Comprehension was what Will wanted her to see. And what better way to see than with her two eyes? But how he was accomplishing this task was beyond her. The skeptical part of Penelope’s mind suggested hypnosis or some kind of mind-altering drug like LSD or peyote, but the pain of the deep scratches scoring her face brought her back to the forefront of her thoughts. The pain was starkly real. The blood on her face was warm and sticky.
What truly grounded her was one of the sayings that her father had quoted and of which she had so recently thought. His voice was like a perceptible bullhorn clamoring in her head. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” More things in heaven and earth, Penelope, than you can ever dream up.
“Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” Penelope muttered. It was a play she hadn’t read until she had seen the film version with Mel Gibson. And even then she hadn’t gotten everything. But she was getting this. It was like being hit in the head with a large water buffalo.
Now what?
The moon suddenly shifted in the sky and started to move away from Penelope. Her eyes went very large and she stepped forward in an effort to keep in the patch of moonlight. Whatever the hell this is, I want to stay where that light is, she thought.
Me, too, said the inner voice plaintively, which sounded suspiciously sincere.
The coyotes began to howl and Penelope was reminded of the dream she’d been having before she woke up at Will’s cabin. The coyotes howled all around her, then changed into something big and shadowy so they could warn her about something. But whatever the something had been, she couldn’t quite recall it at the moment.
“What else have you got for me?” she murmured and followed the moon’s makeshift path into the forest.
*
The little boy was walking home from school, his feet shuffling forlornly through the dirt. The day was dusty and gritty. A forest fire was burning to the west, and the air smelled like brimstone. Threads of low-lying smoke filtered through the tall pines and emphasized the nearness. Penelope stood in the shade of one of the trees and watched as the boy gradually threaded his way up a gravel lane toward a small house tucked away in a stand of pine trees.
Perhaps eight years old, his hair was black and tumbled over his shoulders. His eyes were brown. His skin was a light gold. His face was a little pudgy from the onset of preadolescence. The baby fat would fade away once a growth spurt took him up almost a foot in height.
Will? Or Anthony? Penelope stared. The boy’s lip was fattened from a blow. A trickle of blood wound its way down the corner of his mouth. One eye was starting to puff up to show the beginnings of the shiner he would have. He remained sullenly defiant.
He passed her as if he didn’t see her; his gaze was focused on the ground. There was an excited noise as someone exited the little house and saw him. Penelope looked to see a woman she took for his mother. She rushed to the boy and enfolded him in her loving arms, murmuring sweet reassurances. The boy remained still in her arms for only a few seconds and then slithered away as only small children can do. He slipped into the house and vanished.
There was a voice from beside Penelope. She started and looked over her right shoulder. A young boy stood there, looking at her expectantly. He was perhaps twelve years old and similar in many respects to the other boy. His hair was bluely black in the vivid sunlight. His eyes were a chocolaty brown, and already his features were reflecting the more-than-recognizable proportions of adulthood. He said, “You mustn’t feel sorry for him.”
“Will?” she said, already certain that a vision of a twelve-year-old William Jonathon Littlesoldier stood beside her. Anthony was the one who had fled into the house.
The solemn boy nodded. He wore a Trailblazers T-shirt and blue jeans that were an inch too short for him. Cheap tennis shoes fixed with duct tape revealed the extent of his parents’ wealth. He nodded again, this time toward the house.
Their mother had remained where she was. Her head was bowed toward the dirt as if she were ashamed of her own flesh and blood. Her shoulders quaked as silent tears flowed down her cheeks and dropped into the earth.
“Anthony picked the fight,” Will said sincerely. “He found a smaller white boy that he thought had no one to protect him and insulted him. Then he hit him deliberately. But the boy’s brother was right around the corner.”
What does that say about Anthony? she thought with some disgust.
“The seed cannot grow without fertile soil,” Will said.
“The seed,” Penelope repeated with bewilderment.
