Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

  A flame of terror shot through Gilda’s body, dispelling the chill that had settled on her. She now knew why the image of Effie had shown her in shadow. Anger pulsed through Gilda, leaving no room for caution. She knew Effie had powers at least as strong as her own, yet fear for Effie’s safety seared her heart. She pushed a warning through the air toward their home as she turned swiftly southward, then disappeared inside the wind blowing off the river.

  *

  Manhattan lay glittering like a sequined scarf, floating on the coastal waters of the Atlantic. Lights from the street, apartments and office buildings flickered in the darkness, multiplied by their reflections off the glass of windows, storefronts and shiny cars. Yet night was wrapped tightly around the city and its chill penetrated Gilda. She moved so quickly she was invisible to anyone looking down from one of the windows of the towering apartment buildings of Riverside Drive. The rustle of leaves was the only sign that she passed through the night air. A pedestrian out for an evening stroll by the river would feel only the brush of an unexpectedly warm breeze. But Gilda was a whirlwind of emotion as she sped downtown to the danger she knew was also hurtling through the night toward her home.

  Gilda’s thoughts were a kaleidescoping blur. She glimpsed the calm and elegant face of Effie, her brow furrowed with concern, then an image of the home they shared in lower Manhattan, with its startling murals of foreign cities created by her dear brother Julius. The almond-shaped eyes of her tenant, Marci de Justo, who’d become almost as close a friend as those of her blood. Vivid sounds of Celia Cruz and Ismael Miranda wafting down from Marci’s audio speakers out over her backyard garden like a warm mist usually welcomed her home. The faces of Sorel, Anthony, Julius, and Marci—the men in her life—floated through her mind. Gilda often laughed at the image of the incongruous quartet. Her fear that a fifth, Samuel, was about to destroy all she held so precious swelled in her throat, almost choking off the air to her lungs. She pushed herself to move even faster.

  Gilda easily recalled earlier threats Samuel had made—in the ninety years they’d known each other there had been many. They were usually accompanied by vengeful attacks, in the dark, from behind, under cover of innocence. But this time it had been a veiled hint, so subtle Gilda wondered if she was imagining the menace she felt when Samuel had spoken her name.

  “The not-so-fair Gilda lives, I see,” Samuel had said casually, as if he were simply observing the movements of a bug beneath his feet. Samuel continued to be the threat he’d always been. In less time than it took to think Samuel’s name, Gilda had traversed the four miles downtown and was standing outside the door of her garden apartment. Located in a renovated brick building she’d owned for twenty years, the rooms provided both the privacy Gilda required and a natural place in the rhythm of the neighborhood that nourished her as much as the blood that maintained her long life.

  She listened and was startled to hear such quiet enveloping the building. Peering at the two tall windows that faced the street and then through the intricate paintings Julius had applied to each pane, she saw the warm amber glow that bathed the front rooms. She unlocked the wrought iron gate that shielded her door and entered the spacious parlor.

  As she’d come to spend more time with Gilda, Effie had added her own influences to the sparely decorated room. Fresh flowers sat on the low cherrywood table in the center. A piece of Kente cloth was draped over the back of the overstuffed sofa and a small painting by Julius now hung between the tall windows. Gilda looked around, satisfied with her home, which seemed the same as usual.

  She drew in her breath and listened more closely: Around her she heard the muted noises of her tenants, and directly above, it sounded as if Marci were enjoying a romantic evening with soft music. But in her own flat she sensed no one. As she reached for the key to unlock the sleeping room, her hands trembled with anxiety; “no one” could mean “no one alive.” She flung open the heavy metal door, which was paneled to look like oak, and was relieved when it crashed against the wall and revealed an uninhabited room. The thick silk of the oriental carpet glistened in soft light, the yellow satin comforter rested on the sleeping platform where the soil of Gilda’s home state was mixed with that of others of her family. Her eyes burned with the memory of the ritual blending—dark earth sprinkled together and sown into layered pallets that allowed any of her family to rest in this place in safety. The wave of emotions was for those whose earth blended here with hers and for the many whose did not.

