Blind Shadows

by James A. Moore

  Sometimes when you least expect it, the status quo changes.

  Leonard Wilson sat on his front porch and listened to the 50 Songs To Give You Chills CD that he’s picked up at the Walmart down on 41, tapping his foot to old, familiar tunes that had been bastardized by a group called The New Studio Oryginals. The vocals were horrid but the beat was normally right, so he made the most of it. Leonard liked Halloween. He’d always liked Halloween and he liked a good scare. Mostly he loved seeing the tykes come up in their costumes and giving them a little something to smile about. Life in the Hollow was sort of sucky most times and there weren’t exactly any playgrounds for the kids, but they liked to come around at Halloween and he liked to give the candy and see them on their way. He was old and retired. He was allowed a few pleasures.

  Seven kids came before the sun went down. He complimented them on their costumes after slipping his dentures back in, because before that they could barely understand him. They were good kids and to the last they said “thank you,” and a couple of them even called him by his name. That was more than he expected, as he tended to keep to himself.

  When the first group of older kids showed up, he didn’t think anything about it first except to notice that their costumes were rather similar and decidedly creepy. They came up the long dirt path leading to his house with their ghostly white skin shining in the gathering darkness. Ghosts. Ghosts were always popular disguises, but these were impressive. They had mobile faces and thin, wispy hair that trailed down their elongated skulls. Their arms were long and their legs were bowed and they moved in a way that almost hurt his eyes, like they were both walking smoothly forward and shivering at the same time.

  One of the kids opened her mouth—he could tell it was a her by the surprisingly full breasts on the costume, they were barely hidden by the long hair falling across the shoulders and down the chest—and instead of calling out “trick or treat,” a sound like dried leaves blasting in a hard wind came from her mouth.

  Leonard suppressed a shiver and then smiled. “I ain’t seen whatever movie those costumes are from, but they’re downright scary.” He was properly impressed and meant the words. All three of the kids looked at him—if he’d had to guess they were around twelve to maybe fourteen years old by their height—and their eyes flared with silvery light in the darkness.

  Leonard grinned again as they came closer, marveling at the tricks the costume companies came up with every year. He could still remember the first time he saw glo-sticks and how he thought they’d never top that one.

  Then they moved closer, charging forward in a loping stride that let him realize how low to the ground their hips actually were.

  Leonard had exactly enough time to realize that they weren’t wearing costumes before they were on him. Those long arms were incredibly strong and the fists at the ends of them beat him to unconsciousness in a matter of moments.

  He had exactly enough time to wonder if this was how he was going to die before they took him down.

  * * *

  Take a left on Main Street and it becomes Scufflegrit Street and heads into the higher grounds leading to Mooney’s Bluff before it ends. Take a right and it stays Main Street a lot longer before breaking into Centennial Avenue—which in turn leads to Gatesville—Cemetery road, which leads to, surprise, the largest cemetery in Brennert County, and finally state road 221 which breaks down further into multiple unnamed dirt paths. One of those that veers hard to the right and downward, spirals lazily into the Hollow. No one on the two busses knew that the path they should have been on was on the left of the Wellman Town Square. Even if they had known they probably wouldn’t have paid much attention. The roads were already getting dark and all any of them was really interested in was getting to the casino to have a good time.

  Had anyone asked Lorne Blackbourne, he might well have told them he was taking a short cut.

  Had anyone even considered asking Parson—no one was quite that brave—he’d likely have simply ignored the question. And if that didn’t work, he wasn’t above breaking a few skulls.

  The path into Crawford’s Hollow was a winding nightmare. Mostly the people on the busses were too damned busy trying not to get thrown from their seats to bother with any questions.

  That’s okay. They wouldn’t have liked the answers.

  * * *

  Leonard woke up in a dark place, his arms held in place by hands that felt both cold and oddly feverish. He opened his eyes and looked toward a sky that made no sense, with stars that seemed as out of place as he was feeling and he let out a soft moan before he could stop himself. The white people were back, surrounding him, their skin almost iridescent in the starlight. He might have complained, but the woman who looked his way took his breath away.

  Sixty-four years of age didn’t mean that Leonard didn’t get desires and urges, but a lot of the time his body did not respond as quickly as his mind did. One look at Siobhan Blackbourne had the same impact as it had the first time he’d met her, back when he was fifteen. She was just as beautiful, just as desirable now as she had been back then.

  The woman smiled at him and, by God, his body woke right on up, and he felt himself get harder than he had in years. She was a gorgeous woman. She made no sense, of course, because she should have been positively decrepit, but she was gorgeous.

  “Is that really you, Siobhan?”

  “Of course it’s me, Leonard. I haven’t seen you in a very long time.” Her voice was the same too, soft and sultry and full of the same promises her body and her face offered. Remembering the times they’d spent together in the past, he found himself wanting that again. A hundred times over if he could. He’d always been afraid after they’d been together because, well, he’d sort of forced the issue when she’d teased him into a frenzy. He’d always half expected the police to come pounding at his door.

