ShadowShow

by Brad Strickland

  She looked behind her. Four streetlights. That was all. No snakes, nobody laughing, nobody running. Just four round patches of light floating on the face of darkness. She thought, It feels like I’m standin’ on a boat. Never been on a boat, but this is how it must feel: thin wood under my feet, then deep, black nothing going down under forever. One more light, then turn right.

  But when Mollie turned around, she saw only darkness. From here she should have been able to see more lights, three or four, running down the hill, then more, five or six, going up the next hill again.

  All was dark. Oh God, oh dear God, they’re all out. I can’t go into that, I can’t take another step, I —

  Someone ran past her, just outside the circle of light. She screamed, but it came out a thin dry hiss, and she started to run, tripped, and the hard earth bit into her knees and bit the heels of her outthrust hands, and her purse slid down her arm to the ground and something inside it broke — (dear God, dear God, Jesus, dear God)

  Mollie took deep, shuddering breaths. Her hands blurred in her vision. Her brown leather purse lay outside the circle of illumination, its brass clasp gleaming with reflected light, the tiny paring knife inside it as far out of reach as if she had left it back in Jefferson’s house.

  Back. I can go back and somebody will come in a car and I’ll stop it and get them to take me to a phone booth and then I can call Billy. I have to get up and go back.

  Mollie lifted her head. With a dull pang she saw that now there were only two lights behind her, the one she was under and the next one down, and all else on the street was dark. And even as she watched, the next circle of light died in a tinkle of broken glass.

  Slowly, her breath coming in painful hitches, Mollie pulled her legs under her. She felt alone, on the last island in the world, and she tasted the salt of her own tears as she waited for the forever tide of darkness to rise around her.

  Interval 1:

  Scrapbook

  1

  FAUST: Wilt thou grant me dominion o’er pow'rs strong,

  Daemons, ghostes, spirits, night-hags, devils?

  Wilt come when I call, and spread thy sooty

  Pinions wide to fetch and carry? Speak thou!

  DEVIL: Aye, master, sweet, sweet master, will, I will.

  [Aside.] Thus digs Faust the pit that will him consume,

  Thus opes his eyes, and seeing-blind he falls....

  - George Tucker, The Life of John. Faust, and His Death (London: 1640?)

  The tempestuous reigns of the first James and the first Charles saw devils in many guises, some dressed in Catholic surplices, others in the sombre garb of Puritanism. George Tucker, today only an obscure footnote to the history of the drama, perceived yet another form of devil, one darker than any conjured up by the warring theologians of his time. From 1638 to 1642 Tucker’s star, which, like Shakespeare’s before him, had risen from actor to playwright (indeed no rise at all in the eyes of his Puritan detractors), blazed briefly in the troubled skies of the era. Tucker’s six known works and the three additional plays that he may have had a hand in composing are perhaps the truest representations of this intriguing mind, and yet, until the present series of volumes, they have all been long out of print....

  Though by no means in the same rank as Shakespeare or Marlowe, Tucker in his lamentably short career produced some works of interest. Most notable of these is the last, his version of the Faust legend, preserved only in a quarto dubiously dated 1640, though internal evidence suggests 1642 as the actual year of composition. This, according to legend, was the final play performed in London before the Civil War closed the theatres; and, if the legend be believed, the author’s own mysterious death and certain abominable excesses of the Puritans may be traced to its presentation.

  - Arthur W. Crossett, “Afterword,” from the Facsimile Reprint of the play (London: 1939)

  2

  This same Jonas Highboy, on pain of inquisition, did further relate, that he at several times, did Consort with damnable Witches and their Imps of Hell.... He affirmed, that he did once question the Spirit of one Quohampanong, a wild Indian, dead about Twenty Years.... Highboy asserted, that he asked this vile Apparition or Spirit, If there be any Truth to our story of Hell. To which, the Spirit replied, Nay. Then Highboy did ask of Heaven, and was told that there was not no Heaven, neither. Highboy next made bold, to ask what there was then after Death, but deposed, That the answer given so frightened him, that he could not bear to think on it, neither would he Speak of it, in Court, despite the hardest questioning by the Magistrates.

