I remembered then that my right hand wasn’t chained to anything and reached out and took the water and chugged it until there was nothing left.
The woman took the empty bottle back from me with a small smile. “You really were thirsty, weren’t you?”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Son, I’m not doing anything to you.”
“My parents are going to realize I’m missing. They’ll call the police.”
She produced that small smile again, only this time it was tinged with sadness. Shaking her head, she whispered, “You poor, poor boy.”
I couldn’t tell whether she was being sincere or sarcastic and looked away from her. Beside me on the floor were the remains of the chainsaw Cashman had used earlier.
“Are you scared?”
I looked back at her.
“Stupid question, I know.” The woman ducked her head, raised it back up. “My name’s Nancy by the way. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but …”
“Why. Are. You. Doing. This.”
“Again, I’m not doing anything. It’s Cashman. He wants the ring.”
“Yeah, I kind of already figured that part out.”
She looked away from me, bit her lip, closed her eyes. She stayed that way for a long moment. “To be honest with you,” she said but then went silent.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“What were you going to say?”
She started to speak again, stopped, took a deep breath and whispered, “To be honest with you, I’m scared too.”
“Of what?”
“The Shadow Man.”
“Who?”
“He’s coming, you know. Cashman already contacted him. He’ll be here tonight. He wants the ring.”
“And what is he going to do once he gets it?”
Nancy shook her head, looked away from me again.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She looked back.
“You don’t have to do this. You can let me go.”
She stared down at me, just stared for the longest time. She seemed to be thinking of something and looked as if she was about to speak when the door at the top of the stairs opened and Cashman came down the steps. He had two large paper bags in his arms and was grinning.
“Had to make a quick stop at the hardware store,” he said. “Ready for round two?”
19
“This just doesn’t make sense.” Cashman took a long drag on his cigarette, then puffed out three small smoke rings. “I mean, why you? What makes you so fucking special?”
I was still chained to the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Cashman had brought back another chainsaw and a flame torch. Both had failed, so he’d stepped on my arm to keep it in place and emptied an entire clip of his gun into my hand. Still nothing.
“You’re just a fucking kid. Not even eighteen years old. Why would the ring choose you?”
I blinked, turned my head to look at him. “Choose me?”
“What—you think it was just by accident you came across the ring and decided to put it on?” Cashman dropped the cigarette, ground it out with his boot. “Nah, it don’t work like that.”
“What is the ring anyway?”
“Too complicated to explain.”
“Who is the Shadow Man?”
He seemed to freeze in place. “What?”
“The Shadow Man. Why does he want the ring?”
“How the hell—” He scrunched his face up suddenly, turned and kicked the wall. “Goddamn it! She sure does have a big mouth, doesn’t she?”
“Answer my question.”
“Fuck you, David.”
“What were those things earlier, the ones you saved me from?”
“Goddamn it!” he shouted again, this time kicking a broken piece of the chainsaw. It didn’t go very far, spinning across the concrete floor, and it looked like Cashman had hurt his foot in the process. “I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna fucking kill her.”
He limped across the room, disappeared up the steps, slammed the door shut.
A moment later the lights went off, drenching me in darkness.
I closed my eyes, stared into my own special darkness.
Time passed—a couple minutes, maybe an hour—and then the lights came back on. I could hear the bulbs buzzing in the ceiling.
I opened my eyes just as the door opened and footsteps came down the stairs.
I expected Cashman but it was Nancy.
She came to me, shaking her head quickly. “Why did I ever say anything to you? Why?”
Again I tried sitting up but the chains stopped me.
“Me and my stupid mouth.” She stuffed her hand into her pocket, brought back out a small ring of keys. “One of these days I’ll learn. One of these days …”
She sorted through the keys until she found the one she wanted. Then she reached down, inserted it into the lock keeping my feet chained, turned the key. The lock popped open.
“What … what are you doing?”
“Freeing you,” she said, inserting the key into the lock keeping my left hand chained. “What does it look like?”
“But won’t Cashman … won’t he be angry?”
The lock popped open and she laughed.
“More than he already is? I doubt it. He’ll probably kill me for doing this, but I can’t let this go on. Not with the Shadow Man coming. That … that would be too awful.”
My legs and hand now free to move, they did nothing and acted like they were still chained.
“Come on now,” Nancy said, standing up straight and stuffing the keys back into her pocket. “Get up.”
I just stared back at her.
She sighed, stepped forward, leaned down so her face was only inches away from mine. For a moment nothing happened. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her face changed—the skin looking like it was turning inside out, her white hair turning black as it grew shorter—and an instant later it was not Nancy that was staring back at me but myself.
“Get up, David,” this other me said.
My legs and hand found purpose again and I scrambled to my feet. I pushed myself against the cold cinderblock wall and just stared back at my sudden doppelganger.
