The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  As I started down the road, I saw Perro again. The dog stared at me in the moonlight. There was something odd about him. His head was low, his body expanding and contracting like a bellows. I realized he was panting. Though it was dark, the animal’s eyes seemed to glow hot and red. Then he came after me, snapping and snarling.

  I turned and ran, but I couldn’t move very fast. And I couldn’t turn my head because of the pain. I had no idea if he was gaining on me.

  Blue-white headlights came up behind me. A horn blasted, and I heard a meaty thud followed by a grisly yelp. I stopped running. A white van with a logo I didn’t recognize was stopped in the middle of the road, the engine still idling. The blinding headlight beams illuminated the dog, which had been thrown several feet.

  I heard a car door open and saw the dark shape of a man getting out. He approached the softly panting animal.

  “Be careful,” I said. “I think he’s rabid.”

  “You okay?”

  “I could use a ride. Did you see anybody else on the road?”

  “Like who?”

  “My friend Jim. We were in a car accident. I need to find him.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t see anybody.”

  The dog howled suddenly and we backed off. The man ran back to his van and got a catch pole, but by the time he returned, Perro had limped off down the embankment and into the woods.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Are you animal control?”

  The man looked at me. Then he said, “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

  As I climbed in I was able to read the side of the van. ROBBIN-SEAR INDUSTRIES, OLD ORCHARD ROAD, TRES MARIAS, CA. Both the name and address were unfamiliar to me.

  The Good Samaritan looked to be in his early thirties. He was dressed like an academic, wearing a sport jacket and jeans. Pale, with curly black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. A thin scar went from his upper lip to his nostril, and I realized he’d been born with a cleft palate. He said his name was Bob Creasy.

  “Good thing you stopped,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be distracted and kept checking the rearview mirror. I must’ve looked pretty bad, because even though he tried to be helpful, he insisted on driving me to the police station rather than my house.

  “Did you get bit?” he said.

  “What? No, but if you hadn’t come along, it would’ve been over.”

  “You sure you weren’t bit?”

  “I’m sure.”

  A noise coming from the back of the van startled me. It sounded like growling. “What was that?”

  “Lot of injured animals on the road tonight,” he said.

  He didn’t seem to want to talk, preferring instead to fool with the car radio. At the police station he looked like he was in a hurry for me to get out.

  “Take care, buddy,” he said.

  I watched as he shot away, almost taking out a parked patrol car. Then I went inside to call Holly.

  She never said so, but I knew she was upset. We stopped at the emergency room even though I insisted I was fine. Good thing. The X-rays came back showing there was spinal damage at C3 and C4. They made me put on a neck brace. Said I was lucky I wasn’t paralyzed.

  While we waited, a man with a goiter came in, complaining about a kid in the park who had bitten him.

  On the way home, Holly and I “talked.”

  “So were you drinking?” she said. That was always her first question whenever I screwed up. If I broke a glass washing the dishes, she’d ask me where I’d gotten the beer.

  “No,” I said. “Holly, how long is it going to take before you trust me?”

  “Well, let’s see. You stopped going to AA three months ago.”

  “It was two months. And anyway, I don’t need those people telling me I have no power over alcohol. I do and I’m fine, FYI.”

  “Then why did you lose control of the car?”

  “I swerved to avoid a dog, okay? Smell my breath.”

  “Never mind,” she said. Great, now she was getting weepy. “I was worried.”

  That was the thing with her. She acted all hard on the outside, but inside she was like a marshmallow. I knew I was supposed to be the man, but I was still pissed off. So I let her stew in it. We drove on in silence. I closed my eyes and let myself drift.

  The ER doctor had prescribed Vicodin for the pain, but I asked for Motrin instead. When we got home, I was so sore I couldn’t make it up the stairs. Apparently over her hissy fit, Holly kissed me and made me a bed on the sofa in the TV room.

  “I need to find Jim,” I said.

  “Dave, you need to rest. Come on, let me help you.”

  I lay down, and a few minutes later I was gone.

  In my dream I woke up in daylight. Jim was standing there wearing a curious expression, a dark red gash ringing his neck like a twisted reddish lei. I tried screaming, but when I opened my mouth, blood gushed out. Gallons of it, running down the sofa and spreading like a lake on the oval area rug and covering the hardwood floor. Shiny parasitic things that looked like kidney worms writhed and convulsed in the blood. Had I coughed them up too?

  Someone touched my shoulder and I opened my eyes. It was night, and Holly was standing there in the Giants jersey I’d bought her the previous summer. She looked so good, I wasn’t mad anymore. I took her hand.

  “You were moaning,” she said.

  “Bad dream. What do you think happened to Jim?”

  “I don’t know. He’s prob’ly back at his house, sleeping it off.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. He was pretty damn drunk.”

  * * *

  I stayed home for a few days, in too much pain to work. I felt bad about not looking for Jim, but since I’d filed a missing person report, I figured the cops could take care of it. Because someone had been injured and was now missing, they impounded what was left of my car as evidence. A Detective Van Gundy called later to say he’d taken a ride out to Jim’s house. He didn’t find anyone.

