The Darkness of Shadows

by Little, Chris

  I wouldn’t look at her.

  “I’m fine being alone,” I said. “You’re supposed to get married and have kids. I’m the plucky sidekick with twenty-seven cats. I just want you to be happy.”

  “Family is family, through good times and bad.” She laughed. “Besides, you don’t even like cats.”

  Which reminded me of Rufus. The Guerreros were in danger, danger I didn’t even fully understand, because of me. The crescent-shaped auras were dancing at the edge of my vision, turning it to gray. I tried to get up, but lost my balance and sat back down.

  “Can I stay here tonight?”

  My hands started to tremble again, a fact that didn’t escape Val. She went to the kitchen and came back with the meds from my pack.

  “That migraine came on pretty quickly,” she said.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I tried and failed to open the medicine. “Dammit—”

  She took the blister pack and worked it open. I took the pills and managed not to spill any water. Yippee for me.

  Val took the high road and didn’t make a wiseass comment. She headed to the stairs and the second-floor bedrooms. I tottered to the office to retrieve my cane. She appeared with a quilt, some pillows, and a new toothbrush.

  “I called Mom to let her know you’re okay and staying here. I’ll be in the office if you need me. I set the alarm, so don’t go opening any doors.”

  I made a face at her and headed for the bathroom, where I went about what one does to get ready for bed. It was nice to brush my teeth and get the puke taste out of my pie hole.

  When I went back into the office Val was staring at the screen, oblivious to her surroundings.

  “Hey.” No reply. I took a step closer, careful not to look at the screen. “Val?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to watch TV for a little while. I’ll keep it low.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Thanks for tonight. And for always being there for me.” I turned to leave and felt a hug from behind.

  “You’re welcome. Now let me get back to work.”

  A few hours passed and the clicking of the mouse and the tapping of the keyboard stopped. I muted Rear Window and went to check on Val.

  She was slumped on the desk, sound asleep, using her arms as a pillow. I smiled and touched her shoulder. I was met with a shrug.

  “You can’t sleep here,” I said.

  “Hrrmph.”

  I got her up and steered her to the couch. There was no way I could get her upstairs to her bedroom—my knee was already protesting the short walk from the office to the living room. Plus, the added weight was hard for me to navigate without my cane.

  She was muttering something about sigils and runes as she sank into the cushions of the comfortable couch. She grabbed one of the pillows, scrunched it up, and put her head to rest. Her long legs curled up as I covered her with the quilt. My guardian angel.

  I had no right to put her through this crap.

  My cane echoed in the silence of the house. I shut the lights off and turned to face the computer screen. I tried not to look, but curiosity got the better of me.

  The drawings Val created were still there. She must have scanned the journal pages too, because they were also on the screen. Following the instructions, she layered each image on top of a larger drawing, completing it. Symbols and creatures stared out at me. I recognized one or two from my father’s circle diagram at my apartment.

  According to Val’s notes, the spiral that finished the sequence represented life. Funny, I never knew my father had a sense of humor.

  I read through the rest of the annotations. None of it made sense to me. Addresses for arcane and mystic shops were listed on another sheet. Man, she was organized. This would’ve taken me forever to put together.

  I turned the monitors off. I had no clue how to “shut down” whatever she had running and I didn’t want to mess it up, so I left the computer on.

  I had the leverage I needed to send my father on a permanent vacation. But I still didn’t understand his need for these pages. Why would he kill for them? Why did he need me? What was his end game? My father, Rufus, and the pages—these are a few of my least favorite things.

  Val was still sound asleep when I got back to the living room. I settled into the chair and zoned out on the Alfred Hitchcock festival and waited for morning to come.

  We had a big list of mystic and occult stores to check out. It was going to be a long day.

  “Where’s my pistol?” I said. “Do the police have it?”

  “Sometimes things disappear from crime scenes,” Val said. “Things that really don’t matter. So your H&K’s been enjoying a vacation here in a biometric vault. You know how Mom feels about guns in the house.”

  Biometric what? “I need it back.”

  “Calm down. I’ll get it.”

  We made a quick stop at Mrs. G’s so I could shower and change, and to tell a small lie about a shopping excursion for the day.

  The local shops turned out to be a bust. Colorful people with no information, just a need to sell us tarot cards and chintzy amulets. It was late afternoon and I was ready to call it quits, but Val bullied me into visiting a shop in Manhattan. I rolled my eyes at the thought of going into the city on such a hot afternoon, but I knew she wouldn’t let up until I agreed. Thank God we were in her car—my vehicle decided A/C was a luxury I no longer needed.

  As soon as we walked in the door, I could tell we’d hit the jackpot.

  A different vibe pulsed through the place. No colorful displays of self-help books, fairy tarot decks, and Celtic cross charms. The place was packed with books, wall to wall, and none of them looked like they’d been printed any time in the last couple of decades. Apothecary jars filled with strange ingredients took up a distant corner, everything neatly labeled.

