A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  “Touch me,” Luanne had whispered. “Touch me. Make me belong somewhere.”

  Voice thick with emotion, Simmons had finally begged: “Stop. Please.” The moment froze in time like a bug in amber.

  After a few minutes, an eternity, a blink, Luanne had gotten to her feet. She’d stared down at him as he knelt there, disheveled, on the floor; her heartbroken eyes impossibly deep and melancholy. Her voice had been so weak, so breathless; he’d almost missed the word.

  “You?”

  And then she’d slowly turned and walked out of the room.

  Simmons had gotten up, tucked in his shirt. He’d been surprised to find his knees shaking. He called after her, “Luanne?”

  But she was gone.

  …And now two long, terrifying days later, they will meet again. It is finally time for their next session. Time to follow up efficiently on the transference and counter-transference issues Simmons knows are ripe for examination. To explain why he can never become involved with her, under any circumstances, and that such a thing is absolutely forbidden by his professional code of ethics.

  Simmons checks his watch. Luanne is scheduled for three. He has a duty to ensure that such an intimate moment never occurs again, regardless of his personal feelings. To be firm.

  And he still doesn’t know if he can go through with it.

  ««—»»

  TO: STAFF

  FROM: R. COWAN

  URGENT. AS OF THIS MORNING’S BED CHECK PLEASE BE ADVISED PATIENT LUANNE SPIVEY HAS NOT BEEN FOUND IN HER ROOM OR ON HOSPITAL GROUNDS. PATIENT ESCAPED USING A LONG SCREWDRIVER APPARENTLY STOLEN FROM GARDENERS’ SHACK. SPIVEY HAS JUST BEEN OFFICIALLY REPORTED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AS MISSING AND POSSIBLY DANGEROUS TO HERSELF. PLEASE NOTE WHILE HER STATUS WAS THAT OF A VOLUNTARY PATIENT HER LEAVING WAS AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE.

  R. COWAN, M.D.

  ««—»»

  A light mist of rain is warping the world. The winding dirt road runs past a patch filled with pale, baby watermelons; dangerously close to the edge of the swamp. Green tobacco whispers across the hard red clay. A fat, orange sun is squatting down at the far edge of the fence that’s been devoured by kudzu. The murky water ripples with silver dimes and quarters as the biggest fish come up for the final feed of the day.

  The man knows he does not belong here.

  Kudzu, brackish water, and blackberry brambles devour and cover unwanted intruders. The rain tap dances on the hood of his car.

  He drives on.

  Darkness crawls out from the water-soaked roots of the ancient trees and unrolls like a carpet across the shimmering surface of the still water. Meanwhile, the brand-new car, black as printers ink and dappled with raindrops, wobbles and weaves its way closer to the isolated property.

  Simmons is sweating heavily despite the frigid blast of the BMW’s air conditioning. His windshield is already coated with suicidal insect life. He tries the wipers, smears the mess into something that looks a great deal like soggy pizza. He gives the glop more water, tries again. A clear patch appears. The car dips down into a pothole, struggles around a corner. Simmons stops. He can smell a growing stench; something that reeks of decay, but now can’t see more than ten feet in front. Frustrated, Simmons turns on his headlights.

  And then he sees the trailer. It is a washed-out blue piece of junk, with several dents front and back. Someone has made weak, pathetic efforts to beautify it; empty flower pots adorn crooked little shelves below the windows. A wind chime shaped like a peacock hangs near the dim bulb that serves as a porch light.

  Simmons parks, thinks for the hundredth time that he should not be doing this, should not be out here alone without a social worker or the law. He has no clear concept of what comes next. To his shock and dismay, his cloudy mind has constructed wild fantasies that range from running away with Luanne—marrying her and having children for Chrissakes!—to the more respectably scenario of persuading her to come back voluntarily for more treatment. In truth, he doesn’t know what he will say or do when the time comes. He only knows he had to come here. Had to see her again.

  One crystal pitchfork of lightning crackles to the left; it is followed by a low, rumbling growl of thunder. Fat raindrops splat against the filthy windshield and begin to wash away the mess. The cloying scent of moist plant life and electricity somewhat covers the stench of decay that pervades the clearing. This poor woman, to live in such squalor…it’s obscene. Rusted cans and broken plastic toys litter the yard.

