The Hunter in the Shadows

by Joab Stieglitz

  “Anna! Anna! Are you all right?” Ogden asked, staring into Anna’s face. He tapped her cheek. Anna snarled and then grit her teeth. Ogden followed Anna’s gaze and then turned away as the strobing became uncomfortably fast and bright.

  Anna and Maggie screamed in unison, their backs arching, seemingly floating a few inches off the ground. Then there was a blinding green flash, the glass ceiling of the greenhouse shattered, and a stream of wintery-cold air flooded the room.

  Chapter 22

  ?

  Anna regained awareness. Once again, she was in the alien library in the body of one of the conical beings. She scanned the strangely vaulted chamber and noted several more of the entities there, but eventually she somehow knew she had found the being that she was looking for, and she knew that the body was no longer inhabited by the English archaeologist.

  She manipulated her new form and glided across the octagonally tiled floor to her target. Just before she reached it, the electrical charge on the cuffs around her claw-tipped stalks increased in intensity and the three-fingered appendages were magnetically drawn together.

  In the back of her mind, Anna sensed danger and betrayal. No, not betrayal. Duplicity. And the sensation was not her own, it was all around her. It was the perception of the Collective. They were aware of her presence and intent, and blamed her for the failure of the Xuxaax’ plan. The being that had traded minds with Lyton turned its head stalk to face Anna. It had an aura of frustrated menace.

  You sent me to Boston because I was necessary for the successful creation of the Xuxaax portal, Anna thought.

  You have worked everything out, I see, the being facing her replied. The Xuxaax were a means to our own end, and they needed the psychic energy I introduced into you through that book to initially establish the portal.

  You planted the image of Sobak in my dream, but Maggie White is not Sobak’s surrogate. You left the von Junzt fragment in my pocket. Was there any validity to the von Junzt story?

  Wolfram von Juntz did discover evidence of the Xuxaax in Central America. And he and his benefactors will bring about the mass extinction of trillions of lifeforms on Earth. But it will take a different path now, without the assistance of the Xuxaax, and will not extinguish humanity.

  Why are you set on the destruction of humanity?

  The Collective, like the Xuxaax, exist in your distant past. And like the Xuxaax, the Collective will come forward in time to inhabit the successors of mankind. Anna felt a surge of energy course through her alien body. But you will no longer be able to experience that glorious event. A searing pain erupted in her central mass and radiated to all of her extremities. You have failed the Collective and must be cast out. The pain reached Anna’s head and she screamed in agony.

  ◆

  “Anna. Anna!” Ogden shouted as Anna regained consciousness. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, and the soldier was holding her down by the shoulders. Somewhere nearby, Cletus barked defensively. “Anna, can you hear me?”

  Anna’s vision had been blurry and tinged with the green of the portal collapsing, but as her vision cleared, she took in her surroundings. She was laying in a hospital bed, and her wrists were bandaged. The soldier’s face showed signs of prolonged worry, but bore an expression of relief. He stroked her hair before bending down to kiss her passionately on the lips. Cletus’ muzzle appeared on the right side of her face and started licking it as well.

  “Thank heavens!” he said as Eliezar Feldman and J. Edgar Hoover entered the room. The chair Shroud had been sitting in was lying on its back behind him. Feldman righted it and set next to the bed. Hoover glanced behind a partition before approaching Anna’s bed.

  “What has happened?” Anna asked. The men glanced at each.

  Eventually, Ogden said, “Thanks to Cletus, we found you in the nick of time.”

  “The portal those monsters came through exploded,” Hoover added, “and my men destroyed the creatures with righteous fury. Then the entire structure was burned to the ground. Officially, there was a gas leak, but I would like to know what was actually going on in that house.”

  “You have been unconscious for three days,” Feldman said softly, “and the doctors could not say whether you would recover, or even regain consciousness.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “What happened to Conrad Fox?”

  “Conrad Fox,” Hoover replied, “or rather, Konrad Fuchs, was a German—” he paused to think for a moment. “I guess you would call him a German saboteur. My men have him incarcerated at a secret facility. He’s telling us quite a story about German plans to conquer the world with alien assistance.”

  “It is true,” Anna confirmed. “Fox, or whatever his name is, was sent by the Thule Society to bring the Xuxaax, those monsters, forward in time before the annihilation of their own prehistoric civilization. The German plan was to distract and weaken the American military with the invasion of those creatures.”

  “With the United States effectively neutralized,” Feldman conjectured, “Germany could conquer Europe again.”

  “The Triple Entente powers are still recovering from the war,” Hoover said. “They’re in no condition to fend off another German offensive.”

  “They will be less so,” Anna said, “if similar efforts by the Thule Society are not prevented in England, France, and Russia. Fox told me that there were similar plans being executed in those countries to eliminate future opposition from them.”

  “He never mentioned any of that to me,” Maggie White’s voice said meekly from beyond the partition. “I guess I was just the bait. But why did they need those other girls?”

  “What other girls?” Hoover said with surprise. He moved the partition so they could see her. Maggie’s wrists were also bandaged, and she kept her body tightly covered by several blankets.