  “Can you believe this crap?” Val said, pointing to a small section devoted to DVDs. “When Vampires Attack! Weres Gone Wild! The Fae: Fact or Fiction? Humans, the Other Red Meat. The stuff people buy is crazy.”

  I shrugged. At this point, I wasn’t about to dismiss anything out of hand.

  We headed to the back. A kid was leaning on the counter, next to an old-fashioned cash register. His slight frame uncurled from his don’t-give-a-shit slouch as Val moved into his line of sight. His blue eyes wandered over her. She ignored his gawking and asked him if there was someone who could answer a few questions about a drawing.

  He huffed, opened the door behind the counter, and disappeared down a hallway. A few minutes passed and he reappeared with an older gentleman.

  The newcomer was about Val’s height, but his age—besides “older than me”—was hard to pin down. Hazel eyes peered through silver, wire-framed glasses. His skin had that look of being out in the sun too much and his build was stocky without being fat, just a small paunch around the middle. He dressed all in white, like Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island.

  “All shall be well.” His voice was like gravel and he reeked of cigarettes. “How may I help you ladies?”

  “We have a drawing that we’d like to know the origins and meaning of,” Val said.

  “Show me what you have,” he said.

  Val handed him the folder and he flipped it open. We’d agreed to stick with the stuff from my back, and keep the pages we’d found in my grandparent’s house locked up safely at Val’s.

  He stared at the contents, looked up at us, then back down.

  “Come with me.” He turned and headed down the hallway from which he came.

  I glanced at Val, a little unsure. But I had my pistol (that I wasn’t supposed to take out of Jersey, legally speaking) and a Krav Maga warrior with me. How much trouble could we get into?

  When we arrived at his office, he gestured to two chairs. The folder lay open on the desk, next to an ashtray loaded with cigarette butts. He looked at Val, then me, and pursed his lips.

  “You are Valerie Guerrero,” he said. “And you are Natalie Gannon.”<
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  “Who the hell are you? How did you know our names?” I said.

  “My name is Walter Young. I live in Upper Montclair and know both of you from your businesses in New Jersey,” he said. “Do you want to know about this drawing or not?”

  “Yes, we would,” Val said.

  He turned his attention back to the folder. Brow furrowed, he studied the printout. Val shifted her weight and gave me a “What the hell?” look. I responded with a “beats me” glance.

  I cleared my throat. “Sir, do you have something to tell us or not?”

  “Will you please give me a minute to collect my thoughts?” Walter leaned back in the chair and sighed. “Please sit down. All right. These are from your father’s grimoires.”

  Grimoires? Was that French?

  “Sir, how do you know my father?”

  “I went to college with your parents,” he said. “We had a falling out from which we never recovered, but I’m terribly excited about this find!”

  “What’s a ‘grimoire’?” Val said.

  “They’re like magical training books,” Walter said. “They can be works of art.” He crooked a finger at us. We leaned forward, keeping as safe a distance as was polite.

  He looked at me and pointed with his pen to the top of the drawing: a quartet of skulls carved with swirls and crosses.

  “These represent chaos magic, the magic your parents chose to practice. This is the portal where the spirits and souls enter our world.”

  “Sir, are you serious?” And now, the Amazing William and his lovely assistant, Karen!

  “Portal?” Val’s eyes narrowed a bit. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. A faint drum solo started as she rapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, indicating that her bullshit sensor was about to implode. “What’s chaos magic?”

  “It borrows from other beliefs, allowing you create your own magical style,” Walter said. “I guess what you young people might call ‘free style.’”

  The pen moved to the left, where a dragon curled around an intricately carved cross.

  “This gives spirits a choice to remain in their world or to come to this one.”

  His pen tapped as if sending out Morse code.

  “To the right, the skeleton with the wings represents their fate. And at the bottom is their gateway.” A skeleton head peered out at me from the hilt of a sword with semicircular plates on either side protecting it. Another dragon wrapped itself around the blade, also protecting the skull, its head pointing upward.

  Evidently dragons were in that season.

  “Do you know what sigils and runes are?”

  “Not really, sir,” I said. Val and I eased away.

  “Runes … The name itself is taken to mean ‘secret—something hidden.’” He pointed to some of the lines that made no sense to me. “Here—a sigil is a symbol created for a specific magical purpose, of your own volition, as your father did here. Your father referred to certain runes as his shadows.”

  I started to spin my cane. Just a bit at first, and then a full-fledged drilling for oil move took over.

  “Nat,” Val said. I stopped.

  “Make sense?” he said.

  We nodded and he continued.

  “Your parents also practiced thaumaturgy.”

  I stared at him.

  “Let me see. Wonderworking?”

  “Nope, still nothing.”

  “A branch of magic concerned with spiritual matters—”

  “Sir, layman’s terms please.”

  “Hmm.” He sighed. “Something like the material effect produced by a thaumaturgical device, brought about by a ritual. It influences the material sphere by way of a more subtle, sympathetic magic.”

