The man followed her in. He offered her a soda, then tried to grab her. She let her shadow devour him in a puddle of fetid water beside a Dumpster.
After that, her shadow made her hunt in earnest. She walked all day, sometimes even skipping lunch when her shadow scented a pedophile or a new wet place. By early August, she’d trapped two more men. Hunting was easiest when she was on her period; when she was bleeding, her shadow spoke to her constantly, urging her on. When she wasn’t near her period, the shadow spoke rarely, and only around water. When it wasn’t there to reassure her, she worried about the hunt, and lay awake at night, wondering if her soul was destined for hell.
When school started, Charlie had to abandon her daily walks for the dull routine of books and teachers and bland cafeteria food. She was in junior high school now; she’d hoped it would be better than elementary school, but it was just bigger.
She sat in the back of the classrooms, as always. Almost everyone ignored her. Everyone except her shadow.
It started to whisper ominous suggestions when she was walking to classes:
See that boy? He burned a litter of kittens alive. He’s going to the restroom; follow him in and let me have him.
See that girl? She’s been trying to poison her baby brother, putting soap in his formula. She’ll kill him soon if you don’t help me take her.
Charlie knew she couldn’t possibly do what her shadow wanted, not at school. Parks and underpasses were one thing; there was lots of space, lots of ways to slip away unnoticed even if people screamed as they were dying. But she was trapped at school. She’d get caught for sure.
She tried to ignore her shadow’s exhortations by making up rhymes in her head while she was between classes or by doing anagrams and palindromes in class when the teachers got boring. But when her math class had a young substitute teacher named Mr. Berling, the shadow became unbearable.
Mr. Berling was young and smiled a lot. He explained things a whole lot better than their regular teacher, and Charlie liked him.
He touches little girls, the shadow told her. Takes them out to see the horsies on his father’s farm and feels them up in the stable.
“Able was I ere I saw Elba,” Charlie muttered under her breath. Her hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t write.
He’s scum, just like the rest of them. Follow him home, let him take you to the farm. He’ll fit nicely in the horse trough.
“Stressed desserts.” Charlie thought she was going to start crying.
“Charlie, are you okay?” asked Mr. Berling.
“I think I ate something bad at lunch,” she stammered. “I think I need to go to the bathroom for a while.”
“Please do,” he agreed.
Charlie bolted from the classroom, ran downstairs to the girls’ restroom in the basement. It was usually empty; Charlie prayed no one else would be in there.
She pushed through the door and found four girls clustered around a pack of Camels. Two were inexpertly puffing on cigarettes as the third showed the fourth how to work the childproof lighter. They all turned to stare at her when she came in.
Charlie, get out of here this instant! the shadow demanded. But it seemed to be growing weaker, recoiling from the smoke. With each breath she took, it slipped farther away.
“Can I try one of those?” she asked, stepping toward the group.
“I guess,” said the girl with the pack. She pulled out a cigarette and handed it and the lighter to Charlie.
Charlie lit it and took an experimental drag, then immediately started to cough and gag. This was surely the foulest thing she’d had in her mouth since … since a time she didn’t want to remember. Eyes streaming, she took another puff.
It was working, wind and fire canceling water and earth. Her shadow’s indignant demands were faint, fading into the rhythmic drip of the leaky faucet.
Charlie soon learned that it only took two cigarettes a day to silence her shadow. She smoked them on the sly in the bathroom at school and in the backyard at home. When the shadow started to talk to her in her dreams, Charlie bought incense and started burning it in her room at night.
She knew she was vulnerable without her shadow. The sick men she’d hunted before were still around. And she had the awful suspicion that she was still attuned to them, and they were attracted to her. She needed a way to protect herself.
So when her aunt asked her what she wanted for her fifteenth birthday, she asked for martial arts lessons. Her uncle took her to Master Kim’s Tae Kwon Do Dojang, bought her a white uniform and belt, and enrolled her for a class that started that very night.
Charlie had always hated PE classes, and although tae kwon do was several degrees harder than any sport she’d been made to try at school, she liked it instantly. Unlike running stairs or chasing balls, the kicks and strikes had a point, a real and practical purpose. Everything she learned was useful; getting into shape was just a happy side effect.
Another happy benefit of the class was David. He was a year older than Charlie, tall and cute but painfully shy. Charlie was attracted to him the moment she saw him. It took her weeks to swallow her own fear and talk to him after class, but once she did they became fast friends. Best friends, and as far as she could tell, each other’s only friend. He already had his driver’s license, so they often went out to see movies or go hiking in the low hills north of the city.
Six months after they started going out, Charlie knew that she loved David, even though he’d only hugged her briefly and had never tried to kiss her. He didn’t say so, but she suspected it was because of her smoking. His favorite aunt had died of lung cancer, and he hated being around smoke. She cut back as much as she thought she could, and wished she could explain her habit to him. But she knew that her shadow, although it had gone silent, would not tolerate being exposed.
A year later, David got his red belt, and Charlie got her blue. They were both drenched in sweat by the end of their respective skills tests. Charlie took a quick shower and changed at the dojang, but David never liked showering in the men’s room there, since Master Kim had not thought to provide separate stalls for the men.
