Shadowshaper

by Daniel José Older

  “Wow,” Sierra said out loud. She bit open the plastic wrapper of her icey and sucked the cool blue slush out of it.

  The vacancy has left them struggling, but still one can feel the buzzing of spirits in the air, the power of a collective imagination manifesting its devotion to ancestry across the walls and inner sanctums of the city.

  Laz says the secrets of the shadowshapers are not understandable to the outside mind. And I had to suppress that old urge to defend myself, my field, the ugly collective history, you know. He smirked when he said it, as if realizing it would rile my deepest insecurities. I suspect there is some wiggle room in this arrangement. We shall see …

  Her grandfather’s name in this strange professor’s journal. She wanted to read more but it was getting dark, and Robbie and the domino warriors were waiting for her at the mural. She shoved the file back in her messenger bag, tossed the empty icey sleeve, and headed off.

  Vincent’s mural still looked cold and determined. Old Drasco limped past her, mumbling his own endless stream of riddles, and his parade of cats marched along behind him as always. Across the street, some white chicks in bikinis lounged on a billboard for something — maybe a car dealership, or some kind of cigarette? Sierra couldn’t tell and didn’t care that much either way. Below it, women with big, pastel-colored hats filed in for a night service at a storefront church, and a whole other congregation cluttered into the liquor store next door.

  Sierra turned and walked into the Junklot.

  In the open, dusty area between wrecked car mountains, Rutilio executed an off-kilter pirouette in time to his own breathy beatboxing. He landed in a squat with both hands out in front of him. He was mostly skinny, which made his enormous beer belly even more alarming. It didn’t do much for his balance either. He gingerly eased himself up, exhaling a slew of Spanish curses as he got to a full standing position, then swiveled his hips in a creaky circle, stomping forward arthritically.

  Sierra, Manny, and Mr. Jean-Louise applauded. “Worst dance move yet,” Mr. Jean-Louise muttered.

  Manny frowned. “Ah, come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “You haven’t seen it with the music on: total disaster. Katastwóf.”

  “You see?” Rutilio yelled. “So simple!” Then he winced in pain and clutched his lower back. “¡Ay, cojones!”

  A monstrous dog — some kind of Saint Bernard mixed with pit bull mixed with Satan-spawn — bounded across the Junklot toward him, its huge tongue flapping to either side.

  “No! Not you, Cojones!” Rutilio yelled. “It was an expression! No!”

  The dog tackled Rutilio and gave his face a thorough tonguing.

  “You really needn’t have named your dog that, Manny,” Sierra said.

  “I know, but I thought it would be fun. And look, it is!”

  Sierra nodded, conceding the point, as Rutilio struggled back to his feet and hurled a random scrap of metal for Cojones to chase after. “I hate that perro!” he shouted.

  “Well, he loves you,” Mr. Jean-Louise chuckled.

  “Y’all too much,” Sierra said. “Robbie started back in?”

  Manny smiled at her. “Yep, and we turned on the industrial lights for you.”

  “I see,” Sierra said. “Thank you.”

  The domino warriors nodded and toasted one another with the evening’s first portion of rum.

  “You ready to talk yet, bro?” Sierra said.

  They had worked fast for the last hour. Sierra filled the whole dragon wing as the sky became a hazy orange around them. A few birds flitted past, and down below, families meandered by on the way to the park. Robbie had covered a huge chunk of the wall in white paint, and his skeleton now wore an elaborate dress and was grinning wildly. Papa Acevedo’s eyes seemed to glare off at some impossible enemy, and his colors had faded into an almost see-through wash since yesterday.

  “Robbie,” she said when he didn’t answer.

  “Hm?”

  “What are they?”

  “What are what?”

  “What are the shadowshapers?”

  Robbie sighed. The scaffolding shook violently, which meant Manny was on the way up. Sierra spoke fast. “Something’s going on and my abuelo was involved, and so is that creepy guy at the party and whoever Lucera is … Everybody in on this but me!”

