Dead Light March

by Daniel José Older

  “Squint,” Bertram said. “That’s how you see ’em.”

  She did, then gasped. An army of tall, prowling shadows swarmed through the crowd. They were all shapes and sizes and seemed to be in a frenzy; three stalked toward them on long, translucent legs.

  “Just … act … normal,” Mort urged.

  “What does that even mean?” Mina said.

  “And think about anything but what we’re here to do. Spirits are great about reading intentions on people.”

  “Wait, but …”

  “They’re looking for us,” Bertram hissed. “Go to your happy place or whatever you need to do to take your mind of the job till they pass.”

  George Travis Johnson, Mina thought. Texas, 1870 to 1900. The shadows stalked closer, their narrow heads swinging side to side, long arms reaching over the crowd. Victims were mostly prostitutes and migrant workers. Killed in a shoot-out in San Antonio. One loomed on either side of them now; they glanced down, and Mina was sure they were glaring at her.

  “Scatter,” Mort said as soon as they’d passed. “But don’t run, it’ll draw them. Just walk off in some direction. We meet back up at Grand Army in twenty.”

  “Got it,” Bertram said. “Mina, stay safe.”

  Mina realized she was shaking. So did Mort, apparently. “You can come with me,” he said, in a voice that would’ve been comforting, sexy even, if she’d trusted him more. As it was, she had no idea what to do.

  “Alright.” She nodded. Bertram peeled off toward Underhill and Mina followed Mort up into the sloping park between the Brooklyn Museum and the library.

  “Is it worth it?” Mina asked as they made their way through the darkness away from the Parkway.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever they’re paying you. They are paying you, aren’t they? You said you’re a freelancer.”

  “Yeah.” Mort’s voice sounded far away, all the warmth gone.

  “How much?”

  “Hm?”

  “How much money, Mort?”

  “Oh, Mina — there are more important kinds of payment then money to a man like me.”

  “Like what?”

  They settled into a shadowy grove by the far end of the park.

  “Like lots of money.”

  Mina rolled her eyes. “How much, man?”

  “I’m only half-kidding. There is cash involved, but there are also greater forms of currency in the world we travel.”

  “How do the Sorrows even have money?”

  Mort paused for so long Mina wasn’t sure if he was going to answer at all. Then he said, “The Sorrows have lots of people helping them,” and left it at that. A few seconds later he let out a shrill “Shh!”

  “What?” Mina whispered.

  “One of them’s out there. It’s coming.”

  At first she thought he meant one of the people helping the Sorrows. Then she squinted, saw the impossible shimmering figure gliding through the darkness with long strides, stifled a scream.

  “Don’t move,” Mort said. “Don’t even breathe.”

  Before Mina even had a chance to hold her breath, Mort launched out into the field. The spirit turned to face him just as he closed with it. Mort leapt into the air with a yell and came down right where it stood. The towering shadow stumbled back a few steps, caught off guard, and was rallying to swing at him when it froze. Mort had somehow latched on to it with the same hand he’d placed up against Mina’s: the hand that had sucked her light away. She shuddered. The spirit flailed in Mort’s grasp, swung at him with its other hand but couldn’t seem to find purchase; its flickering translucence just moved smooth through him. Mort flinched but held fast as the spirit fell to its knees and then collapsed before him.

  And then it was gone entirely.

  Mina took a step out of the underbrush. She wasn’t even sure why she was so shook — the shadow was hunting them, after all; Mort had been protecting her — but still: Her hands trembled and she could barely catch her breath. It had all happened so fast.

  “You alright?” Mort asked, walking back over. It struck Mina as an odd question since he was the one who had just been locked in mortal combat with a giant shadow, but then again, she was the one who was a mess and probably looked it.

  She shook her head, nodded, shrugged.

  “There there,” Mort said, with a tenderness that would’ve lit up her crooked little heart just a few hours earlier. “I wasn’t gonna let it hurt you, hon.”

  She nodded, croaked a thank-you as he threw his jacket over her shoulders.