“Run!” the thing shouted.
I ran.
20
Up the stairs, through the door, I came out into the kitchen and headed for the back door which we’d used to enter this place when something caught my eye and I stopped.
The shotgun that I’d leveled on Cashman while we were driving, the thing I had given him and which he had used to knock me unconscious, lay on one of the prep tables. The ejected shells were conveniently lined up beside it.
I hurried over and inspected the shotgun. It had been easy ejecting the shells; loading them would be another story.
Fooling with it, I kept glancing at the basement door, expecting Nancy or what had become of Nancy to make an appearance.
My hands were shaking. Blood pounded in my ears.
Finally I managed to insert one of the shells, lock it into place, then added three more.
Before I left I glanced back, expecting the door to open, expecting for some reason my parents do be there staring back at me, dead.
A second passed and nothing happened.
I went outside.
The day had worn on, the sun almost gone from the sky. I glanced at my wrist instinctively but I wasn’t wearing a watch.
The shotgun in my hands, I made my way down the alleyway toward the main street. I could see a few cars already passing by. Heavy bass thumped from one of them.
I came around the building to find the parking lot deserted. Maybe this was a speakeasy and maybe it wasn’t. Whatever the case, at least Cashman’s truck wasn’t here.
I stepped out on the street, looking back and forth for any traffic. That heavy bass had faded and now there was that constant and palpable silence that inhabits most cities.
Right then an engine growled down th
e street. Headlights appeared.
I started walking in that direction, trying to keep the shotgun concealed behind my back. The last thing I wanted to do now was spook a potential Good Samaritan and wished I’d left the weapon back inside.
With my free hand—my right hand, the one without the silver ring—I waved to the oncoming vehicle.
I stood there for maybe five seconds, waving frantically, until the shape of the vehicle became distinct.
An old red Ford pickup truck.
Cashman’s pickup truck.
Without thinking I brought the shotgun around and aimed it at the oncoming headlights, the engine now a ferocious roar, and fired.
The shotgun exploded and the windshield splintered but the truck didn’t slow.
It was coming for me, swerving right in my direction—fifty feet away, forty feet—and though the silver ring made me invincible I wasn’t going to take the chance.
I dove out of the way at the last second.
Hitting the ground hard, rolling, jumping back to my feet, I turned just as Cashman slammed on the brakes and spun the truck around to face me again.
We were less than fifty feet apart now.
Cashman was hunched over the wheel, glaring back at me. He kept revving the engine.
I lifted the shotgun, ejected the spent shell, and aimed it straight back at him.
A moment passed.
Another moment.
Then Cashman placed the truck back into gear and the tires squealed and it was racing toward me, coming closer, closer, closer, and I waited another second and then pulled the trigger, ejected the spent shell, pulled the trigger, ejected the spent shell, pulled the trigger, all in one fluid motion, like I was a natural, and I stepped out of the way just as the truck moved past me, the windshield completely shattered, glass raining down everywhere, Cashman slumped dead over the wheel.
The truck kept going though; Cashman must have still had his foot on the gas. It slowed speed but kept going, across the street, up over the curb, and then—bang—went right into the side of another abandoned warehouse.
I stood still for a couple seconds, breathing hard. I looked down at the shotgun in my hands, tried to remember how many shells I’d put into it. But I knew it didn’t matter. Cashman was dead.
Still, as I approached the pickup, I did so slowly, keeping the shotgun aimed even though I was now certain it would do me no good if I truly needed it.
Even though it had crashed into the side of the building, Cashman still had his foot on the gas, making the engine growl.
Stepping closer, raising the shotgun, I moved into a position where I would come up right beside the driver’s window.
There was no movement inside. He was definitely dead.
Keeping the shotgun aimed, I opened the door, reached in, and pulled Cashman out. His body flopped down on the ground with a dry thud. His foot no longer on the gas, the truck’s engine quit its whining and went suddenly silent.
I stared down at him, this man who had done everything he could to get his hands on the silver ring.
He was dead and I felt no remorse and I wondered briefly what that said about me, whether I could still be considered a good person.
I stepped over him, climbed up into the truck, slammed the door shut. The engine had shut off so I had to turn it again and again until it finally caught. Then I backed out, glanced one last time at Cashman, and punched the gas.
21
I had just gotten off the expressway and was headed downtown back toward home when the police officer pulled me over.
There was a brilliant flash in the rearview mirror, followed by a whooping siren, and then the rapidly spinning red and white lights.
I considered my options. Trying to outrun the cop was the first thing that came to mind. But then I remembered I had done nothing wrong. If anything, a cop was exactly what I needed right now.
Besides, the traffic light at the upcoming intersection was turning red so I had no choice but to stop anyway.
It was as I pulled the truck over to the curb—the truck that was completely beat to hell, no wonder the cop was pulling me over—that I remembered the shotgun on the passenger seat.
