Dreams and Shadows

by C. Robert Cargill

  That was Simon Sparks. And Simon Sparks was once again on the prowl, once more hustling his wares in a walk-up Second Street bar too trendy to be open during normal hours on normal days. He made his way through the club, eyeing only the youngest and leanest of the night’s crop. Few paid him much mind; even fewer met his exacting standards. And then he saw her. Grace.

  She was five feet nine inches of lithe, firm, blond dysfunction. Her confidence was faulty and laid on a bit too thick, but her dress was tight enough to reveal just how flawless she would look naked. Simon eyed her up and down, trying to figure out exactly which of her features bothered her most. Was it her lips? Her hair? Her thighs? If he guessed right the first time, he could shave a half hour off winning her over. Women were tricky that way. They wanted to be thought of as beautiful, but they only wanted you if you thought they were almost beautiful.

  “My name’s Grace,” she said with a cute southern drawl. Georgia. She was definitely from Georgia.

  “Simon.”

  “What do you drive, Simon?”

  “An A-6. You?”

  “Tonight? Hopefully an A-6.”

  Jackpot. Simon smiled wryly and cocked a brow. “You wanna get out of here?”

  “That’s not how it works, Simon. First you buy a girl a drink. And then you ask her to leave with you.”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Blue Label. Neat.”

  Simon stuck a finger in the air without taking his eyes off her. “Bartender! Two Blue Labels!”

  “Neat,” she said, sliding a hand up his thigh.

  “Neat!”

  SIMON AWOKE STRAPPED to a rickety chair in a dilapidated warehouse, hands bound together with duct tape, a sweaty sock taped firmly in his mouth. Groggy, he sifted through memories, trying to figure out exactly where he was. He remembered the blonde. Grace. Grace was her name. He remembered leaving with her, going to his car and letting her drive. Then he remembered drifting off in his seat, confused. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Grace had said. “Those are just the drugs kicking in.”

  He looked around, frantic. The floors were stained with oil, smooth concrete marred with gouges from heavy machinery. The air was moist and rotten, like old death. And two shadows lingered just outside of the light.

  “Look who’s awake,” said the taller of the two.

  Simon immediately began to cry. And to sob. He shook his head, jumping around in his chair, clacking its legs on the cement, screaming through the sock, “MwomwoMWO! Mweee! MWEEEHEHEHEHE!”

  The taller of the two stepped into the light. He was a thin, gaunt mutant, balding despite his youth, with hair combed over the scabby, bulbous portions of his head. One of his eyes was cocked to the side, and his teeth were feral—sharp, crusty, and yellowed. Knocks.

  He smiled. “I’m sorry, Simon. I’m afraid I can’t hear you properly beg for your life. Let me help you with that.” He walked over and tore the tape from Simon’s mouth.

  Simon immediately spat out the sock, heaving from the taste. “Please don’t kill me!” he shouted.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Let me go. Please let me go.”

  “There’s no fun in that. Not unless we chase you and run you down. Dietrich!” He waved to the short shadow behind him. From the darkness it came, a malignant, twisted dwarf of a man wearing a sweaty red nightcap on a head two sizes proportionally larger than it should have been. The dwarf dragged a long tire chain that skittered, snaking across the floor.

  “Please, God, no!”

  Dietrich swung the chain across his legs, splintering his kneecap. Simon cried out.

  “Please! Do whatever you want to me. But please, don’t hurt my family!”

  Knocks and Dietrich stared, dumbfounded, with jaws slack, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

  “I’ll get you your money!”

  “Money?”

  “I told Jorge that I’d get the money and I’ll get it.”

  Eyeing him up and down, Knocks sniffed at the air. “You’re not lying, are you?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “You really are afraid we’re going to kill that cold bitch of a wife of yours?”

  “Hey! Don’t you dare!”

  Dietrich whacked his splintered kneecap again, this time shattering it.

  “Don’t get sanctimonious, douche bag. Why else would you be prowling for southern tail, unless you had somehow convinced yourself you were entitled to it?”

