Within the Shadows

by Brandon Massey

  Besides, he wasn’t convinced that running away would help. Mika found him no matter where he went.

  It was early evening when they arrived at Andrew’s home. The setting sun cast a crimson-orange glow across the sky. The deep, lengthening shadows promised an especially dark night.

  He got out of Eric’s SUV and shuffled around to the driver’s side.

  “Still think you should go to my lake crib for a while,” Eric said. “Take Carmen with you and chill.”

  “Listen, anywhere I go, this woman finds me. Like she’s got a tracker on me or something. If I’m gonna be stalked, I might as well be in the comfort of my own home.”

  “I hear ya, bro. If you change your mind, the keys to the place are yours, you know that.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Got your piece?”

  He patted his side. He wore the revolver in a shoulder holster, concealing it with an oversize Atlanta Falcons jersey. He’d vowed that he wouldn’t be caught defenseless again.

  “Cool,” Eric said. “What’re you about to do now?”

  “The locksmith should be over in a half hour. I need to finish cleaning up, too. Got a helluva mess in there.”

  “Want any help?”

  “Nah, I can handle it.”

  “I’ll check on you later this evening. But call me if you need anything, all right?”

  “Will do. Thanks, man.”

  Eric pulled away and drove to his home down the street.

  Andrew faced the house. This wonderful place for which he had labored for years to be able to attain. He felt a surge of the same, fierce pride he’d experienced when the real estate attorney at the closing had handed him the keys to the front door.

  And Mika had violated it.

  As his pride gave way to righteous anger, he clenched his hands into fists.

  His outrage didn’t really stem from her vandalism of the house; most of the items and furniture she’d broken could be repaired or replaced. He was angered because she was wrecking what his house symbolized to him. Freedom. Stability.

  She’d robbed him of his freedom, had him nervous to sleep in his own bed. At any time, her or her cats might be watching and scheming.

  And his stable life of comforting routines had been destroyed. He never knew what might happen next, what fresh terror would strike him. Chaos had taken over.

  All because a woman he’d met in a coffee shop had fallen in love with him and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  He squeezed his fists so tightly that his knuckles popped.

  He wasn’t going to give up the life he’d earned for Mika. Never.

  He’d rather die than give up.

  The locksmith arrived around six-thirty and replaced the locks on the front and patio doors. Andrew called the security company and changed the access code to the system, too.

  Tomorrow, he was taking his car to the dealership to get it outfitted for new keys.

  Switching the locks and the passwords probably would not keep Mika out of his house or his car. She possessed unusual talents that might grant her entry to wherever she desired to go. But in the absence of detailed proof regarding exactly what she was capable of, it was logical for him to take basic steps to secure his possessions.

  He kept the revolver in the shoulder holster as he cleaned up the mess Mika and her cats had left behind. If she showed up again, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to shoot her. The only thing he’d ever fired at were targets at shooting ranges. But keeping the gun on him made him feel safer.

  Tidying the entire house would take days; he limited his efforts to the kitchen, bedroom, office, and bathroom, the areas that he frequented.

  As he swept broken glass across the kitchen floor, the telephone rang. It was a cop.

  “Mr. Wilson, we’ve run into a problem trying to serve this restraining order,” the officer said in gruff voice.

  His stomach plummeted. “What’s wrong?”

  “You say that a Lalamika Woods was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead? That you spent time with her there this past Tuesday night, June first?”

  “That’s right. Let me guess: the room’s listed under a different name.”

  “Sure is, buddy. It’s listed under your name.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hotel says Mr. and Mrs. Andrew F. Wilson checked in on Tuesday, June first at two o’clock in the afternoon. You checked out the next morning.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it?” the officer’s voice held a note of sarcasm. “You having marital problems, buddy?”

  “Huh? I’m not married!”

  “The police department ain’t the place to vent your troubles with your wife. On top of that, filing a false police report is a crime—”

  “Listen, I’m not lying. You’ve gotta believe me, she must’ve checked into the hotel under my name—”

  “With your credit card, too, huh? American Express?”

  “I don’t have an American Express card.”

  “You used it to book the room at the Ritz.”

  “It wasn’t me!” He pounded his fist against the counter. “She must’ve stolen my identity, gotten a card under my name, used it to book the hotel—”

  “Why the heck would your wife go through all that trouble?”

  “She’s not my wife!” he said. “Don’t you get it? This woman is nuts and she’s ruining my life.”

  “Buddy, I usually wouldn’t do this, but I’m going to keep this TRO request on the desk here over the weekend, give you some time to reconcile with your wife. I’ll check back with you Monday and see if you’re ready to stop playing these silly games with us.”

  “Wait, I really need your help!”

  Click.

  He slammed the phone onto the cradle. He paced the house.

  Going to the cops was useless. As he’d feared.

  Mika had set him up perfectly. He had no way to catch her. It was like trying to capture smoke.

  Chapter 32

  He called Carmen and told her what had happened. “Wow, psycho chick is a schemer and a half,” she said. “She’s really covered her trail.”

