SHADOWS OF DEATH: Death Comes with Fury (and Dark Humor) To a Small Town South of Chicago

by Carl S. Plumer

  Turning into the shadow matter, Ricky plunged through it and out the other side. He rematerialized and landed hard on the frozen, late autumn ground. He prepared to vanish again when he noticed the shadow thing was in two pieces. The bottom piece was disappearing like smoke from a dying campfire. The top of the Shadow thing turned and jettisoned itself at Ricky.

  Ricky Martin somehow dodged it again, flattening himself against the cold, hard ground. Then he willed himself to do the thing where he transports himself through time and space.

  Come on, he thought, do it, DO IT!

  But nothing happened, so Ricky jumped up and sprinted away as fast as he could. And as he ran, he tried to get that feeling that told him he would transport. Like the sense you get in your eyes when looking at a Magic Eye pattern just before it changes and you see the hidden object in the picture.

  Ricky ran, but the Shadow thing was there. It smacked Ricky to the ground, as if it had a flyswatter and Ricky was a fly.

  He was dazed, his eyes hard to focus, nausea in his stomach. He needed to fight this, but he didn’t know how.

  The Shadow seemed to be everywhere now, hiding the last of the moon and the stars. Ricky felt his strength—his very life—draining away from his body.

  This was the end.

  With one last surge of effort, Ricky willed himself to be shadow matter again.

  This time, he succeeded.

  Using his final ounce of energy, Ricky Martin sliced through the Shadow monster, tumbling end over end to the ground.

  When Ricky turned around and looked up from the cold lawn, the Shadow thing was disappearing, flickering away like dust in the wind.

  Ricky didn’t know if he’d killed the thing or if he had merely sent it away somewhere else, but he didn’t care. The Reaper was gone.

  He let out a whoosh of a sigh and stayed on the cold ground, looking up at the jet black sky. He was safe, for now. He let his eyelids flutter close. He was safe, and so very tired.

  Ricky Martin started to drift off to Slumberland, even with all this strangeness and death around him. It felt so peaceful, so right . . .

  Then he jerked himself upright.

  Conner.

  Almira.

  Flower!

  If one of the shadow things was here waiting for Ricky or Ricky’s family, then there may well be others waiting for his friends and his friends’ families.

  Ricky Martin jumped up, took a deep breath, and gathered his strength.

  Then he disappeared, a puff of black smoke into the ebony air.

  Flower returned home just as her parents pulled up the long driveway. She was at the top of the wide white staircase leading to her front door. She turned and waved.

  Her parents, who had no idea she was no longer a “guest” of Homeland Security, let alone no longer in a hospital bed, sprang out of the car.

  “Flower!” her mother called out.

  Her father stood frozen as Mrs. Gardener rushed toward her daughter. She met Flower at the top of the front steps and held her, sobbing.

  Aaron Gardener shut the car doors and beeped the car locked. Then he joined his wife and daughter by the front door.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said gently, ushering them in.

  Inside, the house was unusually dark. Their home was filled with motion sensors, inside and out, which automatically turn on the outside lights at dusk. But for some reason none of the sensors activated this evening.

  Aaron played with a couple of light switches, just as Ricky Martin had done in his house, but no lights greeted them.

  “Must be a power outage,” he offered. “I’ll get a couple of flashlights. Everyone hold on. Stay where you are.”

  He traced his hand along the wall until he found the front closet. He opened the closet door then noisily reached around in the blackness until his hands fell upon two plastic flashlights.

  He returned with them, one lit, one not. He turned on the second flashlight as he handed it backwards to his wife.

  “Why don’t you and Flower go sit in the kitchen? I’m sure you’re hungry, right Flower? I’m just going to look around a bit. Try to figure out what’s wrong with the electricity here, if I can.”

  “Okay, dear,” Kimberly Gardener said. Keeping her arm around Flower’s shoulder, she moved with her daughter deeper into the house. “Come on, honey.”

