Blind Shadows

by James A. Moore

  Griffin was about to reply when an alarm siren went off in the hall. He said, “That’s not a fire alarm.”

  “No, it’s more like a security alert,” said Decamp.

  Griffin reached under his jacket and pulled out the .38 loaded with the special bullets. He pressed it into Charon’s hand and said, “Stay here. I want to see what’s going on.”

  “What if you need your gun?” Charon said.

  Griffin grinned and opened his jacket, showing the .357 in his shoulder holster.

  “How many guns are you carrying?” Charon said.

  “You can frisk me later.”

  “Count on it.”

  Griffin turned and went out into the corridor. A lot of people, obviously thinking the alarm meant a fire, were crowding toward the elevators and stairs. Griffin shouldered his way through, saying ‘Security’ in a loud voice. He got into the stairwell and hurried down the three flights to the lobby. The lobby was surprisingly empty and he soon saw why. A man wearing green scrubs was sprawled face up on the floor near the nurses’ station. His throat had been torn open and a vast quantity of blood was spreading across the floor. There were two more mutilated corpses between the first and the front doors. Griffin looked around and saw a nurse crouching in a corner near a potted plant. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  Griffin stepped closer and caught a sharp smell of urine. The nurse had apparently emptied her bladder. Sheer terror will do that. Griffin was aware of sirens in the distance. He didn’t have much time. He crouched in front of the woman and said, “What happened? Who did this?”

  The woman stared at Griffin for a moment without speaking. Her eyes were green and looked enormous. She’s in shock, Griffin thought. I’m not going to get anything out of this one.

  Then the woman slowly lifted her hand and pointed toward a service elevator near the back of the lobby. She said, “He came out of the morgue.”

  Griffin said, “The man who did this?”

  The woman nodded. “Came out of the morgue.”

  “Who was it? Can you describe him?”

  “White,” she said.

  “He was a white man like me?”

  “White,” she repeated. “White like chalk. His skin. His hair.”

  Griffin felt his mouth go dry. “He was an albino?”

  The woman nodded again.

  Shit, Griffin thought.

  * * *

  The county assayers office made life a little easier. The land on Mooney’s Bluff where the kudzu ran rampant was owned by the state, apparently. Surrendered by the owners for back taxes years and years earlier. That meant that clearing the kudzu away could fall under the official business of the county.

  Bentley Perkins owed approximately a trillion dollars in fees on speeding tickets. Perkins, Ben to his friends, also owned a landscaping company. Carl made a few unofficial arrangements, provided the man could get to work on the kudzu that very day. Ben stared at the large field of dying kudzu that ran all the way to the property line for Neal Crawford’s house above the overgrown wall of the hillside.

  “You serious, Carl?”

  “Today, Ben. And all the tickets go away.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Maybe the damn stuff is just creeping me out.”

  Ben squinted and stared at the half-hidden shapes that waited under the kudzu. “Okay. You win that one.”

  “All of it, Ben. Okay?”

  “Ain’t like this is my busy season, Carl. Besides, I wouldn’t have half the work I do without your help, so I figure I owe you a few.” Carl didn’t actually handle the choices for who did what in the county when it came to handling landscaping issues, but he was always quick to recommend using the local talent instead of hiring a group of yahoos from a different county or from Atlanta. To that end, Ben had managed to get a few sweet deals for maintaining the grass along the sides of the roads and, disgusting though the work was, for gathering and removing roadkill. It kept him and his crew of workers from struggling through the colder months.

  “Well, I appreciate it, Ben. Just remember this is a one time offer. You get another ticket, you have to pay it. As it is I should haul your ass in on half a dozen pending bench warrants.”

  “I’d have paid them.”

  Carl grinned. “Liar.”

  Ben lit a cigarette and then called three of his guys over. They were going to be busy. Carl waved and hopped back into his truck. There were things he had to do, like finally getting around to visiting with Andy Hunter and getting some details on what they were dealing with.

