial, and that puts us in a pickle. When this gets around—and it will get around—any defense counsel worth his thousand-dollar suit will have no trouble . . . Well, I think you know where I’m going. If these episodes had stayed in your past, we’d be having a different conversation today. But they haven’t. It seems they’ve returned—quite seriously, in fact.”

  That’s why they yanked the search warrant. It wasn’t that the search was invalid. It’s that I was. The department wanted to leave itself the option of executing the warrant with “competent” staff, untainted staff, at some point in the future.

  Not that it would ever come to that.

  “Not only are you having seizures, but your psychological evaluation indicates you’re having hallucinations, and we’ve heard testimony today that suggests your judgment may be impaired. So,” Morrison went on, “it is my duty to inform you that it is the decision of this committee to place you on immediate suspension of duty pending a full review by the promotions board. I must emphasize that this is not a permanent decision, and that you will be given full opportunity to defend yourself at formal proceedings.”

  He sighed. He seemed genuinely saddened.

  “I realize this is something no officer wants to hear. And I take no pleasure in saying it. However, I must ask you to surrender your badge before leaving these chambers today.”

  I dodged calls from Hammond and my brother. I can only imagine the one called the other. I went to Sully’s, my favorite dive bar, the kind of place that didn’t care if you broke the city’s no-smoking ordinance, and sat in a booth at the back with a cigar. It was the middle of the afternoon so the place was nearly empty. Not that you could tell the time of day. Sully’s was old-school. No windows. A holdover from the days when you didn’t want your churchgoing neighbors to know you were backsliding. It was just as dim in the afternoon as it was at night. A permanent, smoky dusk.

  I lit my cigar slowly and sipped ouzo, with a grimace, from a tiny glass. I don’t like ouzo, which was my way of limiting how much I drank. I lifted my box of tricks from the floor and opened it. I took out the round ampules of holy water, tied together on the same length of cord like a string of grenades, and set it on one side of the table. I took out the giant salamander claw, dried and crisp, and dangled it from the string tied to one end. I set it by the ampules. I took out the Coptic cross and the shiny bezoars and the brass pentacles, like coins, and all the rest. Soon, the box was empty. I looked at it laid out neat on the round table. I moved the wax voodoo doll I’d confiscated from a homeless man to one side. Next to it, I put the broken wand. It was tapered at the tip. The bottom end was splintered and frayed like a cut rope. Then I removed the talisman from around my neck and set it in the middle.

  That was it. That was all I had. The rest of it was either a fraud, a mystery, or, like the holy water, nothing that would help in a battle with a wizard. I took another drag from my cigar.

  “Fuck.”

  I put the talisman back around my neck. Everything else went back in the box.

  A man walked in from the back. He was dressed like an investment banker, including vest, overcoat, and pomaded hair.

  “Nice tie pin.”

  “Thank you.” He unbuttoned his coat and sat across from me in the booth.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Not at all. But we have a mutual acquaintance. She may have mentioned me.”

  “I see. Got a name?”

  “Of course. Tell me, Detective, made any interesting new friends lately?”

  “A few. What about you? Who are your friends?”

  “Oh, I’d rather not say. My acquaintances and I get a bad ‘rap.’ Isn’t that the word? We’re not good people, I’ll grant you that, but our chief concern is the conjuring of money. The spells we’ve built to do that are large and complicated and took decades to construct. As such, we do, on occasion, stoop to baser behaviors, but only to protect what we’ve built.” He tilted his head. “More or less.”

  “You have a point?”

  “Yes, and I’ll get to it. There was a man who came through the city last year, a government bureaucrat.”

  “Someone I know?”

  “I would d
oubt it.”

  “What about him?”

  “He disappeared.

  “Shame.”

  “Yes. Then, last summer, a young Chinese woman came into possession of a very rare artifact, an artifact so old and powerful that it has been used at least twice to conquer most of the known world.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “It was weak from long isolation. Its magic has to be . . . charged, if you will. The quickest way to do that is to feed it souls.” He stressed the word.

