In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

  He shivered as though suddenly struck by frigid wind, and she saw his fingers tighten on the pistol. His head twitched, and she had the terrifying notion that he knew she was watching as he slowly turned in her direction.

  Before his eyes could find her, she drew back around the corner and pressed herself against the wall. But she couldn’t seem to get her feet to work. When she had to breathe again or burst her lungs, she drew in slow painful breaths through slitted lips, and she noticed over the almost silent hissing through her teeth the sibilant sound of Cramer humming. When it began to sound more like muttering she leaned closer to the door again until she could just begin to make out what he was saying. But it reminded her somehow of the whispers . . .

  She shuddered, fingering the keys in her pocket, slipping silently down the hall. Even if the thing was in control of Cramer, it shouldn’t be able to get to Jake without the keys. That meant she and Pierce were in more danger than he was, and there was nothing she could do for Jake right now, anyway. Her first duty was to protect Pierce. Just as she reached the front door Cramer’s weird whispering noises froze her like a deer in a car’s headlights.

  She glanced over her shoulder just as his massive bulk blocked the light from the kitchen, and she ripped the door open. Cramer wailed, and Mandi ducked as his lantern crashed against the wall beside her. She staggered out into the storm, snatching her own lantern and grabbing Pierce’s hand, dragging him along with her, racing around the house toward the chapel, the only place she could think of that might be safe. On the tiny stoop she fumbled for the key, finally finding it, the heavy door swinging open from its own weight. She shoved it closed and locked it behind them. Then she huddled with Pierce in the corner behind the fallen lecturn and began to pray.

  AKE THOUGHT HE HEARD SOMETHING STRANGE from the kitchen. But the door was so thick and tightly built it was hard to tell whether the sound had been real or merely his imagination. He pressed his ear against the wood trying to make out the noise, but it stopped as suddenly as it started, and when it didn’t return he went back to inventorying the pantry shelves.

  There were twenty-four dusty cans of soup, twelve cans of green beans, twelve of peas, twelve of lima beans, and twelve of potatoes. Everything was in counts of twenty-four or twelve, except the pickles, of which there were three quarts. He was glad they hadn’t come in gallons.

  There were stacks of soda cases and a box of toothpicks. Jake read the label of a can of mushroom soup again trying to figure out if they were serious about the chicken recipe. It didn’t seem all that appetizing to him. He set it back on the shelf and stared at the door, leaning his head against the wall, struggling to quit feeling sorry for himself.

  The door was a heavy pine-paneled number, and—like all the other doors in the house—the frame was thick and reinforced at the lock with a big brass plate. If he started trying to rip it down the others would hear him, and Cramer would know what to do. Neither Cramer nor Virgil would want to kill him, but Jake knew they would if they had to in order to protect Mandi and Pierce.

  The noise sounded again, just a little louder, but Jake still couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Hey, Cramer!” he shouted.

  His voice echoing in the confined space made him feel even more bottled up, as though the air suddenly tightened around him. And he noticed for the first time how stuffy the room had already become. He knelt in front of the door and pulled the mattress back a little to let in some air.

  “Cramer!” he shouted again.

  A shadow fell across the bottom of the door, but no one answered. Jake waited a second, playing the game, but then his nerves began to twitch. “Is that you, Cramer?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was the familiar Cajun lilt to the voice, but it was throaty and strange, and Jake tensed.

  “How you doing out there?” he asked conversationally, his skin crawling.

  The shadow seemed glued to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye Jake could see the second hand of his watch.

  Dear God, don’t let me be right.

  “You okay, Cramer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s Mandi?”

  The second hand kept turning. It seemed like forever before Cramer replied, and when he did his answer made no sense.

  “Gone.”

  “Shit,” muttered Jake, his throat constricting at the same time a cold sweat broke out on his palms.

  The second hand went around two times.

  Then the shadow moved away, and Jake began to scream.