  Ben waved back and by the time Carl had driven back to the main stretch of road above, the crew was already moving heavy equipment that would make short work of the damned green vines.

  Remembering how the trees had shaken the other day when whatever it was out there had charged after him, Carl waited a few minutes and called in a car to supervise the procedure, just in case anything happened.

  While he drove he contemplated his latest conversation with Wade. Amazingly bad news. Dead men should not, as a rule, get back up and now there were two members of the Blackbourne clan that had done just that. The notion was not pleasing. The men refused to stay dead, and the women? Well, they seemed to have their own special abilities, at least a few of them. He’d met plenty of unremarkable women in the Blackbourne family over the years, some were average, some were unattractive and some were just plain ugly—othersider ugly maybe—but there were a few exceptions and they were doozies. Siobhan was just, well, she was damned unsettling. Her daughter was almost as bad, but young enough that her best efforts were mostly wasted on Carl. He would have fallen head over heels for a girl that looked like her in his youth, but these days he didn’t much take to children or young girls who thought they were women because their bodies were developing. He liked women. The Lord knew he’d arrested enough men who couldn’t tell the difference, and normally he had to remind himself that beating their fool heads into the ground was considered at least as bad a crime as the ones he arrested them for.

  And there was one other he remembered from when he was younger, she’d have been a young teenager when he was in elementary school, but he remembered her because she was so pale, so pretty and so damned mean. The name eluded him, but he wondered what the hell had ever happened to that one. She’d figured into a few of his adolescent fantasies back in the day.

  He shook that thought away and reminded himself that the name Blackbourne was basically synonymous with trouble. Best to drive.

  Fifteen minutes later he was at Andy’s place. Andy was outside, looking around his property with a glum expression.

  “Something wrong, Andy?”

  The older man pointed to the ground near the house and moved his finger in a trail that slid around the side of the house. “There’s one hundred and fifteen distinct footsteps that lead from that window in front of my living room all the way to the back of the house. They march right on up the back stairs of my porch and right up to the back door. Something is decidedly wrong, young man.”

  Carl didn’t like the way this was sounding. “How do you know how many footsteps there are, Andy?”

  “Because, Carl, I counted them. You can’t miss them. They’re very distinct!” Yep. Andy was pissed again.

  Carl sighed and moved closer, trying not to clench his jaw, trying not to let the growing headache sink its teeth into the back of his skull. He wasn’t really having a lot of luck, but he had to try.

  He forgot all about the headache when he saw the footsteps. They were all from one source he had no doubt. The prints were too uniform not to have come from only one source. The feet were long and the toes were extended, and in a few cases he could actually see where claws or seriously long toenails had cut into the dirt and grass around the house. The dead grass. Very dead. The exact shape of the feet was easy to see in the blackened grass. And as he followed the trail around the side of the house, Carl could see the same blackened marks on the wood and leading all t
he way up to the back door.

  Curiosity won for a few moments and then the headache came back. “You’ll be wanting me to repair or replace this, won’t you?”

  “Well, Carl, none of this would have happened to my house and my property if you hadn’t decided to come to me with your little problems.” He looked at Andy and saw a mischievous twinkle in the old man’s eyes. As soon as Andy caught him looking he put on his stern expression again. The old bastard was lonely and wanted an excuse to have company. Fair enough. Carl could arrange that.

  “You win, Andy. As soon as this is all fixed up, I’ll be by to take care of the porch at least. Maybe I can find some grass seed and we can fix the lawn, too.”

  The old professor nodded his head curtly. Before Carl could make another comment, his cell chirped sharply. The office. “It’s Carl.”

