In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF CHANDLER MCGREW

  In Shadows

  Featured Alternate Selection of the Doubleday Book Club, Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Science Fiction Book Club

  “Before you start reading In Shadows, lock all the doors and turn on all the lights. Its suspense moves like a bullet train and whispers your darkest fears.”

  —Dennis Burges, author of Graves Gate

  The Darkening

  “McGrew’s creative, addictive novel is one part Rapture drama, one part Lovecraftian horror story and one part blood-soaked chase…. ‘Mysterious’ is a good word to describe this book, which reveals its secrets slowly and in small increments. But McGrew keeps the pacing brisk and eschews overly florid prose, making this a thrilling one-sit read, right down to its explosive, delightfully hokey finale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “There are many great horror novelists writing today, including King, Koontz, and Barker, but Chandler McGrew proves with The Darkening he is their equal. The protagonists don’t want to be world saviors but when push comes to shove they find the courage to try.”

  —Harriet Klausner

  “The Darkening is a treat for fans of horror, action, theology and mythology, as well as those readers who just like a good book in which they can quickly get lost … a trip into realms some feared would never be explored again.”

  —TheBestReviews.com

  “As the lights go out in this tension-packed tale you’ll make sure yours stay on as you read long into the night!”

  —cyber-times.com

  Night Terror

  “McGrew ratchets up the tension and plays on the primal fears that cause most adults to lose sleep…. Intersperses the action and suspense with moments of assured portrayals of character … It will be interesting to see what area McGrew will tackle in his next novel but based on his first two books, he is an author to watch, and read.”

  —Denver Post

  “Unsettling … an engaging read … Fans of Kay Hooper and Linda Howard will readily dig into this fantastic tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Chandler McGrew’s Night Terror is a skillful tale, well-paced and intricately constructed—a good read.”

  —Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Night Terror sweeps the reader along at an unrelenting pace…. This is a read-it-in-one-sitting book that will have you awake long past midnight, looking at the shadows outside your window.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Chandler McGrew has written a masterful work of psychological suspense…. Night Terror is a fascinating reading experience.”

  —I Love a Mystery Newsletter

  “This story is a spine-tingling blend of mystery, thriller, and a bit of the paranormal, where a surprise lurks around every corner. The characters are ordinary people dealing with their own private pain, as well as the extraordinary circumstances in which they find themselves.”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  “If you thought Cold Heart was a good book by Chandler McGrew, Night Terror will have you sleeping with the lights on! … Suspense at its best, there are so many plot twists and turns.”

  —BookReviewCafé.com

  “A taut thriller … Fast paced with plausible characters, Night Terror is a top-flight story and bonafide ‘page-turner’!”

  —Aromos (CA) Tri-County News

  Cold Heart

  “The best opening ten pages I’ve read this year…. This suspense mystery reads like a good martini tastes: ice cold.”

  —Contra Costa Times

  “This first-time author has crafted a tale that compels the reader to turn page after page. This book has incredible tension and suspense.”

  —Mystery News

  “An engrossing reading experience.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A fast-moving tale of suspense and bloody mayhem.”

  —Lewiston (ME) Sun Journal

  “This is a very well-constructed, action-packed novel … a tense and satisfying read.”

  —I Love a Mystery Newsletter

  “What an unbelievable read! I’m telling you, McGrew could very well be the next Dean Koontz. He’s that good. That’s why we had to pick his book Cold Heart as the number 1 read!”

  —BookReviewCafé.com, Best Author, 2002

  “Chandler McGrew has written one hell of a suspense thriller…. His suspenseful narrative voice is perfection, and he keeps us on the edge of our seats with a bang of an ending!”

  —Scream TV.net

  ALSO BY CHANDLER MCGREW

  The Darkening

  Night Terror

  Cold Heart

  For Amanda

  Light of my life

  Many people contributed to the creation of this

  book, and I would especially like to thank all the

  deafblind and their families who were without fail

  responsive and helpful, asking only that they be treated

  fairly and with compassion. Until I began my research

  I was regrettably unaware of their silent, dark, but

  surprisingly multifaceted world. I would certainly never

  have expected to receive a series of very funny deafblind

  jokes from a gentleman who e-mailed them to me from his

  braille-equipped laptop. Heartfelt thanks. As always

  I appreciated the help of Dr. Kevin Finley for his medical

  expertise. Finally, of course, I have to give credit to my

  faithful agent, Irene Kraas, without whose efforts you

  might not be reading this. To my editor,

  Caitlin Alexander, whose patience is legend.

  And to my wife, Rene, soul mate and friend.

  Without a dream to light your way,

  the world is a very dark place.

  —Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Sometimes its countenance is death

  I’ve smelled decay upon its breath.

  Just as night defeats the day

  In shadows fierce the demons play

  While aloft for those who cannot see

  The dragon hums a memory.