  “You’re shaking,” Mort said in a gravelly whisper. He wrapped an arm around her and they started out across the dark field.

  The shadows were alive; each one menaced and shuddered in the September wind. The night was made of shadows — the dim streetlamps and headlights barely held them back. “How … What … ?”

  “Listen carefully.” His face was very close to hers; she felt the heat of him, smelled the sharp mix of his cologne and body odor. “These shadow children have a power outside even their own house, beyond Shadowhouse. This ’shaping thing they do, it’s not of this world.”

  “What do you mean their house?”

  “Long ago,” Mort said, sounding suddenly like an old storyteller sitting by a campfire, “the mother of the Sorrows divided the world up into various houses. She created the House of Light first, but the original Lucera declared war on it, called on the power of darkness and death to defeat it. So La Contessa created other houses to unify and destroy the shadow workers. Those power struggles persist to this day, as various houses compete for primacy. But the shadowshapers are something even beyond the houses. They are of it and not. They are dangerous, Mina. Dangerous to the order of things. The Sorrows know this, and soon they’ll deal with them for good, finally. This, tonight, this is just the opening salvo.”

  “I don’t … It’s so much.”

  “That spirit, because that’s what it was, Mina, a spirit, a dead thing — a ghost — it would’ve found us. And it probably couldn’t have hurt us, not in its shadow form, at least not much, but it would’ve known us, and it would’ve gone back to its masters, to Lucera, to the shadow children, with that information. Are you hearing me?”

  Mina nodded, couldn’t look at him.

  “And they would’ve come here. They would’ve brought more shadows and then they would’ve splattered drawings across the pavement, crude chalk renderings that their ghosts would’ve crawled inside of, given life to and then, then, they would’ve really come for us, hunted us down, probably slaughtered us, or worse.”

  They reached the edge of the park, a sloping precipice with just a swath of wilderness and iron fence holding off the pulsing festivities on Eastern Parkway. Mina closed her eyes.

  “And that can still happen, Mina. They can still come for us. And if you want out, you can get out now. Walk away. Don’t come back. That’s your choice.”

  She shook her head. “What did you do to it? Did you … did you kill it?”

  “It was already dead. I said it was a ghost. Just, now it’s gone for good. It can’t get to you now.”

  Mina knew that was supposed to make her feel better, but somehow she wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or not. When she opened her eyes, the night seemed even darker than it had just a few moments earlier.

  Five.

  That one extra beat, Juan thought as he tapped his foot along with Ruben’s jangling drums, just one beat, and it messes everyone up. Glory.

  Ruben sent the cymbals shimmering and rolled back to the one on the snare, landing with a heavy thump on the bass drum.

  Everyone’s used to that simple one two three four count, so used to it they don’t even realize that’s what it is. And then you throw in that extra beat, that five … Everything feels slightly off, elongated, like when you overstay your welcome at a party.

  Gordo added in a sprinkle of piano. He was grinning, Juan knew, without having to look. Out in the darkness, th
e crowd was shoved into every nook and corner of the Red Edge, staring at the stage with wide-open expectation.

  Until it doesn’t, Juan thought, feeling the melody rise inside him. He lifted his guitar, tapped the effects pedal with his sneaker, waited. Until something shifts and what was once bizarre, off, extra, becomes the norm.

  Pulpo launched in with his bass, a sporadic dip and tumble on the one, three, and four, leaving that blessed fifth beat a gaping, sudden emptiness before plunging back to the one. Culebra moved as one now, each of them steeped and soaked in the count: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1

  Juan readied his pick, left hand poised, index finger pressed against the string and the whole shape of the melody unraveling in front of him. Felt the weight of so many eyes on him (not Bennie’s though, don’t think about Bennie) but still he waited. It wasn’t time yet. The audience might be perplexed — Kaz had jumped in, tumbling through a modified bolero riff on the congas, and now all that was left was guitar, melody, Juan — but the boys knew not to second-guess his pause. There was a piece missing and Culebra would find it.

