Shadow Walkers

by Brent Hartinger

  She answered her phone. “Hello?” She listened, then leaned back again on the couch. “Oh, hey, what’s up?” She listened some more. “Oh, God, I wish!”

  It didn’t sound like she was talking to people she’d been hired to kidnap for. But even if it was just a relative or friend, she could still say something important.

  “Not a word,” she said into the phone. “And you know what really burns me up about that? He was the one who said he wanted to go so bad! I told him it wasn’t a good time, that I didn’t have anything to wear. But he begged me!”

  This was really getting me nowhere. And if she really had kidnapped Gilbert this afternoon, she had to be the world’s most heartless person to be so cool about it now.

  “Oh, things are picking up,” she said. “Every year I say, ‘That’s it—I’m done! Things are never going to pick up.’ But they do, they always do. It’s never Memorial Day weekend, which is another thing I always think. It’s Fourth of July. It’s like no one can take a vacation before then, not even a weekend. But I had a great day today—so good I missed my shows!”

  She was telling her friend she’d worked in the store all day. Gilbert had been kidnapped sometime after noon. I thought back to the sign I’d seen in the window of the door, the one that gave the store hours. It said the store opened at ten. If what this woman was saying now was true, she couldn’t have taken Gilbert, not unless she’d locked up the store for at least an hour—and that was assuming that Conrad and Evelyn had met her somewhere on the island and she didn’t have to take the ferry to the mainland and back. But that didn’t make any sense—Conrad and Evelyn weren’t islanders. They’d have to know they’d draw attention on an island like this in the middle of the week. That was the last thing they’d want.

  Maybe this woman was lying to her friend. Maybe working in the store all day was her false alibi. But if so, it wasn’t a very good one. If she’d had someone take over for her, even for an hour, someone—one of the other merchants in town—would’ve noticed. And if she’d closed up in the middle of the day, someone would’ve noticed that, too.

  Maybe she was saying one lie to her friend, and she’d tell a different lie to the police. But that didn’t make any sense either. The whole point of a false alibi was that it had to be consistent—otherwise the police would eventually find you out.

  I had a bad feeling that coming here had been a mistake, that this woman hadn’t been involved in Gilbert’s kidnapping.

  Then, from somewhere out beyond the walls of the apartment, Emory screamed.

  Emory’s scream sounded like he was right next to me. Maybe he was—in the astral dimension, the walls of the house didn’t exist to block the sound.

  I soared toward the direction of his voice, through the door of the bedroom.

  But he wasn’t in the bedroom, which had its curtains drawn and was as black as a forgotten tomb. Where else had Emory said he was going?

  The garage.

  I kept moving forward, through the back wall, and suddenly I was back out in the dim moonlight. The garage was free-standing, off to one side.

  I flew through the nearest of its walls. There was a car inside, something small and square, but the garage was big, so there was plenty of extra space. There was a window here, too, but no curtains, so moonlight filtered in, a spotlight against the gloom.

  Emory was standing in the light of that window, facing the other end of the garage, his back to me. He’d stopped screaming, but was frozen, as if staring at something in the far corner. There were several circular objects hanging on the wall next to him, but I couldn’t make them out in the dark—two coiled garden hoses maybe.

  “What is it?” I asked, even as I felt the vaguest tingle of the chill I’d felt twice before, the one in my soul.

  Emory didn’t look at me. It was like he couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak. He just kept staring into the corner.

  I floated closer and took a look. The shadows were particularly thick there, and I didn’t see anything at first. Then I saw something curved and hanging—another coiled garden hose maybe. And there were two small round objects, almost white, suspended in the middle of the coils.

  It wasn’t a hose. It was some kind of … creature. It was floating in the corner of the garage, not any bigger than a basketball. And it had tentacles or legs of some kind. It looked like a cross between an octopus and a spider. I knew it was alive, because its legs were slowly curling in on themselves.

  It’s the thing I saw earlier. The tentacle was real.

  Now I stood frozen, hanging in space. Somehow I knew it was definitely in the astral dimension with us, a being without actual substance, but something made up of shadow and darkness, not light like Emory and me. Had this creature followed us from the cabin? Emory had said he’d been drawn to me because he’d heard me making all that noise. Maybe this creature had heard me too, and then followed us back here to Hinder Island. I still didn’t know how populated the astral dimension was, but from the look of things so far, it was mostly deserted.

  It wasn’t moving, so I edged closer to Emory. I could see the thing much more clearly now. It definitely wasn’t an actual octopus or spider. For one thing, it had more than eight legs—at least a dozen, maybe more. It floated there, quivering slightly with its legs splayed out.

  But it had eyes, looking back at us.

  Human eyes.

  These were the white objects I’d seen floating in the middle of the shadows. Lidless, they peered out at me from near the top of all that blackness. It was the whites of those eyes that had made me realize it wasn’t just a shadow in the first place. But as white as they were, the pupils were as black as the rest of the creature, dark and full of hate.

