by E A Comiskey
Maybe he couldn’t spill the whole can of beans, but he could keep one foot on the solid ground of truth. “I’m worried about Burke. Just look at her.”
Burke beamed at him. “I’m the luckiest girl I know. Half the women in the world would give anything to go out with a guy like Albert.”
Maddie cocked her head at Richard.
“It ain’t natural!” he exclaimed.
“I think I know what’s going on here,” Stanley said. “Richard, may I speak to you in the other room?”
“Oh, there’s no need to run off to the other room.” Maddie thumped the roses down in the center of the table. “I get it. You’ve been a tight little trio, doing God only knows what for the past half a year and now Burke’s got this date and it might break up your gang. Then what? Then you’re stuck back here with boring old Madeline who insists on feeding you healthy food and driving you to important doctor appointments. Well, forgive me for wanting you to feel good and be healthy.”
“I’d like to eat your soup,” Luke said.
They all stared at him for a moment.
The redness in his cheeks turned a deeper shade of crimson.
“Richard, may I please speak with you?” Stanley asked.
Richard grumbled and groaned over every crack and creak his body made when he pushed himself out of his chair and stormed past Stanley toward the bedroom they shared. Stanley entered behind him and latched the door with care.
“I get it, Dick, I do. Your every instinct is to tie the girl up and drive her off to someplace safe.”
The fact that Stan Kapcheck was apparently reading his mind only served to make him edgier. “It ain’t right!” he exclaimed. “My guts are a mess. This ain’t right. We’re just sitting here. We’re letting the monsters run the show. Something bad is happening, and it’s happening to Burke, and we’re just hanging around with our thumbs up our butts.”
“Listen to reason, my friend,” Stanley’s voice remained as cool and calm as ever. “I don’t know what this is. It’s not a traditional binding spell cast by any kind of witch I’ve ever heard of. It’s not demonic in any way that I know how to detect, certainly not that I know how to fight. If we try to take her away, at best she will break free of any bonds we create and do whatever she must, up to and including killing us, to get back to him.” He pointed a finger at Richard. “You know she’s capable of it, too. That girl is not a fighter to be trifled with. At worst, the spell will kill her.”
The words poked a hole in Richard’s balloon of self-righteous anger. “Kill her?”
Stanley shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible. She’s clearly compelled to Albert. As to the degree of that compelling, I have no way of knowing. If she can’t get to the object of her desire, if the spell is strong enough, then yes. The strain of that could be enough to kill her. I wanted to get her out of here before this could happen, but Umbra’s people moved faster than I expected. Now we need to stay and find a way to break this spell.”
Richard sank onto the edge of the bed. “So, we sit here and wait?”
“I’m afraid it’s our very best option right now. I’ll bug her coat, her bag, and her person. We’ll track her every move. Maybe she’ll return with useful information. If we can become a stumbling block to Umbra and his gang, I’d have not even the slightest objection.
“My guts are a mess,” Richard said.
“The soup will help,” Stanley said.
“I ain’t talking about that!”
Stanley nodded. “I know, my friend. Mine, too. Mine, too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Albert
The little voice in Albert’s mind no longer worried. Fear had been crushed beneath the inexorable gravity of power. He had driven the six-lane highway at a comfortable one hundred and five miles per hour, weaving in and out of traffic without a smidge of concern. The other drivers moved out of his way. The road opened up before him. The universe opened up before him.
When he spoke to Burke, he felt the power slip from him, not a loss, but an extension, and then she was his. In an instant, she’d turned from the ungrateful bitch of the night before to a lovely marionette. The moment her eyes met his, he knew there wasn’t a single thing in the whole world she wouldn’t do for him.
And, oh, he did have so many ideas about what she could do for him.
His body ached deliciously at the thought.
Upon his return to Coleum, he turned into the parking garage and exited his vehicle, leaving the keys in the ignition. No one would dare steal Albert Peters’ car. If they did, there’d be hell to pay. Literally.
That gave him an idea.
