Shadow Born

by Jamie Sedgwick

  “You mean when the shadowkind take over our world, the shadowfriends will be rulers or something?”

  “Not necessarily. There are entire countries that are under the influence of the Shadow right now. Not the citizens necessarily, but governments and military. Shadowfriends hold positions of influence and power in almost every major corporation as well. You can imagine what they could offer to a new recruit: million dollar salaries, private jets, political positions…”

  “Not only that,” said Jodi, “but there are also plants among us, pretending to be ordinary people. A construction worker, a mechanic, even a teacher could be one of them. That’s why it’s especially important to keep D.A.S. a secret.”

  “I understand,” said Gabriel. “I promise.” Julia nodded with satisfaction.

  Gabriel threw his gaze around the room, still in awe of the place. “So what happens now?”

  “We have to wait to hear from Pete,” said Reeves. “That bracelet is a major concern at the moment. If the Shadow can control the phasing of light and Dark Matter, there’s no telling what else they can do. For all we know, the house could be crawling with shadowkind.”

  “I doubt it,” said Julia. “Our sensors haven’t picked up anything, not even at Red Alert. I expect that was just a test run. Good thing we caught him.”

  “It was because of Gabriel,” Jodi said. “He saw the hobgoblin.”

  “Is that true?” said Julia.

  Gabriel nodded. He told her about the night he saw it under the stairs. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he said. “I just fell asleep. I couldn’t help it. I thought it was a dream.”

  Julia exchanged a guilty glance with Reeves. “Don’t let it bother you,” she said. “You did nothing wrong. It was our fault. It’s very strange that you were able to see him, though. Perhaps there’s a flaw in the stealth technology they’re using… At any rate, I’m sure you two have homework to do. Jodi, you’d better get home. Gabriel, Reeves will show you to your chores.”

  A short while later Gabriel found himself in the barn, helping Reeves load hay onto a cart. As he scooped up a pitchfork full of hay, a cool breeze caught the tiny motes of dust and pollen and tossed them in his face. Gabriel sneezed. He wiped his nose and chuckled quietly.

  It seemed the whole world had changed in the last few hours, and yet a simple sneeze was so real and mundane that he found it oddly humorous. The barn was real, the hay was real, and everything around him was perfectly natural and normal. Yet somehow, it was all different now. The whole universe had quite suddenly changed.

  Shadowkind, creatures made from Dark Matter… Monsters. As impossible as it all seemed, Gabriel unequivocally knew it to be true. He no longer needed to convince himself it was all a dream.

  “Reeves,” he said. “That hobgoblin thing, you killed it, right?”

  “You could say that,” Reeves said. “Although technically it’s not dead.”

  Gabriel was mystified. “But I saw you shoot it. How could it not be dead?”

  Reeves paused in his work, leaning on the handle of his pitchfork. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a loaded ammunition magazine, and tossed it to Gabriel. “Take a look at those bullets.”

  Gabriel examined the bullets, popping one out for a closer inspection. “They’re clear,” he said. “And they’re filled with some kind of liquid.”

  “The casing is acrylic,” Reeves explained. “It’s a high-tech plastic polymer that shatters on impact. It’s completely harmless to humans. I could shoot you with this gun right now and you’d only feel a slight sting.”

  “But the goblin,” said Gabriel. “What happened to it?”

  Reeves took the bullet from Gabriel’s hand and held it against the light. “The magic is the fluid. It’s called R9-11. Pete and Mr. Oglesby synthesize it in the D.A.S. laboratory at the school. It has some very unique properties. Primarily, the ability to remove things from our dimension. Especially things that don’t belong here.”

  “So that’s what happened to the hobgoblin? You sent it back to its own world… its own dimension?”

  “Pretty much. To be honest, we don’t know how to kill Shadowkind. Not yet anyway. The best we can do is send them back to where they came from, and try to keep them there.”

  “So you guys invented this stuff?”

