Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  “I wish to speak to someone with authority,” I whispered, not sure what else to say. Harry hadn’t been very specific. And this was so removed from my experience.

  “Authority? For what? Listen, mate, are you sure -”

  “Is this the IRA?” I asked, feeling the flush of foolishness on my face.

  “You must be bloody well jokin’ -”

  “I’m Harry’s brother,” I said in desperation.

  It worked, for the voice went quiet. Very quiet. “Yes?”

  “I want to - to join up. My brother convinced me.” My hands trembled and I switched the receiver from one to the other.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at my brother’s flat, the safe one.”

  “Don’t move from there. You’ll be contacted. If this is a joke, or somethin’ worse, all parties involved will suffer.” He blew out air - maybe smoke - and continued. “Is that bloody well clear?”

  “I’ll be waiting,” I said, and hung up.

  Could it be that simple? Just ring up your local representative and add your name to the mailing list?

  Outside, portions of the city burned. Harry was there, I was sure of it. I settled myself on his bed, wondering if he would return that night.

  *

  Ten in the morning. A soft knock.

  I put one of the heavy Brownings in my pocket, then opened the door. A young man stood nervously outside, hands jammed into an old leather bomber coat, shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking up and down the corridor.

  “Yes?” I whispered.

  “You’re to follow me.” His eyes were never still, searching out potential enemies behind me, beside me, in the hall, on the ceiling.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, mate. Come on, then, get a move on.”

  I slipped into my coat and followed him down to the street. He led me around the corner, down an adjacent road. There was no one about, everyone frightened by the night’s events.

  The sudden squeal of brakes beside me. A dark blue auto slammed into the kerb [UK sp] and two men leaped out. Each held a submachine gun, and one motioned for me to enter the auto. When I did, the two sandwiched me between them. The driver shifted and we sped off.

  One of the men blindfolded me. I felt a hand relieve me of both Browning and billfold, and heard my credentials flipped through as I settled back for the ride. My bladder felt as if it would burst.

  We stopped an hour later. My bladder was cramped and painful, but now fear had taken control. I hoped it would hold. I was helped from the auto, led along a concrete path and into a building, then down a steep staircase and into a damp room that could only have been a cellar.

  Was I to be executed?

  Would the very next sensation I felt be that of a bullet entering the back of my head and splattering into my brain? Would they shoot an unarmed man?

  I was shoved into a stiff chair and the blindfold was removed roughly.

  “You’re Colin. Harry’s brother.” The voice came from the darkness beyond the cone of light under which I found myself.

  “Yes.”

  “What brings you to us?”

  “Harry told me to call.”

  Silence. Then: “Harry Flanagan. Are you like him, then?”

  Ah, what a fine bunch o’ boys, Colin-me-lad. The Brigade’s the best friend a Derryman’s ever likely to need, besides his pistol!

  “I want to do something about what happened to Harry - the reason he went away.”

  Someone began to speak, and someone else stopped him. How many men were cramped into that cellar? What sort of tribunal was this, and who would speak for me? For Harry?

  “A Proddy bastard name of Ian Campbell’s the one who had Harry, er, removed. And a couple other boyos, too. Think you might be able to do in our Mr. Campbell, with the right training?”

  Anything, anything to see and hear Harry again. To please him. I was ready to do anything.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Eric, bring me the book and flag.” There was motion in the dark, the sound of fabric unfurled and pages riffled. “Colin Flanagan, get on your knees.”

  I slid from the chair. The pavement was cold and hard.

  “You know your brother is a martyr to our Cause, do you not?”

  “I know,” I whispered. But I didn’t believe - I had seen him, had spoken to him. He had convinced me to avenge his …

  his death - (say it, Colin, his death). Avenge his death.

  “Kneel at the shrine of the martyr, Colin, and learn to live by the gun.”

  I did.

  And I could see Harry smiling at me, his outline glowing faintly in the dark behind the anonymous men of the Derry Brigade.

  *

  “Time,” said Eric. He checked to make sure the key was in the ignition, then we opened the doors and climbed out.