“I feel way gross,” he said as they climbed into his truck. “I probably stink, too. Sorry. Let’s go back to my place and let me get cleaned up, and then you wanna go get some ice cream?”
“Sure.” Charlie suddenly realized that she hadn’t had a cigarette all day. She hadn’t smoked that morning because she wanted her lungs clean for the test, and she’d forgotten to bring her pack with her for a puff in the ladies’ room afterward.
“It’s really cool that you’ve got your blue. Now you’ll be able to spar with us in tournaments. I heard Master Kim on the phone the other day; he’s arranging for all of us to go to Corpus Christi next month for the Tejas Invitational. That will totally kick butt; we’ll get to go to the beach. I’ve never been swimming in the ocean before.”
The ocean. Charlie’s skin prickled with dread.
“I—I can’t go,” she muttered.
“What do you mean? You gotta go, this will be too cool to miss!”
“I can’t.” Dammit, why had she forgotten her cigarettes?
“Is it because you’re nervous about competing? You shouldn’t worry about that, you’re really good. And you know how to intimidate people. I mean, you should see the look you get on your face when you hit the heavy bag—”
“Look, don’t bug me about this!” she snapped. “I said I can’t go, end of discussion!”
“Okay, okay, sorry.”
They drove on in silence until they got to David’s house. The place was empty; his father was probably off on a sales trip, and his mother was probably working another fourteen-hour nursing shift at the hospital. David didn’t like to talk about his parents much.
She followed him into the house and to his bedroom. David kept his room excruciatingly tidy; Charlie doubted she’d even be able to find dust on the tops of his bookshelves.
“You wanna just hang o
ut here while I shower?” he asked as he pulled fresh clothes out of his dresser. “If you want a Coke or anything, just help yourself.”
“Okay.”
David padded off to the bathroom, and she sat down on the edge of his bed, trying not to muss the perfectly smooth green bedspread. She stared around at the neat rows of kung fu movie posters on the walls.
I wonder what David keeps under his bed.
Charlie’s breath caught in her throat. Had that been her own thought, or her shadow’s?
“Are you there?” she whispered, aching for a cigarette. “Damn you, David’s a good guy, there’s nothing bad under his bed.”
Are you sure?
Charlie sat very still, muttering anagrams to herself while she tried to ignore the dreadful curiosity building inside her. She could hear the hiss and spatter of water from the shower.
Are you afraid? If you don’t look, you’ll always wonder.
“Damn you.” Charlie slid off the bed, got down on her hands and knees, and peeked under the bed. She pushed aside a baseball mitt and a pair of cleats and saw a wide, flat cardboard box. She pulled it out and opened it up. Inside was a stack of comic books in plastic sleeves.
“See, it’s just comics,” she said, starting to rifle through them. “Batman, and Nighthawk, and the Hulk, and … oh shit.”
At the bottom was a Swedish magazine, unsleeved. She couldn’t understand the words, but the pictures of naked prepubescent boys were clear enough. The center spread showed an elevenish boy giving a slightly older boy a blow job. And tucked inside the back cover were three Polaroids of a naked boy in different poses on David’s bed. On the same green bedspread she’d tried not to wrinkle.
Charlie felt completely and utterly numb. Defeated. She put everything back exactly the way she’d found it and reassumed her perch on the bed. A few minutes later, David came in, freshly dressed and toweling off his short brown hair.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t be nervous about Corpus Christi,” she announced. “I changed my mind; I’ll go to the tournament.”
His face broke into a broad grin, and he leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “That’s great! We’ll have a terrific time, I bet.”
In her mind, Charlie could see David, the only real friend she’d ever had, being torn apart in the waves. Her shadow felt smug, satisfied.
Was her whole life going to be like this?
Despite her depression, Charlie did well at the tournament, placed tenth in her belt class out of a field of seventy competitors. David did even better, placing third. In fact, most of Master Kim’s students did quite well, so he took all eight of them out for pizza that night, and drove them to the beach in his big van the next morning.
The sky was overcast, and though it was a hot day, the strong, salt-greasy wind from the ocean carried a chilly bite.
“Watch out for undertow!” Master Kim admonished as they piled out of the van in their flip-flops and big Tshirts. “It take you down like that.” He hit his palm with his fist for emphasis. “And watch out for what lifeguard say. If he yell ‘shark,’ get out of water, fast as you can.”
Charlie walked across the sand and set down her beach bag. She pulled out the single-edged razor blade she’d hidden in the folds of her towel. Hiding it in her hand, she kicked off her flip-flops and headed out to meet the waves.
David had run ahead of her and was already paddling around, happy as an otter. The water was dark, a gray like decaying headstones. Then Charlie waded out away from the others until she was in chest-deep.
He’s in over his head, her shadow whispered. Let me have him.
“No.”
For a moment, nothing happened as her shadow considered this new rebellion. Then Charlie felt a sharp cramp, deep in her womb.
Give him to me. The shadow’s little-girl voice was ominous.