  “That’s none of your business, you son of a . . .” He stopped himself, trailing off immediately into regret.

  “Dietrich, I think perhaps you’ll be killing his wife after all.”

  “No! No! Please. I’ll get you your money!” He was sobbing again. “I’ll get you your muh-huh-ny.”

  Knocks smiled and narrowed his eyes, motioning to Dietrich. “Knock him out.”

  The chain cracked into the back of Simon’s skull and the world fell immediately into black.

  SIMON AWOKE TO the rising sun, sweat and blood pooling on the fine leather front seat of his car. His head throbbed, his knee screamed. But he was alive. Thank dear, sweet, merciful Christ, I’m alive! Through the morning dew glistening on his windows he could make out the cold, drab gray of an empty parking lot. Reaching back, his fingers tickled the gooey slop at the base of his skull. Everything about the night before felt like a fading dream.

  He needed to get to a hospital. He could call Mallory from there. It seemed like the best way to keep out of trouble. Wives don’t ask too many questions in the ER; they’re just happy you’re alive.

  KNOCKS HADN’T TAKEN pity on the man—he wouldn’t know how—but Simon’s predicament had given him an idea. What Simon felt in that moment when he imagined his family being beaten to death with a tire chain was deeper and more profound a pain than Knocks had felt in decades. It was a true, heartsick terror that wasn’t driven by survival, but rather longing. And love. The dread was palpable. Nuanced. Delicious.

  When you beat a man to death, the fear subsides the moment you stop hitting him. And after a while, your victim only wants to see it over and done with. Fear fades into acceptance and there’s nothing left but to turn the redcaps on him to tear him to pieces and slake their caps. Knocks had spent years feeding this way, luring in sleazebags and horny hipsters with the promise of a tawdry backseat screw, only to beat them down in a dark alley or abandoned warehouse with a couple of his redcap friends. But that only lasted an hour at best.

  Fear like that meant regular violence. Too regular. People got wary around that much crime. So Knocks waited only until the last possible moment, when his hunger could take little more. Then he would lash out and feed.

  But there was something about having a worm on a hook, writhing and squirming in agony, that appealed to him. He wanted to see just how far this would go. So he let Simon go free with a warning, just to see what would happen. Then, whenever Knocks felt the pangs of hunger, he crept into the bushes around Simon’s house, placing a phone call to Simon’s home number. After a few seconds of heavy breathing, he hung up. Simon, terrified that would be the night they were coming to kill him, would turn off all the lights and huddle in the dark with his family, slowly losing his grip on everything he loved. Thus terrifying his wife and kids even more than the thought of them dying terrified him. And Knocks consumed every last bit of anxious panic.

  He’d discovered the long game. And while police would later fish Simon’s headless body out of Ladybird Lake—murdered by his Mexican Mafia creditors—Knocks had already moved on to something even more dastardly. There was no way to truly duplicate a Simon Sparks; he was a lucky break. But one night, while creeping around Simon’s house, he’d noticed how deeply tormented Simon was at the thought of his wife leaving him over his behavior. Here was a man who spent evenings after work shacked up in some hotel with boozed-up colle
ge girls and strung-out strippers, terror stricken at the notion of his frigid, nagging wife calling it quits. It was counter to everything the guy stood for. But there it was. Love.

  And that’s when Knocks discovered the true frailty of the human heart. He remembered his own heartbreak from youth, when little Mallaidh the Leanan Sidhe snubbed him for that detestable Tithe Child. As the anger and bitterness welled up within him again, he wondered how hard it would be to string someone along—to create the perfect soul mate for a person, only to slowly unravel them over time, first breaking their heart, then their spirit, then even their will to live.

  It turned out to be much easier and more rewarding than he’d imagined.

  No longer willing simply to prey upon one-night stands, he turned his sights toward lonely outsiders, the invisibles of society, those souls passing unseen through the world, eking out a meager existence, cloistered at home on a Friday night with a stack of books, a cup of tea, a video game. Finding them would prove simple enough. They were everywhere. Though they felt alone, their population was dense and numerous, found in bookstores or movie theaters or working in the farthest, most isolated corners of large offices.

