The Shadow Men hc-4

by Christopher Golden

  No. He’d seen the love and the sweet mischief in her eyes just this morning. They had made love in the shower, as tenderly and as hungrily as they ever had. And if Jenny had left, that didn’t explain the apartment. Why would she bother to erase all evidence that she had ever been his wife? How the hell could she have done it? It would have been easy enough to drug him this morning, something in his breakfast or his coffee, or in the donuts that Jonathan brought-

  Jonathan. He denied even knowing Jenny. And Holly! How could he do that? He had to be involved.

  But even with him sedated, could they have changed everything so completely in just six hours? Could he really have been that heavily drugged and not feel any lingering effects now?

  He stood in front of the last door at the end of the hall. No, she wouldn’t have left. Not the woman he had loved all these years. Not the woman who had smiled at him so beautifully, so intimately, that morning. Not his Jenny. But that opened up another possibility. Had his family been taken? If so, by whom? And again, the most troubling, most impossible question-how?

  Jim pushed open the door to Holly’s bedroom, a picture in his mind of the soft pink decorations, the princesses, the bookshelf he had built for her, the fairies he had painted on the wall.

  The room held only a desk and filing cabinet, an old computer, boxes of books, and an old love seat. On the seat cushion was a dark stain from where he’d spilled grape soda the last day of fourth grade. Thirty years ago.

  Jenny had persuaded him to put that love seat out at the curb for trash pickers to cart off when he put his parents’ house up for sale after his mother’s funeral. It had been taken away within an hour, and he hadn’t seen it since.

  It couldn’t be there.

  Jim sank into the love seat, numb and hollow, this impossible piece of furniture that had been left-along with his great-grandmother’s platter-in the place of his wife and his little girl.

  Minutes passed-he didn’t know how many-before he blinked and looked around, as though waking from a trance. He wiped away tears with the back of his hand as he stared first at the boxes and then at the old computer. “What the fuck is this?” he whispered to himself.

  Then he was up and moving, because he knew what he had to do.

  Jim’s building stood on a corner across from Union Square in Boston’s trendy South End. The six-story bowfront brick row house was the last on the block. Its upper five stories were split between two apartments, with the Banks family taking the top three, including the dormered attic where Jim had his studio. The ground floor housed Tallulah’s, a restaurant and cafe that specialized in European fare and damn fine coffee. The apartment in between was occupied by a fiftyish travel writer named Carole Levitt and her latest boyfriend, Oliver Chin.

  Jim knocked so hard the door shook. He waited only seconds before knocking again, standing in the dim light of the stairwell landing.

  “All right, all right!” Carole called from inside. Jim heard the lock slide back, and then she opened the door, irritation creasing her brow. “You don’t look like you’re on fire. What’s the-”

  “Have you seen Jenny and Holly today?” he demanded, jaw set, daring her to say no.

  A bemused smile lit Carole’s eyes, and she leaned against the door frame. “Are those the two college girls you had up there a while back? If so, then no, and I’m sure Ollie hasn’t seen them, either, because he would definitely have noticed. He sure noticed them the night you brought them home.”

  Of all possible responses, this was one Jim had not considered. It struck him dumb for a moment, then he shook his head, trying to clear it. “Listen, Carole-”

  “Did they steal something? I’ve warned you about letting these girls you barely know into your place, Jimmy. They see something shiny, and that’s-”

  “Damn it, will you listen?” he shouted at her.

  Carole scowled, stepping back from the door, about to close it. “Why don’t you come back when you figure out what the hell your problem is?”

  Jim slammed a palm against the door, preventing her from closing it. Alarm flared in her eyes, and he could see her trying to decide if he was secretly a psychopath or a rapist or both.

  “Please, just…,” he started, forcing himself to calm down, to take even breaths. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about? When I say ‘Jenny and Holly,’ you don’t know who I mean?”