  “Oye, chicos,” Manny panted, climbing onto the platform with them. “I’m done for the night.”

  “Manny,” Sierra said, “you knew this Ol’ Vernon guy that died, right?”

  Robbie tensed.

  “Yes,” Manny said, “a few years back. Those days are over now, Sierra.”

  “But you and Vernon and my granddad were all close. What was it all about?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, looking back and forth as if someone might be sneaking up on them.

  Sierra narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Your abuelo could tell a mean story.”

  “Oh.” She tried not to sound disappointed. “I mean, I knew that. Everyone talks about it. I only barely remember him telling stories, though. Like when we were really little, he used to.”

  “Oh!” Manny held up one hand. “Let me tell you, este viejo … he used to have us riveted. Us, a bunch of old men, sitting there silent as a room full of escared children, waiting to see what happens next. The domino game would be on hold.”

  That in itself was an impressive feat; the domino guys were notorious for continuing games unabated through all kinds of natural disasters and even, infamously, a shoot-out. “The shadowshapers, Manny,” Sierra said. “Tell me about the shadowshapers.”

  The old newspaper man raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”

  Sierra heard Robbie shifting back and forth on his feet behind her. “Ah what?” she said.

  Manny sighed. “It was a social club, Sierra. A boys’ club. You know, a place for the guys from around the neighborhood to get together every now and then. Like these guys that wear funny hats and whatnot, except without the funny hats. Thank God.”

  “But then who’s this Wick dude, and why’s he writing about it like it’s some kind of spiritual fellowship?” Sierra asked.

  “That” — Manny smiled sadly — “is a question for another time. It’s not something I really talk about. Perhaps your friend Robbie here can explain further.” He wiped his hands on his slacks. “Alright, you two.” The whole scaffolding convulsed rhythmically as he made his way to the ground. “Buenas noches,” he called.

  “Good night,” Robbie said quietly. His voice sounded a hundred miles away.

  Sierra turned around and shot him a sharp look. “You can explain your end of things while you walk me home, buddy.”

  “Look, I really don’t normally don’t talk about this stuff with, like … anyone.” Robbie had his hands shoved into his pockets. They stood at the edge of the scaffolding where the Tower formed a corner with the back of the old brick building.

  “Well, this is a special occasion,” Sierra said. “Everything’s falling apart.”

  He laughed weakly. “Well, that is special. It’s just that people tend to think you’re crazy when you talk about this stuff, you know? And we’re, you know … sworn to secrecy.”

  “You’re a shadowshaper too? I knew it!”

  Robbie smiled. “It’s kinda hard to explain.”

  “Alright,” Sierra said. “I can’t promise I won’t think you’re crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I’ll still be your friend and help you finish the mural anyway.”

  “It’s your mural! I’m helping you finish!”

  “Man, I’m kidding! Lighten up, my dude.”

  Robbie pointed to Papa Acevedo’s sad face. “Okay, look. I made this.”

  “Right.”

  “Papa Acevedo — Mauricio — he was my teacher before he died. I was just a kid, twelve, when I met him, but he knew I had something in me … and he trained me.”

  “Trained you to what?”

  “Both in pai
nting and … to work with spirits. Shadowshaping.”

  About a hundred contradictory confused thoughts crowded Sierra’s mind at the same time. She ended up pushing them all away and just nodding. Yes, it sounded crazy. It was one thing when someone was telling her stories about some weird old professors, or even her own family members. But Robbie was only a few months older than Sierra and he was absolutely serious. To work with spirits. Something about it sounded so true. Part of Sierra knew he was going to say it, had known it was what he’d been talking about since … well, all along.

  Robbie exhaled, watching Sierra. “But they’re not like evil spirits. These ones aren’t, anyway. The ones we work with, I mean.”

  “Spirits like … dead people? Like ghosts?”

  “Yeah, some of ’em are the ancestors of us shadowshapers, some are just other folks that passed on and then became spirits. But they’re like our protectors, our friends even. And they just look like shadows, until …” His voice trailed off.

