Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2)

by Justine Sebastian

  Tobias decided to take his cue from the crow and ignore Gary. As long as it didn’t in any way molest or assault the corpse of Mr. Jackson, Tobias thought it could stay. It wasn’t hurting anything and the only way it was ill at all was if it had so recently contracted something it hadn’t yet begun to show symptoms. He did worry about the toxic chemicals affecting the animal though; there was no birdie respirator. He shooed her away, pointing toward the far end of the room without thinking about it, but she went just like she understood what he was telling her perfectly.

  Gary was glowering at the bird, unhappy as ever with any kind of change. He loved the funerals, the crowds and all the people, but those were actually constants; things Gary knew to expect. A crow and a cricket from the moon were not on Gary’s list of acceptable things. Like with most things, however, Gary would eventually get used to them.

  “I think that bird likes you,” Dawn Marie said when they were done with the cavity fluid.

  Tobias looked over at the bird who gazed back at him with what might well have been affection. It was not the first bird over the years to have taken a particularly strong liking to him. When Tobias was a little boy there had been a sparrow that he’d named Jack—because he’d liked Cracker Jacks, not because of the Johnny Depp movie. That had come along much, much later. He’d found it amusing to watch the movie and think of the little sparrow that had been one of his constant companions as a child.

  They finished pumping the cavity fluid into Mr. Jackson and Tobias took off his suit. Then he went to crack the back door open and check on Mooncricket.

  “You can come in now,” Tobias said.

  Mooncricket was crouched down on his heels, respirator by his foot, a cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. Tobias was actually surprised to find he was still there, then he reminded himself of the bruises on the young man’s face and thought that no, maybe he wasn’t that surprised after all. Tobias wouldn’t want to go home to the person responsible for that if their situations had been reversed.

  “No more stuff going in his belly and shit?” Mooncricket asked.

  “No,” Tobias said. “We do still need to massage him and apply his make-up.”

  “That was so nasty,” Mooncricket said. “I wanna be cremated.”

  Tobias only smiled and stepped back to hold his arm out in invitation.

  “Where’d the bird come from?” Mooncricket asked when the crow flew over to Tobias and reclaimed its throne on his shoulder.

  “It flew in when you opened the door,” Tobias said. “Crows are stubborn.”

  “Disease carriers,” Gary said.

  “Why are you even concerned?” Tobias asked. “You’re immune to everything now, Gary.”

  “You know what? You’re right, I am,” Gary said. He smiled and bounced on his heels. “I still don’t like the bird though.”

  The crow took off from Tobias’s shoulder and flew around Gary, beating at him with its wings. Gary flailed and screamed at the bird to leave him alone.

  “Stop it,” Tobias said.

  He didn’t think it would work, but the crow did cease its harassment of Gary and came back to his shoulder.

  “You should name her,” Dawn Marie said.

  “How do you know it’s a female?” Tobias asked.

  “I don’t know.” Dawn Marie shrugged. “It just feels right.”

  “Are you a girl crow or a boy crow?” Tobias asked.

  The crow looked confused and leaned down to peck his shoulder lightly twice.

  “Hmm…” Tobias thought how to rephrase the question, all the while telling himself what he was doing was (a) ridiculous and (b) rather insane, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him. He pointed at Dawn Marie. “Are you female?” Then he pointed to himself. “Or male?”

  The crow looked between him and Dawn Marie for a moment then flew from his shoulder to go perch on her briefly and caw once before it flew back to Tobias.

  “Told ya,” Dawn Marie said with a huge smile.

  Her left cheek was starting to bruise, Tobias noted with a sinking feeling of sadness. Then he smiled back because he was pleased the little experiment had—in theory—worked. It could well have all been a coincidence.

  “Name her Lenore,” Mooncricket said. “Like that poem.”

  “That was a raven,” Tobias said.

  “Yeah, it’s ‘Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore’,” Dawn Marie said. “Not ‘Quoth the Crow, ‘Nevermore.’”

  “Oh,” Mooncricket said.

  “Dumb,” Gary said under his breath.

  “Lenore it is then,” Tobias said, giving Gary a warning look.