  A great many other Malefactors, whose Guilt was beyond doubt, affirmed that Highboy induced many to Sin, and to renounce God... . He was the Gate, by which many deceived Persons did descend to Hell. In their Meetings in the Woods, Highboy did often preside in the Place of Satan... . Many Witnesses affirmed, That he brought forth a wondrous Shew of marvelous Images, the which lulled them into a blind acceptance of his supposed power....

  Jonas Highboy, being found Guilty, and continuing unrepentant, was Hanged about the middle of August, being the seventh Wizard thus dealt with. It is asserted, That divers wonderful and terrible Visions disturbed him as he waited in his Cell for execution; and Certain it is, that he with his last Breath cursed the Sergeant who had confined him, and the Magistrates who had sentenced him; and before the Year was nigh over, all these had died most grievous and mysterious Deaths.

  - Worshipful Banford, The Revelation of a Damnable Witchcraft, Horribly Broke Out Amongst God’s People (Boston: 1693)

  3

  It was...some four or five years after, before these phantasms or visions returned, this time seeming most solid and real even in the full light of day. Having in that time abstained completely from laudanum, I could attribute these visitations to no physical agency; but was convinced that, in that time of stupor to which I before alluded, I had relinquished my soul during one of the damnable meetings of the Hell-fire club.

  My persecutions increased daily, until my family, conceiving me to be insane, was forced to the extremity of confining me close. Still, no matter how carefully watch was kept on the door, no matter how impossible it were that any bodily being could penetrate to my bedside, the tormentors thronged thick and fast. I cannot bring myself now to write of them, for, though I have been free of them for nearly ten years, it seems as if they are separated from me by a wall as thin as the paper on which I write, and to think of them too deeply would, I fear, be to rend that wall... .

  My horror reached its apex or zenith, during a period when, owing to what my family supposed to be a disorder of the brain, I had been placed for some days in a small chamber, having no window and furnished only with the barest necessaries. Deprived even of a candle, I spent my days (or what I supposed, in that dark existence, to be days) walking to and fro across the floor and crying aloud to God to have pity on me.

  It was in this interval that I fell into a kind of trance, and thought I saw Susanna, a very pretty young girl of the house, who had entered service as a maid, asleep in her bed. In my ecstasy of mind, and moved by evil thoughts, I attacked the girl; but all the while my body was, as you remember, confined within the cell I have described. I will not pollute my pen by recounting the vile injuries that, in fancy, I committed on that young serving-girl’s body... .

  The next day, upon Mr. Wilkins bringing to me my supper, I observed him unusually grave and solemn. Asking him why, he told me that a girl in the neighbourhood had been foully murdered the night before, and that all the street was alarmed. Not until many months after, when, having recovered my senses sufficiently to be released, did I learn that the unfortunate victim of that night was indeed our Susanna, and that the horrid injuries inflicted on her conformed in every detail to the mad dream of delirium that I had experienced.. . This was one of the most striking instances of a waking vision or night-mare, but was, alas, far from the only one.

  These and other proofs of their existence, I say, came every day during t
hat dreadful time. Wherefore I was, nay, am yet persuaded that they were no mere idle dreams, but rather spirits from a realm darker than ours, and much more terrible.

  - Andrew Hobson, The Mysteries of Opium Revealed (London: 1814)

  4

  Dark is our beginning, and our end is dark ....

  - Harlton Davies, “Ode: On New-Year’s Day” (1821)

  One would give much to know why a poet like Davies, a young man of such promise and wide acquaintance, chose to end his life so dreadfully on the first day of 1821 ....

  - Thomas Lloyd, Introduction, The Collected Poems of Harlton Davies (London and New York: 1949)

  5

  The Soul-Thief... [is] a belief indigenous to pockets of peasantry scattered throughout Middle Europe. The modern researcher will have little difficulty in perceiving behind the terrific figure of the Soul-Thief, an evil being who compels utter obedience in even the most wretched tasks, a dim recollection of the feudal landlord ....