  Carole seemed to sense his genuine distress at last and take pity on him. “Look, Jimmy, I liked that one girl last year, the one who works in the mayor’s office? But it’s not like I invite all your flings in for tea. If you want me to try to remember these girls, you could at least describe them. But short answer is no, I haven’t seen or heard anyone on the stairs today except for you and Oliver.”

  A dreadful chill had begun to settle into his bones, and he felt weariness and surrender waiting for him at the edges of his consciousness like thieves lurking in shadows. “Thank you,” he said. “Thanks. I’m sorry I…”

  But he didn’t finish. Instead he backed through the door, turned, and ran down the stairs toward their shared exit out onto the street. What could he possibly have said?

  Tallulah’s thrummed with clinking plates and glasses and the buzz of conversation. The aroma of coffee hung like a thick, warm cloud inside the restaurant; Jenny had always claimed to get a caffeine high just from walking into the place.

  Jim walked like a man spoiling for a fight, but he couldn’t help it. His hands were curled into fists, and he clenched his jaw, the muscles in his neck and shoulders drawn tight. The hostess, Miranda, had bottle-red hair and a top cut so low her breasts seemed about to pop out and say hello. She smiled as he approached. “Wow, Jim, you look so serious,” she said, her voice almost teasing. “Someone key your car or something?”

  He almost couldn’t get the question out, that cold dread filling him with a terrible certainty. “Has Jenny been in today?”

  Miranda frowned. “Jenny?”

  “Yes, Jenny!” he said, slamming both hands down on the hostess’s podium. “My wife, goddamn it! Have you seen…” He faltered, emotion welling up in him, feeling utterly lost. “Oh, Christ, Miranda. Please tell me you’ve seen my wife.”

  But Miranda’s eyes had narrowed to cold slits. The dozen or so people waiting to be seated had moved to a safe distance, eyeing him warily, but Miranda only stared contempt in his direction. “You never told me you had a wife, Jim,” she said, biting off each word. “Don’t you think you should’ve told me?”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t real. This isn’t my life.”

  Miranda shouted something at him as he staggered out the door, but he didn’t hear. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, unfamiliar key ring, only vaguely noticing that it was different before he bent over a metal trash can and vomited. Blinking, trying to catch his breath, he stared down into the can, grateful that he couldn’t tell what it was he’d just thrown up… because he knew it wasn’t blueberry pancakes.

  Spitting on the sidewalk, he turned the corner and hurried around to the back of the building, where the reserved parking spaces that came with the apartment were located. It must have been nearly six o’clock by now. The shadows had grown long and the sky had the strange, ethereal quality of autumn evenings, almost like a dream.

  Jim wished he could believe this was all a dream, but he knew he was awake.

  Awake, yeah. But sane? He didn’t know the answer to that.

  He stopped short, staring at the silver Mercedes parked in his spot. Jim drove a six-year-old blue Audi. His hand closed around his car keys, and the unfamiliarity of their shape and heft struck him again. He opened his hand and looked down at the logo on the key ring. Mercedes.

  Jim made up his mind then. He gritted his teeth as he clicked the button to unlock the car. The Mercedes chirped.

  “Fine,” he said as he slid into the driver’s seat and plunged the key into the ignition. “I don’t care.”

  And he didn’t. Th
e details didn’t matter. Only Jenny and Holly mattered. It was almost as if they had been erased from the world, but Jim knew-as sure as he knew that the road beneath his tires was solid and that the Earth revolved around the sun-that people couldn’t be deleted from existence. Either he was crazy, or something impossible had happened.

  It was time to find out which.

  The knot in Jim’s gut twisted tighter as he drove over to Jonathan’s apartment in the Back Bay. With one hand on the wheel and only occasional glances at the road, he scanned the contacts list on his cell phone, thinking he would call friends, try to find someone who would end the nightmare, tell him it was all a joke. Somehow, he had to fight the growing certainty that it was neither a joke nor a dream, that either reality or his own sanity had been abruptly and brutally altered. Now that he was away from the apartment, he could pretend it was possible that he had been drugged, that someone had come in and erased all traces of her from his life. And though that idea horrified him, it was somehow preferable to the alternatives.