  Gary huffed at him and turned his back, arms crossed and head up high to show just how offended he was. Schizophrenics were not well known for their subtlety.

  Tobias left him to his sulking and went back to work. Mooncricket sat down in the wheeled chair by the stainless steel table and kept his own counsel, stoned and content to watch them work, not really seeing it much. After a while, Gary sidled over to him and stared until Mooncricket glanced up at him.

  “You don’t look like a cricket,” Gary said. “At all. You don’t much smell like one either.”

  “That’s because—”

  “Furthermore, if you’re from the moon, how do you breathe? You don’t even know how to use the respirator,” Gary said. “Do the aliens help you? Do you have special moon gills? Where are your antennae if you’re such a great goddamn cricket? Huh? I think you’re a liar.”

  “Dude,” Mooncricket said carefully. “Dude, I don’t even know what you’re saying to me right now.”

  Gary rolled his eyes and stomped one foot. “That’s because you’re dumb. I think I’ve mentioned that.” Schizophrenics were not well known for their tact either.

  “Fuck you, man,” Mooncricket said, but he mumbled it so low it carried no weight whatsoever.

  Gary scoffed at him then turned to Tobias and Dawn Marie who were working on Mr. Jackson. They were used to Gary’s antics and even though they were listening, it didn’t affect them much; it was like background noise after a while.

  “Haven’t I mentioned that?” Gary asked them.

  “Gary, go sit down, huh?” Dawn Marie asked as she smoothed make-up on Mr. Jackson’s cold face. “Leave the poor guy alone. Can’t you tell you’re freaking him out?”

  “I’m freaking him out?” Gary asked. “He’s a cricket disguised as a man and he’s from the moon. How am I supposed to feel about that? He’s here trying to trick me and I won’t fall for it.”

  “I am not from the fucking moon,” Mooncricket said. “What the hell?”

  “You’re a moon cricket,” Gary said. “If that’s not a cricket from the moon then just what the hell is it?”

  “My name,” Mooncricket said. “My name is Mooncricket. I’m not some alien insect or something, man. Not like a fuckin’ praying mantis or anything. It’s just my name.”

  Gary considered all he had said for a moment and then discarded it all but the most important bits: “I don’t like your name,” Gary said. “It’s confusing. But… You know about the mantises, so I’ll forgive you. I’m pretty sure they’re here to spy on us Earthlings for their master ship that orbits somewhere in the Milky Way disguised as a meteor rock.”

  “Fuck. Here we go,” Dawn Marie said. “The mantis thing again.”

  “At least he’s not being mean anymore,” Tobias said. “Perhaps they’ve found common ground.”

  “That’s true, I guess,” Dawn Marie said. “But with theories about praying mantises really being aliens?”

  Tobias shrugged the shoulder with the crow on it and it flapped its wings. When it settled again, it pecked him a little harder than usual for the upset.

  “I told you, people who talk to me are usually disturbed,” Tobias said.

  “Meh,” Dawn Marie said. “He’s still fucking hot, so I don’t care.”

  Tobias gave her a flat look that was wasted since she was still looking down at Mr. Jack
son’s face. Mooncricket was otherwise engaged with someone else, a man at that and one Tobias felt would not take well to Mooncricket perhaps stepping out on him. He really hoped Dawn Marie would leave it alone even if it did turn out that Mooncricket was bisexual. It would just be safer for them all and far less worry for Tobias to contend with in the long run.

  When they were finished with their work, Dawn Marie excused herself to go outside. She came back with a fifth of whiskey in her hand and a smile on her face.

  “Drinks, anyone?” she asked.

  “Hell yeah,” Mooncricket said. He was a bit more alert than he had been when he first showed up and was doing a much better job at responding to things in a timely manner.

  There was a stack of red Dixie cups in one of the cabinets over the work table and she took them down. She looked over her shoulder at Tobias and shook the bottle at him in question.

  “I’ll have a small one,” he said. “A couple of fingers.”

  “Make mine a double!” Gary said.

  “Sure, Gary,” Dawn Marie said.

  “You can drink?” Mooncricket asked.

  “I can imagine,” Gary said. “Also, I can smell it.”