  Gilda closed and locked the door, puzzled. Earlier she’d been certain she’d sensed that Effie was in danger. Samuel’s fearsome cruelty had shone in his eyes, brighter than sunlight; and Effie had seemed to be his focus. She opened the door to the garden, clinging to the hope that it, too, would be unchanged. She rushed out to the small patch of roses, rhododendron, and the queenly evergreen. Turning in circles, relieved and frustrated, Gilda saw nothing to either support or alleviate her fear. Danger was still near; Gilda knew it with all the molecules of her blood, but where?

  She looked up at Marci’s open windows. The shades were pulled down. A pale red glow emanated from inside, where music played softly. The red light was a sign that Marci was entertaining. Gilda watched the shadows on the window for a minute listening, but despite the music the room was cloaked in intimacy. Then Marci appeared at the window, snapping the shade up and lifting the window.

  “Hermana, what are you doing down there? Is there something?” Marci leaned low out of the window, his shoulders swathed in a pale yellow silk blouse.

  “I was just wondering where Effie might be.” Gilda held her voice steady, letting it float on the air, falsely casual.

  “Sister, she don’t come up here with no red light, you know that.” Marci laughed as the picture tickled him. “She was there, then she went out, downtown, I think.”

  Gilda marveled at how Marci could tell which direction people walked when they left the building, even though his apartment faced the back. He had a preternatural connection with all the tenants, listening to them, their needs, and their troubles. The mother hen of the building, he offered his vibrant wisdom spun from the practical Puerto Rican reality of his childhood and grounded in the ancient Taino spirits. It amazed Gilda how each of the tenants accommodated their own reluctant reliance on a Puerto Rican drag queen who’d made them his family when his own had rejected him. As the men around him succumbed in greater numbers to the unnamed disease Marci traveled across town, to the Bronx or Queens to help out bar acquaintances and old friends indiscriminately. He dispensed mafongo and advice liberally to everyone as if his thick stew and experiences were a universal resource.

  In the years since she’d acquired the building, Marci had become her guide to the mortal world around their home. His music, the smell of his food, the love he showed for her and their building had made it a place of easy rest.

  “Gotta go.” Marci’s voice sparkled in the night air.

  “Hey, I thought you were single as of last month?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Marci…are you being careful?”

  He looked down at Gilda, affecting the face of a wounded child.

  “Manuel de Justo,” Gilda said solemnly. She knew how much he hated anyone to use his given name. “Ten cuidado!”

  “Of course, I am the soul of careful.” Marci’s long lashes lowered modestly as his lips curled in a brilliant smile and he withdrew inside.

  What a strange existence, Gilda thought. She warned her friend to be cautious of blood that had become dangerous in this decade. Around them young men had begun to sicken and die so quickly Gilda was uncertain how severely even she might be weakened by the infection. But her heightened senses enabled her to easily detect any illness and sidestep its perils. She’d helped tend to many and still the affliction, just like her own nature, remained a mystery to her. She looked up at the window but saw no more movement in the ruby light. Quiet blanketed the building and Gilda felt afraid again.

  She
returned to her living room, beginning to trace the energy of Effie’s route in the air, then noticed the slip of paper sticking out from beneath the vase of yellow roses:

  Sorel and Anthony are back.

  Cocktails.

  E.

  Excitement flooded Gilda, pushing thoughts of Samuel from her mind. Sorel and Anthony, who’d helped her learn her way through the world of their kind, were her blood family, bound to her as surely as her mother who’d died in slavery on a Mississippi plantation. Effie, who was newer in Gilda’s life, was also part of this family, now linked with dozens of others around the world. She again raced through New York’s city streets, this time her fear mixed with anticipation. The one gift from the confrontation with Samuel was that it had evoked the memory of Joe Louis. Gilda had always savored that brief time when she’d known him. She visualized his power and sense of community sometimes just to keep his face in her memory. The kids who admired him thought he was a saint. But he’d been better than that.

