Shimmer: A Novel

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Shimmer: A Novel Page 14

by Passarella, John

With a resigned sigh and another swig of beer, Gideon studied the articles again, searching for some clue the police or the FBI had misinterpreted or misunderstood. By the time he finished the twelve-ounce bottle, he’d come to the conclusion that his methods were doomed to failure for the same reason they failed traditional law enforcement. The only way for him to find the clues he needed to stop the Outsider was for him to examine the crime scenes and the bodies of the victims. For his unique Walker advantages to come into play, he needed proximity to the otherness and its handiwork. Half-measures wouldn’t cut it. And that created a new set of problems. Interfering in an open police—and FBI!—investigation was a good way to get himself detained or arrested as a suspect.

  He stood, stretched his neck, and thought about grabbing a third bottle of beer. Alcohol had a comforting way of numbing his extra Walker senses, making the otherness fade away into his subconscious for a while, a very tempting prospect at the moment. So he stalled, grabbing his plate from the counter and scraping the uneaten food down the drain for consumption by the disposal. As he rinsed the plate and stacked it in the dishwasher, his hands began to tremble. “The hell am I thinking?” he whispered to himself. “I quit for a reason. Not cut out for this anymore!”

  Crossing the kitchen with a firm shake of his head, he tugged open the refrigerator and reached inside to grab the last bottle of beer from the flimsy cardboard holder. At first he didn’t hear the doorbell ring. Thought he imagined it. Then it rang twice more, a carefree sound at odds with his temperament. He released the beer bottle, letting it fall back into its square cardboard compartment, and closed the refrigerator door.

  “Alan?” he said aloud. He couldn’t imagine anyone else visiting him in the evening. If there had been an accident on the job site, Alan would have called. Unless… No, he realized, no matter the severity of the accident, Alan would call me immediately.

  As he strode to the door, he tried to recall the last time anyone had visited his Laramie rancher. Business associates always came to the office. For a fleeting moment, Gideon entertained the idea that Bucky had come to thank him yet again, in person, for his continued gainful employment.

  And so it was with a tolerant grin on his face that Gideon opened the front door. His amusement vaporized in an instant. “You,” Gideon said in surprise. “You followed me?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” the stranger in black said in an oily voice. Alan had been right; the man was pale as death. “Seems I had no other choice.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gideon asked, confused. His fingers were digging into the edge of the door. Anger percolated inside him, dulled a bit by the alcohol, but definitely on the rise. “Who are you?”

  “I’ve had many names. Lately, I refer to myself as Urgog. But really, I expected more of you,” the stranger said. He was tall and cadaverously thin. Beneath a pronounced widow’s peak, he had a long V-shaped face with sunken black eyes, an uneven, mashed nose and thin lips that seemed to stretch from ear to ear when he flashed his unctuous grin. “In fact, there’s a better question you should be asking.”

  “And what question is that?”

  “What”—the stranger said as he spread his arms wide—“am I?”

  “Don’t know what game you’re playing, buddy,” Gideon said, shaking his head as he began to close the door on the man, “but we’re done here.”

  Urgog’s right hand flashed forward and his fingertips struck the door with the sound of a wooden mallet, holding the door open. “I’m afraid we’ve only just begun.”

  “Get lost,” Gideon said, but his voice had lost its edge. Even dulled by alcohol his senses were screaming at him to react before it was too late.

  “Too late,” Urgog said, eerily seeming to read Gideon’s mind. “I know you’re one of them. You reek of it.”

  “What—what do you mean?” Gideon asked, though he could no longer deny the evidence. He’d left the fight, his old world behind, but it had followed him all the way to Laramie.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean, Gideon,” Urgog said, shaking his head slowly in a sardonic mixture of contempt and disappointment. “You’re a Walker. Oh, but more than that. What is it you call yourselves? Ah yes, you are a shadow walker.”

  Gideon swallowed hard. “What—what do you want?”

  “Word gets around,” Urgog said with a careless shrug. “You have quite a reputation among my kind. Never quite believed it myself, and I’m at a loss as to how someone like you could possibly inspire so much fear in your betters, but I’m not one to turn down a rather significant bounty for something as insignificant as a human head.”

