Cast Of Shadows

by Kevin Guilfoile

  “I mean for me,” she said. She pointed to the shovel in his hands. “While you were blinded, he smacked me with that thing.” Sally lifted her hair and on her finely rendered temple Justin could see a large bruise growing toward her eye.

  “All right,” he said. “We should get out of here now. I lost sight of him, but he could try to cut us off.” He held out the knife. “Can you hold this? Or wave it around, anyway? Look menacing?” She wanted to stab Justin with it, to tell the truth. Justin had saved her with that blind tackle, but it was his insane scheming that had put her in danger in the first place. What the hell had she been thinking? And they weren’t out of it yet. She tapped her bruise with the handle of the knife and the pain meter shot to life. She might have a concussion.

  Practically hanging from his shoulder with one hand and making a conspicuous presentation with the blade in the other, Sally and Justin walked out of the garage the way they’d come in. Neither mentioned to the other how relieved and disturbed they were that Coyne didn’t show himself again.

  – 78 -

  Joan felt Davis come to bed late, after midnight, and he settled inertly and heavily into the left side, his side, as if eased there by a dockside crane. She recognized the sigh, the murmur, the groan, and knew he wasn’t coming to sleep, but only to seek refuge from being tired, from the thing that was causing him stress and unhappiness. Oddly, even though the place he chose to hide was only inches away – was, in fact, the very spot on which they had made love countless times before and since their wedding day – she was convinced the thing he no longer wanted to face was their marriage.

  She stretched an arm across his thickening belly nevertheless. “What is it?” she said.

  “I’ve been keeping something from you.”

  Oh God.

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you’d say. How you’d react. I know you thought I was past it.”

  Wherever he was heading, this sounded bad. Bad for her. Bad for them.

  “I know who did it,” he said. “I know who killed her.”

  Awake now. Wide awake. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sam Coyne. That’s his name. He killed AK. He was a boy in her class.”

  In the dark, with the dense red curtains blocking the streetlamps and the moonlight, she could barely see his face, but his white hair reflected what little fluorescence there was in the room. He was staring at the ceiling and she wondered if he planned this, planned to tell her all along, if he knew she’d be awake tonight and planned to tell her, or if he was just tired, tired of not sleeping, tired of not telling. It didn’t matter much either way, now that she knew what had been bothering him.

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Chicago. He’s an attorney. Ginsburg and Addams.”

  “No,” she said. “Shit.”

  “No shit.”

  “Honey, are you sure? How do you know?”

  He inhaled a long breath, as if he had to tell the entire story before it expired. “Justin came to me.” He held up a preemptive hand. “I never called him. Hadn’t even laid eyes on him in years, but he came to me a few months ago. In the fall.” It came out then, not in one breath but in pieces and tangents and in forgotten bits where the tale had to be stopped and backstory recounted.

  When it was done, he said, “I don’t know what to do, Joan.”

  She pulled herself closer to him. “Can you call the police?”

  “If the point is to land me in jail for fraud and genetic tampering, sure.”

  “Well,” Joan said with a hopeful sigh. “This isn’t going to sound like much of an idea, but you could do nothing. You could let it go. A lot of lives have been disrupted or even ended because you started on this path. And I take responsibility for that, too. But if you really can’t get this guy without hurting anyone else – and by anyone else I mean you and me, of course, but also Justin and Martha Finn – then maybe it’s just time to walk away.”

  Davis said, “That’s probably an excellent idea, Dr. Burton. But it might be out of my hands.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the boy. He’s fixated on Coyne. I think he plans to do something. Something irrational.”

  Joan was up on an elbow. “Do you think he’d kill him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s convinced Coyne is the Wicker Man, and he’s trying to prove it.”

  “God. I mean, do you think it’s possible? That Coyne is a serial killer?”

  Davis frowned. “No. I mean, is he capable? Sure. He’s proven that. But Justin was obsessed with the Wicker Man before he even found out he was a clone. Before he found out he was cloned from Sam Coyne. In his head, he’s obviously put these things together on the flimsiest of evidence. You know, he plays that video game-”

  “Shadow World.”

  “Right. And like a lot of other gamers, he talks about the things that happen in Shadow World as if they actually happened, but then he’ll disclaim it and say something like, You know, it’s only a game… ”

  “But you think he has a hard time distinguishing the game from reality?”

  “No, I think he has a hard time distinguishing reality from the game. I think he looks at real life as if it’s some sort of contest. As if life is a puzzle to be figured out. That there’s an objective. Winners and losers. A purpose. And now he’s convinced his purpose for being here is to bring down Sam Coyne for murdering AK.”

  Joan whispered, “How do you know he’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe there is something each of us is here for, and maybe our lives are supposed to be spent figuring out what that is. I mean really, Davis, Justin actually was created for a purpose. A very specific purpose. And you know what? That purpose was exactly what he thinks it is.”

  Davis propped himself up on one arm. “Justin wasn’t created so that he could find AK’s killer. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I shouldn’t have done it. The question is, what do I do now? What do I do with the knowledge that the monster that took my daughter from me is living it up as a partner at a prestigious law firm? How can I let that be? And what do I do about Justin? He’s my responsibility.”

