by Bill Hiatt
After a block I risked turning enough to see if the shadow was following. It was, though I had put a little more distance between us. As far as I could tell, it moved pretty fast, but it didn’t glide after me in a straight line. Instead, it zigzagged, staying away from the areas lit most clearly by the streetlights.
A little more confident now that I could outrun it, I turned at the next cross street, ran down it, and started up the next street, once again headed for my house. All I would have to do was keep far enough ahead of the shadow, cross back onto my street at the next intersection, and I should be fine.
Except that as I approached the next intersection, the shadow appeared again—in front of me. Either there was more than one of the things, or it had some nonlinear method of getting from point A to point B. Either way, I was pretty much screwed.
I still had no idea what I was dealing with. Obviously, whatever was chasing me wasn’t just a shadow, but, aside from that, I knew nothing. I would have been sure it was some kind of weird hallucination, optical illusion, or maybe even an eye problem, except for the nonstop howling of my personal alarm system. I knew instinctively that letting the shadow catch me would be bad—very bad.
I’d probably be safe if I just went into somebody’s house, and I knew at least a couple people on this block, but I still hadn’t had any inspiration on how to drop in without looking like a complete idiot. I was sweating profusely and breathing heavily, so a mundane, “I think I left my notebook in English; did you pick it up?” wasn’t going to cut it. However, “I’ve been running from the shadows and needed a rest,” clearly wasn’t an option either.
I finally settled for the stereotypic insecure teenager move and ran all the way back to Main Street instead of making myself look like a moron in front of one of my friends. The trip was a much longer trip than it should have been, since I had to make several switchbacks to avoid the shadow. The grocery store on Main was small but had really bright lighting, so I thought maybe the shadow couldn’t follow me in.
I must have been looking pretty disheveled by that point, because the night clerk immediately gave me the evil eye. Checking my reflection in the glass of one of the refrigerated displays, I did a little repair work with a comb and tried to get my breathing back to normal. In the past few minutes, I’d piled up a pretty big oxygen debt, and I was still more panting than breathing.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I quickly checked it. Mom, as I might have guessed. During my little marathon, I’d missed three of her calls. It had been almost an hour since I’d left the diner, Dad was home, and we had unexpected company. In a polite, mom sort of way, she had left messages asking where the hell I was, each more concerned than the last.
I looked out the large window in the front of the store. Sure enough, if I looked closely, I saw a shadow defying the normal laws of science, hovering just outside the range of light from the store but still clearly visible…well, at least to me. It occurred to me that perhaps my psychic senses were involved. Even if I had the guts to point out to people that a shadow was following me, I wondered if any of them would see it.
I thought about calling home and using a twisted ankle or something like that as an excuse to have Dad come and pick me up. I was sure he would…but what if the shadow went for him when he got here? I still didn’t know what I was dealing with.
I had never before tried to have a vision. I wasn’t sure I could provoke one, but I had to make the attempt. If I knew what was after me and what it wanted, maybe I could work out a way out of this mess. Otherwise, all I could think to do was run down to the all-night drugstore and stay there until dawn—a move the night clerk there wouldn’t be happy with. Neither would my parents.
My phone vibrated again. Again I didn’t answer.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it was like to have a vision, the split-second of disorientation, the momentary fast-forward into a vivid glimpse of something in the future. Then I tried to duplicate that feeling, to drag my mind into the same state.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I opened my eyes and jumped. I guessed I had been so focused I didn’t hear someone walk up to me.
The bad news: the night clerk—that little weasel—had called the cops on me. The good news: the responding officer was a friend of my dad’s.
“Sorry, son,” he said in his deep voice, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s OK, Officer Sullivan. I’m just having a bad night. I was having a run, but I twisted my ankle, and now I have a headache too.”
Officer Sullivan looked at me appraisingly. “The clerk said you’ve been loitering.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’ve just been trying to work up my nerve to call my parents. I’m kind of embarrassed by the whole ankle thing, but I don’t think I can walk far enough on it to get home.”
“It’s a pretty slow night,” observed Sullivan. In a town like ours, I imagined most nights were pretty slow for the police. “Why don’t I drive you home?”
That offer created another dilemma. Obviously Sullivan had gotten in without being attacked, but might the shadow go for him if we came out together? I had no way of knowing, but I suspected if I turned down a ride, the best case scenario was that he’d call my dad, who would end up being exposed to the shadow, or Sullivan would take me down to the station, in which case he would be exposed anyway. Call me selfish, but if someone was going to be at risk regardless, I didn’t want it to be my dad. I might as well go for the alternative that stood the best chance of working well if the shadow didn’t attack.
“Thanks, Officer. If it’s no trouble, I’d appreciate a lift.” Being sure to affect a distinct limp, I hobbled past the clerk, who eyed me sullenly. I stepped out the door with Sullivan right behind and headed for the police cruiser. I longed to race to it, but I’d blow my twisted-ankle cover if I did. Fortunately, I saw no sign of misbehaving shadows, and we both got into the car with no problem.
