Shadows 3

by Charles L. Grant

  “They chase people like the hound of the Baskervilles did. What do they do if they catch them?” Tommy was still interested.

  Joseph shrugged and closed the book. “It doesn’t say.”

  “I’ll bet they rip them up.” The considering tone in the childish voice made Alice frown. She did not care for the turn the conversation had taken.

  “That doesn’t sound very nice, Tommy,” she admonished him.

  “It’s okay if it’s a wicked person,” he argued. “Then it’s okay.”

  Alice let the subject drop and they walked to the heart of the village in the growing twilight. Birds sang in the hedges and wildflowers grew by the side of the road. Tommy seemed happy for a change—he had picked up a stick and was using it to tap out a rhythm on the road as he walked a few paces behind Alice and Joseph. But when Alice looked back, she caught him watching them with a measuring look and she remembered his expression when he saw Joseph kiss her. She linked an arm with Joseph’s protectively.

  It was not until after they had gone out to dinner, returned to the bed-and-breakfast house, and Alice had put Tommy to bed, that she realized that the jacket she had worn was gone. She tried to remember whether she had worn it on her way back from the church, and she seemed to remember dropping it on a chair by the door in the entry hall of the house, but it was not there. Joseph shrugged when she mentioned it, saying, “If you left it in the churchyard, it’ll still be there tomorrow.”

  “Maybe I dropped it in Tommy’s room. I’ll check.” For some reason, the loss disturbed her.

  Tommy’s room was empty. His clothes were gone and his pajamas lay in an untidy heap on the floor. The full moon flooded the room with light and suddenly she felt cold. The only place the boy would have gone was back to the graveyard. She remembered the black beast that had leaped from the shadow of the fence and she shivered.

  Joseph was already in bed when she returned to the room. She hesitated, then slipped on a sweater. He rolled over in bed to look at her. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

  She paused. If he were to know where she was going, he would insist on accompanying her. She realized that it was foolish to worry about the jealousy of a seven-year-old, foolish to hear the wild baying of a hound in the back of her mind. But the jacket was gone and Tommy was gone. And Tommy hated Joseph.

  “I’m still a little restless,” she said. “I thought I’d go out for a walk before bed.”

  The crickets that chirped in the hedges lining the road fell . silent when she passed. She walked quickly, clutching her sweater tightly around her against the chill night air.

  Tommy was like her, she thought as she walked. He had the capacity to hate. Joseph did not understand that—he thought the child would learn to accept him. But Alice had seen the look in Tommy’s eyes.

  She reached the churchyard and paused by the stone wall. The scent of roses seemed stronger in the darkness than it had in the day. Over the sound of the crickets, she heard another sound—like the click of toenails on flagstones. A cloud had covered the moon and the church and graveyard lay in darkness.

  “Tommy!” Alice called over the wall. “It’s time to come home.” The crickets were silenced by her voice and she paused, listening to a hush that breathed. She stepped through the gap in the stone wall and followed the flagstones toward the iron fence. The scent of roses became almost overpowering.

  A dark shadow separated itself from the darker shade by the fence, and she could dimly see a black beast with red-rimmed eyes, standing in her path. She froze in the darkness. Remembering advice that Paul had given her long ago, she spoke to the animal quietly and firmly. “I don’t know what the hell you are—dog or guardian spirit, but you won’t get my husband. I’ll protect him.”

  The beast growled—a deep-throated sound that rose and fell, rose and fell. The animal stepped forward and still she stood frozen, confident that the animal would not attack. She had seen Tommy playing with it in the graveyard.

  “I am your master’s mother, dog. You are making a mistake.”

  Then another shadow stepped out from the shade of the fence as the moon came out from behind the cloud. Tommy held in his arms Joseph’s jacket, which she had worn so often, the jacket that still carried the scent of her perfume. The moonlight shone on Tommy’s eager eyes and she knew that it was no mistake.

