Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  When she rented this studio apartment, the very first thing she did was remove the four flat wooden boards serving as shelves within the linen closet. She swept the square of wooden floor at the bottom and wiped the corners of cobwebs and dust. A few short steps from her bedroom, from the bathroom and from the kitchen, she could reach this exit at a moment’s notice.

  Even with the three walls bare, it wasn’t a large space. Only one other person could fit inside the closet with her, if necessary, and even then, it would be a negotiation of elbows and angles. Her shoulder blades shifted against the bare wall as she tried to focus on her target. She pictured him in her mind.

  The cowboy coat he favored. His shaved head. The three vertical cuts in his eyebrow made by a razor. A prison tattoo of a devil fucking a woman from behind on his bicep.

  She fed her intuition these markers, letting her compass zone in on the man she wanted.

  Then she saw him, in her mind first, as the compass swirled inside her, orienting herself appropriately.

  Castle marched down a nighttime street with his arm around a girl’s waist. He had a Marlboro between his lips. And a white ten-gallon hat with a brown and gray pheasant feather protruding from one side of the cap. A gold ring on each of his pinkies, one bearing the crest of the Martinelli family. An ornate capital M and two dragons chasing one another head-to-tail around the letter. Ahead of the man was a bright flashing sign for a bar Lou recognized.

  Downtown Austin then. Same time zone, so no problem there. Much hotter than St. Louis, but she didn’t want to step out of the closet and change. She wasn’t going to stay in the city any longer than she had to. She held the image of him in her mind as the pull intensified, the wire on her imaginary compass vibrating stronger.

  She’d learned how to do this, strengthen the bond between herself and her prey before slipping. By twenty-four, her control had improved. She traveled with intention now. She could step into the full darkness and remain right where she was for as long as she needed. That had not been the case when she was a child. As a child, she was prey to the darkness. Whenever it wanted her, it could open its fanged mouth and swallow her whole. Sleeping at night was always a risk when the world was darkest and her mind most off guard. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d laid down in her bed, safe in her aunt’s Chicago apartment, only to wake up halfway across the world.

  It was the same for water. She would never be like her mother, who’d enjoyed sliding into a hot bath with a book and a glass of wine.

  She found this new development in her gift, the most useful advancement. Slipping blind had huge risks. No one knew what waited in the dark better than she did.

  The girl at Jimmy Castle’s side was a brunette in a tight, short skirt and five-inch heels. The night air in Austin was humid as hell and sweat had already begun to form at the back of Castle’s neck. Even though she stood in a pitch-black box 800 miles away, Lou could smell his thick cologne and the cigarette smoke haloing his jaunty hat.

  When her skin and limbs felt like they were on fire, she let go and slipped.

  The hum of her apartment’s refrigerator and whirling A/C were exchanged for the blast of car horns and a wall of heat. It felt like someone had thrown a blanket over her head and she was trying to breathe through its tightly meshed fibers. She stepped out from behind a dumpster, wrinkling her nose at the smell of garbage rotting in the heat. A cat hissed at her sudden intrusion, back arching. She hissed back, and it ran.

  It was cooler in the alley than in the main drag, all lit up with its cars and stoplights and people on their phones. Little screens like sentient eyes burning in the dark. People were laughing too loud. Talking too loud. Trying to hear one another over the din of the throbbing traffic. Lou’s eyes slid over the bodies, over the collective slithering movement until she found her target.

  And there he was.

  Lou leaned against the wall of a building and pretended to scroll through her own phone. It was turned off, but no one was looking closely. She stole glances at her target when he wasn’t looking.

  Castle stood on a corner with his arm around the brunette Lou’d seen in her mind first. Now she took in the details her mind’s eye had missed. Penciled eyebrows. A mole on the cheek. The way she grinned at Jimmy over her cupped hands as she lit herself a cigarette. Lou had learned not to overlook or dismiss the girls she saw with her targets.