  The Shadow thing that had been watching was perhaps contemplating whether to attack the group now, or wait until they had split up. Evidently, it decided to wait, because it floated along the ceiling following Mr. Gardener to the junction box in the basement.

  Aaron Gardener rested the flashlight on a toolbox on the workbench so that the beam of light shown directly on the breaker box. He opened the box and looked for any flipped breakers, indicating a circuit overload. However, all was well with the breakers. He glanced at the main breaker that feeds power from the meter. It, too, was exactly as it was supposed to be; that is, untripped.

  Gardener scratched his head and was reaching for the flashlight to investigate the wiring leading to the box when he smelled something odd. It was the stench of death, but Gardener wouldn’t be able to classify it as such. It was an acrid smell, like bad eggs, like a burnt forest. Just a hint of it, not overwhelming, more like a memory of a scent.

  He took the flashlight and sliced the beam through the dark basement. Dusty bicycles. Ancient tennis rackets. An old dartboard. A swayback couch. An old fat television. Everything looked right. But it just didn’t feel right.

  Then a cold chill ran down his back, as if someone had taken a big piece of ice and run it along his spine. He shivered. His brow was beading to sweat, even though the basement was quite cool. His ball sack pulled up slightly.

  The thing appeared out of the dark, like an optical illusion, like awful 3-D. Black emerging from black, smoke plume from smoke, nothing from nothingness.

  At first, Gardener couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He squinted and tilted his head slightly, trying to see into the space better. The flashlight was nearly useless, like headlights in heavy fog.

  Then Gardener’s heart tightened as though something was trying to pull it out of his chest.

  He grunted, out of breath as he fought the pain. When he looked down at his chest, he could swear he saw what appeared to be a hand there—a wispy, ghostly hand and arm. The hand seemed to be reaching into his chest, squeezing his heart, pulling it out of his rib cage.

  At least that’s what it felt like; at least that’s what he imagined was happening.

  The dark room got darker still. Gardener dropped the flashlight. It crashed to the floor and the beam spun in a half circle, illuminating the lower parts of the room before going out.

  Now, in total darkness, Aaron Gardener fell to the ground. He was dead before his head hit the damp indoor-outdoor carpet.

  But his heart seemed to stay suspended above him in exactly the same spot it was when he had been standing there seconds ago.

  Gardener lay on the floor, his eyes bulging out, his tongue lolling to one side. Blood formed in a dark red puddle in the middle of his chest.

  Inside his body, Gardener’s heart plopped into the pool of blood like a tiny diver.

  The Shadow thing, the Reaper, turned and floated back up the basement stairs, through the hall, and into the kitchen. Mrs. Gardener and her daughter sat there, unaware of the catastrophic events that had just occurred below them.

  “What was that?” Flower asked, staying suddenly still.

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard something . . . ”

  “I didn’t hear anything.,” Mrs. Gardener said. “Probably just your father messing around in the basement.”

  “Maybe.” Flower bit her lip. “Does it feel colder in here all of a sudden?” she asked.

  “Yes, now that you mention it.”

  Flower yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m super tired,” she said. “You mind if I go up to bed?”

  “N
ot at all, dear. Here,” her mother said, standing up, “let me go with you. You’re still recovering.” She picked up the flashlight off the kitchen table. “Once you’re settled, I’ll come back down and wait for your father.”

  “Okay.” Flower yawned again, this time for much longer. “I need my sleep, I guess!” She laughed just a bit. Taking her mother’s hand, they started for the staircase.

  Before either of them could take another step, something magnetic—some unknown force—ripped the flashlight out of Mrs. Gardener’s hand and sent it smashing against the far wall.

  Kimberly Gardener screamed. Then, with no idea why she was thinking it, let alone saying it, she shouted to her daughter. “Run! Flower, run!”

  With all that she had witnessed recently, Flower did not stop to ask why. She bolted toward the stairs and up to the safety of her room.

