“You bet.”
Gruber tapped the folder. “Gotta say, Albert, you’ve been busy.”
“No more than usual.” Kernodle shrugged. That simple motion triggered a cascade of tremors and twitches culminating in him swatting his own ear and checking his palm for a squished insect. Even though his hand was empty, he shook away the nonexistent pest. After what Sam had told him about the footage of Kernodle, Dean had wondered if the man saw things that weren’t there. He seemed to notice the shadow creatures but apparently suffered hallucinations as well.
“So, it’s usual for you to steal from people?” Gruber asked.
“Don’t steal,” Kernodle said. “Never stole nothing.”
Gruber opened the folder and fanned out several eight by ten glossies printed from the security footage, showing Kernodle taking cash from wallets and a purse. “What do you have to say about these?”
“You need a better camera,” Kernodle said. “Besides, that don’t look like me.”
“You’re wearing the same clothes.”
“From a thrift store,” he said. “Anyone can shop there.”
“Oh, we have photos of your face,” Gruber said and took out a shot of Kernodle smiling on the park bench. “That man is you.”
“Maybe,” Kernodle allowed. “But I didn’t steal that money. They gave it to me.”
“They were unconscious!” Gruber said, offended. “You rifled through their pockets!”
“Don’t matter,” Kernodle said. “Law says finders keepers.”
“That’s not a law, Albert,” Gruber said. “And you didn’t find that money. You took it from unconscious people. At least one of them injured, bleeding at your feet.”
Kernodle shrugged again, but clenched his hands together this time to fight off the trembling that raced down his spine. “What if I thought they were dead? Or dying? Everyone falls over like that, you assume they’re dying. Can’t take it with you, right?”
“Not everyone,” Sam said, then pointedly, “Not you.”
“What makes you special, Albert?” asked Dean.
“Tick tock, tick tock, my time’s coming,” Albert said. “Soon enough.”
“But you didn’t black out with everyone else,” Sam said. “Not tonight. Or the night before. Why not?”
“Lucky, I guess,” Kernodle said, chuckling until it triggered a coughing fit. “Ain’t—that right—Off-Officer—Gr-Gruber.”
Gruber leaned out the door and asked Dunn to bring some bottled water for the suspect. Less than a minute later, Kernodle downed half the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What did he mean?” Sam asked Gruber.
“Bad luck,” Gruber said. “The worst luck, really. I know Albert because his situation is very unique.”
“Homelessness?” Dean asked, confused.
“Bad genetics,” Gruber said. “True, he’s been living on the street for a couple years and can’t hold down a job, but it’s not his fault. For the most part.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Fatal familial insomnia,” Gruber said. “An incurable genetic condition. Prevents sleep, can cause dementia and, eventually, leads to death.”
“Life leads to death,” Kernodle said.
“He’s got a point,” Dean said.
“Well, he’s refused medical care all this time.”
“Incurable, remember?” Kernodle said.
“Two for two,” Dean said.
“He’s been living off handouts.”
Kernodle nodded. “The kindness of strangers.”
“And scaring children,” Gruber said. “Although that’s due to his symptoms, not malicious intent.”
Kernodle spread his arms, palms up. “Out of my control.”
His neck spasmed, forcing him to drop his hands to the table and grip the edges. Once he regained some control, he took another gulp of water.
“Overall, he’s been an occasional nuisance rather than a lawbreaker,” Gruber said. “Until now.”
“Old rules don’t apply,” Kernodle said.
“The law hasn’t changed, Albert.”
“End of the world, Gruber,” Kernodle said, tapping the table with his index finger. “You just don’t see it.”
“What do you see, Albert?” Sam asked.
“All sorts of things, big and small,” Kernodle said. “Some things aren’t real. I know that. My symptoms, as Gruber says. But it all feels real. Like the bugaboos.”
“Bugaboos?” Dean asked, glancing briefly at Sam.
“Yes, sir, in the dark,” Kernodle said, nodding. “They ride in the dark. Seen them all over town.”
