The Shadow People

by Joe Clifford

  I heard the screeching wheels of a car peel around the corner, gunning my way. I couldn’t outrun it. My only option was to go back the way I’d come, but it would just return me to the same place I’d left, where one of them surely waited. I was a trapped rat.

  Before I could decide what to do, the car skidded to a stop in front of me.

  The passenger side door kicked open.

  The last face I expected to see greeted me.

  “Get in,” Francis said.

  He didn’t have to ask twice.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The exertion and stress of the last twenty-four hours knocked me out. Even though I’d managed a couple hours of sleep in the backseat of my car, soon to be towed and property of the county, the respite wasn’t enough to compensate for what my body and mind had been through. I wasn’t used to questioning whether what I saw before me, with my own two eyes, was there or not.

  All I knew: when I came to, we weren’t in Cortland anymore.

  “Where are we?” I wiped the crust from my eyes.

  “Couple hours west.”

  Francis lit a cigarette. The smell was nauseating. What could I do? It was his car. And the old man had saved my ass.

  A couple weeks ago, the last place I figured I’d be was on a road trip with Francis Balfour. A lot had changed in a couple weeks. I had so many questions. He was the only one there to ask.

  “Who were those guys? The ones in the car chasing me.”

  “Not sure it’d make much sense to you.” He dragged on his cigarette. “Let’s say the type to tie up loose ends.”

  “How am I a loose end? I don’t know anything. I don’t know what happened to Jacob. This isn’t my fight.” Tall highway poles whizzed past as we slipped under a skyway advertising McDonald’s. “How’d you know where I was?” I thought back to my phone call to the dry cleaners, wondering if I was playing out a 12 Monkeys reenactment.

  “Same way they found you.”

  I felt my pockets. “Where’s my cell phone?”

  “In pieces on the side of the road in Cortland.”

  “What the hell you do that for?”

  “Traceable.”

  “That’s, like, six hundred dollars! And it was off!”

  “Doesn’t matter. Police can still use it to find you.” He glanced over. “Police called you, right?”

  “How’d you…?” How did he know that? “Yes, the police called. My girlfriend Sam is missing. She might not be missing, though. Her parents are looking for her. The police wanted me to come in.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “If she is missing, I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  “Didn’t say you did. But if you’re innocent, why not talk to the police?”

  “It’s…complicated. I’m…seeing things. Cars. People watching me. Not sleeping well. I feel like I’m cracking up.”

  “You’re not cracking up.” Francis took another drag before aiming the burning ember at me. In the red haze of the old Buick, he looked positively demonic. “Your eyes are opening. You’re seeing the truth.”

  He didn’t say more than that, and I shut up.

  I stared out the window, watching barns and farms and old trains whizz by.

  Then I must’ve fallen back asleep. The body is a machine. It has its own automatic hardwire reboot. Mine powered down.

  I woke to bright sunshine slathering high wheat fields, buttery, like scrambled eggs fluffed up on light toast. Or maybe I was hungry. My stomach roiled over having been denied proper meals, those few bites of a meatball sub converted to energy by organs and wires, vessels and bone that had to keep the ship going even when the good captain had passed out down below. I let out a satisfying yawn and enjoyed a good stretch. I had to admit I felt safer in this car, driving with this wackadoodle, than I’d felt in a while.

  Francis had an arm hanging out the window, so relaxed, cigarette dangling from his lips, Wayfarers on, the world’s coolest grandpa. Was this a symptom of his sickness? How he could wax between looking like the spawn of Satan and an extra in a Don Henley video?

  “The Egyptians were the first people to see the color blue,” he said, as if we were in the middle of a conversation and these weren’t the first words I’d heard upon awaking.

  “Huh?”

  “The Egyptians. Y’know, the Pyramids? The Sphinx?”

  “I know who the Egyptians are. I’m getting an advanced college degree. What about them?”

  “The color. Blue. Didn’t exist until the time of pharaohs and pyramids.”

  How do you respond to that?

  I flashed an okeydokey sign. “Hate to tell you this. Blue is a primary color, meaning it’s in damn near everything. The ocean is blue.” I pointed out the window, up at the Simpsons sky and clouds. “See? Pretty blue—”

  “You read a lot?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Ever read The Odyssey?”

  “Homer? Of course.”

  “That’s the one. Story about a man voyaging across the sea. Spends a lot of time on the ocean. Never uses the word ‘blue’ when writing about the water. He describes the sea as a ‘dark wine.’” He glanced over. “Never blue.”

  “I’m sorry, Francis. I’m not following. If you are saying the world—the sea, sky, a billion other things on this planet—magically turned blue overnight, I’m not buying it. Sounds like a crackpot theory Jacob would’ve come up with for his stupid zine.”

  “Didn’t say the world changed colors. Only that the color didn’t exist. At least not in recorded history. No mention of that particular color until the Egyptians.”

  “Sure, whatever, man. What’s your point?”

