Shadowboxer

by Tricia Sullivan

  I could feel my heart racing. I rushed in. The mat where she’d been kneeling was still warm. I checked behind the curtain. Nothing. The bathroom window is only a thin strip of frosted glass, and it was shut.

  I put my fingers to my lips. I thought of my Nana with her plastic saints and her friendly banter with our dead ancestors, going away on her long journey.

  My phone rang again. Shea’s number came up. I turned it off.

  ‘Madre de Dios,’ I said.

  Baby Lek

  WITH SO MANY ghosts to feed, where to begin?

  ‘You have to be strategic,’ Luck told Mya. ‘Mr. Richard will be back here soon enough. If you could get Baby Lek back to the human world, that would slow the old man down. He needs naga venom, after all.’

  ‘Why does Lek help Mr. Richard? Can’t he say no?’ Mya asked.

  ‘Mr. Richard sold Lek’s mother to someone in Holland and she was sent back here pregnant. The Holland people didn’t want her anymore. She gave birth to Lek in the forest, but she had lost her power to move between worlds. She went into the water to beg the nagas for help. She drowned, but Lek was taken under the protection of the nagas. Just like your friend Shea was taken by Kala Sriha.’

  ‘Lek was born in the forest?’

  The ghost nodded. ‘His human part hasn’t aged much. You can see from his face that he wouldn’t be more than two or three years old. It will be hard to remove him. But he never actually died, and part of him is still human. Maybe the nagas will let him go. The only way you can find out is to introduce him to the human world.’

  Born outside the world. Yet Lek had crossed over into Jade’s kitchen once.

  ‘I will do what I can. I will try.’

  In the middle of the day, when Jade was at the gym, Mya cooked rice for Lek in Jade’s kitchen. It took some time to figure out how to work the stove, and at first she startled at every little noise, expecting Jade to come back.

  But it was the black cat who came back. The cat who looked like Kala Sriha. He sailed through the window and stood on the counter, blinking and licking his lips.

  She offered him rice. Then she took the pot and backed out of the small kitchen.

  When the cat began to eat, the air shifted and the smell of the forest came into the apartment.

  Shea was crouched on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Not again,’ he groaned. Mya kept clear of him while he stood up, then offered him the rest of the pot. He took it and ate hungrily, sitting on the counter.

  ‘The police talked to me.’ Anguish tightened his face. ‘A man is dead. They don’t think I could have done it. But I’m starting to feel like maybe I did.’

  ‘You are not evil,’ Mya said. ‘I think you are just confused.’

  ‘How did I get here?’ His gaze flicked to Mya and then away, as if he were afraid what her answer might be. She tried not to laugh.

  ‘Do you remember being the cat? You came through the window? Big jump?’

  He stopped chewing.

  ‘No,’ he said. She could tell he was lying.

  ‘You need human experiences,’ Mya told him. ‘You have to feel what it is to be human, and then it will be easier for you to stay.’

  ‘What it is to be human, huh?’ Shea gave a muffled laugh as he chewed, shaking his head. ‘I don’t have time to feel things. I’m going back to Bangkok. But what if I have one of these breakdowns on the plane?’

  ‘Plane? When?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I hope, if I can get a new passport at the British consulate. I have a contact in the Bangkok police. I have to do something before Richard Fuller can make his next move. So far all I can get off the phone is the video, and it shows two people disappearing into thin air.’

  ‘Do you believe this is what happened?’

  ‘It’s what I saw. It’s what you say is true. But I can’t justify it or prove it.’

  ‘And if it is true, then it could be true you are also a part of Kala Sriha.’

  He closed down when she said that. How could a person be inhabited by an immortal and yet deny it?

  ‘It’s not what I believe that matters. It’s making a legal case. I’m relying on my police contact for that, but I need evidence.’

  Mya said nothing, but she was thinking.

  ‘Mya?’ Shea said. He slid off the counter, brushing grains of rice off his clothes. ‘You have an idea, don’t you?’

  ‘Addresses,’ Mya said. ‘The places where Mr. Richard sent each child. I saw the paper. You know, the children I brought through the forest? He wrote the addresses in English. Some of them had e-mails and phone numbers. Do you need these?’

  ‘Do I need them? Mya—’ He brandished his spoon excitedly. ‘Is that all you remember? Do you know where he kept them? In his computer?’

  She shook her head. ‘Written down.’

  ‘Mya.’ Shea dropped to his knees so that they looked at each other eye to eye. Kala Sriha’s intensity blazed in his expression like a clear fire. ‘Can you remember them? Do you know where they were kept? If we can get that information, we have a chance of rescuing them. Without it... well, there’s no proof they’re even missing, let alone where to look for them.’

  ‘I don’t remember the details,’ she said.

  ‘Try to remember something.’

  ‘I have to think about it.’

  He saw her fear, but he didn’t understand it, and his disappointment was visible.

  ‘It’s too much to ask of you,’ he sighed. ‘Forgive me.’

  Mya frowned. He had no idea what he was asking because he didn’t believe in the immortal world or her ability to move through it.

  ‘Maybe I can rescue them...’

  Now it was his turn to frown. He really didn’t remember anything.

  ‘Can you recall where the paper was? Do you know where he keeps his private documents? Does he have a safe?’

  She nodded, and to get him to stop pestering her she drew on the back of an envelope a little picture of Mr. Richard’s work room, showing where the safe was hidden under the lab sink. She wrote down the combination of the safe, too. She could feel the surge of electricity around Shea when he looked at it.

  ‘Brilliant. This is brilliant. Thank you.’

  ‘Shea, please remember. Mr. Richard is dangerous. He has ways of knowing things. He isn’t going to be easy to catch.’

  Shea smiled, and she could see him dismissing her completely. ‘Leave that part to me. This is very helpful. Thank you. And what you said? About going to look for them yourself?’

  ‘You don’t believe I can.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you can do. But Mya, please. Don’t try to save anyone. What happened to them isn’t your fault. None of this is your responsibility. The first thing I’m going to do when Richard Fuller is brought in is look for information on your family. You can’t carry on in limbo like this forever.’

  She bit her lip, stopping tears because she knew he wouldn’t catch Mr. Richard. Shea was foolish to think he could.

  ‘Where can I find you if I need you?’ she asked.

  He glanced away, at the floor, and she saw the pulse in his neck quicken.

  ‘You said I need human experiences,’ he whispered. ‘So I guess I’ll be here.’

  It was embarrassing to think of Shea and Jade together. But he was trying to do the correct thing. Whenever Mya thought of the children she had led through the forest, she felt her heart crumble, like she was turning to dust inside. She didn’t know what was happening to them, exactly. But it was bad, and she was responsible.There was no way Mr. Richard was going to give up the children’s whereabouts to Shea, or the police. Mya considered the idea of rescuing the other children herself, one at a time. But Shea was right about documentation and the authorities. Even if she succeeded in bringing the others through the forest, what then? Mya herself was a fugitive, without family or papers. What would she do with several others like her, all displaced from nation and loved ones? What if they were thrown in jail? After all, her
own family had been imprisoned for no reason at all.

  So she should help Shea. This would mean going back to Mr. Richard’s house. That was one of the very worst things Mya could imagine doing right now. It made her fingers turn cold and her teeth chatter.

  No one who didn’t know Mr. Richard could understand why going back there was like running into a burning building you’d just escaped. The house was soaked in his sorcery. That was why Daeng and Ploy feared and revered and hated but mostly feared him—and they loved him, too, in their way. So did Johnny. So did everyone who knew Mr. Richard. He could see the soft insides of your bones. He could move your thoughts as easily as stirring a drink.

  That was why, even as Mya considered sneaking into the house, suspicions crawled among her plans. It was the nature of Mr. Richard to make you think you wanted to do things, when in truth it was Mr. Richard who wanted you to do them. You could never know what you really thought when he was around. And he wasn’t around now... but Mya had lived with him for a long time, and he had trained her mind. He proposed to crawl into her very skin, and she wouldn’t put it past him to lure her back. She knew he was afraid of the evidence on the phone. He would be bending all his energies toward getting it back. If one way failed, he would try another.