  Introduction

  This is the kind of story I was brought up on and still love-where clues and hints are little more than flickerings at the corner of one’s eye, where endings aren’t what they seem to be, and where people and shadows are not always defined as one or the other.

  ANT

  by Peter D. Pautz

  Autumn in the East is, as nowhere else, better called fall. The heat of August is long forgotten and remembered only as the last burst of life and sun. As leaves twist down upon themselves and fracture beneath the car tires, the everlasting gales of the tenth month hurl all into a frantic jumble of activity that can end only enshrouded in ice. Toil begins its time again, knowing it must pass through death at least once more, knowing again that this is the last.

  And the children watch everything fall around them.

  Ant among them.

  His spirits had been the first to go this time. Usually the bodies were first, falling around him like piles of squaw wood laid carelessly on end in the blustery gusts by the front door. He had learned quickly about the wood: kindling inside where it could be gotten at quickly, corded oak in the wood-bin on the porch to season. But now it wasn’t the fall of the wood or the leaves or the bodies that dabbed at the corners of his thoughts, irritatingly, incessantly prying with jagged nails at his pain. It was the fall of faith. He knew they wouldn’t come to watch the bodies. They never did.

  Not even when they promised. Like now.

  He wished for once he could see them green, fall.

  From where he sat on the low redwood porch, the long front yard fell away to a sweeping and gentle slope. In the months to come he would use it as a beginner’s run, swooshing and slicing the crystal powder with all the power and ferocity his ten-year-old frame could muster. Being the best, the fastest. And waiting the hardest for the holidays and their return. Finally, and again.

  He couldn’t count the trees before him, bordering the slope and the far field where the bodies would lay and stand and lay again. Poplars, elms, cypress, hemlocks. More pines and firs than the whole forest floor could take its bedding from. Their scents blended and wafted up to him, heavy even in the wind. Their colors speckled like a naked ear of Indian corn.

  Vaguely, just enough to rob his eyes and nostrils of the world before him, a door opened quietly in the cedar-shingled house at his back. The boards’ soft creakings carried the steps of a pair of well-cared-for work boots to his ear, but he fought the urge to look up. He did not want to see the smile, the understanding that he knew would be there. He thought for a moment if he didn’t move at all the steps would retreat, but they never did, they never did.

  “Use some company, Ant?” Greg Tammaris asked softly.

  He shrugged. Would it make a difference what he said? He didn’t think so. Greg sat next to him and looked out.

  “Sure is pretty. I can never really get over it myself.”

  Ant sighed to himself and shifted to look at him. He was a tall man, so tall he almost looked like a stack of folding chairs slumped in a corner of a room whenever he sat down. Light brown hair flickered against his recessed cheekbones and his eyes and mouth were guarded half shut against the chilly northeaster. He smiled and Ant returned the grin. Greg looked as he hoped he would someday: fleshed-out, strong, hair—anything other than the frail lifeless ebony it was now.

  “So, how you doing?” It was the way Greg began most of their conversations, hesitant, yet straining to be more than friendly.

  Ant shrugged again, and slowly rolled his gaze back over the carpet of colors before him. Its nap soon to change from green to white, its borders from yellow-red to stark brown. Soo
n, but not soon enough.

  A low huff passed through Greg’s nose, blowing away the hurt and slight disappointment he was probably feeling. “Anthony,” he began again, “I know how … bad you must feel, but you know that they just couldn’t get away to come back here just now. I know you understand—” Ant shut him off. He could do without the soft words and the understanding and the knowing. He didn’t feel “bad.” He was disappointed, hurt, angry. He wanted to run through the bodies, make them fall around him like sheets from a clothesline at the ripping wind that was himself. “Maybe they can—”

  They would fall hard, and still.

  Littering the field.

  The bodies. The bodies.

  Two more Sundays of bodies passed. And he saw them green, and lay upon the field. Lay and rise again. Waiting for the blue, to charge and put him upon the ground. It happened again and again. Green, green most of the time, but more and more blue.

  And then came the body that did not rise.

