The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  More cops showed up, including Detective Hortz. Max knew Hortz; he’d worked with her several times in the past and found her lazy and condescending. But a dead baby was a powerful motivator, and she was immeasurably helpful in calming the grieving mother. Max found out later that Hortz had lost a baby many years ago, and he felt a little bad about disliking her so much, for about twenty seconds.

  “I’m fine,” he said to the teary-eyed look of sympathy he received at the conclusion of his tale. Sadie leaned over and kissed him, her lips tasted like crayons. He didn’t complain, since he imagined his mouth tasted like Schlitz and vanilla smoke.

  She moved from her seat to his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her waist. “No, you’re not.”

  “I asked you not to do that.”

  “I can’t help it. I shut it off all day and as soon as I get off work….” She made a gesture like a balloon popping. She put her face close and rubbed the end of his nose with hers.

  She was right, he knew it. Sadie worked at a store in the mall selling clothes quite a bit like the ones she had on now. If she didn’t bolt down her supernatural empathy, she’d absorb the moods of everyone she came in contact with. Since that tended to be teenage girls, the result was like going through puberty all over again. Max also knew if it weren’t for her ability to “see” feelings she’d never have tolerated him for as long as she had.

  “I could tell you were upset the minute I got here.” She put her hand over his heart. The way she touched him made his skin settle. He looked into her eyes and saw she was smiling. It made him smile, not something he did a lot. “You don’t have to talk about it. Just acknowledge it.”

  Max nodded. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into his neck. Her little skirt opened between her legs, showing off long black-and-red striped stockings. Max ran his hand up her skirt until he passed the elastic band of her panties. She giggled when he started playing with the little metal ring in her labia.

  “I guess you want to go inside?” She pressed her ass against the lump in his pants. It hardened under her.

  “Unless you want to fuck on the porch.”

  Sadie licked her lips and slid off his lap. “Tempting…” She took his hand as he stood.

  Chapter Three

  “Dammit!” Kearny tossed a cheap pair of binoculars into the back seat. He leaned on his elbow and hit the steering wheel with his palm.

  Tritter gave him a dirty look and reached over the passenger seat to the floor of the coupe. Finding the binoculars, he brought them to his eyes.

  “You mad ‘cause they’re going inside?” The door to Max’s house closed as soon as the binoculars touched his face.

  “I thought they might do it on the porch.”

  Tritter lowered the binoculars and winced at him. “You really want to watch them?”

  “It’s better than just sitting here staring at the house.”

  “Why did you think they would?”

  Kearny shrugged. “She looks like the type.”

  “If we move the car closer, we could maybe listen….”

  Kearny furrowed his brow and tugged at his beard, considering it. He shook his head. “Naw—might get seen. We’re almost too close as it is. We ain’t supposed to get seen.”

  Tritter pulled his black sock cap over his eyes and reclined. “Damn,” he moaned. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because she told us to.”

  “So, if we want to live in this shitty city, we have to do what she tells us? Is that how it works?”

  Kearny narrowed his light brown eyes at him. “That’s exactly how it works, dumbshit. It’s the rules. You don’t like it, move to another town.”

  Tritter ignored his glare. “Screw that! I been bouncin’ around for like two years. This is the quietest place to be a vampire I’ve ever found. The law don’t even know about us.” He pulled up his cap. “You know in Los Angles, they have an entire unit of police officers that do nothin’ but investigate vamp crime?”

  “Yeah, I know that.” He looked out the window. “You tell me that like every time we do this.”

  “Sorry…but I’ll tell you one thing about being a vamp in LA, there ain’t no one bitch running the whole town. You can walk all night and pass through a dozen territories, each one controlled by a different chief. Of course, LA is bigger, but even in that one chief’s turf they don’t have total control.”

  Kearny rolled his eyes. “LA sounds like a paradise. Why don’t you go back there?”

  “Naw!” Tritter laughed. “I got people want me dead there. Got as far away from there as ninety bucks would get me.”

  He fought the urge to tell him there were people who wanted him dead here too. “Ninety bucks got you from LA to Joplin?”

  “No, it got me to Denver. A trucker got me to Joplin.”

  “Why didn’t you just charm someone out of a plane ticket?”

  “I’m a shit charmer is why.” He shook his head. “I ain’t got the knack of that yet. You gotta get people to look you in the eyes.” He pointed at his eyes with two fingers. “And I guess I ain’t got the kind of eyes people want to look into, know what I’m saying?”

  “I do.” Kearny nodded. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask this next part, but curiosity got the better of him. “How do you feed?” Tritter winced at him. “How do you feed if you can’t charm?”

  Tritter shrugged. “I hold ‘em down.”

  “You hold them down?”

  “Yeah! We’re stronger than them. I just grab ‘em and hold ‘em down.”

  “Won’t they remember your face?”

  Tritter pulled his sock cap over his chin. He looked at Kearny through two holes punched over the eyes, and laughed through another around his mouth. Kearny nodded.

  “Do you kill them?”

  “Sometimes. Not on purpose. I mean I don’t give a damn, right? But I don’t want to be leavin’ dead bodies all over the place.” He pulled the mask back up to his head. “That’s just tacky.”