  At work I felt like a spaz wearing the neck brace. But Holly insisted and I owed her for looking after me. Besides, she’d know if I took it off. I practiced turning with my whole body—I was like a robot. And I got headaches from the pressure on my jaw. There was an upside, though. Holly tied my shoes for me, which even in my compromised state turned me on.

  At lunch I took a walk outside, hoping to see Jim. Everything looked normal. Cars went in and out of the parking lot, mothers pushed children in strollers. Some girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty hawked cheap prepaid cell phones. One or two stew bums hung out under a tree, their short dogs tucked inside wrinkled brown paper bags. Some things never changed.

  As I said, Tres Marias had always been a strange little backwater town. But over the next few days, things got even weirder. On the local news, reporters described people acting “erratically” in public. Then I saw one for myself—a pizza delivery guy. The halting steps, the strange glazed-over look, the difficulty putting words together. The sports guy on the local TV station dubbed the condition “the jimmies.”

  At first it was funny to see how these people acted. Then we saw them urinating and defecating in public. Later we heard stories of healthy people and animals being attacked, and it wasn’t funny anymore.

  While I was outside, I saw the guy from the emergency room who’d been bitten, the one with the goiter. His gait was halting and strange—the jimmies. Kids on skateboards hounded him, some following behind and imitating his walk, others laughing cruelly and calling him a tard. If it had been me, I would’ve kicked their middle-school asses. This poor guy kept lurching down the sidewalk, oblivious.

  Across the street a crowd gathered in front of city hall, which in true Tres Marias fashion was an old saloon that had been converted into an office building and stood next to a Dunkin’ Donuts. A man dressed in a crisp brown suit and red pocket handkerchief stood on the steps with a megaphone. It was Ormand Ferry, self-appointed leader of a “charitable organi
zation” known as the Red Militia. Behind him were what I supposed were his lieutenants. One of them I recognized as Travis Golightly, owner of the Beehive, the bar Jim and I used to hang out at in the old days. Travis was a bully and a racist, but we never paid much attention because the beer was so cheap.

  As his followers collected donations, Ormand spoke passionately of “the blood of our countrymen” and the coming apocalypse. Some in the crowd chortled, but I found his manner disturbing. He was slender and tan, with blonde hair cut short like a Marine and wearing thick, round glasses that glinted whenever he moved his head. And he wasn’t stupid. He made every effort to sound reasonable. He talked about the charitable work his group was doing, feeding families in need and giving the homeless a place to sleep.

  I recalled something I’d read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn’t be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace. As I walked past the crowd, one of the volunteers handed me a pamphlet. There on the cover was an image of a black wolf with bright red eyes, slavering and feverish with disease. And at the top a single word in large red print—PREPARE.

  * * *

  After two weeks, the neck brace came off. A new set of X-rays showed that my vertebrae were fine. Jim never did reappear, and the cops didn’t seem interested in finding him. Everyone thought he’d wandered into the forest and died. A search party turned up nothing.

  Something was weird. Over the same period people’s pets went missing. Then a hunter found a deer that had been gored. It was hardly breathing when the hunter sent a bullet through its brain. That was all anybody wanted to talk about at Staples. People coming down with the jimmies and animal mutilations.

  “It’s nothing,” the store manager, Fred Lumpkin, said. “Probably rabid bats or something.”

  Fred was a pudgy, likable guy who was not quite thirty and who had a weakness for Baby Ruths and Diet Coke. He never got mad and was always good for an advance if someone found themselves short. Holly didn’t like anyone taking advantage of Fred. I guess she was protective of him.

  Fred always saw the bright side, even when the evidence irrefutably pointed towards the book of Revelation. I didn’t know if he’d suffered a breakdown at one time and this was the only way he knew to cope. I imagined him losing it one day and chopping everyone up with the fireman’s axe we kept in the back. Or maybe he was a nice guy. And there was no one better in the world than Fred to talk you off the ledge. Nevertheless, I always thought he was full of it.

  In the middle of all this strangeness, Holly announced at dinner one night she was going off the pill. I kind of freaked at first, but once she explained reasonably how bad she wanted to start a family, I warmed to the idea. We were young, but wasn’t this how it’s supposed to be for married couples? Especially since she was a practicing Catholic, though I was so very out of practice.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “I’m sure.” She punched me in the arm. “Well, come on. I want to hear what you think.”

  “Holly, I don’t know. I’m scared, I guess.”

  “Okay.”

  I took her hand. “I never thought about me as a dad. Are you sure?”

  “You asked me that already, Dave.” She was laughing.

  Then it hit me. I realized for the first time in our relationship she trusted me. She believed I had gotten control of my disease and would make a suitable father. I guess I was the man she made me—or at least within spitting distance.

  “Yes, I want to,” I said and kissed her.

  This was the happiest time of my life. I was sober and I had a beautiful young wife. My Camry was totaled in the wreck, and I used the insurance money to buy a new black Dodge truck. I had a job. I had my books. I was on top of the world.

  But you know happiness is temporary, right?

  Chapter Three

  We’re Not Done

  Panic tore at my center and numbed my extremities.