  Simmons swallows his fear, opens the door and gets out into the fast-growing summer storm. He hunches his three hundred dollar jacket up over his head and trots through the burgeoning mud puddles until he is standing at the foot of her steps. He bangs on the trailer door. The porch light flickers on and off from the blow.

  “Luanne?”

  No response. The sky crackles and belches again; the downpour increases. Simmons looks down and sees he has virtually ruined his brand-new shoes. He swears softly and he pounds again, twice this time. It hurts his hand. The air smells of funeral wreaths.

  The trailer remains still, calm, but within it something…moves.

  “Don’t be afraid, Luanne. It’s me. It’s Dr. Simmons.”

  Simmons flashes on one terrible possibility: The infuriated husband, pump shotgun in hand, kicks the door open and fires twice, so close Simmons’ jacket catches fire. The good doctor imagines his entrails dropping down into the widening puddles of mud. He trembles.

  The sound again. What is it? Simmons needs to know it is not the husband, or Luanne hurting herself. Needs to know before he dares to touch the metal door or try the handle. His mind searches his memory bank, comes up with something odd. He thinks the sound is like…rustling paper. When he was a little boy, flying an oversized paper kite in the autumn breeze, the kite had made a sound much like this one; at once a rattle, a wheeze and a crackle.

  “No. Go.”

  “Luanne!” His heart leaps, thwacks his ribcage. Icy adrenaline floods his body with excitement, fear and a strange sense of dread. Something in her voice unnerves him, something Simmons cannot quite place. It sounds too deep, too thick with emotion or perhaps pain to be natural. He has heard this sound before, somewhere. His mind races again, searching for a connecting point, for something to ground this experience in reality.

  He opens the door and steps into the trailer. The room is dark, but Simmons walks further in with his throat closing and his nostrils flared. He coughs and covers his mouth with a handkerchief. Simmons suddenly realizes that the oppressive odor originates here, not in the surrounding swamp.

  “Go.”

  “Luanne?”

  And then he also identifies the weird quality in her voice, the one he finds so disturbing. It is a moaning, gasping burst of air, not a speaking voice. It is the sound a woman might make while being tortured to death, or perhaps in the throes of an overwhelming orgasm.

  The leathery rustling comes again, like newspaper in the wind. Here within the trailer it seems impossibly loud, and it rapidly surrounds him. Within seconds it is behind him, like a huge sheet of newspaper blown up against the trailer door. The noise seems almost a separate entity, a presence that slithers up his pants leg with the stealth of a stalker.

  Another thick vein of white lightning rips the sky wide open, snaps a picture through the windows and in the flashbulb bright of that moment, Simmons sees. He sees and screams, his horrified shriek easily overwhelmed by the nearby thunder and the primitive howl of the storm.

  A mental photograph: Luanne is buck naked, up off the floor, her thin body pressed flat against the far wall. Her legs are crossed but her arms are stretched wide, she looks like virginal Madonna, crucified on a sheet of brown plastic. Her flesh is so pale it seems to glow against something dark and primal.

  She is hanging sideways.

  The room darkens again just as Simmons sees the living carpet of shiny black, grey and brown insects she rests on vibrate and stretch itself, abruptly changing shape like some obscure
form of marine life. In darkness once again, he screams again, steps backward. But then the rustling behind him causes every small hair on his body to lift, strut and tremble. He is clearly trapped. Simmons struggles to stay calm, to form words. He fails.

  Another flash of brightness, this one a wormhole that elongates time and space. As the image registers on Simmons, so does the harsh fact of his imminent death. He begins to weep uncontrollably.

  …Because her mouth, that pretty little mouth, is stretched so impossibly wide open. And in it are scurrying, scuttling creatures; some shiny and some hideously hairy little red and black and brown things. And these things happily, busily remove little pieces of her insides and carry them up and out and into the greedy dark while they hold her there, pinned flat like a specimen. Whoever, whatever these things are they now move her limbs, form her words, carry her messages…

  “They wanted me,” Luanne says, in that obscene and guttural moan. “They made me belong.” She tries to laugh and dislodges a baker’s cup of insects; they flow down over her chin and strike the floor like sentient paperclips. More cascade from her vagina. Simmons wails and tries to run.