“Dark?” Sam asked.
“Look like shadows,” Kernodle said, “unless you pay attention.”
“Let me get this straight,” Gruber said. “You’re afraid of shadows?”
“They’re not shadows,” Kernodle said. “They hide in the shadows. But they’re alive.”
“How long have you been seeing these living shadows?” Sam asked, ignoring Gruber’s skeptical sidelong glance.
“First time…” Kernodle thought it over, scratched his jaw stubble with black-crusted fingernails. “Same day everyone fell down at once.”
“After the blackout?” Dean asked, wondering if the cause of the blackout somehow released the shadow creatures.
“No,” Kernodle said. “Earlier that night. But there’s more of them now.”
“How do you feel when the blackout happens?” Sam asked. “Any different?”
“Don’t know,” Kernodle said. “Never feel good or right. Guess I felt… surprised. First time it happened, I thought it was a blessing. Something finally going my way, you know? A little bit of payback for the crap sandwich that is my life.”
Dean could understand. Guy had been dealt a lousy hand. No hope. Nothing but the ticking clock of his own mortality.
“But it doesn’t really matter,” Kernodle said after a few moments of silence. “End of the world’s coming.”
“You keep saying that,” Sam said. “Why?”
Kernodle glanced around the room, checking all four corners, under the table and even inspecting the ceiling, all of which gave Dean a strong sense of déjà vu. Try that in a dark motel room with a flashlight, he thought.
Finally, Kernodle directed his attention to the three humans in the room with whatever phantoms haunted his mind. “They come from another world,” he whispered at length.
“The bugaboos?” Sam asked.
Kernodle nodded. “They come from another world, but they want to take over ours.” He tapped the tabletop. “Moyer is ground zero.”
“Why Moyer?” Gruber said.
“Who knows? Maybe it’s a weak spot in the space-time continuity.”
“Continuum,” Sam said.
“What he said,” Kernodle said, chuckling. “This is only the beginning. That’s why they’re hiding from us. It’s a gradual process. They’re still learning how to defeat us. By the time we know they’re here, it’ll be too late. The war will be over before we knew it began.”
“But you know,” Gruber said. “Big flaw in their plan.”
“Ha! Who will believe me? Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” he said. “But I’m a freak of nature. Never sleep. I see everything. Even stuff that isn’t there.”
“You’re right about one thing,” Gruber said. “Nobody believes you.”
“One night, you’ll all fall asleep and never wake up,” Kernodle warned, waving his fingers toward them dramatically. “They’ll replace all of you. And I’ll be there to see it. The end of the world. Our world—but not for long.” He lowered his trembling hands to the table and muttered, “Tick tock, tick tock…”
TWENTY
With Kernodle’s dire warning echoing in their ears, Dean, Sam and Gruber stood silently around the table, none of them sure how to proceed. Sam had told Dean he wanted to tell Gruber what they suspected, but when the moment was right. Kernodle h
ad stumbled onto a kernel of the truth—Dean seriously doubted a worldwide invasion had begun in a small Missouri town—but Dean couldn’t imagine a more unreliable witness.
The Winchesters had hoped to replicate Kernodle’s immunity to the blackouts, but short of altering their DNA to incorporate a rare, fatal disease, the task seemed impossible. Hard to defeat an enemy who could render you unconscious from afar.
“Well, if that’s it, gentlemen,” Gruber said to the Winchesters as he helped Kernodle to his feet and slipped cuffs on him. “I’ll take our prophet of doom here back to holding.”
“Fine,” Sam said, distracted. “Hey, when you’re done, maybe we should review that footage again.”
“Why?”
“Thought I saw something.”
Gruber frowned. “Don’t tell me you believe this guy’s nonsense.”
Not one to leave Sam out on a shaky limb, Dean said, “I—We’ve seen stranger things.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “You’d be surprised by some of the stuff.”
“Okay, whatever,” Gruber said. “I’m already half delirious.”