  Her hands wet with her husband’s sweat, Joan went to the closet for a towel, and she brought him a clean T-shirt, peeling the dirty one from his shoulders and drying him off the way a nurse would.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “Just promise me when this is over, whatever happens, we’ll stop keeping secrets and I’ll have you all to myself.”

  Cooled as she lifted the dampness from his chest and arms, Davis smiled in the dark. “You’d be the first,” he said. “But I promise.”

  – 79 -

  When a fantasy gamer gets sick or injured, she usually lets the avatar die. A Shadow World hospital is about as much fun as a real one, and nobody wants to sit through stitches and a physical when she can start the game over instead. There are only two kinds of people with enough at stake to bring their characters to Shadow hospitals: players who’ve achieved great success, fame, or wealth inside the game, and True-to-Lifers. Fortunately, that means the emergency room wait is only half as long.

  In front of the computer in his room, Justin worried his mother would hear him talking into his headset. It was getting closer to dawn and his mother – his real mother – would be sleeping less soundly. She had patience with his gaming, but she’d flip if she knew he’d been staying up all night, driving around town with a thirty-five-year-old woman, and getting in knife fights with serial killers. He started typing words for his avatar instead of speaking them.

  Shadow Sally sat on an exam table, needlessly dressed down to green scrubs. A doctor, Hannah Wright, conducted a series of unconvincing tests (Justin guessed she was a fantasy player pretending to be a doctor) before telling her she was going to be okay.

  “Sally, you have a concussion,” Dr. Wright said. “I’ve ruled out a serious head injury and your spinal cord seems fine. Take ac
etaminophen when the pain gets to you. Stay away from aspirin or ibuprofen, all right?”

  “Dr. Wright, sure.”

  The avatar named Dr. Wright took a seat in an orange plastic chair; her eye line was at least eighteen inches below Barwick’s, and she looked up at her with her head tilted to the right. “Sally, do you have someone to stay up with you tonight? Just in case you start showing disorientation? How about your friend here?”

  Shadow Justin took a step away from the wall. “Well, yeah. Sure. I mean, I have to go to school in a couple hours,” he said. “But my avatar could stay with her. And I could check in on her every few hours.”

  God, he still doesn’t get it, Sally thought. What it means to be a TTL.

  “Good,” Dr. Wright said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’d like the two of you to sit here for another half hour, just to make sure there isn’t any unexpected swelling or disorientation.”

  “Thanks, Doctor,” Sally said. Dr. Wright left the exam room to see other patients.

  At home, Justin – real Justin – was tired. The fight with Coyne had been intense and he wanted to shut down his computer and get an hour of sleep before school. But he knew if he left his avatar alone with Sally’s, it wouldn’t be able to monitor her “orientation.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” Barwick said.

  “No, I want to,” he typed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said. “Avatars heal quickly.”

  “Yeah, but did they factor in all the symptoms right? On a percentage basis? You could just drop dead from an aneurysm or whatever.”

  “Thanks.”

  The energy meter on Justin’s screen dipped to a critically low level, and he grabbed the orange chair. Even if he wasn’t going to sleep tonight, his avatar could use a little rest.

  Shadow Sally sat on the exam table, her fingers tucked under her thighs. Her bruise was already healing, an indication from the game, Justin suspected, that her injuries weren’t going to be so bad.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Why is this life so important to you? I mean, I play the game. It’s fun. Why did you need to come here to the hospital? If your online life is exactly the same as your real one, why can’t you just start over if something happens to you? It seems like you wouldn’t even lose a day.”

  Sally said, “The best way I can explain it – it’s sort of a Zen thing. The goal of being a True-to-Lifer is to make the two existences, online and off-line, equally important. Equally real. Some TTLs treat their avatar like a yin to their yang, trying to channel their less attractive impulses into a fictional character so they can be a better person in real life. Others, like me, are trying to lead two nearly identical lives. If I were to die in Shadow World, I would feel the pain as if a real person had been lost. And if I were to die in real life, my avatar would hopefully go on without me.”

  “Go on without you? What are you talking about?”

  “If you don’t log in to the game for sixty days, Shadow World shuts down your account. Your character disappears, and if you perform a necessary function, you’re replaced by another player or game-controlled character. But a good True-to-Lifer can fool the program. His avatar is so realistic even when a real person isn’t controlling him, he can continue on in the game for months or even years after the player who created him passes away. If you pay attention, you can see them, walking around Shadow World. They have a sad look. Mournful.”

  “So you’re something like twins,” Justin said. “Twins with the same mind.”

  Sally nodded. “I like that.”

  Justin stood up and walked to the door. Nurses were leading worried avatars between exam rooms, medicating them. Healing them. Sitting at computers, their players no doubt were praying the ailments and injuries weren’t serious. “The yin and yang thing. What if Coyne is one of those kind of TTLs? What if he’s not just trying to blow off steam? What if he’s trying to… to banish the Wicker Man from the real world into the game? What if he wants to rid his real self of these horrible impulses and put them all into his character online, where he can’t hurt flesh-and-blood people?”