  “Are you suggesting someone fed her to this thing?”

  “Oh, more than that.” He leaned toward me and whispered. “She helped plan it, her own murder, then sat by idly as it was carried out.”

  “You mean she was under a spell?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know how much you’ve learned in your adventures. The self-taught always have a surprisingly odd mix of knowledge, so forgive me if this is known to you, but enchantments and illusions don’t convince people to see what isn’t there, or to shroud what is. They convince people to see what’s there as if it were something else. You’d be hard-pressed, for example, to find a single sane person who would say that murder isn’t wrong. The question is always what counts as murder? If a soldier shoots a hostile person, it’s patriotism. If you do, it’s manslaughter. If the government takes your money without your assent, it’s taxation. If anyone else does, it’s theft. In both cases, exactly the same act has taken place. It’s simply a matter of interpretation.

  “Every night of the week, illusionists for one side go on TV and tell people one thing. Illusionists for the other, the exact opposite. The facts are almost never in dispute, and yet, people are willing to kill each other over what appears to them to be a completely different state of the world. We each construct the world we see. We ourselves, by our own hands, build the stage on which our illusions are made to play.

  “I couldn’t tell you what convinced this girl to help plan her own murder, but clearly she didn’t see it as murder. She saw it as sacrifice, just as the government bureaucrat I mentioned didn’t abandon his wife and child. But he left them all the same, I suspect for what he thought was a very good reason. The fact is, most people are unreliable narrators, even of their own lives. If you had walked up to these two people and asked them to do, on the facts, exactly what they later did, they would’ve thought you were crazy. And yet . . . The world unfolded such that these people did what he wanted them to, swearing all the while that they did it of their own volition.”

  “So what is he after?”

  “I think he blames the world—the modern world, that is—for the death of his people, the loss of his village, of everything he knew and loved, of the plight of the earth, who was his lover.”

  “His lover?”

  “I suspect he wants to send us all back to the Stone Age, or some silly thing. Who knows, really? Unfortunately, with the artifact in his hands, he now possesses the means to do exactly that. Of course, without modern methods of production, the food supply will rapidly dwindle, as will the supply of medicines. Even if by some miracle they are eventually restored, the crisis will precipitate an unprecedented global catastrophe. Imagine how many will die before a new equilibrium is restored.”

  “You talk like the world is a market.”

  “It is. That’s exactly what it is, Detective. But I can see you’re skeptical of me, and you have every right to be. So consider this. My acquaintances and I profit very handsomely from the current state of affairs. Why would we do anything to upset it? It’s very hard to get rich off the labor of others when there are no others. And anyway, why would we be the ones throwing spells at you? You really shouldn’t have revealed yourself to him so quickly. A warrant? I mean, really.”

  “What do you mean, spells?”

  I played dumb, but I knew what he meant. I couldn’t say with certainty that a spell had been cast, or that if not, something else entirely would’ve been discovered on that VHS tape. But that’s what magic is—the power to unfold the world as you will. He said as much.

  “Let’s say,” he went on, “that you manage to survive this round. How long until he targets those you care about? Not just your brother, but the good Detective Hammond, who is going to walk through that door in exactly six seconds.”

  “What are you suggesting I do? I can’t exactly put a gold bullet in this guy’s head.”

  “Of course not. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. But then, you don’t have to.”

  The door opened. The light from outside turned the interloper into a silhouette, but I would’ve recognized that block head anywhere. Hammond pretended he didn’t see us and took a seat at the bar.

  “The chef has no shortage of enemies,” he said. “The problem is, he’s too well protected. Not just the marks on his hands but his sanctum. It’s a fortress—a fortress from which he emerges only when it’s auspicious.” He leaned toward me again. “It can’t be attacked from without. You learned that the hard way. But from within, all one would have to do is break the seal. A simple sledgehammer would do the trick.”

  I studied him. “And then your people will do the rest, is that it?”

  “Oh, not my people. We don’t do that kind of thing. But we’ll absolutely see that it’s done. You can count on that.”