  Kearny chuckled at his private joke.

  Tritter fished a thermos of plasma out of a backpack and unscrewed the lid. They each had their own thermos, so he drank straight from the lip. Plasma didn’t taste as good as blood, but it was more nourishing. Kind of like the difference between tofu and beef. They both had protein, but beef had flavor. Unlike tofu, you couldn’t make plasma more palatable with steak sauce. No matter what you put in it, it still tasted like plasma.

  “I get this shit pretty regular from the boss so I don’t have to feed as much. Just when I see something I like, you know what I’m saying?” He nudged Kearny’s arm.

  “Yeah, I know what you’re saying.”

  Plasma didn’t smell bad to vampires, even with their enhanced senses, but to humans it smelled like wet dog. Anyone passing the car right now would get a snoot full of it and probably assume they were a couple of hobos. It would at least keep people from looking too closely. Fortunately no one was ever out in this neighborhood at this time of night.

  “So does the boss want to make this guy, or something?

  “Make him?”

  “Yeah, like make him a vamp? Why she got us watching him?”

  Kearny sighed. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Oh, come on!” He screwed the lid back on his thermos. “You gotta care. You’ve been doing this three nights a week for how many months?”

  “Two.”

  “Two months and you ain’t heard nothing? Ain’t never wondered once why this guy is so important that the chief has us staking out his duplex in this shit neighborhood?”

  Kearny waited a few seconds before answering. “She’s afraid of him.”

  Tritter laughed and Kearny shot him a nasty look in return.

  “She’s afraid of this guy?” He pointed at the duplex.

  The light in the upstairs bedroom was on. Kearny knew he was probably nailing that pretty little goth girlfriend. Thinking about it made him want to tear off the door to Max’s house and g
et in on that…though he’d have had to kill Max in the process. Not that he cared, but he wasn’t allowed to hurt him. He tore his thoughts away from that by looking at Tritter.

  “You know how Moonshadow is always in that chair?”

  Tritter nodded.

  “She ain’t got any legs.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This guy had something to do with that. I don’t know what, but he’s the reason she ain’t got any legs.”

  Tritter’s jaw dropped. “Whoa.” He shook his head. “You mean after she got made?”

  “Turned,” Kearny corrected, no attempt was made to hide his irritation. “And no, she’s been a vamp for like sixty years, and most of those years she was walking. But now…she’s in the chair.”

  “So, he blew off her legs?”

  “I don’t know what happened. It was before she was made the chief. In fact, it was part of why she got made chief by the king. Personally.”

  Tritter winced and shook his head. “That don’t make any sense.”

  “We’re vampires.” Kearny looked at him. “We’re vampires, Trit. It ain’t gonna make sense. The King picks who’s in charge, and that’s how it is. Why? That’s his prerogative.”

  “His what?”

  “Prerogative.”

  Tritter stared at him.

  “His choice. Jesus you’re dumb.”

  Tritter laughed. Kearny looked back out the window.

  “At least it’s easy,” said Tritter. “She could have us out killing people.”

  “She’ll have us do that, too. Just wait.”

  “Hey, why don’t she just kill this guy if he blew off her legs?”

  “I told you, she’s afraid of him.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask her.”

  Tritter laughed. “Oh, no! Her big black boyfriend’ll tear off my nuts!”

  “That’s Dwayne. He’s not her boyfriend, he’s her deputy.”

  “Whatever. Blackzilla will rip my nuts off.”

  “Probably.”

  They sat in silence for a while before Tritter’s restless shifting got on Kearny’s nerves again. He was about to say something when Tritter sat up and pointed at the window.

  “Hey, lights out.”

  Kearny looked at the duplex. The bedroom light was off. Soon the light in the front window dimmed, and the porch light came on.

  “They’re going out?”

  “That or they ordered a pizza.”

  Tritter rubbed his hands together. “We’ll just see then. If they’re going out, we have to follow, right?”

  Kearny nodded.

  “Right! So this might not be so boring, they might go to a bar or a movie or something, right?”

  Kearny shrugged.

  Tritter moaned in disappointment when a pizza deliveryman showed up a half hour later. They were staying in. That meant he and Kearny were, too.

  Chapter Four

  Max debated calling in Monday. He wasn’t sick or depressed, but he could easily have used either of those excuses. He could stay in bed all day and watch some of the episodes piling up on his DVR. He had so much work though. Putting it off would just make it harder to do later. Prudence won the day, and Max went to work.

  When Max had Brian’s job, he’d always shown up early. After being demoted, he rarely walked in less than fifteen minutes late. No one was going to do anything to him about it. He didn’t even get docked for the time. Max didn’t care.

  Brian cared. He especially cared on the second and last Monday of every month. That was when he always wanted to meet with Max. Normally, the supervisor met with a worker once a month. Despite the fact Max had been doing this job longer than Brian and he had a Masters of Social Work degree, something Brian lacked, he felt Max needed a little extra supervision. Brian tried to make it pleasant when they met. Max did the opposite.