  I blinked a few times. “You’re talking voodoo dolls, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  Val’s agitation grew, her foot tapping out a beat, joining her finger drumming in the song of disbelief.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “Magic’s all smoke and mirrors. None of it’s real.”

  Walter looked like someone shot lemon juice in his eyes. He blinked a myriad of times and then brought himself back.

  Grimoires, spirits, made-up magic. It couldn’t be nice like Samantha on Bewitched? Oh no! Let’s call spirits from hell! Raise zombies and shit! Un-friggin’-believable. On the other hand … my father killed a cat and brought it back to life.

  Walter drew an air circle above the page, cupped his chin in his free hand and addressed me directly.

  “This is totally perplexing. I’ve been doing this for years and I can’t explain the puzzle you’ve brought me. A piece is missing though. An entire sequence. Do you know where the other pages are?”

  Alarm bells started to go off. For all I knew, this guy was working with my father.

  “No, we don’t. Nat, let’s go.” Val snatched the folder from the desk and motioned me to the door. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Young.”

  “Wait!” Walter reached for my arm and stopped short as if he forgot something. “Natalie, if you want to talk some more, I’ll be here.”

  Silence passed for conversation until we were in the safety of Val’s car.

  “Weird,” Val said.

  “Big time. You know that guy?” The dashboard clock said six-thirty and I was ravenous. Or was it the adrenaline rush?

  “Never seen him before. He gives me the creeps. You okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Uh huh.” She made a move that would have impressed a professional racecar driver. “He asked about the missing pages, which worries me. Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “I’m starving.” Her stomach growled in agreement. “I know a great seafood place not far from here.”

  “Sounds good.”

  As we drove, columns of shadows alternated between the buildings, reaching down the streets in front and in back of us. The setting sun bounced off the mix of buildings, the glass reflecting the waning beams of the day.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Yes, I’ll buy dinner.”

  “Well, if you insist, but that wasn’t my question.”

  “Question away.”

  “Do you believe anything he said?”

  I thought about everything I’d seen and heard since my father popped back into my life. I considered telling Val about Rufus, but I didn’t want her to call the men in white coats just yet.

  “Hell no.”

  And we drove through the Canyon of Heroes.

  Portals, spirits, souls, gateways, skulls, skeletons, and dragons. Such things didn’t belong in Mrs. Guerrero’s house, but she was at the movies, so no harm, no foul.

  We scoured the copy of the completed grimoire page.

  “The graphics have to be tied together by something.” I pointed to Val’s laptop. “Can you look up what a rune is?”

  Val smiled as her fingers flew over the keyboard.

  “‘Different runes are attributed with different powers, some being imbued with the power to bring that which is dead to life.’” She raised an eyebrow. “Walter failed to mention that.”

  “How about sigils?”

  “‘An inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power.’ So if we put them all together, we have a new reality show.” Val made air quotes. “Chaos Magic and the Grimoires.”

  I laughed. “So the spiral’s in the middle of everything and it represents life?”

  Val checked her notes. “Right, a type of conduit through which spiritual and physical energies flow. And the chevrons surrounding the spiral signify protection.”

  There were a few we couldn’t figure out—strange creations our research couldn’t explain. Probably more sigils, since according to Walter you could make up your own.

  He’d also said that the outer designs represented four points: chaos magic, a choice, the spirit’s fate, and a gateway.

&nbs
p; For once, I wasn’t Miss Tardy to the party. My father just went from psychotic bastard to paranormal megalomaniac with the means to accomplish what he wanted.

  He wanted to raise the dead, and it seemed like he needed what was on my back to do it.

  “Something else happened with my father at my apartment,” I said. “He killed a cat and, um … brought it back to life. I think that’s what all this is about: raising the dead.”

  Val’s eyes narrowed. “Did you hit your head when you fell?”

  “No—well, yeah, probably, but—”

  “I’m taking you to see Dr. Carberry.”

  This parade was heading right down Suck Street.

  “No way! I don’t even like being in my head, no way I’m letting a stranger in there.”

  She suppressed a laugh. “So, what you’re saying is that your dad waved a magic wand and abracadabra, here’s your new zombie cat?”

  “I know what I saw.”

  She did the Vanna White arm sweep across the table.

  “You can’t possibly believe any of this stuff. Walter’s just a freak.”

  My breathing was shallow as I tried to hide my anger.

  “You go to church and pray to something you can’t see, believe in all the stories they tell you. Just because I don’t share your beliefs doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and it doesn’t mean I don’t support you.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “They abused you because they were insane. What could they possibly want with raising the dead?”

  “My father said he wouldn’t let decades of work go to waste. That he needed me—and my mom.”

  Val stood tall and lean, her head lolled to one side, her arms outstretched. The moaning started as she shuffled toward me.

  “I want to eat your brains,” she said, with the appropriate undead head bob.

  It was funny, but her timing sucked.

  “FUCK YOU!” I pushed off the chair and limped past her to my room.