  Was Mya’s idea to steal the addresses all part of Mr. Richard’s grand scheme? It might be. When Mr. Richard had taught Mya to play chess, he had told her stories of powerful people he had controlled and manuevered, just like the knights and rooks he tricked on the black-and-white plastic board.

  Maybe it was Mya’s own will that propelled her through the forest to the prayer room in the north of Thailand. Maybe it was Mr. Richard’s manipulation. Maybe she was a hero; maybe she was a moth to a flame. She couldn’t even tell the difference. All she knew was that, once the idea had taken hold of her, she couldn’t make it go away. She had to see it through.

  Mr. Richard had taught her about destiny. How events can pick you up like a tide and carry you. How it is all laid out before you, even though you don’t see.

  She thought: if I don’t do this, no one else can.

  Punishment and Crime

  I WOULD MAKE an excellent stalker. I had Gretchen Van Der Hoef in my sights. My consciousness had become a laser beam focused on fucking up Gretchen.

  I pictured her when I was doing my conditioning, like she was right there and I had to beat her at pull-ups and sit-ups. I had to do more than her.

  I pictured her when I was hitting the bag. I felt her ribs breaking from my body shots. I pictured her when I was doing my omoplatas on poor Cake. Destroy Gretchen. That was my mission now.

  Life can be so crazy, but in the gym what you got to do is clear. Punish yourself now so you can punish your opponent in the cage. It’s solid and you can bank on it. Nothing else in life is clear like that.

  I put Shea out of my mind. I put away all thoughts of missing pączki and little girls chanting in my bathroom. I went out of the gym feeling high and light.

  Then:

  ‘Hold up, Jade.’ Khari was waiting for me in the parking lot. He took out his phone. I thought: if he calls Eva right now so help me god I’ll take him out with a flying head-butt.

  ‘You know that thing you were asking about the other day?’

  My stomach dropped. I nodded. He handed me his phone.

  ‘I thought you should see this. Mr. B deleted it—I guess he don’t want the police to see it. I picked it up off his computer.’

  ‘If you could take it off his computer, the police can, too,’ I said.

  ‘If they make the effort to look,’ Khari said. ‘But Jade.’ He paused dramatically.Khari towered over me, his head ducking away as he rubbed the back of his neck like he always does when he’s embarrassed.

  ‘Somebody already doctored it,’ he finished. ‘You’ll see what I mean. Take a look. But don’t copy it. Mr. B don’t even know I got it.’

  He turned and went back into the gym.

  The footage was grainy, and the screen on Khari’s phone was small. But I could tell that I was looking down from the corner camera in Mr. B’s office. You could see a little bit of blurred movement going on in the main gym through the two-way mirror, but nothing clear enough to identify. There was very little light.

  A figure was pacing up and down just beneath the camera. The shot looked down on them at an angle that only captured their head and shoulders from behind, and in shadow. The rest of the body was out of shot. I strained my eyes, trying to confirm that it was Mr. B, but I really couldn’t tell.

  Then, right in the middle of the room, out of nowhere appeared the girl in the red dress. It was like she’d been edited to fade in. She was holding a small bundle in her hands. For a few seconds no one moved; then the girl stepped forward and put the bundle on the ground, and the shadowy person took it. The girl seemed to be saying something. She stepped back and faded away. The shadowy person slipped through the door without showing their face. I was pretty sure they were too slim to be Mr. B, but that’s all I could really say.

  It was dated weeks ago, while I was in Thailand.

  I gave Khari his phone back. Then I hoisted my bag on my shoulder and went to the bus without saying one single word. I didn’t hear nothing, didn’t see nothing. I went to Mandino’s and did my shift on autopilot, thinking. But I didn’t get very far with that. If Einstein had been a dishwasher he never would have figured out relativity. It’s just too easy to get distracted and cut yourself with a fish knife.

  What was I supposed to think? People don’t just pop in and out like that. Khari thought it had been doctored, but Khari wasn’t in my bathroom when the girl pulled the same trick. The police weren’t going to find any of this amusing.

