We Walk in Darkness

by Bill Hiatt

  And I had been running from shadows! Clearly they were the least of my worries.

  Chapter 3: Fighting Shadows (Lucas)

  Looking at the kitchen clock in my vision and comparing it to the glowing face of my alarm in my room, I realized that this vision, in contrast to my earlier ones, was of the present. If I wanted to, I could go downstairs and join right in, demanding to know who Avó really was and what the truth was that Mom had kept from me.

  Then again, the impostor Avó had drugged Dad. What if she was dangerous?

  Great! First running from shadows, and now worrying whether I could take my impostor grandmother.

  At the moment, I had on boxers, hardly the right attire for a conversation with two women. I quickly got into tomorrow’s school clothes and moved as quietly as I could down the hall, and then down the stairs. Their muffled voices, quiet but intense, came from the kitchen. I could have made a run for the front door, but there was one thing I knew for sure. Crazy as the circumstances were, Mom was still Mom—at least, I hoped she was. After a moment’s hesitation I hung a right and walked straight into the kitchen.

  The two women could hardly have been more surprised, but they covered well.

  “Lucas, couldn’t you sleep?” asked Mom. “Do you want some warm milk or something?”

  “What I want,” I said, pulling out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sitting in it, “is the truth.”

  Avó played it cool, but Mom paled immediately. “I…I don’t know what you mean. Truth?”

  “I heard you guys talking,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. Turning to Avó, I said, “I know you aren’t my grandmother.” Turning back to Mom, I continued, “I know you’ve been keeping a secret from me.”

  “I was going to tell you as soon as you turned eighteen,” said Mom, looking back and forth between me and Avó as if she were trapped between us.

  “The proverbial cat is out of the bag…and doing the samba,” observed Avó in an incongruously upbeat tone. “You may as well tell him now. Perhaps knowing will help him accept what must be done.”

  Far from picking up the suggestion, Mom stared at Avó as if my pretend grandmother had just shot her through the heart.

  Looking exasperated, Avó turned to me and said, “I suppose the truth-telling falls to me, Neto!”

  “Don’t call me that!” I snapped. “You don’t have the right.”

  Avó jerked back as if I had slapped her, as if she really were my grandmother. “You will feel differently once you have the whole tale…Bisneto,” she said gently.

  “You think I’m stupid?” I asked bitterly. “You don’t even look old enough to be my grandmother. Great-grandmother? Really?”

  “Lucas—” began Mom tentatively.

  “You didn’t want to tell,” interrupted…my great-grandmother? Bisavó? Strange as this evening had been so far, I wasn’t about to buy that nonsense.

  “Now it’s my turn,” continued the impostor, looking away from Mom and toward me. “I am…older than I appear to be. I could, in fact, appear any age I choose.”

  “Gabriela!” said my mom urgently. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t! It would be too much of a shock for him.”

  “What is that old saying?” asked…Gabriela? I was having a hard time deciding what to call her.

  “Ah, yes!” she continued triumphantly. “One picture is worth a thousand words.” She waved her arm, and my vision rippled for a moment, I blinked, and suddenly it was not the lively Gabriela sitting in front of me but an ancient woman, her face as wrinkled as a raisin, her withered scalp covered by only a few wisps of white hair, her back bent from osteoporosis. Then, with a wave of a shriveled arm, she made that ripple in my vision again, and just as abruptly as the old woman appeared, she was gone—replaced by a beautiful girl my age, with jet-black hair, skin like caramel, and a curving figure that would have given me ideas if not for the possibility that I might be related to her. Another wave of the arm, and the woman who had introduced herself as Avó was back.

  I looked at Mom accusingly. “You…you drugged me! You gave me some kind of hallucinogen at dinner!”

  Gabriela…or Avó…or Bisavó…or whoever she was, looked amused. “Why would she have, Bisneto? In case you overheard us talking, and we needed to convince you of some wild story? And if she had, how could she get a drug to show you exactly what we wanted you to see?”

