Shadow of the Past

by Thacher Cleveland

  “Be quiet,” Mark said. “I’m going to deal with that little traitor in my own time. But right now, I’m going to enjoy killing all three of you.”

  “Can I kill one?” Jack said, fingers twitching on the gun.

  “Maybe the detective. These two,” he said, pointing the pistol at Steve and the Christine. “These two are mine. That little bastard doesn’t have enough blood on his hands yet.”

  “You killed my brother, and the others, didn’t you?” Christine said.

  “Yes, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the act of killing as much as I did knowing I was using his body to do it in.”

  “You’re insane,” Prescott said. “Just the shadow of a sick and evil man who should have stayed dead.”

  “No, I couldn’t stay dead. There’s still work to be done, and I’m going to finish what was started.”

  “Mark,” Steve said, bringing the barrel of the gun, and the thing’s attention, back to him. “You can fight this.”

  “He’s as much a part of this as I am,” he said. “Even more so. He can’t--”

  “Shut up, I’m talking to my friend,” Steve said. “I know you can hear me in there and I want to say I’m sorry. I’ve been a lousy friend, but I have faith in you. You can--”

  “Shut up!”

  “You can fight this. You’ve been a fighter your whole life and you can’t give up now. We need you. She needs you and this thing--”

  “Stop it! Stop it or she dies!” he said, pointing the pistol at Christine.

  “Whatever it said to you, it lies. It can’t possibly know you as well as I do, and I know that you aren’t going to let anything happen to her. He’s going to kill her Mark, and you have to be strong, you have to be stronger than it--”

  “Be quiet,” he hissed, eyes narrowing and jaw clenching. The once steady hand that aimed the pistol began to shake. From the corner of Mark’s eyes, small tendrils of black smoke began to seep out like tears.

  “Mark, please. You’re better than this asshole. This stupid, punk-ass undead piece of serial killing shit, you are so much better than--“

  “Shut up!” he roared, swinging the gun back at Steve. He was sweating, and the smoke began to flow from between Mark’s clenched teeth.

  “Mark,” Steve said. “Kick this thing’s ass, okay?”

  Mark grimaced and then squeezed his eyes shut, the gun trembling in his hand. Steve stepped forward. Mark was winning. He could see it all over his face and any second now--

  Mark’s eyes flew open, and the sudden clap of thunder was deafening.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Mark watched the whole thing unfold, right from when Joe knocked him out and Corwin had taken the driver’s seat. He was standing outside himself just as he had when he saw Clara and Ms. Kennedy killed and watched Corwin call Christine and then Jack. Talking to Christine, Corwin stared at Mark’s disembodied form as he whimpered and did what was a painfully accurate imitation of Mark’s emotional idiosyncrasies.

  Corwin slipped out the small window in Mark’s attic room, tugging Mark’s consciousness along for the ride. He walked to the house on Briarcliff, and Mark wondered how many times he’d done this when Mark was asleep. He’d been toying with Mark the whole time, showing him bits and pieces of his nocturnal activities.

  It’s no wonder I’ve been so tired these past few months, he thought. I’ve been getting more exercise than I thought.

  All he could do was watch helplessly as Corwin lured Christine to the basement and proceeded to hold her, Steve and David hostage. He swirled formlessly around his own body and Jack as they held the three of them at gunpoint.

  When Steve began his impassioned pleas for Mark to do something, there was a part of him that wanted Corwin to just shoot the asshole and get it done with.

  Sure, and then he can shoot Christine, the Detective, and then you’ll probably spend the rest of your existence watching Corwin and Jack do god knows what in pursuit of their own brand of bat-shit crazy. Or, for kicks, you can listen to what he’s saying and do more than just roll over and say there’s nothing you can do.

  Mark moved closer to his body, and he could see Corwin dart his eyes in Mark’s direction. For the first time since the spirit taken up residence, he looked unsure of himself. Mark moved forward again, and he could feel the tug of his own body trying to drawn him back in.

