Shadow People

by James Swain

  “There you are.”

  He released the railing and spun around. Liza came toward him wearing stone-washed jeans and a wool sweater, looking as radiant as the day he’d first laid eyes on her.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Because this is where you come when you’re in the dumps. Did you get my texts?”

  He took out his Droid and saw the message icon flashing in the upper corner of the screen. Had his cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he’d not noticed? That was no excuse, and he said, “I haven’t been myself today. What happened to Sierra and his friend?”

  “They left right after you did.” Liza saw something she didn’t like, and placed her hand beneath his chin so she could stare fully into his eyes. “You look despondent. Please tell me what’s going on. I want to help.”

  Where to begin? Start by how you feel and take it from there. “I used to think that the day my parents died was the worst day of my life. I was wrong. Today is the worst day of my life.”

  “Because of what Dr. Sierra and Hunsinger told you this morning.”

  “That was just the beginning.”

  He edged up to the railing and resumed looking at the river. Liza clasped his hand and stood beside him. They shared the same view, but he doubted they were seeing the same things, and he found himself wishing that Liza could read minds, for he would have given anything not to repeat the things that Max had told him.

  “Sierra and Hunsinger were the tip of the iceberg. I killed eight different people when I was a little kid.”

  “Oh, my God, Peter. Are you sure?”

  “Max confirmed it. He saw me strangling a mugger the night my parents died. Said the guy deserved it, not that it made me feel any better.”

  “Who were the others?”

  “Two of them were assassins trying to do away with my parents; the other six came after my parents died. My demon did a ‘Death Wish’ on all the bad guys roaming the city that night.”

  “So you only killed bad people. Well, I guess that’s some consolation. Isn’t it?”

  When confronted by the forces of evil, most people turned away, or made excuses, or tried to ignore the facts staring them in the face. It was how they coped with evil in its purest form, and Liza was no exception. He fell silent.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  He struggled to reply. In the back of his mind he saw himself taking the plunge into the river and emerging a different person, or not. That was one way out.

  “I remember the first time you brought me here,” she said. “We had just started dating, and you took me out to dinner, and then brought me here. We stood right in this spot, and you explained to me that there were sixteen bridges that connected the island of Manhattan to the different boroughs, and then you named them. There was the Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, and I can’t remember the others. Then you told me how you grew up believing the bridges were anchors that kept the city from floating away. Remember?”

  He nodded.

  “Is that why you came here? Because you feel like you’re floating away?”

  It was as good an analogy as Peter could think of, and he nodded again.

  “Are you afraid your demon will come out again, and go on a rampage?”

  Growing up, his parents and later his parents’ friends had taught him to control his anger, and it allowed him to control the demon as well. So far, he’d been able to keep the monster under control, but who knew what the future held?

  “That’s part of it,” he said.

  “So tell me the rest. Please, Peter, I want to know. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “I lost my dream. I’ve always known I was different. I talked to my mother about it, and she told me not to worry. She told me that one day I’d grow up, and everything would work out. I took that to mean that when I became an adult, I’d meet a special person, get married, have a couple of kids, and lead a normal life. I’d get to shed being a psychic just like a soldier gets out of the army, you know? Sure, I’d still have gifts, but I wouldn’t have to use them unless I wanted to. That was my dream, and I’ve held on to it for all this time. But now I know that isn’t true. This evil inside of me will always be there, and I’ll always need to keep a lid on it. Because if I don’t, it will come out, and there will literally be hell to pay. I won’t get to retire, ever. I’m stuck being who I am.”

  “But I love who you are,” Liza said.

  “What about the demon? Do you love him as well?”

  “I love you, warts and all.”

  He laughed silently to himself. He had a lot more than warts to deal with.

  “We can deal with this,” Liza said. “We’ll work on it day by day, just like other couples that are having problems. We just have to believe in each other, that’s all. Isn’t that what your parents did?” She glanced at her watch and her eyes grew wide. “Oh, my God, look at the time. We’ve got a show in a few hours. Come on!”

  Liza grabbed his hand. She was not giving up on him. That was good, because Peter didn’t see how he could deal with this by himself. He stole a final glance at the river, the idea of jumping not far from his thoughts.

  Together, they ran across the bridge.

  42

  Milly was telling fortunes for three wealthy widows in her apartment when her cell phone rang. It had been Holly’s idea to buy her a ringtone, and the recorded cat’s meow sounded like the poor animal was being mutilated.

  “So sorry.” Milly muted the phone without bothering to check caller ID. Cell phones were like traffic lights. Necessary, but terribly annoying. “Now, where were we?”

  The widows sat at a round table draped in black felt covered in astrological signs in the center of Milly’s living room. Every Tuesday at five o’clock, they assembled in Milly’s apartment, where they drank tea, ate cookies, and had their futures told. The widows paid Milly enough money to maintain a lifestyle that most psychics only dreamed about.

  “Who’d like to go first?” Milly asked.