  Conditions were perfect. It had just rained and the cobblestones were still wet, the promise of more rain by nightfall written in the clouds. A good thing - it kept people off the street and justified the tan raincoats we would have worn in any case.

  Eric was calm, an experienced executioner. His jet-black hair was conservatively cut, and his features bespoke an aristocratic background - a scholarly upbringing like mine, perhaps. Only a twisted, puckered scar on one side ruined a face that might otherwise have been considered handsome. The scar somehow symbolized his connection to the Cause, separating him from what had been.

  I admired his poise.

  I placed my hand inside the right pocket of the modified raincoat and gripped the metal butt of the Sten tightly. I saw Eric do the same. My fingers felt for the selection lever and caressed it, making sure it was on “automatic.” Then I slid my hand inside the left pocket, using it to hold the 32-round magazine that protruded from the Sten’s side.

  We walked slowly toward the restaurant door from which Ian Campbell and his bodyguard would soon emerge, holding our Stens pointed at the pavement, invisible beneath the raincoats. We were twenty yards from the Denn’s door when he came out, preceded by a rough-skinned, thick-bodied thug - the bodyguard.

  The meal must have been of superior quality, I thought crazily, because they were both smiling. The bodyguard didn’t scan us twice. We must have looked young in those oversized coats.

  It’s too easy, I thought. A sharp disappointment after all the waiting, all the emotion.

  As they passed us, headed in the direction from which Eric and I had come, Eric whirled about.

  It was all in slow motion, a blur.

  I followed Eric’s lead and brought up the Sten, already squeezing the trigger as the muzzle and its old-fashioned suppressor reached the horizontal. Standing side by side, our legs spread for balance, Eric and I emptied our guns into the two, the long bursts kicking up raincoat tatters in front of our eyes. Sizzling brass rained down around our feet.

  A mental picture of my brother Harry, already grown fuzzy,

  floated above me as the bullets streaked toward their target. Harry was smiling his thin-lipped smile.

  My Sten fell silent with a metallic click, its slide stuck in the rear position, the magazine empty.

  I turned, momentarily bewildered, and saw Eric ripping off the remains of his raincoat. I shrugged mine off, too. Then Eric ran toward our car, but I stood still on the wet street.

  I glanced at the two heaps of tissue and bone. Their blood made rivers on the walk, followed the incline to the edge of the kerb, and formed tiny red waterfalls that broke on the cobbles below.

  I stood immobile, the silent Sten in my hands. The picture of Harry had faded, and I felt the vomit rising acridly in my throat.

  I closed my eyes in a long blink, then opened them. The red-spattered bodies of Campbell and his bodyguard were still there. The man who had ordered my brother’s death was now dead himself.

  I felt nothing.

  Sirens.

  Eric yelled something I couldn’t make out, then dove into the sedan and pr
essed the starter. In a rush of sounds and smells I ran up to the car, which Eric stubbornly held still, waiting. I lunged into the open door and into the rear seat. Eric spun the wheel, the tyres skidding as they tried to grip wet cobblestones, then we careened crazily away from the sidewalk and shot like a runaway missile down the street.

  Eric gave the wheel another spin and we were around the corner, skidding on the wetness. I had a split-second view of the hastily-erected roadblock. Two Land Rovers, tail-to-bumper, with a half dozen Royal Highland Fusiliers crouching behind them. Weapons raised. A lucky guess on their part.

  Eric accelerated, jumped the cement, and maneuvered the auto expertly, squeezing through between the darkened store-fronts and army vehicles — with inches to spare and without striking any obstacles. We ducked as slugs ripped through the windscreen and into the chassis. Shards of glass covered our hair like confetti. Eric made a tight right turn followed by a left and a right, then another left and another, slowed, and placed us on the motorway. Neither of us spoke as a few miles flew by, roadblocks probably going in seconds behind us. Then Eric nosed onto a lonely road and followed an old cart-track.

  “Home free, Colin.” He grimaced a smile.

