Shadows Among Us

by Ellery A Kane

  “Are they now?”

  While the man leaned in to read her mother’s name, Dakota thought, too late, of reaching for the marker. At the front of the store, bells jingled softly as the door opened. A camo-clad family made their way inside, waving to the clerk and dispersing. The kids to the tank of minnows, the mom to the racks of clothing, and the dad to the gun counter, positioning himself right beside Grandpa Krandel.

  Dakota watched her grandfather’s head swivel. First, a hurried spin toward the door, the family. Then, to the Hall of Horns, where his eyes skidded to a stop on the man who stood beside her.

  Like a robot, Grandpa Krandel raised a stiff hand. A wave or a salute, Dakota couldn’t tell. But he made no movement toward them or away. He stood frozen, watching. Was this what it meant to be a hunter? To size up your catch, to look him in his eyes, to let him look back in yours, both of you understanding the truth of the situation?

  “You know my grandpa.”

  “Indeedy-doody,” he said, extending his hand to her. “Wendall Grady. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Dakota Roark.”

  His hand remained suspended between them. After Grandpa Krandel’s tower of ammunition toppled, and he beelined for the door. After the bells jingled with maniacal glee. After Dakota rushed down the aisle, carelessly bumping a turkey decoy from its perch atop a display.

  When the plastic bird clattered to the ground, the whole store went pin-drop quiet.

  Then, finally, Wendall Grady lowered his hand. He took a long step forward and stooped to the ground, scooping something into his clutches.

  “You forgot your marker,” he called to her.

  ****

  “C’mon, Mol, keep up. We’ve got traps to check.”

  Dakota quickened her pace, ignoring his slip. She didn’t dare correct Grandpa Krandel. Not now. Not here. In the middle of the woods with his rifle at the ready and five dead squirrels swinging from a carrier over his shoulder.

  Since they’d torn out of the Whitetails and Whoppers lot, pushing the old pickup to its limits and spraying up a cloud of dirt and gravel behind them, Grandpa Krandel hadn’t said much. But what he had said, he’d said more than a few times. With a kind of intensity that scared her.

  I knew that son of a bitch would find me.

  I won’t be taken alive.

  Are you spyin’ on me, you rat bastard?

  That last one he’d said exactly five times, punctuating it each time with the blast of his rifle. Grandpa Krandel didn’t miss. Never mind that the so-called spies had long, furry tails and brains the size of a walnut.

  A few steps ahead of her, Grandpa Krandel held up a fist, and Dakota stopped, wiping the sweat from her face with her T-shirt. She caught her breath and looked around. Nothing but trees in every direction.

  “Ever heard of a glue trap?” he asked.

  Dakota shook her head. A quiet answer seemed the safest. Since she couldn’t tell whether the question was meant for her or someone she couldn’t see. Someone who lived only in Grandpa Krandel’s haunted mind.

  “Real clever but a little dangerous. So stay back.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. When he leaned his gun against a tree trunk and disappeared behind it, she retreated a few more steps. She thought of running—but where to? Of calling her mother—but what would she say? And what would happen to Grandpa Krandel if she did?

  “Got a live one,” he yelled, cackling. “And hot damn, it’s a rattler. Let’s see how you handle that, Grady.”

  Dakota tightened her arms across her chest and waited, listening to his boots snap the backs of twigs on his way back to her.

  “Dakota! Looky what I got.”

  At least he remembered her name now, but she wished he didn’t. She wished he’d forgotten her altogether. Completely and forever. He motioned to her with one hand. In the other, he held out a sheet of cardboard coated with something sticky. She stared at it—mostly at the rattlesnake pinned to its center—her mouth dry as the grass beneath her feet.

  “Don’t worry. He ain’t goin’ nowhere. He’s stuck. And he’s about to be stucker.”

  More stuck, she thought. But she thought better of criticizing Grandpa Krandel’s grammar. Who knew what would set him off?

  “So that’s a glue trap?” she asked. “And a rattlesnake?”

  “Yep. And he’s fightin’ mad. But he won’t be able to move a muscle until I douse him with oil.”