The twelve-year-old Will didn’t sound like a twelve-year-old boy. He sounded as if he were a thousand years old instead. “Look again,” he said and his finger pointed.
*
Penelope looked, and while she looked, it occurred to her that her cheek was burning as if it were on fire. The blood dried on her face and pulled at the skin like scratchy little zippers full of misgiving. Her fingers absently touched the swollen flesh.
She was looking at something different. It was another part of the forest. The smoke was long since gone. The world had shifted into another part of the day; it was the cusp of dusk. The sun was up but lost behind a range of mountains. The skies were purpling in the west. Needles drifted down upon her head like snowflakes. Autumn was in the air.
A waterfall spilled over a rock outcropping not twenty feet away. It fell about ten feet and roared away in a cascade of greenish-blue water down a creek bed. A clearing on one side disclosed that she was not the first person to come to this place, nor would she be the last. A single car was parked there haphazardly. Two young men sat on the hood of a decrepit Ford and drank bottles of Colt .45. One young man was recognizable as a sixteen-year-old Anthony. The other one was an unknown Caucasian boy of a similar age with blonde hair and blue eyes.
As she watched, it became apparent that the pair barely got along. One was there only for the beer. The other was there for reasons unknown. Before long the two began to argue. To Penelope’s ears it sounded senseless and unsubstantiated. There was a girl they both liked and wanted. Apparently neither boy wanted to back down. One was resentfully vicious. The other was insolent and determined.
Will whispered into Penelope’s ear. “Anthony’s soul wasn’t always corrupted.”
Penelope could have turned to look at Will but something prevented her. The two boys began to throw punches at each other. The blonde took advantage of Anthony and knocked him a final debilitating blow that caused him to fall into the stream. When Anthony crawled out, his eyes flashed like black fire wrought from the deepest regions of hell. The other boy broke a bottle of beer and brandished the cut glass like a knife.
Anthony climbed to his feet. His eyes were fixed on the beer bottle. “You don’t need that, Jake.”
“The fuck I don’t,” Jake protested vehemently. “You would have pounded my face in.”
Then he charged at Anthony, the bottle flashing up and back, preparatory to a killing blow. Anthony waited for him, an instant in time where it seemed as though he would take the strike head on, without any attempt to move out of the way or to block it. Then as the other boy was a microsecond away from driving the sharpened shards of the bottle into his chest, Anthony stepped to one side.
The movement was so lightning fast that it seemed as though it were unreal.
“Yes, unreal,” Will murmured. “Not of this world.”
One of Anthony’s hands shot out and grasped the wrist of the other boy and twisted it around with a seamless motion. There was an agonized scream as Anthony broke the boy’s elbow and twisted the wrist holding the bottle to be certain. The blonde fell at Anthony’s feet.
Anthony stared downward for a long minute. There was a moment of clarity for him. A shade of utter blackness crossed over his features and did not vanish. Instead the blackness was absorbed into him. It became part of him.
Releasing the wrist still encased in his strong fingers, Anthony watched as the arm
gently came to rest across the boy’s chest, next to the remnants of the beer bottle buried there. Then he knelt and looked closely at the boy’s dead features. One hand came out and touched the blood around the chest wound. A finger dipped into the viscous liquid and brought it back to his face.
Penelope’s mouth opened in acute repulsion.
Anthony deliberately tasted the blood, and an inhuman smile crossed his face.
“He wasn’t all bad…once,” Will whispered. “But he made a choice. They never found Jake Powell’s body. They didn’t find his car, either. Anthony hid both. He hid them very well.”
“But it was an accident,” Penelope said. “He didn’t really mean to kill the boy.”
“Yes, he did,” the voice was coldly cruel in its judgment. “The seed has grown. Anthony made his choice. He didn’t have to make that choice. There were others.”
Penelope swallowed.
