The Shadow People

by Joe Clifford

  “I read the other day how scientists, like really smart people, believe there could be universes stacked one on top of the other. All at once! String theory? Fermi Paradox? Something like that. But this guy, this doctor, this, like, really, really smart guy with tons of degrees and shit was saying—or maybe it was on the radio? A podcast? I don’t remember.” Pause. “I might’ve read it. Or I heard it. But he, this doctor guy, was saying how these worlds are stacked one on top of the other, like tracing paper laid over mirror images, indefinite, but we can’t see each other, y’know? Like we’re tuned into different frequencies, the way dogs and other animals can hear certain sounds and pitches we can’t, and so maybe we’re all in this room now…” Lenna Ann gouged ever deeper into her flesh. It was hard to watch, red, tender, raised, and raw.

  “I don’t—”

  “Point is: they could be real. The Shadow People. How are they any different than God or the wind or airborne viruses?”

  As she droned on, I sat on the tattered arm of the raggedy couch and opened the box. Scissors and pens. Paper cut into the shapes of hearts. Loose glittering beads. Also newspaper, magazine, and periodical snippets. Lots of them. Like the crap covering the walls of Jacob’s room. Ghost ship rantings about killer rats and unsolved disappearances, invasive species, all the bugs we can’t see that live on our eyelashes, random, unrelated words circled—steak, fishing rod, Doug, catamaran. Every once in a while, I’d recognize a celebrity name like Ryan Gosling or Ryan Reynolds. As if she were crushing like a normal girl. Then I’d read, in big, black marker: “In on it?” With a huge question mark and circles. The stockpile of indecipherable nonsense rendered Jacob’s Illuminations a university publication by comparison. I was about to put back the lid—this box was useless—when I saw the memory stick at the bottom, a flash drive.

  “Do you have a computer?” I asked, holding up the recording device. “A laptop?”

  “In the pawn shop.”

  “There’s nothing to watch this on?”

  “Do ever notice how many times you see the number twenty-three? It’s everywhere. The law of fives. Two plus three. Also seventeen. You look at all the major historical events that occurred on those dates. Add it up. It’s irrefutable. Duh! Math.”

  I tapped her arm—I didn’t want to spook her from whatever altered state she’d entered—presenting the flash drive. “I need to see what’s on this, okay?”

  Lenna Ann housecatted again, wisp of smoke rising in her wake. I’d never been more thankful to be a straight arrow.

  She came back with a laptop.

  “I thought you said it was in the pawn shop?”

  “Mine is. This is Eddie’s. He’s my boyfriend. But you better hurry because if he comes home, he’ll kill you. He’s big and tough and mean.”

  I held up a hand, relieving her of the laptop. I flipped it open, asked for the passcode, sticking in the flash and selecting a lone folder marked SP.

  A video played. Recorded from a cell phone. There was no sound, just a picture. High angle, tall shelf, concealed in a houseplant like a nanny cam. I didn’t recognize the house. It didn’t look like the blue house on the hill with Cody, Dog, and Rick, squalid or skeezy. This house was filled with more toys, video games, Xboxes, and tall, shiny speakers mounted above leather couches and a giant flat-screen TV.

  A large man filled the frame. Reclining in a chair, silky kimono draped around his shoulders and hanging off his bulky frame uncinched, he sat spread eagle, a dark thatch between his legs. I’d never been happier for the low-grade resolution of cheap phones.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “That’s Boy Blue,” Lenna Ann answered, in danger of biting off a piece of her lip, which she gnawed on like skin candy.

  Three men walked into the frame.

  Then a bright flash, and Boy Blue was on the ground.

  Lenna Ann screamed. Lotty didn’t flinch.

  Two of the men stared into the camera.

  I recognized both.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  My instincts weren’t wrong. I knew that guy from the bar was trouble. His mustache screamed cop. The second man was also from the bar; he was the other jerk macking on Sam. I didn’t recognize the third, but he stuck more to the shadows. The trio walked around the crime scene in their dress blues and starry sleeves.

  “You know these guys?” I asked Lenna Ann.

  “They’re cops.”

  “I figured. Names?”

