by David Six
He looked back at Corky. The bright light from the parking lot was making every object in his room throw long shadows. Including Corky. And that was strange.
Because Corky had never thrown a shadow.
The two of them had puzzled over that one years ago, why Corky could not cast a shadow. George had tried all kinds of light, running the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet, and nada. Corky had always been shadow-free. It had troubled George in the beginning, but it had never affected Corky’s sunny disposition, so he had forgotten about it over the years.
But now that old bemusement came rushing back.
He stared at his friend, whose eyes remained closed. George opened his mouth to say something, then shut it. If Corky was getting even more human—whatever that meant—then he didn’t want to break the spell. He stood and crept to the bed and bent to peer at Corky.
The shadow moved.
George squawked, “Awp!” and jumped back, stumbling against the tiny wall-mounted ironing board he’d left unfolded yesterday. His heart was pounding out the top of his head.
The shadow rippled like an oily wave, and shifted to the other side of Corky’s small body, away from George…
And towards the bright light coming in the window.
“That can’t be,” George muttered. He realized he was clutching his chest in a vain attempt to get his seventy-two-year-old heart to slow down. He made his frozen legs move around the bed, and stood between the parking lot illumination and Corky.
The shadow didn’t go away.
“Aw shit,” George said. “Corky?”
No answer. His friend kept his eyes closed.
The shadow was a perfect replica against the headboard of Corky, only in black. George reached out a finger and touched it.
He jerked his hand back. It had been like touching hot tar, and the shadow had pulled away from the headboard, just a little, as if it were made of that sticky, rubbery stuff companies used to glue fake credit cards to the come-on letters they send people.
George looked at his finger, turning to the side to shine the tip in the light. He thought he’d been burned, but his finger looked okay.
“Corky?” he said again.
“Ge… George.”
Corky’s voice was a rasp, like a wood file had been taken to his throat. But he didn’t have a throat.
“George,” he said again, forcing the name out like he was lifting a car at the same time.
“Help… me.”
George’s heart skipped ahead three beats, then restarted, but at a hundred-twenty miles per hour. He reached for his friend.
The shadow struck at him.
“Geezus!” George swore, yanking his hand away.
“George,” Corky groaned. “Help.”
George looked around, plucked up the walking cane he’d used the last time his sciatica had flared up, and poked at the shadow with the worn rubber tip.
The shadow grabbed the cane and swarmed up it like a nest of cobras.
George yelped and dropped the cane. The shadow went still a moment, then retreated to attach itself to Corky once again.
“What the fuck is this?” George muttered.
“He wants…”
“Corky?”
“George. He wants…”
“He? Wants? Wants what?”
“Us… to leave… him alone.”
George stumbled backwards and fell into the chair. His heart was beating like a coked-out monkey hammering on a steel drum. He felt his fingers and toes go icy.
“Who is he, Corky? Who is he?”
The shadow rippled like a row of cats stretching in the sun.
“He says… Leave him alone. He says don’t… show me off.”
“Show you off? What does that mean, Cork?”
“He’s hiding. In me. Hiding.”
“Corky. Who is he?”
The shadow came away from the headboard and flapped like a sheet on a clothesline in a tornado, except a lot faster. It made George’s stomach twist to watch it.
“He says… Don’t do the tricks.”
“The tricks?” George tried to get his mind to work. “You mean, our new act?”
“He says don’t… don’t reveal…”
George waited, but Corky was silent. “Reveal? Reveal what, Corky?”
“Him.”
George stood up and went to the bed. He picked up the cane where it had fallen to the floor after the shadow released it, and jabbed the tip at the thing.
“Let him go!” George yelled.
The shadow quivered, and for the oddest second George thought it was laughing at him.
“He says if… if he lets me go… I won’t… I won’t be here anymore.”
“You won’t—” And then George got it. Got how Corky could be the way he was.
A memory from decades past bubbled to the surface: His wife had just left him, taking all his money—and his self-respect. He had sat, face in his hands, in the one chair she had left him in their apartment, wondering what he would do next. Wondering who there was in the world who might see in him what he thought he saw in himself. He had prayed then, maybe the one time in his life that he had, asking for someone. Asking for a friend.
Then, Corky had been nothing more than wood and cloth. But soon after that prayer, Corky had become the— the person, that he was now. Far more than tree and cotton.
At that time, George could not have imagined that a prayer could pull a U-turn and be answered by other than the One for whom it was intended.
George addressed he shadow. “Stop this,” he said. “Don’t hurt him.”
The shadow came a couple of inches away from the headboard, then sank back.
“He says… don’t reveal…”
“I won’t,” George said. “I promise. I won’t.”
“He says… he can’t trust you now… now that you know.”
George felt his face get hot, and his skin tighten. Then it felt like his flesh was pulling off his body towards some impossible magnet, ripping from his bones.
He lost consciousness as he fell forward onto the bed. Everything went black.
And then light again, but now he was looking at himself, lying unconscious on the bed.
Through Corky’s eyes.