  I nodded, but I knew the truth. I would never be free, just as Harry had never been free.

  The wind from the broken screen was cold in my face.

  That night Harry came to me.

  * * *

  MOTION PURIFIES

  Published in SHADOWPLAYS (1st edition) and HORRORFIND

  The clear mineral taste in his mouth reminded him that it had been almost a week since he’d last seen another living human. The pure, uncomplicated flavor was so opposite of the manufactured, processed taste of his tap water, that it inevitably reminded him of people.

  And those he could do without.

  It was good to be alone, he decided as he drank another cupful of the cold stream water. Its mineral quality mixed not unpleasantly with the metallic taste of the canteen cup. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to stay away from civilization a bit longer, afterwards.

  Maybe even a whole month.

  He was in his element here, and a month would be just fine.

  He rinsed his cup and replaced it under the newly-filled canteen, then fitted both back into the nylon canteen case hooked to his webbed belt. There was a bottle of water purification tablets, snug in its Velcro-ed pouch on the canteen cover, but he left it alone.

  No need to purify this, he thought. Motion purifies.

  He dug the three-quart bottle from the outer pocket of his large frame backpack and tipped it, pouring out the old, stale water. Then he dunked it into the stream and let the fresh water gurgle in.

  He propped the bulging backpack onto a tree trunk and sat next to it, enjoying the sound of water rushing by only ten feet away. It was a comforting sound, like a mother’s voice on a dark night. Or maybe it was more like never-ending thunder, warning of approaching rains, and the images it brought to mind were of comfortable cabins with raging fireplaces and softly-glowing hurricane lamps throwing weird shadows on the walls.

  Mere images.

  Things are never what they seem, he reminded himself, smiling.

  It was still light, though his watch claimed it was evening. Soon it would be completely dark, with the suddenness that is only obvious in the woods - never in the sterile confines of the city. With that in mind, and more, he began to draw his tarp from the backpack. He’d decided against a tent easily, a no-brainer for him. A tarp was just as dry a shelter when well-arranged.

  And he knew all about order and arrangement.

  He folded the large rubberized sheet - once, not in half - to form a groundcloth, then used several rounded rocks from the nearby stream as anchors on the fold side, the rear. A short search of the nearby underbrush resulted in a relatively straight, four-foot length of branch that was not dry enough to snap with pressure. The M-1 bayonet sheathed at waist quickly pared off rough points, and his shelter had a center post. He inserted one end into the steel-rimmed grommet in the approximate center of the front of the groundcloth, and the other end into a corresponding grommet on the folded-over upper portion. Stretching the loose flap and using his bayonet to pound a dozen lightweight stakes trough the grommets set in the fabric at short intervals, he had a passable A-frame shelter that was open in front and sloped downward in the rear.

  Twenty minutes later, a fire crackled several feet from the entrance, spreading its warmth into the shelter. The flames were set squarely into a blackened firepit, also made from rocks dragged out of the stream. He and Charlie had done that on their last fishing trip, and had then grilled a day’s catch of ten-inch rainbow trout in the firepit. They had dubbed the little clearing by the water their chunk of heaven. That was over a year ago.

  He now sat alone before the flames and loaded the old Webley with six round-nosed cartridges from a tan canvas pouch.

  Soon it was dark, and still he sat near the fire, which hissed in the damp air.

  *

  It is a simple plan.

  Ridiculously simple, and he thinks it might even - crazily - work. He thinks it might work because his friend Charlie could talk a rabbit into a lion’s cage if so inclined, and he thinks it will work. Charlie isn’t as talented at talking the rabbit’s way out of the lion’s cage, but you can’t have everything. And Charlie says it’ll never go that bad, that far. It is, after all, a simple plan.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Charlie says to him. It is lunchtime. “About money. How we never have enough of it. How we could use a lifetime supply. Want to hear my thoughts on the subject?”

