Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

  In the few seconds of his fall Samuel still smiled, the blood of his severed tongue creasing his face. He was certain he could not be hurt by a two-story fall onto a garden. In his years he’d survived much worse.

  At that moment Anthony took a step away from the artfully carved box on the ground, off the carefully laid flagstones and into the path of Samuel’s descent. He raised a broad silver dagger. His pale skin glistened in the darkness of the yard. The shining metal and colorful gems that adorned the handle caught the hint of morning light that peeked over the horizon. The muscles of Anthony’s arm were taut, holding the silver dagger before him. He admired its beauty just as Samuel’s spine made contact with the tip. Anthony released his hold as Samuel’s body swallowed the blade and crashed to the ground. He lay on the grass, the hilt driven into the ground, the bloody blade gleaming from his chest. Samuel’s eyes opened in disbelief, and then were empty.

  Anthony looked up at the windows that surrounded the yard. All were dark and unoccupied except for Marci’s, where Gilda and Effie looked down at him. “You will have peace now,” he said. He pulled an edge of Samuel’s coat up to protect his hand as he gripped the blade of the knife and wrenched it downward, opening Samuel’s chest. He then pushed the hilt deeper into the ground. Blood flowed like a stream into the roots of the evergreen. Anthony ripped at Samuel’s clothes, removing them and his shoes, which held his protective soil. He then stepped back into the shadow of Gilda’s garden door and watched morning break over the city.

  Gilda and Effie locked Marci’s door, leaving him cocooned in sleep until they woke him. When they stood beside Anthony at the garden door they clasped each other’s hands, which were slick with blood.

  “His life was much too long, Gilda. He didn’t have the spirit for it,” Effie said.

  “I’m sorry it ended here.” Anthony spoke softly.

  “We saved Marci, that’s a balance, I think,” Gilda answered.

  “More than a balance,” Effie added.

  “Do you remember Joe Louis?” Gilda asked Effie.

  “Of course. His power was amazing!”

  “He’d have loved your swing.” Gilda laughed.

  “I think you might make the college team yourself,” Effie said.

  They retreated into the house as the sun took over the sky. Before anyone could look from their windows, it had turned Samuel’s body into ash, leaving only the dagger in the soil. From above, its silver gleam looked like the tilted arm of a sundial greeting the day. Although windows were painted and the curtains were already drawn, Effie tugged at their hems as if to fasten them more tightly.

  “Come,” Gilda said as she removed her clothes. After washing off the blood of their enemy and of their friend, the three climbed into the wide bed where the two women had made love only moments before. Pulling the gold comforter up, Effie, Gilda, and Anthony turned to fit into the curves of each other’s bodies. Each left the other to personal thoughts: Anthony remembered a time over a hundred years earlier when he’d helped the young Gilda wash away the filth of the road in a deep copper tub. At this cleansing tonight, he saw that naïveté was no longer a veil between her and the real world. Effie’s mind drifted over the roads she might follow now that Gilda had her own path.

  Gilda was at first startled that Samuel’s death was a relief more than a burden. She’d watched the muscles of his face soften and his eyes lose their hardness, finally understanding he’d locked himself inside a torment that had only this release. She fell into sleep planning to clean Marci’s rooms before awakening him, wondering where she’d find him a new silk blouse. They were all at rest before the sun’s rays tapped at the shuttered windows.

  Blackout

  Jeffrey Ricker

  It had been snowing for two days with no end in sight. Jason looked out the living room window at four-foot drifts piled against the garage. The howling wind rattled the windows. He shivered, stubbed out his cigarette, and lit another one.

  The house phone had gone dead an hour ago. Cell phone reception was mediocre at best and nonexistent inside the house. At least the electricity was still on. He had a drawer full of candles, and the woodpile was well stocked. He was as prepared as he could be. His power was usually the first to go out and the last to come back on. Last winter, they couldn’t get the garage door open and had only firewood, candles, and cold cuts for ten days.

  The howling wind eventually died away. Upstairs, the floor creaked, and Jason nearly dropped his cigarette. The house had been built before the turn of the last century, and he’d never gotten used to its shorthand of creaks and rattles: the ticking of the radiators, the buzz of the hall lights.

  It wasn’t the first time the house had startled him.

  *

  Get out of my house.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” David asked. He poked at the fire, stirring up sparks as he repositioned the logs. Satisfied he’d arranged the fire just so, he stood up, arched his back, and took his wineglass from the mantel. At the same time, a gust of wind swept against the house, and the fire flickered in time with the lights. The windows rattled. Upstairs, the floors groaned again. Jason shuddered and glanced up toward the ceiling.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “it sounds like someone's walking around up there.”

  “It’s just the wind,” David said, brandishing the poker like a sword. “Fear not, fair maiden. I’ll defend you.”

  That had been last winter, not long after they’d moved in.

  A year before David died.

  A house in the country had been David’s idea. He’d grown up in a small town and missed having the rhythms of the natural world close to his front door. He didn’t mind the hour commute to and from the city every day, and Jason could freelance from anywhere. It was hard to resist when he saw David’s face light up at the moment their real estate agent brought them through the front door that first time. Even when they drove up to the house, David got more and more excited as the trees on either side of the driveway drew close overhead.

