But this shadow thing of Death had no such interest in hiding what it was doing. Instead of camouflaging the “accident,” this Shadow attacked like a shark. It grabbed Flower’s leg and lifted her straight off the pavement. She came out of her reverie quite fast, and shrieked. The thing shook her like a dog with a chew toy, flapping her left and right. Flower could feel and hear bones in her body snapping. Then it threw her.
Flower passed over the tree to her right, and her arcing path landed her on the roof of a two-story house. Upon contact with the roof, she passed out, slid to the edge, and smashed to the ground.
Both of her legs were broken, as were her hip and right wrist. Various internal organs were bruised or bleeding.
The people in the house looked out of various windows, but could see nothing. If they had, perhaps they could have gotten help for Flower.
The husband in the house, a man in his seventies, finally saw Flower’s broken body in his backyard, lying between and under the azalea bushes. He picked up the phone to dial 911, but fell to the floor with an unfortunately-timed brain aneurism. The wife, crying out in fear and desperation, dialed 911 herself, this time for her husband, unaware of the young girl dying in the backyard.
Unfortunately for the wife, her arm suddenly felt like it was made from cement. A searing pain coursed up her side, and a knife’s agony entered her heart. She keeled over with a heart attack, falling on top of her still-gurgling husband.
“This is 911. Is someone hurt? Is someone in trouble? Stay where you are, we are dispatching an emergency vehicle right now. We have almost located your location. Please stay on the line while we finish determining your exact coordinates.”
The line went dead, as sparks shot out of the phone, killing it instantly. The large electric wire from the telephone pole to the house also, by pure coincidence, shuddered and snapped, eliminating all electricity to the house.
The shadow thing floated away, three victims dying in the night, dying slowly but surely. As sure as the sun would rise.
Flower Gardener, still unconscious, was dreaming of deathly shadows in a land of death. Her eyes were open, looking up at the stars but seeing nothing.
Bright red blood oozed out of the corner of her mouth and soaked the grass beneath her head.
Ricky Martin, still a bit weak from his own close encounters with Death, hobbled up to the Gardener’s house. He limped a bit from his run in, but he was doing all right. He figured a nice walk in the cool autumn air would do him well, clear his head.
He also thought that chatting with Flower (she was pretty and treated him well, sometimes) would be nice. Nice company. He wanted to talk. Not about all this crap, but about anything. Art. Baseball. Hell, even girls’ fashions, if that’s what Flower wanted to talk about.
He knocked a couple of times and then tried the doorbell.
Mrs. Gardener answered. She had the exact same color hair as Flower. And Ricky loved Flower’s hair: reddish-brown, with blonde and red—and a few pink—highlights. Her mom’s was similar, but duller somehow—a hint of gray here and there. And no pink. She was still pretty even though she had to be really old, possibly thirty-seven or maybe even thirty-eight.
“Hi, Ricky,” she said. “How are you?” She had that concerned look on her face, the one that Ricky hated. It was not exclusive to Mrs. Gardener. All the adults around him had it now. As if he was sick and dying, or had lost his mind.
“I’m good, ma’am. Is Flower home?”
“She just left, Ricky, maybe fifteen minutes ago. She was just going to walk around the block. Get some air.”
“Cool. That’s what I’m doing.”
“You’re welcome to come in and wait for her. I’m sure she’ll be right back.”
“No, no. Thank you. I think I’ll take the chance of running into her and take a walk around the block myself. Which way did she head?”
“Jeez, I don’t know. I’m afraid I didn’t watch her walk away.” Mrs. Gardener smiled.
“That’s all right. I have a 50:50 chance of picking the right direction.”
“That you do!”
“Thanks, Mrs. Gardener.”
“Not at all. See you back here soon, Ricky.”
“Yep.”
