Broken Shadows

by Tim Waggoner

  Table of Contents

  BROKEN SHADOWS

  Connect With Us

  Other Books by Author

  When God Opens a Door

  Zombie Dreams

  Portrait of a Horror Writer

  Waters Dark and Deep

  Met a Pilgrim Shadow

  Open House

  Extern

  ’Til Voices Drown Us

  Knock, Knock

  Outside the Lines

  Provider

  Broken Glass and Gasoline

  The Tongue is the Sweetest Meat

  Ghost in the Graveyard

  About the Author

  BROKEN SHADOWS

  Tim Waggoner

  First Edition

  Broken Shadows © 2014, 2010 by Tim Waggoner

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  The Men Upstairs

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  WHEN GOD OPENS A DOOR

  A metal door, rust nibbling at the edges, fuck scratched into the gray paint. No, one of the K’s lines is so faint that it resembles an L. Fucl, then, like a code or a word in some exotic language. From behind the metal, muffled but still clearly audible, come screams. Those of a woman, or perhaps a child. Screams of agony, screams of pleasure? He can’t decide. Both, maybe.

  To the immediate right of the door is a row of newspaper vending machines. USA Today, the daily from the nearest city, Ash Creek’s weekly, and freebies like Employment News and Apartment Finder. The machines are empty, every one, as if they’re never stocked and instead are here merely for decoration. Or camouflage.

  Past the empty machines is a store called I’d Buy That For A Dollar, selling odds and ends that cost—you guessed it—a dollar or less. Of course, with sales tax, you can go over a dollar easy, and usually do, but what the hell, anyone who’d shop there isn’t about to sue for false advertisement. To the left of the door is another store, Hand-Me-Down’s. The owner got the hyphens right, but screwed up on the apostrophe. This establishment sells second-hand clothing and toys for children, one of many such businesses in town. In the display window are three creepy kid mannequins, two girls and a boy, heads tilted up, gazing to the left (their right) with wide-open, flat-painted eyes, as if looking away from the door.

  The door fascinates him. The screams, of course—sometimes interrupted by what sound like sobs, gasps, moans or sighs—but also the door’s aspect, its placement, its very existence. He’s walked the length and breadth of this tiny shopping center, built before the days when it would’ve been called a strip mall, past a hardware store, paint store, diet workshop, the dollar store and the second-hand clothing store, of course, and a couple empty stores with FOR LEASE signs in the windows. Stardust Video, as well, where he rented the two DVDs in the white plastic bag dangling from his left hand. But this is the only metal door, and the only one not clearly attached to a specific place of business. At first, he supposed it could be an access door to a storage area for one of the stores, but if so, then why was there only one? And why would it be in the front of the building as opposed to the back? Perhaps, he’d thought, it led to some sort of maintenance area for the entire shopping center, climate controls or circuit breakers, maybe. But wouldn’t each individual business have its own such controls, and again, why would the door to such an area be in the front?

  And then there is the screaming. The sound sets his teeth on edge, like fingernails raking chalkboard, but it also excites him, electric tendrils of arousal curling their way into his cock, making him grow hard.

  The door looks locked, which is a stupid thing to think: after all, how can a door appear to be locked? But this one does. Maybe it’s the forbidding solidity of the metal or the crumbling neglect of the rust, but it looks as if it hasn’t been opened in years.

  Only one way to find out for sure if it’s locked.

  He reaches for the round metal knob—smooth, no hint of rust here—and he’s surprised to see that his hand is trembling. In fear or anticipation? At this point, he decides, there’s no real difference.

  But before his flesh can come in contact with the metal, a horn sounds, making him jump. He whirls around, feeling a surge of embarrassed guilt as if he’s a fourteen-year-old boy caught masturbating in the bathroom by his mother.

  “Sorry it took me so long, but I was almost out of gas and I stopped to fill up.”

  The passenger window of their SUV is rolled down, and she’s leaning over from the driver’s side, a smile on her face, but is there suspicion in her eyes? Maybe. He puts a smile on his own face and walks toward the vehicle, struggling to hide his disappointment. If only she’d gotten here a minute or two later…

  He feels the door’s presence behind him, tugging at him, as if it’s reluctant to let him go.

  He opens the SUV’s passenger door and climbs inside. His wife—a pretty blonde with a hint of crow’s feet around her eyes and the beginnings of middle-age sag in her cheeks and beneath her chin—gives him a quick kiss which he barely registers.

  As he buckles himself in, he says, “No problem. I picked up a couple movies—” he holds up the plastic bag containing the DVDs for emphasis— “and then I strolled up and down the sidewalk in front of the shops a few times. Got my exercise for the day.”

  “Good boy. Your cholesterol level will thank you.” She puts the SUV in gear and presses lightly on the gas pedal.