  —“Thunderstorm” by Cooder Reese

  From Dead Reckonings

  IERCE MORIN LIVED IN A WORLD of touch and taste, and strange, wonderful odors that wafted through the darkness of his days and nights. Deaf and blind, and smaller than most thirteen-year-olds, most of his exercise consisted of exploring either the house or the yard, or joining his mother on her weekend errands to Arcos.

  Still, he was wirier and stronger than people expected. His fingers were calloused from hours of reading braille and working with the maze of electronic parts and tools he kept neatly organized in plastic bins over the wide folding table that took up one wall of his bedroom. His mother had grown as weary as he had of trying to explain to people how he could repair radios and televisions that he could neither see nor hear.

  So the boy spent his days in quiet anonymity, fiddling with transistors and transducers, with solid-state circuits that no one could fix. No one but him. Even Pastor Ernie was curious just how he repaired them. But the best explanation Pierce could give—spelling it out into Ernie’s palm since it was too complicated for American Sign Language, and Ernie wasn’t that good with the signs, anyway—was that he could see what was broken inside and how the parts were supposed to fit together.

  But that morning he wasn’t in his seat at the worktable. Instead he sat on a straight-backed chair beside the open window, resting his fingers on the sill, feeling the warmth of the sun on them, smelling the new-mown grass in the backyard, the rich loamy aroma of the creek down below, phasing out the leftover house odors of cereal, and coffee, and his mother’s shampoo and perfume. Feeling the hairs
on his arms tingling as the faintest of breezes stirred the air, he wondered what strange sense of gloom kept him so still. He felt like a rabbit huddling beneath a bush, but he had no idea what danger approached, only that it was coming and he needed to be ready.

  Suddenly it seemed as though a cloud had passed the sun, chilling his cheeks, and yet the warmth of the light still lingered on his hands. Twisting his head to one side, as if searching for some errant sound with his deaf ears, he tried to understand what was happening.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  But not wrong in the way an open door in the night was wrong. It was more like the world he knew had somehow broken. Some part of the universe had turned dangerous and deadly. Shivering, he clutched his shoulders.

  He stood slowly, sliding his fingers up to find the top of the window sash and slamming it shut, tripping the latch and wishing that the thin curtains he jerked across it were more than just for show. If sunlight could get through them to warm him in bed, then whatever was coming might be able to look right through them, too. What good were curtains like that, anyway?

  Suddenly he knew that the indefinable something was right on the other side of the glass. He could sense it peering inside, studying him through the gauzy curtains as though he were some kind of specimen. He knew scientists did that to small animals, like bugs, and Pierce had always wondered if the bugs minded. Now he knew. If the bugs were anything at all like him, they experienced the unreasoning terror of knowing they were in the grip of something so powerful they had absolutely no defense against it.

  Against his will he was drawn nearer to the window, parting the curtain again with shaking hands, bending until he was so close that he could feel the coolness of the glass radiating toward his nose even as the refracted sunlight still heated his skin. There really was something on the other side of the pane, inches away from his face. He knew it in the same way he knew when an electronic circuit was broken. He sensed thoughts as though he were reading someone else’s mind, only it was wasn’t a mind that made any kind of sense to him. He was filled to bursting with a maelstrom of emotions, and without thinking he lashed out with his fist, shattering the window, the vibration shooting through his arm.

  He stood frozen, the jagged edge of the glass pressed against the soft underside of his wrist, as the presence on the other side of the window slowly eked away. It was as though his abrupt release of anger had driven it out of the yard, but he sensed that it had left for some other, unknown, reason.

  He felt lightly around the broken pane with the fingers of his other hand, slowly and carefully drawing his fist back out of the shards. Testing with his fingers he discovered that, miraculously, he had not cut himself.

  Not even a nick.

  AKE CROWLEY SQUINTED THROUGH THE RAIN rattling against his parked sedan. Storm-tossed Galveston Bay was little more than a roiling, brown illusion through the sheeting windshield, and the late-afternoon sky barely contained enough light to allow him to read the letter in his hands.

  Uncle Albert was murdered, Jake, and we need to talk. I don’t know if you’re ever going to answer my calls, but won’t you come home to at least pay your respects? I love you, Jake. I miss you.

  He folded the crumpled letter, slipped it carefully back into the envelope, and returned it to the glove box.

  Jake sighed. He’d driven all the way from Houston through the downpour to meet a man who refused to show his face anywhere near the city, and Jake could understand why. If Reever gave up the information Jake needed, two of the biggest crime lords in Houston might be making license plates for years to come. If, that was, they could be prosecuted successfully through the corrupt and politicized legal system that had taken hold in recent years.

  Distant tympanies of thunder rattled the air, and now Jake could barely make out the rolling gray surf through the curtain of glassy droplets. His cell phone buzzed, and he snapped it open, expecting to hear Cramer, his partner, who was home sick with the flu. He’d bust Jake’s chops for being stupid enough to hold a meeting like this alone.

  “Yeah,” said Jake.