  He looked past her for a moment and studied the unfamiliar stars. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in a special place, Leonard.” Her hand moved across his chest, long fingers teasing sensually along his narrow ribcage, and he realized with a start that he was naked. He should have been shivering his fool head off in the cold, but the air was warm enough and the breeze carried a hint of salt water. He was about to protest being in his birthday suit when she hand moved lower, sliding to his—

  “Oh, Lord, Siobhan. That feels good.” He could barely speak above a whisper the sensation was so unexpected.

  She smiled and her hand moved and pleasure ran into his body. And a second later her other hand moved up and then down in a savage stroke. And the thick metal nail rammed though his testicles and pinned him in place with a lance of pain that left him speechless, unable to scream or to breathe.

  “I always liked you, Leonard.”

  Leonard had a lot of time to contemplate the ghastly things that had taken him from his home—the same things that held him in place as he thrashed and howled his pain to the uncaring stars above—and to consider how he’d wondered if they were beating him to death when they took him.

  Long before Siobhan was done with him, he wished he’d been that lucky.

  * * *

  The sun had set on Wellman and on Brennert County alike. And as the last rays faded and the ghosts and ghouls came out to knock on doors and beg tithings of candy, the largest breakout in the history of Brennert County, Georgia or maybe even the entire United States took place.

  Over one hundred people were arrested in the raid on Crawford’s Hollow. Remarkably few of the locals from that area could afford to post bond, but that was okay. Most of them were merely biding their time as they’d been told to.

  Jeff Brady was not a member of the Blackbourne clan, though he’d hung out with a few of them in his time and had gotten himself into trouble on four separate occasions while trying desperately to get into Jolene Blackbourne’s pants. Somehow every time he tried, it ended up with him getting into a fistfight instead of past her panties. He was still trying to figure that one out
. Some people claimed, not incorrectly, that Jeff didn’t think with the head between his shoulders, but the one between his legs.

  Just the same, Jeff had been carrying a .22 and close to thirty small baggies of meth when the raid went down. Rather than risk the wrath of Merle Blackbourne or any of his family, the man had calmly accepted his fate. Why? Because as fine and potentially fun as Jolene was, the Blackbournes as a whole were scary mother fuckers and he didn’t much feel like getting his body cut in half or his face peeled off or any of the other shit he’d heard they’d do to anyone who crossed them.

  So he was there to witness what he came to think of as the Greatest Magic Trick Ever, though to the day of his death—several years later, in an argument over Jolene Blackbourne, thank you very much—he could never figure out quite what happened. Jeff had that problem a lot in his life.

  He was just finishing grossly exaggerating one of his many tales of his fighting prowess—and carefully avoiding mentioning that the fight was over Jolene because, hello, her cousins were all around him—when as a unit, the Blackbournes stood up and started walking. There were seven members of the clan with him that night, all of them over fifteen miles away from Wellman, in the small jail in Clemons, Georgia. A total of ten people were being held by the Clemons police department as a courtesy to the sheriff, who had done the same for the town on many occasions. Seven were members of the Blackbournes, which, to the surprise of anyone who actually took the time to look, was about accurate to the number of Blackbournes arrested versus non-familial arrests. There were a lot of Blackbournes in the Hollow.

  Six of the Blackbournes did the impossible and simply vanished. He watched Enoch Blackbourne take four steps toward the wall and then simply vanish in a shimmering flare that hurt his eyes. Several others did the same thing apparently, because they disappeared too.

  One of the Blackbournes—he had no idea what the kid’s name was—looked at the bars of his cell and then forced his way between them. It should have been impossible, of course. They were six inches apart, those bars. He had set his foot against them a dozen or more times and if there was more than six inches between them he was a rocket scientist, which even Jeff knew was simply not the case. The man—who was as thick around the middle as Jeff, and these days Jeff was thicker at the waist than he liked to think about—pushed at the bars and started to ooze between them. His bones creaked, his flesh turned red and then almost purple and he pushed and grunted and slipped between the bars with a deeply unsettling popping noise. Jeff watched the whole thing, staring with his mouth hanging open and his eyes damned near bugging from his head.

  And the nameless Blackbourne turned back and looked at him for a moment, smiling as his malformed face slowly went back to where it was supposed to be. The man never spoke a word, but he grinned with a mouth full of teeth that seemed too large and too sharp for his face, and his eyes when he stared were an unsettling shade of blue and had too many pupils.

  Jeff felt a powerful need to piss and to puke both. Finally he decided to close his eyes until the feeling went away. Denny Thornton in the next cell over was not as calm. He let out several loud shrieks as he watched the man pop through the bars and then head for the locked door.

  The security door opened when a couple of uniforms decided to see what all the noise was about. Jeff kept his eyes tightly closed despite the screams from the cops and from Thornton alike.

  He didn’t even open them when the popping noises started and the blood spattered through the cell’s bars and stippled his face.

  He kept his eyes tightly closed for close to an hour after the noises had stopped, too.

  Because sometimes you just don’t want to see what’s happening around you. Sometimes it’s just not the smartest thing you can do.