  Corwin’s black smoke began to seep out of his eyes and mouth and the tendrils moved up, trying to block Mark’s progress. Mark dodged from one side to the other, trying to get around them. He could move, he realized. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was awake this time or because Corwin was more distracted, but this wasn’t the same as before.

  “Mark, kick this thing’s ass, okay?”

  Mark darted forward, forcing himself through the smoke, blinding and burning him for a moment until he felt the familiar tug of gravity and rush of oxygen into lungs that burned like they’d been filled with charcoal.

  He sprung up, expecting gun-toting Jack or a shadowy Corwin to pounce on him, but they weren’t there. Neither was Christine or Steve or Detective Prescott.

  “You think it’s that easy, don’t you?”

  The voice came from all around him, and Mark spun in place trying to get a read on his surroundings. The basement was darker than it was in reality, and when he turned to face the furnace he stopped in his tracks.

  In Corwin’s mind (or was it his?) it wasn’t just a furnace. It was a mammoth atrocity of black coiled metal stretching from floor to ceiling and extending impossibly far back into the darkness, beyond what his eyes could see. The fuel chamber door wasn’t a small window of bars and glass, but a crisscrossed network of bars barely containing a roaring wall of flame.

  The pipes that ran along the ceiling were twice as numerous as they were in reality, and Mark could hear them straining at things moving inside them, trying to get out. The fire surged, and the bars holding it back began to yield to their power.

  It wasn’t a furnace, it was a prison. And whatever it held wanted out.

  “You think you can just waltz back in here and kick me out, is that it?”

  The voice was behind him now, and Mark turned to see Corwin’s smoke form issue forth from underneath the stairs, the fire in his eyes roaring brighter than Mark had seen before.

  “This is my mind,” Mark said. “I’m not going to let you use me anymore.”

  The smoke under Corwin’s eyes twisted into a sneer as he began to make a slow circuit around Mark. “Oh, like you have a choice. Like you’ve ever had a choice.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You don’t even know what this is. I know everything that’s been in your head these past few months and what you think what I’ve shown you means, but you don’t know anything.”

  “I know enough,” Mark said, turning with Corwin as he paced around him.

  “Oh, yes. You think I’m Justin Corwin, crazed killer of children and I think you’re Darren Cox, the innocent boy that escaped Corwin’s rampage. I’ve come back somehow to finish the job I started 50 years ago.”

  “That’s what you’ve shown me, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve only seen what I’ve allowed you to see. Let me show you the rest.”

  He waved a hand and everything rippled and dissolved into smoke. It reformed around them, taking the shape of the final vision that Mark had of Darren, Corwin and Randal. Off to the side of them, Mark watched as Randal raced from the cell that Corwin had neglected to latch and the three of them struggled just as Mark had seen in his dream.

  Darren, tattered shirt barely hanging on to his blood-streaked torso, picked up the blade as Randal and Corwin wrestled. Corwin smashed Randal’s head into the ground, knocking the boy unconscious and blindly reached for the blade. When he couldn’t find it, he turned to see it clutched in Darren’s hands, drawn back as if the kid were a major league hitter.

  Corwin’s eyes went wide as Darren swung with all his might. The blade nicked a tiny bit of Cor
win’s hair before slashing through Randal’s neck, sending a spray of blood across them. Randal flailed weakly, head tilted at an obscenely impossible angle.

  Darren dropped the blade on the ground in front of him, eyes wide. There was no fear in the boy’s eyes, just awe at the wondrous sight in front of him.

  “I’m a believer,” Darren said.

  Corwin nodded, picking up the blade. He dragged Randal’s body closer to the furnace and bent down to finish the job Darren’s swing started. Corwin paused, looking over his shoulder at Darren.

  “I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew there was something in there. It’s why I have to do this. I just need someone to understand and see it.”

  Darren nodded and took a step forward, and as he did there was a commotion above them like a clumsy, drunken parade. Darren and Corwin looked at each other, and then the door at the top of the stairs burst open. Blue clad legs raced down the steps, and when they reached the landing they bent down, and a young face topped with a policeman’s cap peered at them.

