The Shadow Man
Page 26
"We'll step out," Malcolm said.
China and Malcolm left the room. They stood outside the door with the other cop, whose Michelin Man physique made him look as though he was going to burst through his uniform.
He looks like a big blue sausage, Malcolm thought.
The Michelin Man said nothing.
After a moment, the door opened and the other cop came lumbering out. His hat was in his hands.
"He wants to see you again," the patrolman said, jerking a thumb towards the door.
China and Malcolm walked back inside.
Ben was ashen, cadaverous. Sweat beaded across his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, running his finger through a scraggly hank of dirty gray-blond hair.
"Ben? Are you okay?" Malcolm said.
"I'm fine. I mean, I'm not fine, but I'm okay medically. It's just . . . they just told me . . ."
He buried his face in his hands.
When Ben looked up, there were tears in his eyes.
"Sam and Tina Baker are dead. The killer—Joel Birkenstock or whatever he's calling himself now--has escaped. They've lost him."
Malcolm's head reeled. Dark spots pulsated in front of his eyes. The lights dimmed, closing in from the edges of Malcolm's vision, as though someone were closing the aperture on a camera.
Sit down, dammit, before you pass out, he told himself.
Malcolm plopped right down on the floor, stupefied.
"What are you guys talking about?" China said.
"It doesn't concern you, honey," Ben said.
"Don't 'honey' me, mister. With all due respect," China said.
"Sorry," said Ben.
"He'll try to finish the job. He'll go after Amy and Mimi," Malcolm murmured.
"What?" said China.
"This guy kidnapped my wife and daughter. He tried to kill them, but we caught him beforehand. But he's escaped, and I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid . . ."
"Get up," China said.
"What?"
"Get up. I've got a car in the parking lot. I'll drive you. Let's go save your wife and daughter."
China wrapped an arm around Malcolm's shoulders and dragged him to his feet. He was wobbly-kneed, but he stood up, shaking his head. Malcolm's senses flooded back in, the darkness receding as the world came back to him in a rush.
"Thanks," he said to China.
She nodded.
Malcolm made eye contact with Ben.
"She's right. Get the hell out of here. The cops are on the way to your house but you know Amy and Mimi better than anybody. Go to them. I just wish I could go with you," Ben said.
China flung open the door, shoving her way between the Beef Brothers, with Malcolm right behind her.
"Take him down!" Ben yelled after them as the door slammed shut.
But Malcolm and China were long gone.
44
"Turn here," Amy said.
The halogen headlights of the police cruiser played across the stark white columns of the house at Rose Dhu, glimmering in the tiny imperfections in the window glass. For a moment, Amy thought she saw a dim shape moving in the shadows of the entrance foyer hallway. But then the headlights prismed across the cut glass door, spilling rainbows into the night, and she could see that there was nothing there. The night sky was devoid of stars. The moonlight had fled, as well, leaving the old house immersed in an oppressive darkness as thick and as sticky as currant jelly.
"This your place?" the policewoman said.
Amy nodded.
"Nice," the cop said, pushing her hat back a little on her head. "I'll just be a minute," Amy said. "Gotta turn the alarm off and the lights on."
She jangled her keys, hands trembling, before fumbling them at the doorway. They dropped onto the brick patio. She leaned down to see them and noticed something inside the house: a tiny red light, like a neutron star, beaming atop the grandfather clock.
I don't remember that light, she thought.
But then again, what did she remember? A pale-skinned killer with ruby eyes had come into her home and whisked her away. She had died, been hurled into the very maw of eternal oblivion, and then had come back to life. The whole thing was like a childhood nightmare, the one where you awoke screaming for your mommy and no one was there to help you, and then the monster came for you from underneath the bed, grasping at your arms and legs with sharp talons that clicked in the dark. Then the monster dragged you down, down, down into the cold, cold ground. You never came back from that, not ever.
Only she had survived.
She had survived and she had made it home, her family somehow miraculously intact. And the monster was in police custody.
So why was she scared? Why did she feel nauseous? It was as though she had been given some invisible poison, a lethal toxin leached from touching the pale skin of the Shadow Man.
Amy wondered if she would ever be right again.
She found the right key and opened the front door. The alarm was beeping. She entered the code and turned it off.
Tripping the switch to the first set of floodlights bathed the front yard in brilliant light. It hurt her eyes for a minute, but that was all. The light seemed to soothe her a bit. Her stomach settled.
The policewoman was helping Mimi out of the car.
"You and your mama gonna be all right?" she said.
Mimi nodded.
"Let me check out the place for you before I leave," the policewoman said, drawing her weapon.
The three of them walked through the house together, turning on lights in every room they entered. Everything seemed to be ship-shape, nothing out of place. They let Daisy out of the laundry room and her tail flailed about furiously, like a flag in a hurricane. She nuzzled against Mimi's leg, grunting. Mimi knelt down and scratched the old dog between her ears.
"She seems okay, Mom," Mimi said, looking up, her eyes bright.
When the inspection was complete, the three women stood on the front porch of the Rose Dhu house.
"Thanks for everything," Amy said, shaking the policewoman's hand.
"You're okay?"