  “Until what?”

  “Until we ’shape ’em. Look.” He pointed to the now barely visible face peering out of the brick wall. “Papa Acevedo’s spirit is … was in the painting.”

  “That’s why it was crying!”

  He nodded, that slight grin creasing his lips.

  “I thought I was losing my mind …”

  “You’re not, Sierra.” He was smiling, but he also looked like he might shatter at any second. “It’s just that people don’t usually see it. Their minds won’t let them, so it just looks a regular painting, not movin’ or nothin’. Papa Acevedo always used to say people don’t see what they’re not looking for. It’s like that.”

  Sierra gazed at the old man’s sad face. Robbie had captured his essence perfectly: that big nose and the way his salt-and-pepper mustache had turned upward at either end to make room for his old-man smile. He had on the same brown cap Sierra remembered him wearing every time she went to visit her abuelo and the domino warriors at the Junklot.

  “Anyway, he started fading — both his spirit and the actual painting — when Lucera disappeared, more than a year back now. It was slow at first, barely noticeable. Then it got faster and faster. And now —” Robbie put his hand on the wall and closed his eyes. “I can’t feel him there. Can’t talk to him. He knew he was gonna be gone soon. And … the last time I talked with him …”

  “He could talk to you like … through the mural?”

  Robbie nodded. “He said there were forces gathering against us. He didn’t know what, exactly — just that we should paint more murals, even if they kept fading, and that we were in trouble. The shadowshapers, I mean.”

  He gave the painting one last glance, and then they climbed the rest of the way down the scaffolding. Sierra locked up the Junklot, and they strolled along Marcy Avenue together. “But why’d he fade, Robbie? I don’t understand.”

  “There was a fight. Your grandpa and Lucera. This was before I was coming around. No one knows whatall it was about or what happened, but Lucera disappeared.”

  “Hold on. Who is this Lucera anyway?”

  “Lucera, she was … is … a spirit.” He shot a sideways glance at Sierra. She nodded at him to go on. “But a really powerful one. They say she was the one first gathered the shadowshapers, that her power was in everything we do. But I guess no one realized just how crucial she was until she vanished, not long before your grandfather had his stroke. And then people just scattered. Some moved on to other traditions, some folks just went back to, like, normal, old, non-shadowshaping life.”

  They passed an all-night hair salon and then a fancy new bakery with dainty cupcakes stenciled on the window.

  “Damn. All of you disappeared?” Sierra said.

  “Pretty much. ’Cept me, I guess.”

  “The last shadowshaper.”

  Robbie laughed, a good hearty chuckle that made Sierra grin. At least he’d lightened up a little. “I mean, you don’t have to make it sound like a bad kung fu movie, but yeah, something like that. We been looking for her, but there’s no clues, no sign, nothin’ …”

  Sierra dug into her pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper her grandfather had given her that morning. “Where lonely women go to dance,” she said aloud.

  “Come again?”

  “My grandpa gave this to me today.” She handed it to Robbie. “Said that’s where Lucera was.”

  “Whoa!” He held it close to his face and squinted at the letters. “We’ve never had anything to go on before. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Mean anything to you?”

  Robbie shook his head. “Nah, but … look, there’s more, somewhere.” Little lines of ink could be seen at the torn top edge of the paper. “I bet if we had the rest of it, we could figure out where Lucera is.”

  “Yeah but … where we gonna get that? My grandpa ain’t trying to give up nothing else. If he even has it …”

  Robbie handed the paper back to her. “Well, it’s a start, at least. Everyone had pretty much given up hope on ever finding Lucera. I’m not even sure where the other shadowshapers ended up. The only one I was tight with was Papa Acevedo. And now things are getting really dire.”

  “What was up with that guy at the party — Vernon? He was still looking for her.”

  “That wasn’t Vern.” Robbie shook his head, frowning. “That was a corpuscule.”

  “Alright now, Sierra!” a heavyset woman in a colorful dress called. All of Sierra’s neighbors were out on their stoops, taking in the warm summer night.