He whistled as he jogged up the stairs to the second floor. Tim sat at his desk, looking at soft porn.
“Hey, Tim,” Albert said.
Tim jumped, hit a button on his keyboard, and then let out a nervous laugh. “Al, what’s up? Get lost on the way to your desk again?”
Originally, Albert’s idea had been to walk into the shared office space, find Tim’s cubicle, and smash his face into the desk until the white bits beneath showed. Now that he was there, it occurred to him that assault would be messy. His clothes might get spattered, and what kind of a man went on a date with brain matter on his tie? Really, it just wasn’t good manners.
He put his hands on the arms of Tim’s chair and leaned over him, casting the man’s face into shadow. “After I walk away, count to sixty, stand up, go upstairs, and jump off the roof of this building.”
Tears pooled in Tim’s eyes. “I don’t want to die.”
Albert grinned. “Sure you do, pal.”
Tim sniffed, wiped his eyes, and nodded. “Oh, yeah. I do.”
“That’s what I thought.” He walked away, to the end of the room with the big windows that looked out over the city. The body fell past the window sooner than he would have expected. He was impressed with the way Tim burst open when he hit the pavement, and grateful that he’d kept his clothes clean.
The face on his watch told him he needed to get a move on. There were arrangements to be made before he picked up his girl for their big night together.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Richard
It hurt a little to admit, but the turkey and rice quieted his upset stomach and the prune juice cleared out the last of the offending greasy food. Maddie had sent him to bed as if he were eight years old and it was a school night and, more to avoid argument than anything, he changed into his PJs and figured he’d wait for Burke’s return in the bedroom. His mind had been in such chaos over her disturbing transformation, he figured he’d while away the time pacing like a tiger in a cage. But now, free from gastric distress and pleasantly warmed by Maddie’s froo-froo smelly flower tea, dressed in the soft cotton pajamas Burke bought at the over-priced department store, and stretched out upon the bed that smelled of lavender detergent, he thought maybe just a little nap was in order. He sprawled a bit, just because he could.
Sleep descended with the swift gentleness of an old favorite blanket spread open to fall upon him, so it was hard to say if he’d been out for ten minutes or two hours when a creaking floorboard jolted him out of a dream in which The Devil Herself danced for him on a glassy black stage. Her long blonde hair fell in thick shining waves down her bare back. “Stanley’s too easy. I prefer a man who presents a bit of a challenge,” she purred while circling a tall silver pole.
He lay there with his heart thumping in his ears, wondering how quickly he could lay hands on the revolver in the side table drawer.
A shadow moved across the bed.
Richard threw his body left, hoping the sudden motion would delay his attacker’s response. Unfortunately, he miscalculated his position in the bed and rolled right off the edge, except for his feet, which remained tangled in the fragrant sheets. He cracked his head on the edge of the side table and landed flat on his back, knocking the stuffing straight out of his lungs. Bright stars flashed in his vision. When they cleared, there stood Stanley, peer
ing down at him with a frown.
“What in the world are you doing?” Stanley asked.
Richard kicked his feet like a capsized beetle trying to free himself from his bonds. “What are you doing, sneaking around in the dark like some kind of a creep?”
“It’s two fifteen.”
Richard’s feet fell to the floor with a thump. “Is that the hour you always wake a man from a perfectly good sleep?”
Stanley extended a hand. Richard faced a choice. Accept the man’s help or spend the next two minutes trying to hoist his old bones off the floor on his own. He reached up and took the hand, but made sure to grumble a bit so Stanley would know exactly how he felt about it. He expected to see the old familiar mockery in Stanley’s face, so the worry that shown in his eyes brought Richard up short.
“It’s two fifteen,” Stanley said again. “Burke said she’d check in at midnight.”
