Shadow People

by Bevill, C. L.

  He stepped back, and the flashlight caught something that made him stop. One of the wrecked doors of the dumbwaiter lay on the floor beside his feet. Bloody fingerprints danced across one edge, seemingly left as she had opened the doors to make her getaway. Not so unscathed after all, it seems. And apparently not William’s cohort. Only a thief. A stupid thief who would break into a house haunted with the spirits of a violently murdered family, where few others would dare tread. What would motivate such a bold woman?

  The black-haired man looked upward at the ceiling, knowing that the likelihood of her evasion was remote. The seatco was on her trail. It had her blood scent. It knew what she looked like. The thief couldn’t have known that this house was specifically chosen because of its bloody past and its connection to the spirit world. Evil corporeal creatures wandered here, even if they weren’t the poltergeist-like beasts of a Steven Spielberg movie. It made the house more secure for his purposes. But somehow, someway, the girl thief knew valuables lay inside, just as another had known before her. How?

  It made for an interesting question, and the man with the long black hair very much desired an answer. In a very small way he hoped the girl’s uncanny luck would continue until he had a chance to discuss it with her. Even if she belonged to the culture he so despised, Penelope might be able to impart something very important to him before she died.

  The pounding thunder of the fireworks continued outside causing the man to look up again. There was a lull in-between explosions, and he heard a very slight noise that made him stop to look back at the hole where the dumbwaiter once had sat waiting for its household load to carry. A folded piece of paper that floated on a midnight breeze came into his sight. Is it something the thief had dropped?

  The black-haired man was about to unfold the little piece of paper when the crackle of broken glass resonated down to him during another lull in the firework detonations. Breaking upstairs windows wasn’t something that he wanted. The neighbors might see it and ask unwelcome questions. Or worse, the police might make inquiries.

  The paper disappeared into a pants pocket, and he darted for the stairs.

  *

  The reckless Penelope would have jumped out the second floor of the Victorian Gothic monstrosity with its houseful of freaky characters and not looked back. But it was the frightened Penelope who wanted to know what was going to breathe down her neck as it blocked out the skimpy hallway light.

  Another giant with grotesque appendages? A man with a big gun and no patience for waiting for law enforcement? Something new and unusual?

  A woman stood there. Her face was turned so that Penelope could see half of her face in the stream of light from the open door. She was an amazingly beautiful woman, not much older than Penelope, with waist-length black hair that gleamed bluely in the dim light. Dressed in an emerald-colored western shirt, she also wore Levis that tightly hugged her curving figure. One of her slender arms rested on the door’s frame and the other hand rested on the swell of her hip. She was so amazingly normal that Penelope hesitated for too long.

  Then her chilling voice came. “Just a thief,” she said, and her voice was like the frozen vestiges of the most remote regions of Antarctica. A smile curved her full ruby red lips and emphasized the splendid beauty of her remarkable face. High cheekbones slashed down, revealing skin the color of burnished ivory, giving her an exotic appearance, but the icy voice was without accent. Although the eye that was revealed in the fall of light from the doorway was hazel, it seemed as empty and bottomless as the space beyond the moon. That curiously blank eye gave Penelope a speculative look. “Just a little thief who shouldn’t be here.”

  There was a fresh round of explosions from outside, then the faint echo of cheering throngs of people as they shouted their approval. Outside the world was twisting and moving and not stopping to be mesmerized by the unnaturalness of this wretched place. Once the cheers faded away, the sound of feet pounding down the wooden floors of the hallway became audible. Penelope unfroze. This was no time to stare at the most stunning woman she’d ever seen, certainly the most beautiful woman bar none, and at the same time the most frightening.

  As a matter of fact, for some unspoken reason the woman with the hazel eyes and the river of ebony hair spilling to her waist was ten thousand times more petrifying than the thing in the kachina mask.

  Penelope spun on her heels and dived headfirst out the broken window, all thoughts of anything else but mindless flight dashing from her mind.

  *

  The man watching from the relative safety of his vehicle saw the blast of glass from the second story window. A black-covered foot kicked out the edges and then vanished. There was a long second where he fully expected someone to climb out to make good their escape. But no one appeared. The man frowned and picked up his night vision goggles. He could see the green illumination of two figures but couldn’t make out details. Then with a blur of movement the one nearest the window took a breathtaking header out of the broken opening. Headfirst the thief went, and the man in the car sat up straight, trying to keep his eyes trained on the falling figure.

  By all the spirits on heaven and Earth, the thief escaped. The man grinned. Clever little man. Not only that, but the thief fell into the heaviest part of a huge oleander bush that covered the front section of the house. It cushioned his fall in a way that prevented it from being fatal. The man wondered if the thief could have possibly known that before he went out the window and decided that whatever was chasing him through the halls of the large house had caused his impromptu exit by whatever means were available.

  A moment later the figure in black was up and running. The thief dashed through the yard and launched himself over the waist-high wrought iron fence in front as if he were the most able of Olympic hurdlers. He ran as though all the demons of hell were nipping at his heels.