Ricky Martin turned and started walking even before Mrs. Gardener shut the door. He didn’t like the thought of Flower being out in the dark alone. Not with what the four of them knew. Not with the way they had all been attacked. It was asking for trouble. Even though it’d been almost two weeks since that nightmarish night, Ricky had this uncanny feeling that this whole thing was far from over.
He hadn’t walked along more than ten minutes when he saw Flower’s purse on the sidewalk. Just sitting there, like it was placed there carefully. Right in the center of the sidewalk.
He stopped, his heart pounding, and listened.
Not a sound. His hands were icy, but his face felt flushed, hot. He breathed fast while he scanned the immediate area, like prey too near the lion’s den.
But he heard nothing. He saw nothing.
You never do.
The shadow thing was upon him, bearing down on him with malevolent determination, with the one psychotic thought of ripping the young man to pieces.
But it was not to be. Because Ricky Martin had become a different type of young man. One who was what you might call immune to the Reapers’ attacks.
The evil thing, like it did in the place of darkness, simply passed right through Ricky. Ricky’s whole body moved the way Jell-O moves when you tap it with your finger. Ricky felt sick, and he didn’t know why, because he didn’t see the thing.
It came back, and it tried again. The results were the same. A wiggly, but very much alive, Ricky Martin.
The shadow thing was enraged. Enraged and stupid. Because it might very well have killed Ricky by stopping his heart or his lungs or his brain, or by dropping something on him or pushing him off of or in front of some speeding thing. But it did none of these things. For some reason, it wanted to kill Ricky Martin as if in battle. To personally cut him down, as if the two fought against each other with swords or knives.
But this was not possible with Ricky Martin. With anyone else on the planet, yes, this tactic would have worked. But Ricky had acquired some sort of resistance. Perhaps due to the fact he was in the dark place for all those hours, so much longer than his three friends. Or perhaps because the dark things had touched him while he was in there—had passed through his body—giving him some of their own substance or lack thereof.
Whatever the reason, it was now as if Ricky was one of them. Some kind of offspring that didn’t act like them, feel like them, or think their way. But one who possessed something of their airy, shadow qualities.
It was if they were attacking one of their own.
A useless battle of shadow against next-gen shadow.
The enraged thing shot high into the air like an almost invisible rocket and disappeared.
Ricky stood for a moment, weaving, then fell to his knees.
He reached up and held his head. He’d not yet experienced his first hangover. But this was worse than any hangover he could ever imagine or would ever live through in the future.
His arms and legs quivered, his head spun, and he vomited.
Then, in an instant, the feeling was gone.
Ricky Martin breathed a loud sigh, a big exhalation. Then he slowly forced himself to stand back up.
Ricky Martin stood there, thinking about everything and nothing.
Then, as his mind reeled back into focus, he noticed the house he was standing in front of was the only house in the whole block with no lights on. And absolutely zero signs of life.
Even with lights off, houses still have clocks glowing. Computers in sleep mode giving off a small dot of life. Outdoor lights blazing, such as those on either side of the garage door. Just various signs of life beyond whether the lights are on or off.
There was a stillness, too—no motion at all. Even when no one�
��s home, houses still give off life. The humming of fans or the heater. Water dripping. Odd creaking. You don’t see that life in abandoned homes. This house was not abandoned, yet it, too, had no life energy coming from it. That energy of a kid having just run out the door, of parents having just brought in the groceries, of friends or neighbors having just dropped by. Of their having been laughter recently in the house. Or tears. Or anger.
It was too still. Too empty.
Next, as Ricky approached the front of the house, he noticed the large electric wire skipping across the grass. Small sparks spit out of one end. It had been cut somehow. But there was no storm, no strong wind, no branch that could have brought it down.
He cautiously walked up to the darkened doorway and knocked. Ricky didn’t expect any response, and that’s what he got. He looked in through the side window that ran along the length of the door. But he could only see as far as the living room, and only a small slice. There was nothing disturbed. No sign of trouble.
He jiggled the front doorknob: locked.