  As the Outsider, a grim—no denying it anymore—uttered the last word, his left hand lashed out to clamp around Gideon’s throat, squeezing hard as he slammed the back of his head against the far wall of the small vestibule. Flashbulbs seemed to pop inside Gideon’s head.

  Urgog’s right hand dipped into the hip pocket of his black jacket and removed a bone-handled knife that looked as if it had been stolen from a museum exhibit. Despite the weapon’s apparent antiquity, the metal blade gleamed and the edge appeared razor sharp. “Now, before I begin,” the stranger said evenly, “if you would be so good as to tell me where I might find some more Walker heads to liberate, I would be most grateful.” With that, he smiled, and his lips spread much wider than before, revealing bunched top and bottom rows of bristling, three-inch fanged teeth. “I’ll even promise to make your decapitation as painless as… inhumanly possible.”

  Keeping his eye on the dagger, Gideon curled his left fist and drilled an uppercut into the Outsider’s solar plexus—if he actually had a solar plexus. The Outsider grunted in mild discomfort but his left-handed grip remained firm. Gideon caught the wrist of the knife-wielding hand in his left hand while reaching up to the hand around his throat with his right. Rather than trying to break the stranger’s grip outright, Gideon latched onto his little finger and pulled it back until the joint snapped—and beyond, tearing flesh and bone.

  The grim snarled with rabid ferocity. Stringy drool spilled from his toothy crocodile maw and his fetid breath washed over Gideon’s face. Hard to remember he looked human moments ago.

  Gideon swung his right forearm against the inside of the Outsider’s left elbow, to weaken his hold. At the same moment, he carried Urgog’s right hand forward, driving the point of the dagger several inches into the wall beside his shoulder. If he could lodge the blade into a stud, he might be able to snap it free of the bone handle. Then, risking a lacerated scalp, Gideon slammed the crown of his head into the Outsider’s face. The blow might have shattered bone and cartilage in the grim’s nose, had there been any bone or cartilage in his nose, but it was sufficient to throw him off-balance.

  Urgog hurled him sideways, toward the dining room.

  Gideon landed on the dining room table, but not before his head struck the low-hanging chandelier. Inertia carried him across the table, smashing a crystal sculpture centerpiece before he skidded off the edge. He slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor amid the splintered ruins of two chairs that had stood between him and the wall.

  Dazed, Gideon made an effort to climb to his hands and knees—and collapsed again.

  Urgog slammed the front door shut, pried his antique knife out of the wall, then strode calmly toward Gideon. “Pathetic,” the Outsider said as he stood over Gideon’s prone form. “Ah, what’s this…?” The voice receded as he stepped into the kitchen.

  The scrapbook, Gideon realized. A momentary distraction, nothing more. Gideon took advantage of that moment and struggled to his hands and knees, this time managing to climb to his feet without his legs betraying him.

  “I see you haven’t turned a blind eye to my adventures, after all,” Urgog said, chuckling. “Well, you still have the one good eye, right?”

  “Adventures?” Gideon repeated, confused. “Of course. It’s you. You’re the killer.”

  “Bravo!” Urgog said. “Frankly, I couldn’t figu
re out why you ignored my little challenge. Surely, one of the fabled shadow walkers would recognize a tossed gauntlet. Or perhaps you’re a bit dim-witted for a Walker. Hmm?”

  “A challenge? A gauntlet?” Gideon was incensed.

  “Not to say I didn’t enjoy those little diversions, but really—”

  “Those children—you murdered innocent children! You sick bastard!”

  “Sanctimonious human,” Urgog said, shaking his head in disappointment. “Judging your physical and intellectual superiors by your narrow morality.”

  “Judge this,” Gideon said and lunged at the grim with a concealed weapon—a jagged spike of wood from one of the ruined chairs. His accelerated reflexes served him well. The wooden point sank several inches into the Outsider’s abdomen, doubling him over. The scrapbook fell to the floor.

