The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Alec said. “We’re her parents. We can take care of it.”

  Lockman ignored him, keeping his attention on Kate. “If the men I told you about don’t have her, they still might try to get her. And if they could follow her to California, they could find her here.”

  “So help me if anything’s happened to her …”

  “I won’t let anyone hurt her. I promise.”

  Some of the pain left her face. “She has a boyfriend. Ryan. She seems to trust him. I had to guess, she went to his house.”

  “Okay, I’ll look there first. What’s his address?”

  She went back into the kitchen and wrote the address on a slip of paper. When she handed the paper to him she asked, “What if she’s not there?”

  “It will make things harder, but it won’t change my promise. I’ll bring her back safe.”

  Alec stepped forward. “Listen here, guy. You might have my wife all worked up and confused, but I know bullshit when I see it. I want you to stay the hell away from my family. That includes Jessie. Or I’ll call the cops. Taking a minor across state lines is a serious offense.”

  Lockman stared Alec straight in the eye. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean.”

  “It means if you have a problem with me, you’ll have to solve it yourself. The police can’t help you. Not against me.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a fact.” He cupped Kate’s face in one of his large hands. Some of the softness he remembered returned. “I wish … so many things.”

  He turned and left. He barely noticed the humidity. Barely remembered getting in the car or driving. Every one of his senses seemed dim compared to the memory of Kate’s skin against his palm.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Princess Leia stared with reproachful eyes while Jessie leaned back on the couch and let Ryan slide his hand up her shirt. Han Solo stood next to Princess Leia looking smug. Poor Luke Skywalker lay on his back, his stiff plastic arm holding up his light saber like a surrender flag.

  They were in Ryan’s basement. He had one corner of the place set up like a living room, complete with TV, stereo, Xbox, and a coffee table. The coffee table was where the trio from Star Wars stood in their frozen tableau. Ryan insisted he didn’t play with the action figures, but they always ended up in a different pose or position when she came over. Since Ryan was an only child, either he moved them or his mother did.

  His fingers touched the edge of her bra.

  She chickened out and squirmed away. “You got any new games?” she asked and picked up the Xbox controller from the coffee table.

  A small grunt escaped from between Ryan’s lips. “I guess. You want to play Xbox now?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He slouched on the sofa, arms flopped at his sides. He puffed out a big breath that ruffled his bangs. “Is it because I tried to feel you up?”

  “Forget it, okay?”

  “Cause we don’t have to do that. I mean, I want to. But I’m cool with just hanging out, you know?”

  She thumbed the power button on the controller and the Xbox hummed to life. The logo looked blurry when it came up on the TV and she realized it was because she had tears in her eyes. Jesus, how much could a girl cry in one day? She turned her head to make sure Ryan couldn’t see and ran her sleeve across her eyes.

  “This about your dad?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ry, I just want to play a video game, all right?”

  He held up his hands. “Way to spaz. Sorry I cared.”

  “I’ve had a bad day, okay? I came here to forget about it. Not wallow in it.”

  “I just expected you to be grounded or something. When your mom showed up here—”

  She turned her head so fast the muscles in her neck strained. “My mom came here?”

  “She wanted to know where you were.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “She was worried.”

  “Aw, crap.” She threw the controller onto the coffee table, bowling over Han and Leia.

  “Hey!”

  “That’s just great. I trusted you.”

  “I don’t know what the big deal is. Why didn’t you just ask her about your dad?”

  “You don’t think I’ve tried? She wouldn’t tell me anything. She doesn’t know anything.” Jessie stood and paced.

  The doorbell rang upstairs.

  Ryan got off the couch and moved to block her pacing. “You can’t be mad at me.”

  “Why not? You betrayed me like everyone else in my stupid life.” She tried to move past him, but he sidestepped back into her path.

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “No.”

  “Please just listen to me.”

  She threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “You promise not to laugh?”

  “I can’t promise something like that. What if it’s funny?”

  “It’s not funny. It’s serious. It’s why I told your mom what you were up to.”

  She crossed her arms. “Spit it out.”

  “I care about you.”

  “You got a funny way of showing it.”

  He waved his hands as if swatting away a bee swarm. “No. It’s more than that. Jessie, I love—”

  The scream from upstairs cut him off and went on a good ten seconds before trailing into silence.

  Ryan looked up at the basement ceiling. “Mom?”

  Jessie’s heart picked up what felt like a thousand more beats per second. She grabbed at Ryan’s arm with a trembling hand. “We have to hide.”

  He acted like he didn’t hear her, still staring up. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  Jessie took Ryan’s face between her hands and forced his gaze to her. “We can’t help her. We have to hide or we are going to die.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She was struck with the magnitude of what she now knew and couldn’t explain fast enough to save them. “If you love me,” she said, “you have to trust me.”

  His eyes cleared and regained focus. He nodded. “Follow me.” He took her hand and led her toward the back of the basement.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lockman, out of habit, parked one street over from the address Kate gave him. He glanced around the inside of the rental for some kind of weapon. The rental company provided a plastic ice scraper that sat on the floor in the back. Unfortunately, holy water and guns with silver bullets weren’t optional amenities offered with the vehicle.