  “Carl?” Danny Braeburn had gotten himself knocked around right and proper during the raid, and he was probably sore from head to toe, but he was also determined to work. So Carl put him on the desk and told him the rules about calls and radio calls. If he was getting a phone call, it was likely to be something at least moderately important. Just as Carl was about to confirm that he was, in fact, who he’d claimed to be when he answered the phone, Danny got to the point. “Adams and Perez? The ones you sent to watch over the clean up? They said they found some old caves behind all that kudzu and thought you might want to see them.”

  “Anything else going on I should know about?”

  “Tom Fowler, over at the planning committee for the Halloween thingy in the square called and said they’ve got their recommended parking and road block plans.”

  “Every year they give me new plans. Every year I look them over and approve them and every year they’re the same old thing all over again.” Carl shook his head. “All right. I’m gonna head up and take a look at those caves. Call if you need me, Danny. And call someone in if your head hurts too much, okay? Doctor said you need rest.”

  “Doctor can kiss my hairy butt.”

  “That’s not covered by our HMO, I can guarantee it.” He killed the call. “You feel like taking a ride, Andy? I thought you might like to take a look at the caves we found up on Mooney’s Bluff.”

  Andy sighed dramatically. “I can be persuaded. I should charge a consulting fee though.”

  “How about lunch on the way back down instead?”

  “That’s my usual consulting fee.”

  “Fair enough.”

  * * *

  “So what did you learn about the Moon-Eyes from you phone calls?”

  “Not a thing.” Andy shrugged. “What I did learn, however, is that the symbols on this little piece of jewelry are either very, very old or replicas of symbols most people haven’t seen in a few centuries.”

  “Centuries?”

  “Learn to pay attention, boy. I said ‘most people.’ Most people haven’t studied ancient languages and cultures that died out before Christ was born, so, no, most people haven’t seen them in a few centuries.” Andy got that smug tone again. What could you do?

  Carl kept quiet for a moment as he slowed to take a particularly sharp turn in the road. When the road was back to a saner angle, he sighed. “So what do these old symbols mean?”

  “Near as I can figure, which is to say near as a few experts I know can figure, you’ve got luck, keeping the dead in the grave, birth control and a little something to keep people from going crazy.”

  Carl thought about Frank for a moment and wondered if moving the damned charms had brought the freak from his grave. That was a decidedly unpleasant thought. What if the only way to get rid of the fucker was to wrap that thing around his neck? But that didn’t make any sense, because Frank wanted the charms.

  “Carl!” He turned to look toward Andy, who in turn was pointing out the side window at the truck rolling and bouncing down the hill toward them. Things were happening fast, but even so Carl could see that the old battered truck didn’t have a driver. Someone had pushed it from above them on the next level of the twisting road, and they’d timed it beautifully. ‘There was nowhere for Carl to go. He couldn’t stop in time to keep the truck from hitting them, so he gunned the engine, hoping to get out of the way before the truck reached them. At least this way, if they got nailed it would be in the rear of the truck. The part without people in it.

  One more foot and they would have completely cleared the damned thing. Instead Carl held onto the wheel in a death grip and Andy did his best to curl into a fetal position as the old pickup nailed the truck’s bed. Both vehicles left the road and started rolling down the hillside.

  The world spun and turned and bounced and jittered. Glass fragmented around them, sending sparkling showers through the air. Seatbelts snapped tight and held both Carl and Andy in place while the truck flipped and bounced and finally smashed into the ground with enough force to stop its own forward motion.

  The engine died with a deep, low hiss. The world still spun a little, but at least it had slowed down from insane to only moderately dizzying.

  Andy was moaning. He looked stunned, but not overly injured. Of course there was no way to know. Carl released his seatbelt and fell all of six inches into the door. The truck was resting on his side. He kicked the shattered windshield clear out of his way and moved out of the truck as best he could. No time to call for backup. No time for trying to help Andy, because if the junked out truck was aimed at them, there would doubtless be a few people to clean up the mess.

