A God in the Shed

by J-F. Dubeau

  “Who . . . Who are you?” she said, squeezing out the words with much less confidence than intended.

  The shadow receded for a moment before pushing forth once more. Less aggressive, more akin to a wave pulling back before crashing onto a beach.

  “I just want to know who you are! Your name!” she found herself screaming.

  “No name. I am unique.” More swirling, but not as predatory as it had been. Venus thought it almost looked majestic.

  “What are you then?”

  “To you? A god.”

  She believed it.

  The voice dug deep into her soul, not just transmitting the sound of its words but implanting ideas into her mind. They were seeds she had to consciously pluck out, lest they take root against her will. She quickly found that when she weeded through the words, she could compose her thoughts more calmly, giving her back some control of the situation.

  “Then what are you doing in my shed?”

  “You set this trap. Release me.”

  I should do this. That was the thought that immediately appeared in her mind, at least until she weeded through that idea and realized she couldn’t. The shade would kill her. In fact, it had tried to kill her before ever giving the order to be freed. Venus swallowed hard, praying she would soon wake up at her computer. Instead her eyes fell once again on the mural, the handiwork of the so-called god, painted with the remains of the unborn birds.

  “Why?”

  A quiet moment passed before the creature spoke again.

  “Because I know you. It’s what you do.”

  The voice was now velvet-smooth, couched in unspoken promises so real that Venus almost felt she could touch them. The shadow crept close again, its menace stripped away, replaced instead by a seductive slithering, graceful, like a snake.

  “You don’t—”

  “But I do. You were called Neil last we met.”

  “You . . . You’re wrong. Neil was my grandfather.”

  The shadow crashed against the invisible wall, attempting to get to her, to move past the immaterial barrier that kept it contained.

  Thoughts blossomed unbidden in Venus McKenzie’s mind once more. She knew what the voice meant, and for less than a second, the lifetime of a spark, she was Neil McKenzie. The so-called god didn’t see the difference and, through its eyes, the line became blurred between the man and his granddaughter.

  “I forget,” the shadow said in words of sound and thought. “Your kind loses itself between iterations, but you smell like Neil. You fear me, like Neil. And you will help me, like Neil.”

  Venus pulled herself to her feet, leaning on the wall for support. Her bare feet slipped a few inches as she stood, but her eyes never left the torrent of darkness that now occupied most of the shed.

  “I’m not my grandfather,” she stated, once her footing and her voice had found firm ground.

  The eyes in the shadows receded and flickered in a clumsy imitation of blinking. The swirl of black clouds themselves backed away from her, coagulating in the corner, revealing the horrid mural once again. Was the creature proud of its handiwork and showing it off? The seductive curves and spirals begged for closer observation, but the knitting of wet tissue and organs made her gag.

  “Strong. Like Neil,” it added. The compliment was like a peace offering. “But your strength is weighed down by fear and doubt. Are you sure you are not him?”

  “My name is Venus,” the girl said, pushing herself away from the wall as a demonstration of her will and courage. “And I’m not afraid; I’m careful.”

  The bulb flickered and Venus nearly bit through her tongue, trying to keep her composure. With each flash of light, the creature of shadow and blood moved, twisting in the air like a barely contained hurricane. It was beautiful.

  “Free me, Venus.”

  For the first time, its voice did not hurt her ears and mind. There was no obvious attempt to implant alien thoughts among her own, only the three pleading words, spoken with the soft whisper only a shadow could manage.

  “How?”

  “The eye of glass and metal. Remove it, Venus. Free me.”

  The girl rapidly put the pieces together. The invisible line that the shadow seemed incapable of traversing, it coincided with the limits to her camera’s line of sight. Somehow this so-called god, for all the power it emanated, was kept in check by a fifty-dollar webcam from the computer store.

  “Free me.”