  “This is it,” he’d said, “I just know it.”

  “We haven’t even seen it yet.” Jason hoped David would stay patient long enough to bargain for a decent price—they were asking too much, and it had been sitting on the market more than six months. The house had been kept in good shape and modernized while remaining true to its original design.

  “So, who were the previous owners?” Jason asked Lydia, their Realtor—an older woman, relatively new to the area herself, a city refugee for the past three years. Mercifully, she wasn’t as perky as other real estate agents he’d had the misfortune to meet.

  “Dan Richards? Widower, lived in the house for forty years. His wife died about three years ago. Unfortunately, she was the nicest thing about him, from what I hear.” Lydia leaned in close. “He was a holier-than-thou son of a bitch. I can’t imagine why anyone would stay with that bastard for as long as she did.”

  David didn’t hear her estimation of the former owner, having disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, the expression on his face was as far from poker as possible.

  “It needs updating, but it’s huge.”

  “Size queen,” Jason muttered under his breath. Lydia giggled.

  *

  Why do perverts like you get to live and my wife doesn’t?

  “Lydia never met Dan before Abby died.” Jane Babbage said this when she dropped in two weeks after Jason and Dan moved in. Jane was their nearest neighbor (if a neighbor they couldn’t see through the dense curtain of trees could be called a neighbor). David was already back to work and getting used to the lengthy commute, while Jason spent half his day working and the other half unpacking. When he heard the knock on the kitchen door, he thought it might have been a woodpecker. Instead, he opened the door to a small, elderly woman in an orange corduroy field jacket, who smiled and held up a basket of muffins.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said brightly. “Well, actually, we a
re the neighborhood.”

  Jason took the basket. The muffins were still warm. He invited her in for coffee.

  “He was absolutely devoted to her,” Mrs. Babbage (“Please, call me Jane”) said of Dan Richards while they waited for the pot to brew. The muffins were carrot and walnut; Jason polished off three of them while Jane filled him in on the details of the Richards’ lives, Abby’s cancer, and Dan’s abrupt change.

  “He just got mean, like an old dog who’s lived too long. We tried to stay friends, but after a while it was too much of a strain.” She fiddled with her coffee cup, rolling it between her palms. “Eventually, he just wouldn’t answer the door, even when we knew he was in here. Then no one saw him in town for over a week, we finally called the police, and they told us he’d died in here.”

  Jason shuddered, and Jane stopped playing with her coffee mug and covered his hand with hers. “Oh, listen to me, telling you these horrible things. Mark’s always saying I have no filters.”

  “It’s all right,” Jason said, though the house seemed darker now. He was certain it was just his imagination. Still, he got up and turned on the light over the kitchen table, even though it was only early afternoon.

  *

  “That was his dream home, not yours,” Katie said. “Why are you still even there?”

  Katie was David’s sister. She’d called him just about every day since the funeral. Jason wondered why she still cared.

  “It’s not that easy,” he said. “I can’t just leave here.”

  “Oh, of course it is, and of course you can.” He listened to her exhale forcefully—she was a smoker too—and pictured her pacing the short distance from her studio apartment’s front door to the kitchen (if you could call the row of appliances along the opposite wall an actual kitchen). The last time he and David had visited, they’d stayed in a hotel.

  When he was quiet on the line for a beat too long, Katie added, “Hell, just come visit for a few days. I know my place is the size of a postage stamp, but we can spend most of our time out and about anyway. It’ll do you good to get away from there for a while.”

  “It hasn’t even been a month,” he said.

  “Trust me. That’s long enough.”

  They’d had that conversation last week. He’d intended to take her up on her offer—he’d been thinking about it earlier that weekend, but now, with it snowing like hell, thoughts of getting away gradually contracted until he just wanted to wait out the storm.

  *

  You’re going to hell, you filthy sinner.

  Things started going wrong when they began to redo the kitchen the following fall. It was a big, open, airy room, but had barely enough cabinet space for David’s pots and pans, and the upper cabinets were too shallow to accommodate their dinner plates. Too much wasted space, David said. Later that summer, he had plans drawn up for a center island and new cabinets along two walls. They moved the refrigerator and the microwave into the dining room, and contractors got to work ripping out the old fixtures.

  The house started getting drafty after that. David never seemed to notice, but Jason kept walking through sudden chills and breezes in odd places. Sometimes they were strong enough to rustle curtains or set a ceiling fan’s string pull to swaying, even when the fan wasn’t on. It never seemed to happen in or near the kitchen, where the contractors were busting things up. Instead, the draft was strongest in the bedroom or while he was walking down the second-floor hall.

  “You want me to start a fire?” David asked. Jason had just put on a hoodie and had the hood up over his head. It was only September, and too early even to be thinking about that sort of thing. Nevertheless, Jason nodded.

  The breezes got stronger as the renovation went on. They’d come rushing toward Jason out of nowhere, then stop, abrupt as a slamming door. He and David turned on the heat, kept a fire going in the fireplace as often as possible, and Jason pulled out the winter clothes a couple months early.

