The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  “I need to touch you,” Sally said. “Your head, your neck. While I’m doing that, think about Veronica. Did she touch you at all? Is there a moment you can recall with her when you felt … unusual, or unsettled? As if you were experiencing déjà vu, or someone was walking over your grave?”

  “After this I might walk over my own, and see how it feels.”

  “It won’t feel good,” Sally said, and then she placed her hands on Trix’s shoulders.

  “What about Jenny and Holly?” Trix asked.

  “Soon.” For the first time Sally sounded like a little girl—scared, uncertain, confused. Trix resisted the temptation to look around at the Oracle’s face. She was terrified herself, and now that she’d found this girl who seemed to possess some kind of understanding and an ability to counteract what was happening, she wanted to hold on to it.

  “Anything?” Sally whispered.

  “She gave us tea and cookies.”

  “Ahh,” Sally said, smiling. “Cookies.” And she moved her hands from Trix’s shoulders down to her stomach.

  It was as if she’d swallowed the coldest, sweetest drink imaginable—a blend of liquid nitrogen and chemical sweetener. And yet she’d swallowed nothing at all.

  “You might have a bit of an upset stomach for a while,” Sally said.

  “No kidding,” Trix said. She groaned as she stood, and already the girl was walking away. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “Away from the static,” Sally said. “And I’ve got to stand on a road. Veronica’s Shadow Men can’t track you anymore, so now it’s time to find the woman and the child.”

  “But Jim?”

  “They can track him, yes.”

  “Then we have to—”

  “The woman and child are the priority,” Sally said. She was standing beneath a tree, and she looked like a lost little girl, but Trix knew that was far from the truth.

  “So you can send your own mark back with them,” she said.

  “Both of them, yes. And you, if you’ll let me.”

  “And how will you mark us?”

  “I have my means. Better than that old bitch’s methods. I mean, cookies? Seriously?” She shook her head, glanced at Trix, then nodded into the darkness. “Come on. Lots to do.”

  Trix could only follow.

  When they reached the cemetery gates, Sally paused, remaining in the shadows as she scanned the street.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t track me anymore?” Trix asked.

  “They might have followed, then waited after they lost you.”

  “Oh, great.”

  But there were no Shadow Men in the street. It was silent, the buildings dark and still, bearing mute witness to the chaos in the rest of the city. Sirens serenaded the darkness, and Trix wondered how bad it had been, how high the death toll. And she couldn’t help thinking of that old lady who had helped her grandmother, and who said she’d help Jim, but who in fact had set the seeds for terrible destruction. How could an Oracle be so brutal? But she looked at Sally and realized that she didn’t know the girl at all. Appearances, she had already learned, could be deceptive.

  “Their names,” Sally said, and she passed through the gate and walked to the center of the road.

  Trix glanced left and right for traffic, then stood on the sidewalk.

  Sally sighed impatiently. “Roads are the city’s arteries. People travel along them. It’s the traveling that helps me see, the floating of souls from here to there, the movement of life. I could find them sitting in my dark basement, maybe. But the city’s in turmoil tonight.”

  “But if a car comes—”

  “No car is coming. Their names.” The girl’s voice had lost all trace of childhood, even its timbre and tone bearing the weary cynicism of someone thirty years older.

  “Holly and Jenny Banks.”

  “Come here, hold my hand, and picture them for me.” Sally was kneeling, right hand pressed to the road’s surface, left hand held up ready for Trix to grasp it. Any other time, Trix might have laughed at how ridiculous this was. But it would take a lot to make her laugh tonight.

  So she pictured Jenny and Holly, and concentrating on her lost friends suddenly seemed to drive everything else away. She remembered Holly’s soft child’s laughter, her innocent beauty, and the way nothing really seemed to bother her. And she remembered beautiful, intelligent Jenny, and how the awkwardness made them closer friends rather than pushing them apart. Her eyes misted, and as she wiped a tear away, Sally sighed in frustration.

  “Turmoil,” she said. “Fuck it, then—just the mother. I can’t concentrate on two. Just think of Jenny Banks.”

  Trix looked down at the girl and wondered what people would think if they saw them. But no one would see them, she knew, and no traffic would come. This silent street was unnatural in a city so shaken, and perhaps the girl had cast some subtle, strange ward to give herself the time and peace she needed.

  She’s at war, Trix thought, the idea shocking but fitting. Those No-Faces and Shadow Men had been savage as they’d fought each other. She had no wish to witness more of their efforts. So she thought only of Jenny, and moments later Sally’s eyes snapped open.

  “I have her,” she said. “Leaving a restaurant called—”

  “Junction 58,” Trix said.

  The girl glanced up. “This world’s Jenny.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I found her too quickly. Your Jenny will be more … fuzzy. Think some more, something about her that’s personal to you. You’re Unique, so your thoughts will apply only to your Jenny.”

  My Jenny, Trix thought, closing her eyes, and the more she tried to avoid the gentle love she felt for Jenny, the more it came to the fore. So she went with it, remembering uncomfortable stares and glib comments meant as jokes, but hiding something more serious. Jenny and Jim knew, and Trix knew that Jenny was flattered and touched. But she’d always kept secret just how much her feelings sometimes fucked her up inside.

  It took longer this time, and at several points Sally squeezed her hand so hard that her finger bones grated together.

  “Marlborough Street,” the girl breathed, and Trix gasped and let go.

  “Where on Marlborough Street?”

  “Across from a church … in my Boston, before the collision, it was the First Lutheran,” Sally said, standing and looking at Trix. “You know that place?”

  “My apartment,” Trix said, and she was starting to understand. If only she’d listened to Jim and checked other places first, before seeking out the Oracle and dooming that man to death. “She’s gone to my apartment, and we can be there in half an hour.”

  Sally nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Hopefully the girl’s with her.”

  “Of course she’s with her!”

  Sally shrugged.

  “And Jim?” Trix asked. “He was going to the restaurant.” Perhaps he’d met Jenny there after all. She closed her eyes and wondered how that would be, remembering the two women staring at each other at the intersection where they’d been involved in the accident, knowing each other and yet unable to believe. The Jenny from Sally’s world would not recognize Jim. He would be bereft.

  “After we find Jenny—”

  “Then you find Jim,” Trix said. “If you want us to help you, you have to help us.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” the little girl said.

  Trix nodded. They started running again, and this time she took the lead. As soon as they left that street, chaos descended once more, and they were returned to the ruins.

  Through the streets, across the city, passing sights he hoped to never see again and with Jennifer keeping pace, Jim felt as though they’d known each other forever.

  They hurried side by side, and he glanced at her often. Each time he was struck with the strangest realization—This is not my wife. It kept hitting him afresh because she looked so much like her and yet subtly different. Sleeker and fitter than his Jenny, Jennifer took their rush
through the streets in her stride. Her ponytail bobbed against her back, and her piercings reflected streetlights and the occasional fire. When she sniffed, her nose crinkled in a familiar way, though, and when she looked at him there was the same strength in those familiar blue eyes.

  If she had been exactly the same, he might have found it easier.

  She didn’t say much as they hurried into Chinatown, toward the address he’d memorized, the home of the other Boston’s Oracle. And Jim had elected not to try explaining everything that had happened and was still happening, because the chaos in the city was enough for both of them to take in. So they moved in relative silence, and it was a comfortable peace that he felt growing between them, seeking acknowledgment. Two people who had never met could never be like this.

  “Weird,” Jennifer said as they rounded a corner into a busy street. There were lots of people marching this way and that, and a steady stream of cars and emergency vehicles, but other than broken glass, no signs of damage.

  “What?” Jim asked, but he knew what she was referring to. The fact that she didn’t feel the need to reply meant they were feeling the same way. When they saw a woman covered in blood being helped out of a building, and Jennifer clasped his hand in hers, it felt perfectly natural.

  They left the busy area and wound their way along quieter residential streets. There was still activity, but these were not through-routes, and most people out on the streets lived here, in the ruin of what would have been a thriving Chinatown back in his own Boston.

  “I’m running through the night with a strange man,” Jennifer said.

  “Not something you’d usually do, huh?” Jim asked.

  “Would Jenny?”

  “No. She’s married to me.”

  Jennifer was silent for a while, but Jim could sense her brooding, turning something over and over.

  “But there’s no me here,” he said, “or in the other Boston. There’s just … me.”

  “Guess that makes you unique.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “You could be anyone,” she said, and he heard the smile in her voice.

  There was an edge to their conversation that Jim could not avoid or deny. He glanced at Jennifer and recognized the raised left eyebrow, and the way her lips were slightly pouted. They were flirting. He and Jenny often pretended to flirt, enjoying the false loaded air, heavy with potential and the thrum of sexual tension. False, because they often dropped into bed at a nod or a smile. The flirting took them back to their courting days, when love was fresh and sex was perhaps more an exciting adventure than a comfortable journey.

  And here he was, taking comfort from someone he almost knew.

  “This is so messed up,” Jennifer said, and Jim berated himself for ignoring her fear. She was hanging on to him because he seemed to have some idea of what was happening, and he was seeing her familiar sexiness, when she was facing unfamiliar territory.

  “You’re handling it very well,” he said.

  “I have no choice. You saw what was happening back at the restaurant. Either everyone I know has twins they forgot to mention, or …” She shrugged.

  “ ‘Or’ is the answer,” Jim said. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

  “Jim.” Jennifer had stopped on the sidewalk, and for the first time he saw a vulnerability about her. He recognized it, and his heart seemed to drop, his eyes burned, and it took all his effort not to hug Jennifer to him and smell her hair, feel her body beneath the clothes, recognize her and take real comfort. I can’t do that, he thought, because she is not my wife. But Jennifer was so definitely Jenny that his emotions were writhing in confusion.

  “Yeah,” he said. She doesn’t know me. She’s never known me, or anyone like me. And as he tried his best to imprint that on his mind and absorb it, she went and made everything worse.

  “I feel like we’ve known each other forever,” she said. “Isn’t that weird? I mean … for you, maybe not. But for me, it’s just so … not me. I’ve been hurt.” She snorted, bitter. “Unlucky in love, Dad says.”