"Malcolm will be home later," Amy said. "We'll be fine."
The policewoman got back into her black-and-white. The door slammed with a solid ker-chunk!
As the police car backed out of the driveway, the beams of the headlights stabbing into the moss-draped oaks, Amy realized that there was something moving in the trees.
"Mimi?"
"Umm-hmm?"
"Run get me the flashlight out of the laundry room."
"Why?"
"I just want to see something."
The branches of the trees seemed to be undulating, even though the air was dead still. Actually, the surfaces of the branches were moving, rippling in the shadows like the waves on a lake.
It was only when Mimi brought the flashlight that they saw what was really happening. But Amy still did not understand what she was seeing at first.
And then things came jarringly into focus, the pixels of the world assembling into a complete picture at last.
A cold bead of sweat curled at the nape of Amy's neck and trickled down her back.
"What are they, Mom?" Mimi said.
The dark gleam of ten thousand eyes stared down at them. They shuffled quietly among themselves, rustling in the dark with a soft chorus of nattering, clicking noises that gnawed parasitically at Amy's guts.
Dear God, Amy thought.
"They're birds," she gasped.
She swallowed and cleared her throat, trying to sound normal despite the fact that she knew the words would come out all strangled anyway. They lodged in her gullet like a husk of dried pemmican.
"Blackbirds," she croaked at last. "Lots of 'em."
"I don't understand," Mimi said.
Daisy, freshly released from laundry room captivity, had trotted down the front steps and squatted to relieve herself in the front yard. She retreated to the doorway, ears perked up, her half-blind eyes upturned to the sky. A l
ow growl rumbled from someplace deep in her throat.
"Mimi, let's go inside," said Amy, not taking her eyes off of the dark creatures crowded in the trees.
She herded the dog and the teenager inside and locked the door behind them, jamming her hip against it to ensure the deadbolt set properly. She then reactivated the alarm, forcefully punching in the key code with her index finger.
"But Daddy's coming," Mimi said.
"Daddy knows the code," Amy said, turning on every single light she could find.
As the lights came on, and as Amy, Mimi, and Daisy were safely locked inside the house at Rose Dhu, Amy felt something vague and substantial relax inside her chest, like a knot untwisting.
It was a relief to be home.
Daisy leaned heavily against Amy's leg.
Mimi squatted on her haunches and held the old dog's broad head in her hands.
"Did you miss us?" she said, gazing into Daisy's cloudy, trusting eyes.
Daisy merely panted, drops of saliva pattering on the heart pine floors.
The ancient house itself seemed to welcome them in its own quiet way. It embraced them, folding them all into its thick walls. The planks of the foyer floor creaked in their familiar patterns, patterns so well-known to Amy that she could negotiate them in the dark, like a minefield. She loved them even as she loved the airy draftiness of the place, or the way the cold radiated through the windowpanes in winter.
Amy flicked on the rest of the outside floodlights. She gazed out into the night sky through one of the living room windows.
She could not see the blackbirds anymore, but she could feel them, crowded together so tightly that there was no space between them. Flexing their beaks and flapping their iridescent wings.
Waiting.
Amy just didn't know what they were waiting for.
"Mom?"
"Mimi?" Amy said, closing the blinds.
"I'm wiped out. I've got to sleep. You think that's okay?"
"Of course it is."
She extended her hands, clasping Mimi's slim fingers in her own, and pulled the girl to her.
"You're an amazing young woman, you know that?" Amy said.
She stroked her daughter's hair.
"I love you, Mom," Mimi said. Her voice was sandpaper-rough.
"I love you, too, hon."
They pulled apart, lingering for one final moment. "Some shit, huh?" Mimi said.
Amy shot her a look of reproach, but it faded in an instant. The two of them burst out laughing.
"Yes, Mimi. That was some serious shit."
Mimi trudged upstairs to her bedroom, heavy-legged, her eyes already at half-mast.
"Goodnight, Daisy," she called from the landing.
Daisy looked up the stairs at Mimi, then back at Amy, then back at Mimi. Her tail was wagging.
"Alright, you can go," Amy said.
Daisy happily trotted up the steps and rounded the corner at the top, disappearing into Mimi's room.
Amy wanted to wait up for Malcolm. Besides, she wanted some time to herself, just to enjoy being alive.
She looked for her cell phone to recharge it but realized it was gone. That was something she'd have to address tomorrow, she decided. No reason to wait. Life goes on, after all.
She went into the butler's pantry and opened the wine refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of ridiculously expensive Chardonnay, a gift from one of Malcolm's grateful patients. They'd been saving it for a special occasion.
She gazed at the label for a moment.
"What the hell," she said, pulling a wine glass from the cabinet.
She settled down into an overstuffed easy chair in the den and savored the wine, letting its cool dryness trickle over her tongue.
Amy wasn't sure when she dozed off. She had been awake and then she was not, just like that, as though she had been taken up by aliens and then dropped back into the den, unharmed and oblivious.
The wine glass was empty beside her on a table.
She looked up at the clock. It was after 8 P.M. Nearly 8:30, in fact.
Malcolm should have been home by now, she thought.