  If she had to track someone in the daytime or slipped only to find herself in broad daylight, she’d have to rely on other skills to track her prey. And following their girls always proved easier. In her experience, Lou found that no one kept track of men better than their women.

  Jimmy fist-bumped another man on the sidewalk before turning toward the entrance of the building she leaned against. A green awning reminding her of the Café du Monde illuminated the sidewalk and a doorman checking IDs. He grinned at Jimmy and slapped him a high five. More machismo bullshit. Then he waved Castle’s group inside, bypassing the long line waiting to get into the club. A girl near the back groaned.

  Lou turned and walked back down the alley, past the reeking garbage. She pressed herself into the deepest corner between the two buildings, shrouding herself in darkness. A heartbeat later, she was standing in a closet, listening to the hard dhump dhump dhump dhump of the club’s bass.

  The door flew open, and Lou barely had a moment to register the stockroom surrounding her.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” a bartender in a white shirt and black vest hissed.

  Lou faked a slur. “Where’s the fucking bathroom?”

  The bartender grabbed her by the arm and steered her out of the closet. She resisted the urge to break all his fingers. Hurting him would draw attention to herself, and she worked best when no one noticed her. No one to remember her. No one with questions that could lead back to her.

  Still holding her elbow, the bartender spun her toward the mouth of the hallway. The music was louder, and up ahead laser lights in purple, pink, and neon green shot through the air. “Go back to the dance floor then hook a right. Take the other hallway, and you’ll find the bathrooms.”

  He slapped her on the ass and pushed Lou toward the dance floor.

  She might murder him after all.

  She slid through the dark searching for Jimmy. Her internal compass told her he was somewhere near the dance floor, on its outer fringes. She found him in a velvet booth with four girls and three men. They were doing shots and laughing like the world was ending.

  Not the best place to grab him, but Lou was patient. She ordered a drink. She paid cash.

  She sipped her virgin daiquiri and kept an eye on the man in the booth with his friends. His girls. Lou didn’t mind being in the clubs. They were dark. And darkness was her element. But there was also a vibrancy to this atmosphere that she could appreciate. It wasn’t unlike the vibrancy she felt in her little closet back home in St. Louis, or when she slipped through the thick shadows clinging to doors and buildings, or even a thick knot of trees.

  No one needed to tell her the darkness was alive.

  Anyone who’d spent a moment standing in a dark room knew. They could feel the energy along the back of their neck. Their pulse rose. Some primal part of them sensed creatures lurking just on the other side. Most people didn’t slip through the thin membrane as she did, but they knew what was there.

  Castle was on the move. The girls were scooting out in their tight skirts so he could stand. He had another cigarette between his lips even though smoking was forbidden in this club and all other watering holes from Boston to Seattle.

  She watched him over the sparkling rim of her daiquiri as he exited the booth and moved toward the bathrooms, lit cigarette bobbing in the low light. The music thrummed in her chest as she watched him go. The crushed ice against her lips cooled her.

  As soon as he ducked into the hallway, she set her daiquiri down and glanced around the room for any eyes trained on her. The club was full of convulsing bodies, to
o drunk or high to be capable of coordination. No one watched her.

  She was only another face in the crowd, and not even a very memorable one considering the painted peacocks with iridescent blue eye shadow and shimmery shirts on the dance floor. She cut through the crowd easily. Behind a booth much like the one Castle had vacated, she found a thin spot in thick shadow and slipped through. Then her hands were on the back of a stall door.

  It was a single-room employee bathroom. Why would Castle bother to wait in the piss lines like everyone else?

  The light flicked on as Castle entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

  Castle’s slurring voice hummed out of tune. He swayed before the porcelain, and after one precarious lean, his arm shot out and grabbed at the concrete wall to steady himself.

  “Oops,” he looked down at his pee-splattered boot.

  Lou watched him through the gap between the stall walls. Castle’s back was to her as he shook his dick over the basin. She made her move.

