The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  Jim glanced at her. For a moment they searched each other’s eyes, wordlessly acknowledging the obvious—that neither of them felt capable of judging what was and wasn’t possible anymore. Trix looked away first, shaking her head, then took the initial step into the unmarred side of the room. Nothing happened. The place seemed solid and ordinary except for the obvious fact of its impossible half ruin. “It’s like someone cut the room in half,” Jim said.

  “No,” Trix replied, walking over to the writing desk and examining the book that lay open there. “It’s like half the room was here for … whatever did all this damage—McGee’s fuckup—and the other half of the room was somewhere else.”

  She flipped a page in the book, then turned to look at him, a kind of almost panic dancing in her eyes. “Magic.”

  Jim flinched at the word. Veronica’s story had sounded like some kind of bizarre fairy tale, but the room around them was tangible, the evidence of the impossible undeniable. Now he took a steadying breath and crossed the room as well, heading for the door set in the opposite wall, beside the writing desk.

  The knob turned easily and he pushed it open, hope surging in the moment when the hinges creaked and the light from the ceiling fixture spilled into the next room. But beyond the door he discovered no passage into other worlds. Instead, he took a single step across the threshold into a small, dust-coated bedroom decorated with antique furniture and piled with boxes. Two old television sets sat on the floor, abandoned. Across the small room was yet another door, this one partially open, and a small amount of light seeped in, revealing a set of narrow servants’ stairs that likely went down to the kitchen or pantry on the floor below.

  Jim turned back into the half-ravaged room. Veronica had taken them into a damned bookstore in Copley Place and claimed that his wife and daughter had vanished from that very spot, just slipped into a parallel world, as though talk of such things was ordinary conversation and the existence of variable dimensions was something only a fool would deny. But Jim had gone along with her because he had no other alternative—Trix had led him to that circle of cobblestones by the State Street station, they had asked the city for help, and this woman had heard them. Even so, he had felt as though his every step took him deeper into a nightmare.

  This room, though … this was real.

  “Trix,” he said.

  She glanced up from the old leather-bound book, looking pale and queasy. Then she stepped away from the desk as if the book might bite her. She turned to stare across the room at the door through which they had first entered. “This is all real.”

  “You’re the one who knew about her,” Jim said. “You didn’t believe her?”

  Trix laughed uneasily. “Finding someone you’ve lost track of, or the truth about a girlfriend you think might be getting beaten up by her husband … yeah, I can wrap my brain around that. You can chalk that up to, like, some kind of psychic powers or something. But this—magic spells and splintered cities—seems so crazy.”

  Jim shut the door he had opened and walked to the center of the room. He stared down at the place where the undamaged floorboards met scorched and glassy wood, and then at the starburst pattern where it appeared something had burned hottest of all, and possibly exploded.

  Something like Thomas McGee.

  He looked at the charred remnant of what had apparently been the only chair in the room, and then he turned to Trix, surprised to find a smile beginning to spread across his face. “If this is true—”

  “Then the rest of it …,” Trix said, faltering as if she was afraid to finish the thought. She glanced back at the magic book, then started for the scorched door, new purpose in her stride. “Come on. Veronica’s waiting.”

  Jim took one last look at that spot in the center of the room, then hurried after her.

  Trix found Veronica in the front parlor, where she had just set out a tea tray with service for three and a plate of Pepperidge Farm cookies. The elegant old woman glanced up guiltily, as though she’d been caught at something awkward. “I know they’re nothing special,” Veronica said, “but they’re my favorites. And, honestly, I couldn’t bake anything edible to save my life.”

  Trix stopped just inside the room and stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “It’s all right,” Jim said, sweeping past her and perching on the edge of a chair by the coffee table. “We’re not exactly invited guests. And we don’t have time for courtesies.”

  Only then did Trix realize that the old woman had been talking about the cookies. Veronica’s concern for such a thing seemed surreal in the midst of the nightmare she and Jim were living—an absurd attempt at the ordinary.