The drive home took a few minutes. I made lame small talk with Sullivan while I stared out the car window, checking for any sign of unusual shadow activity. There didn’t seem to be any, so either it couldn’t keep up with a car, or it didn’t want to attack while somebody else was around.
When we got close, I asked Sullivan to let me out at the end of the block.
“Your ankle—” he began.
“Thanks, but I can make it part of a block. You know what my parents will think if I pull up in a squad car.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, you’re probably right, but be careful of that ankle.”
“Will do, and thanks, Officer.”
He nodded, and I made a show of being wobbly when I got out of the car. I must have done too good a job, because the car followed me down the street until I started hobbling up the walkway to my own front porch. Normally, something like that might have annoyed me, but tonight I was actually glad he did it. After all, what would I have done if he’d driven away, and the shadow pounced on me again?
Actually, fending off the shadow might have been easier than fending off my mom, who came bursting out the front door and met me halfway between the house and the sidewalk.
“Filho, what happened? You worried me half to death!” she said, giving me her sternest expression.
“I’m sorry, Mãe. I decided to run part of the way home and twisted my ankle. I just now found a ride home.” I hated like hell to lie to her, but I couldn’t very well tell her what really happened. Then I noticed she was wearing her best dress, and her hair was pulled back in the way she did when Dad took her out to dinner. The reference to company in her messages popped back into my mind.
“We’re having company tonight?” I asked.
“If you saw my messages, why didn’t you reply?” she asked, clearly upset. “And yes, your avó is here, all the way from Brazil. What is she going to think when her neto is this late?”
The news that the Brazilian grandmother I had never met was here wasn’t quite as shocking as
being attacked by shadows, but it was almost as much of a surprise—and not a welcome one. I had way too much to worry about already. Trying to make a good impression on someone who was a stranger to me in every way except genetically was the last thing I needed.
Mom hustled me toward the door, and I had to remind myself to limp unless I wanted to be exposed as a complete liar. Usually so caring, Mom didn’t even seem to notice. Her reaction suggested I had a very traditional, very difficult grandmother who would be instantly critical.
Imagine my surprise when we got inside and the woman who greeted me looked a lot less like the family matriarch and a lot more like someone ready to go clubbing in Rio with men a third her age. Oh, she was clearly older than Mom, though I never would have guessed old enough to be her mother, and it was certainly hard to visualize this woman as anyone’s grandmother. I had to look closely to notice what little gray hid in her black hair; my parents actually had more than she did. Finding any wrinkles was even more taxing, though I thought I detected one or two very faint marks on her brown skin.
“Neto!” she said happily, embracing me before I could protest.
“Avó, I’m all sweaty!” I said apologetically.
“Men sweat,” she said, almost approvingly. Then she let go of me and looked me up and down.
“And a man is clearly what you are, Lucas. Your parents must be very proud.”
She cut off my dad with the last part. He was clearly about to scold me for getting home so late and not calling. I had always thought of him as a dynamic presence, but he seemed much less so in the presence of my grandmother.
“Uh, yes, we are very proud,” he said diplomatically. “Lucas, why don’t you wash up for dinner?” I took the hint and limped upstairs for a quick shower.
Dinner started out better than I expected. Even though Mom obviously hadn’t anticipated any visitors, or she would have told me this morning, she had somehow managed to whip up her best galeto (roasted chicken), with a nice serving of rice and beans and an elaborate dessert I couldn’t name, though mango and coconut were both involved somehow. Since our menu was American most nights, I had to think that Mom had prepared all of this more or less last minute, and I was surprised she hadn’t been more upset by my lateness, which could have ruined everything.
Grandmother—hard as it was to think of her as one—dominated the conversation, which I think annoyed Dad a little, but Mom, who seemed to have expected something like that to happen, took the whole thing in stride.
Anyway, the woman extracted so much information from me that a military interrogator would have been impressed by her thoroughness. Probably because we’d never met, she couldn’t really know that much about me, and she clearly wanted to fill that void…all in one night, apparently. Not only that, but she seemed interested in everything. Usually, my other grandparents asked polite questions, but they weren’t all that interested in teenage stuff like what kind of music I listened to. Not so Avó, who listened carefully to the answer to every question, seemingly enthralled by details of pop culture most people of her generation couldn’t have cared less about. She was even more interested in my dancing, and she soaked up every word about capoeira.
“It is good you can defend yourself,” she said at one point. “You never know when you might have to.”
Given the fact that a couple hours earlier my life might have been in danger, that choice of subject seemed weirdly coincidental. Equally weird was the way my mom glared at her when she said it.
“Capoeira does look like it takes a lot of skill,” observed Dad, “but I think I’d prefer something like karate for actual self-defense.”
Avó looked at him as if he had just announced that Lichtenstein could beat the United States in a war. “I have seen a skilled capoeirista defeat three armed men and have heard of situations in which even more adversaries were vanquished at one time. I know nothing of karate, but I find it hard to imagine it could be any more effective.”
“Wouldn’t it be unwise, though, for someone like Lucas to try taking on armed men?” asked my dad in a tone that suggested he was trying to cue Avó on what the correct response would be.