  “There were five other girls in that greenhouse room,” White said. “They were there when I was brought there. They opened that passageway once for an instant and threw one of the girls into it. The other girls saw it and started to run away. The first girl disintegrated right before my eyes. There was a flash, and then the others all turned to stone. I guess I wasn’t close enough to be affected.”

  “Why didn’t you run away?” Feldman asked.

  “I was chained to that pillar,” she replied. “The other girls were locked in the greenhouse, but they weren’t tied up or anything.”

  “The women were not turned to stone,” Anna corrected. “They had been encased in it. When the first Xuxaax arrived through the portal using my psychic energy, the one that was here already and the new one preformed a dominance ritual. In the process, one of the statues was knocked over and shattered. Inside the stone fragments were pieces of a human body.”

  “They used your psychic energy to power the gate?” Hoover queried suspiciously.

  “Yes. The being posing as Cornelius Lyton transported me back to the time of the Collective, which also predates mankind by millennia. There I was exposed to an alien book that implanted mental abilities in me that were present when I was returned to my own body. Using those powers, I established a mental connection with Ms. White, who I still thought was my sister from Teplow’s dreamworld. The Collective engineered events to put me in that room to power the portal.”

  “Your sister from Teplow’s dreamworld?!” Hoover shouted. “Brian Teplow, the mystic?”

  “Dr. Rykov and her associates at the Longborough Foundation for Ethnographic Research investigated Mr. Teplow’s disappearance,” Feldman said. “They were able to locate him in another dimension and return him to his mother in Brooklyn.”

  “I find that story hard to believe,” Hoover said, shaking his head, “but after what I’ve seen recently, I’m willing to consider the metaphysical.” He turned to exit. “Rest now, ladies. I may have need of your services in the future.”

  As he left, a nurse came into the room. Seeing that Anna was conscious, she rushed out and returned a moment later.

  “I’m
sorry, gentlemen, “ she said, “but Miss Rykov —”

  “Doctor Rykov,” Feldman said.

  “— but now that Doctor Rykov is conscious, the doctor will need to conduct tests to assess her condition and determine if there are any internal injuries or other consequences from her ordeal.” The nurse gestured toward the exit. “And take that dog with you.”

  “Yes,” Feldman said, “we should let you rest. I’ll check in on you tomorrow. Come on, Cletus.” The dog rose and followed the librarian out of the room.

  Ogden Shroud leaned over to kiss Anna on the lips again, but Anna turned her head, and he kissed her cheek instead. “I’ll be back a little later,” he said. Anna smiled awkwardly, and the soldier departed.

  “That fella’s got a thing for you,” the nurse said with an unexpectedly conversational tone. “You two serious?”

  “I’ll say,” Maggie said. “He’s been here the whole time, sitting by her side with the dog.” She turned to Anna with a smile. “You’ve got a heck of beau there.”

  “We only just met less than a week ago,” Anna said with irritation. “He is a homeless soldier who came to my aid when I was confronted by a band of ruffians. In my gratitude, I bought him some food and got him a hotel room. He has made assumptions about our affiliation that are incorrect.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, dearie,” the nurse said. “I’ll be back with the doctor in a moment,” she added, and then left the two women alone in the room.

  “He’s not the only one who made relationship assumptions,” Maggie said with a knowing glance.

  “I know now that you are not my sister from that other dimension. I confronted the alien who planted that suggestion and it confirmed that you were used to lure me to Fox’s house. He did not know it, but the Xuxaax were after me the whole time.”

  “Well, even if we’re not sisters, I think you’re pretty keen, and I’d love to keep in touch. We’ve been through an adventure together, and that kind of thing happens for a reason.”

  “I would be honored to maintain our acquaintance,” Anna replied.

  “How about if we just be friends?” Maggie smiled broadly, and then the two of them started giggling.

  Chapter 23

  May 15, 1930

  Anna awoke to the smell of fried eggs and bacon. Not unexpectedly, Cletus was not on the bed with her. Anna heard giggling and barking coming from outside in the yard. She rose from the bed and put on her robe and slippers before looking out the window to the backyard, where Cletus was running around the small yard being chased by three boys and two girls. The sounds of the children’s laughter made Anna smile.

  ◆

  Anna was released from the hospital one week later. After paying her bill at the Ritz-Carlton, she went to Boston Common where she was reunited with Cletus. The big dog knocked her down and licked her face until Ogden pulled her to her feet and into his arms. When she freed herself from his embrace, Anna found that Joseph, Rosemary, Helen, and some others had gathered around them.

  “Them Federals told us what happened to you,” Helen said, “but Mr. Stroud said that it wasn’t the whole story.”

  “As we understand it,” Joseph interrupted, “you were successful in finding the killer, but some said that he was killed, and others said he was some kind of foreign agent who fled the country. Which is it?”

  “And where are the girls?” Helen said hopefully.

  Anna sighed and collected her thoughts. She looked at the faces of each of the people gathered around her. They bore expressions of hope, concern, resignation, or just curiosity. She considered how to tell them the bad news. She sighed again.