  She pointed at the screen, at the one with the mustache. “That’s Simms. He’s a fucking asshole.” Lenna Ann aimed at the other guy I’d seen. “That’s Young.” Then at the third. “And that’s McKinty.” I was pretty certain I’d never seen McKinty.

  Back in the video, Young kicked Boy Blue’s lifeless body, two punts to the gut, before McKinty dropped to a knee and rifled through the dead man’s pockets. His first effort yielded a brick wrapped in cellophane, the next a giant wad of cash. Then a whole bunch of shiny gems and jewels. He walked out of the shot.

  The last pixelated image had Simms and Young, working in tandem, each grabbing one of Boy Blue’s hefty legs and yanking him off the La-Z-Boy. Boy Blue’s head thunked against the floor. Even without volume you could hear the sound it made. Like an overripe cantaloupe dropped eight stories to the asphalt. They dragged him out of the frame, a thick coat of dark red paint from a wide bristled brush trailing behind him like slug slime.

  The picture went black.

  “What the fuck was that?” Lenna Ann seemed as shocked as I was.

  “You said cops around here walk in and take whatever they want.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t kill anybody.”

  “They just did.”

  I ran through courses of action. Take this to the cops? They were the cops. The press? Sure. What was I going to do? Drop it in the mail, addressed to “Reporter”? I felt like Bones McCoy begging off new responsibilities. I was a college student, not a justice crusader.

  Lenna Ann had gone back to flapping her arms, a flightless bird not getting the point. I was too wrapped up in thought to hear the roar of an engine rumbling in until it was too late.

  “Eddie,” Lenna Ann said. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

  I searched for another exit. Unable to find one, I braced for another ass kicking, uncertain whether I could withstand one.

  It wasn’t Eddie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Unlike the video, Simms and Young weren’t dressed in their uniforms. More relaxed attire, jeans and tees, like that night from the bar. Casual Friday wear. This visit was off the record. Whatever happened next would not make the official report. I waited for their partner, McKinty, to bring up the rear, but Young slammed the door shut, locked and dead-bolted it. Simms told Lenna Ann to shut up. She did, fast. I’d been trying to get her to shut up for the past half hour. Her eagerness to obey spoke volumes.

  “Shit, Brandon,” Simms said. “You’ve had us running across half this goddamn country.”

  “I fucking hate Minnesota,” Young said. “I grew up there, you know that?”

  How could I have known that?

  “Rotten corn smells like shit. They have silos of rotten corn everywhere out there. Whole goddamn state. Corn. When most people think corn, they think Nebraska, right? Minnesota has so much fucking corn you can choke on it. And it doesn’t last. Shelf life is shit. You know when you’re driving by a farm and you think that fetid stink is horse manure or cow shit? It’s not. It’s rotten, decaying corn.” Young shook his head. “I used to have work on those farms in the summer. So goddamn hot, your balls bobbing in a pool of sweat. I’d be dick deep in those silo tunnels, emptying buckets of rotten, moldy, months-old corn that stunk like the inside of a pig’s caked-over colon, holding mouthfuls of vomit till I got outside.” He glared at me. “Goddamn you for making me go back there.”

  “Calm down,” Simms said. “Relax. We’re gonna work this out. Right, Brandon?”<
br />
  Lenna Ann was whimpering, tremoring, steady stream of nasal drip flowing into her mouth. She didn’t move to wipe it off. Lotty hadn’t flinched, viewing them the same way he had me, silent, devoid and detached, head swallowed by his big blue coat.

  Simms reached over and tipped up Lenna Ann’s chin. “Took too much, eh? You got something to calm down? Pot? Pills? Smack? I don’t give a shit. Just shut up. Please. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  I started toward him. I couldn’t let him hit her.

  “Sit down, Brandon,” Simms said. “No heroes tonight, okay?”

  Like that, it all became clear. The Shadow People. The followings and abductions. The inexplicable explained.

  “That was you in the car,” I said. “At Nick’s Pizza. And later at the Flying J.”

  “That old man was tough as fuck.”

  I now saw the swelling around his right eye, as if he’d recently been cold cocked. “You followed us to Minnesota.” I stared past his shoulder to the front door. “You killed him. Francis. Where’s your other friend?” Was McKinty stationed outside, keeping guard?