  Flower didn’t turn to see her mother lifted off the ground. She did not see her spinning like a top at the pinnacle of their fourteen-foot living room ceiling, blood trailing out of her mouth. She never saw, thankfully, her mother’s head twisted off her body like a wine cork, nor her body crash to the floor, dead.

  Mrs. Gardener’s head, the scream frozen on her face, bounced through the hall and rolled to the basement doorway. It tumbled down the stairs, leaving a red line of blood in its wake, and collided with the body of her husband, Aaron Gardener, where it finally lay at peace. The couple were united again, at least partially, in death.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Very Unprofessional Sobbing

  Detective First Class Gloria Meehan and Sergeant Brent Wilcox led the way, with several irate representatives of the Department of Homeland Security close on their heels.

  Wilcox whispered out of the side of his mouth to Meehan: “I told you to go home, and here you are, a pain in my butt.”

  “Sir, you can’t seriously believe that I’d let you face this alone.”

  “No, but it is what I wanted.”

  “You only think it’s what you want,” Meehan, said. “Trust me, you’ll be glad I stayed.”

  The group turned left at an adjacent hall, then directly into the largest conference room in the building. It only sat six, however.

  “I’ll stand,” said Wilcox. “I’ll need to be mobile, draw on the whiteboard, that kind of thing.”

  Kurt Jackson of Homeland, who was already seated at the conference table with a couple of others from DHS, sensed what he thought was a power play. He responded with, “I’ll give up my seat. Not a problem.” He positioned himself at the wall directly across from Wilcox. Wilcox forced back a smile.

  Meehan was about to say that she would stand. Wilcox could see where this was headed, with none of the participants actually sitting. He shook his head subtly at Meehan, giving her the eyeball. For once, she responded as he wished.

  Meehan pulled out the chair closest to the door and sat down. She had one of the best views of the whiteboard and plenty of room to jump up, if needed, to make her point. And, of course, the open door at her back meant easy access to a quick retreat, should it come to that.

  The other men pouring into the room followed the example and took seats around the table.

  “Let’s get started,” Wilcox said.

  “Let’s start, now!” Jackson said to his team, both talking over and ignoring Wilcox. “We don’t have all day. Here’s the deal.”

  Sergeant Wilcox opened his mouth to interject but slowly closed it as Jackson continued.

  “One,” he said, holding up a single finger. “You had unauthorized police presence—a ’U-P-P’—on location at a secret DHS building.”

  “Well—” Wilcox bravely tried again to wrestle control of the meeting.

  “Two,” Jackson went on, as if no one else were in the room. Certainly, no one that he respected. “The UPP entered with a mission to extract suspects in our possession. Treasonous.”

  “No!” Gloria Meehan piped up, speaking out of turn, but without intent. As if she hiccuped and the word ’No’ came out.

  “Federal jurisdiction. Period,” Jackson continued. “Thus, Federal charges. Are we done here?”

  “Hold your horses,” Sergeant Wilcox said, glaring at Jackson. Wilcox slammed his hand hard on the conference table. “Fact is, one,” Wilcox counted off on his fingers, pulling the finger back with the fingers on his other hand, “you kidnapped a police officer who was following up a lead on a murder investigation. A lead which happened to not only lead to the DHS facility, but which correctly led to the person of interest in your ’possession.’ Two—”

  “No, you hold your horses, sergeant,” Jackson said. He strode over until he and Wilcox stood face-to-face, inches apart. Jackson spread his legs as if preparing to lift a heavy weight over his shoulders. “This is bullshit. You can go ahead and say whatever you want. Blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t matter and it won’t ever matter. Any and all activities underway in our facility at the time your personnel ambushed it are protected by the Terrorist Act. You, sir, are out of order!”

  Flower trembled in her room, not knowing why she’d run up instead of out of the house and into the street. Now she was trapped in her own bedroom. She had run so hard and so scared, she had heard nothing of her mother’s destruction, the decapitation, the arrival of the Reaper.