  “I am afraid that your missing girls were all killed.” Tears and expressions of shock erupted from Helen and some other women. The mens’ faces varied between anger and acceptance. “The man the agents spoke of did represent foreign interests, and apparently he escaped from them.” A disgruntled murmur rose from the assembly. “However, the killer was actually a beast that the man had acquired to collect women to use a subjects in his foul experiments.”

  “And my Angela was a victim of these experiments?” Helen said meekly. Anna nodded. “Did she die… No, I don’t want to know.” Helen’s tear stained face adopted and expression of acceptance. “I knew it,” she said quietly. “I knew it all along.” Then she turned and walked back toward her shelter.

  “So that’s the end of it,” Joseph said. “You achieved what you came to do and now you’ll be going back home?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, “I will be returning to Wellersburg. But I will not forget or abandon you.”

  “We don’t need your charity…,” Joseph started to say.

  “Yes, you do.” Anna was direct and clear. “And I will do my part to ease your suffering.” Joseph went to respond, but Anna started to walk purposefully back in the direction she had come from. “Come, Cletus.” The big dog bounded after her.

  “I won’t abandon you either,” Ogden said to the confounded crowd. “I have been reactivated and will be pursuing these foreign agents wherever they go.”

  ◆

  Exiting her bedroom, Anna closed the door behind her. She glanced down the hall to the two rear bedrooms and noted that the doors were open, and that the bunk beds in the boys’ room were unmade. The girls’ room was neat and tidy, but that was to be expected since they shared it with Mrs. Tidings.

  Anna descended the stairs and noticed the morning mail on the sideboard. She picked up the stack of letters and flipped through them absently until she came upon a postcard. There was a drawing of Big Ben on the front, and when she turned it over, she read.

  Anna,

  Mr. Hoover has kept me quite busy here in London working with Special Branch to uncover the Thule Society in England. So far no luck, but there are a surprising number of unexplainable phenomena here. Maybe you can come and help us out?

  I miss you,

  Ogden

  Anna smiled, wondering if Hoover would be upset about the secrets Lieutenant Shroud had carelessly revealed on the back of a postcard for anyone to see. Following the business in Boston, the Director of the Bureau of Investigation revealed that he had been looking into the Ogden Shroud case and other unexplainable events involving American servicemen abroad as part of an effort to expand the Bureau’s jurisdiction beyond the borders of the United States.

  Anna’s revelation that German extremists were pursuing extra-dimensional aid to weaken the democratic powers sounded alarms in certain closed chambers of government, and, as one of only a handful of people with first-hand experience with such phenomena, Ogden Shroud was reactivated, commissioned, and assigned to a task force to pursue and deal with the threat.

  He and Anna had parted ways in the same place where they had first met at South Central Station. This time, however, the soldier took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. To his surprise, Anna returned the kiss with equal enthusiasm. Anna smiled as she remembered the moment.

  Suddenly, the children entered through the front door. When they saw her, the five stopped in their tracks and said, “Good morning, Miss Anna,” in practiced unison. Then Cletus galloped in, walked up to Anna, and shook his wet coat, showering her with muddy water. The children laughed, and Anna found herself laughing with them.

  “That’s enough of that,” Mrs. Tidings said, emerging from the kitchen with a towel for Anna. “Wash up and get ready for breakfast!” The children removed their galoshes, leaving them scattered across the foyer, and stormed up the stairs past Anna.

  “My apologies, miss,” the gray-haired woman said and ran over to close the front door. “You must be chilled to the bone! Come have some tea!”

  Anna followed the nanny into the kitchen, which had been rearranged to accommodate a table large enough for six people. Woven placemats lay before each seat, bearing a plate with a fork on one side and knife and spoon on the other, all carefully arranged. In the center of the table sat a platter piled high with pancakes, another of toast
, and a third of bacon. She accepted a mug of hot tea from the nanny with a smile and took a sip. Mrs. Tidings knew exactly how she liked it.

  When Anna had returned from Boston, Dr. Feldman had insisted that she continue her recuperation. He hired Mrs. Tidings, an unemployed school teacher, to look after the anthropologist, now under Harold Lamb’s care. The plight of the children in Boston Common had moved Anna. She had had two unused bedrooms in a largely empty house.

  Through Father O’Malley, Anna had accepted five children with no one to look after them into her home. Now the once somber house was full of joy and happiness. The large living room served as playroom and classroom for her charges as well as for some other children for whom O’Malley had arranged accommodations.

  Anna smiled as Jack, Wally, and Matilda entered the kitchen, followed by Sophie, who held little Homer’s hand. Anna accepted the three-year-old from his older sister and sat him in her lap. Then, under the watchful eyes of their matron, the older boys pulled out the chairs for the girls, and then sat in their own chairs.

  As one, the children all bowed their heads and said, “Thank you, God, for this food, for this home, and all things good. But most of all, for those we love. Amen.” Then they all looked at Anna.

  “Amen,” Anna replied.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joab Stieglitz was born and raised in Warren, New Jersey. He is an Application Consultant for a software company. He has also worked as a software trainer, a network engineer, a project manager, and a technical writer over his 30-year career. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.