  “Let me start,” the widow Miller said. “I want to know what’s going to happen with my oldest son. He’s been causing me all sorts of trouble lately.”

  “I see. Please give me your cup of tea and we’ll begin.”

  The cup was passed across the table. Milly swirled the remaining liquid so the tea leaves were distributed, drained the liquid onto a paper napkin, then gazed into the cup. The key to reading tea leaves was the ability to interpret the symbols suggested by the leaves, of which there were over a hundred, each with different meanings. If the leaves looked like a stone, it meant there was work to be done. If they resembled a house, it meant that prosperity was in the future, while a mountain meant an arduous journey was ahead.

  The symbol in the widow’s cup was a snake, a bad sign. But Milly wasn’t going to tell her guest that. Bad news was bad for business. Instead, she said, “Your son will continue to make questionable choices. He means well, but his decisions do not always reflect this.”

  “Will he ever get a real job?” the widow asked.

  Snakes did not work. They hung around all day, sleeping, and were the laziest of creatures. The widow’s son was no different.

  “I don’t see a job in his immediate future,” Milly replied truthfully.

  “Someday?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Can you be more specific? He’s thirty years old and I’m still supporting him!”

  Milly studied the leaves some more. The snake appeared to be well fed. The widow’s son wasn’t going to leave home until his mother stopped babying him. “Your son has the potential to do many useful things with his life. Whether or not he does is up to you.”

  “Up to me? So what do I do?”

  “Take a long trip. I hear a cruise to Alaska is nice this time of year.”

  “Seriously? What about my son? Should I take him along?”

  “Leave him behind.”

  “But I’v
e never done that before. Will he be all right?”

  Milly again consulted the leaves. The snake had sprouted wings and resembled a butterfly, a symbol of growth and change. “He’ll be fine,” she assured her.

  A telephone rang in the study down the hall. Milly’s home number was unlisted, and hardly everyone ever called her.

  “Did you need to get that?” the widow asked.

  “They can leave a message,” Milly replied.

  The phone continued to ring. Like most witches, Milly was a private person, and hated intrusions. An annoying telemarketing firm had found out the hard way, and she’d cast a spell over them when they wouldn’t stop harassing her. Only after they’d gone out of business had the company’s operators gotten their voices back.

  The phone would not stop ringing.

  “Let me get that,” Milly said. “Please, help yourselves to more tea.”

  She went to her study to take the call. She’d already decided that her caller would wake up tomorrow with an ugly mole on their nose with black hairs sprouting out of it. That would make them think twice about calling her again. She snatched up the receiver.

  “Who is this, and what do you want?” she demanded.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Adams, this is Joe, the building’s head of security,” a man’s deep voice said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but you have a visitor.”

  “I’m busy, Joe,” she said icily.

  “I know you are, Ms. Adams. I told your visitor that you had guests and were not to be disturbed, but she insisted that I ring you.”

  Joe was a decent fellow, and always helped her bring in her groceries. Milly quickly undid the spell that she’d just cast over him, then reminded herself to look at Joe’s nose tomorrow morning to be sure he was all right.

  “Does this visitor have a name?” Milly asked.

  “It’s your niece, Holly.”

  So that was who’d called her cell phone. And when Milly hadn’t answered, Holly had rushed over to see her. Something told Milly this was about Peter, and could wait.

  “Tell her that I’m busy, and will call her later,” Milly said.

  “She says it’s a matter of life and death, and that she must see you now,” Joe said.

  “Really. Well, I guess you’d better send her right up.”

  “Will do.”

  Milly hung up the phone. This sounded serious. She returned to the living room to check on her guests. Their teacups were full, their conversation light and pleasant.

  “I’ll just be a few more minutes,” she promised them.

  * * *

  A witch’s life was filled with drama and suspense. It was part of the job description, and there was no getting around it. A light tapping on the door announced Holly’s arrival. Milly ushered her niece into the foyer with a finger to her lips and shut the door behind her.

  “There are clients in the living room. What’s wrong?”

  Holly pulled the wool cap from her head and shook out her hair. Her cheeks were without color, her eyes glassy from crying. She struggled for a proper reply.

  “This is about Peter, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you’ve been scrying on the poor boy again. I see it clearly in your face. You must leave Peter alone!”

  “But I can’t,” Holly said, the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Peter wants to kill himself.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “He nearly jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon. I was scrying on him, and I saw the whole thing. He would have done it, but his girlfriend Liza came to the rescue. I’m so worried about him, Aunt Milly.”

  “Lower your voice,” Milly said, glancing at the living room. “Tell me something. Why do you assume Peter was going to jump? He might have just been out for an afternoon walk.”

  “Peter gets depressed sometimes. He wants his life to be different. Sometimes he can’t handle it. He told me once that he imagined himself jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, and coming out of the water a different person. I told him that if he jumped off the bridge, he’d surely die. He said, ‘If that’s what it takes…’ and his voice trailed off.”

  Milly squeezed her niece’s arm. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

  “Peter swore me to secrecy.”