As Gruber tugged Kernodle through the doorway, Sam caught Dean’s shoulder to hold him back and spoke softly, “Dean, that footage—those dark shapes—we could run it by the British Men of Letters. I don’t know. Maybe they—”
“This is about us, Sam,” Dean said, fighting to keep his voice low. “You and me. Working a case. The Brits? They’re a last resort—beyond a last resort. And I’m not stumped yet. Are you?”
“No, but—”
“Then, it’s settled.”
They heard a burst of excited shouting outside the interview room.
Dean and Sam exited the room at once, brushing past Gruber who tugged Kernodle along by his elbow.
With Sam a step behind him, Dean passed between the conference room and the chief’s vacant office, then between records storage and the clerk office out into the lobby where an agitated teenager stood, holding out his left forearm wrapped in a blood-spotted t-shirt.
Officer Dunn attempted to calm him, but the kid’s eyes were wild, and he wasn’t hearing anything the cop was telling him. “C’mon, man, she cut me!”
“I’ll take your statement,” Dunn said.
“My parents don’t believe me,” the kid said. To reveal his injury, he’d shrugged halfway out of a studded black leather jacket he wore over a Green Day sweatshirt and torn jeans.
“We’ll get to that.”
Exasperated, Gruber said, “Dunn’s got this. I’ll be back after I show Albert to his temporary lodging.”
“Dude, you don’t understand,” the kid said to Dunn. “She came into my home. Sliced open my arm. You gotta stop her!”
“Who?”
“How can I sleep when she could be hiding anywhere?”
“Who cut you?”
“The shadow bitch! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“A woman cut you?”
“She wasn’t a woman,” the kid said. “Just female. Some kind of—I don’t know—freaky shadow monster.”
Dunn approached the Winchesters. “Don’t mind him, agents,” he said softly. “He’s tripping balls.”
But the kid overheard. “I’m not high!”
“Oh, no, not judging by the smell coming off your clothes.”
“One joint, okay,” the kid admitted, maybe forgetting for a moment where he stood. “Half a joint, if that.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Mr.…?”
“Hogarth,” the kid said. “Maurice Hogarth—and I have witnesses!”
“Your parents? You said they didn’t believe—”
“No! They were sleeping. They slept through everything. I’m talking about my online friends. They can collaborate everything I’m—”
“Corroborate?”
“Yeah, man,” the kid said. “They saw everything. Well, almost everything. They saw enough to prove I’m not lying!”
“Okay,” Dunn said. “Let’s see this wound.”
Maurice unwrapped the t-shirt, wincing as he pulled the cloth away from the tacky blood around the laceration in his forearm. “See? No joke!”
“It’s not that bad,” Dunn said. “Clean cut. Doesn’t look deep.”
“Hurts like hell!”
“Son, I need you to come down from whatever cloud you’re circling and begin at the beginning.”
Maurice rolled his eyes and, had he been a few years younger, might have stomped his foot in frustration. “Seriously, I—am—not—high! And what if she’s still in my house? She’s dangerous. And my parents are freaking clueless.”
Dean stepped forward and placed a hand on Dunn’s shoulder, “We’ve got this.”
“They can creep into our homes!” Maurice exclaimed. “Slice our throats while we sleep.”
“You want this headache?” Dunn asked.
“No problem,” Sam said.
“All yours.”
Dean checked one of the interview rooms off the lobby, found it empty and motioned Maurice forward. Sam brought up the rear. Maurice and Sam sat opposite each other across a table, while Dean leaned against the wall on Sam’s side of the room.
“Who are you guys?”
“FBI,” Sam said. “Special Agents Blair and Tench.”
“That’s more like it!”
Sam smiled. “Okay, Maurice, do me a favor,” he said. “Take a deep breath.”
“What?”
Sam followed his own instruction.
Maurice nodded, followed suit. “Okay, now what—?”
Sam glanced at Dean, who guessed what he had in mind and nodded.