  When Gilda stood on the corner of the lower Manhattan street where Sorel and Anthony maintained their establishment, she slowed to savor the feel of cobblestones beneath her feet. She could sense the three of them inside together, safe.

  It had been almost a decade since Sorel and Anthony had made the difficult journey across the Atlantic to visit old friends and places they’d not seen for over a century. The moments Gilda spent apart from her family always seemed to fly by, yet they weighed on her heavily. She’d not yet learned how to let the years pass and trust in the future. In that way she felt too much like Samuel, who also clung to the past. His rage at Gilda from almost a century before was as fresh for him as a new wound. The woman who’d betrayed him for Gilda had been dead longer now than she’d been alive. Gilda pushed the memory away from her, just as she wished she could do with Samuel.

  The door of Sorel and Anthony’s small bar was set right on the street, the ground level of an ancient factory which they owned. On the outside the door was covered by a modest sheet of metal, like many which lined the block. The seventeenth-century carved wood from Spain that was attached to the interior side of the door made it hang heavily in the frame. Once inside, Gilda leaned back on the intricate, hard forms, which pressed into her back as she breathed in deeply.

  Sorel, in evening wear accentuated by a gold embroidered vest, sat in his booth holding Effie’s hand. The bar was appointed like an elegant pub: wood paneling, coats of arms, gleaming crystal. The bar had deeply padded stools with backs; two were now occupied by people familiar to Gilda. The four booths, other than Sorel’s, were empty.

  Anthony, not wearing his usual apron but a blue silk suit, poured the wine expertly. Champagne for Sorel, a deep red for Effie. Gilda nodded a greeting at the thin, dark man behind the bar who’d worked with Anthony and Sorel since they’d opened the establishment long ago. He proffered her a champagne flute in a fluid movement. Gilda didn’t break her stride as she took the glass and continued toward the dark green leather upholstered booth at the back.

  “Ah, at last.” Sorel rose from his seat, his rotund body moving lithely. His pale, delicate fingers encircled her large brown hand. “My daughter. I’ve missed you like sweet air.”

  Gilda never knew how to bridge these chasms. So much time seemed like only moments, yet their emotions were full. If tears had been possible for them their eyes would have been brimming. Instead they squeezed each other’s hands, letting the magnitude of their happiness pulse between them.

  When Gilda sat next to Effie her body completely relaxed. She looked up into Anthony’s sardonic gaze.

  “So you are still drinking this poor excuse for wine?” he asked, nodding at the champagne flute.

  “Anthony, you know I take after Sorel in that regard. The champagne grape has captured my soul almost as assuredly as Effie.”

  “Effie at least does not leave the blood sluggish.”

  “Thank you, Anthony.” Effie’s light voice carried a music of its own, distilled from hundreds of years of travel. She sipped the red wine through smiling lips. Gilda brushed her finger across Effie’s mouth, enjoying the warm fullness, savoring her relief at seeing her safe. Her round dark face was just as it had been for more than three hundred years. Her tightly braided hair curved across the crown of her head like a dark halo. She was petite and seemed to be swallowed up by the deep leather banquet. As their skin touched Gilda sensed, not for the first time, Effie holding something hidden inside her. She pushed the sensation away and enjoyed her relief.

  Sorel watched Gilda recognize a secret place inside Effie, and wondered how they would weather the coming years. He and Anthony had spent almost two centuries of living together, striking a balance between the separations they both appreciated and their desire to experience life side by side. The separations, sometimes weeks sometimes years, were part of the growing process for them. Living on one’s own developed survival skills and helped each one of their family to stay connected to the world and not withdraw into safely guarded enclaves. It was within those isolated clans that the deadly patronizing attitude toward mortals was cultivated. Those like Samuel, who took no responsibility for his existence, thrived among those isolated circles. Within them they reinforced each other’s weaknesses and fed on dreams of power. Each decade he grew thick with paranoia and the blood of terrified victims slaughtered like deer in season.