  “Hypnotic suggestion, then,” I said stubbornly, looking suspiciously at both of them.

  To my surprise, the mystery woman in front of me laughed, glanced my mom’s way, and said, “Too many spy novels!” To me she said, “Honestly, Lucas, the truth is so much less complicated than the stories you’re inventing. I am your great-grandmother, I can change my appearance at will, and I can do other forms of magic…as can any of the Encantado.”

  “Encantado?” I said, my mind momentarily blank. Then I remembered those childhood stories. “You want me to believe those fairy tales Mom told me when I was a little kid—creatures like dolphins who live in an undersea world called the Encante and assume human form from time to time to…” I had to think for a minute to remember exactly why.

  “Yes, Lucas,” said Mom, trying for a matter-of-fact tone and not quite making it. “Sometimes an Encantado entered the human world because he or she fell in love with a human being.”

  “Since we’re being honest, that’s the kiddie version,” said the mystery woman. “In the beginning, it was usually much more about making love than being in love.”

  If the woman really had been my grandmother, that would have been a colossal overshare if ever there was one.

  “Don’t worry,” she continued. “Though your great-grandfather was a magnificent lover, our relationship quickly became more than just sexual.”

  Again, more than I really wanted to know. I had to keep reminding myself that none of it could possibly be true.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that I had to get out of here. They must have given me something, maybe a drug that made me subject to suggestion. The mystery woman put the idea of being able to alter her appearance in my mind. Yeah, that was it. They had certainly drugged Dad to keep him out of the way…but out of the way of what? I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

  Neither one of the women appeared armed, but I wasn’t sure I wanted a physical confrontation anyway. I had never hit a woman, let alone my own mother—assuming she really was my mother. I could no longer be sure even of that. My best bet was to run like hell, put some distance between me and them, and then use my cell to call the police. Crazy as my story would sound to any sane officer, there were probably still traces of something in my blood, and Dad was still out cold—that they could easily check. If I was lucky, Sullivan would still be on duty.

  The kitchen wasn’t exactly set up for capoeira, but I worked with what I had. In one fluid motion I stood, threw the chair in such a way that it would block Mom’s path, and launched myself through the door, not troubling to conceal my freakish speed.

  “Lucas!” Mom yelled after me. “You’re in danger!”

  I was already at the front door. I flicked open the deadbolt and reached for the chain, which became a green snake with angry eyes and enormous fangs. The hallucinogen again! I forced myself to ignore what I was seeing and get the chain unlatched. For a second, I thought I was trapped; it’s pretty hard to work with objects you can’t really see. Then the snake disappeared. I got the chain off, and I threw the door open. I got out just before the women reached me.

  Then I froze, closer to complete panic than I had ever been in my life. Shocked out of disciplined thinking by the betrayal within my own family, I had momentarily forgotten about the shadow. It had not forgotten about me.

  Even from a quick glance, I saw it moving just beyond the glow of the porch light. Then I realized I couldn’t really be seeing it. The street was abnormally dark. Somehow, I could still see its movement, though. Perhaps whatever weird psychic ability I had
let me perceive the shadow better than I should have been able to.

  Why was the street so dark? In another second I realized what had happened. Somehow every single streetlight on the block had gone out. Maybe every one had been broken. I thought I caught the glint of broken glass on the sidewalk. Not that it mattered how the thing had put the streetlights out, only that it had. If I tried to make a run for it, the shadow could follow me much faster than it had when it had kept out of the glow closest to the streetlights.

  “Come inside, Lucas!”

  I jumped despite myself.

  During the moments I had hesitated, the mystery woman had come up right behind me.

  I spun to face her. “Stay back! I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.” Whether I really would, I didn’t know, but I was hoping she wasn’t willing to risk calling my bluff. If all else failed, I could start yelling bloody murder, and someone was bound to call nine-one-one.

