The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  “What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.

  “Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.

  “What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought, Is she really just a crazy old lady after all? Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.

  Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.

  Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear. I think she’s a little spooked. Jenny’s missed that. What kind of a mother am I? She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.

  “But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”

  “What is all this?” Jim asked. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you what I can of your wife and daughter before they went,” Veronica said. “Now, if you’ll just …” She raised and lowered one hand, an almost dismissive gesture.

  “Trix, I don’t like—”

  “Jim!” Trix snapped from the backseat. If her voice had been angry or impatient, he might have argued. But Jim could see that she was crying.

  “Jenny’s hungry. She’s got lunch on her mind. But Jonathan sees what Holly really wants. He knows even as they pass the bookshop, and Holly slips away from her mother, pressing her face to the window. There’s a display of fairy books there. She already has some—she has three of them—but there are two others she’s always wanted. I’ll get us a table, Jonathan says, and Jenny smiles at him and nods. I won’t be long. She follows Holly inside. The smell of new books, coffee from the Starbucks upstairs in the shop, the sound of gentle conversation at the counter. Pages flip, books thump closed. Holly is already past the counter and at the kids’ section, and she has a book in each hand, deciding which to read.”

  Veronica fell silent and her expression slowly changed. Gone was the gentle smile as she relayed Holly’s supposed behavior earlier that day. In its place was something like resignation.

  “What happened next?” Jim asked, because he did believe, really. It wasn’t that he knew the story, but the subtleties were accurate: Holly’s delight at the fairy books, Jenny’s eagerness to get her daughter fed before shopping, Jonathan’s surprising perceptiveness for a guy who’d never wanted kids. She couldn’t be making this up.

  “A book falls from the shelves,” the old woman said. “Jenny reaches for it, wonders, Why the hell did that one tumble, there’s no one to push it, there’s no reason—And then …” Veronica looked up at him again, and for a second there was a smile in her eyes. “Jonathan is back at home. The falling book is on its shelf, and your wife has never touched it.”

  Jim breathed heavily, trying to process what she had said, and what she was still saying. “I don’t understand.”

  “We must go there,” Veronica said. “That’s not always essential, but it can help. You need to feel the place to know it.”

  “Copley Place?” he asked. The old woman nodded, and in the backseat Trix was looking at him expectantly. Jim pushed the door closed and stood alone on the street for a moment, cold, getting damp again from the fine rain. It’s where they were headed when I last saw them, so why the hell not? he thought. But as he got in and started the car, he knew there was more to it than that. He would go because Veronica had suggested it. And she knew.

  The old woman sat quietly beside him as he drove, hands still crossed in her lap, and he adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Trix.

  “You all right?” he asked. Trix caught his eye and nodded. She even offered him a smile that said, Yes, fine now. He thought of standing on that traffic island pleading with the patterned cobbles for help, and the rain, and the long wait in the restaurant while Veronica dealt with some other city emergency.

  “So what makes you the Oracle of Boston?” he asked. He heard an intake of breath from the backseat.

  “Long story,” Veronica said.

  “Well, it’ll take a few minutes to—”

  “And private.”

  “Right.” Jim pressed his lips together and flicked on the wipers. The rain was growing heavy again, and Boston’s evening streets demanded his attention. Dueling taxicabs jockeyed for position as they took couples and friends out for the evening. Other cars lined up at traffic signals, pedestrians dashed across the streets, and horns erupted here and there as impatience settled and tempers flared. You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience, he’d read somewhere once, and he leaned on the car horn for no reason.

  Veronica turned to look directly at him. “Breathe, Mr. Banks,” she said. “I’ll do all I can.”

  “Why Copley Square?” Jim asked. “Are Jenny and Holly still there?”

  “Nowhere near. But you know that.”

  “Then we should be going where they are!”

  “You understand, Jim. You’re just trying hard not to.”

  “Then fucking make me understand!”

  “Jim!” Trix said from the backseat, but fear and anger had Jim now, and such emotions combined brought out the worst in people.

  “Learn patience, Jim,” Veronica said, as if she’d known what he was just thinking. “I need to see where they were before they went, even if you do not. I need to … taste the air. It will help me pin down their location.”

  Jim scoffed but said nothing. Tears pressed against his eyes and throat, and he did his best to swallow them down. They were as useless as drops in a rainstorm. “But you’ll help me find them?” he said finally.

  “I have every intention of setting you on the right path.”

  Jim nodded, and a tear streaked down his right cheek. Veronica saw it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but the air in the car seemed to soften. But perhaps that was just him. The trials of driving through a busy Boston possessed him for a while, and each time he looked in the mirror he saw Trix, light splaying across her bright hair, eyes sad, face shadowed with confusion and grief. We’ve both got to hold it together, he thought. And so far, she’s done more than I have to find Holly and Jenny.

