by Jim Butcher
In the distance, a noise. It sounded like his brother crying.
“Jon? Where are you?” But silence answered him. Dax called out again, but the only sound was his voice chasing after itself in an echo.
The last thing he wanted to do was move deeper into the cavernous tunnel, to move away from this spot, which he feared was the closest he would ever be to home again, but Jon had sounded like he was getting further and further away, so he had no choice. He had to find his brother and then, he had to find a way to get them out of here.
Clutching the flashlight in his hand, Dax moved through the cavern. All around him he could hear faint whispers, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He paused several times, shining the light behind him, trying to catch whoever—whatever—was whispering, but each and every time there was no one there. Dax was, despite the nudging of the darkest corners of his imagination, completely alone.
Jon was nowhere to be found. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air.
The large tunnel broke off into three smaller tunnels up ahead. Dax listened, but heard nothing that told him which one Jon might be down. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and, just as he’d decided to take the middle tunnel, the whispering stopped and a new sound began. A small click as something hit the floor, then an even smaller noise, like something rolling several feet. He pointed the flashlight down, searching, sweeping the floor for any sign of movement. The sound ceased as whatever it was rattled to a stop just in front of his feet. He bent down, focusing on the item with the light. In near disbelief, he plucked it from the ground, turning it over in his hand.
A red, shiny button. Just like the ones on Jon’s pajamas.
Dax stood again, shining the flashlight on the tunnels again. “Jon?”
He stepped forward and just as he was about to enter the center tunnel, he saw movement with his peripheral vision. Taking a step back, he shined his light on the right tunnel entrance. At first there was nothing, but after a moment, Dax thought he could hear a small whimper. He hurried down the right tunnel, clutching the button in his hand and calling out for his brother.
Several yards in, the whispers returned, but though they were louder in the smaller space, Dax still couldn’t determine where they were coming from or what they were saying. It was unnerving, like he was being followed by someone without a voice, who insisted on making themselves known. His flashlight flickered and went out. The whispers grew louder and felt like they were closing in, but that was crazy. They were just noises… weren't they? Dax knocked the light against his palm. When the flickering subsided and the light returned, the whispers ceased… and someone was standing in the tunnel with him.
He would have recognized that face and those pajamas anywhere. Relieved to see his brother again, he stepped forward. “There you are. I've been looking everywh—”
The child had his arm extended, stroking the walls in a loving manner that sent a chill up Dax’s spine. Something about the way he moved seemed unnatural. Suddenly, but calmly, he turned his head toward Dax. Dax’s trembling fingers found his open mouth, hushing a gasp. The child had Jon’s mouth, his cheeks, his forehead, his hair, but the eyes… they were filled with shadows.
The thing in front of him might have looked like Jon, but it wasn’t his brother. It was something else. Something sinister. Something dark.
Dax backed up, clutching the flashlight tightly to his chest. When he hit the tunnel wall, he expected it to be cool, but it was warm, almost like a living entity. Even though he knew that it wasn’t Jon, he swallowed hard and whispered his brother’s name.
The Jon-thing turned slowly, without speaking, and disappeared around the bend.
Dax’s heart slammed against his ribs. His breath came in quick gasps. Panic overtook him, but he forced himself to move forward, because something inside of him told him that the Jon-thing knew where his real brother was. Dax turned around the bend, reluctantly following wherever it was that the Jon-thing was leading.
By the time he turned the corner, it was already moving around the next bend. Dax picked up the pace, jogging after the thing that looked like his brother.
After several more bends in the tunnel, he turned the corner into a small room. A boy was lying on the floor in the fetal position, shuddering with sobs. Raising every hair on the back of Dax’s neck, the Jon-thing bent down and stroked the boy’s hair wordlessly with its small, pale fingers. The boy scrambled away from him, terrified, and Dax shot forward, hugging his brother—his actual brother—tightly. At first, Jon screamed and pushed him away, but then, realizing that it was Dax, he clung to his brother’s chest, sobbing into his shirt, soaking the fabric. “It’s okay,” Dax whispered into his hair, not entirely certain he was telling his brother the truth. “It’s going to be okay.”
