Anthony struggled ineffectually. His hands tried to grip the Shadow Lord and went through the dark matter as if it were constructed of mist. The only noise he could make was the helpless choking that indicated his throat was being slowly crushed into a bloody pulp. He had made his deal with a devil and discovered that the devil couldn’t be trusted.
With an ominous bellow of conquest, the Shadow Lord abruptly threw Anthony from him. He landed in a pile ten feet away, and the shadow people converged upon his flailing body like a pride of lions descending upon a hapless antelope. Their merging shadowy forms concealed his in a cloud of crisscrossing blackness that left no gaps.
Anthony screamed a single time and then was portentously silent.
Penelope made a noise under her breath and tried not to gag with the horror she was witnessing. What power does the Tears of the Spirit hold over the shadow people? repeated her inner voice insistently. What power? Figure it out quickly, Pen.
The Shadow Lord turned its consideration upon Penelope. That, in itself, was utterly and completely numbingly frightening.
*
Charlie looked at the open door where the narrow stairwell was located. Then he looked again. “Say, boss, I think a wall collapsed somewhere above us.”
John turned his flashlight down the little hallway and saw a mass of dirt that had spread out of the door and halfway down the short passage. The doorway they had come through was now blocked. He swallowed nervously and stepped back to look upwards. There was only one way out of the silo now. The way where all the strange people were waiting.
Jessica said, “What the hell are we waiting for? Those children need our help.”
John sighed. Did I make sure I wore my underwear without the holes? Yes, I goddamn well did. “Let’s go,” he said. He took Jessica’s arm and added, “I don’t suppose you have a gun in that backpack, Mrs. Quick?”
Jessica shrugged and rested her hand on John’s forearm as if she was a royal princess, and he was her escort. “She did have a Taser but Anthony took that and a gun as well.”
With another exaggerated sigh, John began to lead the way upstairs. The meager spotlights flickered in time with the trembling earth. Whatever was happening was big, and he couldn’t remember ever having an actual, honest-to-god earthquake in the area. John didn’t doubt it had something to do with the weirdness that was happening above them. Red-eyed critters, the earth moving, kidnapped children, sneak thieves. What in the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt is going to happen next?
*
“Thief,” it said. “The sky god belongs in the underworld. Give it to me.”
Her hand slid into her pocket and felt the reassuring weight of the diamond. A thing that belonged to the heavens probably did NOT belong in a world of darkness. Darkness concealed its powers. Her eyes flickered toward the piece of obsidian lying near the misty feet of the Shadow Lord. It was dull in comparison. It didn’t reflect the light the same way as the Tears of the Spirit. The fake one didn’t belong in the light like…
Suddenly, Penelope understood. Her fingers twisted the handkerchief off the black diamond and held it in her hand inside her pocket. It was as cold as it had been before, but it warmed with the touch of her flesh, as if it recognized her. Cold became warmth, warmth became heat that threatened to scorch. She remembered her dream where the stone had been in her pocket, and it had felt as though a red-hot poker had been forced against her flesh.
“I don’t think I like the way you do bargains,” she said. With a slow look around her, Penelope saw that the shadow people had regrouped and were closing around her in a large loose circle. Anthony’s still corpse had been forgotten. They were inching toward her en masse.
The Shadow Lord looked upon her with its frightening gaze, and although no features could be perceived, she was sure that the thing was amused by her. Like Anthony, it underestimated her.
There was only one thing that bothered the shadow people. Strong light. They had avoided it in the chase from the Durfrene Row house. They only came in the night. Anthony had purposely set up the flood lights in the silo so they would have a free path of pure darkness with which to come or go. And sunlight would undoubtedly kill them.
Penelope didn’t have sunlight at her command, and if she looked skyward she would see the blood red visage of the moon, still secreted under the shadow of the Earth, unable to move as if it were stuck in time, never to shine fully again.