  Little men all in white huddled together into a knobbled mushroom, blue characters of place stitched on their backs and jersey fronts. Ant was calling signals.

  “Jet 36, on 2,” he said sharply, the way he called all his plays. A moan came from Donnie Ryerson on his right. But that was just too bad; this was business. Stretching forth his hands, he received all theirs and led their cry of “Break!” and the Grizzlies shot to their positions. As they settled into stance, Ant scanned right and left like Greg and Coach Tyler had taught him, but now, as more often than not, he searched the long stretched-out line of parents and friends on the sidelines—the bleachers a mocking gray bird cage of fallen bars behind them—instead of studying his own backfield. They could just pop in, he thought. They popped out often enough.

  Forcing his attention back to his men, he stomped up behind his center and cupped his hands beneath the boy’s rump.

  “Green ‘em down, Anthony,” someone on the left line yelled. He was glad it had worked out that way. If the guys had had to yell “Blue ‘em down,” he knew the older boys would have made fun of him something fierce. It was something he had heard the roughnecks in the higher grades say to each other, snarling it across the walks outside the school. (Or, once he had heard them saying it quietly, in a small group, talking about someone’s girl friend named Judy.)

  They had been falling around him all through the first half and his team was six points ahead. But in the third quarter, the blues had found him and he’d been sacked four times, and it was getting worse. The last three plays had all been blue. He knew it couldn’t go on much longer that way, and he promised himself that if this one was blue too he wouldn’t pass off the next play. He would take it himself. Whatever it was.

  Hunkering down behind his center once more, he eyed the defensive line.

  Blue.

  He could feel it. He could just feel it.

  “Damn,” he mumbled, then realizing he had said it too loud began the count off quickly. “Set. Hup-One! Hup-Two!”

  Everything went off smoothly. The ball hit his hands and was planted there, tight and secure. He backstepped three quick paces and spun. Donnie was there. Slamming the ball into his stomach, Ant curled in the opposite direction hoping to draw at least one of two chargers his way and off of his halfback.

  It felt good. A beautiful play.

  Two blitzers skimmed over his back—he could feel them brush harshly against his ribs—fighting clumsily to turn and pursue the real ball-carrier. Ant was on his knees between them waiting for the light curses he knew would follow. “Christ! Shit!” Field words. But they didn’t come, and the legs didn’t move from in front of him.

  Twisting, he came up on one knee and saw Donnie not five feet from him, bent double, holding his middle instead of the football. A flicker of gourd-brown caught his eye and disappeared quickly into a dive of bodies, all scurrying for possession. Both teams converged on the pile of midget madmen, thrusting hands and arms and legs into the mess, like greedy monkeys after a piece of fruit.

  A whistle blew and the referees arrived, pulling apart the players. One reached into the midst of the scattering bodies and plucked the ball from some vicarious handhold. Stepping away, he carefully placed his foot at the far left hashmark and pointed a flattened hand toward the other team’s goal. It was still the Grizzlies’ ball.

  Ant sighed heavily in relief. He knew he would carry most of the blame if they lost the game. Even if his teammates didn’t blame him, he would make sure to heap it all on himself. After all, he was the quarterback, it was his team. But those thoughts left him immediately as he stood. The sky seemed different. Rain? he thought. It didn’t look cloudy, just darker somehow. Like looking through a piece of smoked glass at an eclipse: purply, blue and—

  “Anthony,” the coach yelled from the sidelines, “move it! Come on. Huddle.”

  He staggered a little, not from dizziness. He didn’t know from what I’m afraid, he told himself, and felt a shiver at the thought. Then, slowly he shook it off. Afraid of what? A stupid football game? A little rain?

  It was ridiculous. “Huddle,” he cried, and felt the comforting circle of bodies press around him. But still something told him to be careful. He didn’t understand the sensation and promptly overruled it. Again he called, “Jet 36, on 2,” and broke the huddle before he remembered that he had wanted the ball this time, wanted it for himself. Not for Donnie. Donnie was his friend. But the sky …

  It was too late. He was already yelling for the ball, feeling it slap into his hands, into Donnie’s stomach. But before he could spin away, drawing tacklers, he saw them fly through the air. Arcing, slashing. Cleats.