  The trick was to find someone who had a hard time making eye contact. Those were the invisibles who felt they were invisible for a reason. They felt unattractive or unlikable, and they dressed the part, with baggy clothes, face-shadowing glasses, and only passing attention paid to their hair or makeup. Knocks began to spot them in even the most crowded rooms. A quick brush past them and he could feel the tingle of loneliness, the tickle of their yearning to be loved. And that’s when he would strike.

  LIZZIE ANDERS WAS a mess. In another life she could have been beautiful. But not this one. This was the life in which she cried herself to sleep, still thinking of herself as the ten-year-old girl who had pissed herself in gym class, earning the nickname Pissie, which stuck until graduation. The boys would tease her about being into water sports and the girls, far crueler, would get up and move whenever she sat near them. She’d skipped college and gone into data entry straight out of high school, making it a point to never look up from her computer.

  It was a complete shock to her the day Knocks spoke to her on the bus. He was beautiful. Radiant. Pop-star looks and a thousand-watt smile. He said his name was Billy. He’d asked if the seat beside her was taken and never stopped talking after that. She tried to shut him down with silence, but every time she immersed herself in a book or looked out the window, he found something else to talk about.

  It was as if he knew her already. Her every interest, her every dream. He was magical. The guy she cried herself to sleep thinking about, knowing that he couldn’t be real. Not for her. Not for Pissie Anders. But there he was, and he wouldn’t give up.

  Their love affair lasted three magnificent weeks. On their second date, they’d made love on the floor of her studio apartment. By their fifth date, they were making love so much she would pass out from exhaustion. By week three, they were planning trips around the world that they would take after their kids graduated.

  And then he stopped calling. At first it was three days without seeing him. Then five. At last they’d gone three weeks without speaking until he showed up late one night, reeking of booze, for a quick roll on the floor before passing out and sneaking out before dawn.

  When next they spoke, Knocks told her he had met someone else. Someone prettier. Someone better in bed. Someone who didn’t urinate frequently out of fear of wetting herself. Someone he could spend the rest of his life with. That night, Knocks waited outside her window as she drew a hot bath and sawed through her wrists with a steak knife. He giggled as she wailed in the tub. Knocks hadn’t giggled like that since he was a child watching his mothers drown men in Ladybird Lake. Every moment he didn’t call her was a delicacy, but this, this was a feast. Nothing had been this satisfying since Tiffany Thatcher had strung up her rope. And as the life drained out of Lizzie, staining the water a deep, dark red, Knocks knew it would be a long while before he was hungry again, enough time to set up another hearty meal.

  Knocks savored the taste of young love gone sour, with its fondness for razor-blade carvings and pill-popping professions of love. Teen hearts shattered the hardest. Allison Jacobs was a brainy girl with a bright future when an equally intelligent poet with a tousle of curly locks came along. She threw herself into the daydream. When it ended, she threw herself under a city bus. Jaclyn Stanton was a pimple-peppered, perpetually silent high school senior dressed head to toe in black, pining for some dark, Gothic mystery. Her Romeo came to her at night, avoiding the sun, enjoying the silence with her. The night he left her, she never saw morning, choosing instead to slit her own throat. Matthew Cash was an engineering student whose love came to him after traded glances at a bookstore. By the end, he’d put a shotgun in his mouth just to hear the sound it would make.

  Knocks understood his place in the universe now—his reason for being. He knew why his first two mothers had shunned him; he knew what it was that scared them. They knew what he could become. And while it had taken a long time to get there, all that suffering had only made him better at what he did. It didn’t fill the void, it didn’t dull the pain—but it was comforting to know that everything he’d been through served a purpose, making him what he was now.

  A shark.

  Nixie Knocks the Changeling was ever moving, always eating, forevermore lurking as a shadow on the edge of darkness. And there seemed, for a time, to be nothing that could distract him from his single-minded feeding.

  THE MAN APPEARED from out of nowhere, emerging from the dark one night to walk beside him. Knocks tried not to make eye contact—at first attempting to stay anonymous—but the man knew good and well who he was. Looking up, Knocks recognized him instantly.