  “Actually that’s an interesting story,” Reeves said. “Have you ever heard of the Philadelphia Experiment? Or Project Rainbow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Reeves saw Gabriel’s crestfallen look and gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Your memory will come back,” he said reassuringly. “Just be patient.”

  “I know. I’m trying to. Sometimes I think I’m starting to remember something, but then it’s gone. I know the memories are there, but when I try to focus, they just disappear.”

  “Give it a few more days. If you’re not better soon, we’ll have Mr. Oglesby give you one of his hypnosis sessions.”

  “Hypnosis? For real?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Gabriel realized he was still holding Reeves’ magazine. He handed it over. “You were saying something about an experiment?”

  “Ah yes, the Philadelphia experiment. The official story was that there was an accidental explosion on the Navy Destroyer USS Eldridge. It was in 1943, off the coast of Pennsylvania. The truth was that the government had been conducting experiments using high-powered electromagnetic radiation to bend light. They believed that if they succeeded, they could make the ship invisible.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Well, the theory -as I understand it-is that when we see things with our eyes, we’re not actually seeing the thing itself. That pitchfork you’ve been using, the barn, the car in the driveway… all of those things are there, but what we really see when we look at them is the sunlight reflecting off the object. So, if you can build up a high enough electromagnetic charge, you might be able to bend light around that object and make it invisible -because the light never touches it, and never reflects back to us.”

  “Weird. Does it really work?”

  “Oh, it worked, just not at what they were trying to do. They didn’t bend light around the ship, they moved the ship out of phase with our dimension, and partway into the world of Dark Matter. Unfortunately, that part worked just fine.”

  “What happened to them? Did they all die?”

  “Not exactly. Playing with millions of volts of electricity while floating on water is ill-advised at best. Everyone on the ship knew there was a good chance something could go wrong. When the experiment started, several other ships in the area were monitoring the test. The immediate reports were that it seemed to be working. The ship began to rapidly disappear and then reappear. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

  “But in reality it was jumping back and forth between dimensions, and in doing so, the Eldridge picked up passengers. Of the crew of 130, only 16 lived. They told stories of monsters and demons, of terrifying beasts that ate men alive. There were even reports of men whose bodies were torn limb from limb, and others were embedded in the hull of the ship. I can’t begin to tell you of all the unexpected side effects they reported.

  “You must understand that after this experience, the survivors weren’t well. They suffered delusions and hallucinations. Their accounts have to be taken with a grain of salt. Some of them used to stop moving for several minutes, as if they were frozen in time. Others lived normal lives for a few months or years and then completely vanished, as if they’d gone back across the dimensions.

  “Anyway, after it was over, Navy scientists found that a gel-like substance had formed on the entire ship. They assumed it was a by-product of the experiment and began cleaning it up. They were wrong. The substance -a chemical compound they called R-9 turned out to be an unstable form of ectoplasm. It was Dark Matter that came back with the ship. The substance wrought havoc, causing all kinds of psychic turbulence. Ghosts, demons, hallucinatio
ns. Most of the poor sailors who cleaned up that boat ended up in straight jackets.”

  “But I thought R-9 sends things across dimensions? It sounds more like a drug or something the way you’re describing it.”

  “That’s because the people didn’t understand what was happening. When the chemical got onto their skin, and into their bloodstreams, they started to slip out of our world. They started seeing things. Can you imagine what that must be like? They had no clue what was going on.”

  “That would be awful,” said Gabriel. “No wonder they went crazy. Did the government figure out how it works?”

  “Yes, and no. The government scientists actually assumed that the stuff took people to a different dimension. They had a vague idea of what was going on, but in those days, they didn’t have the tools to understand it. As to how it works, the explanation is complicated and honestly, I don’t even understand it myself.