  Sure enough, they came down the hill, leaning back against the harsh slope and more forcing their bodies to slow down than actually running to catch up. He tried to count, but the dust hadn’t settled yet and some of the forms looked like mere shadows past the clouds of dry dirt and powdered leaves.

  Three, four...maybe as many as seven.

  According to the law, Carl had to show his weapon, warn any perpetrators that he was armed and insist that they stop and prepare themselves for arrest.

  Carl pulled the Glock and fired. The first of the men snapped backward, a large portion of his face removed from its usual location. The second took a shot to the knee and then a second to the stomach. The rest of them hesitated, and that was exactly what he hoped they’d do, because moving targets are harder to kill.

  Two down. Then the third. The fourth tried to run, and Carl shot him in the back of his neck. The fifth dropped to his knees and raised his hands high in the air. Carl aimed for the man’s heart and got him in the guts instead. He dropped soundlessly, holding his insides in place and screaming silently, his mouth open wide and his neck straining but no noise escaping him.

  The woman came at him, screaming like a mountain lion as she charged. She was thick and uneven and her blue eyes were the exact same color as her cousin Merle’s. Carl shot her in the face as he stepped to the side and she obligingly stopped that damn screaming.

  He looked around for several seconds, panting and doing his best not to let his mind lie to him about what was around. There was no one else to see.

  He couldn’t find his damned phone, so in the long run he wound up calling for backup on the radio. The Gut-Shot Kid tried crawling around a bit, but eventually stopped when he realized Carl had no intention of helping him.

  Carl looked down at him. Bernard Blackbourne: arrested several times in the past for dealing meth. Like as not he should have been arrested the day before and had managed to clear out before that happened. Bernard started crying and Carl continued to ignore him, instead moving to the truck to check on Andy.

  Andy had pulled himself from the truck by the time Carl got to him. The old man was shaken, certainly bruised and dealing with a few scratches, but he seemed very, very alert.

  “Did we just get hit by a truck, Carl?”

  “Yessir, we did.”

  “And did you just shoot several people who were attacking us?”

  “Yessir, I did.”

  Carl ran his hands over his own face, making sure that all the parts were
in the right spot. His lip felt fat and wet. Otherwise, he was just shaky.

  “Carl? Are you okay?”

  “I’m good, Andy.” He looked around the area again, checking to see if anyone at all was moving above or below them. The car should have brought Perez and her partner to him by now and he wasn’t sure if they were okay. He hoped they were. If they were hurt, however, he’d feel even less guilt than he did for blowing the hell out of several members of the Blackbourne family. Just now he wasn’t sure if that was even possible.

  Bernard stopped whimpering and moving and after another minute or so, it looked like maybe he stopped breathing.

  The rules said Carl should administer CPR and any first aid he could muster. He didn’t move. He’d called for paramedics. That was the best the man was getting from him.

  A few moments later, the ambulance sirens started echoing up the hillside. The cop car sirens soon followed.

  Nothing came from the bluff above.

  Damn, he hoped they were sleeping on the job or had run off for food.

  * * *

  “Look, Decamp,” Griffin said. “What happened last night wasn’t your fault.”

  “Wasn’t it?” said Decamp. He was limping around the hospital room, gathering the last of his belongings. Stark morning sunlight flooded the room, casting sharp, dark shadows.

  “You couldn’t have known Isaiah wasn’t dead. From what Charon told me you practically gutted him.”

  Decamp gave a quick nod. “I did, but I should have checked the body.”

  “You were injured. Besides, three deputies and two paramedics did check. He was dead as the proverbial hammer.”

  Decamp checked his .45, then slid it into his waistband and left his shirt hanging outside his pants to hide the gun. He looked at Griffin. “Yes, he was dead. At least the part of him that lives in this world was dead. But that’s what I should have thought of. Me, of all people, Griffin. Isaiah Blackbourne lives in more than one dimension at once. I suspect he retreated to the other side and healed himself there. When he was strong enough he came back to the part of his body that resides on our plane.”