  AKE JERKED WILDLY AT THE DOOR, but all he accomplished was knocking the pickles off the shelf and sending spikes of pain through his wounded shoulder. He continued screaming at Cramer even though he got no further replies.

  “Goddamn it, Cramer, come back here!”

  Anything to distract him from Mandi and Pierce. And where was Virgil? They had to be alive. Sweet Jesus, what had he done? Why hadn’t he realized the thing might not just take him or Pierce? He didn’t have the jewel anymore. And even when he had had it, it had still driven José’s men crazy. It had still managed to get Rich killed somehow. How had he made such a stupid mistake? It was just that he’d had the idea beaten into his head for so long that Crowley men went crazy . . .

  He kicked the door again and then again, mindless of the pain in his ankle, trying to break through one of the panels. The ancient pine cracked but didn’t show any sign of snapping. He kept kicking until finally he thought he saw a little light through a paper-thin crease in the wood. But even if he could knock out the whole panel, he couldn’t reach through and open the door without the key.

  He stared at the ball knobs at the top and bottom of the top hinge. If he had a hammer he might be able to get them apart. He worried at the bottom-most ball with his fingernails, splitting the paint at the joint, finally unscrewing the balls from all three hinges. Then he glanced around for some kind of tool, snatching a couple of soup cans, putting the edge of one under the top ball of the upper hinge and using the other can as a hammer. But he only scratched the paint on the hinge and bent the cans into useless masses of folded, leaking tin.

  He dropped the soup and kicked at the door even harder. The hinges rattled, and a long crack appeared down one panel, but it still didn’t look ready to give, and he knew he didn’t have the strength to break through that way. When he saw Cramer’s shadow cross the door frame again he stopped, holding his breath.

  It seemed like hours that Cramer stood silently on the other side of the door, and Jake wondered if the thing had a hard time controlling him or whether it was simply deciding what to do next.

  “Fight it, Cramer!” he screamed. “Memere would want you to fight it!”

  When he heard the unmistakable sound of the slide on an automatic pistol ratcheting into place his heart stopped, but his mind raced. He climbed the shelves like a monkey, praying they’d hold. But they weren’t wide enough to support him so he reached across and pulled his feet up on the opposing shelves, supporting himself above the door frame, pressing his back tightly against the metal ceiling, just as Cramer began to blast the closet, blowing cans and jars to hell. The smell of vinegar and something long gone bad seeped through the air.

  One of the bullets managed to douse the lantern, miraculously without causing a fire, and Jake was thankful for that. In the silence that ensued he stared below him into the near-total darkness. He flexed the muscles of his arms, pressing his hands harder into the rough old plaster near the ceiling, trying to will a cramp out of his lower back. Cramer’s whisper sounded like a leaky gas main in a sleeping house.

  “Jake . . .?”

  Jake practiced being a piece of ceiling trim while Cramer called for him three more times. Finally there was continued silence, and Jake risked climbing down to explore the tortured door. A million splinters cratered inward from the bullet holes, through which he could make out a small area of the darkened kitchen.

  He ran his fingers along the lock, praying
that the shots might have damaged it enough for him to twist it open, but no dice. The old brass-plated contraption, though pitted and bent, held just as it had been intended to. His fingers explored the wide, paint-encrusted hinges again, and he noticed that he could slip a fingernail between the pin cap and the hinge on the top one. Finally, in desperation, he removed his belt, but the buckle was too thick to use as a lever, so he tried the buckle point. The hinge pin gave just enough to slip the blade of the heavy buckle between the cap and the hinge. A tiny creaking noise told him the pin was moving, and he pressed upward with all his strength, knowing that if the damned thing froze again he’d have to hammer on it to get it moving, and that wasn’t an option. Finally the rusty pin dropped onto the mattress, and Jake heaved a sigh of relief.

  He ran his fingers along the door frame to the middle hinge, but try as he might he could not get the pin to budge. He stood again and, tugging, managed to slip his fingernails between the door and the frame near the top. The upper hinge creaked as the unpinned halves rubbed against each other, and Jake slipped one hand down to it, wedging his fingers there, jerking hard at the door. That shift loosened the middle pin, and he jerked it out. Now the door gave enough to get his hand outside, and he pulled harder, with steady motion, listening for Cramer.