The Jon-thing tilted its head. When it spoke its voice mimicked Jon’s perfectly, but still something seemed off about it, false. “You shouldn't lie to children.”
Dax sneered. “What are you?”
It smiled, its dry, cracking lips stretching back from its Jon-like teeth, which seemed sharper than Jon’s, hungrier. “We are shadow children.”
Instinctively, Dax looked around, but saw no one else. “We?”
The Jon-thing smiled and looked up, as if exchanging bemused glances with someone that Dax couldn’t see. “We tire of the darkness. We want to live as you live.”
A small trail of colored dust, shimmering and full of light, floated in the air between Jon and the monster that was mimicking his form. Jon swooned, not at all steady on his feet. He looked pale. He looked weak. The sickening realization hit Dax that the creature was somehow feeding on his brother, sucking his essence from him and stealing his shape. Maybe it was the only way the thing could become solid. Maybe without whatever it was that it was stealing from Jon it couldn’t become anything more than the horrible shadow that had snatched Jon from his bed. Maybe it couldn’t face the light before and somehow Jon knew that, and when Dax had forced his brother to remain in the darkness…
Dax swallowed the lump in his throat. It didn’t go down easily.
It was his fault. Jon knew that these things existed and he knew how to keep them at bay. Dax ignored that, brushing it off as just a stupid little kid fear, and let the monsters in.
It stretched out its hand again, caressing Jon’s hair the way someone might pet a puppy. Dax jerked Jon from it and glared. It met his gaze with its shadowy eyes, blinking some like it couldn’t possibly understand why he wouldn’t want it touching his brother. “You cannot escape.”
Dax gripped Jon to him, standing, holding his brother as tightly as he could without hurting him. He looked at the Jon-thing and tightened his jaw. “Watch me.”
With Jon in his arms, he bolted back down the tunnel, back the way he’d come. As he ran, the indistinguishable whispers started again, quickly growing louder until they were almost deafening. Jon cried against his chest, so scared of what was happening, and Dax ran as fast as he could, darting around corners with ease. The whispers grew faint as he ran. He was beating them, beating them all. Finally, out of breath and with nowhere else to run, he entered the large cavern that they had first fallen into. Dax sat Jon down on the ground, only then noticing that the trail of shimmering dust still hung in the air, winding its way through the tunnels. Running from the Jon-thing wasn’t enough to sever that essence-stealing tie. His brother tugged at his sleeve, still trembling, but Dax was firm. “Hold on, Jon. Let me figure this out.”
On the ceiling, just on the edge of the flashlight beam, something moved.
Dax chased it with the light, but it remained at the beam’s edge, just as before. Then suddenly, his ears were filled with a thousand whispery, deafening sounds. He waved the flashlight around, and terror filled him.
Strange shadow creatures, like the monster that had grabbed Jon from his bed, peeled from the cave’s ceiling, from its walls and floor. One flew dangerously close to Dax and he ducked back, but not befor
e seeing the image of a young girl’s face reflected in its shadowy substance. The sight of it startled him. It wasn’t just Jon that they were after. They flew from their place in the cave and swirled around the two boys, surrounding them completely, blocking any chance of escape. Each of the shadows wore the face of a child, some Dax knew personally. The Jon-thing had said that they tired of the darkness, that they wanted what Dax and Jon had, what everybody had. The creatures were going to make mirror forms of every kid on earth, and then what? Kill them all? Suck them dry of their essence, leaving them empty, hollow shells? Panic set in and Dax gasped for air. Layers and layers of the cave floor and walls peeled away until Dax could see what they were peeling away from—and it wasn’t black rock. With horrified understanding, he realized that there was no cave. The creatures were the cave.