  “Tell us what we need to do,” Jim said.

  As Veronica poured tea, Trix stepped into the room. “Hold on,” she said. “I need to slow down a second.”

  Jim shot her a hard look. “You saw that room. I know you were thinking the same thing I was. We don’t have time to slow down.”

  Trix sat on the love seat across from him. Veronica poured tea and offered them both cups, and though eager to move on, they both accepted. Veronica took her own teacup and sat on the love seat beside Trix, exhaling as she settled in, staring at her, the plate, and Trix again.

  Trix smiled and took a cookie, and Jim plucked one up as well.

  “Which one of you will carry my letters?” Veronica asked, sipping her tea as though all of this was perfectly normal.

  “I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Jim said. “Just tell us how we get to where Jenny and Holly are.”

  Trix noticed he’d chosen his words carefully. He might have accepted what Veronica had told them as the truth, but he wasn’t ready to say it out loud, and she didn’t blame him. Not caring whether or not she was being rude, she set her cup and saucer down. “We need to know what we’re walking into,” Trix said, looking at Jim before she focused on Veronica. “Please, ma’am.”

  “I’ve already explained—” Veronica began.

  “I know,” Trix interrupted. “And I know Jim is ready. This is his wife and daughter we’re talking about, and he’ll jump headfirst into hell for them.”

  “And you won’t?” Jim said. “You love her, too.”

  Trix blinked, surprised at the bold acknowledgment from him. His tone made clear he wasn’t talking about the love of a friend. She nodded but kept her focus on Veronica. “Of course I’ll go,” Trix said. “But I just need to understand.”

  “Understand what?” Agitated, Jim sloshed a bit of tea and it pooled in his saucer. As if only now realizing the cup was in his hands, he set it on the table.

  “Why here?” Trix said. “Is this the only place this has happened? And have people crossed over before? Uniques, I mean. That’s what you called us, right? Have Uniques crossed over before, and come back?”

  As if the kindly-hostess persona had been a mask she could peel away, Veronica’s entire mien changed. She sipped her tea again but sat up straighter, her eyes narrowing and seeming to grow darker. “There have been moments in history when reality has strained and splintered,” she said, taking an almost professorial tone. “Such moments can create schismatic realities. Usually these revolve around a particular locus, the point of origin of the schism. One took place in Boston in 1890.”

  Veronica paused, studying them. “You want to understand how this happened? What the other two Bostons might be like, should you enter them?”

  Trix nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I’ve dreamed of those other places,” Jim said.

  “Nightmares,” Trix said.

  “Uniques do tend to dream across realities, I suspect because a part of them is missing in those alternate worlds.”

  “So tell us,” Jim said.

  Veronica was the last to surrender her tea. She set it down on the table. Now all three cups were forgotten. Three cookies remained on the plate. “Quickly, then,” she said, straightening up. “A variety of circumstances, most prominently the nearness of New York, conspired to pr
event Boston from becoming a major center of immigration in the late eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries. In the 1840s, two elements conspired to change that. First, it was determined that the best way for mail to reach Canada was through the port of Boston, making transportation to our fair city from Liverpool and Dublin astonishingly cheap. Second, land evictions and the potato famine sent tens of thousands of Irish fleeing their own country. They arrived in Boston with no money, no skills, and nowhere else to go.

  “I imagine you’re familiar enough with what the lives of Irish immigrants were like in that era. They filled the city, lived in poverty. But over time that began to change, as the Irish populated the police force and worked their way into Boston politics, and the city became divided between the Yankees—they were called the Brahmins back then—and the Irish working class. And then, in the 1880s and 1890s, the Italians began to arrive.” Veronica waved a hand to indicate not only the house around her but the entire neighborhood.

  “The North End had been purely Irish, but in just a handful of years it was transformed. Ten thousand Irish moved out, and fifteen thousand Italians moved in.”