  “And what makes you think I can get into this so-called fortress?”

  “That’s the clever part. It’s built to stop people like me and my friends. Whatever else he is, he’s an arrogant sot. He doesn’t see the rest of you as a threat. There are minimal protections against the . . .” He searched for the word. “Let’s say novice.” He smiled.

  “Cute.”

  “But you must understand, Detective, you’re only going to get one chance. And you’ll have to move quickly. Right now, he’s letting his spells work their effect. I can see them swirling around you, like smoke. Your only hope is to strike first. Get in, break the seal, and get out. We’ll do the rest.”

  He waited for a moment like he was expecting me to say something.

  “There a problem?” I asked.

  “Not at all. I just thought you’d say ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ or something like that.”

  “I try not to ask stupid questions.”

  “No.” He smiled again. “Of course not.”

  He reached into his pocket, removed a thick set of neatly folded papers—architectural plans, it looked like—and slid them across to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “A gift. To cement our good intentions. The building dates to the 19th century. Some very interesting architecture.”

  “That’s a historic building. I checked.”

  After 9/11, the structural plans for various historic landmarks around the city were removed from public view, accessible only by permit. The idea was to make it difficult for any would-be terrorists to pack one of the city’s many abandoned underground spaces with explosives, Guy Fawkes–style.

  “I would pay particular note to the hidden entry. Via the sewers.” He stood. “Good day, Detective.”

  He replaced his hat, tipped it to me, and walked toward the door. He tipped it again at Hammond, who was sitting on a bar stool with his back to us. “Detective,” he said. Then he was gone.

  I finished my ouzo in one gulp, coughed once, and dropped the cigar into the glass. I left a twenty on the table—surcharge for the municipal violation—and grabbed my box. I set it on the bar and pulled out a stool.

  “There’s only so many places you go,” he said.

  “How many you visit?” I asked.

  “This was number three.”

  “Huh. I didn’t think you knew about this one.”

  He looked around. “Doesn’t look like I’ve been missing anything.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shithole. That’s why I like it.”

  “Hey,” Sully called jokingly from the end of the bar. “Careful.”

  “Best damned shithole in the city,” I said as he stepped away to clear my table
and give us some privacy. “Seriously. How’d you find me?”

  “I’m a detective. Remember?”

  I scowled. “You know what I mean, Craig.”

  “Kinney,” he said.

  “Fred give you her number?”

  He nodded. “Everybody’s worried about you, Har. Not gonna apologize for it either.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “What’s in the box?”

  I slid it away. “Just some things from the office.”

  “Oh? And who’s the suit?” He nodded toward the door.

  “Dunno. Didn’t tell me a name.”

  “Seemed like you guys were getting on. What did he want?”

  “Me to do his dirty work for him.”

  “Are you?”

  When I didn’t answer, he studied me.

  I waited for a moment. “What’s the word on the Sacchi case?”

  “There isn’t one. Anything you’ve touched recently has been referred for review.”

  “Jesus . . . That’ll take months.”

  He nodded solemnly. “What’d you expect? The department’s gotta cover its ass.” He glanced at the box. “You’re not gonna tell me what that’s for, are you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  After a minute of silence, he got a text. His phone buzzed and he took it out. He nodded sharply and got up from his stool.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Yup. Got a recital tonight. That was my reminder.” He shrugged. “I did my bit. I told Fred I’d talk to you. I talked. Not that I don’t know the answer to this, but I don’t suppose you’d want to come to the house? Recital won’t take an hour. The girls would like to see you. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

  He was doing what everybody does after they get spooked: deny it. Go home and pretend like nothing happened. It never lasts, but it’s where we all start. Including me. Couldn’t exactly be mad at him for that.

  “Rain check, okay?”

  “Of course.” He paused. “Other plans, huh?”

  I bobbled my head noncommittally. “Hoping.”

  “Say hi to her for me.” Then he turned for the door. He raised a hand without turning back. “See ya around, Har. I’d say ‘don’t do anything stupid,’ but you’re already on a roll.”