  I don’t know how I knew with such certainty that these were human eyes, but I did. You could see the intelligence in them, and the anger.

  The chill in my soul deepened, and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. The creature was such an appalling mixture, so obviously alien and yet also somehow human. I’d never seen anything like it—never even imagined anything like it. If being in the astral dimension meant becoming aware that the boundaries of the universe are artificial—that we’re all one—did that mean I was part of that creature, and it was part of me? It was bad enough that it even existed.

  But then, the very instant the creature made sense to me, it was gone. It didn’t vanish—it shot away, like a retreating octopus. Unlike an octopus, it didn’t leave a cloud of black ink in its wake, but because the creature was so dark, so black, it did seem to leave a dark spot in my vision even after it was gone.

  Celestia Moonglow hadn’t said anything about any of this.

  Neither Emory nor I spoke for a second. It had all happened so fast.

  Finally, he said, “Let’s get out of here. Now.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. It was all I could do to get out of the dark confines of that garage.

  The moonlight was brighter in the small yard just outside, but it was only a small comfort. We were still surrounded by shadows: dark outlines that stretched out beside the ragged rhododendrons and black pools that had gathered under the Madrona tree in the yard or pickup truck parked in the alley. These were all places where the shadowy spider-octopus creature could be hiding, still watching us. The chill I felt still hadn’t gone away—I was starting to think it never would. Maybe this was why I’d felt that chill out at Trumble Point, along with the strange sense that something bad was going to happen: because Gilbert was going to be kidnapped and I was going to encounter this horrible creature.

  Instinctively, Emory and I both rose up into the sky, away from the shadows. Something flew by us in the dark, and we both flinched at the sound of muffled flapping. But it was just an owl chasing a bat back in the real world.

  “What was that back there?” I said to Emory, both of us hover
ing unsteadily now.

  “I don’t know,” he said. The two of us felt the need to whisper. “I was looking around the garage, and I felt something watching me again. I turned, and there it was.” Emory was scared—really scared. The same guy who flew like Superman and had let a car pass right through him without jumping.

  At least the chill in my soul was slowly leaching away. But there was a different chill taking its place, a kind of unease that didn’t have anything to do with the shadow creature.

  “Did you find out anything about Gilbert?” I said. “Before the creature, did you see anything?”

  Emory shook his head, even as he shivered in the dark. Like me, he was still feeling the chill. “You?” I shook my head. I told him what she’d said on the phone, how I didn’t think she was involved in my brother’s kidnapping.

  “You should still tell the police. It’s still really suspicious that she gave Gilbert candy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, no steadier than before, no less uneasy.

  “We should go back,” Emory said quietly.

  I looked at him. “Back?”

  “To the real world. To our bodies.” This was the unstated thing I hadn’t wanted him to say. The only thing worse than that shadow creature was the thought of losing Gilbert.

  Reminded of my little brother, I tried briefly listening for him again—but I still didn’t hear anything.

  “It wasn’t a complete loss,” Emory said. “You learned Gilbert really was kidnapped—you even know the kidnappers’ first names, and a lot more if that’s their lake cabin. The police have to be able to do something with all that.”

  “They already sent a police car out to the cabin,” I said. “They didn’t find anything. You said they need probable cause to do anything more. Besides, Conrad and Evelyn are already gone. They said they’re meeting someone—there can’t be much more time.”

  “You could take a car and go search the cabin yourself.”

  “It’s too late. The ferry’s already stopped running for the night.” I looked up at him with eager eyes. “But you could!”

  “What?” He hadn’t expected me to say this.

  “You said you only live twenty miles away!” I said. “You can take a car and go break into the cabin, and then you can come back here and tell me what you found!”

  Emory held up his hands. “Zach, stop! I can’t. I don’t have a car—I don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  “Then call a friend! Have them come and—”

  He interrupted me. “Zach, I can’t! I just … can’t. My parents would never let me leave this late at night. And there’s no way to sneak out of the house. Besides, you really can’t stay here. That thing down there? Who knows what it might do? Use the silver cord. Let it draw you back to your body.”

  “But it was my last stick of incense!” I said. If I went back now, that was it; I couldn’t come back, ever. If I later thought of something else that I could do from the astral dimension to help Gilbert, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

  Still, Emory had a point. We didn’t know for sure what the shadow creature was capable of, but the hatred in its eyes had been all too real.

  I felt like a stone that had been sinking through deep water for a long time and had now finally hit bottom.

  I could always come back to the New Age shop. I could knock on the door to the woman’s apartment, get her to talk to me and tell me everything she knew about astral projection. She might not want to at first, but I’d have to make her understand. And I could trade her something for the special incense—my bike or my cell phone.

  From somewhere nearby, something started grinding. It didn’t seem very far away, and at first I thought it was tires on gravel. But it didn’t have the weird hollow timbre of sounds in the real world. Whatever this was, it seemed to be coming from within the astral dimension.

  “What is that?” I said.