  He got out of the car and thought about checking the trunk for a tire iron. Even if he were put in a position where he needed a weapon, the kinds of things Dolan would throw his way wouldn’t have much to fear from the swing of a metal bar. And who knew? He could get lucky and find Jessie doing whatever normal girls her age did with their boyfriends.

  Wait a sec…

  He popped the truck, found the tire iron, and took it with him.

  He cut through a neighbor’s yard and into Ryan’s back yard. He didn’t worry much about being seen. The moonless night provided plenty of cover as long as he stuck to the shadows.

  The yard didn’t amount to much, though it did make the patch of weeds at Lockman’s house in LA look all the more pathetic. A rusted metal swing set stood in the center of the lawn. The swings themselves were missing the seats, which left the chains dangling from the cross bar like broken shackles.

  He skirted around the swing set and approached the back door. Crickets called back and forth with their chirps from the cracks in the cement patio. The blinds were all drawn. The faintest hint of light showed around the edges of the blinds to a back bedroom. Lockman cocked his head, listened. Through the cricket chirps he could hear a television.

  Lockman tested the heft of the tire iron while he thought about what to do next. A buzz
ran through his body like an electrical current riding his nervous system. The quality of silence bothered him. But after the day he’d had, he wasn’t sure he could trust instincts alone. He’d become conditioned to expect danger.

  With the head of the tire iron he rapped on the back door.

  The crickets fell quiet at the sound. The television emitted what sounded like a laugh track. No movement, though.

  He rapped again, louder. The sound echoed off the face of the house, amplifying the effect.

  Still no answer.

  It didn’t mean anything. Jessie might not have come here in the first place. Ryan and his family could have been out. Maybe they were deep sleepers.

  Plenty of possibilities. None of them good enough to bet on.

  He turned the knob, but when he pushed on the door a deadbolt kept it in place. Committed now, he tapped the glass pane closest to the doorknob. The glass broke easily. He rattled the tire iron in the hole he’d made to break away enough glass to fit a hand through, then reached in and undid the deadbolt.

  The backdoor landing had two possible exits besides the one leading outside. One led to a staircase down to the basement, the other opened to a kitchen. The layout was strikingly similar to Kate’s house. Apparently when the houses were built in these suburbs there was a shortage of original blueprints.

  He readied the tire iron and crept into the kitchen.

  The woman lay on the tile floor, limbs akimbo, hair splayed in the pool of blood seeping out from under her head. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, one lazily, the other wide and terrified.

  Lockman scanned the rest of the kitchen and what he could see of the adjoining family room. No sign of anyone else. He crouched by the body and checked for bite marks, though vamps usually went for the throat, and it wasn’t like in the movies with two tiny pin marks. If a vamp had killed this woman her neck would be half gone.

  The bulk of the damage seemed to come from the back of her head, smashed against the tiles so that it looked like her head had sunk into the floor when in fact her skull had collapsed.

  A simple fall wouldn’t cause that kind of damage. Someone—or something—slammed her head against the floor. An odd way to kill. Time to analyze the what and how could come later, though. If Jessie was in the house, he had to find her.

  He kept the tire iron ready and slunk from the kitchen and down the hall to the back bedroom he’d seen the light coming from. As he approached the room the sound of the television grew louder. A cheesy jingle about toilet cleaner piped out from the open door.

  When he entered he found the covers on the bed rumpled as if someone had been sleeping there. The TV stood on the dresser, canted at an angle to face the bed squarely. But the TV played to an empty room.

  Lockman checked the other two rooms. One looked like a pretty typical teen boy’s room, with posters on the walls and a smell that hinted at the overactive glands of puberty. The other room had a desk with a computer and a set of file cabinets. Both rooms were empty. He peered into the bathroom. No one.

  Upstairs covered, that left only the basement. He crossed back through the kitchen. When he reached the staircase, he looked down and saw a section of carpeting and a portion of paneled wall. A swatch of light cut across the floor at the bottom of the stairs, the source from around the corner.

  He felt certain Jessie was down there, or had been. He tightened his grip on his makeshift weapon and started down the stairs.

  “I know you’re down here.” His voice sounded like a gust of wind through tall grass. Just hearing it made Jessie shiver.

  Ryan had led her to a small room built to house the furnace and water heater. Not much larger than a closet, the space barely afforded them room to squeeze by the two machines and crouch into a dark corner.

  Ryan had his arms around her and hugged her close. Nothing could rid her of the chill flowing through her blood, though.

  “I heard you cry for your mommy.”

  Jessie squeezed her eyes shut and couldn’t tell the difference from having them open in the pitch blankness. Whoever was out there, he might have a strange voice, but it didn’t sound like the vampires had in LA. Still, she would place a bet the dude was not really a dude at all. Swamp monster? Space alien? Sasquatch? Who freaking knew?