  “I don’t want to hurt you either,” she said quietly, probably trying to avoid attracting attention from the neighbors. “I came to protect you, which I can do much better inside the house. You can accept my help, or you can stand here, with your back turned on one of the pessoas da sombra, until it figures out a way to kill you despite the porch light.

  My Portuguese was a little rusty, but I knew what she meant: people of the shadow. Somehow, she knew, or at least had made an educated guess about what was after me.

  There’s an old saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Wise words, but how could I apply them when I didn’t know either devil?

  “Lucas, please!” Mom, assuming that’s who she really was, had joined us.

  I did know her, even if I couldn’t figure out why she had brought a stranger into our house, drugged Dad, drugged me.

  I glanced at the shadow. Its shape was roughly human, and its arm movement suggested it was about to throw something.

  “We can’t—” the mystery woman began. The rock whizzed past, and a second later, glass broke. Suddenly, the only light came from the still open front door.

  The damn thing had taken out the porch light!

  Had I been alone, I would have just run back into the house, slammed the door, and called the police. I couldn’t tell them a shadow was after me, but I could tell them some punk kid was out throwing rocks at streetlights and porch lights. In Madisonville, that was the equivalent of a major crime spree, and the police would come, with car headlights, and flashlights—lots of flashlights—and the thing might retreat.

  The problem was that I wasn’t alone, and if I went into the house, the women would be with me. I didn’t trust the mystery woman at all, and, right now I didn’t trust Mom much, either. If I couldn’t retreat, there was only one other choice. Reflexively I moved into the ginga, the basic foot-movement pattern of capoeira. Assuming the shadow wanted me specifically and wouldn’t dash around me to get to them, they could retreat into the house…and would, if they had any sense.

  One of the basic principles of capoeira is to keep moving in a pattern that could confuse an opponent and make hitting the capoeirista much more difficult. There really was something to the old adage that it’s harder to strike a moving target, particularly one moving at faster than human speed. The women had already seen how quickly I could move, as had the shadow, so there was no point in holding back now.

  The thing moved closer, trying to stay in the shadow thrown by my body, which blocked the light from the door. I used the ginga to unexpectedly hit the thing with light every few seconds, and each time it backed up again. This might be easier than I thought.

  Then I realized the women were still behind me. I wanted to focus on the fight without having to worry about them.

  “Get inside the house!” I demanded.

  “If you insist on staying in danger, I’m staying with you,” Mom whispered.

  I didn’t look back, but I guessed her eyes were on the impossibly moving shadow.

  “Though it would be better if we all got out of danger,” pointed out the mystery woman.

  As I continued the ginga, the conversation continued behind me—much to my annoyance. Now that I was facing the thing more calmly than when it had first attacked, I became increasingly confident I could figure out how to beat it…if only I didn’t have to worry about bystanders.

  “Gabriela, can’t you do something?” whispered Mom.

  “I don’t think the illusion of light will stop it,” the mystery woman whispered back, “and I doubt it would be affected by my illusions anyway. I might test it, though, just to see.”

  I used every ounce of self-discipline I had to block out the conversation. I couldn’t make them leave, but if they were behind me and closer to the light, they could be relatively safe. If I could defeat the shadow, I could make all of us safe, hopefully for good.

  However, as I kept moving, and the shadow kept twitching as if it were trying to figure out my pattern, I had to wonder how I could beat it. Did it have some kind of physical presence? I guessed if it could attack me, it had to have some form of real-world body, and it was clear that the thing was sensitive to light, not that that helped. Capoeira had a lot of interesting moves, but none of them could generate light. I hoped a good solid blow would work. The only alternative was to run back into the house with someone I hoped was my mom and someone I knew was a stranger I didn’t trust…and, given the shadow’s ingenuity in breaking the street lights and the porch light, how long would it be before the thing found a way to cut power to the house? No, better to find a weakness now than fight in the relatively cramped spaces inside where the shadow had a far greater advantage.

