I tried to yell, to warn her, but the words were frozen in my mouth like dead seals in an iceberg. The shadow grabbed her by the throat, causing her to let out a grunt, and then she was pulled through the portal and out of sight.
I suspected there would be danger, but on some level I thought we would approach the tree, read a prayer, stick a cross in the ground, set the tree on fire, and flee, hoping the entire forest, the house, and surrounding property wouldn’t burn down with it.
I had also hoped, for reasons previously stated, that the religious symbols would carry weight against whatever it was that lay inside that gateway, but either the materials had not been properly blessed, or we were dealing with something immune to those kinds of artifacts.
Now, here comes the hard part. This is very hard for me to admit, even to this day. But the moment Jane was snatched through that portal, I broke and ran. I offer as excuse only two things: I was young, and I was terrified.
I ran all the way to the back door of the house. No sooner had I arrived there than I was overcome with grief. It took me a moment to fortify myself, but when that was done, I turned and started back with renewed determination.
I came to the H, and with a stick, I probed the gap between the trees. Nothing happened, though at any instant I expected the shadow to lean forward and grab me. I picked up the bottle of holy water that Jane had left, hoping it might be better than a prayer book. I climbed over the communal trunk, ducked beneath the limb that made the bar on the H, and boldly stepped through the portal.
It was gray inside, like the sun seen through a heavy curtain, but there was no sunlight. The air seemed to be fused with light, dim as it was. There were boulder-like shapes visible. They were tall and big around. All of them leaned, and not all in the same direction. Each was fog-shrouded. There were shadows flickering all about, moving from one structure to another, being absorbed by them, like ink running through the cracks in floor boards.
Baffled, I stood there with the bottle of holy water clutched in my fist, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, the only thing that came to me was to start forward in search of Jane. As I neared the boulders, I gasped for breath. They were not boulders at all, but structures made of bones and withering flesh. The shadows were tucked tight between the bone and skin like viscera. I stood there staring, and then one of the bones—an arm bone—moved and flexed its skeletal fingers, snatched at the air, and reached for me.
Startled, I let out a sharp cry and stepped back.
The structure pivoted, and a thousand eyes opened in the worn skin. It was a living thing made of bone and skin and shadow. As it slid along, a gray slime oozed out from beneath it like the trail of a slug.
I flung the holy water violently against the thing, but the only reaction I got was a broken bottle and water leaking ineffectually down its side. As it turned, I saw sticking out from it a shape that had yet to become bone and dried skin. It writhed like a worm in tar. Then it screamed and called out.
It was Jane, attached to the departing thing like a fly stuck to fly paper.
Other mounds of bone and shadow and flesh were starting to move now, and they were akin to hills sliding in my direction. They were seeking me, mewing as they went, their sliding giving forth that horrid shuffling sound I had heard years before from the running shadow. The sound made me ill. My head jumped with all manner of horrid things.
I realized escape was impossible—that no matter which way I turned, they were there.
Now the shadows, as if greased, slipped out of gaps in the bones and skin, moved toward me, their dark feet sliding, their arms waving, their odd, empty, dark faces turning from side to side.
I knew for certain that it was over for Jane and me.
And then I remembered the laser pointer in my pocket. I had brought it because shadows are an absence of light, and if there is one thing that is the enemy of darkness, it is the sharp beam of a laser.
That said, I was unprepared for the reaction I received when I snapped it on. The light went right through one of the shadows, entering it like the thrust of a rapier. The shadow stopped moving, one hand flying to the wound. The beam, still directed to that spot, clipped off its hand at the wrist. It was far more than I expected; my best-case plan had been that the light would be annoying.
I knew then that I had a modern weapon to combat an ancient evil. I swung the light like a sword, and as I did, the shadows came apart, fell in splashes of inky liquid, and were absorbed by the gray ground. Within moments, the shadows were attempting to leap back inside the structures, but I followed them with my beam, discovering I could cut flesh and bone with it as well, for what had once been human had been sucked dry of its essence, and was now a fabric of this world.
As I cut through them, the bones were dark inside, full of shadow, and the skin bled shadows; the ground was sucking them up like a sponge soaking up water.
I darted to the beast that held Jane. It was sliding along at a brisk pace. I grabbed one of Jane’s outreaching hands and tugged. I was pulled to my knees as the thing flowed away. I didn’t let go. I went dragging along, clinging to Jane with one hand, the laser with the other.
Eventually, I lost my grip, stumbled to my feet, and pursued the monster as it moved into a gray mist that nearly disguised it. A shadow came out of the mist and grabbed me. When it did, an intense coldness went over my body. I almost passed out.
I cut with the laser. The shadow let go and fell apart. I had split it from the top of its head to the area that on a human would have been the groin.
I ran after Jane. The mist had become so thick I almost lost her. I ran up on the creature without realizing it, and when I did, its stickiness clung to me and sucked at me. I was almost lifted off my feet, but again I utilized the laser, and it let me go.
Aware of my determination, it let go of Jane, too. She fell at my feet. My last sight of the thing was of it moving into the mist, and of bony arms waving and eyes blinking and shadows twisting down deep inside it.
