Detective Meehan’s car blasted out of the basement parking lot at almost sixty miles per hour. She was heading for Flower’s house. The Shadows were on a mission. Her instincts told her that first on the list would be those teenagers. And first on the list of those four teenagers, based on past experience, would be Flower.
At least, that guess was as good as any.
Meehan reached down and felt the gun in her holster. She also had a shotgun with a box of ammo in the backseat.
Yet, she knew that she was as good as unarmed as far as fighting these deathly Shadow things was concerned.
Upstairs in Flower’s room, the monster had finally put two plus two together and grew more furious. It floated backwards like a dolphin on its tail. It spied Flower out on the lawn, her arms folded around herself, shuddering, hands hidden in the sleeves of her sweater.
The Shadow was about to attack for the final time when something ripped its “body” in two. Another black shadow had entered the room and had passed through the grim creature, slicing it in half.
As the bottom half of itself dissipated, the Shadow thing frantically and with confused fury scanned the room. It found a smoky, dusty creature in a far corner. Smaller than it and weaker, too. And a bit chunkier, somehow. Yet, not one of its own, not a creature of death. Something different. Something new.
But before it had time to evaluate, study, and plan an attack, the other shadow sliced through it again, ceasing the Shadow thing’s existence.
Ricky Martin reappeared in the room in his human form as the last of the shadow beast floated away like black, liquid confetti.
The lights came on in the entire house. Each room in the house illuminated one-by-one, as if someone had returned home and switched on the lights to every room they entered. Finally, the back porch lights flickered on. Then right after, the front lights blinked alive, shining like a blessing on Flower.
Upstairs, Ricky grabbed his side in pain. It was unexpected, and excruciating, unlike any pain he’d ever felt before. Ricky Martin blacked out and crashed to the floor.
Outside on the front lawn, Flower stood in the pool of welcome light and wondered what was happening, why Ricky hadn’t returned yet.
Against her better judgment, and Ricky’s stern advice, she strode toward the front door. It was locked. Of course.
Flower crouched on the porch, pulling her sweater tighter to try to keep out the horrible things all around her. And she waited.
Waited to find out what, or who, would be next.
At the Croyant house, just two blocks away, a Shadow thing sensed something was wrong. Two of its kind erased from existence in such a short time. Shadow things can live forever; dying was something new. Although they did not know what it meant, they knew something had happened. The thing of death felt this in the way a bloom feels the coming rain—not consciously, not with a brain, but with other, unknown senses.
Jennifer and Travis Croyant entered the house carrying a couple of bags of fast food. It had been one of those days. Although they had recently redone their kitchen with gourmet equipment, neither felt like cooking.
Mrs. Croyant placed the food on the kitchen table as Mr. Croyant hung up his coat and called out to Conner.
“Conner, you home?” He waited and then tried again. “Conner? Dinner!”
Lights clicked on room by room, and the automatic heating system had already activated about forty-five minutes earlier.
“How was your day?” Jennifer asked her husband as he entered the kitchen.
“Oh, boy, don’t get me started.”
She sighed and pulled her hair back in a ponytail, waiting for him to say more.
“It was all right, I guess,” he said. “If you don’t mind too much getting screamed at by a multitude of customers.”
“What was the problem?” she asked absently, as she washed her hands in the kitchen sink.
“The system was acting weird today. It was slow to begin with. Then it started screwing up deposits and withdrawal amounts. It got ugly.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” Jennifer said, suppressing a yawn.
“Yeah, we had to shut it down after a while. They’re supposedly working on it remotely overnight. Hopefully it will be fixed by the time I get in tomorrow morning.”
“I hope so, too.” She dried her hands on the kitchen towel. “My day was pretty rough, too. One of my kids died.”
“Oh, no. Which one?”
“Astor. Do you remember her? Such a fighter . . . ”
“The skinny twelve-year-old?”
“Yeah. I really thought she’d be one of the kids who’d make it through.” Jennifer Croyant started to cry. Her husband went to her and held her.
Most weeks, this scene repeated itself: Jennifer crying over one more lost child. For every ten they could save nowadays, they lost one. It always hurt. The Children’s Cancer Hospital did what it could, with equipment as state of the art as the hospital could afford. But there was still chance involved, factors out of the doctors’ control—doctors like Jennifer Croyant.
Travis helped his wife to a seat at the table. He returned to the counter and started retrieving various packages from the fast food bags. He placed the items on plates—classing it up a bit. He poured the drinks from the paper cups into glasses and unwrapped the burritos.
“Here you go,” he said to his wife as he brought the food to the table.
She wiped the tears off her cheeks and smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
That was when the lights went out, without a sound. As if the electricity had been sucked out of the house.
“Oh great,” Mr. Croyant said. “Now what?”
Flower pounded on her front door. Still no Ricky. She was worried now, and scared. She expected the Shadow thing would have emerged by now, had Ricky failed. But neither of them had come out of the house. Yet, the lights had all come on. Surely, the Shadow thing would not have chosen to put on the lights. She knocked again, and then she heard a moan. The sound of someone in pain.