Thousands, maybe millions of shadow monsters, out to replace the people of the world. Dax’s heart raced. Beside him, Jon screamed as the shadows closed in.
The floor shrank until there was only an island of shadow left. It trembled wildly beneath their feet.
Dax whipped his flashlight around in desperation. On a low part of the cave ceiling, he saw a flash of color, something brown and familiar.
He scooped Jon up in his arms and said, “Hold on tight.”
One of the shadows whipped forward, snatching the flashlight from Dax’s grip. It threw the light down, smashing it to bits, leaving them all in darkness. The shadow monsters swarmed closer to the boys, and just as a long shadowy tentacle reached for Jon, Dax leapt toward the familiar sight on the low cave ceiling and clung to the hole in the floor of Jon’s closet with the tips of his determined fingers. His biceps burned, but he pulled himself up until he was waist-high into the closet. “Jon, get off now! I’m falling!”
Jon scrambled from his brother through his pitch black room to his bed, drenched in sweat and tears, crying for his brother to hurry, hurry before those monsters got him.
Something wrapped around Dax’s ankle and pulled hard, but there was no use. It pulled him back down into the cave, the tips of his fingers only barely clinging to the wood.
He was going to fall. And once he did, those things would suck every bit of his essence away.
A beam of light suddenly shined down into the hole and the creatures backed off. Dax looked up. Jon was holding a flashlight he must have retrieved from the kitchen. Dax pulled himself free from the hole, his muscles burning. He collapsed onto the floor of Jon’s closet and hugged his brother, trying to quench his tears, but the danger wasn’t over. There was still a hole in the closet floor. It was still dark.
Whispers drifted up from the hole until they were filling the room. Jon’s flashlight flickered out, as if it couldn’t stand up against the growing darkness. Dax picked up his brother and ran for the door. They had to get out of there, away from the darkness, into the light.
The bedroom door opened and their mother flipped the light switch, bathing the room in incandescent light. “Where have you boys been?! Your father and I have been worried sick!”
Dax panted, his heart settling some into a more normal rhythm. He looked at the closet, at the perfect, unbroken floor. Jon ran across the room and jumped into his mother’s arms. Dax couldn’t help but notice that the trail of dust was gone, the Jon-thing’s connection to him broken at last.
Holding Jon, placing kisses on his cheeks, their mom crossed the room and opened the heavy drapes, letting sunlight inside. It was morning. Had they really been gone that long? It had felt like minutes, maybe an hour, but certainly not several hours.
She turned back to Dax with a concerned look on her face. “Dax? Is everything okay? We were so scared that something happened to you both.”
Dax slowly nodded his head, even though everything was about as far from okay as it could get, and looked from the closet to the sunny day outside. Out the window, he could see the neighbor kids playing soccer. To any onlooker, it would seem like an ordinary, normal day.
He turned back to his mom and released a relieved sigh. “Yeah, mom. Everything's fine. We just—“
As she turned around, Jon peered over his mother’s shoulder at Dax, who froze. Jon smiled and offered a wave.
Shadows lurked in his eyes—the darkest that Dax had ever seen.
EVEN HAND
~
by Jim Butcher
Editor’s Note: Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files know that Harry Dresden’s main nemesis is the mobster Johnny Marcone. This short story offers a fun twist in that it’s told from Marcone’s perspective rather than Dresden’s.
A successful murder is like a successful restaurant: Ninety percent of it is about location, location, location.
Three men in black hoods knelt on the waterfront warehouse floor, their wrists and ankles trussed with heavy plastic quick-ties. There were few lights. They knelt over a large, faded stain on the concrete floor, left behind by the hypocritically-named White Council of Wizards during their last execution.
I nodded to Hendricks, who took the hood off the first man, then stood clear. The man was young and good looking. He wore an expensive, yet ill-fitting suit and even more expensive, yet tasteless jewelry.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
He sneered at me. “What’s it to y—”
I shot him in the head as soon as I heard the bravado in his voice. The body fell heavily to the floor.
