In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

  It felt good to have something to keep her thoughts off of Jimmy Torrio or the whispering terror that lived out in the storm. But her mind kept wanting to go back to that moment when Barbara had disappeared into the trees. In her mind’s eye Mandi saw not the old lady trying to save a dog, but herself, running through the darkness after Pierce. What if he had gotten away from them instead of Oswald? Would she and Pierce have been sacrificed for the good of the group? She imagined Jake’s arms around her and knew that it would never have happened. He had forged his way through the flood to save them. He would never forsake them again. Never.

  Pierce sat on one of the mattresses, facing the fire. His brow was furrowed, and he was squinting into the fireplace. He had one hand cupped over an ear as though trying to hear the crackling flames. Mandi knelt slowly beside him.

  Pierce’s eyes always moved along with his head. It was one of the traits that gave his blindness away to people. But now they followed the jittering flames as she watched him twist his head, cupping one hand over his ear.

  Dear God. Don’t let me be imagining this.

  “Pierce,” she said, in a voice firmer than she felt. “Pierce, can you hear me?”

  To her amazement, he turned toward her voice, his eyes roving her face. He ran his fingers lightly along her cheeks. And she saw curiosity, and love, in his eyes, for the first time since his birth. Her chest ached, and her throat constricted.

  “Pierce?”

  He took her hand and signed to her. I don’t understand what you’re saying.

  Of course not. He’d never heard anything in his entire life. He wouldn’t be able to recognize his own name or any other words she spoke. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was so shaken she could barely will her fingers to sign back. Can you really see me?

  He nodded vigorously, never taking his eyes from hers. She pulled him toward her, crushing him in her arms, stroking his hair, kissing the top of his head. When she held him out to arm’s length his eyes found hers immediately again. Tears welled in her own eyes.

  Dear God, she thought. Dear sweet Jesus. Thank you. Thank you.

  Since the boy was born she’d felt guilty about his infirmities, no matter how much the doctors reassured her that neither his blindness nor his lack of hearing was her fault. Then, when he was crippled and she wasn’t home to protect him, her guilt had multiplied. Seeing him cured like this was like the lifting of a vast weight that she had been certain she would have to carry for the rest of her life.

  “What’s going on?” asked Virgil, leaning around her to look at Pierce.

  “He can see,” she gasped. “He can hear.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Pierce glanced over Mandi’s shoulder at Virgil and made a face, trying to place the smell with the sound and the face.

  “He doesn’t understand or recognize you,” said Mandi, the tears flowing freely down her cheeks. “He’s never heard speech or seen anyone’s face before.”

  Pierce’s eyes went back to roaming the room, but when either she or Virgil spoke he turned to them instantly.

  Virgil shook his head, smiling. “What could have caused it? It’s some kind of miracle.”

  “It is a miracle,” she whispered, clutching Pierce tightly again and kissing his cheek.

  But Pierce slipped out of her grasp and climbed to his feet. She thought for a moment he was going to reach into the fire, and she rushed to stop him. But he sensed the heat, and drew back. Instead he wandered around the room like a toddler, touching the windowsill, sniffing the dust on the curtains, leaning to pick up one of the cans of vegetables from Jake’s pack, sniffing it, squinting at the picture on the label. Mandi watched him, barely able to breathe. He was halfway around the room, making his way back to the mattress, when she gasped again.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Virgil.

  Mandi nodded toward Pierce who was now fingering the old brocade upholstery on the sofa.

  “He’s not limping,” she whispered.

  “What’s he saying?” asked Jake, as Cramer moved in beside them, dropping his own armload of wood beside the hearth. Both men watched the boy.

  Pierce kept signing to his mother, his fingers racing through the symbols like a piano player doing warmup exercises.

  Mandi frowned. “He says the jewel is broken, but it’s doing things to him. I guess he believes the necklace is responsible for his sight and hearing.”