  There was movement behind me. Good, the women retreated into the house, though they left the front door open to give me what light the house could still provide.

  The shadow threw a rock at me, but I was too fast, and the rock sailed past. My gut told me the shadow might be off-balance from the throw, so I rolled into a bananeira, or handstand, which I was pretty sure the shadow wouldn’t expect unless it had studied capoeira. Then, using the momentum from my last move, I aimed an escorpião (scorpion kick) at where the shadow’s head should be. The sole of my foot definitely hit something solid, and the thing made a noise that sounded like a squeal, much higher pitched than I would have visualized. It also fell backward, giving me an opening.

  The shadow wasn’t well positioned to attack, so I ran in its direction rather than using an aú, or low-to-the ground cartwheel, which I might have needed to evade a blow. By the time I reached it, the shadow was standing again, so I hit it in the face with an asfixiante, a hard punch that drew another high-pitched sound from it and pushed it backward, though I could tell it was still conscious.

  I also noticed it was armed. There was definitely some kind of blade clutched in its right hand, though whatever the weapon was made from was as dark as the shadow holding it and barely visible.

  Most capoeira kicks and punches target the head, torso, or legs. Right now a kick to the weapon hand might have been more useful, but a good banda swept the thing’s legs out from under it and caused it to land on the lawn with a thud. The thing definitely had a physical presence.

  Once it was down, I stomped on its hand in a very un-capoeira way. It screamed, but it kept its grip on the weapon. I threw myself on top of it. Yeah, that was risky. I wasn’t sure what its physical form was, but when I landed on it (with a satisfying thunk and another squeal from the thing), it felt human enough. In fact, it felt…female. I wasn’t the most experienced guy in the world, but I recognized breasts when I landed on them. I had a twinge of guilt over fighting with a woman, but it…she…was trying to kill me.

  I had sacrificed any possibility of evasion to pin her, but I was bigger and heavier than she was. Her struggles didn’t come close to freeing her. I didn’t give her enough space to knee me in the groin, and I grabbed her hands to prevent punching or scratching. My grip on her weapon hand was particularly strong to keep her fr
om striking at me with it. As soon as I overcame my aversion to knocking her out with a good, old-fashioned head butt, the fight would be over.

  Then the whole area lit up like noon. The shadow gave a satisfying scream, but I was momentarily blinded. In the second it took my eyes to adjust, she head butted me somehow, though I wouldn’t have thought she could from her position.

  Caught by surprise, I loosened my grip just a little, and she heaved beneath me with frenzied energy, creating more space between us, and then kneed me in the groin.

  My brain stalled for a second as red pain surged through me, and she broke free. I was at a complete disadvantage now, and she might have stabbed me. Instead, probably from fear of the light, she ran like hell.

  My eyes had adjusted enough to make out a deceptively small but definitely feminine body in a loose-fitting black outfit running at Olympic speeds into the shadows. I might have chased her, but my throbbing groin precluded that, and, in seconds, she vanished. I glimpsed light hair, probably blond, but I had no idea what her face looked like, not that I would ever need to. She would never come at me in a place with enough ambient light for me to see her face anyway.

  “Are you all right?” Mom asked, bending over me, concern clear in her voice and face. In her hand she clutched the heavy-duty flashlight that she had probably thought would be helpful. It would have been, too—if I hadn’t already won.

  Sure, I’m fine. I’m just writhing here clutching my crotch for the fun of it!

  “I’ll be OK,” I managed, “but we better get inside. Whoever or whatever that was may be back.” I let her help me up, and then I hobbled toward the door with her fussing along behind.

  Better the devil you know…

  Chapter 4: Interlude (Umbra)

  The Praeceptor didn’t strike me, though she could have. She didn’t need to, though; her words were weapons enough.

  “You failed, Umbra. I sent you out against someone who isn’t even considered an adult by the standards of his society, and he defeated you. If not for luck, he would have captured you, and the consequences of that for the Populus Umbrae would have been unimaginable.”