Shadow of the Past

by Thacher Cleveland

  “Okay,” he said, heading out of the driveway with a look back over his shoulder.

  He didn’t want to go right home, having had enough of that blue collar dungeon to last several lifetimes. Just before his grounding he’d gotten himself a full tank of gas and now was the perfect time to use it.

  He rode aimlessly for a while, doing a circuit of the town and trying not to think about anything but the road in front of him. He was just about to head home when he caught sight of the street sign he was about to pass. He weaved over to the side of the road, trying not to squeeze the brake so hard that he’d lose control.

  When he came to a full stop he craned his head around, pulling off his helmet to be sure.

  Munson Drive.

  He turned around and headed down it, knowing that all he was going to do was confirm his suspicions and probably give himself a heart attack.

  At least that would solve a lot of your problems. Solve some other people’s problems too.

  He’d gone down a couple of blocks on Munson, just enough to make him begin to doubt himself, but there it was.

  Briarcliff Avenue. He didn’t even have to look too hard to see its star attraction.

  He turned slowly, taking his time getting down there, and as he did he could feel his dream coming to life all around him. He could see the little kids running around, playing baseball and trying to ignore the big shadowy pimple on this perfect neighborhood’s face.

  He stopped across the street from the house, which had gotten worse over the years since he’d seen it in his dream. Of course no one had moved in there. Of course it hadn’t burned down in some freak lightning strike or flash fire. Of course it was a real thing right in the town he lived in.

  This place, withered and sunken and shrouded by crooked trees was too nasty to have just gone away.

  The neighborhood was quiet except for the stuttering cough of his engine. He wanted someone to walk by just so he could make sure he wasn’t just making the place up.

  If it was still here, still empty and ugly, then what did that mean? Did people know about what happened in there? Was everyone getting a sweet break on their property take being “homicide adjacent?” Did any of what he’d been dreaming happen at all?

  If it was real then there had to be a connection between it and Clara’s death, something more than just his crazy visions. If there was then it was probably in that house. His hand hovered over the scooters key. It’d be a simple matter to see, right? Just turn the V off, head through the hedge and find out, once and for all.

  His hand closed on the key and then there was a shriek of a horn behind him.

  “Hey, out of the road!”

  Behind him was a lovely new car with an exasperated housewife behind the wheel. Mark waved a weak apology and pulled the scooter up and over to the side of the road. She drove past him, glaring at him with a lecture on the tip of her tongue. She looked past him and saw the house behind him and drove off without a word.

  Yeah, Mystery Machine, you go in there and solve the case. Maybe you won’t fall through the floor and break your legs, or just get caught and hauled off the jail for trespassing. Joe would love that, wouldn’t he?

  His hand was over the key again. Just turn it. Turn it and go look.

  He revved the engine and sped away, the little engine whining a high-pitched laugh at his cowardice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mark woke staring down at concrete. He’d been trying to catch up on all the work he’d missed over the course of his suspension but he ended up sleeping face down in a pile of it after just sorting it. He braced himself for whatever horrors his dreams of the basement on Briarcliff Avenue held for him, but realized that this wasn’t the cell under the stairs, it was a parking lot.

  Not just any parking lot, he realized, but the one tucked away behind the administration wing at his school. It was empty and sparsely lit, and the only car in the lot was a compact with various politically active bumper stickers on it. There was a metallic whine that echoed through the empty lot, followed by a slam. He tried calling out but realized he was formless, just as he was when he’d seen Clara murdered.

  “No, that was just the door. I know, right? They keep saying they’re going to fix it but they never will.”

  It was a familiar voice, and Mark felt his stomach turn. Not this, not again.

  Ms. Kennedy came around the corner of the building, walking under the security light and up the driveway that ran along the building and out the street. It was perfect, Mark realized. Isolated and dark, just the way he would like it.

  She was talking on her phone and trying to put her coat on, not doing either one particularly well. “Yeah, I know. I know. Look, I’m gonna get off now, but I’ll call you when I get home okay? Yes, I’m just leaving now, but I was getting some good stuff down for my book and I wanted to look over some stuff. For one of my students. He just . . . look, it’s complicated. Can I tell you about it later? Okay, call you soon.”

  She’d gotten her coat on, dropped the phone in her purse and started digging in it for her keys. The security light on the building behind her flickered and then went out. She didn’t notice at first, still walking towards her car and looking down in her purse for the keys. She pulled them out just as the light she was passing under went out.

  “Seriously?” she said, looking up in irritation. There were two more lights between her and her car, the last positioned directly above it.

  Her stride remained steady until she got under the next light and it went out as well. She stopped for a second, turning and looking around, keys dangling from her hand. They began to jingle as her hand began to twitch.

  She started walking faster, humming to herself. Her shoes clicking on the pavement echoed off the sides of the darkened building, she kept looking around to every very dark corner of the lot. “Amazing grace . . . how sweet the sound . . .” Her voice was trembling.