  It had already occurred to him that if Cramer had had the key he would have opened the door. That gave Jake hope that at least Mandi and Pierce had escaped. He was clinging to any straws he could find.

  When he spotted flickering light through the cracks in the door and smelled smoke, he realized that Cramer must have set the old house ablaze. He worked feverishly at the door, gashing his fingers on the hinges. Finally he felt the lock bolt slipping out of the receiver, and he reached across to catch the door, but it was heavier than he had expected, and he fell back a step onto the soft mattress, struggling for balance. Thick smoke wafted into the pantry, and he dropped the door and leaped over it, catching himself against the wall in the kitchen as a deep roar sounded from outside and the floor rocked beneath his feet. He didn’t know whether the old house had simply shifted on its foundation from the rise in the water table, or a flash flood had reached the high ground. But whatever had happened, Cramer had to be just as shaken as he was. He spotted his pistol on the floor and snatched it up, checking the clip. One shot left and one in the chamber. Stumbling through the kitchen, he shoved aside the overturned table, oblivious to any noise he might be making in the storm of vibration and sound all around.

  But as the house settled he glanced out the back window and discovered that the rumbling noise he’d been hearing was coming from Albert’s dozer. It must have rammed the house in passing; Cramer had left a muddy trail across the back lawn with the machine and now seemed intent on knocking down the chapel. Jake could only assume that the others had taken refuge inside. It looked as though Cramer was still having some trouble figuring out how to run the big beast, but when he crashed it into the corner of the chapel again the roof shook, and Jake knew that pretty soon the structure was going to come crashing down.

  Pierce cowered with his mother in the corner of the chapel farthest from the lights of the dozer that flashed through a million cracks in the stone walls. Two heavy beams had collapsed from the roof onto the floor, and rain poured through a huge hole over their heads.

  Fix it.

  That thought struck him like a blow, reinforcing what he had already guessed. The jewel was broken. It was like a transformer, storing up power and turning it into some kind of other power. And the original power had to come from the big stone in the floor beneath the lectern. But he sensed that just replacing the jewel would not repair it or reload it with the power it needed to recall the thing that had taken over Cramer. Not until the stone was fixed, as well.

  He clenched the gem, trying desperately to read its strange alien “circuits.” Circuits almost dead now. Slowly a pattern began to emerge. The giant stone drew power from an unknown source from the very ground beneath it. The jewel was made to receive that force from the stone and convert it to power to be used by someone, a person. A person who could read and understand it. A person just like him.

  And the jewel knew it was broken.

  Its circuits had always contained a program to contact a living, breathing person. A person who would understand and know how to repair it. Somehow it sensed that he had that understanding. Or it had known that his family did. That was why it had been searching for the right Crowley all that time. And over the years, as the jewel failed, the search circuit had become more and more corrupt. Sometimes it killed people. Sometimes—in its never-ending search for a repairman—it got into people’s heads and caused them to go crazy, to murder or commit suicide.

  Words filled his head again, a deep resonant voice.

  Do what you do. I must not end.

  How can I fix you? he asked soundlessly.

  Fixing me is in your blood. You are the fixer.

  After a moment, when silence reigned, Pierce sensed that he would get no more answers, and he turned toward the hole in the floor just as he heard his mother scream.

  Another huge beam crashed to the floor beside them, and Pierce swallowed a thick lump in his throat as his mother tried to drag him back to her.

  Giant tongues of flame shot out of melting windows, whipping in the wind, licking the sheets of rain that did nothing to extinguish the roaring fire inside the old house. Glimmering light sparkled through the droplets, turning the surrounding forest into a bejeweled wonderland. Heavy air forced the smoke downward where it curled around the old house and drifted out across the lawn toward the chapel.