  That’s when Gordo’s tinkling piano notes growled suddenly into overdrive. He must’ve clicked some button on that keyboard and laid heavy on the chords: Each grinding, toppling harmony pressed forward into the next in a flinchless swirl.

  Yes.

  Juan let the new monster this song had become grind by twice as Pulpo rose to the occasion, kicking his bass riff into some kind of manic surf guitar fury. Here it came.

  3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, now!

  Juan released the first note of the melody like a warning shot. The whole club shook with it, and then it simmered out of existence like a firecracker into the night, leaving traces and dancing echoes.

  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3

  Again he released, this time a smooth dip and saunter of notes gliding up and down the scale. The crowd held perfectly still, electrified. Gordo fell back into long, heavy chords that stretched across whole measures and then slid forward into the next. Pulpo stayed trilling, shoving the beat forward.

  4, 5, 1, 2

  Juan unleashed again, the song now reaching upward, beyond where he’d even known it to go; it stretched like a waking giant toward the dark club ceiling and beyond into the sky.

  3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2

  And then there was Bennie, not in the crowd — hopefully she was there too — but inside Juan, unfurling like a heavenly bird, all feathers and flesh and light bursting out around her but somehow coming from her too, light filled the dark club and the melody and Juan. The song gathered itself like a snake and then exploded.

  It was all in her head. That was the only explanation. Sierra rubbed her eyes as Culebra rocked the club around her into mesmerized, rhythmic trance.

  Not the spirits — they were real, of course. Sierra had seen them, felt them, she knew them. That wasn’t a question. But those whispered warnings, that certainty she’d felt that something was coming … It had to be fear playing tricks with her mind. She’d let all that stress and loneliness get the best of her, let it muddle whatever the spirits had actually been trying to say. Let it twist her intuition into terror, sheer terror. Nothing was coming for her. Wick had vanished, but he was broken and powerless, wherever he was. The Sorrows were licking their wounds still. The spirit world had finally found some semblance of order now that she’d taken up the mantle of Lucera from her exiled grandma.

  “Si?” Beside her Bennie had been bopping along to Culebra’s weird new jam with unusual enthusiasm.

  “Hm?” The spirit world was in order and she’d been making up the gnawing sense of doom. So why did she still feel it?

  “What’s the deal with this song?”

  Sierra felt like she was emerging from a cloud. She looked around. The song teetered and writhed around them like a broken mechanical ballerina, beautiful and yet off in a way that was somehow perfect. She shrugged. “You know those boys always trying out weird new music nerd shit and making it work.”

  “It’s kinda pretty,” Bennie said.

  “I guess. Hey, did you hear anything weird earlier, when we were on the Parkway?”

  “Besides your brother tryna make small talk and sounding like a goober? Nah.”

  “That is weird. But no I mean when I was … when I told you the spirits were bugging out about something coming.”

  The song ratcheted up a notch and Bennie and Sierra had to hold off a pulsing throng of hipsters getting a little too hype.

  “Oh! Nope. I squinted and saw some of ’em stomping around but didn’t hear nothin’. Why?”

  If Bennie hadn’t heard it, maybe she really had made the whole thing up. Sierra shook her head. “Nothin’.”

  Bennie raised her eyebrows. “Girl.”

  “I just … I’m not sure what’s what anymore, is all.”

  “Oh, that. No biggie, then.”

  Sierra elbowed her. “You know what I mean.”

  “You mean you’re doubting yourself.”

  “Deeply.”

  Bennie slid her arm around Sierra’s so they were linked as the crowd grew rowdier around them. “I feel you. We all do it.”

  “Do we though? I mean, like this?”

  “Okay, well … we all do it in one way or another.”

  “I mean, yeah, the spirits are real. But that don’t mean I’m not also just making some things up, right? Both could be true.”

  Bennie frowned. “I have no idea, Si.”

  “Both could be true. I’m stressed, B. You know that. And stress’ll do things to you. To your mind. Make everything seem worse than it is. But it’s a long weekend, and we at a weird shwanky club in the Slope. And Culebra has a freaky-ass new song.” She shook her head, found a smile. “I gotta live this moment.”