  By then it’s dark again.

  And they come to love him, too.

  _______________

  “Thank heaven, the crisis

  The danger is past

  And the lingering illness

  Is over at last

  And the fever called “Living”

  Is conquered at last.”

  —Poe

  Another Hell

  “I’ve heard you fix things.”

  Daisy Kendall was pretty, one of those ubiquitous beach bunnies who carried herself like a cringing fawn. She looked all of twenty-five years old, but I guessed early thirties. Huge breasts, gold hoop earrings, a blue halter top and white shorts a couple of sizes too small. I had a difficult time deciding where to focus, but finally decided on the bridge of her surgically sculpted nose.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said what does that mean. Fix things.”

  Her lashes fluttered. “I’m sorry. Maybe I have the wrong person.”

  I shaded my eyes against a sliver of reflected sunlight that bounced off the shiny bumper of her leased BMW. “Daisy, is it? Look, just tell me who sent you. Then we’ll take it from there.”

  She cleared her throat nervously, made sure no one was near enough to overhear. It all came out in a rush. “I have this friend, name of Sandy and she’s real tall, with green eyes and red hair? Anyway, you helped her out once when her ex-husband got nasty. Something about it was…weird, she said. Supernatural?”

  I just stared. Daisy kept going.

  “Anyway she said you were great and didn’t even charge a lot. She said I could ask you to find some people for me and stop them from doing something. See, I need help because I have a big problem. I don’t know where else to go, so I’m praying maybe you can…fix it.”

  We were standing in the parking lot near a high-end coffee shop in Studio City. I paused while a wan and wrinkled housewife strolled by, scolding the shrieking toddler in her shopping basket.

  “You still haven’t explained what you mean by the word fix, Daisy.”

  Her face reddened. “By that I mean that you should do, well, whatever needs doing, I guess.”

  “You know what? It sounds like you think I’d agree to do something illegal, Daisy. I won’t. This conversation is over.”

  I finished my espresso, tossed it to the trash can six feet away, nothing but net. I turned to go.

  “P-p-p…”

  Tears were streaming down her pretty face. I’ve never seen anundercover cop be that good an actress.

  “Please. Please.” She kept stuttering on the P sounds. I put my arm around her, a bit clumsily. There was so much bare flesh it was difficult to comfort her and still be polite. Daisy seemed for real.

  “Let’s sit over there.” We walked to the last table in the row. I waited while she blew her nose and calmed back down.

  “I just got my sixty days in AA on the other side of the hill,” Daisy said, “at that church at Sunset and Bellflower.” She reached inside her purse and showed me the requisite plastic chip. “I catch the midnight meeting all the time. You meet the nicest people. That’s how I know Sandy, but maybe you guessed already.”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s really why I’m here, the drinking thing. It started getting out of hand right after I moved here from Omaha, I was so lonely and everyone on the set was doing it, you know? I’m an actress. Anyway, I was at a club in West Hollywood with a friend of mine, and I met these three men, and they seemed pretty nice. You know how it is.”

  I nodded without speaking. I was listening to her, but another part of me was eyeing a sedan at the other end of the parking lot. Someone was sitting inside, in the heat, running the engine with the window rolled down. I wondered why. A moment later a hand came out, holding a thick cigar. Smoke flew out like a miniature twister. I relaxed again.

  Daisy continued. “These three guys, they said they’d take us to an after-hours bar all the entertainment industry big shots go to, and we bought it. I was already pretty wasted by then. But my so-called friend went to the ladies room, ran into an old friend and never came back. They started talking about strange stuff, witchcraft and such. And that’s when I think these guys slipped something into my drink. It’s all bits and pieces from there.”

  The tears were back, so was the embarrassment. Daisy looked down and away, like an abused animal. “You can imagine the rest.”

  “You have to tell me everything,” I said. “Or I won’t be able to help.”

  “They all three did me,” she said, with a rasp in her voice, “first one after the other and then all at once. Christ, I’d never even thought about doing something like that. I don’t remember very much, except that it wasn’t just sex. Things got really kinky. Fake blood, magic symbols, all kinds of S&M stuff.”