  Pierce looked right at Jake. The boy’s eyes followed his every move. Jake took one of Pierce’s hands to spell into it. But when they touched, Pierce jerked away, and Jake knew instantly what had frightened him.

  I won’t take it back, I promise, spelled Jake, but the boy still pulled away, huddling against his mother.

  “Tell him he can keep it,” Jake told Mandi.

  “But what else is it doing to him?” asked Virgil, frowning at Pierce’s closed fist.

  Jake shook his head. “It doesn’t seem to be hurting him.”

  “But it’s connected to all this, to the Crowley curse, isn’t it?” said Cramer.

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know how it could be. I took it from José Torrio in Galveston.”

  “Baggage,” muttered Cramer.

  “What?” said Mandi.

  Cramer shook his head.

  “Tell Pierce I just want to look at the jewel again,” said Jake. “Not take it.”

  Mandi signed to Pierce, and he answered back with his free hand. Jake sat down on the floor beside him, resting his own hands in his lap in what he hoped looked to Pierce like a nonthreatening gesture. Finally the boy seemed relaxed, but all he would offer was for Jake to touch the jewel while he continued to press it to his own chest.

  Can you see me now? asked Jake.

  Pierce nodded slowly, his eyes following Jake’s other hand uncertainly.

  How many fingers? spelled Jake.

  Three, signed Pierce, frowning.

  Right.

  Jake gently rested his fingertips on the jewel. At first it felt exceptionally cold. But then the feeling abruptly changed, and he was afraid it was about to burn his skin. He jerked his fingers away, and Pierce closed his fist again. But a memory had been rekindled in the back of Jake’s mind. An image of his mother on the night she was killed. He was sitting on the floor just like he was now, staring at the form of her broken body, when his father had dropped beside him. There were tears in his dad’s eyes as he reached beneath Jake’s mother’s hand and slipped something into his own. Something gleaming and red. Jake stared at the chain dangling from Pierce’s hand, and in that instant he recalled his father’s words.

  Oh, Sylvia, what in the world did you do? Why?

  Had his mother found this same jewel? Had his father known that it had somehow caused her death? But then how in the world had it ended up around José Torrio’s neck? What unbelievable concatenation of events had led it back to him? Albert had been up to the house. Torrio’s man killed Albert, or he was there when Albert was killed.

  Things began to click into place.

  DIDN’T HEAR ANYTHING OUT THERE THIS TIME,” said Jake. He and Cramer were carrying yet more wood into the kitchen.

  “It’s there,” said Cramer, shaking off the rain. “A spirit like that don’t cause this much trouble, then just run off. Memere says the only way to stop a spirit is to either figure out what it wants and appease it, or find its power and cut the heart out of it.”

  “Pleasant old thing, Memere.”

  “Very knowledgeable,” said Cramer with a toothy grin.

  “And what else would Memere say?”

  Cramer’s grin hardened into a frown. “That maybe that necklace is like a juju for the spirits. Maybe they’re following it around. Maybe they want it back.”

  Jake considered it, but shook his head. “That just doesn’t ring true. If the spirits were here all along they’d have known where the jewel was before Albert found it. I think it was meant to come to me, for some reason. That’s how it ended up in Housto
n to begin with.”

  “And what are you supposed to do with it?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Cramer shrugged. “You gave it to the boy. Maybe that’s what you were supposed to do.”

  Jake shook his head. “Pierce was already here. Why send the jewel on a four-thousand-mile round trip just to get it to him?”

  Mandi sat in front of the fire hugging Pierce, both of them wrapped in a blanket. Since Pierce’s astounding recovery she seemed reluctant to be more than arm’s length from the boy, as though by her proximity she might stop the miracle from fading.

  Although her eyes were sliding closed, Jake noticed that Pierce was still staring into the fire. He knelt quietly beside the boy and took his hand, receiving a shy grin in reply this time.

  Who are you? Pierce spelled.