  She grabbed him and twisted his arm behind his back, immobilizing him.

  He wailed and fought her hold, throwing a blind elbow strike which she ducked easily, given the difference in their heights and his sluggish movements. Fortunately, she only needed to hold onto him for a heartbeat. She hit the light switch on the wall with one quick swipe of her hand and pulled him through the dark.

  Once the fresh air hit her, she stopped clinging to Castle and let him tumble to the grassy knoll at the edge of the lake.

  His drunk ass hit the dirt, and he cried out.

  The crickets fell silent at having their concert interrupted. The other night sounds swelled, oblivious to their intrusion. So far into the wilderness, scuffles happened all night long. Beasts tearing apart one another wasn’t newsworthy. So the night went on.

  An owl hooted. A fish jumped up before belly flopping the surface of the water. Something on the opposite shore slid into the water, a silver trail cutting the surface behind it. Ducks maybe. She wasn’t sure. Surprisingly, despite all her gifts, Lou’s night vision was unremarkable.

  She loved this place. A small placid lake in the Alaskan wilderness. The evergreens thick with snow. A caribou on the opposite edge darted away at their intrusion, but otherwise, perfect silence. Perfect stillness as snow fell from the sky. Standing in this snowy world of eternal night calmed her in a way no other place on Earth could.

  And not only because it was the entrance to her dumping ground.

  When she killed, she brought them here, got them into the freezing waters and slipped to La Loon. They were miles from anything. Perfectly secluded, in a world that was night for months on end.

  It calmed her every time.

  Castle pulled himself to his feet, clawing at the small of his back.

  “Looking for this?” Lou asked, pointing his gun at him. A night bird cawed.

  Castle stopped slapping his lower back, and his jaw fell open. “Oh fuck. It’s you.”

  She stopped

  He finally pulled up his pants. “You’re Konstantine’s bitch.”

  She grimaced. “I’m no one’s bitch.”

  “No, you’re her. I’ve seen the fucking pictures. I thought he was jumping at shadows and shit but look at you.” He waved a hand up and down her body. “Oh fuck, are you going to kill me?”

  She should’ve said yes. That was her intention. But she was hung up on the words fucking pictures.

  “God, I’m too high for this right now.” He ran his hands over his face. Then he dropped down by the lake and started splashing water on his face. His white cowboy hat with the fancy plume fell off his head and into the water. He fished it out and shook water off it before laying it aside. A strange expression seized his face. He was going to puke.

  She lowered the gun. This was new. Usually, when she came across a hired hand from the Martinelli drug ring, it had a predictable pattern. It began with threats.

  There was the name calling.

  The threat to kill off her family.

  Too late, she’d said. You’ve already killed them. I’m here to return the favor.

  Or some variation. It was all pretty much the same. These men weren’t great conversationalists, with their limited vocabularies.

  When they found her unmoved, they tried to strike first. Then she killed them and shoved their bodies and all the evidence into the water.

  The end.

  No one had ever recognized her before. Mentioned pictures before. Collapsed to their knees and started vomiting before the first threat was even made.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. What did I ever do to you?” He sounded as though he would cry.

  Lou lowered the gun even more. She kept the pistol cupped in her hands, ready to raise and shoot at any moment. She thought the best way to proceed in an uncertain situation was to check her facts.

  “You’re one of Martinelli’s mules.”

  “What does that got to do with you?”

  “The Martinellis are dead, but you’re still selling. Why?”

  He turned and heaved into the lake again. When he stopped vomiting, he added, “Like you said, I’m a mule. It’s what I do. I gotta pay bills, don’t I?”

  “I don’t like drugs.”

  “Fuck, then don’t do them!” he said with a wild shrug. “I never held you down and forced you, did I?”

  “Good point.” Lou forced a smile. “I’ll cut you a deal.”

  The man begged. Literally begged on his hands and knees. Hands clasped.

  “You stop muling, and I won’t kill you.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in the moonlight.