  As she stood still and listened, there wasn’t a sound in the house. She did not know that the Shadow thing, the Ghost of Death, was working its way toward her that very moment. Silently floating on wings of murderous intent up the stairs and into her room.

  The Shadow thing stopped at her door and watched, as if it was enjoying Flower’s last minute on Earth, as if it found it funny, as if a smile played across its ghostly visage. The thing had decided on the death for Flower: death by falling. Or, more precisely, being pushed out the window. So, the Shadow charged, the push inevitable as rain, the death as predictable as the changing of the seasons.

  But Flower did not die. No one was pushed out of any window to his or her death.

  Because by the time the grim thing reached the spot where Flower stood trembling and crying, there was no longer anyone there. Only wispy air. Just like the shadowy thing was made of.

  Outside on the front lawn, Flower and Ricky Martin reappeared in a puff of smoke like headliners in an elaborate Vegas magic show. Flower stared wide-eyed at Ricky.

  “How—? How did you know I was in danger?” she asked between jagged gasps.

  “One of those Shadow things attacked my house, too. It was a guess really, that one would be in your house, too. But it looks like I got it right, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I need to get back in there, Flower,” Ricky said, in as calm a voice as he could muster, “before it realizes you’re gone.”

  Flower said nothing, tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “I should be back soon. You stay right here. No matter what, do not come back in your house. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Flower said in a small voice. She paused and then said, “Ricky?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please be careful.”

  Ricky smiled, and his eyebrows spread until they looked like an open drawbridge. “I will.”

  Flower leaned in and kissed Ricky softly on his full, slightly slobbery, virgin lips. “Don’t let that thing get you,” she whispered.

  Now it was Ricky’s turn to stare with wide eyes.

  “I—I won’t.” He swallowed hard, still staring at the pretty girl who’d just kissed him, as if in a dream.

  Then he vanished into thin air.

  The lights in the office flickered and the room went dark.

  General confusion ensued as everyone chattered their version of the optimal solution to the problem. Finally, Wilcox made himself heard above all the other voices.

  “Detective Meehan!” he shouted. “Would you please go see why the lights—”

  Wilcox stopped talking as he noticed that it wasn’t just the lights in the room now. The entire police station was
eerily quiet, except for the whir and buzz of machines powering down. The place was pitch-black and silent. Then officers shouted and dashed about outside the room.

  “Let me go try to find out what the hell is happening,” Meehan shouted over the new cacophony of voices. She jumped up and felt her way to the door.

  Briefly the lights came back on and the humming of the generators in the basement could be heard even up here on the second floor. Then, thirty seconds later, the backup generators powered off as well, throwing the station once more into blackness.

  “I’ll be right back,” Meehan said, holding up her index finger toward the pitch dark room and its inhabitants. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  The Shadow that had entered the room as Meehan left floated to the ceiling and waited there, surveying, listening. Then Shadow attacked.

  First Kurt Jackson of Homeland collapsed to the carpet, dead of a heart attack. The four at the table expired on the spot, one after the other, like dominoes falling. The first died of food poisoning, the second from tuberculosis, the third from pneumonia, and the fourth from sudden melanoma. They screamed as they died, lashing about.

  Wilcox bolted down the hall before the third man’s head hit the table.

  “Gloria! Get the hell out of the building. Everyone, get the hell out. That’s an order!”

  Men and women started running for the exits.

  “Should I unlock the armory, Sarge?” someone yelled.

  “We can’t fight this thing with guns. The Black Death has arrived!”

  As Wilcox shouted and pointed and gave directions, the Shadow thing sliced through him. He died instantly of malnutrition, flopping to the tiles like a fish, wriggling for a second or two before dying.

  Others in the building were dropping, too. Untrained in fighting the supernatural, many started shooting at the air around them. Friendly fire dropped many of the officers, others died of additional curious diseases.