  “You’re right. The sea and sky, certain flowers, berries have always been blue. The human eye couldn’t process the color. Therefore, it didn’t exist.”

  “Great.” Thumbs-up. “I’m in a parallel universe. Wonderful.”

  “There are parallel universes. But not like you’re thinking. Several worlds exist simultaneously. All the time, right on top of each other. Some people see the world for what it really is. Some people don’t.”

  “So which one am I seeing?” I knew there was a reason Francis was sharing this anecdote.

  Francis flicked his butt out the window. “I think you’re seeing the color blue for the first time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We stopped for lunch in King’s Landing, a trucker town off the freeway. How did I end up in this situation? Breaking bread with a geriatric nutcase shaking his fist at chemtrails. Yet, there I was. Because I couldn’t go home. The cops wanted me for questioning. I had strange cars following me. People breaking into my apartment. I started wondering if all the crap that went down at Ledgecrest was related.

  “Eat up,” Francis said.

  I’d ordered a burger, even though I had no appetite. I was hungry. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of eating. I didn’t do well with deviation from the norm. An impromptu road trip to go on the run ran counter to that arrangement.

  The restaurant didn’t even have a name. Just a burger and sandwich place affixed to the truck stop. Long-haul drivers ducked through the doors, making for the showers in back. The restaurant opened into a novelty shop—useless garbage parents bought to keep kids quiet on cross-country trips. Customers milled about, picking up trinkets, putting them back without buying, periodically glancing in our direction. I didn’t know what was real and what I was imagining, if these people, these watchers, were like my color blue.

  “What’s the plan, Francis?”

  “Minnesota.”

  “I’m not in the mood for a vacation.”

  He nodded toward the truckers at the filling station. “I’m sure one of those fellas will be happy to give you a ride back home.”

  Francis stuck a fork in the egg yoke, swirling orange over his toast, which he’d ordered extra burnt. He cut off a hunk of egg and bread, chomping, jaw
rotating like a cow chewing cud, slow and deliberate, refusing to respond to a simple question.

  I made to go. But where? I was a man without a country.

  “Sit down,” Francis said.

  I acquiesced, as if staying granted Francis a favor, the closest I was getting to saving face. I wasn’t taking a Greyhound back to Cortland.

  “Before Jacob went missing,” Francis said, “he called me. I understood the world he was attempting to infiltrate.”

  “And what world is that?”

  “The same one you are starting to see.” Francis paused before adding, “Again.” He said it like it should mean something to me. Which, of course, it didn’t. “My grandson published several issues of Illuminations. He broached subjects the mainstream press is scared to talk about.”

  “Photocopying is not publishing.” I turned to look out the window, eyeing the long road before me. “Everything isn’t a conspiracy, Francis.”

  “Some of it was out there. I’ll give you that. Not all of it. You read his piece on Rosemary Kennedy?”

  “I perused the zine. Can’t say I recall that particular essay.”

  “Might’ve been an earlier edition.” Francis rained black pepper over his eggs.

  “What about Rosemary Kennedy?” I said, taking the bait. “She was mentally handicapped. Like a vegetable, right?”

  “Not before her father got ahold of her. Before Joe Kennedy got his mitts on his eldest daughter, she was perfectly intelligent. A little wild maybe. Joe scrambled his own daughter’s brain so his sons could be president. Brought her to a back-alley doctor to scrape away her frontal lobe.”

  “The Kennedys? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe what you want. I’m telling you Jacob wasn’t afraid to go big-game hunting. You mess with powerful families and their skeletons, people get defensive.”

  “Are you telling me the—” I leaned over the table to whisper “—the Kennedys had something to do with this?”

  “Of course not. What do you think? I’m crazy?”

  Actually, Francis…

  “My point is you poke around enough, throwing darts in the dark, you’re bound to hit your mark. Broken clocks, twice a day. Jacob hit a bull’s eye.”

  “About what?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be investigating, would I?”

  “You’d go to the cops?” Like Francis would trust the police.

  “What’s your life been like these past couple weeks? Visits from strangers? Tailed by more than that one strange car? Patterns disrupted? Doppelgängers? Frequent episodes of déjà vu?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of late, life has been…weird. But that doesn’t mean I’m buying into any of this bullshit. There’s always a logical explanation—”

  “Logical can be illogical.”

  “That is literally the opposite definition of logical.”

  Francis ran a finger out the window, up and down, side to side. “This is all one big simulation.”

  “I’ve seen The Matrix.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a movie.”

  “I ain’t talking about no movie, boy.”

  “Frankly? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Francis.”

  “Jacob had been doing better,” he said, extracting another copy of the latest edition of Illuminations while dismissing my input. He dropped it on the countertop, finger tapping. “Wasn’t until this issue came out that Jacob went off the rails.”

  “I’ve known Jacob since we were kids. I loved him like a brother. But he was crazy way before playing intrepid journalist. He was never on the rails. Not after we were kids, anyway.”