“Maurice, we know about the shadows,” Sam said. “Agent Tench encountered one a few hours ago.”
“So, why are the police pretending they don’t—?”
“You’re not talking to the police,” Dean said. “Agent Blair and I are a bit more… open-minded about some things.”
Sam asked to see the wound again. “Shouldn’t need stitches,” he said. “A shadow did this to you?”
“Yeah,” Maurice said. “Like she wanted to slice me open.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Her hand—thing,” Maurice said, raising his own hand. “I don’t know, maybe it was one of her fingernails.”
“What? Like Freddy Krueger?” Dean asked.
“No,” Maurice said. “Normal fingernails but sharp.”
“You could see them?” Sam asked. “Fingernails?”
“Yes—No—I mean, she was a shadow—an outline. Like a silhouette of a person.”
“And you could make out individual fingernails?”
“Not at first,” Maurice said. “But after it—after she came past my computer monitor, the shadow shape came into focus, like changing from low definition to high definition. You notice details you couldn’t see before.”
Sam turned aside to whisper to Dean, “The ones I spotted on the surveillance cameras varied. Some clearer than others. Many fuzzy or wispy around the edges. D—Agent Tench,” Sam said, glancing at Maurice. “Could you see that level of detail with the shadow in the club?”
Dean thought back to the shadow that had emerged from Jasper James and the few moments of their standoff before it fled. He’d had the overall impression of a human silhouette, but not the kind of detail Maurice described. “No,” he said. “The outline was clear, but not what I’d call high-def.”
“Well, the one that attacked me definitely changed, like adjusting the focus knob on a pair of binoculars.”
“We haven’t heard of the shadows physically assaulting anyone,” Sam said. “Until now.”
“At least not directly,” Dean said, because possession assaults were mounting. “So, what? We think they’re escalating their attacks now?”
Sam turned back to Maurice. “We need to understand what triggered the attack.”
“Nothing!” Maurice exclaimed, offended. “I was video chatting with some friends and this thing showed up
in my room and came after me.”
“After the blackout?” Dean asked.
“Yeah,” Maurice said. “Everything was fine until midnight. I live-stream my reviews of hard rock albums, classics and new stuff, you know, while we listen to the tracks. I was in the middle of reviewing Skull Town by Morpheus Adrift—you guys heard that one? No? You really should check it out. It’s all about this fictional—sorry—where was I?”
“Midnight,” Sam prompted.
“So, at midnight, we all blacked out—except for Sally.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Sally didn’t black out?”
Intrigued, Dean stepped forward. Had they found another immune person?
“She lives in Bakersburg,” Maurice said. “The rest of us live here, in Moyer. I don’t think anyone in Bakersburg zonked out.”
“Unless they were in Moyer when it happened,” Dean said, disappointed.
“Well, she was at home at midnight,” Maurice said. “We all zonked out for two minutes. She thought we were goofing, at first.”
“And after you woke up?”
“We were all still connected online,” Maurice said. “But kind of freaked out by the blackout. Didn’t feel like finishing my Skull Town review, so we hung out and talked.”
“That’s it?” Dean asked.
“After the blackout, I checked on my parents, but they slept through the whole damn thing. Or did they? If you black out while you’re asleep, how would you even know? Like that riddle about the tree falling in the forest but not making a sound if nobody’s there to hear it. But the tree still fell, right? Anyway, I wasn’t hurt or anything. No damage to the house. So, I let them sleep.”
“And that’s when the shadow appeared in your room?” Sam asked.
Maurice nodded. “Out of nowhere,” he said. “We were talking. Then Sally saw it through her computer screen, moving toward me. That freaked her out. She yelled a warning and then I saw it.”
“And it appeared female to you?”
“Not then,” he said. “Only after it switched to high-def.”
“When it came after you?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, when it got close. It—She approached slowly at first,” Maurice said. “I backed away, but she had me cornered in my room. When she got close she—touched me—and I freaked out.”
“That’s when it cut you?” Sam asked.
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