  How was I supposed to go into this fight with so many doubts about my manager? It was looking more and more like Mr. B was into something really despicable. Just my damn luck. Finally start to get a break with a big fight, and now my manager could be arrested any day for involvement in pedophilia and drugs. Great. The only hope I was clinging to was that maybe Mr. B didn’t know.

  He doesn’t know, Jade. He doesn’t know. Please, god, let him not know.

  AS SOON AS I let myself into the apartment I knew someone was there. I could smell that weird flower-shop smell again. A little zing of adrenaline rushed into my forearms and hands. After the incident the other night with Malu, I’d started keeping a baseball bat in the hallway just inside the front door, and I grabbed it now, flexing my fingers around its neck.

  A voice called from the kitchen.

  ‘Jade? Down, girl! It’s only me.’

  The voice was Shea’s. He waved a hand out of the kitchen.

  ‘Is it safe to come out?’

  I lowered the bat as he emerged. He had a bottle of wine in one hand, which he waggled at me like I was a dog and it was a Milk Bone.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  He shrugged. He was unshaven and wearing the same jeans as the day before, although he’d changed the bloodstained shirt for a white t-shirt. His hair was a mess.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘What about the police?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Look, Jade, I’m sorry about imposing like this. I wanted to see you, but I don’t blame you if you don’t want to see me.’

  He was lying. That was obvious. The only thing is, I couldn’t figure out which part was the lie. He was leaning against the refrigerator like he was trying to take up as little space as possible. How was I supposed to believe Shea was a killer? But what other explanation could there be?

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We can talk about it over food. I’m starving.’

  ‘I thought you worked in a restaurant.’

  ‘It was too busy tonight to take a break. Move over and I’ll make us something.’

  ‘Have you got anything beyond those cardboard things you eat?’

  ‘My protein bars not good enough for you? You want somebody’s arm, or maybe a thigh...?’


  He didn’t rise to it. ‘Actually, if it isn’t too much of an imposition, could I use your shower? I’m feeling rather grimy.’

  He looked way nastier than people look after a night in jail. He was lying so bad. Where had he been? I said, ‘Didn’t you go back to your hotel, then?’

  ‘Er... no. The police gave me the shirt.’

  ‘And here I thought you stole it.’

  He even had the nerve to grin at me.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I said it with an edge.

  The smile wavered. ‘Nothing! I just... well, I thought if you were the type to prefer a bit of the rough, then maybe this would be my opportunity...’

  ‘A bit of the what?’

  Smile vanished completely. ‘Never mind. I was making a feeble attempt to appear to be something other than the mild-mannered reporter I obviously am.’

  ‘Towels are on the shelf,’ I snapped, trying to untangle the string of words that had just come out of his mouth. Who talks like that? He was making my brain hurt.

  While he was in the shower I started making a stir-fry. It gave me something to do with my hands. I was all jumpy and excited and... happy. Damn. And not ‘damn’ in a good way, damn for real. I was flying to Las Vegas tomorrow and Shea was not a mild-mannered reporter, and—hey, what the hell happened to all the food in my fridge?

  I bent over and stuck my head deeper into the fridge to see if there was some chicken in the back, and a feather floated up against my nose. I’m not talking about one of those little tiny butt-feathers that sometimes get stuck to free-range eggs, which are gross but explainable. I’m talking about a big feather that could have belonged to a damn peacock, if peacocks were bright red.

  Was my fridge being raided by a hungry showgirl? What the hell.

  I closed the fridge and opened the freezer.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Put your friend on the line,’ Perez said.

  New Kid in Town

  A KNIFE-SHARP SLIVER of cool forest air came with Mya as she slipped into the prayer room by dark of night. Rain thrummed on the roof of Mr Richard’s stilt house, and the air was saturated with moisture. The windows were shuttered against the rain, and the only light in the prayer room came from the computer monitor in the adjacent work room. Mya stiffened, afraid that Mr. Richard was working late. But the monitor was running a screensaver, a series of photographs. Mr. Richard shaking hands with a film star. Mr. Richard at the orphanage, surrounded by smiling children. Mr. Richard and his wife on the red carpet at a society event. Mr. Richard receiving blessings from a bishop.