  “Down here!” the officer yelled, face going white.

  Corwin turned back to his work, taking a fistful of Randal’s hair and pulling and twisting with all his might. The officer raced down the steps, followed closely by three more officers, all of them with their nightsticks drawn. Darren was almost knocked over by the group of them, and they started swinging as soon as Corwin was within arm’s reach.

  Randal’s body fell to the ground, ignored as the four of them pummeled Corwin with all their might.

  “Easy! Easy!” shouted a plain clothes detective, running down the stairs. “I want him alive! Alive, dammit!” The group grudgingly stopped, pulling the barely conscious Corwin away from the furnace and his final victim.

  “Mother of God,” the detective said, coming to a stop at Darren’s side. He bent down and turned Darren away from Randal’s nearly headless corpse. “It’s all over now, son. We’ll have you home to your mum and dad quick as we can.”

  The Detective led Darren up the steps, following the officers dragging Corwin up the steps. Darren turned and looked back, staring deeply into the furnace fire until he was completely up the stairs and out of sight.

  “That wasn’t real,” Mark said. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I? You read it yourself in your little book. Only one survivor, Corwin kills himself in his cell. It was all there.”

  “Corwin kills . . . But you, you’re . . .”

  “Not him, Mark. I never was. See what you get when you assume?”

  The smoke melted away from his body, revealing a young man, just barely 20, maybe a few years older.

  “Wh . . . who?”

  “Here,” the man said. “Let me give you a hint.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt and held it open for Mark to see the long scar, wide and dull with age, running from hip to shoulder.

  “No, that’s not possible,” Mark said. “It was me. I was Darren Cox.”

  “No, I just showed you all the things that I remembered after I was taken, when I was made to watch what happened and when I saw my Lord in the fire. When my life was given purpose.”

  “Why me? Why did you have to come after me? I don’t have anything to do with this!”

  “Because we needed you Mark. He needed you. You were the first one to see Him. You were the one that showed me the way. We had to wait for decades for his soul, your soul, to be drawn back here, but now it has and you’re back where you belong.

  Justin.”

  Mark squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block it all out, but he could feel it rising to the surface. His parents, the war, coming down to this basement, staring into the furnace . . . it all came back, filling in all the blanks the visions and the book had left behind.

  His past life as Justin Corwin burned into his memory.

  He remembered how, after being in his cell and away from the fire the memory of what he’d done coming to him. He knew that he had to pay, before the lawyer his relatives had hired got him sent to some mental institution for the rest of his life, claiming the war made him do those horrible things.

  He had to pay, and with a bed sheet wrapped around the cell bars at one end and his neck at the other he made sure that he did.

  “Why? Why would you bring me back here? Why do you need me?” Mark said when his breath finally came back.

  “Because you ran away you coward! You took the easy way out, and left me there on the edge of something truly great, something divine! I had to wait for years, to pretend that what I saw was horrible and in my imagination. My family moved away, and I had to wait until I left home to come back here, and even then He still wanted you. He needed you, and I knew that the only way I could bring you back here was to sacrifice my flesh and wait until the day you were brought back here. I stayed in this house, protecting it, until you were old enough for me to use you.”

  Mark leaned against one of the basement poles for support. He slid down in under the weight of his former life and Darren’s trembling rage.

  “But why? It wasn’t me . . . not really.”

  “Mark, Mark, Mark.” Darren bent down close to him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t ever thought ‘What have I done to deserve this? Why me, why me, why me?’ And don’t lie and tell me you don’t, because I know you have. You’d sit in bed and you’d wonder what you did, what happened that you ended up with such a horrid, miserable life. Well, now you know. And do you really think that the universe would just let something like that go? That it wouldn’t bring you back here to face what you left behind when you took the coward’s way out?”

  “That’s not fair, it wasn’t me! I’m just a kid!”