  “Believe me,” he said, turning away so that he did not enfold her in his arms, “it is weird for me. Come on, we’re almost there.”

  “Am I going to see her?”

  “Yes,” Jim said. “Yeah, you’re going to see her.” He believed that and clung to it, because he could not entertain any other outcome.

  He navigated to Sally Bennet’s address by memory, and the closer they came, the more unsettled he felt. Part of him wanted to run, desperate to meet up once again with Trix and see what she had discovered. And in that desire was the fleeting thought that, perhaps, Jenny and Holly had already been found, or had already encountered the Oracle.

  But countering that instinct was a more basic, animal sense of caution. And what he saw as they turned onto Harrison Avenue inflamed that caution until it began to scream.

  This isn’t the earthquake, he thought when he saw the scene of devastation farther along the street. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did, with as much certainty as he could muster in these uncertain times. Perhaps it was the way that the helpers, hunkered over bodies sprawled across the street, kept glancing around, as if expecting the arrival of someone, or something.

  Or maybe it was the blood.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jennifer said. Jenny would never blaspheme in that way. She held his hand and it felt right, their skin touching was familiar, and when she pressed close he could smell her breath. It stirred memories and blood.

  “That must be her house,” he said. “They’ve been here already, and we might be …”

  Jennifer said something when he trailed off, but Jim didn’t hear it. He let go of her hand and touched the folded envelope and paper in his pocket. I should get rid of this, he thought, but something told him to keep it. He sensed her following him, but his heart was thudding so hard that he could no longer hear her voice, or the wails of grief that echoed along the street. As he approached he looked at the bodies, desperate not to see … Trix’s pink hair.

  He didn’t see it, but there was activity in the house as well. Lights flickered behind broken windows.

  Jenny’s long blond hair, and Holly’s … Holly’s …

  Jim’s throat worked and tears came as he considered the possibility of Holly being here, a victim of those bastard wraith-things that had killed the Irish Oracle. “Too late,” he said again, and he turned to one of the living to ask what had happened.

  Someone screamed. A woman stood from where she was kneeling by a body and pointed at Jim. Her cry was terrible, and it was taken up by others in the street as they started to flee. All those people in need, Jim thought, but for the first time he realized that none of the bodies were moving. “Wait!” he shouted, but behind him Jennifer’s voice, broken with fear, turned his blood cold.

  “What the fuck is that?” she said. He looked where she was pointing.

  One of them was emerging from the front door of a house back along the street. The door was closed. Another slid down the building’s façade, landing gently on the sidewalk and flexing its arms. Two more manifested from shadows as if they had only recently been a part of them.

  “Shit,” Jim said. One of them appeared damaged, its arm withered and less visible than the other.

  Jennifer glanced back at him, mouth open, eyes wide … and her eyes grew even wider. “Behind you,” she whispered, and Jim wished he had held her, just once.

  Instead, he turned to face what had arrived.

  Trix’s ground-floor apartment light was on. Her heart beat, and not only from the exertion. The curtains were drawn, dark and heavy with a Celtic swirl.

  I’d have chosen them. She wondered who the hell lived here in this Boston, and whether the building and area could possibly attract like-minded people. The pub on the corner was the same, and perhaps old man O’Reilly still had punk and folk bands on Saturday nights, and open-mic nights on Wednesdays.

  “Someone’s home,” Sally said.

>   “Then let’s knock.” Trix crossed the street, thinking, Let it be both of them, let it be Jenny and Holly, because she could not imagine how terrible it would be if Holly was lost in this place, at this time.

  Jenny would have done anything to keep her daughter safe and sound, whatever weird events had swallowed them up and spat them out in a different place. I’d die for my daughter, she’d said once as she, Jim, and Trix were lounging in the Bankses’ living room after a big meal. Jim had landed a huge promotional contract with a local brewery, and they were celebrating the following week with a holiday to the Bahamas with their extended family. But that night had been their real celebration, Jenny had told her—a night at home with good food, good wine, and their best friend. And Trix had nodded, looking into the ruby depths of her Merlot, and said, I’d kill for your daughter. The room had fallen silent for a while, as they all realized that was one step further.

  Up the steps, and she scanned the four nameplates to see who lived in her apartment. But the paper slips were missing, leaving four mystery bell pushes.

  “Try the door,” Sally said.

  Trix tried. The handle turned and the big glass door opened inward, a waft of musty air emerging from the lobby. I know that smell! she thought. No one in her block had ever discovered where the smell came from, and it gave her an intense, welcome feeling of home.

  She entered, with Sally close behind, then stood before her apartment door. “Whoever lives here must have taken them in,” she said.

  “It’s a rough night,” Sally said. “Something I know more than most is that people are generally good, and usually want to help.”

  Trix beamed as she rapped on the door. She wondered whether the handle stuck like hers, and the hinges squealed, and whether the oak flooring in the small hallway held the scratched inscription of the man who had laid it decades before. But when the door opened and she saw Jenny standing there, all such thoughts evaporated.

  “Jenny!” she shouted, lurching in through the door, arms raised, sweeping the stunned woman into her embrace.