She tried the door again with all her strength, but it wouldn’t give. She needed to get in there, to help Ricky Martin.
The lawn was decorated with things her mom had found at garage sales and flea markets. One of these was an old milk can, metal and about three feet high. Apparently, they used to deliver milk in these things from the farm to the stores. Flower’s mom had painted it white, with bright daisies along the bottom. The lid was metal, too. She had painted that sky blue.
Flower picked it up. It was heavy, and her arms hurt as she carried it to the front window. She put it down to rest and took a deep breath before lifting it again. Then, after swinging it back and forth couple of times, she launched it at the window. It flew through the air and bounced off the metal-and-wood strip between the two front windows with a loud thud. It rolled back a foot or two in her direction.
Flower blew some errant strands hair out of her eyes and stood with her hands on her hips, eyeballing the container. The night was quiet except for the chirping of night birds.
She grabbed the thing again, this time in anger, and hurled it once more at the windows. This time, she got a direct hit and the left window smashed apart as the milk container flew through the window and into the living room.
Flower walked up to the window to examine her handiwork. Only one large fragment was still attached to the window frame, at the bottom. If she hadn’t noticed it, it would have cut her to shreds right through her midsection while she wriggled through the window.
Carefully, she rocked the piece out of the frame and threw it behind her into the yard. Then she jumped up and wormed across the window frame. Legs kicking, she fell into the living room. The lights were all on. Every single one. Even the television was on, but the sound was muted.
Flower stood up and checked herself real quick for any cuts or bruises. Satisfied that she was okay, she made her way further into the house. Flower stopped at the stairs listening for the moaning she had heard just moments ago. S
he couldn’t hear it now, but although she had a big house, there were only so many places Ricky could be. Flower would begin her search in the kitchen.
She took a step or two in that direction. The lights as bright as a museum, hardly a shadow in the whole house. She was only another three steps from coming into the kitchen, where her mother’s headless body lay in a swamp of dark blood. She took another step toward a terrible image she would never forget.
And she stopped. She thought she heard something. Yes, that moaning. It was behind her now.
Flower turned away, having not seen the carnage, and slowly faced her fears.
Chuckling to himself, Conner Croyant jogged up the street toward his house, having successfully escorted both Almira and Flower to their homes. He was bone tired and hungry. But sleep was calling out for more attention than his stomach. He would eat in the morning. Right now, all he wanted was a good night’s sleep.
He could see his home ahead. He was never so glad to see the old place as he was right now. It was lit up like a flare, every light on in every window. Well, the parents are home, that’s good to know, he thought. He sped up as much as his muscles and strength would allow. Maybe he would just grab a little something before he crashed. A quick bite and then it’s off to dreamland.
Then, as he watched, his house went black. Every light was extinguished, even on the porch. His home was dark and lonely sitting there in the middle of the trees in his yard. Like that, it almost looked a little haunted, a little creepy.
The rest of the houses on the block still had electricity. Blew a circuit, Conner guessed. Funny, though, that the whole house would go black like that.
He was almost at his driveway.
That’s when he heard his mother scream.
Flower Gardener turned around and retraced her steps, passing by the open basement door as she did so. The lights were on down there as well. She paused at the top of the basement stairs, peering into the cellar, trying to see if there was anything down there. Then the moaning brought her mind back to focus. She switched off the basement light and closed the door.
She walked to the staircase and started to climb to the second story.
“Ohhhh . . . ” Ricky’s voice. She heard it distinctly now, but he sounded bad.
Flower hurried up the stairs and down the hall to her parents’ room. The room was in shambles—a broken mirror, a smashed lamp, a chair on its side.
And Ricky.
In the middle of the floor, by the end of the bed, she found him, unconscious.
Flower fell to her knees beside him.
“Ricky, Ricky!” she cried.
She stroked his hair and his face. Then she had the presence of mind to check his pulse. It was there, but barely.
“What’s going on?” Ricky said in a weak voice, almost inaudible.
“You’re hurt,” Flower said. “Can you stand up?”
“I think so.”
Ricky forced himself to sit up. Then, as Flower helped him to a crouching position, he was just able to stand, swaying.
“Flower, I’m—I don’t feel well.”
“Let me get you outside. The air will do you good,” Flower said.
She held Ricky close, to support him as he could barely support himself. She looked at his profile. He was actually quite handsome beneath that teenage “baby fat”. How had she not taken notice of that before? He slowly turned to face her. Flower looked into his eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling.
Then she kissed him again.
The two held the kiss for a long time.
Flower pulled away gently, a bit embarrassed. “You need air,” she whispered. “Let me help you downstairs.”
The two made slow progress but eventually found themselves outside.
“Sit,” she said, helping Ricky to perch on the front steps.
Flower seated herself beside him and looked up at a beautiful full moon, the first time the moon had emerged from the thick black clouds in quite some time.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said. She didn’t stop looking as Ricky slipped his arm through hers. A smile grew on her face like the waxing moon, emerging, too, from the dark for the first time in quite some time.