  “Thank you for helping,” he said softly, glancing across at the old woman. “And I’m sorry about …” He shrugged.

  “Oh! A thank-you. Well, that’s an even better start.”

  It took another ten minutes to wend their way toward Copley Square. They passed Boston Common, rolling along Beacon Street, then cut left along Clarendon, finding a parking space opposite the First Baptist Church.

  “It’s Borders, on the corner,” Veronica said. She was breathing more heavily now, and Jim noticed that her skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

  “Are you okay, Miss Braden?” Trix asked, leaning over from the backseat.

  “I’m fine,” the old lady said. She took a few breaths
, seeming to gather herself, and then offered Jim a small smile. “When there’s a trauma to the city, I suffer a little myself.”

  “A trauma to the city?” he asked.

  “I’ll explain when we’re there.”

  Jim glanced at his watch. Almost ten p.m. “It’ll be closing in a minute.”

  “Not tonight,” Veronica said. “Tonight it will remain open until almost ten-fifteen.” She checked the side mirror, then opened the door, standing up with an audible groan.

  “Jim,” Trix said as soon as Veronica let the door swing shut, “you’ve got to give her a chance. You must! Believe me, this is the only thing—”

  “We’re here now,” he said. “This is where they came. And the things she said about Holly, those fairy books …” He shook his head. “She couldn’t know that.”

  “So you’ll give her a chance?”

  “It’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but when he and Trix got out of the car he smiled at her, and she nodded. She knew him so well, and even with everything that was happening, she’d know that Jim would struggle to hold on to reason. Though an artist, he was also a pragmatist, an atheist, and a skeptic when it came to the supernatural or anything associated with it.

  “She’ll amaze you,” Trix said. “Come on. She’s going.”

  They followed Veronica along the street, and Jim was surprised when Trix clasped his hand. He took great comfort from the contact, and as he realized it was because she was afraid, he acknowledged his own fear as well.

  Entering the shop, breathing in warmth and the familiar smell of new books, he wondered what they would find.

  It was almost as if he had walked this way before. He had, of course, many times in the past. He and Jenny were both big readers, though their tastes differed—she loved thrillers, historical novels, and real-life stories, while he preferred biographies and science fiction. When they came into town they often spent an hour in one bookstore or another, enjoying watching Holly browse the books, buying a couple here and there, maybe progressing to the café for coffee and a shortbread, and sitting to check out their purchases. But this time was different. Veronica had said only a few sentences about Holly and Jenny being here, but the picture conjured in his mind was complete. He was walking in his missing family’s footsteps.

  Breathing deeply, Jim moved past the counter and approached the children’s section.

  Trix had let go of his hand as they walked through the front doors. Perhaps she’d felt the tension growing in him, or sensed that his mind wasn’t quite in the present as he tried to relive that moment, following Jenny and Holly’s path.

  “Here,” Veronica said. She’d gone ahead, and as if following a guide of some kind, Jim and Trix had stayed a few steps behind. Now he saw her swaying slightly, and he reached out hesitantly, not wanting to touch her but worried that she was about to fall. If she drops dead here, now, just what the fuck will that mean? But she didn’t fall, and when she looked back at them he saw a strength in her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Something was affecting her, challenging her. But she was fighting back.

  “I’m not sure,” Trix said. A strange thing to say.

  “Do you feel it, Jim?” Veronica asked.

  He frowned and looked around at the book stacks—the splash of colors and textures, words and names jumping out at him, the spines of children’s books hinting at the stories inside, and books faced out tempting with elaborate and enticing covers. “No,” he said, not understanding what she meant, but even as he closed his mouth again he did feel something. He felt …

  Someone passed him by, but there was no one there.

  The front door closed softly, and he heard the distant jangle of keys, but when he looked back it stood open, warm-air curtain shimmering his view of the rain-slicked sidewalk outside.

  It’s all so wrong! he thought, and a nightmare he used to have when he was young struck him for the first time in decades. It used to plague him when he was sick, and he’d never been able to describe it, not even to himself. It was an impression of terrible space, so wide, so endless, that it lessened him where he stood at its heart, smothered him, crushed him down with enormity and possibility. And now it impacted again, because everything he saw and felt around him seemed, for a moment, an infinity away.

  He gasped in air that was too far away to breathe. Book titles on the shelving before him blurred, and he closed his eyes to the cold, staggering thought, They mean something else! He stepped back and Trix stopped him, hands on his waist and her chin resting against his shoulder. He heard her breathing hard, felt her heart thudding against his back.

  “What is it?” she asked Veronica, voice loud in Jim’s ear.