  Curious, she took another step. Her bare foot, moist with drying blood, intruded an inch into the creature’s invisible cage. Her heart pounded so hard that she could hear her own blood rushing through her veins. Venus waited for something to happen. An attack, an assault. A way for the shadow to physically impose its will upon her.

  Nothing.

  Another step. The darkness moved once more. Where it had snapped like a predator when she had last walked within its reach, its motions were slow and deliberate. There was no mistaking the raw power of the thing whose space she now shared. Swimming with a great white shark would have been a fraction as intimidating.

  A third step. If the god had any plans for her, she would be unable to avoid them now. In a moment of cold terror, Venus wondered if somehow it had indeed charmed her into its arms. She’d never felt the seeds of foreign thoughts take root in herself, but somehow there they were. Or perhaps these were her own feelings? The line had become impossible to see.

  A vortex of black velvet, hungry for light, danced between her feet. Dervish-like, the shadow spun around her. The lack of light somehow moved her hair like a soft wind, blowing strands of it over her eyes. There was, at this point, only darkness and the smell of blood.

  Venus closed her eyes, delighting in this communion of flesh and spirit. Her own weight was taken from her along with her will as she ascended to the tips of her toes, drinking in the abandon of otherworldly forces. The freedom of letting go was intoxicating. An embrace that touched parts of her soul she didn’t even know existed.

  She could see now. The line that could be drawn directly from her grandfather to her. Hints of the relationship the god had shared with Neil McKenzie and how, to a creature so immortal, the difference in generations might be meaningless.

  “Stop,” she murmured.

  Venus thought she would have to struggle, to argue, to fight. That she had stepped too far into the trap, and that everything from this point on would be outside her control. Through the dance of shadows, she could see the mural again. Beautiful yet terrible, and it sobered her.

  In the span of a breath, the dance was over and the god of shadows and blood had pulled back into the dark corner of the shed.

  With careful steps, Venus made her way back to the safety of the wall. Her eyes never left the place where the god was huddled, looming over a puddle of blood. The shed seemed to expand forever beyond the corner, reaching into all the dark places at once.

  “Why did you let me go?” she asked, having reached the safety of the door.

  “You’ll be back,” the god said, scratching at her mind once again.

  Venus nodded. Her heart still raced from the experience, though it was difficult to decide if it was fear or exhilaration that drove each beat. She looked outside the shed and into the night for a moment, then back inside at the shadow with whom she had just danced.

  “I will . . . ,” she said. Or thought. It didn’t matter. The god understood.

  CICERO

  IT WAS GOOD to be back in Saint-Ferdinand. The town hadn’t changed too much in the years he’d been gone. It wasn’t quite the same feeling as coming home, though. There was no warmth or security. No, it was more like visiting one’s old high school. Every building whispered memories to him, every street begged him to reminisce, but not every scrap of nostalgia was pleasant. There was some loss here, a bit of fear there, and tremendous amounts of suffering everywhere.

  He parked his rickety 1968 Volkswagen Beetle at the Peterson farm and walked to the village from there, intent on e
xperiencing the past as it presented itself to him.

  After stepping out of his seasoned vehicle, Nathaniel took a look around, his eyes lingering for a moment in the direction of Finnegan’s trailer. Somewhere in these woods was the home of his old friend. Oh, how it pained him to think on how they’d failed each other.

  Just before the tree line was the field Peterson had lent him, and a few feet away, the farmhouse he and his family had lived in back in those terrible days. There was a boy in the field, working to clear it.

  Nathaniel started the long walk toward Saint-Ferdinand proper. It had been a hot day, and the old man was thankful he’d arrived in the late afternoon. If he’d gotten here much earlier, he would have had to take the car to town or be broiled alive on the walk there.

  The farms he passed all held strong memories of the friends who had lived there so long ago. Now most of the farms had been renovated and modernized almost beyond recognition. Yet they all kept at least a small fragment of their original charm: an old fence, a dilapidated barn, or some other vestigial element from back in the day. To his left was a corn farm where his friend and accomplice, Jonathan, had lived until the day he died. To his right was an orchard that used to be a small potato farm. He remembered a pretty girl had spent the summer there when he was eleven. So long ago.