She said, “The Tears of the Spirit doesn’t belong in the darkness of your world.” Then she pulled the diamond out and held it out in front of her. For a moment it was as opaque as the piece of obsidian, dull and lifeless, as if a dead thing long removed from the affairs of man. Then it caught the dim light of the fire.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Friday, July 18th - Saturday, July 19th
Playing the devil (slang, origin unknown, probably 20th century American) - taking a risk with someone who isn’t to be trusted
There were too many of the red-eyed things running around to suit Jake. He had crawled as close as he dared. He could almost reach out and touch one of the kids staked by the fire. Lying face down in a low gully, he peeked over the edge to see what was going on. After the one guy had stabbed the other one and smeared blood on his face, he threw some more blood around, and the earth split open, and then more of those things spilled out of the crack. The last thing out was twice the size of the others and with a bearing that indicated to Jake that he in charge.
The fella with the knife wanted to argue with the big red-eyed thing. He dropped the knife on the dead guy’s chest and stood up to speak to the large creep. They kept looking at the woman who was being held in between two more of those things, whatever the hell they were. They even spoke to her. Then after she started to laugh, the situation began to go downhill for the knife-wielding guy.
Jake could see it in his stature. The blood-splattered guy was afraid. A moment later the huge thing showed him exactly why he had a reason to be. Jake didn’t know what the shadowy things did to him after he was tossed away from the biggest one, but he suspected it was all bad. Finally, the woman did her own talking with the huge thing. All the while she didn’t seem to be aware that the rest of the critters were closing in on her.
It didn’t look good for her. Jake sure hoped that the woman wasn’t the one John was hunting down, Penelope. She didn’t look to be long for the world. But he did notice that the red-eyed buggers were no longer congregating around the children, and he knew that he was going to have to take a calculated risk.
Of course, that was when something really strange happened.
*
Two flights from the top of the missile silo, John led the group down the tunnel to the Launch Control Center. The LCC had the only other exit available to the three people trapped in this place. The blast doors were open, and there was evidence of recent occupation. The floor was wiped clean of dust from frequent passage of God knew what. Fortuitously, they hadn’t seen anyone else, and John thought that the other shoe was about to drop. It was, he suspected, a really big shoe with spikes covered in poisons obtained from the deepest depths of Africa.
Then he saw that the last door was closed and locked. John cursed under his breath. The door was constructed of heavy gauge steel and weighed about a thousand pounds. He didn’t know how he was going to get past that. If he had a pile of dynamite, maybe, but at the moment dynamite was about as scarce as winning lottery tickets.
Jessica bumped into his side as he faltered. Charlie stared at the closed door and said several bad words in Spanish.
“What’s wrong?” Jessica said quietly.
“Door’s locked,” John said. “It’s the only door out of this place. It’s closed and locked.”
Jessica tilted her head curiously. “Is it padlocked from the outside like the other one, or is it locked with a regular deadbolt?”
John shrugged and then immediately remembered that Jessica couldn’t see his shrug. “I guess it coul
d be locked from the outside, but the door’s set up to be opened from the inside, too. Just in case airmen were inadvertently trapped down in the silo when the missile was launched. It’s a big-ass deadbolt. Supposed to be Soviet proof.”
“Does it have a keyhole, Mr. Rife?” Jessica insisted softly.
“Yes, Mrs. Quick, it does,” John answered, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “Not that will do us much good since we do NOT have the key.”
Jessica sighed melodramatically. “Well, we may not need the key.” She shrugged out of the backpack and held it out to John. “There should be a set of lock picks in here somewhere. Would you be so kind as to find them for me?”
John glanced at Charlie. Charlie’s eyebrows went up in a why-the-hell-not? gesture. “I can’t use lock picks, Mrs. Quick.”
Jessica snorted in a very unladylike fashion. “I don’t expect you to use them. I will.”
“Okay, but can I point out that you’re blind?” John said carefully. Jessica still had the rusty wrench and might be so inclined to use it again.