  But now he saw that something had happened to his cell phone contacts list. Names were missing-Jenny’s best friend, Trixie Newcomb, who had become Jim’s friend as well. Matt and Gretchen Kelleher, whom Jenny had met at the gym and who had become their go-to dinner companions-the one couple they really seemed to get along with. The office number for the Atherton School, where Jenny taught.

  In place of those listings there were new contacts, names that were unfamiliar to him, and it chilled Jim to wonder who they were and how their information had gotten into his cell phone. If he phoned them and introduced himself, what would they say to him? How well would they know him, these people whose names he did not know?

  But not all of his familiar contacts were gone-only the ones he had known through, or because of, Jenny.

  A car braked too fast in front of him, and he stopped fast enough for the tires to skid, cutting the wheel and slewing to the right. Another night he would have shot the guy the finger or at least muttered some curse under his breath, but his focus was on the phone instead of the road. The car drove on and Jim accelerated. He had driven this route to Jonathan’s apartment hundreds of times. One hand on the wheel, he navigated on autopilot, scanning the list, finding Steve Menken, and hitting CALL.

  Menken answered on the third ring. “Jimbo! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need to ask you a question,” Jim said.

  “Oooh. Sounds ominous.”

  “It is.”

  A hesitation on the line. Jim could practically see the smile fading from Menken’s face. They had known each other for more than a decade, running in the same circles in Boston’s artistic community. Menken worked at Hiram Davis Press in Cambridge, editing nonfiction from biographies to art books. He and Jim had become friends without ever managing to work on a project together-Hiram Davis couldn’t afford Jim Banks. They had bonded over a mutual love of beer, old science-fiction movies, and Boston sports teams-common enough interests for men in the city, but not in their line of work.

  “You can ask me anything, Jim,” Menken said. “What’s going on? You sound awful.”

  “This is… this may sound weird. Do you remember Jenny and Holly?”

  Menken paused in thought before replying. “I don’t think I know anyone named Holly. Are you talking about Jenny Garza?”

  Jim went numb. “No. Not Jenny Garza.”

  “You’re gonna have to give me something more to go on,” Menken said.

  “Never mind, I’ll talk to you later,” Jim said, ending the call.

  He tossed the phone onto the seat beside him. There were other people still in his contacts list-friends and colleagues who knew him well enough to know his wife and daughter-but he no longer had any desire to call them. Another conversation like the one he’d just had with Menken, and he might completely fall apart.

  Instead, he drove in silence. No talk radio. No music. No phone. Several times he encountered snarled traffic, but he knew these streets well enough by now to avoid most of it, and soon he was pulling up to Jonathan’s Marlborough Street brownstone. He cruised another block before noticing an aging BMW pulling out, and he slid into the vacated parking space.

  As Jim climbed out of the car, an unseasonably icy breeze swept along the street and seemed to eddy around him. He looked toward Jonathan’s apartment, and a coil of fear encircled him. He could almost picture Marlborough Street as the road to Oz, and he felt a terrible trepidation at the prospect of approaching the wizard. Jonathan had been the last to see Jenny and Holly.

  Hollybaby, he thought, missing his daughter so much that he nearly fell to his knees. He practically flung himself across the street, picking up his pace as he hurried toward Jonathan’s brownstone, so that by the time he reached the front door he was running. With a quick glance at the intercom, he pressed the bottom-most button. It made a sound less like a buzzer than an old-fashioned school bell. Seconds ticked by, each one an eternity, and he hit the button again.

  Crackle. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jim. I need to-”

  “What are you doing here?” Jonathan asked sharply, the intercom crackling.

  “We have to talk,” Jim said, hearing the pleading in his own voice and hating it. “I really… I’m at my wit’s end here, Jonathan. I need a reality check, man. I need a friend.”