  “If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask Pete or Mr. Oglesby. All I can tell you is that R-9 has strange effects on matter, especially living tissue. The navy did a few experiments with the stuff but found it too unstable for practical use. They pulled the plug after six weeks of experiments, and after using up their entire pool of willing test subjects. Some of them went mad, others just disappeared. The government classified everything Top Secret and hasn’t acknowledged any of it since. They washed their hands of the whole affair.”

  “How did you find out about R-9?”

  “We owe Mr. Oglesby for that. He discovered the story during his research. We got our hands on some of the warehoused material and started experimenting. After several years, D.A.S. came up with R9-11, the synthetic version of R-9. The only real difference between our version and the original is that we added an extra molecule. Somehow that stabilized it.”

  “But doesn’t that mean you can go across dimensions whenever you want? Mr. Oglesby said that could only be done through a septic tear.”

  “Well, technically we could, I suppose,” Reeves said. “The only problem is that there’s no way back.” Reeves’ phone went off and he glanced at the screen. “Dinner’s ready,” he said. “We better get the horses fed.”

  On the way out of the barn, something else occurred to Gabriel. He’d completely forgotten about it until just then. He threw his gaze up at the front stairs and his mind flashed back to the interview he’d given on the day of the party. “Reeves, I did see one more thing…”

  Reeves dropped the cart handles. “Tell me exactly.”

  Gabriel told him all about the strange man in the black trench coat that he’d seen during the interview. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know any of this was real. I thought it was just my imagination.”

  “That’s okay,” Reeves said. He glanced nervously around the corral, and tossed the rest of the hay out for the horses. Reeves was nervous? The thought sent a chill down Gabriel’s spine.

  Chapter 15

  When the wagon was empty, they left it at the edge of the fence and ran back to the mansion. Reeves called Julia out of the kitchen as they entered.

  “What now?” she said. “Didn’t you get my message? Dinners already…” A glance from Reeves silenced her.

  One minute later they were all back in the D.A.S. headquarters, in the basement. Reeves activated the security system again, but this time he put the entire estate in lockdown. Gabriel watched live video feeds come up on the monitors. Thousands of motorized ultraviolet and infrared lights popped out from their hiding places and began throwing hazy purple beams in every direction. Bars appeared on all the house windows and doors, and lasers scanned every inch of the estate.

  “Are you sure about this?” Julia said, after she’d heard the explanation. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

  “That’s what we’re gonna find out,” said Reeves. He sat at one of the computer workstations and pulled up camera feeds from the front of the mansion. “What time was the interview?”

  “Three o’clock,” said Julia. Reeves hit a few buttons and jumped back to the beginning of the interview on Sunday afternoon. Gabriel saw himself exiting through the front door with Julia at his side. They watched the video until the point where Gabriel doubled over.

  “There,” Gabriel said. “That’s when it hit me.”

  Reeves switched the view to a second camera that panned across the audience. The man wasn’t there. Gabriel saw empty space where he had been standing.

  “He was right there,” Gabriel said. “I swear it!”

  “Patience,” said Reeves. He paused the video and hit a few more buttons. The video darkened and then faded into a washed-out bluish color.

  “What are you doing?” said Gabriel.

  “I’m filtering out most of the light,” Reeves explained. “Leaving just enough that we can still see everyone, and then increasing the density of the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums… like so. Sometimes the light alone will give them away –that’s why we use the lights as a security measure. If not, we’ll run a computer scan and see what it can extrapolate…”

  Suddenly the man appeared, right where Gabriel had seen him. His image was colorless and washed out, as if he were a ghost. He was almost transparent. “That’s him!” he said.

  Julia leaned back against a desk, and groaned. “I think I’m getting a migraine,” she said. “Is there anything else you’ve forgotten to tell us, Gabriel?”

  “No,” he stammered. “I… I don’t think so. Why? Is he one of them? One of the shadowkind?”

  “Sort of,” said Reeves. “He’s a Shadowlord. Sometimes they’re called Grey-men because their skin looks like they’ve been dead for three days. They’re also called Men-in-Black because they usually appear dressed like that. These are the guys that brainwash people when they’re trying to get information. When they’re done they leave a crazy UFO story in the victims’ heads to cover it all up.”