  Jake was shaken, suddenly wondering if they’d made a mistake, if the gem that appeared to have repaired Pierce’s vision and hearing, and his leg, had somehow damaged his mind. He spelled back, slowly, Jake.

  Pierce shook his head. Why do I know you?

  Jake sighed. I’m not sure, he signed.

  But it was clear from Pierce’s steady expression that he didn’t buy that. The boy had the same instincts that he did. Only he didn’t have the information that Jake had in order to reason from them.

  Cramer tossed another log onto the fire and slipped silently over to the front windows beside Virgil. When Jake turned back toward Pierce he noticed Mandi was wide awake and watching him, and he saw just an edge of distrust in her eyes.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t ask him for the jewel.”

  “What were you two talking about?” she whispered, eyeing Pierce’s hand in Jake’s.

  Jake glanced over her shoulder, but Cramer was on guard, and Virgil seemed to have nodded off. “I don’t really know how to ask this.”

  “What’s so hard?”

  He stared at Pierce first, reassuring himself that although the boy could hear him, he still wouldn’t understand what was being said. To Jake his own whisper sounded shallow and weak. “Was Rich really Pierce’s father?”

  “No,” said Mandi simply.

  Jake’s shoulders sagged, and his breath caught in his throat. The crackling fire sounded like gunshots.

  “It’s all right,” she said softly. “I never expected anything from you.”

  “I guess no one did.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she whispered, placing her hand over his and Pierce’s. “And you did what you thought you had to do.”

  “I would never have left if I’d known.”

  Her answer seemed to come a heartbeat too slow. “You were already gone before I knew. We just have to get by all that now. You thought you were doing the right thing.”

  He wanted to accept her forgiveness, but another part of himself needed punishment before absolution. Regardless of why he had run, of what he had known or not known, he had abandoned the woman he loved, and his own son.

  Pierce questioned Jake with his fingers, but Jake just shook his head. “He wants to know what we’re talking about, and why I seem so familiar to him. I don’t know what to tell him.”

  Mandi frowned. “I guess that’s up to you.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “Pierce has never had a real father, and he’s always wanted one. The question is, what do you intend to do about it?”

  Her voice told him she was ready to accept whatever he decided. Jake felt as though new possibilities were opening wide before him just when the whole world might still come crashing down around them. But he knew that he already loved Pierce more than he had ever loved anyone except Mandi, and come what might, he could never leave either of them again.

  Hesitantly he began to spell, watching the boy closely. I’m your father.

  Pierce’s head jerked. He slipped his hand from Jake’s and offered it to Mandi, signing rapidly. When she signed back the boy swallowed visibly before offering his hand to Jake again.

  Why did you leave?

  I didn’t know about you, signed Jake. I didn’t know you were going to be born, or I never would have left. I’m sorry.

  But why?

  Jake had had a hard enough time trying to explain to Mandi. How was he going to tell Pierce in the cumbersome finger spelling? I thought if I left, your mother would be safe.

  Because of the thing outside?

  Yes.

  Why did you think that?

  Jake hesitated, as Pierce stared up into his eyes. Because I didn’t know if it was real. I thought I might be crazy. That I might be dangerous. I didn’t want to hurt your mother.

  Pierce signaled with his shoulders that he’d accept that answer. But the boy’s expression added for now.

  Do you love my mom?

  Yes.

  I think she’s missed you a lot.

  What about Rich?

  Pierce’s face told Jake he didn’t understand the question.

  Was he hard on you?

  Pierce frowned. I got by.

  Jake smiled, seeing in the boy the man he would become and feeling a sense of pride he had never experienced before. I’ll bet you did.

  I used to mess with the TV so he’d leave.

  The TV?

  Pierce beamed. It was easy to break. Rich couldn’t live without TV.

  Jake chuckled, and Mandi asked him what Pierce had said.

  “I think he was way ahead of you about Rich,” said Jake. “Did you know he sabotaged the television so Rich would leave the house?”