  “Ask your friend Jacob,” Simms said.

  “I can’t. He’s dead too.”

  “We said sit down.” Young pointed at a kitchen chair. “You’re making me tense up.” Then to Simms: “Shut up. I need to stay calm. I get tense, people get hurt, and we don’t want anyone else getting hurt.” Back to me: “Sit.”

  I sat.

  “We trailed you to Minnesota,” Simms said. “We knew the old man would go to the quarry. Too bad you weren’t with him.”

  Young pinched his eyes, before stomping a foot. He scowled at his partner, angry, agitated. I wasn’t getting in the middle of it.

  Simms kept his eyes on me. He shook his head, a show of admiration. “I liked that old bastard. And you? You, boy, you got a horseshoe up your ass.” He turned toward the heavens, inaccessible through the low, water-stained ceiling. “Every time we thought we had you, you’d have one foot out the door. Somewhere, an angel loves you.”

  “He didn’t fall, did he?” I already knew the answer. Jacob, Francis, it was all the same.

  “Fell. Pushed. Thrown. What difference does it make?”

  “By the time we found the motel, you were gone.”

  “And by the time we got to your apartment,” Young said, “you weren’t there either—you don’t sit still, do you? You got ADD? You’re as restless as a tweaker after an uncut batch.”

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Simms said, lying through his teeth. “We just want the video.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “You’ve seen the video,” Simms said. It wasn’t a question. “Don’t make us do that to you too. Your buddy and his girlfriend stole so much money and jewelry from us. The pawnshop too.” He turned to Lenna Ann. “That’s her father.”

  Young turned to his partner. “They took a lot more than that.”

  “Give us the flash drive,” Simms said. “And we’ll be on our way. We thought your fat friend had it. Thought Grandpa had it. Thought you had it.” Simms cool-handed through his hair. “It was in Wroughton the whole goddamn time.”

  “Don’t get cute,” Young added, sweetening the mythical deal. “We get the video, you get to go back home to that pretty girlfriend of yours.”

  There was no point correcting him that Sam wasn’t technically my girlfriend. I’d just watched them shoot a man in cold blood. Judging by their smooth, effortless movements in the aftermath, I could tell it wasn’t their first time. And they had no problem not making it their last.

  It was Simms who pulled his gun first, a lazy, limp-wristed gesture, a douchebag jock disinterested in showing off another second-tier trophy. I wished I understood enough about guns to say what kind it was, whether it fit a magazine or clip. Things all looked the same to me. Black, oiled, menacing. All I cared about was where it was pointed: me.

  Lenna Ann’s whimpering graduated to chest-heaving sobs, and now Young pulled his gun, aiming it between her eyes, directing her to sit and shut the fuck up.

  I thought this would be a good time for her boyfriend, Eddie, to come home.

  Instead, the phone rang.

  I wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the ringing that broke the silence or the fact that the call was coming via landline, a cradled drugstore telephone affixed to flimsy wood paneling, an archaic relic that went out of style last century.

  No one moved to answer it. It kept ringing.

  Nonstop.

  Young walked over, lifted the phone, and slammed it in the cradle.

  It rang again.

  He went to rip the phone out the wall. Simms stopped him, motioning for Lenna Ann to answer this time.

  “Tell whoever it is you’re about to go to bed. I don’t give a shit. Sound normal, get ’em off the phone. Got it? You try and alert with bullshit codes, I have no problem putting you down.”

  The phone kept ringing as Lenna Ann sniffed back nasal remains and mucus, slacking across the trailer, plucking the phone, earpiece to ear.

  “It’s for him,” Lenna Ann said, pointing at me.

  Simms glowered. “Who you have calling you here?”

  I shrugged, holding up empty palms for them to see. I was devoid of intent or plans. “Nobody knows I’m here.” Which, once it escaped my lips, I realized was the dumbest thing I could’ve said. I wasn’t lying, though.

  Simms ripped the phone out of Lenna Ann’s hands, shoving it in mine.