I pulled Jane upright, and it was purely by accident that I saw a bit of true light—a kind of glow poking through the mist.
Yanking her along, I ran for it. As we neared the light, it became brighter yet, like a large goal post. We darted through it and fell to the ground in a tumble. Making sure Jane was all right, I cautioned her away, and stuck the laser in my pocket.
I pulled out one of the cigarette lighters I had bought. Shadowy arms reached through the gap in the trees, into the light. The dark fingers snapped at me like the fangs of a snake. I avoided them with an agility I didn’t know I possessed.
I bent low and clicked the lighter and put the flame to the spot where I had poured gasoline. A blaze leaped up and engulfed the tree in a ball of fire.
With a shaking hand, I went around to the other side of the H tree and put a lick of flame to it. Coated in gasoline, it lit, but weakly.
I flicked off the lighter and grabbed the can with its remaining gas and tossed it toward the fire. The can exploded.
My ears rang. The next thing I knew I was on the ground and Jane was beating out tufts of fire that had landed on my pants and the front of my shirt.
We watched as the tree burned. Shadow shapes were visible inside the H, looking out of the gray, as if to note us one last time before the fire closed the gateway forever.
The tree burned all night and into the next morning. We watched it from where we sat on the ground. The air was no longer heavy with foreboding. It seemed . . . how shall I say it? . . . empty.
I feared the flames might jump to the rest of the trees, but they didn’t. The H tree burned flat to the ground, not even leaving a stump. All that was left was a burned spot, dark as a hole through the center of the earth.
Jane and I parted the next morning, and for some reason we have never spoken again. At all. Maybe the connection at that time of our young life, that shared memory, was too much to bear.
But I did hear from her lawyer. I was offered an opportunity t
o buy the house and property where the H tree had been. Cheap.
It was more than I could manage, actually—cheap as it was—but I acquired a loan and bought the place. I felt I had conquered it, and buying it was the final indicator of this.
I still own it. No more shadows creep. And that spot of woods where the tree grew? I had it removed by bulldozer. I put down a stretch of concrete and built a tennis court, and to this day there has not been a single inkling of unusual activity, except for the fact that my tennis game has improved far beyond my expectations.
Finished, Dana leaned back in her chair and sipped from her drink.
“So, that’s how I got my start as an investigator of the unusual. Beyond that revelation, I suppose you might want me to explain exactly what happened there inside that strange world, but I cannot. It is beyond my full knowledge. I can only surmise that our ideas of hell and demonic regions have arisen from this and other dimensional gaps in the fabric of time and space. What the things did with stolen flesh and bone is most likely nothing that would make sense to our intellect. I can only say that the shadows appeared to need it, to absorb it, to live off of it. However, their true motivation is impossible to know.”
With that, she downed her drink, smiled, stood up, shook hands with each of us, and left us there in the firelight, stunned, contemplating all she had told us.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His novella, Bubba Ho-tep, was made into an award-winning film of the same name, as was Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. Both were directed by Don Coscarelli. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, the International Horror Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, his first novel for young adults, was published last year. His most recent novel for adults is Edge of Dark Water.
The Case: Mabel Weaver’s grandmother left her a family heirloom passed down through generations of women—a nearly flawless yellow diamond, Hecate’s Golden Eye, said to kill any man who touches it. Her cousin Agnes has stolen it and Mabel needs help to get it back.
The Investigators: Jack Fleming—a former reporter who is now a vampire and private investigator—and his British partner, Charles Escott, private agent and former theatrical actor.
HECATE’S GOLDEN EYE
P. N. Elrod
Chicago, June 1937
Hanging around this alley gave me the creeps because it looked exactly like the one where I’d seen a man gunned down in front of me. That had been shortly before my own murder.
The man in front of me tonight was my partner, Charles Escott, who was unaware of my thoughts while we waited for his client to show. I didn’t like the meeting place, but the client had insisted, and Escott had to earn a living. At least he’d invited me along to watch his back. Too often he ignored risks and bulled ahead on his own, which was damned annoying when it wasn’t scaring the hell out of me.
The air was muggy to the point of settling down in your lungs and forgetting to pay rent. I had no need to breathe regularly anymore, but still found the heaviness uncomfortable in this hot, windless place. A car cruised by, briefly visible in the alley opening. The faint wash of light from its headlamps allowed Escott to see my face.
“Stop worrying, old man,” he said, speaking quietly, knowing I could hear. “Miss Weaver just wants to be careful.”
That would be Miss Mabel Weaver, his prospective client, who was late. She’d made the appointment hours ago when the sun was up and I lay dreamless and, for all other purposes, dead in the basement under Escott’s kitchen.
Yeah, dead. I’m undead now, the way Bram Stoker defined it, but don’t ask me to turn into a bat. He got that wrong, among other things.
I moved closer so Escott could hear. “Careful? Wanting to meet you in a dark alley is nuts.”
“Less so than wanting to meet you.”