“Thief,” came another voice. Her head twisted, and she saw the sixteen-year-old Anthony standing there. His face was smeared with his enemy’s blood, adorned just as it had been some years later with Merri in the unknown lava cave. White teeth flashed in a wretched crimson grin. “Run, little girl. Run for your life. You won’t escape me, but oh, the fun I’ll have finding you, and I’ll get back what you’ve taken.”
Penelope backed away into the blackness.
*
“Ill seed, ill weed,” Penelope whispered. It was another of Jacob’s sayings. It was one he often applied to people he considered to be a chip off their old blocks. He used these on people he didn’t want Penelope to associate with, particularly other thieves who didn’t adhere to the code which he and his old crew followed. But she shook the thought off and looked at where she was at the present time.
She was standing in someone’s house. The walls were wood paneled, polished regularly with oil and kept free of blemishes. There was a tall bookcase constructed out of cherry wood, filled with leather-bound books. The floor was covered with a lovely Navajo rug made from multihued wool and woven into intricate abstract patterns. There was a cherry desk and a chair that matched. A brass banker’s lamp was lit on the desk, illuminating a neat stack of papers.
She slowly looked around again, expecting monsters, beasts, or other various creeping, crawling things to leap out at her. Then she realized that her knees were trembling. For a moment she thought that the earth was shaking as it had been when Anthony had opened the fissure to the underworld for the shadow people to come forth. But it was only her. Her body felt like it was on fire, and her vision was starting to blur with little black specks appearing on the edges of her peripheral vision.
The scratches on her cheek felt thick and inflamed, the point from which all pain in her essence radiated. It was as if she had been infected with the evil that had taken over Merri Littlesoldier’s shape.
It burns, she thought and it was both herself and her inner voice thinking at the same time. God, it burns.
The door to the library opened up, and a silhouetted figure paused there. The shape scrutinized the room with deliberate measure and entered, shutting the door behind it. Anthony again faced her, but he looked through her as if she was invisible. He passed by her and went directly to the stacks of books. His hand caressed the supple covers with a tender touch and found the one he wanted.
Penelope stood still, wishing to remain as motionless and unnoticeable as possible.
Dressed in a suit with a red tie, Anthony appeared every inch a polished gentleman. Approximately in his mid-twenties, his long hair was his only failing. The magnificent blue-black length spilled over his back like a proud badge of honor. His eyes glittered ruthlessly in the lamp’s light, and he opened the book with a gruff noise of success.
The book was merely a cover for a hollow space contained inside. He delved a hand inside and came out with a necklace of carved beads. On the end hung a sparkling gemstone the size of an egg. Its opalescent refractions and deep black color instantly revealed its true nature, and its name teetered on the edge of Penelope’s lips.
The Tears of the Spirit.
“You shall not take the stone,” said a voice. It was an acute voice, hollow in its delivery as if spoken from the inside of a large, empty room.
This time Penelope did not jump. She merely turned her head. There was a dark shape in the corner of the room. Previously her eyes had passed it by. It was too small to be anything threatening and it looked like a pile of books cast in shadows.
“I shall not,” Anthony said in response, meaning the opposite. Penelope looked back at him. He held the necklace up to the light of the banker’s lamp and examined the gemstone closely, seemingly unconcerned with the speaker. When he spoke again, his voice was filled with awe. “It is as it was rumored. I can feel the black power within it. It seeks me out.”
“It’s not too late for you, Anthony,” the voice said. “The evil has not completely overtaken your innermost self. You could simply put the stone back and return it to its place.”
“Where no one will ever look upon its shadowed form and know its majestic purpose,” Anthony said and laughed. His hand closed ruthlessly over the gem, and he put it unhesitatingly into a jacket pocket. The other hand directed the light of the lamp toward the obscured corner.