The other two jumped and cursed, their voices angry and terrified.
I took the hood off the second man. His suit was a close cousin of the dead man’s, and I thought I recognized its cut. “Boston?” I asked him.
“You can’t do this to us,” he said, more angry than frightened. “Do you know who we are?”
Once I heard the nasal quality of the word “are,” I shot him.
I took the third man’s hood off. He screamed and fell away from me. “Boston,” I said, nodding, and put the barrel of my .45 against the third man’s forehead. He stared at me, showing the whites of his eyes. “You know who I am. I run drugs in Chicago. I run the numbers, the books. I run the whores. It’s my town. Do you understand?”
His body jittered in what might have been a nod. His lips formed the word “yes,” though no sound came out.
“I’m glad you can answer a simple question,” I told him, and lowered the gun. “I want you to tell Mr. Morelli that I won’t be this lenient the next time his people try to clip the edges of my territory.” I looked at Hendricks. “Put the three of them in a sealed trailer and rail-freight them back to Boston, care of Mr. Morelli.”
Hendricks was a large, trustworthy man, his red hair cropped in a crew cut. He twitched his chin in the slight motion that he used for a nod when he disapproved of my actions, but intended to obey me anyway.
Hendricks and the cleaners on my staff would handle the matter from here.
I passed him the gun and the gloves on my hands. Both would see the bottom of Lake Michigan before I was halfway home, along with the two slugs the cleaners would remove from the site. When they were done, there would be nothing left of the two dead men but a slight variation on the outline of the stain in the old warehouse floor, where no one would look twice in any case.
Location, location, location.
Obviously, I am not Harry Dresden. My name is something I rarely trouble to remember, but for most of my adult life, I have been called John Marcone.
I am a professional monster.
It sounds pretentious. After all, I’m not a flesh-devouring ghoul, hiding behind a human mask until it is time to gorge. I’m no vampire, to drain the blood or soul from my victim, no ogre, no demon, no cursed beast from the spirit world dwelling amidst the unsuspecting sheep of humanity. I’m not even possessed of the mystic abilities of a mortal wizard.
But they will never be what I am. One and all, those beings were born to be what they are.
I made a choice.
I walked outside of the warehouse and was met by my consultant, Gard—a tall
blonde woman without makeup whose eyes continually swept her surroundings. She fell into step beside me as we walked to the car. “Two?”
“They couldn’t be bothered to answer a question in a civil manner.”
She opened the back door for me and I got in. I picked up my personal weapon and slipped it into the holster beneath my left arm while she settled down behind the wheel. She started driving and then said, “No. That wasn’t it.”
“It was business.”
“And the fact that one of them was pushing heroin to thirteen year old girls and the other was pimping them out had nothing to do with it,” Gard said.
“It was business,” I said, enunciating. “Morelli can find pushers and pimps anywhere. A decent accountant is invaluable. I sent his bookkeeper back as a gesture of respect.”
“You don’t respect Morelli.”
I almost smiled. “Perhaps not.”
“Then why?”
I did not answer. She didn’t push the issue and we rode in silence back to the office. As she put the car in park I said, “They were in my territory. They broke my rule.”
“No children,” she said.
“No children,” I said. “I do not tolerate challenges, Ms. Gard. They’re bad for business.”
She looked at me in the mirror, her blue eyes oddly intent, and nodded.
~
There was a knock at my office door and Gard thrust her head in, her phone’s earpiece conspicuous. “There’s a problem.”
Hendricks frowned from his seat at a nearby desk. He was hunched over a laptop that looked too small for him, plugging away at his thesis. “What kind of problem?”
“An Accord matter,” Gard said.
Hendricks sat up straight and looked at me.
I didn’t look up from one of my lawyer’s letters, which I receive too frequently to let slide. “Well,” I said. “We knew it would happen eventually. Bring the car.”
“I don’t have to,” Gard said. “The situation came to us.”