  “You don’t like my deal, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy ran his hands down the front of his pants. “Come on, man. Be reasonable.”

  She pistol-whipped him.

  Castle touched two fingers to his bloody cheek. It swelled a dark purple in the moonlight. “If I quit I’m as good as dead. Konstantine will cut off my balls and stuff them up my ass.”

  “Ah, so that’s the real reason. You have a new boss.” Lou grinned. Why did pain compliance work so well? Hurt them a little, and they spilled their guts. “So who is he?”

  Her pulse leapt at the idea of a bigger fish. A worthier opponent.

  His bald head gleamed in the moonlight. His hat lay against one knee, and he studied it intensely. He said nothing.

  Okay. Crime lords were all the same to Lou anyway. “He’s another roach that’ll run under the fridge when the light comes on. I’ll get to him.”

  Castle’s head snapped up. “He ain’t no roach. He’s Martinelli.”

  She raised her gun and shoved it between his eyes. “There are no Martinellis. I killed every last one.”

  “Missed one. And the things I’ve heard about him, you wouldn’t believe it. Truly fucked up shit.”

  “And he has pictures of me?”

  Castle tugged the damp hat back onto his head. “He sent them around. I thought it was a story to keep all the good little mules in line. But here you are, and you look like your fucking pictures.”

  Keep the good little mules in line.

  Because they hadn’t been in line. Lou saw the infighting herself. But she thought the chaos was the result of her murdering everyone in charge. She’d cut off the thumb holding them down, and now every dealer with an ounce of ambition was vying to be on top.

  Of course, this Konstantine would have to be a bloody bastard. He’d never re-establish the pecking order or the fist of power his family had built with soft tactics. The clans and other crime families would eat him alive.

  Alive. There was at least one more Martinelli alive. She couldn’t help but smile. Grin like it was Christmas morning and she’d found a present under the tree, wrapped and ready for her. Before she could stop herself, she laughed.

  “Get up,” she said.

  “Oh come on.” Castle pulled himself to his feet. The sight of her jubilation intensified his horror. “Please don’t fucking kill me. You want money? I’v
e got—” His voice broke, and his face screwed up like he was going to burst into tears.

  “Don’t cry. It pisses me off,” she said.

  “Please.”

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “You’re not?” Castle’s face lit up.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “No, no!” he begged. “I’m not ready to die.”

  “Everyone dies, Castle.” She stepped into the shadow of the tree and slipped, leaving Castle with wide, glassy eyes.

  She didn’t go far. Across the way, she peered from beneath a Sitka pine. He turned a circle, searching. He went to the tree where she’d been and looked beneath it as if expecting to find her there.

  When he seemed satisfied that she had left, he lifted his hat and ran a hand over his gleaming, bald head again, before walking south, away from the moon-filled water.

  She wasn’t going to let him go far.

  If he kept wandering his current direction, he wouldn’t last two days. There was nothing but Alaskan wilderness that way.

  And this place was sacred to her.

  She loved it more than any place on Earth. It had taken her a long time to find one so perfect. Its silence. Its eternal night. The magic way the lake did not freeze with more than a thin layer of ice, no matter how cold it got. It told her the dark waters underneath were deep.

  She wouldn’t let him ruin this place for her.

  She slipped through the trees, staying on his heels as he navigated the forest. Coyotes yipped nearby, catching her scent and no doubt Castle’s. It didn’t matter. As soon as he passed beneath the next shady limb, she was going to grab him.

  The arm of a mighty fir tree stretched overhead. As soon as the shadow passed over Castle’s body, she caught him. He yelped, as expected. And he was still howling when she dropped him on the sidewalk beside the downtown alley.

  She ducked out of sight before he could turn and look for her.

  Let him think she’s a ghost. A boogeyman.

  Power was only powerful when no one knew how much you had. It was better if they believed her invincible. She was in trouble if they realized how many limitations she had.