  - William Edwards and Jean-Louis Piel, Folk-Beliefs and Survivals (Paris and New York: 1897)

  6

  Q: Did the defendant, did he at any time express to you the nature of these voices?

  A: I don’t know. I, that’s hard to say.

  Q: Well, did he say that the voice was the voice of God, for instance?

  A: No, man. No, sir. He, he said the voices told him what to do, what to, you know, like with the knives.

  Q: The voice mentioned the knives?

  A: Well, Paulo said, yeah, they told him about the knives.

  Q: And what to do with the knives?

  Mr. Feinberg: Oh, your honor, objection. That is a leading question.

  Mr. Stern: Sustained.

  Q: Can you tell us what Paulo said about the voices and the knives?

  A: Yeah. Paulo said the voices told him to get the knives and then, you know. I mean, he told me what they wanted him to do. To kill the kids.

  Mr. Zimmer: You dead, Benny. You dead, man.

  - Excerpt from the testimony of Benjamin Clements during the homicide trial of Paulo Zimmer, Westbrook, New York, February, 1950

  7

  A RED DEVIL?

  Communists, officially forbidden to believe in God, are presumably not supposed to believe in devils, either. Yet villagers of Hron, Czechoslovakia, last week fought a desperate battle with the devil — or something like him.

  Even a devout capitalist might have trouble understanding why Satan would bother about such a tiny (pop. 850) prize. The villagers, however, are certain that the Old Boy has visited them. They speak of unaccountable deaths, more than thirty of them since last month, of odd visions, and of even odder compulsions.

  The officially atheistic government, unable to quell the devil by decree, reportedly has even sanctioned the ancient Catholic rite of exorcism ....

  - Time magazine, November 1954

  8

  GAITHER THEATER TO REOPEN

  After more than a year, the State Theater [sic] will open under a new name and ownership.

  Mr. Athaniel Badon, formerly of London and Boston, has purchased the building and plans to open it next week as the Shadow Show [sic]. Mr. Badon foresees a bright future for his new venture.

  “I plan to exhibit family films,” Mr. Badon says. “I would like to welcome the whole community to come to see what I have to offer.”

  Mr. Badon promises a continuing calendar of films, plus special shows and events. “Gaither will find something here that cannot be found on television,” he says....

  - The Gaither Advocate, page 1, August 23, 1957

  Part II

  Coming Attractions

  Five

  1

  An hour before sunup.

  Harmon Presley broke his promise to himself at five o’clock that morning when he saw the dogs nosing into the bushes on Slattery Row. One of them dragged something out that looked like a woman’s purse, and he stopped the car to investigate. That meant getting out.

  He was the first to find the body.

  The first except the dogs.

  Cursing and gagging, he kicked the dogs away, took out his revolver, fired at one, missing cleanly, but driving the pack snarling and yelping down the street. A door across the street opened, a dark face scowled out, saw the white law, and vanished back inside. Presley got to his car and slid in. If only he had a two-way radio, like the city police, he thought. But the county hadn’t appropriated the money. Now he had to go back toward town to call. Or go into one of these houses, if any of them had a phone.

  He went back to town, called Sheriff Quarles at home, and was ordered back to the site. By the time he got there, dawn was washing up in the east, pale Sunday dawn. The sheriff’s car parked behind Presley’s, and the man himself got out, a square, athletic man of fifty, his steel-gray hair cropped close in a military cut. Presley got out to meet him. “Where is it?” Quarles asked.

  “Over here. It’s pretty bad, Sam.”

  Quarles grunted and followed Presley.

  A hedge, or what if trimmed would be a hedge, separated 10 and 12 Slattery Row. The body lay in uncut knee-high grass at the base of the hedge. Quarles paused. Presley heard him swallow. “Godamighty,” the sheriff said.

  The woman lay on her back. Her clothes had been cut or torn away, jacket, blouse, bra, skirt, underpants. Her eyes, filmed over, were very wide, her mouth slightly pursed, her teeth clenched. From the neck down all was ruin. Her left breast had been cut almost off and flopped back into her left armpit, exposing yellowish fatty tissue and rib. Her abdomen lay open, spilling its contents into the grass around her. Her large intestine had been pulled out and lay across her upper thighs. One single fly crept across her leg, but it was early: more would come with the heat of the day.