  “There’s gotta be something I can do,” he said. “But I don’t know what.”

  “I’m sorry, Drew. Wish I knew what to tell you. Is there any way you can talk to Sammy again?”

  Standing in his office, he glanced at the smashed computer screen.

  “Computer’s shot,” he said. “I’ll have to get a new one. I’d planned to go to Best Buy first thing tomorrow.”

  “You saved your manuscripts to disk, right? Wouldn’t want the mega-author to lose his masterpieces.”

  “Saved them to disk and uploaded the files to an online storage site, too. I do that for everything all the time. A few years ago I read about Toni Morrison losing some of her important manuscripts in a house fire, and that scared me to death.”

  “I’m glad that’s covered, then.”

  “Wish I could upload myself to a Web site right now, escape this madness. I’m not gonna sleep tonight, Carmen.”

  “I’d love to be there with you. But I know you don’t think it’s safe for me. Can I at least drop off my computer for you?”

  A crashing sound came from downstairs.

  An icy wave of dread washed over him.

  “I’ll call you back,” he said. “I need to check out something.”

  “Be careful, Drew.”

  He rushed downstairs. He was certain the noise had come from the basement.

  Poised at the top of the basement staircase, he flipped the light switch, chasing away the blackness.

  Silence lay over the area below.

  With a shaky hand, he drew the .38 from the holster. He held the gun in both hands, muzzle pointed at the ceiling, and slowly descended the steps.

  He saw what had caused the noise. In the corner of the room, a board game had been tossed to the hardwood floor: Scrabble.

  Cold air wafted toward him an
d caressed his face. The coolness felt as welcome as a breeze on a sizzling day.

  “Sammy.” He smiled. “You’re a genius, man.”

  In the kitchen, he spread the crossword game board on the dinette table and dumped a couple dozen wooden letter tiles out of the sack.

  The board overlapped the jagged crack caused when Mika had flipped the table. The fracture served as a vivid reminder of how much was at stake.

  “Sammy, I need some answers,” he said. “I need to find out how to deal with Mika.”

  He remembered that during previous communication, Sammy had answered questions that he presented verbally. He decided to try the same approach now, to save time.

  The air around him thickened, cooled.

  Sammy was nearby.

  He leaned over the game board. “Earlier, you said that you and Mika are from the same place—you called it a sad place. Do you know the name of the town or city?”

  The letter tiles began to slide across the board and form a phrase.

  FAR FROM HEAR

  “Okay, you told me that before,” he said. “But what’s the name of the city, Sammy?”

  DONT NO

  He sighed, tried to hide his frustration with the ghost’s inadequate answers to basic questions.

  “Is the sad place a house?”

  YES

  Okay, this was progress. Until now Sammy hadn’t told him exactly what the “sad place” was.

  He flipped through his notebook and looked at his notes. Earlier, Sammy had said, “sad place is hers.” Mika therefore owned this house, and Sammy had dwelled there, too.

  “Good, Sammy. Where is this house located?”

  MORNENG

  That puzzling word again. Morneng. What the hell did he mean? Hunkered over the table, he decided to temporarily change the line of questioning, and hope that he could lead Sammy back to this subject and a more coherent answer.

  “Let’s talk about Mika,” he said. “What is she?”

  WOMAN

  Was Sammy trying to be a smart-ass? Or was he merely simple-minded?

  “Listen, she can’t be an ordinary woman, not with the stuff she’s able to do.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Is she some kind of psychic—meaning, she’s got lots of weird powers?”

  CAN DO LOTS OF STUF

  “Okay, I can believe that, then. She’s always able to find me, wherever I go.”

  SEE FAR

  “See far? You mean, she does some kind of remote viewing thing, can sort of focus on me in her mind and know where I am?”

  YES

  It was perfectly unbelievable. And perfectly sensible.

  “That means I can never get away from her, Sammy. Is that true? Will she always be able to find me?”

  CANT SEE VEREY VEREY FAR

  His answer seemed to indicate that Mika’s ability to detect his location had limitations. But what was the extent of her talent? How far away did he have to run? A hundred miles? A thousand? Ten thousand?

  He doubted Sammy would be able to provide a more quantitative explanation. Back to the house.

  “Sammy, is the sad place very, very far from hear?”

  YES

  “Where?” He was so eager to know he asked the question without realizing that it would take them back to conversational ground they had already covered.

  MORNENG

  Morneng, morneng, morneng.

  He wanted to pull his hair out. What did that word mean?

  He got an idea.

  “Wait here, Sammy, I’ll be right back.”

  He ran upstairs to his office and dug a state road atlas out of a desk drawer, where he kept some of his reference materials.

  He checked the names of cities and towns in Georgia. Mika had told him that she lived somewhere in the state, hadn’t she?

  But in the entire state of Georgia, there was no town called Morneng.

  It might be a misspelled word. Sammy sure wasn’t going to win a spelling bee competition.

  Morning, maybe?

  He examined the atlas. There was no town named “Morning,” either.