  When Ant woke in his own room the bloody numbers on his night stand told him it was after midnight. Quickly he turned his head away, closing his eyes. Greg was in the living room, talking softly, his hill-toned voice easing through the closed door. Ant relaxed. He was very glad to know his friend—he never knew what else to call him, (certainly not Dad; no never Dad)—was close by, up and about should he be needed. Like this afternoon.

  Now that he was awake his eyes no longer carved out the grisly scene behind the lids. Instead, consciousness brought back complete memory and sensation: Donnie’s screams as he was flipped onto his back; long flashing scythe-sweeps, silver, then red, then white in the air; warm and sticky smatterings on his face and the backs of his hands, liquid and half liquid; the smell of rust pulsing away in his nostrils. Human rust.

  And, somehow, the taste of it.

  Ant cried. It burst sharp and hoarse from his mouth. Like the rain of blood and gristle from Donnie’s jaw and throat. (The rain he should have feared.) Other memories faded through annihilation and were gone: Rising; Greg bent over a shattered little man in white; cries for a doctor, for help; hands working under a tiny chin, but not knowing what to do. And finally he recalled his own screams, the doctor over him with a needle. Remembered and forgot. Everything.

  Except Donnie. And the sky.

  In the moment oblivion took to guard his mind, the door slammed open and he ceased in mid-wail. She stood there, and behind her—

  The room shriveled so that she was on his bed without seeming to have moved. Her arms clamped around him clumsily, straitjacketing him beneath the covers. She rolled him attempting to comfort, flapping his limp form up and down lengthwise as if square sheeting an air mattress. Crooned to him. And he did not move. Reaction caught in his throat and in his heart. He did not know how to respond.

  Mothered.

  The next he knew the night was gone. Ant was alone in his room. The stark, bright sunlight shining outside the straight columns of heavy curtains surrounding the window told him it was well into morning. So subtle it took him several moments to notice it, a sweet and flowery scent pervaded the bedroom. As his mind took hold of the fragrance and accepted its reality, he bolted from the bed, without glancing again at his clock, and raced to the closed door that led into the large living room.

  He threw the heavy oaken door
open, letting it bang sharply against the wall. “Mom!” he cried. A small scraping sound came from beyond the ell of the room, from the kitchen. Before she could say a single word, he was running, barely avoiding collisions with the low, darkwood furniture. Rounding the corner he stopped suddenly and stared at the woman standing in the doorway. For a second his only expectation was shattered. Each time he saw her she was smaller, with each passing of months her chin became more level, her shoulders less stooped as she bent to speak to him. But this time she was completely shrunken!

  He gasped. Had she been sick? Had she been dying and been afraid to tell him? No, that couldn’t be it, he told himself. She looked too good. Beautiful, he corrected. Her hair was dark this time, almost black as a crow’s feathers, but fluffy instead of stiff. Her make-up was on with a lighter hand than he had ever seen before, yet the crystal-blue of her eyes burst forth brighter than ever. She was dressed the way he liked her: snug dungarees and checked flannel shirt. Barefoot.

  Quickly she stepped from between the massive beams of the doorjamb and instantly her tiny form took on some mass. But not much; it had been too long a time. Able to move again he flew toward her and they leapt into each other’s arms.

  “Oh, Ant darling,” she whispered into his hair. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Mom,” he said again. “Mom, I’ve missed you.” He hugged her tighter once more, rubbing his face into the softness of her unheld breasts, and reluctantly stepped back to let her look at him. Her hands still gripped at his shoulders.

  The excitement was exploding within him, pushing out words in a mad rush to beat the time clock he knew was wasting away the hours somewhere: “When did you get here? Greg said that you wouldn’t be able to get here until maybe Christmas. How long can—”