Forest of Shadows

by Hunter Shea

  John lifted his video camera with a grunt, I’m not getting any younger, and trotted up the stairs. The air on the second floor was stale and hot. Large droplets of sweat slid down his face as he lay out the cables and tested the camera. A few minutes later, dark crescent moons blotted the underarms of his shirt. His heart raced with the exertion and cloying heat.

  John felt the first pinpricks of anxiety start to take root deep in his belly. Breathing was becoming a chore and he felt cold beneath the layer of perspiration that had broken out all over his body.

  He dropped a handful of cable and leaned against the wall.

  Steady.

  His heart rate doubled. His head felt lighter, followed by his hands and feet. Suddenly, his bladder felt like it was ready to burst.

  “You’re cool, John. Nothing’s going to happen. You’re just winded, that’s all. Nothing wrong with getting winded, especially when it’s this fucking hot,” he said to himself.

  After a few deep breaths, the anxiety started to recede. Calmer, he resumed his task, taking it slower, listening to the muffled sound of Eve and Ed talking in the kitchen. When he was done, he rinsed his face off in the bathroom sink, savoring the kiss of cold water, letting it flow across his wrists. The last thing he wanted to do was shamble into the kitchen white as a sheet. That would have sent Ed over the edge.

  Eve handed over the audio tapes and smiled when he walked in.

  “All set,” he told Ed. “If you need anything at all, please feel free to call me.” He handed him a gray business card.

  Ed Smythe thanked them both several times as he walked them to the front door. Eve waved as they drove away.

  “Poor guy,” she said. “You can tell he’s so alone and afraid.”

  “You should go out to dinner with him. I’m sure that would ease his problems far more than anything I can do.” John smiled and Eve lightly punched his arm.

  “Do you think there’s a ghost in Ed’s house?” she asked.

  “Other than the shadow of his unfulfilled dreams? Probably not. You never know, though. For his sake, I actually hope it is some kind of spirit. Something tells me a little excitement might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “That’s an even tougher road. Then the ghost is in his own mind, and that’s a lot harder to get a handle on.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sheriff Gary High Bear was just finishing the last of his coffee when Erica placed his check face down by his plate. He gently placed the cup back on the coffee-stained saucer and smiled.

  “No free pass for the sole protector of the town?”

  The diner had thinned out considerably over the past twenty minutes as everyone hauled themselves to work. The sound of the radio, tuned to the local news station, was now the predominant source of noise in the dining room, interspersed with the clacking of dishes and spatulas scraping across the grill. The smell of bacon, pancakes and coffee was overwhelming and comforting.

  His mischievous blue eyes sparkled and his smile caused the lines in his tanned face to grow deeper, making him look older yet stronger. His heavy gray mustache tilted up in a V.

  The waitress, over thirty years his junior and pretty as they came, gave him a wink and said, “You didn’t leave me a tip the other day, so now you pay.”

  The sheriff pushed back into his chair and held his hand to his heart, like she had wounded him deeply with her words.

  “In fact,” she added, “you haven’t left me a tip in as long as I can remember. Unless you count that time I rang you up and you let me keep the twelve cents change you didn’t want rattling around your pocket.” She adjusted her dyed red hair under its cap, turned, and walked down the counter to refill another customer’s coffee.

  Hubert, the owner and cook at Cheryl’s Diner, popped his head out of the opening between the kitchen and the dining room and shouted, “Would you leave the sheriff alone, Erica. You won’t be so quick to antagonize the man when you need his help some day.”

  Erica rolled her round eyes and faced the sheriff.

  “See what you did. Now I’m in trouble with the boss.” She walked over, scooped up the check, crumpled it and tossed it in the garbage. Bending over the counter to get closer, she whispered, “I think I’m going to give you a nickname.”

  He leaned in conspiratorially and said, “And what name would that be?”

  “Sheriff Short Arms, Long Pockets.” She locked him with her gaze and held it until the corners of her mouth began to tilt upward.