  And surprisingly, the thief didn’t tear off into the direction where the man had first spied him approaching, but in the opposite way. He got on the sidewalk and hauled for all his worth, passing the car where the man was sitting without the slightest hesitation.

  The clever little man isn’t a clever little man at all, the watching man realized with a hint of dismay. But a clever little woman. She was a woman who was about five foot five inches tall, slender of build, with pale blonde curls hanging out from underneath her knit cap. The brief glimpse of her features showed them to be fine and well-formed. She might have been a school girl out on a silly jaunt except for the haunted expression on her pretty face.

  The man couldn’t help her. He turned his gaze toward the house and watched as the dark figures spilled out onto the street after her. The watching man sank into the depths of his car and put his hand around the only form of protection he had. A coyote fetish held in his hand would aid him, if only for a short period of time.

  He focused the night vision goggles on the front of the house and saw the ground beside the front pathway ripple with motion and a large form emerge clumsily from the shadow-strewn earth. The rest of the figures plunged past him, followed by the stand out of gigantic proportions that made the watching man’s face twist with anger and horror. The large one still dripping with bits of dirt and earthworms was a human-shaped figure with bulging mounds of cloth and a mask made from the spirit gods of the Native Americans of the Four Corners area. What methods motivated those who had formed this atrocity? Then Anthony passed the watching man and he closed his eyes, knowing that proximity alone could give him away. He knew that Anthony sensed his presence but couldn’t put a meaning to it. He knew that Anthony paused as he felt the ripple in the air about him, but the girl’s absence was more urgent. They had to get to her. When the watching man opened his eyes again, the street was empty.

  They had gone after the thief.

  It meant that the watching man had the opportunity he was waiting for, at long last. All their resources were pooled into locating a single, fortunate thief. They had left the house unguarded for the moment.
>
  The watching man exited the car and went toward the house. Without hesitation he walked up to the open front door and entered.

  Chapter Five

  Friday, July 4th

  A Richard (slang, origin English, probably from Shakespeare) - a deformed man

  It behooved a thief to stay trim and able to run short distances. A case in point was that half the cops Penelope knew were overweight and wouldn’t be able to chase her down in a footrace. Not that being in a footrace with the police really mattered, considering the level of present day technology to include infrared cameras, helicopters with spotters, and trained police dogs, but where there was a loophole, there was an opportunity. Consequently, she did wind sprints for an hour every other day, and she could run a hundred-yard dash in less than twelve seconds. The thought that went through her mind, as she found an even breathing rhythm whiling running through the backstreets of downtown Dallas, was a result of her reasoning that these strange people didn’t have a hope in hell in catching her.

  Penelope knew that she didn’t want to take chances. She didn’t head straight for her car because if they got their hands on that, they would know exactly who she was, and it could lead them back to Jessica Quick. After all, Penelope had never been caught. As a matter of fact, Penelope had never even been fingerprinted. Jacob had wanted it that way because he had known the path in life that he was leading his daughter down. Just because one got caught didn’t mean necessarily that they wouldn’t be able to get away somewhere down the line. Positive identification through the use of fingerprints would mean that the police had the upper hand. Unless, of course, they didn’t have her fingerprints.

  The people who were now after her wouldn’t be putting handcuffs on her and rushing her off to jail. Au contraire. They might be rushing her off to the cemetery. Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, Penelope thought woefully. What have you gotten me into?

  Penelope hadn’t thought about her friend for long minutes, and a nagging seed of doubt assailed her. Was it possible that Jeremy had tried to hit the house at 26 Durfrene Row while Penelope had been occupied with her mother’s illness?

  No, he would have let me know, Penelope assured herself. He would have because that’s our gig. That’s how we keep ourselves a little more secure. And he would have told me because he knows that I need the cash right now. He would have, dammit. And oh, crap.

  Remote street lights made diffuse yellow pools at intervals on the dark street. The street opened into a row of old buildings that were used for lofts upstairs with run-down industrial businesses on the bottom floors. The first floor windows were dark and secured with wrought iron bars to prevent idiots from breaking in. The upper floors were lit, and Penelope could hear the strains of a rowdy July 4th party on nearby roofs.

  Penelope slowed to a jog. She didn’t want to expend all of her energy yet. While she jogged, she removed the single leather glove and put it in a pocket. Then she took the latex glove off the other hand and stuck it into the pocket with the other gloves. She loosened her black top shirt and scanned the street signs for her location. Then unexpectedly she ran smack dab into a group of young men who were coming around a corner.

  One of them caught her easily in his arms and said good-naturedly, “Bitch, don’t go running ‘round corners here. You going to cause some shit.” They all smelled of beer and pot and were joyfully mellow. Another one laughed and said, “Got yourself a blonde, Antoine. Whatchu going to do with her?”