Penelope’s head followed the fluorescent rays, and what she saw she couldn’t quite believe. Once, her hair had been black as night, but now it was gray and mottled with the eternity of years. The passage of time hadn’t been so kind to the rest of her. Bones were all that were left. They weren’t bleached white by the sun or stained brown with the dirt in which they had been buried. Rather they were yellowed ivory and sat neatly arranged in a leather chair in a corner like a valued visitor. She was dressed in tan buckskins adorned with shells and ornate beadwork. Matching moccasins adorned her skeletal feet. Her bony arms were crossed over her lap as if she was waiting for someone. Her skull with the hair that remained was propped against the headrest of the high-backed chair. Empty black holes keenly observed her caller.
“Oh, hallowed ancestress,” Anthony said mockingly. “Never did I think I would look upon your visage.”
Her name had been Nahkeeta. She had warned her husband, Magic Elk, of the ill-fated consequences of his undertaking, but he hadn’t listened, so determined had he been to have his beloved wife back.
Anthony scratched lazily at his chin. “All these years, and you’re still about, doomed to be alive unto eternity. It seems like an unfair exchange.” His comment was coldly sardonic. “You’ve learned to speak the white man’s language. I would have thought that beneath you.”
“One adapts, Anthony,” Nahkeeta said just as sardonically. “You know that. You know many things. The clock hasn’t quite chimed midnight. Turn back before you’re lost forever.”
“You sound like the worst dialogue from a wretched soap opera,” he commented idly. Anthony regarded the skeleton with marked derision. Finally, he said, “It’s already too late.” One hand reached into another pocket and removed a little metal container. “Do you know what this is, Nahkeeta?”
He moved the container so that the markings on the front could be seen in the lamp’s light. It was a can of lighter fluid.
Nahkeeta said nothing. Apparently she did know what it was and what it was used for.
“I don’t think they’ve taken you to many barbeques lately,” he said and flipped the little spout upwards. With a last look at the remains of his distant ancestor, he began to systematically spray the room. “Perhaps if your bones were incinerated, then you could go on to the next world, or perhaps not. I don’t really care.”
Penelope gasped as he sprayed the caustic fluid over her body. She stepped backwards and would have fled except that Nahkeeta said, “Penelope. Don’t fear.”
Her head turned expectantly toward the bones sitting in the chair.
“Penelope,” Anthony repeated, halting his actions. He tossed the container onto the floor and extracted a lighter from an inside
jacket pocket. “The little thief. Time to stop running. Time to burn with the sanctified remains of the skeletal one.”
The lighter flicked once and sparked. Anthony chuckled and flicked his thumb again. This time it caught, and he dropped it even while he walked toward the door.
The room exploded into flames, and Penelope screamed hoarsely.
Over the roar of the flames, she heard Nahkeeta say, “Remember, Penelope. Remember what the coyotes told you.”
I can’t remember, Penelope wanted to shriek, but it was too late.
*
The towering walls of fire surrounded Penelope. She would have run, but there was nowhere to escape the impenetrable waves of heat that were inevitably inching toward her. No escape, her mind shouted. No escape!
Every surface was aflame. Penelope could smell the acridness of the burning lighter fluid and knew that if a single spark touched her she would be burning like the rest. Trapped in the middle of the room, she had run out of options.
Chapter Twenty-Six
? - Sunday, July 13th
XX (slang, origin unknown, probably 1920s American) - double-cross
“Trust,” said a voice. It sighed the word into her ear like a cherished supplication. The voice didn’t seem to be sarcastic or denigrating.
Abruptly, something dug into the palm of her hand, and she clasped her fingers tightly around the object, almost afraid to look at it. It manifested itself there from nothingness and was no small part of the insanity which she was enduring. However, the fear of the fire was more immediate and took her attention away from the unknown object.
Penelope threw a frantic glance around her, seeking what she already knew she couldn’t find. There were only great barriers of fire that were searing her flesh. Her lungs gasped in breaths of blistering hot air that scorched her from the inside out.
Suddenly the voice was more than a voice. It was a hard shape, pushed up behind Penelope’s shaking body so that she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The extraordinary part was that she felt safe for a solitary moment and then the feeling was gone. Will bent his head to her ear and said, “Trust me.”
Shadow People Page 24