There’d been a terrible day in southern California when crossed signals left each of them convinced the other two had been in mortal danger from a vengeful baba yaga. In the end, it turned out the only real problem was the God-awful traffic in that part of the country. Around the dinner table, they’d agreed upon a standing rule: in addition to a rendezvous time whenever they were apart, there would be a two-hour clock. People ran late. Traffic jams, flat tires, dead cell phone batteries—any number of crazy things could cause a delay or a break in communication, but a two-hour window should be more than enough time to make contact and give assurances of safety.
Richard peeked at the green glowing numbers on the bedside clock.
2:17 a.m.
“I’ll get dressed,” he said.
Stanley nodded and left him to it.
Seven minutes later, the Cadillac rolled silently out of the sloped drive in neutral with the lights off. Stan let momentum carry the car backward past three houses before turning the key. The engine purred like the world’s most powerful and well cared for cat. Headlamps sliced through the heavy shadows cast by the low-slung streetlamps dotting the subdivision, and they rocketed forward into the night guided by a red bubble floating over a map on Stanley’s phone. The bubble winked out, returned, hovered, winked out again, came back. “I never saw it do that before,” Richard said.
“Probably just a glitch. Do you know where that is?” Stanley asked.
Richard peered at the street names, squinting to make out the tiny black letters. “Not exactly. Not much in that part of town. Old assembly plant used to be out there, but they shut her down when Clinton moved all the jobs to Mexico. Ain’t been nothing but rot and vines since.” He fished his own small phone from his jacket pocket. Getting used to carrying the thing had been an adjustment. A few taps on the screen brought up Burke’s number. The call rang and went to voicemail. He pressed the red button and let his hands fall back to his lap.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Stanley said, but Richard noticed the speedometer climb a little higher.
When Maddie had been a schoolgirl, the factory located just outside the western city limit up and moved to Mexico, taking half the jobs in the county with it. Richard remembered the churning fear of wondering if his own employer would follow suit, leaving him with a kid, a mortgage, and exactly $841 in the bank. Over time, the Earth took back the abandoned assembly plant. Holes opened in the ceiling and dandelions transformed the asphalt parking lot into dirt and stone. The passing decades had since brought more change.
A new facility stood in place of the old assembly plant, with solar panels on the roof and a gargantuan windmill in the parking lot. Three white metallic arms, each longer than the wing of a jetliner, spun in lazy rotation under the sliver of a crescent moon. As they crossed the blacktop wilderness, a nearly soundless whoomp, whoomp, whoomp reverberated somewhere deep inside Richard’s core every time the arms completed a rotation.
The side of the building proclaimed “Coleum Corp. - Space for all.”
Near one end of the building, a crowd of cars filled the spaces close to a door lit bright as day. Three workers in blue and white coveralls stood under a sodium lamp, snakes of smoke slithering skyward from the cigarettes clamped between their fingers.
Stanley maneuvered the Cadillac into a spot near the edge of the cluster of cars and tapped his fingers against the wheel. “Most decidedly not rot and vines.”
“More full of life than an old cheese on a hot day,” Richard agreed. “Also, not where I’d take a lady on a second date.”
A few fluttering snowflakes zig-zagged through the air, highlighted in the weird yellow light that cast a flickering shadow play across the blacktop. The movement stirred a vague, unsettled sense of motion sickness. Richard’s gaze shifted left and right.
Stanly leaned forward over the wheel, squinting into the night. “Do you see anything strange?”
Richard readjusted his upper plate with his tongue. “Looks like any night shift I ever worked.”
“No,” Stanley said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Look again, Dick. Look with a hunter’s eyes. Don’t focus on what’s right in front of you. Don’t focus on anything at all. Just look.”
This looking without actually looking was a trick Stanley and his cohort Nathanial had spent a full week trying to teach Burke and him. Burke picked it up right away, of course. Not a woman in the world had a right to be that darn smart. By the end of the week, he’d had the general idea, but his rheumy old eyes didn’t like the queer, unfocused feeling of looking at nothing at all. With an exasperated sigh, he peered out past the bits of bug innards splattered on the windshield in the general direction of the well-lit entrance and let his gaze settle on an empty gray space next to the doors.