  “Then can’t you just sniff our drinks?” Mooncricket asked.

  “He likes to have his own,” Tobias said.

  Dawn Marie set Gary’s drink down on the edge of the table and Mooncricket jumped when the red cup lifted into the air. Gary took a deep breath, sucking up the odor of good whiskey. He swayed on his feet, enraptured by the aroma. Then he turned the glass up and tried to take a sip.

  Whiskey splashed on the floor.

  “Stop wasting my whiskey,” Dawn Marie said. “That’s alcohol abuse.”

  Gary laughed and said, “Sorry, sorry, okay. I’ll stop. For now.”

  “Thanks,” Dawn Marie said. She hopped up to sit on the edge of the table and immediately hopped back down. “Holy shit, I forgot for a second how cold that is.”

  “It is frigid,” Tobias said as he leaned against it.

  She glared at him then stuck out her tongue. “Show-off,” she said.

  “Huh?” Mooncricket inquired.

  “Toby doesn’t get hot or cold,” Dawn Marie said. “You could lock him in a freezer and he’d just chill.”

  She laughed at her own joke and Tobias smiled in return. He loved bad jokes, probably because he made so many of them himself.

  “How’s that work?” Mooncricket asked.

  “I do not know,” Tobias said.

  “His brother is the same way,” Dawn Marie said.

  Mooncricket frowned then smiled when it clicked. “His brother who does and does not look like him.”

  “Right,” Dawn Marie said. “Have you met Hylas yet?”

  “No, I only met you guys really and Jeremy, you know,” Mooncricket said. “I’ve talked to a few people, but nobody as cool as y’all are. Who the hell else hangs out with ghosts all the time?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Tobias said. “Sparrow Falls is a haunted little place.”

  “I heard that,” Mooncricket said. Then he laughed. “I was talking to this chick over at the library the other day and she said there was a werewolf around here, too.”

  “Nonsense,” Tobias said, a bit too quickly he thought, but Mooncricket didn’t notice.

  “I think there was one here,” Dawn Marie said. “It came a couple summers ago and disappeared again the following spring. It killed a lot of people.”

  “No way, man,” Mooncricket said. “I mean, c’mon, it’s a werewolf. Those aren’t real.”

  “I think that one was real,” Dawn Marie said. “It nearly killed our friend Wes, too. He’s the only one that got away. He saw it and told us about it.”

  “Seriously?” Mooncricket looked doubtful. “Because like, werewolves, you know?”

  Tobias laughed softly and thought of Nick Lange’s denial until the very end. There was still a werewolf in Sparrow Falls, but he wasn’t a bad one. Dawn Marie didn’t know about what Tobias had done for Nancy Lange and Hylas that foggy spring morning. She had been in Opelousas visiting her sister when Tobias had gotten the call. By the time she came home, the werewolf terror of Sparrow Falls was no more and things grew quiet again until another body; one drained of blood, the mouth stuffed with flower petals, turned up just as they always did.

  Dawn Marie didn’t know what Nick was either, at least Tobias didn’t think she did. It amused him to consider that she might know though and they were keeping the same secret from each other in the name of not being gossips. That and if she did know then Dawn Marie probably thought Tobias wouldn’t believe her. Until he had seen what was once Calvin Newman impaled on the splintered spikes of a lightning-struck tree, he would not have.

  Dawn Marie was assuring Mooncricket there were no vampires in Sparrow Falls when Gary started singing.

  Mooncricket said, “Wow.”

  “Gary is quite the talented spirit,” Tobias said.

  Gary flashed a quick grin his way then walked off, Dixie cup in spectral hand, as he continued to sing.

  “This place is insane,” Mooncricket said.

  “We’re all mad here,” Tobias agreed.

  “I like mad people,” Mooncricket said.

  “Then welcome aboard,” Dawn Marie told him. She lifted a lock of his long, black hair and flipped the end back and forth. “Can I braid your hair?”

  “I don’t care,” Mooncricket said.

  “Cool,” she said. “You gotta hop up from that chair though so I can reach it. Go sit on one of the tables.”

