The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  Splintered cities—the barriers separating them now degrading—in danger of collision? It was daunting enough to think of finding Jenny and Holly in some parallel Boston, especially since they could be anywhere. A hundred anxieties came along with the prospect, not least of which was whether or not he could find them, and how they could all get home again. Would the world realign itself? Was reality truly that malleable? It had undergone a metamorphosis to account for Holly and Jenny no longer existing in this world, so he supposed it could happen.

  Jesus, listen to yourself, he thought, staring down at the burn line in the floor, and the half-starburst pattern that—he suspected—marked the explosion that had killed Thomas McGee.

  In the end, though, hope must hold sway. Jenny and Holly were the whole of his heart, existing outside of his body, and if they were now somehow elsewhere, then he would have to follow. Any other choice was inconceivable.

  “Jim,” Trix said, and from her tone he realized she had called his name more than once.

  “Sorry,” he said, turning to see her and Veronica watching him expectantly. “Were you saying something?”

  Trix gave him a knowing look. He saw the pain in her eyes as she took a deep, worried breath and exhaled. Then she glanced at Veronica.

  “Okay. We’re listening.” He patted his back pocket where he’d folded and stored the two envelopes, unknown names and strangely familiar addresses on their fronts in surprisingly untidy script. “Tell us what we need to do.”

  The old woman stood at the open doorway, and every shred of her body language screamed that she did not want to be there. In the charred cavern of that half of the room, she looked almost in need of rescue herself.

  “You both should be on that side of the room,” Veronica said, pointing toward the end opposite her, where the writing desk remained intact and the door to the small bedroom—perhaps once servants’ quarters—was tightly shut.

  Jim reached out his hand to Trix. She took it, and together they crossed to the desk. They turned their backs to the desk, hands still clasped, and faced Veronica across the length of the room. “What now?” Trix asked.

  “Look away from each other,” Veronica began. Jim started to turn. “No,” Veronica said quickly. “Not like that. Continue to face me, but let your eyes shift to one side. Stare at the wall with only your peripheral vision.”

  Jim let out a breath, trying to focus. He felt uneasy, until Trix squeezed his hand reassuringly. He glanced at her and nodded, and then both of them followed Veronica’s instructions. Jim started by concentrating on Veronica and trying to push out of his mind how absurd the whole thing felt. He had to remind himself that he had accepted all of this, that he believed it. You have to believe it, he told himself.

  And that was the truth. He didn’t have anything else.

  Facing Veronica, he glanced to his right, away from Trix, assuming she was doing the same thing. The floral wallpaper was faded, and there were water stains along the seams. He focused on the flowers and those seams.

  “Still without turning your head, try to look farther back, into the very edge of your vision,” Veronica said. “Your eyes will feel the strain. They may moisten or burn.”

  Just as she predicted, Jim’s eyes hurt. He narrowed them slightly, fighting the urge to close them or to look forward.

  “Keep them open. Force yourself,” Veronica said. “You may feel dizzy—”

  Jim had to shift his feet to maintain his balance.

  “—and your vision will start to blur eventually.”

  “Start?” Trix said. “It’s blurry as hell.”

  “Good,” Veronica said, her voice barely a whisper, coating the room like dust. “That’s very good.”

  Good? Jim thought. This is bullshit. And what is that? Is she chuckling?

  “Concentrate on the blur. There will be two or three variations on what you see, one laid on top of the other, shifting, out of focus.”

  Jim’s eyes were tearing up badly now, but he did think he could see two different variations on the wall to his right, slightly out of sync with each other. One of them had the faded floral paper and water-stained seams, but the other … the other blurred version of the wall was just as charred as the far side of the room, where Veronica stood.

  “I see them,” Trix said, startling him.

  Jim’s heart began to thunder in his chest. His eyes burned. He wanted to look away. But he couldn’t, because this was real. Oh, God, Jenny, it’s real. I’m coming to get you—you and our baby girl. Just hold on.

  “Jim, do you see them, too? The variations?” Veronica demanded.

  As she spoke, he noticed the third. At first it had been difficult to see, because in that variation the walls were equally scorched. “Yes,” he said, hating how small and alone his voice sounded.

  Trix squeezed his hand, reminding him that he was not alone after all.

  “What now?” Jim asked.

  “You’ve got to separate them visually. Shift your vision to follow only one of the variations that you know is not the image you should be seeing. Then begin to turn, slowly.”

  Jim and Trix both obeyed, still clasping hands, turning together.

  “Let your eyes relax slightly. Continue focusing on your peripheral vision, but not so painfully. Uniques can see all three variations, and this should work elsewhere as well, but it will be simpler here. The parallels are more unsettled here than anywhere else in the city. You’ll be able to see such places clearly after this—places where the Bostons don’t quite match up. Holly is a Unique. You can teach her, as I’m teaching you. In such places, you’ll be able to bring Jenny back with you.”

  “But the void you talked about,” Trix said. “The In-Between. People get trapped there.”

  “You’re Uniques,” Veronica said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “You can guide her through.”