I looked at it quickly, opened my mouth, and muttered, “Oh shit.”
“Shut off the engine and slowly step out of the vehicle.” Apparently the officer wasn’t taking any chances after seeing the condition of the truck. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I considered my options again. Understood very quickly that I had only one.
I shut the truck off, opened my door, and with my hands raised stepped out onto the pavement.
“Now place your hands on the hood and do not move.”
I stepped to the front of the truck, noticing that the hood was quite mangled. I guess in my haste I hadn’t realized just what kind of target it was going to make me.
But this was okay, I thought as I placed my hands on the warm metal. The cop would come and I would tell my story and he would get me into protection.
Except my story would be a problem. You know, what with all the aliens and shape shifters and everything.
The cop had stepped out of his car, was now slowly approaching me. The radio on his belt squawked.
Not moving from my position, I said, “What seems to be the problem, officer?”
The cop didn’t answer. He kept walking, and from the corner of my eye I could see he had his hand on the holster of his gun. When he came within just a few feet, looked inside and saw the shotgun, the beads of shattered glass, he cursed and quickly drew the gun.
“Get down on the ground.”
“What?”
“Down on the ground!” he shouted. “Do it now!”
I pushed away from the truck, keeping my hands raised as I turned toward him. “Officer, please, you have to—”
“Get down on the motherfucking ground, asshole.”
I wondered briefly how long he’d waited to say that phrase.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and started to lower myself to the pavement, first one knee, then the other. “But please, will you just listen to me?”
The cop wouldn’t. While he kept his weapon aimed at me, he turned his head to speak into the mike Velcroed to his uniform, and that was when I felt the sudden pinprick on my finger.
I looked at the ring that was now glowing, looked back up at the officer who was speaking into his radio but suddenly stopped when he turned his attention back to me.
I was invisible again. I knew it by the way the cop’s eyes widened, by the way his body suddenly tensed. And he wasn’t looking at me like he had before with those cold, hard trained eyes; now he was looking through me.
The radio squawked again, the dispatcher asking the cop to repeat what he’d just said.
The cop stood there, his eyes still wide, his mouth now opened.
I got back to my feet, watching the cop carefully. He didn’t notice a thing.
How much longer the ring would keep me invisible, I didn’t know. All I knew was that right now I was less than two miles away from home.
Turning my back on the speechless cop, his radio still squawking, I started running.
22
At some point between where the cop had pulled me over and my house, the silver ring had stopped glowing and I became visible again.
I barely noticed.
I just kept running as hard and as fast as I could and didn’t even slow when I reached our block or when I reached the steps to our brownstone.
What slowed me was the front door. It was locked—something I should have assumed—and I had to ring the bell repeatedly until my dad opened it.
“David?” he said incredulously. “Where—where have you been?”
I pushed past him into the house, hurried over to the table just beside the door where he kept his wallet and keys and breath mints and other junk he’d acquired over a typical business day.
“Where is it?” I said, sorting through the loose dolla
r bills and change and plastic-wrapped toothpicks.
My dad shut the door. “Where is what?”
Before I could respond my mom rolled into the hallway. She actually gasped when she saw me, placing a hand on her chest.
“Honey, what happened to you? Where have you been?”
Upstairs I heard my sister shouting, “David? Is David home?”
I ignored both of them and turned back to my dad. “The cop from last night, Officer Mallory, he gave you his card. Where is it?”
“I think I have it in my study. Why?”
I was already turning, hurrying around my mom, through the kitchen and into my father’s study. Surrounded by bookcases, his desk stood in the middle like an island. I went to it and started rifling through the papers on top until I found the cop’s card.
Dad stepped into the room. “David, what is the meaning of this? Where have you been?”
I picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the number on the card and then listened as the phone rang, hoping that I wasn’t making a mistake by calling Mallory. He’d shown patience and intelligence last night and he knew about what had happened—or at least some of what had happened—and right now I felt calling him was a better chance than trying to get through to someone at 911, someone who would transfer me to someone else who would then transfer me to someone else …
“Hi, this is Frank Mallory,” the voice mail prompt began, and I closed my eyes and listened to the rest as my mom and Emma both entered the study.
Then there was the beep and I started talking.
“Officer Mallory, this is David Beveridge, from last night. I need you to call me back as soon as possible. Please, it’s important.”
I left the house number and hung up the phone and then just stood there for a long time, staring down at the cluttered papers on Dad’s desk.
“Honey?” Mom said.
I looked up.
She glanced at my dad, cleared her throat, and in a cautious voice said, “Did you visit grandma this morning?”
Right then the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Dad said, already turning to leave the study, but he wasn’t fast enough.
I flew around the desk, past my parents and sister, through the kitchen, back into the main hallway to the front door.
The Silver Ring Page 4