  Nathaniel used to visit Saint-Ferdinand annually. He did so against the better wisdom of Katrina, one of his employees and his oldest friend. Indeed, his last visit had rewarded him with a short stay in jail. He’d stayed away for almost twenty years after that, waiting for the appointed time. But as it turned out, he was a few days late. So was the nature of prophecy: vague and conveniently veiled in innuendos.

  Not far down the road, a little past the Richards farm, which he remembered fondly as the home of a pair of twins with whom he’d gone hunting and fishing, Nathaniel’s sharp nose detected the nauseating odor of putrefying blood. There was a time when he wouldn’t have noticed or recognized the smell. Today he wasn’t just familiar with it, but attentive to it.

  Taking a few steps into the woods, he quickly found a portion of the forest that had been roped off by bright yellow plastic ribbons. The area was large. A chill went up Nathaniel’s spine as he considered whether this was the site of a massacre with many victims or a single, extremely unfortunate one.

  While he had strong suspicions about what had happened, some of the details didn’t fit. He’d expected a great darkness to have befallen this place, but somehow he also felt a small light shining through the shadows. Something dark and cold had taken place here, but it hadn’t gone unnoticed. There was power in that. Nathaniel could feel it.

  Still, there were things to do and people to see. So many people to see. Nathaniel didn’t linger. There would be time for that later.

  By the time he walked into town, it was almost five in the evening. Some shops were already winding down. Tables and chairs were being moved indoors, signs and placards being taken down. Exhausted employees from a variety of jobs were eagerly packing up, praying there would be no last-minute customers. Some of the older villagers gave him odd looks, like old schoolmates who couldn’t quite remember his name. He, however, remembered them all.

  Nathaniel felt a spark of shame at avoiding the police station. The building he was heading for was the only other municipal office in town and was located right next to the station. He had nothing to worry about, at least officially, but there were certain people he’d rather not run into quite yet. There would be time for that unpleasantness later.

  Saint-Ferdinand’s town hall served the limited number of functions necessary for the village to run smoothly. It housed the mayor’s office, administrative offices, and even a small courtroom that hadn’t seen much use, as the small town hadn’t had a residing judge in a few years. Fortunately, Nathaniel was only there for a trivial but necessary task. A formality.

  The old man squeezed in through the door at the very last moment. The woman at the front desk let out an audible sigh at having her workday so rudely prolonged. She was rather young, Nathaniel noticed. Young enough that she would have been an infant the last time he visited.

  “I’m very sorry to come in so late, mademoiselle,” he said, approaching the counter. “Allow me to make it up to you by keeping my request a simple one.”

  “How may I help you, sir?” the clerk inquired mechanically, his apology flying miles above her head.

  “I am merely here to pick up a permit, dear. Two, actually: one for temporary residence and the other for commercial zoning.” He smiled broadly and announced, “The circus is coming to town.”

  The woman remained unimpressed. She pushed a strand of brown hair from her face before walking over to a nearby cabinet behind the counter. Nathaniel remembered a time when the mere mention of a circus would have men and women, young and old, beaming with pleasure and anticipation. Nowadays, people were too blasé. The traditional circus, the traveling carnival, had lost most if not all of its luster. Attractions were either considered too ordinary compared to the wonders one could see at the theater, or too politically incorrect because they made use of animals and freaks. Such a disappointing turn of events.

  “Your name, sir?” the young lady asked with as little interest as she could muster.

  The old man smiled again, not with pride or joy but rather like a child unveiling a secret.

  “Nathaniel, dear. Nathaniel Joseph Cicero.”

  The clerk remained unimpressed.