  As she spoke, Jim and Trix continued to turn. When he’d made it three-quarters of the way around, he could see a badly blurred Veronica in his peripheral vision … but there was only one of her. She existed in only one of the variations his strained vision could see.

  Veronica grinned, talking again, wishing them luck, cautioning them not to forget to deliver her letters, reminding them that the fate of the city might well be at stake … but by then Jim found it difficult to focus on her voice. She seemed to be fading. He kept turning until he and Trix had rotated 360 degrees. The strain on his eyes was great, though he had allowed himself to focus on only one variation of the room around him, with the exception of the distraction of seeing Veronica.

  “Do we stop now?” Trix asked.

  Jim paused, feeling Trix do the same. They waited for a reply, but none came.

  “Veronica?” Jim said. “I need to close my eyes a second.”

  Still no reply.

  Jim ground his teeth together. The need to close his eyes made him grip Trix’s hand tighter. Tears began to slide down his face.

  “What do we do?” Trix asked him, and from the groan in her voice he knew she was having the same difficulty.

  “Veronica?” Jim asked again, but the room felt empty now, except for Trix beside him. He squeezed her hand. “Fuck it.” Closing his eyes, he held his free hand over them for a minute. Then he swore again and dropped his hand, blinking.

  “Jim, look,” Trix said.

  He forced himself to focus, wiping the moisture from his eyes. For a second, the room seemed to spin around him. What the hell had happened? The lights were off, the only light coming from behind them. But even in the dim illumination that slipped through the partially open door—which had been closed just moments ago—he saw that the floor and the walls beside them were charred black from fire. The metal light fixture above was twisted and blackened from heat.

  “How the hell …,” Jim began, trying to make sense of it.

  Somehow they had traded places with Veronica. They were on the scorched side of the room, though they had only turned in a circle
where they stood.

  “It’s backward,” Trix said.

  Jim retreated toward the door, hitting the lightswitch beside it. The far side of the room was bathed in light from the single intact fixture. On the floor, practically melted into the wood, was half of a desk chair. Jim saw immediately that something was different about it, though it took him a moment to realize precisely what: it was the opposite half of the chair he’d seen before. The missing half.

  He turned back to the door. It was narrower than the one on the other side of the room, and he knew where it led. Beside the door, against the wall, was the same writing desk, but now it had been reduced to a charred ruin, the front of it eaten away by fire and the rest blasted black.

  “We’re here,” Trix said quietly.

  Jim glanced at her and saw fear and wonder filling her gaze in equal measure. He knew she must see the same in him.

  Thomas McGee’s spell had gone badly awry. It had scorched the room, scouring the interior with some kind of ritual magic, an enchanted fire that had spared the rest of the house. McGee had vanished. Incinerated? Perhaps. But the room had been just as splintered as the city. In the original Boston, one half of the room had been ravaged and the other remained pristine, as though it had been snapped into place moments after the damage had been done. But in this parallel Boston, the damage was reversed, the opposite side of the room having sustained the fire damage.

  Here, the other side of the room—where Veronica had been standing inside the door—was abandoned, the wallpaper badly peeling. Boxes were stacked in both of those far corners, but otherwise the room had been abandoned in this world, just as it had been in their own. Whoever owned this house had left this place alone, perhaps driven by some urge they did not understand.

  “Which one are we in?” Trix asked.

  “Which what?” Jim said, and then he got it. “Which Boston, you mean?” Trix nodded. “Damn good question.”

  Jim led the way, pushing the narrow door fully open and stepping into the small bedroom he had entered once before, in another city, in another world. Other than the fact that it still contained a bed, the room was entirely different. The walls were a bright yellow, with hand-painted flowers stretching in a curving line across three of them. The bed had a modern brass frame, with a wooden box at the foot and a handmade lace spread. The photos tucked around the frame of the mirror suggested an older girl or young woman, and the clothes that hung from the open closet door reinforced that impression.

  “Shit,” Trix said.

  “What?”

  She looked at him. “We’re in someone’s house. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Jim laughed softly, more in disbelief than amusement. She was right. He’d been so astonished, his mind full of questions and trying to jump ahead and figure out how they were going to find Jenny and Holly, that he hadn’t even thought to worry about what they might say to whoever might live here.

  He moved to the opposite door and cracked it open, peering down the narrow steps that he had presumed led to the kitchen or pantry. The bedside lamp was still on, so whoever occupied it was probably at home. But he neither saw nor heard any sign of the residents. “All right,” he whispered, turning back toward Trix. “We just have to …”

  Staring at her, he let his words trail off. Trix had gone to the window and drawn the lace curtain aside. “Jim,” she said without turning, “come here.”

  With a nervous glance down the stairs, he closed the door partway and hurried to her, aware now of the tiny creaks that his footfalls eked from the floorboards. Trix stepped back from the window and turned to him. She tilted her head, urging him to look, holding the curtain back for him.