  Dawn Marie took the small travel brush she kept there to fight with her own hair out of a drawer then came back and started to stroke it through Mooncricket’s hair. While she did, he watched Tobias and Tobias pretended he didn’t notice. He was used to people staring at him and though he couldn’t say he liked it, he had adjusted to it. On his shoulder, the crow preened itself; across the room Gary was singing “18 and Life” by Skid Row while standing on another table to look at the nighttime world out one of the long, narrow windows set high along the walls.

  “I bet people call you a vampire, huh?” Mooncricket asked.

  “Hey, don’t be a shit,” Dawn Marie said.

  “It’s fine,” Tobias said. “To answer your question; yes, I’ve heard it a time or two in passing.”

  “That blows,” Mooncricket said. “‘Cause, like, it’s kinda mean, you know? Mean people suck. ‘Cause they are mean.”

  Tobias gave a slight tilt of his head in acknowledgement and said nothing.

  The hour grew late and the company became drunk, but Tobias didn’t mind; he was happiest at the funeral home despite its morbid air. Mooncricket’s hair hung down his back in a long braid that swung like a pendulum every time he turned his head. Dawn Marie was sitting in the chair beside him.

  It was time for them to be on their way and it was up to Tobias to move them along. He could sleep there if it came to that, but he wouldn’t expect the same of his well-soused companions. Dawn Marie probably wanted a shower and Mooncricket… well… Tobias didn’t think Jeremy was the kind of person that took well to waiting up.

  He excused himself to go use the restroom, intent on telling them both it was time to leave when he came back.

  Business taken care of, Tobias went to the sink to wash his hands. He was in the process of drying them when pain the likes of which he had never felt tore down his back. He gasped and nearly fell, his hands gripping the ledge of the sink all that kept him on his feet. It was a deep ache that went all the way through his back to his ribs; the pain like two claws shredding his flesh from the shoulder blades down. He bit his lip against a cry as the initial ache faded and a muscle spasm took its place. The first spasm was the worst, a feeling like the muscles in his back were actually twisting, fleshy rags being wrung out. The second was nearly as bad. So was the third. The crow flew from his shoulder to perch on the edge of the counter and look down at him. It flapped its wings and pecked worried
ly at Tobias’s fingers in bird Morse code for, Are you all right? What’s going on?

  Tobias sank to his knees and fell into the wall beside him, panting, trying to breathe through the pain. Everything stood still, the world unaware and Tobias all alone with that horrible, unrelenting pain. It came in a wave that gradually—so gradually—faded to ripples then disappeared entirely. A dull ache remained, like what he felt after a long day working in his gardens when his muscles were pleasantly strained. The crow had flown down to nestle itself against his side while he leaned there and he stroked its glossy feathers while he prepared himself to try and stand up again.

  The crow plucked at his hair and flapped its wings lightly after settling on his shoulder again. “I’m all right now,” Tobias assured it.

  Carefully, he pushed himself to his feet, his back twinging with sharper bursts of pain when he moved a certain way. At last he regained his feet and stood there, head down, hair in disarray, as he caught his breath. The ache receded more and Tobias finally lifted his head then turned on the tap to cup water in his hands and have a drink. He’d never had back problems, had suffered no kind of back injuries that would account for what had just happened. He was fit and strong, in good health as far as he knew. Maybe it had been a fluke.

  “Yes. A fluke,” Tobias said to the gaping mouth of the drain. His back was sore and still hurt, but there was no hint of that awful shredding ache coming back. Of course, it had come out of the blue and broadsided him. It might happen again that way, too. The crow muttered and murmured, rubbed its head against his cheek in comfort and relief.

  Tobias decided he would deal with that when or if it occurred. Right then all he wanted to do was go home and lie down for a spell, maybe read a book before he turned in for the night. He dried his hands and turned around, nearly bumping into Gary. “Can I help you?”

  “Are you okay?” Gary asked. “You’ve been gone nearly twenty minutes. Dawn Marie thinks you might be constipated.”

  “I am not constipated,” Tobias said.

  “It doesn’t smell like poop in here,” Gary said. “Which makes sense if you are; all that work and no reward. This one kind of medication I used to take did that to me. I ate laxatives like they were peanuts. So, I know about constipation. You can talk to me.”