  When can I see you?

  The text message on my cell phone glowed as I woke in the morning to the faint sound of the television downstairs. I’m not a brave man. In fact, I’m a wuss when it comes to trouble. Holly could have seen the message. I recalled hearing my cell phone ding through a pasty fog of sleep. Looking over, I realized I was alone. She must be in the kitchen.

  I dressed in a hurry, jammed the phone into my jeans and headed for the stairs. I passed the spare bedroom and saw Holly sitting on the floor, wearing her work clothes and facing the windows. Blue light streamed in, illuminating her hair. She looked like an angel, and I smiled as I walked in.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Just imagining,” she said, and kissed me. “Once I’m pregnant we’re going shopping for baby furniture. I already know what I want.”

  I kissed her head. “I need to shower.”

  “It’s your day off. What’s the hurry? I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “I want to get started. Got a lot of random stuff to do.”

  I kept my phone with me in the bathroom. After a quick shower, I went downstairs and grabbed coffee and a bowl of cereal. Holly had the morning news on. A local woman was missing, last seen going for a run.

  I got the sense Holly was watching me, but I think it was my imagination. As I ate, she kept her eyes on the TV.

  “We know her, right?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope they find her.” I got up.

  “Why are you so busy?”

  The way she looked at me, I felt she knew what was going on. Just my imagination. That and deafening guilt.

  “I’m going out for a while,” I said.

  She pulled out her phone and snapped a pic as I rinsed off the dishes in the sink. “There. The perfect husband.”

  I felt around for my keys and kissed her. “Have fun at work.”

  “Oh, sure. I hear we’re getting in a pallet of red Swingline staplers. Whoo-hoo!”

  “Say hi to Fred.” I gave her a thumbs-up and ran out the door.

  * * *

  There was a Starbucks up the 5 in Redding. A lot of tourists stopped there on their way to Mt. Shasta. We’d decided to meet there to avoid seeing anyone we knew in Tres Marias. When I walked in, she was already sipping tea out of a huge blue cup and reading something on her phone. I looked around the store, found nothing but strangers and took a seat across from her.

  When she saw me, she smiled in a sad kind of way. She looked amazing, her straight, shiny dark brown hair pulled back, huge dark eyes and full lips. Everything about her was hungry for my company. She wore a white V-neck T-shirt cut way low and denim shorts that showed off most of her tanned legs. I smelled the perfume I’d bought her when we visited a Sephora one time. If things had been different, I might have ended up—

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.” I spoke in as neutral a voice as possible. “So why did you text me?”

  “Do you want a coffee or …”

  “No.”

  I was somewhere between angry and turned-on. It had been two months since Missy Soldado and I last saw each other—way before any of the current craziness in Tres Marias started. Towards the end I was going over to her house two or three times a week. I blamed it on the fact that I was struggling to stay sober and needed a distraction. But I think it was because I was getting ready to end it and I wanted as much of Missy as I could get before she was out of my life for good.

  I’d planned to go to her house one last time and break it off clean, but ended up having sex—the best sex I ever had with her in the six weeks we were together. Then I left. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since.

  “Why did you text me?” I said.

  “I had to see you again. I’ve been thinking a lot about us. I drove over to Staples the other day and saw you inside talking to Holly. I almost went in.”

  “Missy, you need to let this go.”

  “I know, but I can’t.”

  “You knew how things were. I never lied to you
about my situation.”

  “People split up all the time.”

  “Well, I’m not doing that.”

  “So you feel some kind of obligation to Holly? What was she, your high-school sweetheart?”

  “Lower your voice. No, I feel love for her.”

  “You felt love for me once. You can’t be in love with two women, Dave.”

  “You’re right, I can’t. Look, I don’t want to make a scene. Please try to understand. We’ve been together for three years. I love Holly. We’re planning to start a family.”

  She stirred her tea and avoided my eyes for a long time. “I don’t believe you. You just don’t have the cojones to get out of a dead relationship.”

  Disgusted, I got up and looked around the store. A family of four was ordering the works. Some businessman with a laptop and earbuds was on a call. At another table some sincere-looking guy was trying to sell a middle-aged woman life insurance. Across from them several baby-faced religion students argued about Corinthians and Saint Paul’s views on marriage. At that moment I would have given my soul to be any one of those people.

  “What did you even see in me anyway?” I said. “Was it the fact that I was married? Is that it? Was it a big thrill for you? You could have any guy you want. Go find somebody who’s single.”

  “I don’t want somebody else.” She was crying.

  “Don’t contact me anymore,” I said. “I mean it.”

  She shook her head and smiled bitterly. “No, this isn’t over. I’ll do what I have to.”

  I grabbed my chair and slammed it down next to her, startling the people around us and giving Missy a scare. Did I mention I have a temper?

  “What exactly does that mean?” I said.

  She looked up at me, her eyes defiant. “It means I love you and I’m not giving up on us.”

  I hated her and wanted out. This wasn’t fair. She needed to understand that what happened, happened. It was nice, but it was over. Time to move on. Did she think she was going to talk me into leaving Holly for her?