  “Hello, Ewan,” said Coyote. His skin was as coppery as it ever had been and his hair was as tangled and black as he remembered.

  Knocks glared at Coyote, gritting his teeth, spitting out, “I’m Knocks.”

  “Of course you are,” Coyote apologized. “It’s dark and I’m used to seeing Ewan out and about at this time of night around here.”

  Knocks stopped in place. “What?”

  “Oh, I thought you two would have run into each other by now, what with him working downtown. He and Colby are both here. Weren’t you all friends as kids? I seem to remember something like that.” Coyote smiled slyly. “Well, I’m off. Running late and all.”

  Knocks stood there, dumbfounded, a fourteen-year-old fist slamming into his gut as Coyote once again slunk away into the shadows. It felt something like what Lizzie had felt. Like what Simon had felt. What they all had felt at some point. Had Ewan been here all along? he wondered. Living out his perfect little life? For a moment, the shark was gone. He was a seven-year-old boy watching his mother trampled to death beneath hellish hooves; watching as the love of his life fell into the arms of another; watching the little boy he was made to look like reap the rewards of the Tithe, only to escape its fate, leaving the crowd howling for Knocks’s blood. One can never go back to fix the wrongs of their pasts, but they sure as hell can relive them. For a moment, the seven-year-old Knocks stood awash in the painful tides of time.

  But with those tides came the shark; and with the shark returned, Knocks knew what he had to do. His anger and pain and confusion and heartache knew only one relief, had only one release.

  He had to find and kill Ewan Thatcher.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE YOUNG MAN EWAN BRADFORD

  The years since he’d left the Limestone Kingdom had not been unusually kind to Ewan Thatcher. Never having known his given surname—as the fairies hadn’t used it—the kindly old shelter worker who’d taken him in off the street had named him Ewan Doe. And it wasn’t until he found his way to his first foster home that he’d taken the name Bradford.

  The Bradfords were sweet enough, a pudgy pair o
f professional types who had tried for fifteen years to have a child of their own. Barren and cursed, they took in what they called strays, making the best of what the system could find them. Parenting, much like conceiving a child, wasn’t in their genes. It took less than a year for them to get fed up with Ewan’s screaming nightmares, strange behavior, and eccentricities before dumping him back into the system and trying their luck with another. From that point on, Ewan referred to the Bradford line—the point at which a family had kept him for as long as the Bradfords had. Three hundred and twelve days. Only two families since had ever gotten that far, neither getting much further. In the fourteen years since he’d entered the system, he’d been with twenty-two families.

  Despite the foster care system having shipped him all over Texas, it was only natural that, when of age, he found his way to the only home he really knew. So on his eighteenth birthday, he packed his stuff, hugged his latest foster mother good-bye, and took the bus to Austin, Texas, where lived his closest friend in the world, the only person who remembered him from before: Colby Stevens.

  While Colby had mysteriously turned up time and again throughout his life, consistently writing letters that always knew how to find him, he was still something of a mystery to Ewan. Always off on some adventure in a far-off part of the world, it struck Ewan as odd that he felt the need to keep in touch with someone he had known stateside when they were too young to remember even meeting. But Colby was a good friend, always there for him, providing the only real sense of stability in his erratic life.

  At the age of twenty-one, Ewan was a mess. Tall, gaunt, and tattooed, he wore both his clothing and his dyed hair shaggy and black, concealing his innate good looks. While he never wore makeup, it was hard to tell without looking closely, his skin so pale and his eyelashes so thick that, coupled with the hair, he seemed to be aspiring to vampire chic. In truth, he embraced the look because with his hair its natural brown, he simply looked ill—like he was missing some essential component of his diet. The occasional crack about his style from a stranger was much easier to take than smothering concern. Are you eating right? You look sick. You need more iron in your diet. Or bananas. Potassium is good for that sort of thing. There was no need for the attention; it was humiliating. He was just naturally pale. So he dressed the part and people left him alone.