  Emory shook his head.

  I had to check it out. Sure, maybe it had something to do with that shadow creature—but maybe it had something to do with Gilbert, or would lead me to something that did.

  “You should go,” I said to Emory. I didn’t have to take him with me. I didn’t have to risk his life, too.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s too dangerous here. Just like you said.”

  “Are you going home?”

  I thought for a second, debating whether to tell him the truth. Finally, I shook my head. “No.” I nodded toward the sound. “Whatever that is, it might have something to do with Gilbert.”

  Emory set his jaw. Some of his old bravado was back. “Then I’m not going back yet, either.” But now there was a bit of hesitation in his voice.

  Even so, I nodded. This time he’d said what I’d secretly been hoping he’d say.

  The source of the grinding noise was … a giant purple pinwheel.

  At least that’s what it looked like from where Emory and I were, still floating high up in the sky. It hung there, suspended vertically in mid-air above the lawn of one of the houses that surrounded the town of Hinder.

  Whatever this thing was, it was definitely with us on our side of the looking glass. It glowed with a purple light, but it didn’t seem to be casting any shadows. And it wasn’t dimmed by the astral lens.

  Just like a pinwheel, it was slowly rotating.

  I had to check it out.

  “Wait!” Emory said, even as I had already started angling down. “Keep a look out—and avoid the shadows.” Unlike me, he hadn’t already forgotten about the shadow creature.

  We landed in the open lawn area in front of the house. From there, the purple pinwheel looked like some kind of vortex: an eight-foot whirlpool of energy. It was definitely moving, slowly revolving inward, like a satellite photo of the clouds of a rotating hurricane. As it slowly turned, it made a sound like the millstone of a windmill. The vague ethereal breeze still blew, toward the vortex now, but it was easy to withstand.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “A gate,” Emory said.

  “A what?”

  “A doorway to another dimension.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “There was one just like it on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

  “We’re now getting our information about the astral dimension from a TV show?”

  Emory shrugged.

  I thought back to Voyage Beyond the Rainbow. Once again, Celestia Moonglow hadn’t said anything about this—despite the totally misleading blurb on the book jacket that had promised readers they could “travel through space and time, visit distant planets, and even travel to different dimensions.”

  She hadn’t said anything about shadow creatures with human eyes either. The truth is, she made a crappy spirit guide. If Celestia Moonglow really had been to the astral dimension in some form, she hadn’t done it like I had.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Gilbert,” Emory said. “I think we should leave.”

  “What’s going on?” said a voice from the porch of the little house.

  It was the shimmering outline of an old man, fat with sweat-matted hair and rumpled pajamas. He was looking right at us, confused, like he’d wandered from his house in the middle of the night. But he was like Emory and me, clear and bright, definitely with us in the astral realm.

  “What am I doing outside?” the old man said to us. His whole body shook and wobbled like a person on ice skates for the first time.

  “He’s doing astral projection,” Emory said to me. “Like us.”

  “Why is everything so dark?” the man said. He gestured at the vortex. “And what in heaven’s name is that?”

  “Don’t you know how you got here?” Emory asked the old man.

  “No!” said the man in
his pajamas. “I was just—” He pointed back at the house behind him, but was interrupted by the sound of sirens. My first thought was that maybe the sirens had something to do with Gilbert, that maybe they’d found him and were returning him home. But my grandparents lived on the other side of the island, and the ferries had shut down for the night now anyway.

  A firetruck, lights flashing and siren blaring, pulled up to the house. Other trucks and cars followed. It was paramedics from the island’s mostly volunteer fire department.

  “Hurry!” said a new voice from the front porch. “He’s in here!” It was an old woman in her nightgown. She’d come outside at the sound of the sirens.

  “Brenda?” The old man in his pajamas had turned to face the woman on the porch.

  She ignored him. Instead, she clutched fearfully at the folds of her nightgown while paramedics quickly unloaded medical equipment from their trucks—cases and backpacks and a stretcher.

  “Brenda!” the old man said, but now the paramedics were hustling the stretcher and their equipment toward the house. Brenda turned and led them inside.

  Slowly the old man looked back at Emory and me. He was made up of light and energy, not flesh and blood, but his face had seemed to pale anyway.

  Unlike Emory and me, the old man didn’t have a silver cord. He wasn’t attached to his body.

  “Does this mean I’m dead?” the old man whispered.

  I didn’t know what to say. It sure looked that way.

  So this is what happened to my parents, I thought.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded, suddenly angry. “Where am I?”

  “I’m sorry,” Emory said. “We really don’t know much more than you do.”

  “Look, there’s been some kind of mistake,” the old man said.

  “I’m sorry, but we—”

  “I need to get back inside!” The old man was panicking. When he tried to walk, he just flailed, skating now on cracking ice. He didn’t understand how to move in the astral dimension.

  The vortex ground louder, like the rumble of distant thunder. It was moving more quickly now, roiling, like water beginning to circle down a drain.