  Jake raced for the dozer, mindful of the fact that Cramer was not only obsessed but still probably packing his own pistol. But before he could reach the machine it swung in his direction, and he was blinded by the headlights as Cramer tried to run him down.

  The dozer moved slower than Jake could run, but the tall grass was wet and slippery, and he stumbled to his knees, clambering quickly to his feet, backing toward the trees.

  “Help!”

  Mandi’s voice cut through the storm and the roar of the machine, and Jake hesitated. A glancing blow from the blade clipped his hip, throwing him down onto the lawn, and he caught a glimpse of Cramer’s face. His lips were pulled back in a wide, cruel grin, and his eyes seemed to glow with their own inner fire. Jake dragged himself aside as Cramer jerked the control lever and tried to spin the blade into him, the metal edge crunching deep into the muck.

  “Cramer!” Jake screamed, rolling onto his back and aiming his pistol at his partner’s chest. “It’s me! Jake! Fight! Call Ogou!”

  For just an instant he thought he saw something resembling the old Cramer behind the fiery eyes, but it was gone so fast he couldn’t be sure. He staggered to his feet and broke for the chapel. Cramer misjudged, swinging the big machine in the wrong direction, snapping his head around as Jake whirled past, then jerking the other lever, spinning the dozer back around. Jake was halfway to the little stone building when another of Mandi’s shrieks shattered the night.

  Jake careened up onto the tiny stoop to pound on the locked door.

  Cramer throttled up the dozer, heading right for him. Jake leaned against the heavy wood panel, squinting through the headlights to take aim again. But the thought of killing Cramer shook him to the core. If he couldn’t shoot Jimmy, how the hell could he bust a cap on his partner? But he knew in that instant that it was the only thing to do, that the monster he had been afraid of all these years wasn’t something inside him. It was something that had been outside him all along, wanting in. Now it was inside Cramer, and the only way to stop him was to kill him.

  Slowly Jake’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Virgil knelt on the mucky forest floor—resting the shotgun against a gnarly pine—and untied and removed his shoes, leaving the soaking socks on his feet. He didn’t think Jimmy could hear the tiny squishing sound the shoes made, but he wasn’t taking any chances, and his tr
action on the slippery ground could only get better without them. When he stood and hefted the gun again, he took a deep breath of air that was thick as water.

  It felt as though his entire life had been building to this one moment, this one place. Virgil knew that the odds of killing Jimmy were about nil. Jimmy really was a stalking beast. But he also knew that he could not leave another person to her fate without at least trying to stop the bastard. He could not wait peacefully while Jimmy came at leisure to do as he would with Jake and the others. This might have been the stupidest stunt he’d ever pulled, but it felt right, and Virgil wondered if maybe Ogou wasn’t really with him after all.

  He hadn’t heard a peep out of Jimmy in the past five minutes, but he expected at any moment for a crazed Jimmy to leap out at him, or to come stumbling across Barbara’s mangled corpse. If it was the former he had no intention of trying to take him alive. If he got half a chance he was going to blow the sonofabitch to hell and gone. And he wasn’t going to lose a minute’s sleep over the killing.

  Virgil was creeping along, peering nervously into the darkness, when a powerful fist latched onto the barrel of the shotgun, ripping it from his hands. He reached for his pistol, but the butt of the gun swung up under his chin, lifting him off the ground and breaking his jaw with a nasty crunching sound. He hit the ground hard, still fumbling for his pistol, but he had no target as he jerked the gun from the holster. Jimmy had faded away into the pitch-black woods again.

  Shit. Now the bastard was armed with a shotgun, and all he had was a pistol.

  Virgil rose shakily to his feet, quickly scanning three hundred and sixty degrees, ready to shoot anything that moved. To pull the trigger and keep firing until there were no bullets left in the gun. Either he or Jimmy was going to die out here, but he was afraid it wasn’t going to be Jimmy. Still, Virgil was protecting home turf and family, and he thought that gave him just a little more heart than even a crazed killer out for revenge.