  He opened his eyes again, and the woman was staring at a bookshelf. It was four rows above the floor, a selection of hardback books for children—atlases, natural-history books, histories—and as she slowly lifted her hand and moved closer, Jim knew what she was doing.

  “This one,” she said. She touched the spine of a book called People and Places. “It fell, but not here. It only fell there.”

  “Where?” Jim asked. Anger flared and faded again just as quickly, because now, through the fear, he only felt a desperate need to know. “Please tell me, where?”

  “Where they went,” Veronica said. “They slipped through into another Boston, and this is where it happened. Here.” She tapped the book’s spine and looked around again, ignoring an inquiring look from a shop attendant. “It’s all closed up again now, though. The In-Between has receded; the wound is mended. But there are always scars.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Jim said.

  Trix held him tighter. “I think I’m starting to.”

  Veronica froze, and it was that sudden stillness that made Jim realize just how alive she seemed. Even while sitting beside him in the car she had been a formidable presence—a person whose gravity was greater than most—and he imagined her being the sort who could command a room upon entry, if she so desired. But for that brief moment she became more immobile than he believed any living person could.

  “Closing time,” the shop assistant said.

  “Yes,” Veronica said, turning and breezing past Jim and Trix. “Good. It’s gone now. Come with me.”

  “Where to?” Jim asked, pleased to leave that place. They were here and then they weren’t, he thought, and there was something cold about that shop, and distant, and he wondered why the assistant didn’t seem to feel it. She smiled indulgently as they exited the store, and he heard the jangle of keys as she closed and locked the door behind them.

  “Somewhere special,” Veronica said. “I can tell you more in the car. Hurry.”

  As the rain stopped, a siren wailed in the distance. They walked back to the car. It took Jim a couple of seconds to identify the sensation rising inside him.

  It was hope.

  They slipped through, Trix thought. She was sitting in the backseat again, heart thudding, and as Veronica lowered herself gently into the front passenger seat, Trix said, “They’re somewhere else.”

  “Yes, dear,” the woman replied. Jim was walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side, and for an unsettling moment Trix felt complicit in something of which she had no knowledge.

  “But you can help us find them?” she whispered.

  “I can help you.”

  Jim opened the door and climbed in. He slipped the keys into the ignition and placed his hands on the wheel, ten to two. “So will you start telling me now?”

  “I will,” Veronica said. “Now that I know for sure, I will.”

  “Good. Where to?”

  “The North End,” Veronica said. “Home.”

  “We’re going to your house?” Trix asked.

  “Like I said, dear. Somewhere special.”

  Trix stared from the window and watched Boston passing them by, and thought about who they were with and where they were going. For some reason she’d nev
er imagined the Oracle of Boston even having a home. Her grandmother had told her that story when she was barely into her teens, and the Oracle had taken on the hue of someone mystical and mysterious, one of the city’s own shadows, a breath of Boston’s unique air, a ghost. The story had been remarkable and felt very real, and Trix had always believed it was this, more than a thousand childhood dreams and a love of books, that had given her the open mind she had grown up with. She’d toyed with various prescriptive religions before settling into the comfortable embrace of her own beliefs. She’d once heard a ghost, and remembered the way sadness had settled around her for a brief, shattering moment as the wraith walked by. And now here she was in a shiny new Mercedes with the woman who knew Boston, and whom Boston knew.

  “A long time ago, there was a man called Thomas McGee,” Veronica said. Her voice had changed somewhat, as if she used different tones and inflections to relay stories, and Trix felt herself settling in to listen. “He was the Oracle at the end of the nineteenth century,” the older woman continued. “The first Irish Oracle, in fact, since the Boston Brahmins had dominated up until then.”

  Trix frowned. “Brahmin” was such an outmoded word to describe Boston’s first families and their English Protestant ancestors. She wondered how old Veronica really was, and how long she had been the Oracle.

  “By all accounts McGee was a proud man,” Veronica continued, “an older Irishman who’d seen his countrymen struggling toward equality against a background of bigotry and resentment. Since the middle of that century they’d filled most of the unskilled-labor jobs in the city, household domestics and the like, but as the years went on they became the backbone of Boston’s industrial boom. Yet they were still looked down upon. They lived in squalor in the North End and other areas. The all-Irish neighborhoods housed whole families living in single rooms. McGee grew up through that, and after he took on the mantle of Oracle he became more determined than ever to ensure that his people lived better lives in the future.”

  “But as Oracle, weren’t all Boston’s people his people?” Trix asked. Maybe she had a rose-tinted view of what being Oracle meant; maybe she’d set Veronica on a pedestal higher than the position justified. Just because it was a little beyond and outside the perception of most normal people, did that mean that being Oracle implied perfection?