  As the oversized vehicle begins to move forward, he wants to shout No!, wants to tell her to stop, wants to get out of the car, rush to the door, and try that goddamned handle, fling the door open wide and see what the hell is inside. But he doesn’t. He merely sits quietly as they pull away from the small shopping center, the sounds of faint, almost imperceptible screams lingering sweet and mysterious in his ears.

  * * *

  It’s not enough.

  Darrell woke with these words whispering through his mind, almost as if they weren’t his, as if they had been thought—or perhaps spoken aloud—by someone else. Next to him, snoring softly, naked and covered by a single thin sheet, lay Patti. As usual, she slept on her side, but she was facing away from him right now, which was fine with him. Her breath tended to get sour as the night wore on, and when her head faced his, he couldn’t escape breathing in the smell. Funny, they’d been married close to twenty-five years and it had only been during the last few that he’d noticed her night-breath.

  On second thought, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. A lot more than Patti’s breath had seemed go sour for him lately. Take his fabulous certified pre-owned Lexus: his status symbol announcing to the world that he had finally, at last Made It—or at least made it enough to afford a very expensive used car. The goddamned oil light had been blinking on and off for no apparent reason lately, and Darrell had been forced to drop it off at a BP ProCare after work because he hadn�
��t been able to afford the extended maintenance contract the dealer had offered. He’d called Patti on his cell phone and asked her to come pick him up, but since he hadn’t felt like waiting at the ProCare, he told her he’d walk across the street to Stardust Video and pick up some movies, and she could meet him there.

  But she still hadn’t come by the time he’d rented the DVDs, so he’d wandered the sidewalk in front of the shopping center, and that’s when he’d discovered it.

  The door.

  Moonlight filtered through a space between the curtains, bleeding a blue-white sliver of light onto the opposite wall. He closed his eyes and in the darkness of his mind, summoned the image of the door. He saw gray paint, rust, the enigmatic word fucl…heard once again those faint, high-pitched, almost childish screams, and he felt a shiver pass through his body, tremors rippling along his nerves like surges of electric current. If only he’d had a chance to try the knob before Patti had driven up, maybe now he wouldn’t be so…

  Obsessed?

  That might be overstating the case, he thought, but if so, it wasn’t far from the truth. The door was just about the only thing he’d thought about all night. He’d been distracted during dinner, hadn’t been able to concentrate on the paperwork he’d brought home from the office—not that he’d ever found drawing up wills to be all that captivating on any occasion—and he’d only half-listened when his daughter had called from college to say that she’d be coming home to visit this weekend.

  Even worse, as they were getting ready for bed, Patti had suggested they make love. She didn’t initiate sex very often, and Darrell knew she’d feel rejected and hurt if he declined, so he agreed, though he felt no desire for her whatsoever at the moment. At forty-seven, she looked at least ten years younger, her large breasts were still mostly firm, and thanks to regular exercise, her belly, while softer than it had been when they were first married, was still flat. And even though for most of their marriage it was he who was the aggressor in the bedroom, once they got started, she always proved an enthusiastic partner.

  But tonight, despite her best efforts to arouse him—efforts that might’ve made another man cum numerous times—he’d barely been able to sustain an erection. He kept thinking about how he supposedly had it so good: a sexy, loving wife; a smart, beautiful daughter; a successful career; a five-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house with a large yard in the right part of town, and of course his prized Lexus…but none of it was satisfying, none of it was enough, and he didn’t know why. Sure, money was tight, especially with paying for Catherine’s tuition (hence the trip to ProCare), but Patti and he weren’t in danger of starving anytime soon. By most people’s standards, he was doing just fine, was well ahead of most of the other rats in the race—but he didn’t give a damn.

  He’d started to go soft inside Patti (for the second time) when he found himself thinking of the door again, hearing those screams, and his erection returned with a vengeance. He kept replaying those screams in his head as he thrust into his wife, and he finally managed to achieve a climax of sorts, brief and unsatisfying as it was. If she’d sensed any problem on his part, she didn’t mention it, just kissed him sleepily, told him she loved him, then rolled over and went to sleep, leaving him alone with his dark thoughts until, after some time, sleep finally came to him as well.

  But now it was—he opened his eyes and glanced at the digital clock on his nightstand—2:17 in the morning, and he was wide awake. He lay there for twenty more minutes, waiting for sleep to find him, but it was no use.

  He sighed (not too loudly; he didn’t want to wake his wife) and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark—sweat-shirt and jeans—and slipped out of the bedroom, leaving Patti snoring softly, alone in their bed.