  Gideon grabbed clumps of stringy hair in each hand and drove his knee into Urgog’s face once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Two steps back and a spin kick sent the Outsider sprawling across the kitchen floor, but he still clutched the bone-handled knife.

  Fearing he would eventually lose a physical battle to the Outsider, Gideon yanked open the door to the coat closet and grabbed the upright vacuum cleaner by the handle only to toss it out of his way. What he needed was buried deeper, amid several boxes he’d never bothered to unpack. Coats spilled off hangers as he shoved boxes aside with no regard for their contents.

  “Afraid there’s no hiding anymore, Walker,” Urgog said from the closet doorway. “Come out now, and I promise to end this quickly.”

  Gideon laid his hands on the long wooden case, flipped the latches open and reached inside. “There’s something we can agree on,” he said as he turned around to face the Outsider.

  Urgog had pulled the wooden stake out of his abdomen. His black shirt glistened with white leakage, some type of Outsider blood or other vital fluid, but not enough for the wound to have been mortal. Gideon’s makeshift weapon had had the effectiveness of a nasty splinter, nothing more, which proved his instincts had been right. He’d needed a real weapon.

  “My, my, what have you got there?” Urgog asked as if he were merely amused at Gideon’s feeble attempts to prolong the battle. “Shiny, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is shiny,” Gideon said. Then he lunged forward again, this time driving the sword blade up under Urgog’s ribs, probably skewering a few alien organs before piercing his back. “And out of this world!”

  Urgog’s face contorted in a tortured grimace. He gasped for breath as he staggered backward, colliding with the dining room table. “Me—meteor blade,” he croaked. “B—burns…never thought…” He shook his head and the white fluid gushed through his rows of teeth, coursing down the pale flesh of his chin. “Never believed…”

  Urgog stepped sideways, then lost his balance and collapsed awkwardly. His back arched on the floor as he writhed in pain. “Please…”

  Gideon walked over to him and grabbed the hilt of the long sword. “For what you did to those innocent children, I should let you suffer as long as possible.”

  “But…you… won’t…” Urgog gasped. “Mercy…me.”

  Gideon twisted the sword viciously, cutting into fresh flesh and organs. “Don’t be too sure what I will and will not do, you transdimensional piece of filth.”

  Skewered and helpless, the grim began to tremble violently.

  Gideon withdrew the sword, then placed the white-bloodied tip under Urgog’s clenched chin, beyond the devastating ring of teeth, pressing it against the softer, vulnerable flesh.

  Released from the immediate burning of the sword if not recovered from the internal injuries, Urgog sighed in relief, almost smiling, as if clemency was assured.

  “Time’s up!” Gideon said through clenched teeth.

  He buried the sword deep into the Outsider’s brain and held it there, motionless, until the black-cloaked body was no long viable, until it faded out of earth’s dimension, leaving nothing of itself… except the human carnage left in its wake.

  Gideon picked up the scrapbook and placed it carefully, almost reverently on the kitchen table. First he would clean his sword and pack it away. Then he would call Alan and his office manager to make arrangements for his extended absence. He’d been foolish to think he could ignore who he was and what he was.

  No matter how far we run, he thought, we can’t escape ourselves.

  He had one more call to make.

  And a long flight in the morning.

  Chapter 27

  Hadenford, New Jersey

  As rain began to fall, Fallon and Logan entered the house and found Liana in the kitchen alone, making a fresh cup of tea. Before they could ask, she informed them that Chelsea was asleep in the downstairs guestroom while Thalia had returned to her attic studio. “Strangest thing,” Liana said. “It’s as if Thalia worked some magic on Chelsea.” Fallon must have had bad poker-face because Liana became alarmed and waved off her assumption. “Figurative magic, Fallon, not literal. I suspect Chelsea is simply overwhelmed by everything and her mind simply needs a time out.”

  “A sanity break,” Logan said humorlessly.

  Fallon said, “Can’t get enough of those around here.”

  Liana cocked her head at Fallon. “Speaking of sanity breaks,” she said. “You’ve come straight from the déjà vu department.”

  “That’s me, Boomerang Maguire,” Fallon said with more lightheartedness than she felt.

  “I was about to join the boys, but Logan and I can take you home again.”