“Only a fool seeks violence, but sometimes there is no other way,” replied Avó, missing her cue by a mile.
Sensing a potential conflict, Mom, moving about as fast as I’d ever seen her move, served the adults cachaça, a Brazilian liquor made from sugarcane. That move didn’t help as much as she might have anticipated, however, because then Avó asked, “Shouldn’t Lucas have some, too? He’s a man now, after all.”
“He’s below the legal drinking age…even in Brazil, I believe,” said my dad in a way that made the room feel about ten degrees cooler.
“I think I’ve heard that in California a parent may serve a son or daughter alcohol legally,” replied Avó smoothly.
“I’m fine, Avó,” I said. “I need to keep myself in the best possible physical shape for dance and for capoeira. It’s like I’m…in training.”
“Well, I can’t argue with your dedication,” said Avó, looking straight at me as if Dad wasn’t in the room any more. “I would imagine you would like to keep yourself in the best possible shape for the ladies as well, yes?”
My other grandparents occasionally asked about girlfriends, but there was something almost suggestive in Avó’s tone, something that made me blush.
“Mother!” said Mom abruptly.
“He’s a handsome young man, and surely there are women who desire him…” Avó fell silent in response to Mom’s continued glare.
OK, now I was officially weirded out. Unless I was just imagining things, the way Avó said “desire” seemed overly direct and loaded with innuendo. While I pondered her tone, she caught my eye and winked at me in a very ungrandmotherly way, almost like another guy would have done. The whole situation reminded me of one of those movies in which an alien is trying to impersonate a human and not doing a particularly good job of it.
“Please forgive me,” said Avó, still talking to me and not to my dad, though I sensed Mom was part of her intended audience. “I’m afraid I don’t really know any teenagers, and I haven’t much practice in talking to them. I certainly didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“You didn’t,” I lied. I glanced at Dad, who looked livid, but Avó was his mother-in-law, and he must have decided not to say anything as long as she was backing off anyway.
To break the awkward silence, I did talk a little—in very parent-friendly terms—about the girls I had dated. Avó listened intently but said almost nothing. My mom continually giving her the evil eye might have had something to do with that.
I excused myself shortly after that and went up to my room, now thoroughly tense. There was something wrong; that was for sure—and not just with shadows coming alive and menacing me, though that by itself would have been enough.
Relatives who lived close might pop by for an unannounced visit, but who pops by all the way from Brazil? For all Avó knew, we might not even have been in town; Dad sometimes traveled for business, and we had just gotten back from spring break, though she could have checked my school calendar on the Internet. Then there was her conversation, which had seemed less and less grandmotherly as dinner progressed, becoming more and more like that of a mischievous older sister. As the robot on the old TV show Lost in Space used to say, “It does not compute!”
I probably would have brooded longer over all the strangeness, but I was more exhausted than I remembered ever being. Spending all that time running after a strenuous dance workout obviously took more out of me than I had realized at first. Luckily, I had finished my homework before dance, so I focused on stilling my mind enough to sleep.
Just as I switched off my light and was about to crawl into bed, I had a vision, the kind I would have killed to have had earlier. Unlike my typical vision, though, this one seemed mundane and nonthreatening, just Avó and Mom out in the kitchen having coffee and talking. I held my breath, expecting some sudden catast
rophe, but nothing happened. Then I listened more carefully to what they were saying, and suddenly the vision became a lot less mundane.
“You have to be more careful, Gabriela!” cautioned Mom. Odd! As liberal as Avó seemed to be, I had a hard time imagining Mom being raised to call her mother by her first name.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” replied Avó defensively.
“I mean you have to stop acting like some…bohemian and start acting more like a grandmother. Lucas is a smart boy. For that matter, his father’s very sharp as well. Neither one of them will buy this grandmother act unless you do it more convincingly.”
Grandmother act?
“I wouldn’t have had to do it at all if you had been able to follow simple instructions. I told you to get Lucas out of here. I told you there was danger.”
“I could never have explained to Paulo,” Mom said.
Avó—or whoever she really was—snorted. “Men are born to be managed. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have thought of some way to convince your husband, Carolina.” Again I picked up the vibe of unspoken innuendo.
“I don’t manage my husband; I love him.”
“Much good that will do him when his son is dead.”
When his son is dead?
“We don’t even know the danger is real,” insisted Mom.
Avó raised an eyebrow. “Don’t we? I’m sure I smelled fear on Lucas the moment he came in. That twisted ankle nonsense was just a cover. Something happened this very night.”
“Why wouldn’t he say something?” asked Mom, her voice shaking a little.
“For the same reason you’ve never told him the truth: he has no way to explain what happened, and he doesn’t think you’ll believe him. We should go upstairs this minute and tell him everything!”
You’ve never told him the truth?
“Paulo—” began Mom.
“Is sleeping soundly,” said Avó, “and will continue to do so until I wake him.”
I was numb, unable to figure out how to react. Avó was an impostor. Dad was “asleep”—drugged probably. There was a truth Mom had never told me.