  Grandpa Krandel tossed the trap to the ground at the base of the sycamore, grabbed his gun, and pointed up ahead, through the trees, where the sunlight glinted off the metal roof of a small shed.

  “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show ya how to fix it good.”

  Dread fixed Dakota in place for a moment, same as the snake. She didn’t know what was coming. Only that it would be bad. Probably worse than she imagined. But she scrambled along behind her grandfather anyway, more afraid of being out there alone.

  “Grady don’t like snakes. One time we were creepin’ through this tunnel looking for Charlie, and Grady screamed so loud we thought we were dead men. Turns out Charlie left a little surprise hangin’ from the ceiling.”

  Dakota knew what he expected. She should ask: What? What was hanging there? But she couldn’t look away from the snake and the only two parts that moved—its head and its rattle. Grandpa Krandel kept talking anyway, mumbling really, in a way that reminded her he was only half there.

  “A damn rat snake. Can you believe that? One hundred kinds of snakes in Nam. Ninety-eight were deadly; one could crush you like a bug. And then, there was the rat snake. Never hurt nobody . . . but a rat. But that didn’t stop Grady from yowlin’ like a cat in heat.”

  She didn’t mention the gopher snake she’d seen at Lake Berryessa or the way she’d cried out—okay, yowled. Instead, she kept her mouth shut and followed close behind him.

  When he spoke, she listened. “Stay right on my six.”

  Where he stepped, so did she. “Watch out for the ole punji pit.”

  Where he pointed, she looked. “Careful, bowling ball trip wire.”

  And when he fixed his finger onto the thick of the sycamores, she heeded his warning. “Don’t you go out there without me. I’m pretty sure Charlie still lives at the bottom of that old well. Had to cover it up to keep him away.”

  When they arrived at the door to the shed, remarkably in one piece, she released a long, shaky breath.

  “You know, I never told anybody that story about Grady.”

  “Not even Mom?”

  “Specially not your mama. She didn’t like them stories.”

  Grandpa Krandel lifted the doorknob and leaned against the frame. It creaked open to a musty room, lit only by the meager triangle of sun streaming through the doorway. “It sticks a little. I’ve been meanin’ to fix it.”

  Dakota waited until he was inside, gathering supplies, his face swallowed by shadows. A hammer. A rusty can of oil. “So . . . Wendall Grady is the guy you thought was following you? In the car at the library? And today?”

  He spun suddenly, too fast for his old-man body, and he stumbled a little, righting himself against the wall. “Did he say that? Did he tell you he was followin’ me?”

  “No. He didn’t even mention you . . . not really. He was talking about the horns on the wall. Velvet shedding or something. I didn’t really—”

  Her grandfather charged past her, hammer and oil in tow. “We gotta hurry and get these traps ready. That SOB is on my tail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know who he is. And now the army does too. And it ain’t pretty.”

  “Who is he?” she asked, mostly to herself, since her grandfather had already trucked it back to the tree, where he was about to do God knows what to that snake.

  “A goddamn war criminal, that’s who.” He picked
up the trap—stuck rattler and all—and held it at arm’s length. “Damn. I knew I was forgettin’ somethin’. Could ya grab a couple nails from that old Mason jar on the shelf?”

  Dakota nodded, even though her legs felt like rubber. The shed seemed darker now without her grandfather there. It was easy to imagine another rattlesnake coiled silently in the corner, waiting to take his revenge for his doomed buddy outside.

  She took out her phone, tapped the flashlight app, and stepped across the threshold, feeling smug as she pointed the beam of light at all the spooky corners and behind the large trunk near the back wall. Seeing no snake, she scanned the shelves for the jar.

  Top shelf. Too high for her to reach.

  “What’re ya doin’ in there with that fancy phone? Snitchin’ on me to Grady?” She figured Grandpa Krandel meant it as a joke, but the edge in his voice felt like a warning. The lightning before the thunder.

  “Coming,” she called, already maneuvering the chest across the dirt floor so she could stand atop it.