“I know that,” she said patiently. “My husband, may he rest in peace, was a professional thief. He taught the art to our only child, whom you met so recently. And while Penelope is not a bad girl, she managed to get herself involved in something so vile that I cannot, even now, conceive of what has happened. But on the matter of the lock picks, to which that story has significance: who do you think taught my husband to use the damn things thirty years ago? I learned it from my father, but if he had thought that for an instant that I would use it professionally, he would have had my guts for garters. And you don’t need to see to use lock picks, Mr. Rife. Most of the time when a thief is breaking and attempting to crack a lock, they don’t have the luxury of lights.”
John stuck his hand in the backpack and dug around. He didn’t care who was a thief or not because of the immediate danger they were in at the moment. Later mother and daughter could explain what being a family of professional thieves had to do with red-eyed creatures and kidnappings of children and terrible things. Later. And if Jessica Quick could get the door open for them, then all the better. However, he was damned if he was going to ask her what a set of lock picks looked like.
Charlie pointed helpfully as various items came to light. “That’s it, boss.” Then he looked abashed. “I saw a picture with someone using them once. Swear to God, boss.”
Handing the set to Jessica, John led her to the door and pointed the flashlight at the locks there before he remembered she didn’t need the light.
“How long will this take?” John said.
“As long as it takes,” Jessica replied succinctly.
*
The words that the Shadow Lord emitted were the opposite of anything human. It made Penelope’s ears burn, and the world seemingly tilted on its axis. An abrupt shimmer of power radiated outward and caused a blur of inanimate sensation. She couldn’t tell where it had come from, but she seemed to be the epicenter, and that fact was annoying the Shadow Lord. She held out the Tears of the Spirit, and it absorbed the distant light of the fire. Then it appeared to implode.
Penelope’s eyes widened in reaction. Not knowing what was happening was an understatement. She had a theory. She needed light. The black diamond was reputedly from a fallen sky god. The gemstone burned in her grasp like it was ablaze. Perhaps if the rest were true, then the Tears of the Spirit would provide the light that she so desperately needed.
Her hand was out in front of her. She slowly raised it up. The implosion garnered all available light, and the world dimmed like a dying flashlight.
In that split second she speculated that she had made a dreadful mistake. Penelope couldn’t see anything, not even her hand not three feet away from her face. The world was filled with blackness and lightlessness like a wretched void.
Penelope tried to breathe, but it felt as though something tremendously heavy rested on her chest. She tried again and then, when the Tears of the Spirit exploded outward in an amazing array of iridescent beams that pierced everything around her, air rushed into her lungs.
Suddenly she could see everything. It was as if she were holding a mini-sun in her hand. Penelope was truly awed. She expected to be flash-fried as if the lustrous light was lethally searing, but it didn’t seem to affect her. Instead it flooded the immediate area with its gleaming rays leaving only patches of shadows no bigger than the span of one of her hands.
The shadow people shrieked in pain. They bent over and threw black arms over their red eyes and attempted to protect themselves. Some of them writhed in agony on the ground, their translucent flesh beginning to smolder and flicker away in great portions. The light was death to their shadow-constructed shapes.
Some of them began to slither back into the ripped earth, vanishing into bottomless depths. Their forms wiggled furiously across, seeking the sanctuary of the black realm. Their cries were anathema to her ears, and Penelope wanted to cover them to block out the sound, but she couldn’t make herself move.
But the Shadow Lord didn’t seem to be impacted. It stared at her and was horribly revealed in the stone’s light. Cloaked with darkness that concealed most of its shape, its face was a blackened skull with eyes that blazed as fiercely as the Tears of the Spirit. Its fingers were seared bone, and Penelope knew that the Shadow Lord had been touched by the stone before.
Its dark teeth ground together in fruitless anger. The other shadow people that were exposed to the gem’s brilliance were melting away like distant bad nightmares. In moments there would be little left but unrecognizable inky pools. The Shadow Lord surveyed the area and stepped backwards without a word.