  “So they are shadow-creatures?” Gabriel said.

  “They are the most powerful of all shadowkind,” said Julia. “And they are the only creatures who can travel between the dimensions at will. They can also walk in full sunlight. The sun burns the skin of most shadowkind, but not Shadowlords. They’re impervious.

  “Once they were humans -the worst kind. They were shadowfriends who gave their souls to the Shadow. They willingly went across to live with, and become, shadowkind. We don’t understand how it works; we only know that the Shadow has the power to do this.”

  “I just don’t understand why we’re still alive,” Reeves said. “He could have killed us all and been done with it.”

  “He must have known about the security perimeter,” Julia said. “He didn’t get close enough to set off any alarms.”

  “What about the bracelet? If he had one of those, he could have walked right in. In fact, he could be in the house with us right now for all we know.”

  “If he was, we’d be dead already,” said Julia. “Maybe the bracelets don’t work on Shadowlords.”

  “Maybe,” said Reeves. “Well, there’s no point in hiding down here all night. Let’s go eat dinner. If anything’s going to happen, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I’d just as soon die with a full stomach.”

  Chapter 16

  Nothing happened that night, but Gabriel spent the whole night mentally kicking himself. He hadn’t withheld information intentionally, but he still felt bad about it. He could have gotten everyone killed. He didn’t sleep very well that night. His mind raced wildly, spurred by the knowledge that there could be a Shadowlord or some other shadow creature hiding somewhere in the house. That knowledge was enough to keep him awake most of the night, and what little sleep he did get was haunted by nightmares.

  At school the next day, his mind was in a fog. Unfortunately, all of his classes were giving year-end exams. He wasn’t hopeful about his scores.

  At lunchtime, the children went to the library to discuss the events of the previous day. Mr. Oglesby wasn’t in yet, but the library was open and they had the ent
ire place to themselves. As soon as they were inside, Pete pulled out the mysterious bracelet.

  “Did you figure out how it works?” said Jodi.

  “Yep! It’s actually quite simple, really. It’s an EMF generator. It uses a frequency modulator that’s powered…”

  “ENGLISH PLEASE!” Jodi said. “You know I hate it when you talk dork!”

  “Sorry,” Pete said. “The bracelet sends a calibrated electromagnetic impulse into whoever is wearing it, basically making them look human to our sensors. If the computer senses a bioelectric field and body heat just like a normal human, it assumes the object is normal and organic.”

  “So the security system wouldn’t recognize them as shadowkind!” said Jodi.

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s not good,” said Gabriel. He recounted his experience with the Shadowlord.

  “A Shadowlord?” said Pete. “At the mansion?” His face looked sickly pale.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” said Jodi. “A Shadowlord would have killed us all the first chance he got.”

  “I think I understand,” said Pete. “He was probably there to get information from the hobgoblin. They took advantage of the party because they knew security would be at a minimum. D.A.S. security, I mean. The guards Julia hired don’t count for much when it comes to shadowkind. I bet the Shadowlord left right after the party.”

  “But why?” said Jodi. “With a bracelet, he could have walked right into the house and killed everyone.”

  “No, he couldn’t. This bracelet is powered by a nuclear battery, because it has to generate thousands of volts in order to work. They’re very expensive and hard to get, and you’d need a dozen of them to make it work on something the size of a Shadowlord. Not only that, but it probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

  “Why not?” said Gabriel.

  “Ahh, I get it,” Jodi interrupted. “It’s because Shadowlords aren’t shadowkind, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Pete. “You can run these signals through shadowkind to make them appear to be human, on a bioelectric scale at least. That wouldn’t work with a Shadowlord because technically, they are human. D.A.S. has sensors calibrated to detect the movement of organic organisms, particularly something the size of a Shadowlord. Even if it’s not exactly human anymore.”