  “That’s okay,” Fallon said. “Brought my own transportation this time. Although… I may regret this, but is it okay if I listen in?”

  “Don’t see why not. The more the… I don’t know”—Liana frowned—“the less scarier?”

  “Works for me,” Logan said.

  They filed into Ambrose’s office where the old man sat facing Barrett and Chief Grainger in the twin wingchairs. The young men offered their seats to Liana and Fallon, but both women declined. Fallon didn’t plan to stay long. Frankly, she could use her own sanity break, from everything the Walkers had told her and all that she’d seen. But first, she needed to know what would happen next.

  Chief Grainger had the same question on his mind. “What now?”

  Ambrose sighed. “We wait.”

  “That’s it?” Grainger asked incredulously. “Your family has spent centuries fighting these rifts, and your plan is to wait?”

  “Oversimplification, perhaps,” Ambrose said. “While we wait, I will research our records for prior mentions of Carnifex.”

  “Who?” Fallon asked Liana, who stood to her left, sipping tea.

  “According to Thalia,” Liana whispered, “Carnifex is the demon responsible for what happened tonight.”

  “How could she—?”

  Liana tapped her head. “Walker talents.”

  Fallon made a silent ‘Oh’ with her mouth and gave a nod of understanding before returning her attention to Ambrose who was elaborating on the nature of rifts to Grainger.

  “—important to remember that, at this moment, the rift does not exist in our reality. It’s simply not here—anywhere. We must wait for its return, or for one of us—Logan, probably—to sense its imminent reappearance. We must use this time, a grace period if you will, to learn what we can about the exact nature of the threat, to be ready to face the challenge by whatever means necessary.”

  Liana added optimistically, “And Thalia may recall more about Carnifex in time to help us.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, her memory is jumbled at best.”

  “And her coherence is hit or miss,” Barrett said grimly.

  Ambrose wagged an index finger at him. “Except that this threat seems to have given her more focus than usual.”

  “Regardless,” Barrett said, “we can’t count on her to lead the way, or even point the way. You want a plan? It’s simple. Next time this hell dimension rift appears, we cross over and rid ourselves of Carnifex once and for all.�
��

  “Hell dimension?” Fallon whispered to Liana, a little more stridently than she’d hoped.

  Liana frowned, unwilling to answer that query. From Fallon’s right, Logan whispered, “Not a happy place.”

  “Each time the rift appears,” Ambrose said, again directing his answers to Grainger. “It will be larger than the time before. Eventually, the rift will be wide enough to allow Carnifex passage into our dimension. Our goal, obviously, is to stop him before that happens.”

  “He’s done enough damage already,” Logan said bitterly. “Imagine if he has free rein of our world.”

  Fallon visibly shuddered at the thought. Okay, she thought, that makes one too many nightmare-inducing moments for one day. “I’d rather not imagine it,” she said to everyone in the room. “Home and bed beckon, though I seriously doubt sleep is in my immediate future.”

  “Try though,” Ambrose said sympathetically. “We all need our rest.”

  “Long day,” she said with a nod. “School tomorrow. Apocalypse the day after.”

  “I doubt it will come to that,” Ambrose said reasonably. “But there are no guarantees.”

  “Gee, thanks for that warm-fuzzy moment,” Fallon said. “And you can skip the Latin stuff about hope in the air or whatever it was.”

  Ambrose gazed at her solemnly and spread his arms wide, “Life without hope is nothing.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Fallon said, but she knew he meant well. She heaved a sigh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back, after all.” No, that’s wrong. I needed to come. No matter how comforting the thought, she refused to bury her head in the sand. At the same time, the view aboveground had become more frightening than she could have ever imagined. “I’ll—I’ll be fine. I think. Don’t worry about me. Okay?”

  Ambrose nodded, thankfully remaining silent. His unflagging compassion and understanding were freaking her out. The more he urged calm, the more panicked she became. And she hated being the only hysterical one in the room. She was new to this world of shadow walkers—a fledgling unbound catalyst prescient dreamer—and her initiation couldn’t have come under more extreme circumstances.

 

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