  Sierra waved back to the woman. “Hey, Mrs. Middleton.” She looked at Robbie. “A corpus-who? What is that?”

  “It’s … it’s like, when someone dies, their body is an empty shell with no spirit, right?”

  “I guess?”

  “A corpuscule is a dead body with someone else’s spirit, like, shoved into it.”

  “A … a dead person? Ugh!”

  Robbie nodded. “I know. It’s not something shadowshapers would ever do, not the ones I know anyway. Takes someone really messed up to force a spirit into a dead body. I didn’t know Vernon well, but whoever did that to his body is controlling him. That’s who’s looking for Lucera.”

  They walked in silence, Sierra remembering the corpuscule’s icy grip, its foul smell. She shuddered as they walked up to the Santiagos’ four-story building. “This is me.”

  Robbie looked up at it. “I love brownstones.”

  “So … we gotta find Lucera, huh?”

  “Only Lucera can turn this around. I didn’t even think she still existed, but if someone’s corpuscule is out looking for her, man … Yeah.”

  “Alright. Hey, you know some cat named Wick? I picked up some of his files at Columbia today.”

  “Oh, that random white dude that used to roll with your granddad? I didn’t see a lot of him, but I remember meeting him once or twice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see what I come up with. Maybe he knows something …”

  Robbie looked up and met Sierra’s eyes. “Sounds good. Hey, thank you. For listening, I mean.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for telling me all that.”

  He smiled. “Listen, I could … I can show you how shadowshaping works better than I can explain it.”

  Sierra raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Meet me tomorrow night at the Church Ave stop on the Q. If you’re free, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I could do that.”

  “Cool.”

  They stood there for a few seconds. Sierra felt an invisible thread of possibility hanging in the air between them, but she didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. “See you tomorrow,” she said finally, and walked up the steps into her house.

  The next morning, Sierra crept into Lázaro’s room. The rising sun played across the Bed-Stuy rooftops, glinted against windowpanes, and cast stark shadows down the avenues and walkways.

  Her grandfather lay with his mouth wide open, a trickle of dried saliva crusted agai
nst his face. For a second, she wasn’t sure if he was even alive. She was about to cross the room to check when the old man’s nostrils flared and he let out a colossal snore.

  Who was this man? He’d always been sweet to her when she was a little kid: piggyback rides and stupid magic tricks with that cigar-stained hacking laugh of his. But then she entered that awkward preadolescence stage, all pimples and big glasses and brand-new curves, and Lázaro acted like he didn’t know what to make of this new creature. Mama Carmen had remained quietly firm and occasionally ferocious, but there was never any doubting her love — it came through in every small move she made, the way she’d absentmindedly adjust Sierra’s clothes and do her hair for her, or lay her wrinkled old hand on Sierra’s shoulder. She didn’t pay much mind to small talk or banter, but when she asked Sierra a question, she meant it. Grandpa Lázaro, on the other hand, just drifted further and further away as time went on, and Sierra had never figured out how to get him back.

  Then came that terrible day with the phone ringing endlessly, the police showing up at the door, Sierra’s parents hurrying their shoes on and rushing out to Brooklyn Hospital, where Lázaro lay comatose. Liver cancer had taken Mama Carmen a few months before. It had been a sudden and devastating death, and everyone said it was grief that had sapped the old man’s ability to make sense anymore.

  Sierra had gone to visit him in the hospital the next morning. Her grandfather’s face had been frozen into an open-mouthed mask of terror, like one of those poor souls who glimpses Medusa and turns to stone. Tubes and cables snaked across his body, coiled into his flesh, and wound in a tangle up to an incomprehensible mesh of blipping waveforms and drip-dropping fluid pouches. Sierra hadn’t found it in herself to cry — the shock seemed to knock away all emotion and just leave her with a dull, vacant throbbing — but her brother Juan had been inconsolable. Lázaro looked only slightly better now, a full year later.