  He returned to the kitchen. The spectral coldness waited near the table.

  “Morning?” he asked. “Is that the name of the town, Sammy? Morning, like ‘good morning’?”

  SAD PLACE IS MORNENG

  “The sad place is called morning?”

  Sammy rapped the board, causing the tiles to jump, but the message remained the same: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG

  Andrew gnawed his lip. Maybe he meant “mourning” as in grieving. But a check of the atlas confirmed that no city named “Mourning” existed in Georgia.

  “Sammy, I don’t understand.”

  Sammy tapped the board again, like an impatient teacher: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG

  “Mourning like crying? The sad place is crying?”

  Another knock: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG

  Andrew dragged his hand down his face. This was going nowhere.

  “Listen, how can we get rid of Mika?” he asked.

  DONT NO

  “What can we do to stop her?”

  A tap: DONT NO

  “Can we make her quit?”

  Another tap: DONT NO

  “Don’t you know anything at all?” he asked. “Damn, you sound like a stupid kid!”

  The cold, coagulating air grew thicker.

  “I didn’t mean that, Sammy. I’m just confused and scared. I’m sorry.”

  The ghost spelled another message.

  AM A KID NOT STOOPID

  And the coldness faded away.

  He pleaded for Sammy to come back. He repeatedly apologized. But the ghost did not return. He was angry with him, apparently.

  “Good job, man,” he said to himself. “Pissed off the only one who could help you.”

  He wrote down what he recalled of their communication. He read through his notes, tried to make sense of what Sammy had told him about the sad place, which he considered the linchpin of understanding Mika’s background. But the meaning of Sammy’s cryptic statements eluded him.

  One thing had become clear: Sammy was a kid. It explained his poor communication skills.

  “Why couldn’t I have gotten a grown-up ghost?” He laughed bitterly at the absurdity of the situation.

  He took a Heineken out of the refrigerator. He sat at the dinette table, drank deeply, belched.

  The thought of drinking himself into a stupor appealed to him. It would take the edge off the anxiety that chewed at his guts.

  Even as he considered the thought, he knew he wouldn’t do it. Drunk, he would lose full control of his mental and physical functions, and with Mika on the prowl, he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. One or two beers would have to be the limit.

  As he sipped the brew, Sammy’s baffling messages spooled through his mind.

  Sad place is morneng.

  He was missing something. A vital link that would explain all of the clues. But what was it?

  Sad place is morneng.

  Why was he convinced that it was something obvious? Sammy wasn’t Shakespeare, crafting intricate and metaphorical language. He was a kid, almost painfully simple and direct.

  He worried that he was analyzing this too rigorously. The logical left side of his brain doggedly attempted to grind out a solution—but inhibited his creativity and intuition.

  Sad place is morneng.

  He took another sip of beer and let his thoughts settle. From his experiences writing fiction, he’d learned that the muse often visited unexpectedly, after he had given up trying to wrestle an idea to the surface.

  He went to the pantry, opened a can of Planter’s almonds, and poured out a handful. He munched on almonds and sipped the Heineken.

  Without any purposeful effort, his mind circled back to what Sammy had told him.

  Mika and Sammy hailed from the same place. The sad place. A house. What kind of house would an heiress to a fortune own?

  An estate, probably. Like a mansion.

/>   A mansion . . .

  He stopped eating.

  The beer bottle felt much colder in his hand. Like a brick of ice.

  He had an idea. An idea that frightened and excited him simultaneously.

  He needed to talk to Sammy. Immediately. The ghost was his only hope of proving what he suspected.

  He ought to knock himself upside the head for insulting the kid.

  Loud music struck up in the basement. The kitchen floor started to throb.

  He placed the beer on the counter.

  It had to be Sammy down there, fooling around with the stereo. Throwing a temper tantrum. Just like the child he was.

  He went to the basement door.

  A disco song played downstairs: “Dance With Me,” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band.

  “That you, Sammy?” he said. “I said I’m sorry!”

  The music increased in volume. The walls vibrated and the door trembled.

  “Turn it off!” he said. “Stop messing around!”

  The banging music played on.

  Feeling like a parent needing to discipline a boisterous child, he pounded down the steps.

  But Sammy was not there.

  Mika was.

  Chapter 33

  Mika was dancing. Standing at the base of the stairs, Andrew froze.

  On the other side of the room, the patio door was half open, allowing an evening breeze to whisper inside. The locksmith had changed the lock on the door only an hour ago, and he had made sure that it was secured.

  It proved his fears: locks were useless against Mika.

  Twirling around the hardwood floor, she waved at him. “Hey, baby. Come on and dance with me!”

  Laughing, she whirled. Snapped her fingers to the beat.

  As she neared the furniture, it moved out of her path; the sofa, chairs, and end tables, pushed by an invisible force, glided to the walls.

  She barely noticed.

  Fear covered him, like a blanket of ice.

  What would Mark Justice do?

  Justice answered: You can’t fight her, Andrew. She’s got unbelievable powers. Get the hell outta here.