He had a point, but Miss Weaver didn’t know I was a vampire, so it didn’t count. “Charles, this has to be a setup. Someone with a grudge paid some pippin to get you here. They figured you wouldn’t be suspicious if a dame called asking for help.”
“I considered that, but there were notes of hope, anger, frustration, and desperation in her voice that are difficult to convincingly feign . . . I think I know when someone is lying or not.”
He was uncannily good at reading people, even when there was a telephone in between. I could trust his judgment; it was this damned alley that put my back hairs up. Just like the other place, it had stinking trash barrels, a scrawny cat nosing through the garbage, and sludgy water tricking down the middle.
This one didn’t have a body in it yet, but my mind’s eye could provide.
“I have my waistcoat on,” Escott added, meaning his bulletproof vest. His business occasionally required dealing with all sorts of unsavory characters—I was considered by a select few to be one of them—so I was grateful he’d bothered. How he could stand the extra weight of those metal plates in this heat was a mystery, though.
“You think you need it?”
He gave a small shrug, fingers twitching once toward the pocket where he kept his cigarettes. That told me he had some nerves after all. A smoke would have calmed him, but it was also a distraction. For a meeting with an unknown client in a dark alley he’d keep himself focused.
We glanced up at the sound of thunder rumbling a long, slow warning. I couldn’t smell the rain yet, but change was in the sky. It would get worse before it got better. Storms coming down off the lake from Canada were like that.
“Crap,” I said.
He grunted agreement. “If she doesn’t appear before—”
We jumped when the door in the building on my left abruptly opened, filling the alley with the noise and brightness of a busy kitchen. A large man in a sweat-stained undershirt banged out with two buckets of leavings. The scrawny cat went alert and darted toward him with an impatient meow, tail up. This was a regular event. Escott must have come to a similar conclusion, but he relaxed only slightly.
The stink of cooked food fought against the rotting stuff in the garbage cans a few yards away. Fresh or foul, unless it was blood, all food smelled sickening to me. Coffee was the one exception; I’d yet to figure out why.
The big man dumped the buckets’ contents more or less accurately into a trash barrel and tossed a large scrap of something to the eager cat, who seized it and ran off. The man fit one bucket inside the other, giving Escott and me a hard once-over.
We had no legitimate reason to be here, and I looked suspicious. Escott was respectably dressed, but I was in my sneaking-around clothes, everything black and cheap, because sneaking around can be rough work. The man would be within his rights to tell us to clear out or dump us into the barrel with the leavings—he had the size for it.
“You waitin’ for someone?” he finally asked.
It was Escott’s turn to take the difficult questions. I made sure the guy didn’t have a gun or friends with guns.
“I’m from the Escott Agency, waiting for a Miss Weaver. Is she an acquaintance of yours?”
He gave no answer, going back into the kitchen. A second later, a tall, sturdily built woman hastily emerged.
She was too big-boned to be fashionable, but there was grace in her simple blue dress. A matching hat teetered on her head, barely held in place by several hatpins stuck in at various angles. The hat was an oddball thing with a brim that was supposed to sweep down to cover one eye, but now askew, as though she’d pushed it out of the way and then forgotten. She had a small purse, but no gloves. My girlfriend never left her flat without them.
“Miss Weaver?” Escott stepped forward into the spill of light.
“Yes, but not here,” she whispered. She shut the door, moved toward him, and promptly skidded on something in the sudden dark. I caught her before she could fall. She gave a gasp of surprise. I can move fast when necessar
y, and this alley murk was like daylight to me. I decided to be kind and not tell her what she’d slipped in. Maybe that cat would come back later and eat it.
“Sorry,” I said, letting go when she got her balance.
“Mr. Escott?” She squinted at me, uncertain because my partner and I have nearly identical builds, tall and lean. Our faces are very different, and I look about a decade younger even though I’m not.
“The skinny bird with the English accent and banker’s suit is who you want. I’m just here for the grouse hunt.”
Escott shot me a pipe down look. “I am Charles Escott. This ill-mannered fellow is my associate, Jack Fleming.”
I tipped my hat.
“Mabel Weaver,” she said, and ladylike, extended a hand to let us take turns shaking her fingers. She had dusty red-brown hair, a long, narrow, humped nose in a long face, and a lot of freckles no amount of makeup could conquer.
“May I inquire—?” began Escott.
“We have to be quick and not attract attention,” she said, glancing toward the kitchen door. Her strong husky voice sounded unused to whispering. “The owner’s an old friend and let me sneak out the back.”
“Toward what purpose?”
“I’m ostensibly having dinner with my boyfriend and his parents. They’re my alibi—no one else should know about any of this. I’ll tell you why if you take the job.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“I heard about you through Mrs. Holguin. She said you pick locks, recover things, and can keep quiet. She said I could trust you.”
Escott does everything a private detective does, except divorce work, calling himself a private agent instead. It’s a fine point, allowing him to bend the law when it’s in the interests of his client. He’d found it profitable.
“Mrs. Holguin’s assessment is accurate. How may I assist you?”
“I need you to recover something my cousin Agnes stole from me. She’s my first cousin on my late mother’s side. We’ve never liked each other, but this time she’s gone too far.”
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