The cramp got worse, and bile rose in Charlie’s throat. “No.”
I saved you! the shadow shrieked inside her head. Without me, you’d be less than nothing, and this is how you repay me?
“Maybe I am nothing. But it’s better than what you are.”
I’m your God, and don’t you forget that.
The cramping became a wrenching pain in her stomach and intestines, and she cried out.
“Charlie?” David called, paddling toward her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, please don’t come over here,” she managed to call back.
You’ll do as I say. And today we’re going to start with that little boyfucker over there.
“You haven’t proved to me that he’s done more than look, and even if he has, I won’t let you. Not today.”
She began to slit her left wrist with the razor blade. Her blood was invisible in the dark water. “I’d rather die than live like this. You’re not getting my permission to kill, never ever again. You asked me what I wanted, and now I want you to go away.”
The shadow shrieked inside her head, the pain almost unbearable. A big, sandpapery shape bumped up against her body. Sharp jaws clamped down on her bleeding wrist.
It yanked her down beneath the waves and shoved her into the sandy bottom. Through the cloudy water, she could see the pearly dead eyes of the big shark holding her down. The shark’s wide, razored mouth was inches from her face.
Give. Me. The. Boy.
Charlie kicked against the shark, churning up the sand, sharp shells and rocks cutting her legs. With her free hand, she beat against the shark’s snout, but the huge fish wouldn’t budge. Her eyes burned, and her lungs screamed for air.
She saw movement in the corner of her eye. David was diving down toward her.
“No!” she tried to scream, but all that came out was her last bit of air in a long string of bubbles.
The shark released her and rose to meet David. She pushed off the bottom, trying to reach them, but she’d gone too long without a breath. She blacked out.
Charlie came to on a stretcher on the sand. Her left arm was splinted and wrapped in bloody gauze. Master Kim and two paramedics hovered over her. Kim’s face was grave.
“Where’s David?” she whispered.
“I’m right here.” He pushed through the crowd and knelt beside her. There wasn’t a scratch on him. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Her shadow seemed to be gone. But the shark’s attack crushed bones in her wrist and forearm and severed a couple of tendons. The doctors said she’d need more surgeries and it would be at least a year before she regained full use of her hand. She felt weaker than she ever had before.
David came to visit her in the hospital the next day. He could barely sit still, and his eyes glowed with fever.
“It told me that I could save you, just by wanting to,” he said after the nurse left.
“It?” Charlie felt a deep chill.
“Yeah. It’s like … it’s incredible. I can kick more ass than Bruce Lee and Batman combined! I just have to be near water, and no one can stop me.”
“Oh God, David …” Charlie trailed off as it all sank in.
Her best friend seemed not to hear her. “I’m gonna go away, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. I just thought you should know, ’cause we’re buddies and all. I don’t need school, I don’t need Master Kim. Now I can do anything I want.”
“David, no, please, don’t do this, listen to me—”
“Sorry, Charlie, I gotta cruise.” He planted a quick, hard kiss on her forehead.
And then he was gone.
Charlie lay in bed, listening to her heart pound. Between the beats, she thought she could hear the shadow’s little-girl laughter.
chapter
twenty-six
Grave Matters
Pal and I looked at each other; clearly the shadow was some sort of devil. Whether it was the kind we could deal with was another matter entirely.
Charlie crushed her smoldering cigarette stub in her lunch plate and lit up another. “I thought that would be the last I’d ever see of David, you know? And it was, u
ntil about six weeks ago. I was on night patrol near the fence when he popped up out of nowhere. He looks so sketchy now, I barely recognized him.”
“What did he want?” I asked.
“He told me how he and the shadow had gone to L.A. for a while but they came back here—how did he put it?—because ‘the darkness was coming’ or something like that. And even though the shadow’s a lot stronger now, it and David got stuck here like everyone else. He told me that he and the shadow are helping Miko. Before, when she popped out people’s souls, their bodies might live on for a little while but then they’d die. The shadow gave him the power to turn them into zombies that she could control. They’ll stay alive for months if you give them food and water. And so Miko let him and the shadow do pretty much what they wanted—I guess the shadow mostly wants living bodies to eat—as long as she got enough zombies to do what she wanted.”
“But why did he come to you that night?”
Charlie shrugged. “Why that night? I dunno. But what he wanted was for me to join him and come back to the shadow. He said that he’d been going into abandoned houses and stealing money and gold and stuff that people had left behind, and he had millions of dollars in cash stashed away. He said that I’d always been his best buddy and he wanted to share the loot with me. And if I helped them, he’d make sure I got out alive, and once we got out we’d buy a mansion in Beverly Hills and have movie stars over for parties and all kinds of other crap.”
“What did you say to him?”
Charlie looked indignant. “What do you think I said to him? I told him to go to hell and walked away. No way I was going back to the shadow. No way I was helping Miko. Not ever.”
“Do you know where they are now?”
She nodded. “Civic League Park. There’s a water lily garden there. Big ponds. The shadow’s living in one of them, and David’s in the gardener’s hut.”
Shotgun Sorceress Page 22