Acknowledgement of Penelope’s victory would be unproductive.
“Wait,” she said. Penelope looked at the thing from the underworld and knew her life would never be the same. It would never be the same from the moment she had first touched the Tears of the Spirit.
The Shadow Lord hesitated. Its crimson eyes cast toward her, and its bony countenance was full of barely repressed fury.
Penelope didn’t dare look toward Will’s body. She lowered the hand with the gemstone and held it out toward the Shadow Lord. It was not as if she were giving it to it, but showing the black beast that it could be part of a new deal.
“You want to bargain, thief,” it said, and its voice was grating harshness. “I warn you, bargaining with the lord of the underworld isn’t like making an agreement with another human.”
“I didn’t think it would be,” she said solidly. “I have something you want. And you…you have something I want.”
*
Jake watched in disbelief. There had been a sudden shimmer in the air. Then there had been a kind of explosion of darkness that had made everything black as sin. It had been followed by an explosion of light. Everything was revealed in horrifying detail. He knew that he hadn’t seen such things since the last time he had gotten drunk on Jack Bryne’s homemade moonshine.
He suddenly shook his head and crawled toward the nearest youngster. The child was a little blond- haired girl who was curled up in a ball on the ground, her arm over her face as if that would protect her from what was happening to her. “Psst,” he said carefully. He looked around him. The bright light of what the woman was holding in her hand had made the critters haul ass or disintegrate into sooty piles of crap. Nothing was interested in him or the children any more.
The woman was speaking to the last thing standing, the big one that now appeared to look like the Angel of Death. All it needed to complete its ensemble was a large sharp sickle.
The demoralizing thought made Jake want to hurry. He pulled out his buck knife and got a little closer to the little girl. He sawed through the heavy rope and freed her in less than thirty seconds. “Little girl,” he said insistently, “I’ve got you free. I’m going to get the other kids. You need to run in the direction I’m pointing. There’s a truck and a Jeep there and you can— ”
The little girl peek
ed over her arm at Jake and must have decided that he seemed preferable to the other things that had been bothering her. “MY daddy is a ‘torney,” she said furiously. “He’ll sue you so that you don’t have a shirt on your back.”
Jake closed his mouth. Then he said quickly, “I’m trying to help you. Look, they’re all gone. Just run. Crawl under the fence where I dug through. I’ll get the other kids real quick-like and we can get the hell out of here.”
The blonde looked around and ascertained Jake’s story. She didn’t hesitate. She climbed to her feet and ran like the dickens in the direction that Jake had indicated.
Before Jake went after the other children, he muttered, “She’s going to own the testicles of the man she marries. Gonna keep them in a box on her dresser next to her jewelry. Jesus Christ, do I feel sorry for that poor bastard.”
*
Jessica cleared the door with a sound of triumph. The door swung open as if it had been oiled. She started to say something pithy and stuck-up to indicate the level of her success, but John Rife saw what was lying in wait for them beyond the open door and shoved her out of the way before a word could be issued.
The shadow creature rushed at them, hissing and spewing forth black wispy clouds from its screaming mouth.
John didn’t waste any time. He brought his shot gun up and fired exactly where his wife had told him to fire. When the first blast only slowed it up incrementally, he blasted its hellish red eyes with the second round. That made an impact. It flew back from them as if a winch from a monster truck had suddenly yanked it.
Not wasting a moment, John shoved a shocked Charlie toward the exit stairs and yanked Jessica up by her arm. “Leaving now!” John yelled. “Not a good place to hang out in!”
Thankfully no one thought to argue with his summation.
*
The fiery red eyes of the Shadow Lord slowly traveled in the direction of Will’s corpse. It regarded the dead man with a quietness that profoundly disturbed Penelope. The deed bothered her that she was so easily readable. “A bargain?” it said with its terrible voice.
Shadow People Page 38