  “Well then, I guess I better do something to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He could smell the faint aroma of her perfume, dulled from working the morning rush. Reaching into his wallet, he pulled out a five dollar bill and slid it across the counter to her. “That should square things for a while.”

  She quickly grabbed the bill, as if she was afraid it would vanish before she had the chance to get it.

  “That’ll buy you some time. That’s all I can promise.” She slowly walked to the other end of the diner to clean up a recently vacated booth. Gary watched her every move and reluctantly donned his hat and coat.

  “I’ll be seeing you, Hubert,” he yelled as he walked out the door.

  His cruiser, a dirt-encrusted Chevy truck, was parked in front of the diner, its front wheels resting on the sidewalk. He removed his nightstick from his belt, slipped it into the rack behind his head and put the truck in gear.

  Lord, that girl was going to be the death of him. It was a good thing there weren’t many customers around to witness their display. It was rough enough on a man his age to be carrying on with such a young, vibrant woman. Even tougher to keep it on the sly. Shida was a small town with the usual small town ways. Gossip ruled, especially during the cold season, which was maybe why they had started their romance in the spring. He could just imagine what people would say, an old man stealing chances to sleep with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.

  Of course, she wasn’t the first. There had been plenty over the years. Between his weathered good looks, legendary charm and job title, finding a woman to keep him warm in bed was never a problem. At his age, he was expected to keep his wandering eye within a socially acceptable circle of women, all in their late forties and upward, most of them with grown children and divorced or widowed. That all changed two months ago when Erica put the moves on him and he was powerless to resist. Erica made him feel like a young man again. Being sixty was bad in its own right. Living sixty years in Alaska was enough to make an old man dive for the nearest wheelchair and day nurse.

  No, being with Erica was good for him. He hoped it was good for her, too, but had his doubts. He was just a diversion, something to help her pass the time away. The novelty of screwing an old fart would wear off one day. He wasn’t so sure he would be able to let her go as easily, and that disturbed him. The longer they were together, the closer their secret came to being exposed.

  People talked, and talking was never good.

  Muraco Fenton took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled a cloud of smoke and howled at the full moon. His cry echoed across the forest, answered by the crack of twigs and brambles as startled deer, rabbits and squirrels darted into the darkness.

  His name meant White Moon and tonight was his night, the first night of the new moon. It hung in the sky like an oversized sponge ball, pockmarked from a summer of being bounced on sidewalks, thrown against walls and smacked by skinny stick ball bats.

  “Nice one. Have a beer.”

  Muraco’s crew sat around a small fire, guzzling beers from a case they had stolen from the volunteer fire department. It had been Wadi’s idea. His older brother was a volunteer fireman and bragged many a night about fighting fires and getting drunk afterwards with his fellow volunteers. He’d said they had soda vending machines stocked with a variety of beers and all you had to do was punch a button without inserting any money to have your pick.

  Getting the beer was simple. Just a few minute
s after nightfall, Wadi called in a phony fire report, something about hot oil blazing up when he, pretending to be that fat asshole Teddy Hawkins, had tried to make a batch of French fries. As soon as the firehouse emptied out, Muraco, Ahanu and Ciqala slipped inside, raiding the vending machines and stuffing the ice cold cans into an old Budweiser cardboard case they’d found in the garbage.

  It was a perfect way to kick off the new moon. Another couple of beers and the fun could really begin.

  He howled again, louder than the first time, tipping his head back as far as it could go, balling the hands of his outstretched arms into tight fists. Ahanu tossed him a beer and he bit down hard at the top. A jet stream of beer and foam shot up from the punctured can. He sucked hungrily, mindless of the fact that his hair and shirt were getting soaked. When the can was empty, Muraco tossed it into the darkness, bouncing it off a tree.

  “I still can’t figure out how you do that without busting your teeth,” Wadi said. “Remember that time I tried and I chipped the end off my tooth?”

  Muraco sat near the fire and chuckled. “You can’t do it, moron, because you don’t have the spirit of the wolf. That’s why you guys feel compelled to tag along behind me. You’re my pack.”