  “ Oh God. I don’t think so,” Barwick said.

  “Why not?” Shadow Justin was annoyed. “You dismiss everything as soon as I say it, but you have to admit, some of my nutty theories have proven right. Isn’t it possible that the real Sam Coyne is trying to stop himself from killing, and he’s trying to use the game as a way to rid himself of the illness that compels him to attack women?”

  “I doubt it,” Sally said, “because right now I think the real Sam Coyne is standing outside my window.”

  – 80 -

  Through a window in the spare bedroom, cracked even in winter because of an irritating anomaly in the ductwork that always baked this corner of the town house while other rooms froze, Barwick heard him when he jumped the iron fence into her tiny, neglected back garden. In a sweatshirt and black jeans, he looked like a panther against the new covering of snow, but less graceful, putting his face clumsily to the downstairs windows, peering inside. If he was a predator, he didn’t seem to be stalking prey so much as peeping it.

  That was Sam Coyne for sure. She recognized the blond mess of hair and, when he looked up into a streetlight, those cheekbones. Maybe he is a TTL after all, she thought. The avatar didn’t lie.

  Still online with Justin, she dialed 911. She also tried to come up with a way to defend herself. As she gave her address to the emergency operator, the closest thing to a plan she could manage was to grab a softball bat from under the bed.

  “How did he find out where you live?” Justin asked. “Or even who you are?” Sally could hear Justin’s own voice again. He must have picked up the headset.

  “I don’t know,” Barwick said, standing at her computer now, whispering, trying to figure out where Coyne had gone. “Maybe someone at the club recognized me from the story I did on their opening.”

  “You think?”

  Without her even commanding it, Sally’s avatar looked around the hospital room and then down at her own hands. Watching it on-screen, the action jolted real Sally. “Oh shit!” she said into her headset. “My purse! I left my purse in the garage! My Shadow ID is the same as my real one. Shit!”

  “Do you have a weapon or something?” Justin asked. “Like a gun or a bat?”

  “You know, for a deep thinker, you’re about two minutes behind the curve,” she said. “Do you think I should hide? In the closet?”

  “No!” Justin yelped. “How will I know you’re okay if you’re away from the computer?”

  “Not a priority for me right now, Justin.”

  She removed her headset and bounced from window to window, following the man as he made the perimeter of the house. If he was the Wicker Man, so notorious for leaving no evidence at the scenes of his crimes, Coyne was having an off day. The bottoms of his boots had made dozens of impressions around the foundation. She took that as a hopeful sign he wasn’t here to kill her.

  “What’s going on?” Justin asked at intervals.

  Hearing his muffled voice from across the room, Barwick grabbed the headset and held it to her face. “He’s just walking around the house.”

  “Like he’s looking for a way in?”

  “I don’t know. Why doesn’t he just bash in a window?”

  “Noise, maybe?” Justin said.

  “This is insane!” The ends of her sentences were starting to betray fear.

  Justin was still trying to grasp the strangeness of it – the way they were having a real-world conversation and navigating this tense situation through avatars sitting quietly in a hospital waiting room. His real life suddenly seemed like the surreal one. “Don’t freak out,” Justin said.

  “Easy for you.”

  “Just stay away from him. You’ve already beaten him once tonight. This time you’ve got an advantage. It’s your house. He’s got more to lose. The cops are on the wa
y…”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “Are you kidding me?” Barwick said.

  “What?”

  “He’s knocking on the front door.”

  “Maybe it’s the police.”

  “Have you ever called the police?”

  “No.”

  “They’re not that fast.” She dropped the headset and lifted the bat to her shoulder. The simplest explanation, remember? The simplest explanation for that knocking sound is that the deranged madman I saw lurking outside my house wants me to let him in so he can kill me.

  She was exhausted. The last four hours had been long and intense. She was more tired of being frightened than she was frightened. Frankly, she had been more scared when Coyne had been chasing her in Shadow World. Her whole life seemed inverted.

  She decided she was going downstairs. She let Justin get her into this for the sake of a story, and now the story was knocking on her door. It was probable the story wanted to kill her, of course, but she was going to ask Sam Coyne a few questions, nevertheless.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “I’ve called the police!” Sally shouted from the stairs.

  A pause. “I just want to talk!” Coyne said through the door.

  “I know who you are!”

  Another pause. “I know. That’s why we need to talk. Call the police back.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “That you made a mistake.”

  “You can’t cancel a nine-one-one call,” she said. “I already gave them your name.” That was a lie but she wondered why she hadn’t.

  “You’re a reporter. For the Tribune. ”

  “You’re a murderer. Nice to meet you, asshole.”

  A long silence. She thought he might have left. Or gone around back. “How did the boy know my name?” he said finally.

  Sally said, “That’s right. He does know who you are. And he knows you’re here. We’re sitting together at Shadow Stroger Hospital right now. I’ve been telling him everything that’s happening.”