  Ryan stroked her hair. She could feel the tremor in his hand. Nothing compared to how she shook. Of course, Ryan didn’t know how scared he should really be.

  “I’m going to find you.”

  Jessie grabbed Ryan’s hand and squeezed so tightly she thought she could break his fingers. He squeezed back and pulled her more tightly against him.

  We’re going to die.

  Knowing that, accepting that, thawed the paralyzing cold inside of her. She moved her lips against Ryan’s ear and whispered, “I love you, too.”

  “How sweet,” the voice said, impossibly close.

  Then she saw the phosphorescent glow of the face poking through the wall as if the wall were no more substantial than air.

  Jessie screamed, and Ryan screamed with her.

  Lockman heard the voice when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’m going to find you.”

  His gut tensed. He peered around the corner. A section of the basement looked like a make-shift living room, with a TV and couch. Beyond that, a larger portion of the space held metal storage shelves carrying neatly labeled boxes. Two walls in the back corner jutted out, forming a small room with a closed door. Probably a utility room for the furnace and water heater. By the door to this room stood what looked like a distorted hologram of a person with a phosphorescent greenish tint. The thing was hard to make out in the light. A quick glance might have left Lockman thinking his eyes had tricked him, conjuring an image in the corner of his vision. But even when he blinked, the translucent figure remained in sight.

  Lockman had seen many strange things during his work with the Agency. This one was new.

  The figure bent at the waist and poked its head through the wall of the utility room.

  The screams came next.

  Lockman raised the tire iron and strode forward. But the thing stepped completely through the wall before he could close the distance.

  One of the screamers stopped. A boy’s voice. The scream did not stop abruptly, but trailed off as if strangled.

  Lockman dashed to the door and flung it open. The light from behind him flooded into the room, chasing off the shadows. In the back of the room, Jessie crouched next to a boy around her age, long hair hanging close to his eyes, styled to look messy.

  No sign of the transparent man.

  “Where did it go?”

  Jessie shook her head, her voice still pitched at a near scream. “I don’t know. It disappeared.”

  The boy looked ready to puke.

  “Is this Ryan?”

  Jessie nodded.

  “Is he okay?”

  “What do you think?” she yelled, voice quivering. “What was that thing?”

  “Never seen anything like it.” He held out a hand. “We have to get out of here.”

  Jessie’s nostrils flared as she took a few sharp breaths. Then she got to her feet. “Come on, Ry. This is my dad. He can help us.”

  Ryan looked up at Jessie as if he didn’t recognize her. Then he turned his head and stared at Lockman.

  Just what he needed. Another kid in shock after his first brush with the supernatural. This routine was getting old.

  “Get him on his feet or we’re leaving him.”

  “No.” She crouched back by the kid’s side and took his hand. “Can’t you see he’s scared out of his mind?” She hesitated, something occurring to her. “Did you see his mom?”

  Lockman closed his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Oh. Oh, no.”

  He opened his eyes. Jessie had Ryan on his feet, and while it was clear she understood what had happened to his mother, Ryan didn’t look like he could grasp any concept more complex than breathing.

  “Look, kid,
I’m sorry. But—”

  “Mommy’s dead.” The boy smiled. “I know. I killed her.”

  The hairs on the back of Lockman’s neck stood on end.

  Jessie tried to pull away from her boyfriend, but the kid held onto her hand and wouldn’t let go.

  “Ryan, what are you talking about? Let me go.”

  Ryan yanked her toward him and wrapped his other arm around her neck, her throat in the crook of his elbow, her body in front of him like a shield.

  “If you want your daughter alive, you’ll come with me.”

  “What are you doing?” Jessie shouted.

  Lockman’s shoulders sagged. “That’s not Ryan anymore.”

  The boy nodded at the tire iron in Lockman’s hand. “Put that down and come peacefully, all right? Otherwise, I’ll be tempted to switch bodies. You know, when I leave them, they’re never quite the same. Poor mortal souls can’t handle the occasional passenger. It’s really sad.”

  Jessie gave Lockman a wet and desperate look. In that moment she resembled her mother, that same expression of pain he saw when he’d told Kate Jessie was in danger.

  Lockman felt something tear inside of him. He tamped down the feeling, set his jaw. “What are you?”

  “An ex-mortal.”

  “Ghost? Dolan must have some serious hold on a thing like you to be brave enough to let you cross to our side.”

  “I’m no slave.”

  “Every damn one of you that comes here is a slave. You don’t belong. You’re here because someone else willed it.”

  “A convenient accident that allows us to feed on the weak of your world.”

  “The party won’t last.”

  The boy cackled. “Mortal hubris. Always good for a laugh.” His face went from mirthful to menacing in a fraction of a second. “Drop the bar and let’s head upstairs.”

  “Ryan, stop it,” Jessie pleaded. “Whatever’s happened to you, you have to fight it.”

  The boy put his mouth an inch from Jessie’s cheek. “He can hear you. And he’s trying to fight. He’s very brave.”

  “Keep fighting.”