  The pack of four howled in unison until they broke down laughing.

  “I think my father once told me I had the spirit of a fox,” Wadi said.

  “If you have any spirit at all, it’s most likely a fat white woman who sits around all day and orders stuff from the Home Shopping Club,” Ciqala quickly interjected.

  Muraco broke the circle around the fire and jumped into his car; a restored 1968 Camaro, ebony exterior and interior with custom alloy rims that shined as bright as the full moon.

  “You ladies coming or what?”

  Ahanu grabbed what remained of the pilfered beer and they climbed into the Camaro. Four men, three years removed from their teens, hooted and hollered as the muscle car kicked up a cloud of dirt and gravel. They bounced about the interior as the car glided over the hardpack. Muraco slipped in a heavy metal CD, the CD player being the one concession to the twenty-first century in the vintage Camaro, and pushed the volume up high enough to drown out his pack’s drunken reverie.

  They drove into town and spotted Teddy Hawkins and Judas Graves walking out of Cheryl’s Diner.

  “Kind of late for dinner,” Ahanu said.

  “And early for a midnight snack,” Wadi added.

  “Just in time for Teddy’s second dinner, though,” Ahanu said with a sneer.

  Muraco flipped his hand to the backseat and motioned with his fingers for a beer. Ahana slipped it into his hand with anticipatory glee.

  The two men spotted the black car barreling down Main Street and were obviously deciding whether to continue on their way towards the approaching car or run in the other direction. Muraco would have given anything to see Teddy run.

  As they swept past the duo, Muraco threw the full can out the window and hit Judas square in the chest. He dropped down to his knees, holding his hand to his chest like a man in the throes of a heart attack. Checking his side view mirror, Muraco saw Teddy flip the car his middle finger. He immediately slammed the brakes and spun the car into a tight turn. Ciqala grunted in the back seat as Ahanu smashed into him.

  Muraco stepped from the car and shouted, “You have a problem, fat Teddy?”

  Teddy was trying to help Judas to his feet and keep his eye on Muraco at the same time.

  “Are you going to cry because I hurt your white bitch?”

  Teddy replied with silence. Judas rubbed his chest, wincing with pain.

  “What about you, Stitch? Maybe you have something you’d like to say.”

  Roger Stitch was a kid at their school when they were all in middle school. In seventh grade, Roger had been caught by several unsuspecting girls masturbating in a stall in the girl’s bathroom. Why he was in the girl’s room was never known. What was known was the fact that he had become the school pariah, absorbing a constant stream of abuse until he killed himself two years later. After his death, the nickname Stitch was given to any and all deemed social outcasts. Judas was unfortunate enough to inherit the honor of wearing that nickname, but he was damned if he’d ever let a bunch of assholes drive him to kill himself.

  The heads of Muraco’s pack poked out of the car’s windows and taunted them, cursing their mothers and daring them to fight.

  “I didn’t think so,” Muraco huffed and turned to get back in the car.

  He stopped when he heard the pop and hiss of the can being opened. He whipped around to see Judas taking a long sip from the beer.

  “Hey man, waste not, want not,” Judas said to them and resumed crossing the street with Teddy in tow.

  “Crazy fucking white man,” Muraco muttered.

  “Come on, let’s have some real fun,” Ahanu whined.

  Once they were back on the road, Muraco made it a point to swerve the nose of the car to clip garbage cans, bicycles and anything else that was close to the edges of the curb. The full moon was bright in his rearview mirror as he pulled up to Mai Smith’s house. It was a new moon tradition for each of them to have sex with Mai, one at a time, finish off whatever hard alcohol she had and run naked in the woods, high on tequila and testosterone induced dementia.

  High on the moon.

  It had been Muraco’s idea, these monthly gang bangs, and Mai, the high school whore who had taken the virginity of nearly every young man in Shida, was a happy and willing participant. She said it made her feel like a kind of shaman, allowing the men to use her body to achieve an altered level of existence. Of course, she said this when she was drunk, high and horny, just like Muraco and the pack.

  Mai answered the door wearing only a flimsy robe that was open down the middle, revealing her full, untrimmed womanhood. “What took you so long?” she asked. Her breath was toxic from hours of downing cheap gin.

  Muraco snarled, grabbed her by the waist and slammed the door shut with his boot.

  Chapter Eleven

  Judas Graves felt his head sag forward and he snapped back awake. The paperback he was reading, some battered old sci-fi novel by an author he’d never heard of, was closed on his lap. It was two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and he was the only one in the library other than Millie Cloud, the librarian. Despite the fact she had a name from another era, Millie was actually an attractive young woman. A full Ojibwa, she took over as head librarian when Wanona Walker passed away a year ago.

  Never a fan of television, Judas liked to spend his free time at the library, and free time was something he had in abundance. Everyone may have thought he was Shida’s number one good-for-nothing, but he was probably the most widely read person in town. Judas loved to read, even as a kid. Any book was fair game. He read them all: classics, horror, thrillers, romance, poetry, even textbooks. The library was empty most of the time, which meant he had plenty of privacy to read as many books as he liked, all for free.

  Rubbing his eyes, he ambled over to the main desk. Millie was organizing a pile of old magazines. Her gold, wire-rimmed glasses had slipped to the edge of her nose.

  “Looks like another hectic day at the Shida P.L.,” he said with a grin.

  Millie looked up from the magazines, pushed her glasses back and smiled. God, her teeth were perfect. Her shiny black hair cascaded over her shoulders, flowing free and beautiful. “Kind of makes me wish there was someone I could shush every now and then.” She smiled back, her ebony eyes sparkling.

  “If you want, I could make some noise.”

  “Well, you were snoring quite a bit before.” She laughed while Judas blushed. “I didn’t want to wake you. I tried reading that book once,” she nodded towards the paperback in his hand. “It had the same effect.”

  Judas stared at the book like he’d never seen it before. Whatever cool he mustered when he was around Millie never seemed to last for very long. She rose from her chair and stacked the magazines in a neat pile on a battered metal cart
.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, actually, there is,” he stumbled. “I was wondering if I could use your computer for a little bit.”

  The Shida library had only one computer, and it was not for the general public. It had been reserved strictly for the head librarian’s use. Judas had heard tales of libraries in bigger cities that actually had whole banks of computers at their patrons’ disposal. People could just waltz right in and use them to tool around the internet, send emails, or do their homework. A good number of libraries even had their entire catalogues on computer.

  Not Shida. If you wanted to look up a book, you had to go to the warped card catalogue drawers and hope someone hadn’t swiped the card you were looking for a decade or so earlier. He was unsure if Millie would let him use her computer this one time, even though he was her number one customer. Sure, they’d engaged in their share of small talk, but the most he had asked of her before today was the key to the restroom.

  “Sure,” she replied and his eyes lit up. Could it really have been that easy? And here he’d been agonizing over it so much that he had fallen asleep while trying to stall for time.

  “As long as you promise you won’t access anything that would make your mother mad,” she added with an air of jocularity.

  Judas felt the tips of his ears grow hot. “You don’t have to worry about that. I just need to look up something on the internet.”

  He followed her past the microfiche machines to the former storage closet that was now her office. When she had taken over for Wanona, Millie had insisted on her own office and a computer. She vowed to bring the library into the twenty-first century, kicking and screaming if necessary. After graduating from college in California, she had returned to care for her ailing father, one of Shida’s founders, who passed away within six months. Being a town legacy, she was given her choice of jobs, of which there were very few, if she chose to stay on. She had eagerly taken the job as librarian in the library where she had spent a good portion of her youth and she was determined to make some changes for the good. The town council purchased a four-year-old computer, ancient by today’s standards, and had David, the library’s janitor, clear the closet of decades worth of rotting books and paper. He somehow managed to wedge a small desk, hard back chair and floor lamp into the cramped space. Millie had been so elated by the fact that her first demands were met so easily that she overlooked the state of both the computer and office.