  Sorel understood how difficult the separations were for Gilda and had tried to help her understand how important they were. Their life needed air as much as it needed blood. As he held her hand he could feel both her joy at his return and the edge of anxiety that anticipated his next trip. More than a hundred years had passed since Gilda’s enslavement and the death of her mother under its brutality, yet she could still barely withstand separations. Every journey away from her was a move toward abandonment. This was another lesson Sorel was confident Gilda would learn in time. As he’d held Effie’s hand, he sensed her compelling need to move back out into the world. The lesson would be brought home to Gilda soon.

  “We have so much to tell you about the land we left behind. It has changed, as you can imagine.”

  Laughter burst from Gilda and Effie, knowing that the last time Anthony and Sorel had seen France, Marie Antoinette was about to be led to the guillotine.

  “But you have things to discuss with us, I believe.” Sorel took a sip from his glass, then sat back in the booth. Effie turned to Gilda, seeing the thoughts behind her eyes for the first time. Effie’s blue-black skin glistened in the soft light that bathed the room.

  “What is it?” Effie’s voice was low and even as the muscles in her body became alert. Her tiny figure became a tight coil of energy as she took in Gilda’s concern.

  “I don’t want to spoil your homecoming,” Gilda said, looking up at Anthony. She could feel him not waiting for her to speak but probing her mind.

  “Samuel.” Anthony spat the name out.

  “Yes.”

  “Samuel? I’d hoped we were done with him,” Effie said, her voice as hard and sharp as a steel dagger.

  “He came to me tonight. On the street. Again. Full of syrup overlaying the vinegar.”

  Anthony drank from his glass, set it down firmly on the table and walked away. The set of his back told them how angry he was.

  “Did he make threats again?” Effie asked.

  “Not directly. He said something about seeing in the turn of the century together as we had in the past.”

  “He is a bit early,” Sorel said, trying to mask his anxiety. “Off schedule as is his usual.”

  “But he made several references that worried me. He kept using the word ‘fair’ in odd ways. Not so odd really, just repeatedly. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then he disappeared with such a sense of bemusement I was…” Gilda stopped, unsure what to say. She looked to Effie, whose brow was wrinkled in thought; then at Sorel, who looked alarmed. He’d known Samuel longer than any of them and understood that Gilda’s concern was no
t misplaced.

  “Why does he continue this? Eleanor used him and tried to use Gilda. She’s been dead for almost a hundred years!” Effie spoke her anger aloud before she thought.

  Sadness settled on Sorel’s face like a carnival mask. In her mortal life Eleanor had been like a daughter to him. The sunny face of curiosity and hopefulness all of them struggled to hold on to. Her spirit was as golden as the hills of Yerba Buena where miners dug for precious ore. Her selfishness was so strong it had infected Samuel.

  “He’s always blamed Gilda. Even Eleanor’s death can’t release him.” Sorel’s voice deepened with sorrow. Everyone was silent as he closed his eyes. His beautiful hands rested lightly on the table as the image of Eleanor sprang to life in his mind. The way she tossed her auburn hair had remained unchanged from the time she was five until the day she died—haughty and vulnerable at the same time. Sorel could almost feel the brush of it against his hand. But the picture he examined behind his eyes also revealed the glint of petulance in hers. Many of their blood acted deliberately cruel or brutal, and Eleanor had done both. Yet there’d been no meanness in her. She’d cared deeply about everything, in the moment. Samuel and Gilda had both entranced her. But her most enduring care was for herself and her whims.

  He’d brought Eleanor into their family impulsively. She had repeated that same mistake with Samuel, then abandoned him in pursuit of others. It didn’t matter to Samuel that Gilda was only one of many lovers she preferred to him.

  Sorel opened his eyes, no longer able to bear the shining clarity of his memory. “I’ll call him to me, make him see some sense.”

  “Sorel, this isn’t your responsibility,” Gilda said. She too remembered the feel of Eleanor, as well as all she might have done to keep Eleanor by her side. But she’d refused to accommodate Eleanor’s profoundest desire—Samuel’s death. “He was Eleanor’s error in judgment, not yours.”