Ricky thought he was just making something out of nothing. But after his encounter with the Reaper, he knew he should at least check. Especially as this mysteriously disabled house was right next to where he had just experienced an attack.
He edged around the side of the house. All of the windows on this side were on the second story, out of reach. He made his way to the back, trying to see through the dark. This was a far-too-familiar situation for Ricky Martin.
He stood at the back corner of the house, looking into the backyard, trying to make sense of the shapes there. Bushes. Some kind of bucket with a plant in it. A picnic table and maybe a chair. Some other dull, black shapes. Probably more shrubbery.
And a shape that kind of looked like a human body lying in the darkness.
But it couldn’t be a body, Ricky thought. Because what looked like the legs were twisted in a weird way, not the way human legs could twist.
Just a little freaked out, Ricky made his way over for a closer look, purely out of curiosity. He started to think that maybe this was a dead dog, or some other kind of hurt animal. But it seemed too long somehow, too stretched out for a domestic animal. Two dogs? Two dead dogs—that would be fuckin’ weird. Yet, par for the course the way the past couple of weeks had gone and the way everything was dying these days.
But something about the “leg thing” wasn’t right for a dog. It was too thick. Dogs legs were thin, the lower half mostly bone. This leg had, well, too much leg.
Ricky couldn’t imagine what this thing could be. He didn’t want to get too close. Finally, he just thought to himself, “Grow a pair, dude,” and stepped forward again. He knew, he told himself, that once he got close enough, he would see that it was nothing but a tarp over a motorcycle or a pile of wood or something.
Feeling a bit better, he took another couple of steps forward.
Then his heart was in his throat as he recognized the crumpled, crushed figure.
Flower Gardener.
Looking about as dead as anyone could look.
If he wasn’t so scared and tired, he would have screamed. Instead, Ricky Martin knelt down beside Flower’s body. He didn’t dare touch her. He didn’t want to make her injuries sued. If Flower were alive, he didn’t want to be the one who, out of kindness, snapped her spinal cord.
Instead, he whispered her name.
“Flower. Can you hear me?”
He waited for a response, any kind of movement or sound. But nothing came.
“Flower? Flower.”
He waited again. Then he leaned forward, his ear nearly touching her mouth.
“Are you dead?” he whispered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
You Know Nietzsche, Right?
Almira and Conner met Ricky at the emergency room.
After he had called for help, the paramedics and the cops had taken all three victims away (a quick, routine search of the house found the two owners piled in the living room, barely alive).
“What happened? How’s Flower, is she all right?”
“I don’t know,” Ricky said. With his lower lip out, he blew at his hair to move it out of his eyes. “They won’t tell me nothing.”
Ricky Martin looked scared and exhausted. His face white, his usual grin gone, replaced with a tense line of stress where his mouth should be.
“I’ll go ask,” Almira said. “Maybe they know more now.”
She left the two boys together.
“I’d just gone for a walk, and thought I’d ask Flower if I could come in and chat. Her mom had wanted me to come inside and wait for her. If I had, Flower woulda been dead, for sure. Who knows when anyone would have found her? Next day? Next week?” Ricky’s lower lip stuck out and trembled.
“It’s okay now, man. You’re a hero.” Conner put his arm around his friend’s shoulder and gave him a strong hug. Then he got up. “So, the Shadows, right?”
“What else could it possibly be?” Ricky said. “She looked like she jumped out of a plane without a parachute.”
“Jeezuz.”
“She got the crap beat out of her man. She was all broken, like a doll. Swollen, too. Blood everywhere. If it wasn’t one of the Shadows, then it was a gang of some of the meanest motherfuckers.”
Conner didn’t say anything at first. Then, gently, he asked, “Is that a possibility?”
Ricky Martin made a face, and with a dismissive wave of his hand said, “Don’t be a jerk.”
“I mean, man, we don’t really know . . . ”
“We do, Conner. It attacked me, too. And don’t forget the two people inside their own home. Untouched. Except one had a heart attack and the other one a brain attack.”