  “Ballew Jefferson’s girl, ain’t it?” Quarles asked.

  “Uh-huh. Got her purse in the car. Mollie Avery’s her name,” Presley said, his voice low, awed.

  “Better see if anybody around here heard anything,” the sheriff said. “Lloyd Gordon’s coming already, and he’s supposed to bring somebody to take pictures.”

  “Want me to take this side of the street?” Presley asked.

  Quarles gave him a withering look. “Why don’t you just take both?”

  Presley, his face burning from the rebuke, walked stiffly around the end of the hedge and toward the house on the other side. Something crackled beneath his feet: a shard of glass. He squinted upward, then went on. A thin, bushy-haired black man answered his knock, stood in the doorway. No, he hadn’t seen or heard nothing, no. He didn’t know how long the light had been busted. The kids around here do that all the time. The man didn’t ask Presley what happened.

  He visited two other houses, with no better result, before the coroner’s station wagon pulled up. Lloyd Gordon was a rarity in north Georgia, a coroner who was also qualified to practice medicine. He got out of the car, his doctor’s bag superfluous in his hand. A younger man got out on the passenger side. Presley joined them as they approached the sheriff, who stood over the body, looking away. Quarles saw them and stepped forward, partly concealing what lay on the ground.

  “Sam,” Dr. Gordon said. “Looks like a murder, I guess.”

  Quarles nodded, his light blue eyes squinted hard at the younger man. “You work for the paper, don’t you? You’re — ”

  “Tom Davies,” the younger man said, trying to look around Quarles. “Yeah, I write and take pictures for the Advocate.” He hefted his camera, a Crown Graphic. “Doc said you needed some photos.”

  “You can’t run any of these in the paper,” Quarles said.

  “No, sir. I’ll give you the negatives and all.”

  “Think twenty dollars will pay for your time?”

  “That include the materials?”

  “No, the county’ll pay for them separate.”

  “Twenty’s fine,” Davies said.

  “Okay. I want shots of the general area, of the body, and anything the doctor tells you to shoot.
Start from here.”

  The sun was up now, off to their left. Davies took two pictures from the curb, though from here the body was only a dark shape huddled in the grass. “Doc, I guess you better pronounce her dead,” Quarles said.

  The doctor went in, knelt down for just a moment, then stood, shaking his white head. He waded back through the grass. “Dead for hours,” he said. “Autopsy, I guess.”

  “Uh-huh.” Quarles turned to Davies. “Take the pictures.”

  Davies went in close. “Jesus,” he said. He fitted a flashbulb in, popped it, ejected it, put another in, changed angles. “Oh, God,” he said, but he went on taking pictures.

  “Pick up the bulbs when you’re done,” Quarles said.

  That reminded Presley. “Sam, the streetlights are out all through here. Busted.”

  Quarles rubbed his jaw. He had not bothered to shave; bristles rasped like sandpaper under his palm. “You find out anything from the neighbors?”

  Presley shook his head.

  “Where’d the woman live?”

  Presley nodded up the street. “Sixteen Slattery, accordin’ to her ID. Two doors down.”

  “Doc, can you go back and get an ambulance?”

  “Surely.”

  “Hey,” Davies called from the grass. “Don’t leave me alone here.”

  “He’ll be back,” Quarles said. “Keep on with your pictures. And don’t forget about them bulbs.”

  “Yes, sir.” But Davies did not look happy.

  Presley and Quarles walked up the street. A streetlight hung from a splintered electric pole in front of number 16. They paused beneath it and looked up. The five-hundred-watt bulb was shattered.

  Number 16 had a narrow, sandy front yard and a banged-up ‘37 Ford beneath a pecan tree off to the side. The engine dangled from a block and tackle hitched to a main limb of the tree. The house would have been a white frame job if it had had any paint on it. Only the screen door, torn in several places and mended with puffs of dirty cotton, showed any color: its frame had been painted green sometime in the last five years or so.