  She climbed up, nearly eye level to the shelf, and slid the jar toward her, leaving a trail in the layer of dust. She plucked three nails from inside—careful to avoid the very fat and very dead horsefly that had met its end there—and tucked them in her pocket. Otherwise, the shelf was bare, except . . .

  She aimed her flashlight in the corner where the dust looked more like a snowdrift and the spiders had been building their homes undisturbed, probably for decades. Something metal winked back at her. Her curiosity drew her along, a moth to a flame.

  She moved to the edge of the chest and reached her arm out farther, farther, farther, until she snagged it with her finger. Just a little bit more and she’d have it.

  Leaning on tiptoe, she managed to grab it—whatever it was—along with a handful of spiderweb she couldn’t shake. Which came with the terrible thought of a spider scuttling nearby. Or worse, on her.

  She dropped her phone—the shed went dark—and she screamed as she tumbled from the trunk, nearly hitting her head on the wall behind her.

  For a few seconds, she laid still as a board, stunned and staring up into nothing. Until her grandfather’s voice jolted her into action.

  “You alright in there?”

  “I think so.” She tried to sit up but couldn’t. Something had her by the hair and wouldn’t let go. With a grunt, she relented, searching the ground for her phone with her fingers. Finally, she flipped it over, the flashlight spotlighting the dim ceiling like a tiny moon. At least it wasn’t dark anymore.

  “I think I’m stuck,” she yelled, her eyes tearing.

  “I’m comin’. I’m comin’. These old legs don’t move as fast as they used to.”

  Dakota gave one more effort as Grandpa Krandel lumbered to her side. “Hold on now,” he said, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. “Tiger’s got you by the tail.”

  His hands tugged at her ponytail, jostling, jiggling, unwinding. A little rip. And then, freedom. “You lost a few pink ones,” he told her, helping her to her feet.

  “Mom would probably say that’s karma.”

  She retrieved the nails from her pocket and held them out to him, still rubbing the sore spot on her head.

  “Alright. You ready to fix that ole rattler good?”

  Dakota nodded, even though she most definitely was not ready.

  As Grandpa Krandel ducked through the doorway, she hung back and scanned the ground for the thing she’d risked life and hair for. The thing that had gone flying from her hand—there it is!—landing in the space behind her grandfather’s trunk.

  She picked it up.

  A leather collar, stiff and cracked with age.

  She rubbed the grime from the metal tag, aimed her flashlight at it, and read the words inscribed there.

  ROSCOE

  If lost, please return to

  Mol’s Junkyard, Allendale.

  ****

  Dakota plucked a grass burr from her shoelace and rolled it gently between her fingers as she reread Boyd’s message.

  Hi Birdie (aka the next Barbara Walters)! I have news. Big news. I put Leia to work again last night on the dog issue. Nothing. But Obi-Wan says there’s more than one way to skin a womp rat. And he’s right. Can you meet me this week? I want to tell you in person.

  Dakota set the burr beside the keyboard and stared at its prickles. She couldn’t focus. Not with Roscoe’s collar hidden in her back pocket and visions of Grandpa Krandel and his traps in her head. She’d shut her eyes when he’d oiled up the rattlesnake’s tail, partially releasing it from the trap. When he’d fixed the rattle-end to the sycamore, she’d covered her ears. But she couldn’t block the hollow thud of the hammer. And she couldn’t keep her eyes closed forever. No matter how hard she tried.

  Finally, she’d held up Roscoe’s collar. Like a crucifix to ward off evil. “What’s this?” she’d asked, grateful that the pounding had stopped.

  “Where did ya find that ole thing?”

  “The shed. It was in the corner on the shelf with the nails. Did it belong to Mom’s dog?”

  Grandpa Krandel nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead. He stuck the hammer in his back pocket and started toward the house. “Sure did.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Dakota had willed her legs to move, to catch up to him. But she’d felt as rooted as a sycamore. Until the snake whipped into her vision and she’d jogged ahead.