  After picking the sticky note reminder off his computer monitor, Max walked into Brian’s office and took a seat. This used to be his office. It used to be decorated with samurai swords and Punisher action figures. Now it had a stuffed fish on the wall and pictures of Brian’s fat kids. He didn’t have many pictures of his wife. Max got that. If he had a wife like Brian’s, he probably wouldn’t want pictures of her at work either.

  Brian was on the phone; probably why he’d closed his door. Taking a sip of coffee, Max propped his feet on the desk. Some dirt fell from the waffle of his Doc Martens, probably left from when he walked across his yard. It had rained Sunday night, so the ground was spongy. Brian noticed the dirt and shot Max an irritated glance from the corner of his eye.

  Max took another sip of coffee.

  After he hung up the phone, Brian turned to him. He crossed his pudgy fingers on his desk and leaned forward. It made him look like a bear.

  “Max, how are you doing?”

  “Brian, I’m doing fine.”

  He looked over at Max’s feet. Max pulled them down and sat up with a grin.

  “I need you to shut the door.”

  “Oh…it’s one of those meetings.” Max shut the door and returned to his chair.

  Brian spoke quietly, “I told you I used to work in one of the Kansas City offices, right?”

  “You probably did….”

  He scratched his head. “In the KC office, we had a few workers who knew-” He shook his hand and squinted. “Knew a little more about certain things than others.”

  “Wow. Brian, I’m going to have to ask you to make that a little more vague.”

  He sighed and rubbed his receding hairline with sausage fingers. Max noticed, and not for the first time, that he still wore his high school class ring. What was he like forty now? Was it magical or something? Not important… Max focused on what Brian had to say.

  “I’m not going to beat around it here, Max. There are the cases we get every day, and then there are the others. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Not just now, ever. You are the most confusingly stupid son of a bitch I’ve ever known, and I want to force you to drink my piss.

  “God dammit, Max!”

  He’d never heard Brian swear. Had he gone too far? Did he care if he had? Maybe, and no.

  “All right.” Max sat his mug on the desk with a soft thump. “I know what you’re talking about. When I had this job, I either handled those cases personally, or gave them to Lana.” Lana was retired now.

  “Since your reassignment—”

  “Demotion.”

  “—whatever…we haven’t had any really hinky cases.”

  “Hinky?”

  “Janice was working this case first.” He pulled a file out of his drawer. “Janice started calling in sick a lot, missing a lot of work. Then, she up and quits.”

  “Yeah, I remember Janice.” She was very tall with brown hair and a pancake face. She’d flirted with him but even if he hadn’t been with Sadie, he wouldn’t have been interested. Her ass was out of proportion with the rest of her body. Max was man, he noticed these things. “How is she?”

  “Don’t know.” Brian waved both hands. “She disappeared. She was single, no kids…no family in the area. She had a dog…now she’s gone.”

  Max paused. “What happened to the dog?”

  Brian moved on. “We reassigned the case to Michelle—Shelly, whatever… now she’s on her third sick day.”

  Max didn’t remember seeing Shelly around the office much last week. She was a cute young blonde with a nice little body. He remembered her well, and not just because she was hot. He’d hired her. When he had Brian’s job.

  “So I go to see her Friday afternoon. She comes to the door all sick and weak…pasty skin…recoils from the light.” He tapped his neck with two fingers. “I know you think I’m an idiot.” That was true. “But I know what that means. I know there’s shit out there that I can’t let myself believe in. Because if I did…If I did, I’d never let my kids leave the house again. I’d just go shit crazy and start carrying a
gun everywhere I went.”

  Max actually did carry a gun everywhere he went, so he found that amusing.

  Brian threw the file onto the desk. It had drops of what appeared to be dried coffee running down the front. Phone numbers and notes were jotted along the cover. Before Max could take the file, Brian planted a fat hand right on top of it and looked Max in the eye.

  “You get this now. I know you have some kind of immunity to this stuff. I know you’ve handled things like this before. I know when the other workers get this kind of stuff, they come to you for help. I want you to handle this, and I want you to handle it in a way that makes it look like it isn’t what it really is. Because if we start believing in these things—”

  “I’ve got it, thanks.” Max nodded. “You want me to take this hotline, close it up, and find out what happened to our workers.”

  “Yeah. And make it look—”

  “Normal, right. I got that.”

  Max stood to collect the file and leave. “Why don’t you work from home for the next few days, eh? I’ll tell everyone you’re taking the time off…you know, dead baby.”

  “You want me to work from home on this?”

  Brian shook his head and hands. “I don’t want this file anywhere near here. Everyone this case touches, those things come after them. But those things leave you alone, or they’re afraid of you or something. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I thought it would put you in any danger.”

  “Sure!”

  “Max, I’m not going to put you in danger! I printed everything from the last two worker’s files. It’s all in there, and a packet of photographs Janice took before she disappeared.”

  The file was thick with printouts, maps, notes and a blue-and-yellow envelope of pictures. Max closed the file at his side and started reading the notes on the cover.

  “I hate to ask you this, after what you’ve already been through. And I know it was a case just like this that got you…demoted. So it means a lot to me that you’d….” He let the thought drop with a sigh.

  Max scratched the back of his head and nodded. “When I finish this, you want to know?”