“Yeah, that sounds like supernatural forces.”
“No fuckin’ kidding.” Ricky closed his eyes and bit his lip. Then he opened his eyes and said, “Man, I think those things are, like, the Death. The real Death.”
“What?”
“I mean, like, you know, Death with the cape and pitchfork and all.”
“You mean the cowl and the scythe?”
“Whatever. But yeah. The Grim Reaper.”
“But Death is only supposed to take you when it’s your time,” Conner said, one leg now bouncing nervously. “It can’t just pick any time it wants and attack you!”
“Well, apparently now it can,” Ricky said. “And you know what else I think?”
“What?”
“I think it’s happening everywhere. All over our country, all over the world. Because we let the Grim Reaper out. Lots of Grim Reapers.”
“What do you mean, ’lots of Grim Reapers’? There’s only one, man.”
“Yeah, well, I think there’s more than one,” Ricky said, snorting a bit. “Lots and lots more than one.”
Conner seemed at a loss as to what to say next. This was a shitload of information. Conner bluffed a bit, stalling until his brain could catch up with what it was being asked by Ricky Martin to process. “Well, this doesn’t make much sense, but anything is possible. Not only that—”
“Hey, I got some intel,” Almira said, returning from the receptionist’s desk in a hurry. “It wasn’t easy, but I finally convinced them to tell me what we’re dealing with.”
“And?”
“Flower is in surgery. There’s a lot wrong. Internal injuries, breaks, lots. But some good news.” Almira sniffed and blew her nose into a tissue. “Her brain is fine and her spinal cord is undamaged.”
“Thank god for that,” Ricky said. “She looked like a tornado had shit her out.”
“The internal bleeding is a real problem. They’re worried. The bones can be set. But the organ damage is a big issue.”
“When will we know more?” Conner asked.
“Not for a while. The operation could take another five or six hours. We’re in for a long night.”
The doors to the outside whooshed and Mr. and Mrs. Gardener walked into the waiting room. Upon seeing Almira, Mrs. Gardener burst i
nto tears and ran to her. Almira did the same thing and the two held each other for a few minutes, sobbing.
Mr. Gardener marched over to the two boys. His face was ashen and he nodded at Conner. Then he reached out to shake Ricky’s hand. Mr. Gardener’s hand was trembling.
“Thank you, Ricky, for finding my girl. For calling for help.” His voice caught in his throat and he dropped Ricky’s hand. As Mr. Gardener turned and headed across the large atrium to the receptionist, Ricky could see that he was wiping his eyes.
“Well, I don’t want to do it either.” Officer Meehan draped her jacket on the back of her chair and fell into her seat, as if the weight of the world shoved her down. “But you gotta admit, this is wa-aay beyond coincidence.”
Detective Nayles, a recent transfer to the precinct but an old friend of Meehan’s from the academy, sat down in the chair on the other side of Meehan’s desk. “I guess so. But I find it hard to believe that this Martin kid attacked that old couple to cover up beating the Gardener girl half to death. Does that really make any sense?”
“Do serial killers ever make sense?”
“But he’s a kid . . .”
“How is that relevant? Every serial killer ever caught—outside of obvious psychos like Manson—were always described as the ’friendly neighbor’ type. Typically, they were always great coworkers, churchgoers, kind to animals—the usual crap.” Meehan sighed and lowered her head. She shuffled some papers into a loose stack. “In other words,” Meehan went on, “the ones you’d least suspect. But only until caught and their freakiness revealed. That’s what we may have here, Nayles, in this seemingly-innocent kid, Ricky Martin.”
“I dunno. I still think it’s too far out there.”
“Why do you say that? He was at every crime scene we’ve investigated in the last two weeks,” Meehan stated.
SHADOWS OF DEATH: Death Comes with Fury (and Dark Humor) To a Small Town South of Chicago Page 9