  She made it around the car to the driver’s side and was looking all over the lot and not down at the lock the she tried to find with her key. “That saved a wretch like me . . . was blind but now I se--” The note jumped up to an ear piercing shriek as a spear of silver flew from the trees and pinned her hand into the car door.

  He came out from the trees, sprinting towards her noiselessly and surrounded by a fog of complete darkness. When he reached her, she was thrashing about and frantically slapping at the long blade protruding from her hand. He grabbed a handful of her hair and slammed the side of her head into the car window.

  Her head bounced off the splintered glass and she stopped moving. She stood still for a moment as he placed a boot on her wrist and yanked the blade from car and hand with a swift tug. Her arm fell limply to her side and she staggered backwards, eyes glassy from the sudden blow and shock running riot through her brain.

  Her eyes went from the blood-pouring hole in her trembling hand to the man covered in swirling smoke and flame-filled eyes. She drew in a breath to scream, but he smashed the cane sheath into her jaw.

  She fell backwards, turning just enough so that she didn’t land on her wounded hand. She rolled over and pushed herself feebly along the pavement. She didn’t make it more than a foot before he plunged the blade down into her shoulder, pinning her to the ground. She screamed, and the Shadow Man clamped a hand over her mouth to silence her. Her body twitched and flailed and her eyes grew wide as he twisted the blade ever so slightly in her shoulder.

  “Shhhhh,” he said in the same rumbling voice Mark had heard under the staircase in his dreams.

  She kept trying to pull away, but the blade in her shoulder and the hand clamped tight on her jaw held her still. He pulled her closer to his face, dragging her shoulder further up the blade.

  “Who did you tell?”

  Her eyes grew wide, and Mark couldn’t tell if it was from the panic of staring into a face made of swirling smoke or confusion at the question.

  “The boy. Watson. Who did you tell about him? What have you
said?”

  She shook her head again and he let her go, pulling the sword from her shoulder with a practiced flourish. She shrieked in pain and rolled onto her side.

  “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about! Please! Someone help me!”

  She tried to push herself away from him, but with a hand run through on one side and a shoulder similarly impaled on the other all she could do was inch herself along the ground.

  “I want to know who you talked to about him. What you said. Who you told it to. What . . . suspicions you shared with some other nosy little maggot.”

  She just shook her head wildly, inching along the ground. “Help me! Someone help me!” Her feet finally found purchase on the ground and she began to push herself up to stand. The Shadow Man rolled his head in annoyed impatience and drove the blade into the back of her knee, forcing her back to the ground.

  “Who did you tell? What did you say?”

  He swung blade again, cutting her across the small of her back. He swung again, catching her ear and sending it flying in Mark’s direction. She flailed again and he stepped around to stand in front of her. He pressed a foot down on her wounded hand, focusing her attention back on him.

  “I just want to know, and then I’ll disappear into the night like a bad dream. Just tell me what I want to know.”

  She tugged at her trapped hand, but Mark could see she was fading. Shock and blood loss may well kill her before the Shadow Man did. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  He squatted down, and she winced as he put more pressure on her hand. “You talked to the boy. You watched him squirm and lie and you knew he was lying. You suspected and maybe you said something to someone. Maybe you said ‘That Mark Watson boy is trouble, and we should take care of that trouble.’”

  She shook her head. “No. No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He slammed his fist down onto the earless side of her head, causing her head to bounce sickeningly off the pavement. “Yes you do. I can see it, see right through you and I know when you’re lying to me. You knew that there was a problem with him, and you were going to tell someone about it. About your concerns. Who?”

  She stopped shaking her head. From the looks of her she had stopped most things altogether. “No . . . no one. I was . . . but there was a meet. A meeting. I was going to, but . . . I won’t. I think I was miss. Miss . . . taken. Good kid. Good boy.”

  The Shadow Man threw his head back and howled. It took Mark a moment but he realized the Shadow Man was laughing. He stood up and swung his blade across her trapped wrist and severed it.

  She didn’t even react this time. She just lay there and watched more of her blood pump weakly onto the already soaked pavement.

  “Oh, he’s a good boy. Yes, a very good boy, right you are. Hopefully now he’s a boy that knows when to keep his mouth shut.” The Shadow Man turned and was looking right at him. Or right where Mark would be if he was real.

  He was bigger than he was when Mark had seen him at Clara’s. The flames of his eyes were brighter and the curls of smoke on his body darker and stronger than they were before. He placed the blade down into the pool of blood forming at her severed wrist. Just like at Clara’s, the blood made its way up the blade until it was completely covered.

  The Shadow Man turned and walked around to her car. He smashed the driver’s side window with his cane, and then slid the blade back into place. There was a rumbling, retching sound, and then he spat a small glob of fire onto the seat. It sizzled and hissed before catching the seat on fire.

  The Shadow Man turned and walked back into the clutch of trees, leaving Mark to watch as Carrie Kennedy bled to death by the light of her burning car.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Mr. Watson?” Ms. Olivio called

  Mark turned away from the window, but before he could respond he saw past her and out the doorway of the classroom. It was Detective Prescott, standing in the hallway and doing a poor job of nonchalance. Mark had been waiting for this since showing up at school, trembling with the pitiful hope that what he’d seen last night hadn’t been real.