  “You still should have told me. I would have talked to him.”

  “It won’t make it any better. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  Milly wanted to grab her niece by the shoulders, and shake some common sense into her. Milly understood who Peter was, and what he was, better than anyone else, except maybe Max. If anyone could talk the boy off a ledge, it was her. Not that she could convince Holly of that.

  “My powers of persuasion are far greater than yours,” Milly said. “I will go see Peter tomorrow, and talk some sense into him. He’ll listen to me.”

  Holly shook her head and stared at the floor. A tiny sob escaped her lips. “It’s too late. Max told Peter about some horrible things he did when he was a little boy. I heard the whole thing. Peter ran out of the restaurant with the most horrible expression on his face.”

  “You mean Max told Peter about the killings,” Milly said matter-of-factly.

  “You know about them?”

  “Of course I know about them. Come on, dear girl, I helped raise Peter.” A noise from the other room caught Milly’s ear; her guests were growing restless. If she wasn’t careful, the subtle spell she’d cast over them would evaporate like a puff of smoke, and they’d seek out another psychic in the city to look into their futures and soothe their fears. “I must get back to my guests. Come back later, and we’ll go have dinner and talk this through some more.”

  Holly shook her head, still miserable.

  “What is it now?” her aunt said stiffly.

  “Peter’s going to do harm to himself. I can feel it in my bones,” Holly declared.

  A feeling in the bones was the window to a witch’s soul, and could not be denied.

  “And what do you propose we do?” Milly asked.

  “We must protect Peter,” Holly said.

  Her niece didn’t understand. Milly didn’t have the time or the patience to explain it to her. Holly would have to learn on her own about Peter, just as Milly had done. She opened the front door and gently but firmly pushed her niece into the hall. Nearly fifty years separated them in age, but sometimes it felt more like hundreds, the different between them was so great.

  “What are you doing?” Holly said, sounding hurt.

  “Showing you out, my dear.”

  “But why—what have I done?”

  “You don’t understand what’s going on. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have raced across town, and barged in on me like this.”

  A hurt look crossed Holly’s face. “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me.”

  Milly stuck her head through the open door. “You and I were not put on this earth to protect Peter. Peter was put here to protect us. Now go home. I’ll call you later.”

  Holly looked stunned, the words slow to sink in. Milly shut the door firmly in her niece’s face, and returned to her guests in the living room.

  PART IV

  DANTE

  43

  “Call her,” Ray said.

  Early Wednesday morning, the sun was barely up. Munns stared at the cell phone lying on his kitchen table. It was a clamshell Motorola, ancient by today’s standards. He would have bought a newer model if he’d had friends to talk to. But Munns had no friends. Few serial killers did.

  “Come on, call her,” Ray implored him. “You need to set this thing up.”

  Munns lifted his eyes to stare at the tattoo artist leaning against the sink. He didn’t like the tone of Ray’s voice, or that Ray had driven to Munns’s house so early in the morning, and banged on his front door like an irate bill collector.

  “It already is set up,” Munns said irritably. “Rachael is coming out on the train Friday night. If I call her now and tell her to come early, she’ll get suspicious and stop t
rusting me.”

  “You’re not going to do it? Not even for me?”

  “Nope, not even for you.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  Munns’s silence was his answer. He knew how to draw victims into his web, and did not appreciate Ray’s interference into the one thing he did rather well.

  Ray pulled up a chair and sat backward in it. Whenever he could, he liked to show off the demonic-inspired tattoos that covered his arms. Like wild reptiles moving across the jungle floor, they slithered across his skin in perfect synchronicity. “I had a dream last night. Rachael came out on the Friday night train, and she had a pair of detectives with her. Something happened on Friday morning that made her suspicious, and she decided to call the cops.”

  “You saw this in your dream,” Munns said.

  “I sure as hell did. The detectives busted you and searched your car,” Ray said, not missing a beat. “They found rope and handcuffs and a bottle of chloroform. Then they came here, and tore your house apart. They found your trophy collection of clothing and jewelry of the women you’ve killed. They threw your ass in the county lockup, and the judge refused to grant you bail. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Munns shuddered, and drew his bathrobe tightly around him. When a judge didn’t grant bail, it meant the system thought you were guilty, and was not going to let you back into society no matter how fancy your lawyer was.

  “I know,” Munns whispered.

  “Then call Rachael right now, and get her to come out on the train tonight. You know how to talk to women. You told me so yourself.”

  “But why tonight? Why so soon?”

  “Because she still isn’t suspicious. I saw that in my dream, too.”

  Munns understood the power of dreams. He’d started having them right after Ray had stamped the shimmering silver tattoo on his neck. They’d given him glimpses into the future, and he’d watched himself kill several of his victims before it had actually happened. He’d seen these dreams as gifts, for it had allowed him to watch himself and hone his skills. But they had not come without a price. Each time he’d had one, he’d awakened in sweat-soaked sheets and he knew that he had ceded another chunk of his soul to the Devil.