She picked up her glass and walked back into the butler's pantry. The bottle of Chardonnay was waiting for her, sweating profusely on the granite countertop.
"There, there, Mommy hasn't forgotten you," she said.
She poured another glass and wished that Malcolm would hurry up. She wanted to share this moment with him. They had their lives back.
She picked up the phone in the kitchen to call him.
The line was dead.
"What the hell?" she said.
She checked the connection and saw that it was intact. The power to the phone was on; she could see the little green LED glowing.
She went back into the den and checked the phone there, too.
It was dead as well.
It was then that the feeling came back—the unsettled dread that she had felt when they had seen the flocks of blackbirds outside. The feeling that something was not right.
She knew he was there before he spoke.
"Celebrating, Amy? Don't you think that's a bit premature?"
She didn't want to turn around. Didn't want to but knew she had to, had to face him, with his red eyes and pale skin glowing translucent in the half-light.
"Hello, Joel," she said, without turning around.
He clicked his tongue against his teeth.
"Come on, Amy. You know that's not my name."
She faced him at last.
The Shadow Man stood before her.
He was naked. Naked and malevolent, breathing softly, eyes all aglitter.
Grinning toothily.
He's awful, Amy thought, and a shudder rippled through her.
She could see the pale blue latticework of veins beneath his skin, the flicker of every muscle and sinew. His eyes, more red than she had remembered, glowed with a deep crimson light as if the very fires of hell burned within them. Then again, she had only seen him for a brief moment when he had attacked her before. That had seemed like a dream, a gauzy memory from someone else's life.
But this was no dream. This was stark, screaming reality.
"How did you get in here? I have the alarm on."
"You're joking, right? I mean, seriously. Alarms like yours are child's play to me. I could disarm this thing in my sleep."
He chuckled—a burbling sound, like mud boiling.
"Honey—you like that, that I called you 'honey'? I was here before you ever got home. I was watching when the lady cop drove away, leaving you two alone. I thought seriously about killing her, but I changed my mind. Too messy. Not enough time, anyway. So I just parked my ambulance in a strategic location and waltzed on into this fine, fine home once more."
The Shadow Man looked around the room, licking his lips with a quivering tongue. His right hand twitched.
"I once . . . I once saw a rat that was caught in a maze. There was a trap at the end of the maze and the rat kept heading towards it, unaware, death coming closer with every little rat step. Click! Click! Click!"
His fingers walked across the countertop and he chuckled to himself. The sound turned Amy's stomach.
The Shadow Man crooked a bony finger and motioned for her to come sit by him.
Amy did not move.
"Shhh!" he said, his finger to his lips, his eyes wide.
He raised his eyebrows.
"The rat approaches," he said.
Amy sighed. She could feel her breath leave her, could feel her heart skipping away in her chest.
She felt like crying, but would not.
Won't give him the satisfaction of that, she thought.
"Okay, I'll bite: Why are you here?" she asked, trying to suppress the subtle quaver in her voice.
She had known the answer to the question before she asked it.
"To finish what we started, my dear. I'm built like that. You start something, you finish it."
He smiled. There was blood in
his mouth, staining his teeth.
Perhaps it was the wine she had drunk, or her fatigue, or maybe she was just different now, having died once and come back from the grave. But when he spoke, the Shadow Man's voice seemed to come from inside her head. She felt it, his words driving into her skull, burrowing into the terrible places in her subconscious that she never dared go. His voice sank its vicious fangs into the very meat of her fears and settled in, curling up in her head like a snake.
The Shadow Man blinked. His right hand twitched again.
When he spoke next, his words were measured and cool, falling from his lips like ice cubes rattling out of a tray.
"It's simply this: I'm here to kill you," he said.
45
"Can't you drive any faster?" Malcolm said.
China looked over her shoulder, changed lanes and gunned past a rust-bucket Ford pickup lumbering down White Bluff Road.
"With all due respect, Dr. King, this is a 1999 Honda Civic. It only goes so fast. And I'm doing over seventy. That's pushing it to the red line as it is."
"I'm sorry. I'm just anxious."
He punched the speed dial on his iPhone again.
"The phone at the house keeps going to voicemail. Nobody's picking up."
"Maybe they're just sleeping." Malcolm didn't answer.
He called Billy again, as well, for perhaps the fourth time. He was tired of leaving voicemails for people, so when he didn't pick up, Malcolm ended the call.
"Dammit," he said under his breath.
"That Native American guy still not answering either?"
"His name's Billy. And nope, I'm not getting a thing. It's like the world has just taken off and left us."
"Maybe it's the Rapture," China said.
Malcolm glared at her.
"I'm joking," she said, shooting him a sheepish glance.
"I'm not in a joking mood," he said.
She swerved sharply to avoid a battered Chevy Impala pulling out of Food Lion, throwing Malcolm against the door.
"What the hell were you thinking?" China screamed at the guy in the Impala, who had turned left and was headed the opposite way, oblivious to the curses being hurled at him.
"He wasn't," Malcolm said.
China brushed her hair from her eyes and changed lanes again.
"What about texting Billy? Sometimes a text can get through when a call can't," she said.