  Both dressed in their uniforms, they sit in plastic chairs in the company cafeteria. The chairs are plastic, the tables are plastic, the food in the machines is plastic. There is plastic in everything he sees, everything around him. There is even something plastic about Charlie, busy talking his rabbit into the lion’s cage.

  He bites into a soggy cheese sandwich and realizes with a mental groan that it is processed cheese.

  Plastic.

  “Johnny-boy,” Charlie is saying from across the orange table (there’s a natural wood color for you, he thought, distracted from Charlie’s words), “we’ve got the chance of a lifetime here. We. Have. It. Under. Our. Noses.”

  Johnny bites his lunch and swallows the gummy cheese and bread with difficulty. He hates to be called Johnny-boy, but Charlie always does anyway. Even so, he listens. Because Charlie is a communicator - rabbits always listen to Charlie.

  Temptation is too complicated a word for what Johnny feels, and he knows that. He is hungry. In more ways than one. His undergraduate psychology degree (a lark, he knew) has qualified him for nothing more than this security position with Redman International, a mysterious conglomerate whose total list of products Johnny has never seen, where wages seem to be inversely proportional to the amount of work one does. Dead end job in a dead end.

  So Johnny listens. With only one ear, maybe. But he does listen.

  “Did I ever tell you I worked with computers before this shitty job?” Charlie is saying. “I used to be somebody. Until the jerks I worked for downsized me right out the door. The assholes.”

  Johnny has a vague concept of computers. Not his style. Masses of metal and plastic. Plastic again. All around, ruling and ruining lives. He nods.

  Charlie’s round head swivels to see if anyone else is listening, and his washed-out blue eyes pierce the air. The closest robot worker shovels plastic food into his mouth five tables away, engrossed in a colorful sports section. Satisfied with their relative privacy, Charlie continues.

  “My next gig, got caught checking out some files they tell me I shouldn’t be botherin’ with. Secret stuff. Hadda split fast. Spent a few grand of their money on a new name and social security number and got to be honest joe again. But it don’t pay.” He sneers. “Hell, you know that.”

  Johnny nods absently, taking another reluctant bite. So even Charlie is a plastic replica, not a
real person at all.

  “Know my way ‘round a safe, too. And I got a connection who’ll let me have an entry card for Accounting, for a small cut, of course.”

  Charlie stops and lowers his voice to a gruff whisper.

  “I’ve seen ‘em put four hundred grand in the safe, night before Brinks comes and takes it. It’s, like, a payroll transfer deal. All I need’s a guy to keep watch while I work the safe. I’m one of the guards who gets the safe gig, you know.”

  He snickers with half-pride and half-derision, sharing a joke on the stupidity of anyone who would trust him.

  “With that card to get us in, I’ll be done in ten minutes. They put the cash in there on Friday, like always. They won’t get wise until Monday if we’re careful as flies ‘round a spider-web. It’s an old trick, I know, but it’ll work. We’ll be blown, but we’ll be outta here by then. Whattaya think, Johnny-boy?”

  Johnny has been watching Charlie’s hands as the big man talks. They are never still, those massive shovel-like hands. They describe, measure, coax, and cajole. They are his best and most convincing mannerism, and Johnny has to admit that it all sounds easy enough, from what he’s heard. But one thing he has learned in his singular life is caution. One shouldn’t just jump into things. It can affect motion.

  “I don’t know,” says Johnny. “Let me think about it.” He has exercised caution before, in other places and times, and he knows the value of forethought. And of motion.

  Charlie frowns. His frowns are ugly - as ugly as the swamps from which he claims to hail. “One day, Johnny-boy. Then I ask someone else. I know someone who’s interested.” His eyes are hard and cold. “But he don’t go fishin’ with me.” He stands abruptly and strides out of the cafeteria with a polyester rustle. Charlie - or whatever his name is really - is not a patient man.

  Johnny throws the sandwich away. It’s too plastic for his taste.

  The rest of the day, Charlie is on his mind. He can’t get rid of the images.

  Charlie, the big man with the quiet manner and subdued hatred is a criminal. A thief. Johnny has fished with him almost two years, and never suspected.