  “Well then,” Bennie said, pulling her into the crowd, “let’s dance.”

  The song knows when it wants to end, Gordo always said. Gordo was, in fact, right behind Juan, getting ridiculous on the keys. But his musical wisdom stayed Obi-Wan-Kenobi-ing through Juan’s mind whenever a quandary came up, and right now, Juan had no idea how this damn song was supposed to wrap up.

  “Aliiiiiive,” Pulpo roared into the mic. “Once more alive for the very first ti-me!”

  “Una vez más por la primera vez,” Ruben and Kaz chimed in.

  Juan had no idea when his best friend had started singing, or when the drummers had decided to join on backup vocals — it just seemed to rise up naturally as part of the song. “Again!” Pulpo hollered, almost as an afterthought. Gordo had managed to extend the kaleidoscoping salsa piano riff into a five-four time signature, because that old guy was clearly a sorcerer of some kind, and he stood there smiling, his fingers stretched to long octaves and twirling in between notes along the keys.

  It was coming, that end; Juan could feel it like a faraway train rumbling toward him, getting louder and surer with each passing measure. He would know — but what if you don’t, a little voice nagged, and it passes you by? Juan frowned and shrugged off the doubt, launching into a wild, unexpected solo that caught even Culebra off guard. Then, one by one, the other instruments fell away until it was just Juan and that manic, static snarl. No drums, no bass, no keys; Juan unleashed himself from the rickety time signature and went astral, blasting out tall, shimmering note after note against the roar of the crowd.

  Each one crested and simmered out of the one before it, until the space between them grew longer and longer and then, as a hundred wide-eyed faces waited, Juan let the last ridiculous, glorious deluge of sound burst forth, and then Culebra joined back in while he ripped through a final strut down the scale.

  The Red Edge lost its collective shit. Juan and Pulpo traded a dap and then Juan nodded at the others. They’d done well, all of them. Made something brand-new, virtually from scratch. Maybe Bennie had heard it — he was pretty sure she was out there somewhere. But even if she hadn’t — Juan had taken all that churning whatever-it-was he’d been feeling and turned it into
something, something, besides just angst. He let loose his Cheshire cat grin on the crowd just as Izzy smoothstepped out onto the stage to more wild cheering.

  “Um,” she said, grabbing a mic, “that was weird and dope as hell but in the words of Thomas Jefferson, can we get back to politics?”

  “Please,” Pulpo said in a squeaky falsetto.

  Izzy rounded off the exchange with a curt, “Yo.”

  The whole club cracked up, apparently in on some joke that had sailed directly over Juan’s head.

  “I am positive,” Juan said into his mic, “that Thomas Jefferson did not say that!” He clicked on his wa-wa pedal and started a smooth wukka-wukka strut. Ruben jumped in immediately with a hip-hop beat.

  “I mean, who cares?” Izzy said, winking at the audience. “Jefferson was a rapey, people-owning creepmonger. I’d rather quote Lin-Manuel anyway, feel me?”

  The crowd definitely felt her. Juan just shrugged and amped up the strut.

  “Or Daveed, with his fine ass,” Izzy continued. “Anyways, turn up!” Juan and Pulpo went into their wide thrasher stance simultaneously and smashed into an overdrive riff.

  Izzy held the mic away from her face like she was winding up to pitch the final strikeout at the World Series. Then she leaned way out over the crowd and began. “If every action has its equal opposite reaction / does every faction get divided up into smaller fractions? / Do people tell the truth when they on the rack, son? / Do we believe the lies that spawn our hearts to act, son?”

  “No!” Culebra yelled into the mics, just liked they’d practiced after that set on Coney Island over the summer (and never again since).

  “Can we deny the times they tried and lied and died, son?”

  “No!”

  “Can we compare the snares and slings that led to action?”

  “No!”

  “We must resist and never desist and smash the list, sis.”

  “Yes!”

  “We fight to live and then forgive then get stopped and frisked, sis.”