  Trix studied her eyes, the lines in her face. “And that’s why Thomas McGee did what he did.”

  Veronica nodded. “The Italians were flooding in, and the influence of the Irish began to wane. The Brahmins had never allowed them a seat at the table. But in McGee, the soul of the city had chosen an Irishman as its Oracle. Boston had an Irish spirit in that era, but McGee knew that could change.”

  “So he wasn’t supposed to choose the next Oracle?” Jim asked.

  “This isn’t science,” Veronica said. “I don’t know the entire history of all of the Oracles of the Great Cities of the World, but certainly an Oracle can train his or her heir, if the Oracle has the best interests of the city at heart. McGee feared that when he died the soul of the city would supersede his choice.”

  Trix nodded, gesturing for her to move on. “We know this part. McGee splintered the city, so where there was one, now there were three.”

  “Yes,” Veronica said, holding up a hand and counting them on her fingers. “First is this Boston, the one you know. Let’s call it Boston A. As far as I know it is unaffected, the city the way it would have been without McGee’s botched magic. The other two are the splinters, their realities somewhat weaker for that. In Boston B, the Oracles have been Irish ever since McGee, and the city has developed for the past twelve decades or so under heavy Irish influence. In Boston C, the opposite happened, with the Irish all but absent, and the city developing under the guidance of the Brahmins but without the tempering influences of its immigrant working class.”

  “You’ve been there,” Jim said eagerly. “To these other Bostons.”

  “As Oracle, I can never leave my city. My Boston. But I’ve met those who have traveled from one to the other—”

  “Like Jenny and Holly,” Trix supplied.

  Veronica shook her head. “Not really. Well, perhaps like Holly.”

  “What do you mean?” Jim asked worriedly.

  “Holly is a Unique, of course,” Veronica said. “In the other two Bostons, there was no Jim to fall in love with Jenny. In those cities, Holly Banks was never born.”

  Jim looked as though he might be sick. “And Jenny?”

  “No. There are facets of Jenny.”

  “Facets,” Jim murmured, like he was testing the word on his tongue.

  “So it doesn’t happen often?” Trix prodded. “People like Jenny, who aren’t Uniques, crossing over?”

  Veronica seemed to consider her words a moment before forging onward. “Think of the cities as all existing in the same location, just slightly out of sync with one another. A kind of membrane separates them, and that is called the In-Between. It’s a limbo place, a vast nothing, but it … I suppose you could say that it breathes. Better yet, imagine the sea, waves rolling up onto the shore. When there is a storm or some other disturbance, the tide rises higher, sweeps farther inland before it withdraws and pulls things out to sea. The membrane can be like that. It expanded into our Boston for just a moment, and when it drew back it took Jenny and Holly with it. On rare occasions people have been pulled across. Where the cities are identical, those people vanish from one Boston and appear in the same spot in the other. But where the cities are different … sometimes there are voids, and there have been cases of people being dragged into the In-Between and lost there.”

  “Jenny and Holly …,” Jim began.

  “No. That is why I wanted you to take me to the bookstore where they vanished. The store exists in all three Bostons. Jenny and Holly have not been lost in the void. They’re in one of those other Bostons right now, probably very confused and very afraid, but alive.”

  “So, how do we go after them?” Trix asked.

  “I’ll show you the way,” Veronica said. “The existence of a Jenny in each world provides a kind of counter-pressure on that membrane that works to hold each facet in its place. But Uniques have little more than expectation and perception holding them in place. If you know how to look for the other Bostons, how to see the places where they are different, you can walk through in places where others would be lost to the void.”

  “But which Boston are they in?” Jim asked. “The Irish or the Brahmin?”

  “That,” Veronica said, “is something the two of you will have to find out for me.” She corrected herself. “For yourselves.”

  Trix studied the old woman. “The people this has happened to before—have any of them ever come back?”