  “So was I! I was just a kid but you opened my eyes! You made me watch, and right there at the end, when I had accepted it, when we were on the verge of bringing the thing we worshipped into this world, you quit! You left me after seeing those things, and now, so help me, we are going to finish what you started!”

  Mark shook his head. “Never. I don’t care what I may have done, or what happened to you, you can’t make me!”

  “Oh yes I can, Mark. Where do you have left to go? Who do you have out there to help you? No one! I walked you around this town and picked them off, using their blood to make our Lord strong again. Now we’re here again and all we have to do is kill these three and He will come through and grant us power beyond our wildest dreams. We will spread his fire across this town, across the world, and nothing will be able to stop us.”

  “I’ll never let you hurt them, or cause whatever hell on earth you think you can create.”

  “Oh, come on now,” Darren said. The room shifted again, showing the wear and neglect of 50 years time. His body, as well as all the others, materialized where they were out in the real world, frozen in place.

  “What are you going to do Mark? Tell them ‘Whoops, it turns out that I’m a reincarnated serial killer and this whole thing is my fault.’” He motioned to Christine. “Are you going to tell her that her brother was killed because she showed pity to a killer?”

  “It’s not--” he started, but Darren cut him off again.

  “Is that what you’re going to tell the Detective here? ‘Sorry, sir. It turns out that I did kill all those people, but it wasn’t really me, see? I was possessed by a ghost, that’s all. No harm, no foul.’ Do you think he’d even hesitate before sending you to jail? Or an asylum? Or the electric chair? All those people are dead, because you did something so awful, so evil, that it will always be with you no matter what you do. You can’t control it and you can’t change it. All you can do is give in to what I’m offering you.”

  “No, you’re wrong. They’ll know that it was you that did all those things, not me. They care about me, and--”

  “Bullshit!” Darren said, waving at the three time-frozen hostages. “You’re just a case to the Detective, something to be solved, accounted for and forgotten. Even before she knew this was your fault, the girl was sneaking around on you. She never love
d you and she never will! Even your own so-called best friend betrayed you! Why on Earth would they stand by you now?”

  Darren moved closer, placing a hand on Mark’s shoulder. The rage was gone, and now he was wide-eyed and pleading. “There’s only one way out of this, Mark. Accept me. Continue what you started all those years ago, and I promise you the rewards . . . oh Mark, we’ll have whatever our heart’s desire. I’ve seen the kind of power He has at his disposal. Their lives, their blood, will free Him, and this world will be ours.”

  Mark looked over at his body, frozen in place with the blade that had killed so many held down at his side with one hand, the gun in the other, pointed at Steve. He was frozen in the act of pleading with Mark to fight, and Mark’s own face twisted with strain and rage.

  At Mark’s side was Jack, still pointing his pistol at David and as full of rage as Mark was, Jack had one thing in his eyes that Mark’s body didn’t: Joy.

  Mark looked back at Darren.

  “Go back to hell.”

  The pleading innocence vanished as Darren’s eyes burst with a roar of fire and anger, and the smoke he’d hidden himself with rose like a tidal wave and dove towards Mark. Mark leapt for his frozen body and almost made it there before the wave of darkness crashed over him.

  The blackness muffled everything. All he could feel was searing heat as what felt like dozens of tiny, burning fingers dug into him, trying to pull him back. The rest of his senses were reduced to a dull, underwater roar as he pushed forward hoping he was still going in the right direction.

  The roar and pain intensified, and then there was a burst of light so bright that he couldn’t make out anything. He could feel his body shaking as his mind took control again. His eyes began refocusing as the light faded away, only to be replaced by a smoky haze that hung in the air in front of him. There was a clap of thunder and then he could hear again.

  Steve was in front of him, and he wasn’t pleading anymore, just looking at Mark with surprise. He backed up, mouth moving, but all Mark could hear was a high-pitched shrieking. Steve bumped into the furnace behind him, and then raised his hands to cover the ragged hole in his throat that was pouring blood all down his shirt.