by Paul Taylor
"Damn it, keep her muffled!" snapped Neil. "Her screaming'll have all the cops in town after us."
"I'm trying," said Pete. "She keeps pulling it off."
Taking a deep breath, Neil glanced away from the tarmac road rushing at them and gave Pete a level look.
"Tie up her hands first," he said.
"Let me go, you cock-sucker!" screamed Kath.
"Is that the mouth you kiss your boyfriend with?" asked Neil.
He glanced in the mirror and saw Pete flip Kath over and tie her hands behind her back. A few seconds later, her yelps became muffled as Pete gagged her.
As he drove, not really knowing where they were heading, Neil kept glancing at the backs of his hands where they lay on the steering wheel. The veins were thickened and black and stood out as if he'd just finished a strenuous work-out. He nodded to himself, listening to the shadows whisper through them.
"My shadows don't like your boyfriend, Kitty-Kat," said Neil, trying to make eye contact in the rear-view mirror. "That's the second time we haven't been able to kill him. They won't be impressed.
"We couldn't touch him," he went on after a moment, since no reply was forthcoming from his bound and gagged wife. "And we want to know why. What's so special about Reilly that he should be immune to being shadowed? And have everyone running scared?" He slapped the steering wheel. "He was to be our next meal, damn it! Giving his life to allow me to continue pursuing our glorious cause. But we couldn't touch him!"
That was no good. Neil could feel a thin thrill of unease echoing through him from the shadows and knew it was not good at all.
This was not good.
Ben's Valiant growled up and down the streets of Casino, looking for any sign of Kath and finding none. They'd vanished into thin air. No sooner had Ben thought this, than he realised that, where the shadows were concerned, this might be the literal truth. A fit of shivers overcame him.
He'd already been to Kath's place, not seriously expecting them to be there, but needing to do something. Richard had been there already, swift to action after Ben's call from the hospital. Of course they hadn't found anything. Apparently after that, the police had been at as much of a loss as Ben was. Talking to Rich, Ben had asked about roadblocks.
"I'm afraid that only works in movies. This place has so many highways, laneways and back roads leading out of it that it's like trying to treat a machine gun victim with a band aid. We don't have the manpower to cover half of it."
So that had been the end of that.
"There's gotta be something we can do," Ben had complained. "He's going to fucking kill her."
"I don't think so," said Rich. "Hey, listen, man. This is my cousin we're talking about here, as well. If he's so much as laid another finger on her when we find them, they're going to need sniffer dogs to find all of him. I don't think he plans to hurt her, though. Usually psychos like him try and convince them they still love them, and that they should get back together."
Ben laughed bitterly. "Sure. That's gonna work!"
Rich looked at him solemnly. "You'd be surprised how often it does happen. A woman runs away from her abusive husband, only to have him catch up with her and convince her he's changed his ways. The woman, like an idiot, falls for it and goes back to him. Not to say men aren't as stupid, at least women have the guts to try and leave."
Despite the fact that Ben knew Kath didn't love Neil any more, knew that she loved him now, he still felt his balls go tight with fear. It was as though a block of ice had settled into his pelvis.
She wouldn't go back to Neil. God damn it, she couldn't. So Ben had spent the last two hours trolling the streets. As he drove he tried to push aside the visions that crowded in on his mind. Visions of Kath admitting to Neil that she knew she'd been in the wrong, that going back to Ben was no more than a petty, childish manoeuvre meant solely to make Neil jealous.
Ben thumped the steering wheel, swearing under his breath.
As he came through the roundabout, Ben saw someone at the edge of the pedestrian crossing and he stopped to let them through.
It was late afternoon, the town strangely deserted, and now that Ben thought about it, he couldn't remember seeing anyone the whole time he'd been driving around. But that was absurd. Wasn't it? The whole population couldn't have vanished into each other's shadows.
A cover of clouds lay out to the west and the setting sun's rays reflected off them, turning the sky into brilliant shades of red and yellow and purple. It turned the light into something that resembled the night-time glare of the arc-sodium lights.
Coming across the stranger like that under such conditions unnerved Ben. He'd been starting to think he was all alone in the town. The last surviving person, perhaps. Now this guy, he wasn't even moving, just standing there. What the hell was he doing? Was he going to cross the road or what?
Ben gestured impatiently at him. Cross.
And still the man didn't move.
Fuck it, thought Ben. He wasn't going to sit there all afternoon waiting for some nutcase to decide whether or not to cross the road.
As Ben let the car start to roll forward though, the man stepped out onto the road.
"Oh for..." Ben sat drumming his fingers on the wheel and giving the guy death looks, waiting for him to cross.
All of a sudden, the clown was looking in through Ben's open window. His face was inscrutable behind dark sunglasses and Ben suddenly felt fear pang through his body.
"It's all right," said the man. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"The hell do you want?" demanded Ben.
"Ben?" said the man. "Do you mind if I call you Ben?"
"How do you know my name?" said Ben. "Who are you?"
"You should know that, Ben, you were asking for me." He stepped back a little, and gestured at his feet. "Look."
Ben leaned out the window and looked at the guy's feet and wondered what the hell he was on.
"What about them?" said Ben. "What's wrong with your feet?"
"Not my feet. Look beyond my feet."
Ben looked, and still couldn't see anything. Then he realised. He swallowed around what felt like a big, dry ball of cotton wool and his throat closed and opened painfully, making a clicking noise.
The man was standing with his back towards the setting sun. The day's last dying rays fell full upon him and the sun was blocked by his head. Ben should have been sitting right in his shadow. If he were casting one.
The man had no shadow at all.
Ben's heart danced a frantic jig in his chest and he felt it might burst. The world shrunk down to a very small dot, featuring little more than this bizarre man's shadowless feet. He started to speak and succeeded only in making a noise that sounded like "ungk". Ben closed his mouth, took a breath, and tried again. When nothing came out the second time, Ben lifted his foot off the brake, put it on the accelerator, and ran away.
In his rear-view mirror Ben could see the man without a shadow standing in the middle of the crossing and staring after him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE