Shadowshaper

by Daniel José Older

  “Dang, still?” Neville whispered.

  Dominic shrugged. “I mean … It just upsets her.”

  “Why … what don’t we talk about, Dad?” Sierra said. “What’d he have to do with Grandpa Lázaro?”

  “It’s nothing, baby. Old family history. Drama.”

  “You want French toast, mi amor?” María called from the kitchen. “I don’t have to be at the graduation till noon.”

  Dominic cleared his wife’s paperwork off the table. “Sure, babe.”

  “Seconds, Neville?”

  “Only if it’s you that’s cookin’ ’em,” Neville hollered a little louder than necessary. “Sierra, baby, why is your hand shaking?”

  Sierra put the newspaper down. “I dunno. Probably just too much coffee, I guess.” She stood up. “I gotta … Imma go upstairs, ’kay? Still worn out from the party last night.”

  “You going to start job hunting, m’ija?” María called over the din of clanking pots and sizzling butter.

  “Of course, Mami.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  On the second floor, Sierra poked her head into her brothers’ room. Her two older brothers could not have been more different. Gael’s walls were completely blank, while glossy photos of fancy guitars and half-naked zombie girls stared out from Juan’s side. Gael could talk through the night about all kinds of random ridiculous facts, while Juan spent his days crafting a careful casualness and practicing guitar at all hours. Then Gael became a marine, which surprised no one, and Juan’s salsa-thrasher band Culebra got a record deal, which shocked everyone, and both disappeared suddenly and completely from Sierra’s daily life. Now Gael was a three-page letter every month about waiting for something to happen in Tora Bora, and Juan was a rare and awkward phone call from Philly or Baltimore or wherever his latest gig was.

  Sierra continued past her own room to the third floor. The murky smell of incense and ramen noodles at the landing meant Timothy Boyd was home and trying to cook. He’d been renting the Santiagos’ extra apartment while he finished up his final visual arts degree at Pratt, and he pretty much stayed out of sight.

  Sierra went up another flight and knocked lightly on the wooden door. She always performed this useless tap-tap, even though Grandpa Lázaro never opened it or even responded. When she walked in, the gorgeous morning sky over New York unfolded before her.

  “Lo siento lo siento,” Lázaro muttered. He was sitting up in his chair, eyes watery. His fingers were clenched tightly around a scrap of lined paper.

  “You back to that?” Sierra crossed the room. “What are you sorry about? What is it?” She tried to see what he had clutched in his hand, but Lázaro pulled the paper tighter to himself and turned away.

  “You okay, Abuelo?” Sierra plopped into the bedside easy chair. “Cuz I’m not. I found Robbie like you said but … I don’t know what to tell you. I’m in over my head already. I don’t understand any of this. This guy Ol’ Vernon you usedta know? He showed up last night and chased me and …”

  Lázaro lifted one trembling hand, his index finger extended.

  “What?” Sierra turned and followed an invisible line from his finger to the far wall, where Lázaro’s gallery of family photographs stared back at her.

  “Lo siento lo siento lo siento.”

  She stood up and walked across the room. She had never paid the old pictures much mind. There was Tío Angelo, who’d fought with the Macheteros rebels outside of San Juan. There was Uncle Neville hanging with Sierra’s mom and dad back in the eighties, all three of them looking wildly happy outside some nightclub that had long since burned down. There Sierra’s mom and Tía Rosa stood next to each other outside a skating rink on Empire Boulevard, all dolled up and smiling. Sierra’s grandmother, Mama Carmen, glared out of another photo; she had that look that used to light up her eyes right before someone got beat. Mama Carmen had died a few months before Lázaro’s stroke. Sierra missed her grandmother’s hugs more than anything — it was like a secret world of warmth and love every time they’d embrace.

  But what was Lázaro trying to show her?

  In the middle was a large group photo. Grandpa Lázaro beamed from the center of it, wearing the same creased khakis and guayabera that he’d always worn when he was with it. He was grinning that sweet abuelo grin of his, staring down the camera with an almost fevered excitement. Next to him, a young white man with a pouf of dirty-blond hair stood with one arm wrapped around Lázaro’s shoulder. His eyebrows were arched up, his mouth creased into a surprised half smile, as if he’d been caught off guard by the photographer. Someone had written beside him Dr. Jonathan Wick in elegant, old-fashioned script. On Wick’s other side, a group of about a dozen men stared intently at the camera without smiling. Each had their name written near their head. Sierra knew most of them from around the neighborhood, but a few were strangers to her. There was Delmond Alcatraz and Sunny Balboa from the barber shop, and there was Manny, looking uncharacteristically solemn, and Papa Acevedo … She squinted at the picture. The man next to Papa Acevedo had a black fingerprint smudged over his face. Beside him was his name: Vernon Chandler.

  “What the …” Sierra said out loud. Her voice sounded strange in the quiet room. She looked back at her abuelo. Grandpa Lázaro had slumped over the side of the easy chair, a strand of drool stretching from his mouth to his stained white T-shirt. He let out a high-pitched wheeze, laughed a little, and then snored again.

  Sierra crept toward him, her heart thundering in her ears. Lázaro’s right hand clenched the armrest. She crouched beside him and peered at the edges of his fingertips. There was no ink stain on any of them, from what she could tell. Lázaro snored again and startled himself awake. He looked warily around the room.

  Sierra took a deep breath and studied her old grandfather, the blue veins along his crinkled arms, the deep-brown eyes. “Abuelo, your ol’ buddy Vernon went missing,” she said, “and now there’s a smudge over his face in the picture.” The old man shook his head slowly back and forth; the news hadn’t registered. “And last night he showed up at the party acting like a creepy freak and looking for someone named … what’d he say? Lucera.”

  Lázaro sat up and sputtered, “Lucera … back?”

  “I don’t know. Who is she, Abuelo? Who’s Lucera?”

  He snapped his head toward Sierra, his eyes once again sharp. “Sierra, if Lucera is back, she can … she will help you, m’ija. I never should’ve … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He shook his head, eyes glazing over again.

  “Abuelo, I don’t know where she is. Where’s Lucera, Abuelo?”

  Lázaro shook his head and placed the crinkled scrap of paper in Sierra’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he moaned.

  Sierra uncrinkled it. In the same elegant script as the names on the photograph, someone had written:

  donde mujeres solitarias van a bailar

  “Where lonely women go to dance,” Sierra translated. “This where Lucera is?”

  Lázaro nodded, his eyes faraway again.

  “What does it mean, Abuelo?”

  “Lo siento lo siento lo siento,” he whispered.

  Sierra stood and gave her grandfather a kiss on his forehead. “That’s all you got for me, huh?” She pulled out her phone and dialed up Bennie as she headed downstairs.

  “What it do?” Bennie said. “Did you have fun with your secret lover man last night?”

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “No, B, I had fun running away from that freaky guy that showed up at the party.” She packed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

  “What? That guy chased you? What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t even know what to tell you.” She waved at her dad and Uncle Neville and walked out the front door. “But I need a favor.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m alright.” Outside, it was a perfect summer day. Sierra’s next door neighbors, the Middletons, had set up a kiddie pool, and a bunch of the little ones were screaming and splashing around in
it. Mrs. Middleton waved at Sierra from her stoop. Sierra smiled and waved back. “It’s just a lot going on,” she said to Bennie. “Listen, can you check up on someone named Jonathan Wick?”

  “Wick like candle?”

  “Right.”

  “What you wanna know?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s in a picture with my granddad and some cats from around the way, but like … he’s just a random young white dude. Just seems kinda odd.”

  “You seem kinda odd,” Bennie said. “But that’s nothing new. I’ll see what I can find.”

  Sierra turned a corner and stopped in her tracks. The portrait of Bennie’s brother Vincent, which was painted along the side of a laundromat, had faded just like Papa Acevedo’s, but there was something else about it …

  “Sierra?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Thanks, B. I’ll hit you later.” Sierra hung up and pocketed her phone.

  Vincent had been killed by the cops three years back. His towering image stood tall against the cement wall, arms crossed over his chest, his name written in bubbly letters across the front of his favorite hoodie. The artist had painted him smiling that terrific Vincent cheeseball grin he’d flash after making a really stupid joke. Now, his eyebrows arched and his jaw jutted out with a sharp frown as he glared into the distance.

  Sierra looked around. It wasn’t just Papa Acevedo’s mural. What is going on?

  “¿Qúe pasó?” Manny the Domino King peered at Sierra across the game table in the Junklot. Rutilio and Mr. Jean-Louise sat on either side of him, each decked out as always in their best guayaberas and Stetson hats. Two empty chairs sat at the corners of the table — one for Lázaro and one for Papa Acevedo, both longtime domino warriors, now departed.

  “I was gonna ask you the same thing,” Sierra said.

  “Trouble at school, Sierra?” asked Mr. Jean-Louise. “Public school is a cesspool of poisonous bile.”

  Manny threw his hands up. “¡Cállate, viejo! The child needs her education. Don’t ruin it for her just because you dropped out of kindergarten.”

  “When I am finished this move, Manny,” Mr. Jean-Louise declared, “you will be in that nursing home on Classon Ave, rotting like a forgotten cabbage.”

  “If you take any longer,” Rutilio chortled, “Sierra here will be in the nursing home by the time you’re done. Anyway, your entire family tree is a sad weed that I pull from my garden and spit on before I feed it to the rats.”

  “School’s out for the summer,” Sierra said. “And y’all ridiculous. Hey, I was wondering what happened to that guy Ol’ Vernon because —”

  “Nothing.” Manny shifted his considerable weight on the little wooden chair and fussed with his skinny goatee. The other old gentlemen exchanged frowns. It was the only time Sierra had ever seen them look seriously at each other. “No pasa nada.”

  “What do you mean nothing? You said he was missing in the Searchlight this morning.”

  “Yep, he’s missing,” Manny said.

  Mr. Jean-Louise smacked a domino on the board. Rutilio cursed under his breath.

  “That’s it?” Sierra crossed her arms over her chest.

  Manny kept his eyes on the board. Dominos clacked against each other.

  “Alright,” Sierra said. “I’m gonna go paint. Manny, let me know when you feel more talkative.”

  “Make sure you cover that nasty tower with every wild monster you can imagine, Sierra,” Mr. Jean-Louise said.

  “Top to bottom,” Rutilio added.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Manny said. They each produced a brown paper bag with a bottle inside. One by one the three friends poured a little splash of rum out for Papa Acevedo and then swigged. “Ah! It’s the wall I think that bothers me the most,” Manny continued. “We used to be able to see all the way down the block, past Carlos’s Corner Store to the church, and then down beyond that the hospital. ¿Ahora? Carajo. The blankness of void vacant estupid.”

  “If you don’t make a move soon,” Rutilio said, “I will make sure that that’s what they write on your gravestone.”

  “It’s not even my go, coño, it’s Lenel’s.”

  “Here lies Manuelito,” Mr. Jean-Louise said. “The blankness of void vacant estupid.” He shrugged. “He was somewhat liked.” He and Rutilio crossed themselves. Manny grumbled and shuffled his pieces.

  “Good-bye, weirdos,” Sierra said.

  Papa Acevedo’s face could barely be seen now. Sierra looked up at it as she walked to the foot of the Tower. If no one would answer her questions, she would do what she’d always done when people she cared about stonewalled her: She’d lose herself in art.

  She’d already finished most of the dragon’s mouth — its lips snarled back to reveal huge razor teeth around an explosion of hellfire. Today it was time to get the eyes on point. Sierra put her headphones on and let the crashing salsa-metal fusion of her brother Juan’s band, Culebra, wash over her as she climbed the scaffolding.

  “Cuando la luna llena,” a voice crooned, “mata al anciano sol.” It was all she could hear before Juan’s thrash of electric guitar exploded across the song, blotting out the rest of the lyrics. The creeptastic night before still lingered in her mind, but the music kept the chills at bay.

  Sierra set up her paints and dabbed a few slender blobs of white on the dragon’s pupil. When she was done with the eye, she’d start filling in some of the scales along the neck. It was more monotonous work than the face details, but it had to get done. Cymbals crashed; Juan’s wailing guitar and the swirl of keyboards all screeched to a halt. “Mira que los enemigos se caen,” came an urgent whisper, “La voz del espiritu llama / Y la energía surge como …” and then bam! Culebra burst back in as one: guitars, bass, drums, and keys a single, relentless electric roar.

  Sweat poured down her back, and she was glad she’d worn a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off and shoulders open. She’d tucked her fro under a red bandana and removed all the jangly bracelets and necklaces she usually wore.

  Sierra dipped her brush in the white paint again just as the scaffolding shivered. She took off her headphones. Someone was coming up. “Hello?” she called.

  “Hey!” Robbie’s face appeared a floor below her.

  “Robbie!”

  He climbed onto the platform next to Sierra and paused to catch his breath. “I was worried about you last night. You just … you disappeared!”

  Sierra put her hands on her hips. “Actually, you disappeared, sir. What I did was called running for my life.”

  “I looked for you!” Robbie raised his shoulders all the way up to his ears. “I swear! I just …”

  “Uh-huh.” Sierra raised an eyebrow at him and realized she was enjoying Robbie’s discomfort. “Here.” She handed him a paint roller. “You can make it up to me by laying down some primer and then painting something cool over there to go along with this dragon.”

  “Anything I want?”

  “Go to town.”

  “Nice!” Robbie crouched over the tray, popped open a can of white primer, and gooped some in. “I mean, the thing is … I was really scared too, especially when you disappeared, and …”

  “Ran for my life.”

  “Right, when you ran for your life and I wasn’t sure what to do.” He covered the roller and started spreading paint evenly across the wall.

  “Dang, you really know what you’re doing, huh, Robbie?”

  He shrugged. “You know I’ve done some murals here and there. Anyway, when you …”

  “Any I’ve seen?”

  Robbie stopped painting and looked at her. “Actually …” He nodded toward Papa Acevedo’s frightened face.

  “You did that? I had no idea!”

  “Yeah, he … yeah.” He shook his head and turned back to the wall.

  “What’s wrong, Robbie?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Sierra clenched her teeth. No one ever wanted to talk about what was bothering them. She swallowed a sigh of frustration — who was she to Ro
bbie anyway? He didn’t owe her any explanations. She turned back to the dragon eye.

  “I mean,” Robbie said. He was facing the wall, his eyes closed. “I don’t know how to talk about it.”

  “Does it have something to do with the murals fading?”

  He nodded sadly. “You noticed, huh?”

  “I saw it and … yesterday, there was a …” Sierra took a deep breath, felt Robbie’s eyes on her. “There was a tear. It came out of Papa Acevedo’s eye and slid down his face.”

  Ever so slightly, Robbie smiled, but he looked like he was about to burst into tears. “You saw it.”

  Sierra nodded. He didn’t call her crazy. He knew. It felt good. For a few seconds, their eyes held each other’s.

  “So you wanna tell me what the shadowshapers are?” Sierra said.

  Robbie looked away.

  One of Juan’s heavy metal songs started blasting from Sierra’s pocket. She made a face at Robbie. “To be continued.” She stepped away and tapped her phone. “Yeah, wassup, B?”

  Bennie sounded excited. “That cat you asked me to check up on? Doctor Wick?”

  “Yeah.” Sierra walked quickly to the other side of the scaffolding, cradling the phone with her shoulder.

  “¡Oye!” Manny yelled from the ground, where he was laying down some more primer. “Esafety first, nena! And we’re about to break for lunch, so let me know what you want me to order from Chano’s.”

  “Okay, Manny!” Sierra waved at him. “What about him, B?”

  “He’s a Columbia professor. Or was.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “This amazing thing they have now. It’s a web and it’s mad wide. Like, worldwide.”

  “Wow.” Sierra rolled her eyes. “I coulda Googled his ass myself. I wanted you to, you know, go deeper! Get all Bennie-nerdtronic and get me his ATM pin and favorite colors or something.”

  “Whatever, girl, listen: I need you to suppress the urge to make a corny pun about what I’m about to say.”