  “Somebody shot him. Your mama don’t know this. But it was Grady’s fault. All of it.” When he quickened his pace, she understood the conversation was over. “C’mon. We got more traps to check back at the house.”

  They’d inspected every last one.

  The airhorn trip wire. “First line of defense.”

  The spiked plyboard. “Your mama made that one with me.”

  The punji pit. “Already showed you my scar, right? Goddamn Charlie.”

  And the Altoid-tin alarm. Before he’d driven her back to the library. The whole time, she’d seen only that snake lashing and struggling against its fate.

  She shook her head, trying to unsee it even now, and typed her reply.

  Hey Chewie!

  If we’re skinning womp rats, I’m game. How about tomorrow outside the pool at 3:30?

  P.S. Who’s Barbara Walters?

  P.P.S. JK.

  Dakota closed her direct messages and scrolled through the posts on the main page. She still had fifteen minutes before the library’s 6 p.m. closing time and wanted to be sure she hadn’t missed anything important.

  She flinched when a new chat bubble popped up on the screen, her heart racing.

  DocSherlock: How ya been, Cagedbird? Haven’t seen you or Chewie on the chat in a while.

  Jojo666: Yeah, it’s been pretty boring around here without you two going at it.

  Cagedbird18: We might have a lead.

  Jojo666: Ooh la la. Sounds juicy. Spill.

  Cagedbird18: I will. After we crack the case.

  Jojo666: We, huh? So are you and the Chewster the first official Shadow Snoops couple?

  Dakota’s stomach rolled as she pondered a reply. What if Boyd was out there right now, reading this in his Wookiee slippers? She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Thankfully, she didn’t have to.

  DocSherlock: Leave it alone, Jojo. You’re just jealous.

  Jojo666 has gone offline.

  Her fingers hovered over the keys, still uncertain, when the librarian’s voice streamed over the intercom.

  “The Napa Public Library will be closing at 6 p.m. Please make your way to the exit shortly.”

  Dakota logged off the computer and slung her bag over her shoulder. She took one last look back as she headed for the double doors, leaving the grass burr behind for the janitor to wonder about.

  ****

  “Did y
ou finish your book?” her mom asked as Dakota picked at a soggy wonton.

  She nodded, stuffing it into her mouth. Anything to get this over with. They hadn’t all sat down for dinner since her dad’s big scandal broke, and watching her parents pretend they weren’t smack-dab in the middle of the Roark apocalypse was too much to bear. She felt the weight of it pressing on her shoulders until she wished she could simply give in, slide from her chair underneath the table, and sit with Gus, gobbling up the eggroll crumbs her dad brushed from his lap.

  Dakota wasn’t alone in her misery. That much she knew for sure. Her mom had already downed half a bottle of wine. She sucked down the rest of her glass and poured another, ignoring her father’s side-eye.

  “So, sweetie, we wanted to talk to you—”

  “What now?”

  “About your birthday,” her mom finished, already sounding defeated. “It’s next Saturday, you know.”

  “Um, yeah. I know, Mom. I didn’t forget my own freaking birthday.”

  “Hey, watch the smart mouth, young lady.”

  Dakota rolled her eyes hard, hoping her dad would send her to her room. “You argue with Mom all the time. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is she’s your mother, and you need to show her respect.”

  Dakota snorted. “Like you do?”

  Her mother smacked the table, and Gus darted from beneath it, tail tucked between his legs. Dakota watched with envy as he scurried up the stairs. “What has gotten into you?” her mother asked, half plea, half demand.

  Dakota stood up and took a step back, out of her mother’s firing range. “Wrong question, Mom. Why don’t you ask Dad what he’s gotten into? He’s the one who messed everything up. That’s what I want for my birthday. For things to be like they were before.”

  Huffing, she took the stairs two at a time and slammed the door, relishing an uneasy satisfaction. At least they’d leave her alone now.

  She undressed, relieved when she discovered the Whitetails and Whoppers card in the pocket of her jean shorts. If she’d stuck them in the laundry, her mother would’ve been the one to find it. Disaster averted. She slipped the card between the pages of her yearbook and dropped into bed, exhausted.