  “Crazy is a convenient term. A point of view. It’s also lazy, predictable, and boring. For some of us, it’s a term of endearment.”

  “Us?”

  “You know Jacob’s official diagnosis?”

  “Delusional?”

  “My grandson was schizophrenic.” Francis pulled out an orange prescription bottle, placed it on the table. I couldn’t read the label. Something long that started with a T. He snatched it back before I could sound it out and use my context clues. “One of many. I’m on a cocktail. Some will tell you schizophrenia isn’t hereditary. But my father had it. So did my son, Gary. So did Jacob. It’s a term, a classification, a word medical coders need to file claims in the appropriate insurance file. I prefer to look at schizophrenia another way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A gift.”

  I was a positive guy. Like Monty Python, I liked to look on the bright side of life. But what do you say to a man who claims a brain disease is a blessing?

  Francis crooked a finger at me. “It allows you to see what’s really there, what others are blind to. The same things you’ve been seeing of late.”

  “I’m not schizophrenic. I’m…normal.”

  “Normal.” Francis spat the word. “Another convenient term of the dull and conventional. But it doesn’t matter what doctors or the medical community call it. Some see. Some don’t.”

  “Okay, Rasputin. Schizophrenia allows you to see. Great. You’re an oracle.” I nodded at his tucked-away pill bottle. “If it’s such a blessing, why do you take your medication?”

  Francis looked me dead on. “Sometimes I don’t.”

  The waitress came to refill our coffee, asking if we wanted anything else. Yeah, I thought, out of here, right now. Francis asked for the check.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he said after the waitress left. “Most close that door at a young age. It’s why kids only see monsters when they’re little. Why dogs howl at nothing at all. Then everything returns to status quo. But they are still there. All the time.”

  “The Shadow People.”

  “Call them whatever you want.”

  “Great. Wonderful.” I checked out the window. “I have bigger problems than imaginary friends. My girlfriend is missing.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “The cops called and said she was. And when I called her, she didn’t pick up.”

  “She didn’t pick up because they waited for the moment they knew she wouldn’t.”

  My eyes widened.

  “I don’t know who is involved. But I promise they’ve been watching you. Which means they’re watching her. They were trying to lure you. Did the call you receive come from the police department?”

  I thought back. “The number was blocked.”

  “Since when do police call from a blocked number?”

  The idea that Sam wasn’t really missing filled me with joy. It also pissed me off since I had no way of verifying that.

  “It’d be nice if I could call her. But you destroyed my cell.”

  “That was for your own good.”

  Out the window, I watched tractor-trailers, buses, and automobiles rambling on.

  “I’m finding out who killed my grandson.” He landed a bony finger on the baby blue pamphlet. “To do that, I have to find which of these theories rattled cages, what drove him to Minnesota—what was so terrifying it was worth killing for.”

  I dragged the zine over with one finger. I hated giving credence. Except…my life had been shaken up as soon as I laid eyes on that zine. I wanted to believe Francis was right about Sam. But that didn’t fix everything, did it? Someone had still called, masquerading as the police, trying to come at me. And that was the best-case scenario. I flashed back to that day at the Balfours, Mrs. Balfour crestfallen, and the police taking…evidence? Why confiscate Jacob’s belongings? What if they weren’t really cops? Or weren’t good cops? That’s the danger of entertaining the possibility of a conspiracy: once you crack open that door and start questioning what’s real, the answer is sweeping. None of it. All of it. Everywhere in between.

  I spun the periodical around. Domestic plots. International spy games. The pharmaceutical industry’s ploy to get the masses hooked on synthetic
opiates. A new spin on the Hillary Clinton pizza sex cult, this one involving prominent Albany politicians with added human trafficking. It was all looney tunes. But Francis was right about one thing: Jacob had been going big-game hunting. I started thinking, What if…? This sex ring, for instance, what if it were real? Well, people would kill to keep that secret, wouldn’t they? I felt gullible for thinking that. Because the next header I saw was about…the Shadow People.

  I’d seen the article before. “Bodysnatching.” Much of it was a screen grab of a chatroom exchange between Jacob, going by the handle RAW, and his “inside source,” Jessiesgirl81. Half the piece was redacted with thick black bars, as if this were a top-secret government file. A hot take. Jessie had witnessed the Shadow People snatching bodies…

  I slapped the zine shut.

  “Jesus effing Christ,” I said, “I am not playing pretend. I’m a grown-ass adult. I have a life.”

  “Jacob left a trail. I’m going to follow that trail.” He nodded out the window. “Last place he called me is up the road. Twenty miles. Said he was being followed.”

  “By whom?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.” Francis pulled his wallet and dropped a twenty and a ten, covering my portion as well. I didn’t get the chance to thank him before he hopped up and bulled for the exit.

  He’d almost reached the door when I called out.

  “Hold on, Francis. I’m coming.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE