Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

  “You’re where?” she asked, the connection clear enough to telegraph her disbelief. Or maybe she was just yelling that loudly. “You get back inside right now.”

  “I can’t get any signal in the house and the landline’s gone out. Listen, I was thinking maybe you’re right and I should get out of here for a while…if your offer for me to visit still stands.”

  “Of course it does, but why did you have to go outside in the middle of a blizzard to tell me this? Is something wrong?”

  Here it is, he thought. She’s going to think I’m crazy or— He couldn’t come up with an alternative.

  “There’ve been—things happening. In the house. I can’t explain them. All the doors slammed a few nights ago. I know that sounds crazy, but they were open when I went to bed, and I woke up in the middle of the night and heard them. And then the house has been getting so cold, even with the heat on and a fire going.” He paused a moment before adding, “And I’ve been hearing something, like someone whispering things to me.”

  She was quiet for a long time. “What kind of things?” she asked, her tone careful.

  “I can’t tell, but I figure it can’t be good.”

  She breathed deeply, and he could hear that even over the storm. “Listen to me,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “You need to go back inside now, no matter how frightening it is. You stay outside and you’ll freeze to death.” Jason started to protest, but Katie cut him off. “After we get off the phone, I’ll call the Babbages and ask them to come get you as soon as they can. But you have to go back inside first.”

  She wouldn’t hang up on him until he agreed, and she even stayed on the line as he walked back up the hill until finally he lost her signal. It was impossible to see his footprints in the driveway. When he made it back inside, the house provided little warmth.

  He wasn’t surprised.

  *

  He kept the fire going. It was the only thing keeping the ghost at bay, he was sure of it. Jason wondered how long the snow would keep falling, how long the firewood would last, whether the Babbages would come for him before it ran out.

  He was also down to his last two bottles of wine. Drinking didn’t make him feel any warmer, but it made him mind the cold less and made it harder to focus on the whispers that were a constant drone now, even when he retreated to the kitchen. He lit every candle in the living room and got more out of the kitchen drawer. All he had to do was make the firewood last until the next morning and keep the fire going in the meantime.

  It didn’t turn out that way.

  He remembered the tail end of the dream he was having. David was once again running through the trees, which were falling behind him again too. Once again, Jason stood on the front porch, watching helplessly as David raced toward him. This time, he wasn’t alone on the porch—but he also knew he really, really didn’t want to look at the figure standing to his left. When the big tree once again started falling directly at David, Jason averted his eyes.

  The man looked older than old. Few details of his appearance registered clearly except for the halo of receding white hair, the leathery wrinkles in his sunken cheeks, and—when he tilted his head to return Jason’s stare—the blackness of his eyes.

  “You’re doing this,” Jason said, gesturing toward the falling tree. “Stop it.”

  The man smiled and opened his mouth wide, impossibly wide, as if he were a snake about to devour prey. There were no fangs, though, no forked tongue, not even a normal mouth. It was nothing but blackness. He exhaled a frigid wind that howled louder than the crashing of the tree that flattened David.

  Jason awoke to darkness. He was lying on the floor near the fireplace, which had gone out, and the room was frigid. He couldn’t breathe. Hands pressed against his throat, fingers an icy vise digging into his skin. The whispers, insistent before, were now clear.

  “This is my house.”

  Jason reached for the hands even though he couldn’t see them. Touching them was like touching cold fire. He tried to scream but could only draw enough air for a croak. He flailed in the darkness, trying to find anything. He knocked over an empty wine bottle and heard it rolling away. Before it was out of reach, he grabbed it by the neck and swung upward. He heard the crack of glass against bone and the hands released him.

  Jason stumbled drunkenly toward the stairs. Going out in the cold would surely kill him, not that it was much warmer inside. But the gun was upstairs.

  How do you shoot a ghost, though? Jason wondered.

  He barreled into the darkened bedroom, a sliver of moonlight through the window barely lighting his way. Memory drew him to the nightstand where he yanked the drawer open too quickly, spilling its contents onto the floor. He heard glass breaking. He flailed for the pistol he knew was there, shards pricking his fingers until he found first cold metal, then the rubber grip of the handle.

  Jason rolled onto his back, turned toward the bedroom door, and raised the pistol. Before he pulled the trigger, David’s first instruction when he was teaching Jason to shoot came back to him, the words as clear as if he actually heard them right then: Use both hands.

  Jason fired. In the brief flare of light from the barrel, he saw a man in the doorway.

  He fired again, the sound deafening him. The man was in the room now.

  Jason fired a third shot. The man was at the foot of the bed. His face was gray and lined. He looked old, but the darkness in his eyes looked even older.

  Jason fired one last time. The man’s hands were reaching out toward him when something (someone?) darted from Jason’s left side and rammed into the figure. In the darkness Jason heard what sounded like a scream, but it could have been the sound a tree makes when it topples over. Wind, arctic cold, swept through the room as the sound grew deafening.

  Leaving the gun behind, Jason ran for the bedroom door. He continued down the hall and half ran, half fell down the stairs, arms outstretched, bouncing off the handrail as he tripped and sprawled in the foyer, pain stabbing his knee. Ignoring it, he swayed to his feet and flung open the front door. The blast of snow and frigid air staggered him briefly, but he felt the wind at his back propelling him down the front steps and into the snow. He got up, staggered down the walk—maybe through the yard, he wasn’t sure where he was going—then weaved to the left just before he ran headlong into a tree, hooking it with an arm and boomeranging around it until he slumped to the ground. Behind him, it sounded like two wild cats fighting as consciousness sank beneath a blanket of snow.

  *

  Jason awoke on the sofa. Mr. Babbage stoked the fire, and as Jason stared at him through half-open eyes, Jane came in with an armload of blankets and a mug of tea.

  “Mark, he’s awake.” Jane set down the tea and then knelt beside the sofa. She unfurled a blanket and settled it over him. “What happened, hon?”

  Jason tried to sit up, but even pressing his hands against the sofa cushions beneath him made his fingertips burn. He gave up and leaned back again. “I could have sworn someone was in the house last night. The power went out, and then they tried to break into the bedroom—”

  “Why did you go outside, though?” she asked.

  Jason tried to remember, but his memory of the night before receded even as he tried to pull it closer. He shook his head, and she patted his arm. “It’s okay, hon. Just try to relax. Your sister-in-law called. She’s coming up to get you as soon as the roads are clear.”

  He reclined on the sofa and turned to gaze out the window. The snow had stopped, and the sunlight reflecting off the white-covered yard blinded him for a moment. He closed his eyes. Later, he’d think about calling Lydia and putting the house on the market. He’d pack a few things and go stay with Katie for a while, even if her apartment was the size of a closet.

  That could all wait, though. For the moment, he lay back and tried to remember the last time the house had been so bright.

  Crazy in the Night

  Greg Herren

  Danny probably would
have never moved from his apartment on Constantinople Street—if it hadn’t been for that damned thunderstorm.

  It wasn’t that it was such a great place—it was far too expensive for as small as it was, frankly, and he was well aware of that. But rents had gone through the roof after Katrina, and he needed a place to live. He could afford the rent, of course, that wasn’t the problem with it. He just felt like he was being gouged every month when he wrote the check to his landlady, whom he called “that greedy bitch” to his coworkers and friends so often that no explanation was necessary. But he hated the hassle of moving—of getting services turned off and on, of packing and unpacking—and he hated the search for a new place most of all. So every month on the first he simply gritted his teeth, wrote the check, and gave it to that greedy bitch with a phony smile plastered on his face.

  The forecast that day had been for rain, but between May and November the forecast every day was “hot, humid, chance of rain,” but he took an umbrella with him when he left for work at the Monteleone Hotel that particular morning. He was so busy once he got to his office that he didn’t know it turned dark as night outside when the rain started around one in the afternoon. The loud crack of thunder did startle him, breaking through the intense level of concentration he’d focused on the conference contract he was putting together, trying to remember things from the phone conversation with the conference organizer and swearing at himself for not writing down every request she’d made.

  He walked out to the hotel lobby and saw Royal Street filling with water, and the doorman had come inside. At least it’s not a tropical storm, he thought with a sigh of relief as he headed back to his office, because that would suck.

  But the storm did manage to dump twelve inches of rain on New Orleans in slightly less than two hours, despite not being a tropical storm. That would be problematic in any city, but for New Orleans, built on a swamp below sea level and surrounded by water on every side, it was catastrophic. Despite the efforts of one of the best pumping systems in the world, the streets flooded. The residents of the city could only watch in helpless horror as the dirty brown rainwater rose and rose. Cars attempting to make it through the bayous the streets quickly became were inundated with water and engines stalled. Lightning knocked out power in most of the Uptown part of the city, and the power flickered a few times at the Monteleone.

  Around three in the afternoon the storm passed and the sun came back out as though nothing had ever happened. In less than half an hour, the pumping system kicked into high gear and the dirty water disappeared. The only evidence that it had ever been there was the stalled cars, the mud and dirt and debris on the sidewalks and in the gutters, and the unlucky ones in low-lying houses pushing dirty water out of their houses with mops.

  As Danny drove home from work that night, past dead cars pushed out of the streets up into parks and neutral grounds, his relief that his small overpriced apartment was on the second floor grew—until he turned down Constantinople Street and saw the enormous live oak that had crashed into the front of the building.

  He parked, and stared in horror. He could see clearly into his apartment from where he was standing. His hands shaking, he fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket and called his boyfriend. Matthew came right over and spent a few hours with him in the wreckage, finding what was and wasn’t ruined—almost everything was.

  Finally, Matthew shook his head as the light faded and said, “Come on, babe, let’s go over to my place. You can stay with me for now.”

  For now.

  Too emotional and upset to say anything else, Danny just nodded.

  But it rankled, as it always did.

  They’d been seeing each other exclusively for just over a year—but God forbid Matthew even consider the frightening possibility of asking his newly homeless boyfriend to move in with him.

  Matthew always begged off about making any kind of commitment, giving him a sheepish grin and an apology. He always claimed a long-term relationship that had ended really badly made him commitment-shy, and with some space and time he’d “get over it, I promise.”