  It was worst when David was at work and Jason was alone.

  Jason was at his desk in the second-floor office, around three thirty in the afternoon, three hours before David got home. Jason tensed when the contractors left the house. Then it was just him and whatever was making that breeze. He went around the first floor and opened all the curtains, turned on the radio, opened the back door and let in the cool air through the screen door. Still, when he walked down the second-floor hall, he could feel that breeze sweep past him, and he knew it wasn’t because the door downstairs was open.

  He tried to concentrate on the laptop screen in front of him, but the breeze settled into a chill across his shoulders and neck and wouldn’t leave him alone. He shivered, hunched his shoulders, and pulled the collar of his shirt higher. The chill drifted away.

  The door slammed. Jason spun in his chair, bumped into his desk, and sent his coffee cup crashing to the floor. He stared at the now-closed door and listened to the house creaking in the breeze—and tried to convince himself that he wasn’t hearing footsteps moving down the hall.

  *

  “You don’t seriously think the place is haunted, do you?” David asked. They’d just finished dinner, and neither of them was in a hurry to get up and clear the table.

  Jason shrugged. “It’s an old house. The old guy died in here. If he was as much of a bastard as Lydia made him out to be, I guess it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  David all but rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe we’re discussing this like it’s even possible.”

  “I don’t know how else to explain it.” Jason knocked back the contents of his wineglass and checked the bottle for more. He refilled his glass.

  “Could it have been one of the construction workers maybe opening a door in another part of the house? You’ve said yourself how drafty this place can be.”

  Jason shook his head. “This was no draft. And the guys had been gone at least half an hour before the door slammed.”

  Jason could tell David wasn’t convinced. “I wonder why I haven’t seen or felt anything. You’ve always said I had an extra sense when it comes to picking up on things.”

  Jason smirked. “I didn’t say you had an extra sense. I said you were overly sensitive.”

  David, scowling in mock anger, balled up his napkin and threw it at Jason, who caught it and dropped it on his empty plate. He got up to clear the table.

  “You don’t suppose someone could have come into the house while you weren’t looking?” David asked. “Maybe the contractors left a door unlocked?”

  “We never lock the doors anyway,” Jason said. “Besides, who would bother? We have exactly one neighbor, and you practically have to drive to get to their house. The only other people who come by are the contractors and the mailman.”

  Jason crammed the paper plates in the trash can and let the lid bang shut. He’d have to wash the wineglasses in the bathroom sink. Hopefully the kitchen would be done soon. He was getting tired of eating off paper plates.

  “Out of the way, concealed from view, and not heavily trafficked sounds like a thief’s dream come true. I guess it’s a good thing I bought the gun.”

  Jason nearly dropped the wineglasses. “You bought what? When?”

  “A couple weeks ago. It’s in the nightstand upstairs.”

  “You might have told me before you brought a deadly weapon into the house.”

  “Well, I’m telling you now.” David got up, took the wineglasses from Jason, and headed to the bathroom to wash them. “We live in a secluded place where it’d take the county sheriff a long time to respond if we were in real trouble.”

  Jason scowled. “When you talk like that, it makes me wonder why we moved here in the first place.”

  “We could always move back,” David said.

  “Not on your life,” Jason snapped without thinking. He would have loved to go back, actually—their friends all promised to visit, but would they really? If he and David did move back to the city, though, they’d have to deal with insane rents for posta
ge-stamp-sized apartments, crowds, neighbors.

  On second thought, he didn’t want to go back.

  Besides, they’d just shelled out a small fortune for the kitchen, so they should at least take the time to enjoy it.

  “I just wish you wouldn’t play devil’s advocate so much,” Jason said.

  David carried the now-clean glasses to the one finished piece of countertop in the kitchen, where he upended them on a dish towel. “Well, if I don’t play devil’s advocate, then that means the house really is haunted. That, or you’ve lost your mind. I’m not sure which of those options I prefer—especially since I just told you there’s a gun in the house and if you’re crazy, you might shoot me in the middle of the night.”

  “Don’t even joke like that!” Jason said, though David had a grin on his face the whole time. He drew Jason into a kiss that clearly meant business, and they went upstairs.

  Jason didn’t tell him that even when they were in bed, with David underneath him, he felt the chill settle across his shoulders. Long after David was snoring away next to him, the cold lingered.

  *

  That was a week before the contractors finished the kitchen. Two weeks before David died. It was late October, not quite Halloween, but a sudden cold snap blasted the East Coast, and Jason couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering.

  “You sure you’re not coming down with something?” David asked. He was getting ready to go out and restock the woodpile. In the past week they’d burned through most of their supply.

  “The only thing I think I’m coming down with is frostbite,” Jason said. He lay wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, the fireplace blazing. David put a mug of tea on the coffee table and kissed Jason’s forehead before heading outside.

  Jason stared at the flames waving madly in the fireplace. David left the TV remote in reach, but Jason couldn’t muster the strength to reach for it any more than he could reach for his tea.