  Of course it was, and even though it looked like most of the emergency vehicles had moved along before school had started, the back parking lot was still closed off and there were plenty of teachers and staff with red-ringed eyes and far-off stares. The most that anyone else knew was that there had been an accident and Ms. Kennedy had died. Few people thought it had anything to do with what was going on in the back lot, and no one had said anything about murder.

  Remember that, stupid. Nobody here knows anything about murder. Let’s keep it between us, the cops, and the shadow demons.

  “They need to see you down in the office,” Ms. Olivio said.

  “Sure,” Mark said, picking up his backpack and jacket as he headed towards the door. There were a few low “oohs” and “ahhs,” but probably less than there would’ve been since the now classic Bike Helmet Episode.

  “Hey,” Mark said when Ms. Olivio closed the classroom door behind him. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you, is that okay?” He took his badge out from the chest pocket of his jacket and let it hang from there.

  “I guess. What’s going on?”

  “I think it’d be best if we did this downstairs in the office. I don’t think we want to talk about this out in the hallway.”

  “What’s going on?” Mark asked again, his voice trembling.

  “Let’s talk about it downstairs, okay?”

  “Sure,” Mark said, and they were silent until they got down to the basement office. A couple of the secretaries looked away when he made eye contact and Mr. Lafayette glared at Mark intently as they walked into his office. Detective Prescott nodded at him and then closed the door behind them.

  “Have a seat,” the detective said, taking one of the ones in front of Mr. Lafayette’s desk.

  “Mark, I’m sure you’ve heard that something happened here last night. Do you know what that was?”

  “No. I mean, I heard some kids talking in homeroom. They said there was some sort of accident and something happened to Ms. Kennedy?”

  The detective sighed and reached into his pocket, bringing out a small notebook. “Well, something happened to Ms. Kennedy, but it was no accident. She was murdered.”

  “Oh my God,” Mark said, struggling with the balance of sounding surprised and not sounding too surprised. “How?”

  “The details aren’t important, except for the fact that there are some similarities between her death and Clara’s. I wanted to talk to you about it, not just because of that, but because they said that the two of you had a pretty loud confrontation in here yesterday and then you ran off. Is that true?”

  “Well, I met with her and everything like she asked me too but I don’t think it was a confrontation. And I didn’t run off, I just left.” Unlike last time they spoke, Detective Prescott seemed totally closed off. The nice “I’m your buddy McGruff the crime dog, here are some tissues” cop was gone.

  “Mark, I’m going to level with you. I’d like to think this is just a coincidence, but there are two things that connect this killing and Clara’s. One of them is you, and you’re my only lead here. If you’re in some kind of trouble, or if you’re scared of something or someone, I want you to tell me about it. Before someone else gets hurt.”

  “Shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something? I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on here.” He was getting hot, and the stupid chair was making him slide everywhere.

  “Mark, if I you want to I can take you down to the station and we can wait for a lawyer there, but I don’t think we have to do that. I just want to talk. I can tell you’re real scared, and--”

  “Of course I’m scared!” Mark yelled, perhaps a little too loudly. He flinched, but the detective was stoic. “I mean, one minute I’m in English and the next minute I’m down here in the Assistant Principal’s office talking about murder! I mean
, this is pretty crazy! What you want me to say?”

  The detective just looked at him, and before he could say anything, there was a bellow from out in the office. A very familiar bellow.

  “Where is he?”

  The detective turned to look out the window, and Mark answered the unasked question. “My Uncle Joe. I think he’s here to pick me up. Or kill me.”

  Detective Prescott sighed and opened the door, just in time to see Joe practically steamroll over Mr. Lafayette, who’d been trying to keep him out. Joe wasn’t having any of it and was in mid finger-wagging bellow as the two of them got out of the office. As soon as Joe saw Mark he dodged around Mr. Lafayette with surprising agility.

  “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Mark had to resist the urge to crawl under a table, no matter how lucky his arrival had been.

  “Mr. Nelson,” the detective said, getting Joe’s attention. “I’m Detective David Prescott from the Cedar Ridge Police Department. We met when I came to talk to Mark about his friend’s death. I just wanted a moment to talk to your nephew about an incident that happened here last night.”

  “Just because you’ve been in my house doesn’t mean you can just talk to my nephew whenever you want. I’m still responsible for him.”

  “I know,” David said, “but if you could just calm down, we can talk about this rationally.”

  “Rationally my ass,” Joe said. “I get a call down at work,” he tugged on the postal jacket for effect, “to say that the police are going to talk to my nephew and you wanna talk ‘rational’ to me? Like hell, buddy! If you want to talk to him,” he jabbed a thick finger in Mark’s direction, “then you talk to me, and my lawyer, understood?”

  “Mr. Nelson,” David started again, but Joe waved him off.

  “Don’t fucking ‘Mr. Nelson’ me, alright? Save that shit for someone else, ‘cause I ain’t buyin’. Last I checked we had rights.”