  Much as Danny loved him, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was wasting his time.

  For two weeks he waited for Matthew to ask him to make his stay permanent, but he waited in vain. Once the settlement check was in his hand, he told Matthew in bed that night he was going to start looking for a place.

  “Well, don’t just grab the first place you see,” Matthew said, slipping his arm around Danny’s waist and pulling him closer. “You’re welcome to stay here until you find the right place, you know.”

  He was glad it was dark, so that Matthew couldn’t see his face.

  He started looking the next morning on his drive to work—looking for “for rent” signs on his way downtown, cursing Matthew under his breath. It wasn’t like there wasn’t plenty of room in Matthew’s house—he even had a spare bedroom, if it came to that—and since almost everything Danny had owned was water-damaged, it would be relatively simple. Everything he owned was already in Matthew’s house. But no, we can’t have that, can we? he thought angrily as the light at St. Andrew changed and he headed down Camp Street.

  “Maybe it’s time to just end this,” he said out loud as he reached for his travel mug. He took a sip of coffee, stopped several cars back from the light at Melpomene. He was so wrapped up in his anger at Matthew he almost missed the cup holder—almost dropping the mug and making an enormous mess. He carefully set the mug down and just happened to see through the passenger window a For Rent sign hung on a massive live oak on the other side of the sidewalk. He bent down and leaned over, peering out the window. The house was a beautifully restored Victorian, painted green with brown trim. There was a wide front porch, whose roof made a balcony for the second floor. Hand-lettered with a black Sharpie in the long white rectangular box beneath the words For Rent was written: 2 bedroom upper, 1600 square feet, central heat and air, washer/dryer, modern kitchen, call Linda 555-0890.

  He typed the name and number into his phone just as the light turned green.

  He called as soon as he got to the office, and made an appointment to see the place over his lunch hour.

  It was perfect. The apartment took up the front half of the second floor of the house—each bedroom had two windows opening out onto the balcony. The kitchen was, indeed, modern—all the appliances were new, as were the front-loading washer and dryer, which sat in a small room Linda, the real estate agent, said “could be used as a walk-in closet, a pantry, or just storage.” The bathroom was art deco, and everything in it was new. The floors were polished, shining dark hardwood, the ceilings were fourteen feet above the floor, and the living room was enormous. Beautiful brass chandeliers hung in the center of each room, with energy efficient bulbs screwed into the lighting fixtures just below the broad wooden blades of the ceiling fans, which matched the dark floors. There was a driveway that led to off-street parking, behind an electric gate.

  And the house was right across the street from Coliseum Square, a beautiful old park with classic-looking street lamps and ancient live oaks. The St. Charles parade route and streetcar line were just a couple of blocks away, and he was much closer to work. He was almost afraid to ask the monthly rental price, and almost fainted in shock when she quoted him a number that was $200 less than the ruined apartment uptown.

  “I’ll take it,” he said without even having to think twice about it, pulling his checkbook out of his back pocket. “When can I move in?”

  “Whenever you want,” she replied, producing a lease out of her briefcase. “It’s available now.”

  Once he signed the lease and wrote her a check for a deposit and first month’s rent, she handed over the keys and a remote control for the gate.

  “Why is the rent so cheap?” Matthew asked that evening as he walked around the empty apartment, stopping at one of the bedroom windows facing the park. “As big as this place is, they should be able to get double what they’re charging yo
u—a balcony and a view of the park?” He shook his head. “It’s almost too good to be true, you know?”

  “There always has to be something wrong, doesn’t there?” Danny stood in the living room, thinking about where to hang his Herb Ritts prints before remembering they’d been ruined. He spoke absently, without any malice.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Matthew walked back out of the bedroom with his two thick black eyebrows knit together and his round brown eyes narrowed. He folded his arms in front of him. He was wearing a white ribbed tank top, and crossing his arms made his thick chest bulge over the neckline.

  “It’s not supposed to mean anything. All I was thinking was, you know, after being overcharged by the bitch for so long, maybe I earned some apartment kharma.” Danny looked at him, at the heavily muscled thick folded arms, the narrow waist, the jean shorts clinging tightly to his muscular upper thighs, and wondered if anyone could see inside the curtainless windows. He walked over to one of the side windows and looked out. No, they were much higher up than the nearest neighbor’s windows. He moved toward Matthew and slid his arms around his waist, cupping his buttocks. “And I’m really glad I was lucky enough to find this place before someone else did.” He kissed Matthew’s lips, which were tightly closed at first and resistant.

  But after a moment, Matthew’s arms went around him and his lips parted.

  They broke in the new apartment right there on the hardwood floor.

  Danny took a week off from work and spent two days driving around the city, buying new furniture and new prints, sheets and towels and a phone, a television and kitchenware. It was the first time he’d ever moved into a new place and actually had the time to think about where things should go. He decided the bigger bedroom, the one to the right from the street, would be his bedroom and he would turn the other into a combination office/guest room. He bought curtains and hung them, deciding to make his bedroom dark blue and the guest room in earth tones. Late Thursday afternoon the bed arrived, and after the deliverymen left, he put the sheets on and made the bed. Tomorrow, he decided, I am going to start living here.