  He went into the family room, with its almost brand-new furniture and state-of-the-art entertainment system, intending to turn on the TV in hope of finding a good movie on cable. But just as he was about to sit on the couch and grab the remote, his eye was drawn to the two DVD’s he’d rented from Stardust Video. They sat on the shelf next to the television, propped up on their sides against it. Patti and he had watched one of the movies tonight, a new film by Robert Altman that Patti had thought hysterical but which Darrell had found meandering and only sporadically amusing. But it was a new release, and at Stardust, if you brought a new release back the next day, you received a dollar credit toward your next rental.

  He looked at the DVD for a long moment before going over to the entertainment center and pulling it off the shelf.

  What the hell. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do right now. Maybe running a late-night errand would help make him sleepy.

  He snuck back into the bedroom to get his watch, wallet and keys, and to put on a pair of running shoes (no socks). He left the bedroom, made his way through the kitchen, past the laundry room, and opened the door to the garage. He closed the door behind him, and as he got into the SUV, he told himself that he was just going to return the movie, that’s all. But his hands were trembling in anticipation just the same.

  * * *

  The DVD made a chunk! sound as it slid through the return slot and fell into the plastic bin inside the store.

  That’s one dollar credit, he thought. One dollar wasn’t much, but with the expenses he had these days, every dollar helped. Nothing to do now but get back in the SUV, head home and try to get what sleep he could before he had to get up and go to work.

  But he didn’t turn and head back toward the parking lot. Instead, he looked toward the door. He listened, trying to catch the faint sound of a woman-child screaming, but he heard nothing.

  The shopping center’s parking lot was well lit by fluorescent lights, and there were a scattering of cars still in the lot, most of them down by the bar at the far end of the center, despite the lateness of the hour. It was well past closing time. Maybe the cars belonged to employees or perhaps to patrons that had gone home with someone else for the night—either because they were too drunk to drive, too lonely to go home alone, or both.

  But there were other vehicles here and there. His SUV, of course, but also a blue Tercel, a gold Saturn, a beat-up Pinto, and a VW bug. He wondered who their owners were. Cleaning staff? Not this late, he decided.

  Maybe they’re on the other side of the door.

  Maybe.

  Well. you’re here and no one else is around. What are you waiting for? Do it, if for no other reason than to get it out of your system.

  He hesitated a moment, two, then took a deep breath—night-air cool and sharp in his lungs—then started walking toward the door, past I’d Buy That For A Dollar, past the row of empty newspaper vending machines.

  And then he stood before the door once again.

  It looked exactly the same: rust at the edges, gray paint, fucl scratched into the surface. He listened, turning his right ear toward the door so he could hear better.

  He heard the soft sound of a gentle breeze stirring the air, but when he didn’t feel it touch his skin, he realized that what he had heard hadn’t been a breeze at all, but rather a long exhalation that seemed to come from just the other side of the door. Not exactly a sigh. More like the weary release of air after long exertion. Or perhaps the last breath filtering slowly from the lungs of the dying.

  The last thought made him smile. Amazing what—he glanced at his watch—3:04 in the morning will do to a man’s imagination.

  He listened again, but this time heard nothing.

  You wouldn’t, would you? No one gets a second last breath.

  He did his best to ignore this latest 3:04 a.m. thought, and reached for the knob. The metal was cold, colder than it should’ve been. It was early October, but it had been unseasonably warm this fall; the leaves, fooled into thinking that summer was defying the calendar, had barely begun to drop. But the knob felt as if it were the dead of winter—almost burning-cold to the touch.

  Just another morbid late-night imagining, he told himself. Nothing more.

  Quit stallin
g and give the fucker a turn!

  Darrell took his own advice and tried the knob.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  He tried several more times, attempting to twist it one direction then the other, but it didn’t move, not even a fraction of an inch. There was no rattle of metal, no looseness, no give at all. It was as if the knob and door were a single solid piece of metal.

  Disappointed, but also on some level relieved, he let go of the knob.

  That’s that, he thought. The damn thing’s locked, and maybe rusted solid to boot. No one’s getting in there without some serious tools.

  But another thought tickled its way into his consciousness.

  You could always try to pick the lock.

  Darrell examined the knob more closely. Yes, there was a keyhole, but if the knob was rusted on the inside (for its smooth, cold metal showed no sign of rust outside), then attempting to pick it would hardly do any good. Besides, who was he kidding? It wasn’t like he was a goddamned locksmith. He wouldn’t have the first idea how to—

  The knob began to turn.

  Startled, he took a step backward and then, as if he were a kid caught in the middle of playing a prank, he turned and ran back toward the video store. At first, he ran out of instinct, but as he neared the store, he told himself to stand in front of the return slot to make it look as if he’d just put his movie in. It might seem a little odd that someone was returning a movie this late, but then people kept all sorts of strange hours, didn’t they? They worked different shifts—some couldn’t sleep. So it might seem odd, but not that odd. Hadn’t he just returned a movie a few minutes ago?