  * * *

  The first sacrifice done, Siobhan licked a trail of arterial blood from her finger and smiled. So many years spent behaving, waiting for the right time. So many times when she’d been thwarted. And now, finally, her time had come.

  The air crackled with power. She felt it growing and her arousal grew with it.

  Siobhan sighed and the world sighed with her. She breathed out and the world did as well. This was her world now. Finally.

  * * *

  Mooney’s Bluff was surrounded by cops. It was just that simple.

  Frank Blackbourne walked carefully, not because he had anything to fear from the sheriff of his people, but simply because, for a moment, he felt at peace. He felt lucid.

  His mind was his, if only for a brief shining moment in time.

  He hadn’t always been broken. He knew that. When he was a little boy his Meemaw had been alive and she’d sat him on her lap and sung songs to him that soothed his troubled mind and stopped the fires in his head and body from consuming him.

  And then the bad things had happened. His Auntie had done bad things in her time. Very bad things. She had done what her heart told her had to be done and he understood that, because his heart sometimes sang the same songs to him. He just hadn’t listened as much when Meemaw was alive. And later when he did listen, he got himself hurt again and again. That was okay. His Auntie always made him better when that happened.

  He stopped walking and thought about that for a moment. There were memories, but they were broken, disjointed things. They were images that made almost no sense to him. Auntie holding him, telling him she loved him. Auntie tending to him when he was hurt. But then everything changed. Auntie came of Age. She grew so powerful, so vast, that he was like a little bug and sometime she forgot he was there.

  That was hurtful. Auntie was hurtful. Thinking about her now made him gnash his teeth and brought the pain back; a searing, screaming mental anguish. That was why he’d let himself be dead for so long. He knew that. He’d stayed in the grave because Auntie was hurtful. She didn’t—

  No.

  He wouldn’t think about her.

  But his other voice was already rumbling, already starting to blather. The pain started again, cutting through his mind—his minds—and he shook his head and clenched his fists and stomped hard to make everything go away.

  And then the first of the sacrifices started.

  And Frank smiled.

  Auntie thought she was the only one who understood the old ways. The only one who really got anything from the rituals.

  Frank knew better.

  Frank knew why Meemaw had always sung to him.

  Frank’s smile grew even bolder.

  “Auntie. We’re gonna have us a real good time, you hear me?” He stayed mostly quiet as he moved away from Mooney’s Bluff. “We’re gonna have us a fine time, indeed.”

  His other mind agreed. “A mighty fine time. Gonna have a reg’lar reuuuunionnn.”

  Frank felt his blood soar and boil within his body as the power bathed him.

  Finally, oh, finally.

  It was about damned time.

  * * *

  Lights were coming up in Crawford’s Hollow as the sun dropped behind the horizon. Some were electric and some were propane and some were plain old fires in ancient hearths. Griffin could smell the wood smoke from his vantage point on Mooney’s Bluff.

  A few feet away, Carl was talking to his dispatcher. “Yeah well who let that idiot patrol that area alone? Captain Simms, eh? I’ll have a few things to say to him. Send another car to see what’s become of him. Okay. Anything else going on?”

  Griffin noticed a sudden change in Carl’s posture. He seemed to have gone rigid and he was gritting his teeth. He said. “Wait, wait, did you say two busses? When did that happen? Well get some people out there to find them, God damn it. Call me the second you know anything, and I mean anything!” He ended the call. “Shit! Jesus H. Christ on a fucking bicycle.”

  Griffin said, “What is it?”

  “Two casino buses didn’t make their regular checkpoints. Both were reported leaving the diner where they pick up suckers for the casinos but now both buses are overdue.”

  Griffin
started to say that buses run late sometimes, and then it hit him. “Two busloads of passengers.”

  “Exactly,” said Carl. “We’ve been trying to figure out where the Blackbournes were going to get the victims for their mass sacrifice, and all along they were planning to just snatch them up at the last minute.”

  “Shit,” said Griffin.

  Carl said, “They’re not coming here or we’d have already seen them. So that means this place is a wash for the ceremony. We’ve been wasting our time up here while the Blackbournes have been ahead of us at every step.”

  Griffin pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Decamp.” He punched the number and Decamp picked up on the second ring. Without preamble, Griffin told Decamp about the buses and their probable purpose.

  “It’s got to be the house,” Decamp said.

  Griffin said, “What?”

  “The old Blackbourne house. That’s why they’ve opened the interior into other dimensions. It has to be. Somehow they’ve found a workable place of power inside the house.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “You looked out a window while you were inside, Griffin. What did you see?”

  “What looked like the moors in England.”

  “That means that the house isn’t just built into other dimensions, it can function as a door into other places.”

  “Could they reach the other side from there?”

  “No, not without the ceremony, but they could use it for...” Decamp trailed off.

  Griffin said, “What? What is it?”

  “Damn, I should have thought of this,” said Decamp. “I’ll call you back. I need to check something.”

  “No! Decamp, don’t hang up you son of a bitch.”