THE END
Enjoy these stories? Then follow the links below to find my novels.
IN THE TIME IT TAKES TO BLINK
A grieving cop, living at the bottom of a bottle. A relentless serial killer, back to play the game after a ten-year retirement.
Frank Bruno is the cop, a former Santa Mariana, California, detective. The killer is the faceless murderer known only as “Deadly Sins”. Ten years ago, Bruno was closing in on Deadly Sins, when unimaginable, horrifically bloody tragedy struck at the very heart of his life. That day, he walked away from his home, his career, the job…
The case.
He spends his days fishing off a tidepool in the Pacific, across Highway 1 from the abandoned gas station where he lives. And he drinks. But the booze doesn’t make him forget what he saw, that last day on the job. Nothing will, except death.
Now, his former partner, and newly-anointed lieutenant, Rita “Sally” Salvanian, shows up at his door with a case file. In it are photographs of Deadly Sins’ first victim in a decade. Bruno wants nothing more to do with the cops, the law, or the case.
But Sally knows how to play Bruno, and she does. Before he knows it, Bruno is drawn back into the hunt for one of the most horrific killers Northern California has ever known.
With the help of a young friend who rescued Bruno four years before from certain arrest, and the devastated but resolute mother of Deadly Sins’ newest victim, Bruno may have a chance this time to put to rights his mistakes of a decade ago.
If Deadly Sins doesn’t get to him first.
Equal parts gory chills and irreverent humor, “In the Time It Takes to Blink” will leave you breathl
ess as it races breakneck through twists and turns to its startling conclusion!
*****
Find “In the Time It Takes to Blink” at:
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FOR WEEDS WILL GROW
Who are the gray people? And what do they want with thirteen-year-old Danny Noble?
It all starts with the body Danny and his best friend, Donny Meachum, find hidden in a storm culvert on a hot July day in 1966. Danny has never seen a body before, but even at his young age, he knows what has been done to the corpse is not normal. Not normal at all.
The police act confident, but Danny can tell they are perplexed. After all, it isn’t every day in the small Missouri town of Winchell that such a thing happens. No, Danny’s quiet little town is nestled in the northern Ozarks, stifled by humidity, and host to the occasional marauding tornado. Danny is just a normal little kid, doing normal little kid things…
And then his hallucinations start. At least, Danny hopes they’re hallucinations, because if they aren’t, then… Well sir, that means what he’s seeing is real!
The doctor tells him it’s nothing, just growing pains is why he passes out when he sees the first vision, brought on by too much birthday cake. But Danny isn’t so sure. A circle of wooden doors held shut with iron brackets and braces and nails and locks, floating around you in your mom’s dining room, isn’t something you just dream up, not even a boy with a roomy imagination like Danny. No sir.
And those doors? They aren’t just floating in the air… Well, they are, but they are not silent. No, those doors are creaking and straining and bending and getting hammered on…
By something on the other side.
And then the gray people start appearing…
Filled with family secrets and supernatural horror, “For Weeds Will Grow” is the story of Danny Noble across the years, a boy who only wants to be normal, until he realizes that “normal” is something he can never have. Because boys with a destiny are anything but ordinary.
Find “For Weeds Will Grow” at:
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LOOK FAST OR DIE SLOW
Bruno & Salvanian are back, but Bruno has run afoul of a brutal killer. Who?
Former Santa Mariana police detective Frank Bruno hasn’t a clue. The murderer’s MO—skinning his victims and carving certain parts of their flesh for his gruesome use—is unlike anything Bruno’s seen in all his years as a cop. The serial killer delights in taunting Bruno—if you call leaving him notes scrawled in the victim’s blood at the murder scenes provocations:
Miss me, Bruno? the killer writes in blood. And as he closes in on Bruno, Not long now!
Bruno’s former partner, Santa Mariana PD Lieutenant Rita “Sally” Salvanian, finds herself in the unusual position of being the grownup in trying to protect Bruno, while making sure he doesn’t do something stupid—like set himself up as bait for the Skinner, as the FBI dubs the murderer.
All this while Bruno tries gently to discourage a gorgeous young stalker who has become enamored with him and will not leave him alone—even after she meets his girlfriend, Emily. And while single-mom Sally gets a surprise—and unwelcome—visit from the father of her six-year-old son, Jamie.
The second book in the “Bruno & Salvanian” series, “Look Fast or Die Slow” dives back into the lives of your favorite dysfunctional investigators as they struggle to catch a serial killer who seemingly cannot be caught. And as the bodies pile up, and Bruno blames himself for triggering the killer to start his vicious spree, Sally wonders if, this time, she will lose Bruno for good!
Amazon
Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, and other ebook retailers (Coming June, 2018)
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Books by David Six
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Books by David Six
Bruno & Salvanian Novels
In the Time It Takes to Blink (#1)
Look Fast or Die Slow (#2)
Standalone Suspense and Horror
For Weeds Will Grow
Short Stories
13: A Baker’s Dozen of Suspense and Horror Tales