  Hesitating only a moment, he bent and peered out the window. For a few seconds, the view of Hanover Street only looked off, as though he’d been away for a while and some enterprising developer had come along and gentrified something, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Then he realized that nearly all the shops and restaurants were different, that the Italian flavor of the street had been erased.

  But he couldn’t keep his focus on the street below. His eyes were drawn higher, to the cityscape rising to the west, to a towering stone cathedral he had never seen before, and to modern skyscrapers with fluid lines and unfamiliar spires.

  Not my Boston, he thought. But the cityscape was familiar.

  Trix leaned in beside him, staring out the window as well, so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek.

  “I’ve painted this,” he said, his throat strangely dry. “One of those two other Bostons.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I’ve been here before.”

  “In dreams,” Jim added.

  “Nightmares,” Trix said, standing up, the motion drawing his gaze. “But this is real.”

  Jim took one last glance through the window and then let the curtain fall back into place. He hurried quietly back to the door and opened it a crack, checking again to make sure the coast was clear.

  He glanced at Trix and said, “Let’s go find them.”

  Within a Mile of Home

  ONCE, TRIX had woken in the middle of the night to find someone standing at the foot of her bed. It was the most terrifying moment of her adult life. Lured up from dreams by a sense she could not identify, she’d lain awake for a while with her eyes still closed, certain that someone was there. Swimming in that just-woken state, which had the feel of a dream and yet seemed so real, she’d wanted to open her eyes to prove that she was wrong but also to confirm that what she sensed was true. There’s someone waiting for me to wake, she’d thought, and I can’t open my eyes.

  And then the movement—a shuffling of feet, a rustle of clothing—and she’d opened her eyes and sat up at the same time. Her scream had been one of terror and rage, and the shadowy shape had fled the room, crashing into the door frame and leaving a dent that she had never gotten around to sanding away. Tooth, one of the policemen who’d come later that morning had said, examining the indentation. With any luck it’s knocked loose and the asshole will lose it. She’d slept at Jenny and Jim’s for three nights afterward, then mustered the courage to return home. A hundred “what if” scenarios had played through her mind, and sometimes they still did. In another world you were raped and murdered, one of her friends had said in the pub one night. That comment had given her three days of nightmares, but even in those she succeeded in chasing the intruder away. It came back to her now as she crept onto the landing of a stranger’s house. She knew it was not true. She had woken and scared the intruder away, and that was the only truth. Because she was unique.

  And now she was the intruder.

  She followed Jim out onto the landing and wondered if this was how that unknown man had felt as he’d worked his way through her house—breath held, feet settling lightly in case of creaking floorboards, heart thumping. But she thought not. She had not chosen to be an intruder, and she took no delight in it at all.

  The layout of this house was different from Veronica’s home. Something about it felt the same—occupying the same space, perhaps, or maybe the general shape and substance echoed the building back in the world they’d just left. But if it had once been the same building, someone had spent a lot of time and effort expanding and enlarging it.

  The landing cornered around the gallery staircase, and as they reached the head of the stairs Trix paused, listening. She touched Jim’s shoulder and he stopped, too, glancing back at her, then down into the hallway below once again. She could see the silvery flicker of a TV screen spilling from one of the rooms down there, and she heard the gentle laughter of someone relaxed at home.

  She leaned to her right and looked through a partially open doorway, then froze when she saw the girl—a teenager, maybe fifteen years old, lying back on her bed with one hand behind her head, the other resting on her stomach, fingers tapping gently. Trix saw the wire snaking across the bed to the small device on the table. In the halflight, she could not make out the h
eadphones.

  Jim put his finger to his lips and started down the stairs. Trix followed, and as they descended she felt a curious weight growing around them. At first she thought it was caused by her shallow breathing and thumping heart, or the darkness, or the reality of where they were—somewhere different. But as Jim stepped down into the hallway and the girl upstairs started shouting, she realized what it was. The fear of impending discovery was solidifying all around them.

  “I’ll never … see the likes … of you … again!” the girl screamed from behind them, and as Trix glanced back and up she thought for a surreal moment that the girl meant them. She sees our strangeness, the fact that we’re from somewhere else and don’t belong here, and—But the landing was empty. The teenager was singing.

  Jim clasped Trix’s arm and squeezed, calling her attention. She looked back at him. He was nodding to the front door, five paces away across the oak-floored hallway. His eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, and she could almost smell the fear coming off him. Not scared of being caught, she thought, but frightened of what that would mean for Jenny and Holly.

  At that moment, Trix vowed that they would not be caught here. Whether or not they slipped out without being seen, they would not be caught. She clenched her fists and pressed her lips tight together, and then a voice came from the TV room. “What’s the point of a personal stereo if you don’t keep your voice to yourself?” the man said, not unkindly. It sounded as if he was smiling as he spoke.

  “They call them iPods now, dear.”

  “Well, forgive me for—”

  The girl shouted again, tone-deaf and enjoying every line of whatever she was listening to.

  “Go,” Jim whispered.

  “Jim, we could”—Trix pointed back beneath the gallery staircase. It was dark back there, two doors half-closed on shadowy rooms.