  Penelope looked over her shoulder. Some of the emotion on her face must have transmitted itself to the man holding her easily in his arms. He effortlessly placed her upright with his hands still wrapped around her upper arms and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Brother,” said another one warningly, “she look like she be the one in trouble.”

  “Someone after you?” insisted the first one.

  “Let me go,” Penelope said softly. “Then stay out of their way.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bitch doesn’t want our company,” said another one. “Let her go, Antoine.”

  Antoine let Penelope go and shoved her roughly in the direction she had been headed. “Have it your way, sugar,” he said with curious resolve.

  Penelope breathed a sigh of relief and jogged off. After a moment she tossed her head over her shoulder and loudly repeated her caution to the lingering group of young men. She didn’t stop moving while she called back. “Stay out of their way! I mean it!”

  “Stay out of whose way?” Antoine asked of no one in particular.

  “Bitch has lost her mind.”

  “That’s what happens when you’re a woman,” advised another one gravely.

  The people dressed in the same color as the woman who had just barreled into them came around the same corner causing the group of young men to part like the Red Sea. All conversation came to an abrupt halt. Antoine looked over his shoulder and saw that the pretty young woman with the platinum curls was already gone.

  Her absence didn’t seem to matter to the people chasing her. They flowed after her in a strange solemn manner. Then the really big one came, and Antoine felt the rough brick surface of the building rubbing his shoulder blades as he went as far back as he was able to go. The dim yellow light of the street lamp above showed the weird bright mask and the obscene bulging shapes under the dark robe the big man was wearing. He lumbered down the street and paused just at the spot where Antoine had held her in his arms.

  The other young men were attempting to fade into the woodwork. One was backed into the same building as Antoine. Another was crouching in the gutter of the street. A third was backing away down the sidewalk with large staring eyes. The others were trying to do their best impressions of The Invisible Man. There was only the sound of the fireworks bursting above.

  The huge being turned his painted mask toward Antoine, and Antoine saw his eyes clearly in the beam of jaundiced light. One eye was colored blue, the other was a contrasting brown, and both stared at him as if pinning a live bug onto a board with a long needle. They are looking at me. Antoine shuddered helplessly.

  For an instant, the massive man in the bizarre mask watched him. Even while he studied the young man, Antoine had the oddest feeling that the man behind the mask was sniffing the air as if searching for something he’d lost. Then the ungainly multicolored mask swiveled in the direction that the girl had run, and the big man lumbered off.

  Antoine had an urge to run in the opposite direction. Before he could bring himself to move, another man came around the corner as if he were taking an evening stroll. This one looked very normal in comparison, and Antoine almost breathed a sigh of relief before it occurred to him that although his appearance was normal, this next one was anything but. He was around thirty years old and a few inches under six feet tall. His long black hair flowed over his shoulders and undulated gently behind his powerful shoulders. His observant brown eyes, set in a handsome face, looked over the group of trembling young men and found them wanting. An annoying knowing smile quirked over his features, and he passed them wordlessly.

  Finally, Antoine said, “What the fuck was that?”

  “I think maybe we should go home,” said another one. “Next thing you know, a SWAT team is going to be running through the streets and everyone’s going to the pokey for the night. I don’t want to be in a common cell with any of those motherfuckers.”

  “I don’t want to know, and I don’t want to ever know,” said another one. “Shit man. They have twenty bars still open on Lower Greenville. Let’s go.”

  Antoine was thinking of the girl dressed in black and wearing a black knit cap just like someone who was committing a crime. Whatever she was into, she was in deep shit.

  *

  The watching man entered the house and immediately suppressed the chill of fear that threatened to inundate him. The house was filled with the spirits of the dead, the spirits of the underworld who should have gone to join their loved ones. Their twisted presences overwhelmed the at
mosphere of the large house on Durfrene Row and circled it with their malevolence. The man knew precisely why his enemy had chosen this place as his headquarters. He would feel at home here, and the evilness would protect his perverted purposes.

  The watching man was drawn toward the basement. He knew that he didn’t have much time. What was calling him was coming from the basement. It took him a minute to find the pantry and the narrow door in the back that led downward. But he descended into the depths of the basement and couldn’t prevent the goose bumps that ran unchecked down his arms at the wretched air down there. The dead walk here. Oh, Anthony, what have you done?

  Using a flashlight he had brought with him, he discovered that the safe was empty and that his enemy had been robbed of the very thing he had taken from the tribe. But the watching man discovered something far more sinister. He noticed the blood on the dumbwaiter’s doors and knew that the thief had bled there. The thought of what it meant made his lips curl in consternation. She didn’t have much of a chance of survival now. Not unless he helped her.

  It was true that she had been clever enough to escape a house filled with supernatural beings. And she had become aware that her proximity would ensure her doom. The watching man’s head came up as he thought about what it meant to him and the task he had come to complete. He closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them, he dabbed his finger into the still sticky blood of the thief and smeared it on the coyote fetish. Then he wiped the blood away from the dumbwaiter door and cast a handful of dirt on top to obscure it.