She didn’t understand it then, but the pain to come when she learned about her parents would be helped, over time, by this new love in her life.
If they both lived through this night.
Conner ran.
As tired as he was just a second before, he now ran faster than he ever had in his life, as if the weariness had been blasted out of his body by his mother’s cry. He darted across his front lawn, paused for a half a second, then threw the door open.
The interior of his house was as black as the bottom of the sea. No lights, not even the flicker of a candle. He reached his hands out in front of him instinctively and stepped into the house.
“Mom? Dad?” Conner called out, not too loud, not too soft. He wanted to hear their voices; yet, if there truly was something wrong, he didn’t want to alert anyone else of his arrival.
His mother screamed again, a cold, deathly scream that was filled with nothing but fear. No strength, no bravery, no defiance. This was not a rebel yell, not a cry to battle. Just the scream of a horrified victim, which sucked Conner into the horror. Even though he had no idea what was happening. Still, his entire body was now filled with adrenaline, with the fight or flight response.
His mouth was dry as dirt, his legs and arms trembling. What the hell is going on? What the hell am I walking into?
Nevertheless, Conner ran straight through the house, straight toward the sound of his mother’s scream.
There, in the darkness of the living room, Conner could just make out his parents in the tiny bit of light sneaking in through the pulled curtains, the curious moonlight. His mother had one hand over her mouth and one arm fully extended at . . . nothing. His father was nearby, on his hands and knees. He looked hurt, but Conner couldn’t see enough detail to tell how badly and it what way. Bruised? Bleeding? Dying?
Then he noticed—the air had a different feel in here, the way air changes before a thunderstorm. But the smell wasn’t like that. The air in this room had a different chemical balance, too much of some kind of compound—or poison. Conner, while rushing to his parents’ aid, was also processing this smell in the back of his mind. Science class. Thursday’s lab. Then he remembered. Sulfur. That was the smell. Like decay. Rotten eggs. Burning flesh.
The Shadow thing emerged then, and Conner recognized it from that other world they had been in—like seeing an old friend.
Or an ancient, evil enemy.
Detective Meehan pulled to a stop at the Gardener residence. Every single light was on, the place blazing as if an all-night party was in progress. She hopped out of her vehicle and yanked her weapon out of her holster. There was blood on the porch, a couple of spots, but still . . . The front window was smashed. She raised her gun in front of her and held it with both hands.
“Anyone home?” she called out. “Police!”
She stepped cautiously into the house. Things did not feel right. There was the smell of blood and destruction in the air. She pointed her gun behind the door then up the stairs before continuing on in.
She didn’t have to walk far before she came upon the headless body of Mrs. Gardener.
“Oh, my God,” Meehan called out, suppressing the reflex to vomit. She pressed her nose into her shoulder in an attempt to block the smell—and the sight. She continued on through the kitchen, her arms extended gun first, upstairs, and into the garage. No head. No other victims.
Then, coming back into the house from the garage, she noticed the blood splatter on the living room carpet and again on the front hall tiles, as if someone had kicked a soccer ball covered in blood through the house.
Blood stained a side door.
She walked up to the door, but before she opened it she noticed what appeared to be a shred of gauze, of black flimsy material, laying on the floor. She
crouched down to examine it more closely.
When she reached for it, it just disintegrated, like trying to touch a wisp of fog.
She stood back up and shook her head, confused. Then she reached for the door handle and pulled the door all the way open. She kept her gun still pointed in front of her, at eye level. The door led to the basement.
“Anyone down there?”
She started to descend. What she found made her gag again, even after all these years of police work. This was a relatively small town, and there’d been nothing like this here, ever. She hurried back up the basement steps and back out to her vehicle.
Once there, she contemplated what to do. Call for back up? The police station was under some kind of supernatural attack at the moment. Call the fire department? There was no one to rescue. Call the National Guard? Probably too late for their help, and what could they possibly do against this mysterious attack?
Instead, Detective First Class Gloria Meehan laid her head against her steering wheel and burst in to tears.
Very unprofessional sobbing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Good, We’re All Here Now
On the other side of the neighborhood, roughly a mile away, Nita Fuerza, Almira’s mother, sat in the dark. She opened the nearly empty bottle of rum on the table in front of her, a small glass in her hand. She lifted the glass and tossed the rum back, swallowing the full glass in three easy gulps. She filled the juice glass from the bottle again, her eyes misty with tears.
Mrs. Fuerza was feeling sorry for herself. Only forty-four, she was already one of the top ten real estate agents in Illinois. An honor she’d won four times now in the past ten years.
She thought about her husband, Jesús Fuerza, gone now, taken by—she stopped herself and raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure what it was that had taken him. The doctors had said it was a rare form of cancer. But how? The man was obsessed with health. Not that that’s a guarantee. She took another sip of rum and let it wash down her throat, warm and soothing.
SHADOWS OF DEATH: Death Comes with Fury (and Dark Humor) To a Small Town South of Chicago Page 17