  DANIEL

  IT HAD BEEN a long, introspective weekend for Daniel Crowley. After witnessing his father’s bizarre gathering at church, he had come home with more questions than answers.

  For the past two days, Dan had been avoiding the outside world. Sasha, his girlfriend, had left a dozen messages that he’d ignored. Two sunny days had come and gone without him going outside. He ignored his routine and neglected his usual workout regimen. Most of all, he avoided his father. Not out of fear, though there was certainly a portion of that. It was mostly confusion. Daniel wasn’t used to lying and didn’t know if he could keep a straight face in front of his old man. More likely he’d break down, succumbing to a rare bout of Crowley anger and demanding an explanation. And his father didn’t react well to demands.

  Thankfully, Stephen Crowley was easy to avoid. The inspector had barely set foot in his own home all weekend. This allowed Daniel to spend more time investigating the contents of the chest under his father’s bed. So far what he’d discovered made him question either his father’s sanity, or his own.

  From what he could gather, the social club his father belonged to and the Sandmen cult were one and the same. If the papers and photos Dan was sifting through weren’t evidence enough, his memories of the bizarre meeting he’d witnessed confirmed it.

  More baffling, however, were the notes referring to the old Saint-Ferdinand Craftsmen’s Association. Daniel had found several papers, some of them official court documents, mentioning the Craftsmen. One that stood out was a subpoena for his father, requesting his testimony regarding a violent altercation between one Stephen Crowley and “Cicero’s Circus and Performers.” The charges had been dropped due to lack of evidence.

  Yet no matter how deep Dan dug into the documents, the name Chris Hagen went unmentioned. This particular fact felt wrong. Hagen’s business card bore the icon of the Sandmen. Obviously, he had ties to the organization. Was he a new recruit? Shouldn’t he have been at the meeting at the church, then? Why would his father avoid a member of his own group? None of it made sense.

  The final piece of the incomplete puzzle was the photo of his father with the strange boy and familiar woman. Even the location felt vaguely familiar. The antiquated popcorn machine with ornate, old-fashioned lettering. The white-and-turquoise circus tent dominating the background. Even the farmhouse on the edge of the photo teased the fringes of Dan’s memory, like a souvenir dangling at the tip of his mind.

  Dan sat on the floor of his father’s bedroom, the contents o
f the chest sprawled around him. He was very careful to keep the documents organized so he could place them back in the chest in the exact same order he’d found them. The tension that had been slowly rising between him and his father would spill over if the inspector found out his son had been rummaging through his affairs.

  The phone rang, shattering the silence like a sledgehammer through a plate-glass window. Dan gasped, a little embarrassed by his own skittishness. Then the phone rang again, and he scrambled to his feet to answer it.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi, Daniel?” came the familiar voice of Jackie, the dispatcher on staff at the station. “Is Stephen there?”

  Of course not, thought Dan. He’s probably too busy gutting rabbits and having secret meetings. When would he find the time to be home? But he didn’t voice his thoughts. What if Jackie was one of “them”?

  “Nah. He’s off somewhere,” the teen answered as nonchalantly as possible. “Can’t you reach him on the radio?”

  “No, that’s why I thought he was home.” She sounded unconcerned. “It’s okay. Not an emergency.”

  “Hey!” Dan figured he might as well try to gather as much information as possible. “Do you want me to give him a message?”

  There was a pause. He could tell that the dispatcher was weighing her options. Deciding whether revealing too much might put her on Stephen Crowley’s bad side.

  “All right. Just tell him when he gets a chance, to check out the Peterson farm.”

  Dan attempted to push his luck. “This is my dad; he’s gonna want to know why.”

  “Tell him Cicero’s Circus was just granted a permit to set up shop in the field next week.”

  “You make it sound like that’s bad news.”

  “Yeah, well, you know your father.”

  “I guess. All right, I’ll let him know,” he said, his eyes darting to the various stacks of paper strewn around the wooden chest at the foot of his father’s bed.