The shadows flickered, vying for his attention, but he ignored them and focused on exhaling to a slow count of ten.
A man slipped along the wall toward the roofline.
His eyes snapped upward to follow the creature’s progress, but nothing was there. “What the Sam Hill?”
“Shadows,” Stanley murmured. “No smell. No hex bags. Somehow, they bound her with shadows.”
“I don’t understand,” Richard said, squinting into the dark.
“Neither do I, but I’m certain it’s true.”
Richard tried to look again. His eyes watered. He rubbed at them, stared at the wall, took a deep breath. The inky black beings infested the property. They slid over the walls and curled around the lampposts. They hung from the backs and arms of the workers sucking on their cancer sticks and darted over the pavement. One of them slithered over the front of the car and peered at them with pure white eyes, no more than two spots of light in a man-shaped hole of darkness. It opened a gaping maw full of jagged black teeth and a hundred more pairs of white eyes turned in their direction.
“Go,” Richard squeaked in a high-pitched, girly voice. “Go, go, go!”
Stanley’s hand fumbled at the keys, grasped them, and the engine purred to life.
The creature crawled forward and reached a hand in their direction just as the headlights flared to life, bursting the creature like a balloon full of matte black confetti.
Stanley yanked on the gearshift and smashed his foot against the gas pedal. The white wall tires laid a film of rubber against the pavement with a piercing scream. At last, the tires gripped and the car lurched out of the space. He drew a tight circle that got them pointed toward the exit.
A broad-shouldered man with a black stocking cap on his head and a silver badge pinned to his chest punched a button that caused a yellow barrier to drop across the parking lot exit.
“Buckle up, Dick,” Stanley said.
Richard wasted no time arguing. He managed to snap the buckle a split second before the Caddy’s front bumper made contact, sending bits of wood flying into the night. The car bumped onto the road, scraping its belly on the pavement and throwing up a shower of sparks.
Stanley pulled the wheel hard, making a sharp left onto a two-lane city street as void of traffic at that late hour as any dark desert hi
ghway.
Richard peeked in the side mirror just as two sets of headlights bobbed around the corner behind them. “Company,” he announced.
Stanley urged the car faster, not slowing as the light over the intersection in front of them flipped from amber to red. The headlights behind them drew close enough for Richard to make out a black SUV. “They’re on your butt like white on rice!”
“I’m aware,” Stanley replied, making an abrupt right-hand turn. The back tire caught the curb and the car bumped and shuddered, causing Richard’s vertebrate to clack together like a row of castanets.
“Watch it, man! You want to kill us?”
“If I wanted us dead, I’d stop right here and let them—” The car hit a patch of ice on the overpass and slipped sideways, fishtailing wildly into the sparse stream of oncoming traffic. A rusty white delivery van clipped their front end and tossed them back into their own lane, which would have been fine if they were still pointed in the right direction. As it was, they sat at a dead stop with the front bumper facing one SUV while the second boxed them in. A thin stream of smelly white mist drifted upward from under the car’s hood. The magnificent V8 engine sputtered and died.
Richard sat there, panting hard, taking inventory of his limbs. So far as he could tell, everything remained attached and fully operational. Too soon to say if his shorts were still clean. His family jewels crawled up into his belly to hide as the passenger door of the black truck swung open.
A pair of ugly brown loafers appeared below the door. Albert stood, illuminated in their headlights, his white teeth gleaming in the night. “Get out of the car, gentlemen,” he called.
Stanley reached under the seat and snatched something that he slipped into his pocket so fast Richard didn’t have time to make out what it was.
Richard looked down and was surprised to realize he’d had the presence of mind to get the pistol out of the glove box during the short, wild chase. Feeling rather proud of himself, he pocketed the gun and tried to follow Stanley. Unfortunately, in the ruckus, his door had been smashed in, making it impossible to open it fully. He managed to push with his right foot until it cracked about a third of the way, but no way would he be able to squeeze through the tiny opening.