  “Go to the police.”

  “How can I?” she asked. “I don’t even know their names. Besides, I can’t prove anything. I woke up the next morning all sore and not even really sure what happened. The memories started coming back over the next couple of days. I felt so humiliated. I finally just decided maybe it was best to put it all behind me.”

  “Well, maybe that’s the right thing to do.”

  “I tried. Believe me. But I went on drinking.”

  I blinked. “I thought you told me you had sixty days.”

  “I do. All this happened around the first of the year.”

  I shook my head. “Daisy, why did you wait so long to talk to somebody about this? You don’t even know their names, and it was all nearly a year ago? What do you expect me to do about it now?”

  “Let me finish,” she said. Some steel crept into her voice. “So, a couple of months ago, I’m dating this lawyer, Kevin. He’s a really, really nice man, and he drops me, all of a sudden, with no warning. I get a little bombed and call him, just to make a fool of myself, and he levels with me. He says he dumped me for not telling him I’d done some porn and had a shady past. He felt really betrayed and lied to, he said, and then he hung up. He changed his home number after that.”

  I stared. “I’m beginning to get your drift.”

  Daisy nodded, eyes flashing. “Those bastards didn’t just drug and rape me, they taped it all. A kinky movie for all the snuff film freaks. And now it’s out there on DVD for the whole world to see. That’s when I stopped drinking, okay? And when I told my friend the story she said you might be willing to help me out.”

  “I’m thinking about it.” I studied her face. “You’re leaving something out, Daisy. What else do you have to tell me?”

  She sighed. “I met a new guy in AA, name of Jack Wade. We hit it off right away. He was in Afghanistan with the Special Forces. Jack is mostly sweet, but he’s got a real bad temper sometimes. Well, somehow he got a copy of the movie and flat wigged out o
n me. I told him the story. He got pissed and he slipped.”

  “He got drunk again?”

  “He said he’ll come back to meetings again, but if I don’t find some way to stop this thing on my own, I’m afraid he may freak out, go after these guys and get in a lot of trouble.”

  “Let me think for a second.”

  Daisy dug into her purse and produced an envelope. “There’s five thousand dollars here. Every cent I could raise.”

  I looked at the envelope. I was starting to do a slow burn. Daisy seemed like a pretty nice kid.

  “I’ll keep two thousand five for myself and return whatever I don’t need for expenses. Does that seem fair?”

  She nodded briskly. I lifted the front of my loose t-shirt and slipped the envelope into the waistband of my jeans, next to the small Firestar .9mm. The Firestar may be known as a woman’s gun, but it’s small and reliable and one hell of a lot easier to hide than a Glock.

  “Give me the last name.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kevin, the really, really nice lawyer you were dating.”

  “Kramer.”

  A few seconds later, Daisy was walking away, across the parking lot and over behind the bowling alley. A lot of male eyes followed her every step of the way. I went back to the coffee shop.

  ««—»»

  “Does she have a sister?”

  “We both wish.”

  Detective Jon Kasper was a muscular guy of average height who looked like he could bench press a building. He was off duty that weekend, and every once in a while we’d meet to impress one another with basketball stats. I’d helped his brother out of a jam once so Jon also figured he owed me. Jon had an open mind. He helped me out on a lot of cases, both paranormal and ordinary. I’m not above asking for a favor now and then, especially from a cop, so we stay in touch. I told Jon I’d call him later.

  Back at home, I checked on Daisy via the Internet Movie Database, and found she’d done bit parts here and there under the name Elizabeth Bath. Nothing else popped up. I located the attorney boyfriend through the California Bar Association. He even had one of those classy web sites that pegged him as a player. Kevin Kramer, Esq. had done me the extra favor of posting his photo. Expensive suit, but he looked like the kind of kid that would need a hair transplant by thirty. I located his office on Wilshire, watched him come and go for a couple of days and picked up on his routine. Like most young music attorneys he often worked as late as eight or nine. He tended to stop by the bar at the Sky Bar for a cocktail or two on his way home. I followed, sat across the room and watched him, just to be certain he generally left alone.