  Mandi stared at the boy as he opened his palm again, showing Jake the gemstone and signing.

  Where did you get this? Pierce spelled into Jake’s palm.

  Jake explained briefly about the night on the beach, and Pierce frowned, shaking his head.

  It belongs here.

  How do you know that? spelled Jake.

  I can feel it. It’s broken, but it’s stronger now than it was before, at Pam’s. That thing outside is connected to it. On the road . . . I almost understood what it wants.

  Jake frowned. That jewel was here the night my mother was murdered, and I think that thing out there killed my father, too. Jake hesitated before continuing. I think maybe it tried to make me kill your mother a long time ago.

  Pierce’s eyebrows rose. What stopped it?

  I don’t know.

  Pierce nodded. Maybe you did.

  How?

  But Pierce shook his head, looking down at the gem in his open palm. It pulls me to it.

  Me, too.

  Pierce held the jewel out to Jake, signing. Touch it again.

  Jake discovered that now he was reluctant to make contact with the gem even though he’d been carrying it around for days. But the boy was insistent, nodding at him. Finally Jake rested his hand over Pierce’s open palm.

  The electricity that surged through him was much stronger than even the heat and cold he’d experienced moments before. When he felt as though his consciousness was being drawn down into the gem he jerked his hand away, and glanced at his palm, once again expecting to see the skin blistered, but there seemed to be no damage.

  What just happened? he spelled.

  Pierce shook his head. It’s broken. But when both of us touched it for a minute it felt better.

  But what’s it supposed to do?

  Pierce frowned, shaking his head in exasperation. I can’t figure it out yet. And if I don’t know what it does, I can’t fix it.

  You really think you could do that?

  Jake wasn’t sure that was a good idea, anyway. If the jewel really was broken like Pierce thought, it had already been responsible for uncounted deaths. What the hell would happen if the boy repaired it?

  Is it doing anything to you now? signed Jake, studying Pierce’s face.

  The boy cocked his head, thinking. Sometimes I can see inside it. And I feel it, inside me.

  A part of Jake wanted to jerk the jewel out of Pierce’s hand and throw it into the fire, regard
less of his promise to the boy. But he knew that the answer to their dilemma couldn’t possibly be that simple or his father would have destroyed the gemstone decades ago. And if it really was the cause of all the terror, then why did it seem to be making Pierce better?

  We’re gonna figure this out, he spelled.

  Pierce nodded, but there was fear in his eyes again. It’s getting stronger.

  The jewel? signed Jake, frowning.

  Pierce shook his head. The thing outside.

  Jake took the boy by the shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace. He noticed tears in Mandi’s eyes again. There were tears in Jake’s eyes, as well.

  We’ll figure it out, Jake promised, spelling into the boy’s hand.

  ULES WATCHED THE CRAZY OLD WOMAN stirring another pot on the stove. She’d offered him a bowl of gumbo, but he didn’t trust her. Instead he ate the cold canned chili he’d found in the cupboard.

  Although it seemed impossible, he was sure she’d been drugging him somehow. There was just no other way to explain some of the crazy shit that had been going on. He wished that Jimmy had just offed the freaky old bitch and been done with it. But now he was beginning to wonder if even thinking something like that was a bad idea.

  On the day that Jimmy and Paco had left, Jules would have sworn that voodoo or magic or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it was all just hocus-pocus bullshit. Now he wasn’t so sure. He stared at the back of Memere’s gray head and wondered if she could hear everything he thought.

  “I don’ be needin’ to read you mind,” she said, laughing.

  Jules started, dropping the spoon onto the counter and splattering chili into his lap. He genuflected instinctively, but Memere never even turned around to look at him.

  “You ‘fraid you don’ know anymore what real and what not. You ‘fraid maybe since you cain’t hear nuttin’ from you boss that he dead. He ain’t dead.”