  Veronica shook her head. “I’m afraid not. But usually they are never missed. Ordinary people, those with facets in the other Bostons, never even know that they’ve lost someone. The splintered cities change around them. The two of you both remember Jenny and Holly because you’re Uniques. The rest of this world has forgotten them. They’ve been erased.”

  “Erased,” Jim repeated, his voice hollow. “Jesus. That sounds so permanent. What happens when we bring them back? Is it even possible to bring them back?”

  Veronica’s expression turned darker than ever. She turned to look out the night-black window. “There are thin places where you might get them through. Once I show you how to see properly, you’ll be able to tell.” She glanced upward to indicate the half-burned study. “But now that you understand, there’s something else you need to know.”

  “What’s that?” Jim asked.

  “Every time someone is drawn from one Boston to another—someone with facets in the other cities—the schism deteriorates more. And if Jenny encounters her other facets, which seems likely, given that she and Holly will be searching for traces of the life they’ve known, that will exacerbate the situation.”

  “What do you mean, the schism is deteriorating?” Trix asked.

  “I suspect that the three Bostons might be reintegrating.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Jim said. “This is all … well, it’s unnatural, isn’t it? What this McGee did? It’s not supposed to be like this, so what’s wrong with it all going back to normal? With there being only one Boston?”

  “It could be a good thing,” Veronica said, glancing away as if distracted, “but there’s also a chance that the city would be left in ruins.”

  Trix stared at her a moment, then reached out and drank her tea down, wishing it was whiskey.

  “So, you’re saying Jenny and Holly being over there could trigger this thing?” Jim said.

  “No,” Veronica said, “it’s happening already. But they could speed up the process. I may be able to stop the deterioration, but not alone. I need the help of the Oracles of the other Bostons, but I can’t pass through into their cities myself. I’ve written letters to them, intending to find a Unique ally who would carry them for me.”

  Trix nodded. “That’s why you said this was providential, us coming to you.”

  “It does seem that some greater power is at work here, yes.” She smiled, and Trix couldn’t help thin
king her expression skull-like.

  “You want us to deliver these letters to the two other Oracles,” Jim said.

  “And they will help you locate Jenny and Holly,” Veronica replied.

  Jim stood. “Come on, Trix. We know all we need to know. We’re wasting time.” He looked at Veronica. “Show us, please. Show us how to cross over. And give us those letters. We’ll deliver them for you.”

  Veronica exhaled, and Trix saw a flicker of something pass across her face. Fear? She thought not. It was something lighter but deeper.

  “Remember to hurry,” Veronica said. “And you must not give the letters to anyone but the Oracles themselves, and only at the addresses on the envelopes.”

  “The Oracles don’t live in the same building in each Boston?” Jim asked, waving a hand around them.

  “Of course not,” Veronica said. “Too dangerous. A catastrophe across the In-Between could wipe out this place, and all three of us, at the same time.”

  “Right,” Jim said, uncertain and unsettled.

  “And do not open the letters yourselves,” Veronica continued. “In addition to my warnings and pleas for help, there are incantations that the other Oracles will need to protect our cities. But if an ordinary person were to read them … well, without a mastery of such things, you could accidentally trigger an immediate and total integration.”

  “And destroy the city,” Trix said. “Right. Important safety tip.”

  Jim glanced over at her in surprise at the reference—a quote from Ghostbusters—and smiled. “We can do this, right?” he said.

  “We have to,” Trix replied.

  “Or die trying.”

  Trix grimaced. “Aren’t you just a ray of fuckin’ sunshine?”

  By the time they had returned to McGee’s study, the lightness of that single moment had been forgotten. Jim stood in the center of the room, one foot on scorched wood and the other on whole, undamaged floorboards, and felt a dreadful trepidation. Hours ago, the things he had been forced by circumstance to believe would have seemed absolutely absurd. Fantasy. Now, even as he straddled the two sides of that room, he felt torn between the fear that Veronica’s story might be the product of an unbalanced mind and the terror that it might all be true. Veronica unsettled him, but he had too much to lose by not doing as she asked.