  For several seconds the intercom did not even crackle. And then the door buzzed.

  Jim hauled it open, then made sure the heavy door latched behind him. The foyer of the building smelled of disinfectant. He headed past the stairs toward the door at the rear of the foyer. Jonathan lived on the ground floor. He could have easily afforded the view from the top-floor apartment, but he didn’t like heights.

  As Jim approached the door he heard the dead bolt slide back, and then the door swung open. Jonathan stood outlined in the doorway, the wan light from the hall casting shadows on the lines and hollows of his face. The sight of him startled Jim so much he came to an abrupt halt. At fifty, Jonathan had perfected the aura of a 1940s movie idol trying to hold on to his looks. Always tan, his silver hair always neatly trimmed, he was a man with expensive tastes.

  But this was not the Jonathan that Jim knew. This man was a withered husk, his clothes hanging on his thinning frame, his silver hair gone dull and gray, his skin jaundiced and sagging. “Jesus,” Jim whispered. “What the hell’s happened to you?”

  Jonathan’s eyes flashed with anger, and he straightened himself up. “What kind of question is that? First that crap on the phone, and now you show up here with your eyes wide like it’s your first fucking day on Earth? What’s so goddamned important?”

  Jim shook himself and took a step forward, frowning. “Sorry. You caught me by surprise.”

  “ I caught you?”

  But Jim barely registered the sarcasm. He took another step nearer, the sadness that already enveloped him growing heavier. “Are you sick?” he asked. Then he shook his head. “I mean, obviously you are. But what is it? How did it happen so fast? Christ, Jonathan, you never said anything.”

  Jonathan cocked his head, regarding Jim anew. His eyes narrowed. “You’re really asking that,” Jonathan said, almost to himself. When he spoke again, he had softened. “What’s wrong with you? You really forgot I have cancer?”

  Jim closed his eyes, shaking his head, wishing it all away. “Cancer?”

  “In my brain. I… hell, Jim, you know all this. I’ve got eight, maybe nine months.”

  They stood in the hallway, those two old friends, and stared at each other.

  “So you can’t have been at my place this morning,” Jim said.

  “I haven’t been over to your place since Labor Day,” Jonathan replied. Then he stepped back into his apartment. “Come in, Jim. Call your shrink. I’m serious. I don’t know what that stuff was on the phone before about Julie or whatever-”

  “Jenny.”

  “-but you’re having an episode or something. Are you on any medicatio
n?”

  Jim stood paralyzed in the hall, bathed in that hideous yellow light.

  “Hey,” Jonathan said, coming out into the hall and reaching for his arm. “Please, don’t. I’ve had enough tears.”

  Only when Jim tasted salt on his lips did he understand that he had started to cry. Instantly he shut off the tears, wiping them from his cheeks. He pulled away from Jonathan. “I have to go.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jonathan said. “Come in. Please. Sit with me. I’ll make tea and you can clear your mind, talk to me about what’s going on in your head right now.”

  Jim backed away from him, toward the foyer. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  This isn’t my Jonathan. This isn’t my life. Somehow, the world he knew had been stolen from him while he slept. Or maybe this is my life, and the rest was just me inventing one that isn’t so fucking ugly. Maybe I’m meant to be alone.

  But he rejected that instantly. Even with all the hours that had passed, his lips could still remember Jenny’s kiss. He could close his eyes and picture her, recall her smell, the perfect way her body cleaved to his when they slid into bed at night. He knew Holly’s laugh, the dimple in her left cheek, the silly way she would dance to make him smile whenever he grew too serious for her liking.

  They were his wife and his little girl. They weren’t inventions.

  “Call Dr. Lebowitz,” Jonathan said, starting to follow him into the hall but too weary to chase him.

  “First thing in the morning,” Jim muttered.

  “Promise?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Then he was out the door and running for his car, wondering what else would be taken from him today… and then realizing that he had nothing else in his life that really mattered.