  “Whoever it is,” Simms said. “Everything’s fine. You say one stupid thing—” He stuck the gun, point blank, between Lenna Ann’s eyes “—and you’re next. And then I take a drive to Cortland and see your girlfriend, have some fun before I plug her too.”

  Bringing the phone up to my ear, I didn’t get the chance to say a word.

  “Get to the back,” a voice on the other end said. “And get down.”

  Then came the squealing of tires, the thundering roar of a big engine, and the blinding glare of a million suns.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The augmented bull bar ripped through the front end of the trailer, sending a chunk of tin panel fluttering into the night, a demented, drunken bird taking flight. The collision knocked Simms and Young off their feet, guns skittering across the floor, aftershocks toppling smaller objects not nailed down from shelves and brackets. At the back of the trailer, Lenna Ann and Lotty, whom I’d shielded on impact, were shaken too, but we’d escaped the worst of it.

  Dog was behind the wheel. The other three—Lester, Cody, and Rick—jumped out of the flatbed, two with baseball bats, Rick brandishing a shotgun. I crouched behind the couch, keeping Lenna Ann and Lotty close. Everyone was shouting, screaming, threatening to kill the other. Truck high beams on, kicked-up gravel dust clouded my vision, a redneck standstill in a sandstorm. Volume reached its crescendo. I waited for a gun to go off. I glanced down by my feet and found a piece belonging to Simms or Young. I wrapped my fist around the handle, hoisting its alien heft, praying I wouldn’t have to fire it. Was there a safety on the thing? A button I had to push, an on and off switch?

  “We’re fucking cops!”

  “You’re fucking dead!”

  “How’s it feel to be on the other side?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you!”

  “No, fuck YOU!”

  That went on for a while, each telling the other to fuck himself.

  Then it got calm. Too calm.

  I peeked my head over the couch, before slowly standing.

  Lester now held the shotgun, which was locked on Simms and Young. Neither cop held anything. Well, Simms was holding his arm, which dangled, dislocated, from its shoulder socket, in all likelihood broken too. It was such a surreal scene. The big slash in the trailer’s casing, like a screwdriver torn through a soda can. Four drug addicts surrounding cops on their knees, a reversal of fo
rtune.

  “You!” Simms said to me. “Shit for brains? You know how much you just fucked yourself? You were gonna walk out of this. What do you think happens now? You’re an accessory. This is prison time. Life as you know it, college boy, is over.” I saw his eyes drift to the gun I held by my side.

  “You okay?” asked Rick, the guy I’d known as Van Dyke until twenty minutes ago, nodding at me like we were old pals.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “But there’s another one of them. McKinty. I think he’s outside.”

  “He ain’t outside,” Young said. “Your fat friend killed him in the quarry. After him and that bitch took our jewelry and money.”

  “What—?”

  “You don’t know anything, do you, Brandon?” Simms winced from the pain. “I thought you watched the video. Where you think your buddy and his girlfriend got that cash? Those jewels? They stole it.”

  “After you stole it from Boy Blue!” Cody stepped through the wreckage, baseball bat clenched, tapping the barrel off his palm, sneering down at the cops. “You’ve been ripping me and my friends off for years.”

  “Possession is nine-tenths, numbnuts.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Young said. “Kill us?”

  “If we have to,” Cody said.

  Dog spat at their feet.

  Rick walked over to me, twiddling his fingers for the gun. “Give that to me before you shoot yourself in the dick.”

  I was surprised by how fast I handed it over, throwing my hat in the ring with scofflaws and derelicts without question.

  Rick juked, grabbing my wrist. “Jesus, man, you don’t pass a gun like that.”

  I’d pointed it at him. I didn’t mean to. This entire situation was overwhelming. I was still reeling from accusations Jacob killed their partner. Not that McKinty didn’t have it coming. That video told me all I needed to know. Why hadn’t the police back home mentioned any of this?

  “Cody,” Rick said. “What do we do?”

  I stopped worrying about the past. This wasn’t a rescue, and its execution didn’t come with an escape plan. Four guys ripped out of their skull on drugs, hyped up to play cowboy, heard their tormentors were gathered in one convenient spot—Dog must’ve been keeping an eye on me—and they took their shot. This was my hope.