  “‘Yeah’? You don’t speak to me three times in fourteen years, and ‘yeah’ is what I get?”

  “Pam?” His cousin’s voice filled him with dread and pain. In his mind’s eye, she still stood waving at him from the airport window, but incongruously it was his mother’s voice—from an even more distant past—that echoed through his thoughts.

  Run away, Jake. Run away.

  “Glad you remembered,” said Pam.

  “Look, I don’t have time right now. How did you get this number?”

  “A desk sergeant gave it to me. I guess I was pretty persuasive. How come it doesn’t work on you?”

  Jake shook his head. “Honestly, Pam, this is a really bad time.”

  The wind picked up, the storm roaring in straight off the water. Marble-size raindrops threatened to burst through the windshield. Why the hell had Reever insisted on meeting here in this seawall parking lot? Jake didn’t like it that the place he’d supposed would be very public ended up being all too secluded because of the storm. But even Reever couldn’t have known the weather was going to be this bad.

  “Jake, Uncle Albert was beaten to death. It was bad. Real bad.”

  A muscle spasmed in Jake’s belly, and his fingers tightened on the phone. Albert was another old, long-buried memory.

  “Jake? You there?”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded shaky. Hell, it felt shaky.

  The only thing visible now was the veneer of water cascading across the glass, and Jake found himself wondering how so much fluid could be diverted down into that little cavity concealing the windshield wipers without making its way into the engine compartment.

  “Jake, you’re not saying anything.”

  “What do you want me to say, Pam?”

  “Nothing, I guess. I’m sorry I called.”

  “I’ll call you back. I’m meeting someone, and it’s kind of important.”

  He glanced around and noticed that the windows were just as useless as the windshield. It occurred to him that if this was more than just a rainstorm—if a tornado or water spout were heading in his direction—he would have no way of knowing it was coming, and nowhere to run.

  “Sure, Jake. I’ll be waiting for your call.” The click of the receiver on the other end was like a slap in the face.

  Jake slipped the phone into the pocket of his sports coat. He and Pam had been raised like brother and sister. Hearing her voice after so long . . . a swirling cauldron of emotions gurgled within him. The bile of shame, and fear, churned in his throat, and he knew that if he couldn’t stifle it, it would remind him of Mandi. He could hear Cramer’s husky voice chiding him, his partner’s deep drawl heavy with Cajun weirdness.

  Watch yo ass, not de bitch on de street. Man, you better keep you ducks in a row or you gonna end up on a slab.

  The giant black man could just as easily slip into slick white jive with an inflection tighter than a frog’s behind. He formed his persona to fit the situation. But the Cajun was real enough. Cramer’s grandmother, his memere, had been raised in the deep bayous of Louisiana, and she didn’t speak anything but patois-twisted English.

  The trouble was that Reever was no street tough. He was a trigger man for the Houston mob who had become disenchanted after his brother had taken a fall for one of the higher-ups and gotten stiffed. Usually the organization was smarter than that. Either you took care of your own when they did you a favor or you got rid of them. Apparently they’d made a mistake this time, and Jake planned to capitalize on it.

  But where was Reever? The beachfront parking lot had been empty when Jake arrived. He’d driven slowly around the area, circling a couple of blocks of old Victorian homes. But no one was sitting in any of the cars parked on the street. No one stared at him from the dripping front porches. Reever was probably pulled over on the highway now, waiting out a storm this strong. Jake could have gone ahead and carried on
the conversation with Pam if he’d had the nerve.

  A memory of Albert flashed through his mind, heavy flannel shirt across thin shoulders, the old man’s gray beard flecked with sawdust. Albert was equipment-and land-poor like most small loggers, and he had already been getting too old for the business when Jake had left Maine fourteen years earlier. He was a lifelong bachelor who always smelled of pipe tobacco, axle grease, and pine pitch. And Jake loved him like a father.

  The dampness was seeping into Jake’s pores. Even though it was still in the seventies outside, he started the car and turned on the heater. Over the thrum of the engine and the pounding of the rain, he heard another car behind him. He flipped on his lights and stomped the brake pedal several times, and a set of headlights answered, the car itself just a ghost through the downpour.

  Reever parked the sedan so close to Jake’s driver’s side door that Jake wondered for an instant if he was being corralled. He instinctively rested his hand on the gearshift, then slipped it to the Glock in his shoulder holster. The familiar feel of the weapon stirred up mixed emotions, and Jake let his hand slide slowly away. There was no sign of anyone else in the car, and as he watched, Reever jumped out and ran around to drop into the front seat with Jake, already soaked in the seconds it took him to get there.

  “Fuckin’ like the fuckin’ flood out there!” said Reever, shaking his greasy black hair.

  “How come you didn’t park on the other side?” said Jake, eyeing him closely.

  Reever shrugged, water dripping off his wide forehead. “Couldn’t see! I told you it’s like a fucking Noah flood out there, you jerk.”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Yeah. Fuckin’ right. How’s the ball and chain and the kids?”