The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  For a moment Jim wondered whether Miranda was still the restaurant hostess, and what her reaction would be were she to see him. But there would be no reaction. Back in the Boston he knew, she had been his friend and, after Jenny’s disappearance, apparently his erstwhile lover. But in this Boston he would be unknown. He had never been here before, and to attempt to imprint his memories on this place would be futile. And maybe even dangerous.

  “It would have been too strange,” Trix said, leaning into Jim to see from his side window.

  “Yeah. But this would have been the first place she’d come.”

  “They’ve been gone for half a day.”

  “And I doubt she’d have hung around.”

  “So where to if you’re not getting out here, pal?” the driver asked. There was an edge to his voice now, nervousness or tension, as if he could suddenly sense that things were not quite right.

  “Just … drive on,” Jim said. And he thought, Where to indeed? Where would Jenny go once she had been here, and seen the differences? Trying to put himself in her head was just too traumatic, because the confusion and terror she must be feeling were shattering. Instead, he started to analyze her probable approach objectively.

  “After here, she’d go to your place,” Jim said.

  Trix’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but then she nodded. “Yeah. But … I’m not sure I want to go there myself.”

  “Right. After that, probably her parents’ place. Then following on from that—”

  “Oh, shit,” Trix said. “Her parents.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not Unique, Jim. Somewhere in Boston there’s another Jenny.”

  “Another Jenny,” he echoed. It set his head spinning, and he felt suddenly sick.

  “Maybe her parents don’t live in the same place here,” Trix said. “Didn’t you help them with their mortgage, back in … well, our Boston? So here, maybe they’re still living somewhere else. Maybe outside the city. And maybe Jenny will have gone to the cops, realized things were amiss, and maybe—”

  “Too many maybes,” Jim said. He lifted himself from the seat and took the folded envelopes from his back pocket. He checked them both, and then held up the one he now knew applied to where they were right now. “We go here. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Trix said, and she sounded relieved. She wanted to go there right away, Jim thought, and perhaps that would have been the safest thing to do. He looked across at the building one more time, at the dark windows that he had stood behind a thousand times in another world, another life. He wondered what was behind those windows here … but just as quickly realized he did not want to know.

  “You know O’Brien’s Bar?” Jim asked. “It’s down on … East Broadway.”

  “Know it?” the driver said. “Sure I know it.”

  “That’s where we need to go,” Jim said. Trix sighed and seemed to settle lower in the seat beside him, and he felt a slight sense of relief at having made a more definite plan. They’d go to find the Oracle of this Irish Boston, give him the letter Veronica had sent through with them, and then tell him their problem. They couldn’t do this on their own.

  “Sure,” the driver said softly. “From the second you got in, I knew you needed help.” He turned up his music again, even louder than before, and Jim watched the rain-washed streets flit by.

  O’Brien’s Bar was an innocuous pub nestled among a terrace of houses a couple of blocks from Telegraph Hill. Over the tops of the buildings, they could see the white steeple top of the Dorchester Heights Monument, just a block away. In the other direction was a view of downtown Boston. This part of the city, in Jim’s city, had always been Irish, but now the Irish presence was greater than ever. South Boston was truly an old-world Boston neighborhood, mostly residential, with local bars and markets. But in this Boston, where the Irish were the pinnacle of Boston society, Southie was a hell of a lot nicer.

  Across the street from the bar was a small park, lit now by streetlights and apparently deserted this late at night. Perhaps shadows moved within the shadows, but Jim could not see, nor did he care. His own safety was not the priority. There were benched tables outside the bar, chained to metal hooks in the pub’s front wall so that they didn’t walk at night, and even at this late hour lights shone inside. They exited the taxi and Trix paid the cabbie—still dollars, thankfully, and Lincoln was no stranger to him—and Jim could tell that the bar was all but empty. There was faint music playing somewhere in the background, but the usual hubbub of voices was absent, and there was a sense that this place was about to go to sleep for the night. It was a strange way to view it, and disconcerting, but he looked up at the façade and saw tired windows reflecting streetlights; the double doors were a closed mouth, and the building gave the sense that it was something with knowledge and wisdom.

  The cab drifted along the street, its engine sounds echoing from silent buildings, and then they were alone.

  “Is this one going to be as weird as the old woman?” Jim asked.

  “Who knows? What’s the name again?”

  “Peter O’Brien.” Jim looked at the envelope in his hand, the messy lettering, and something ran a cool finger down his back. The hair on his arms bristled, and his senses suddenly became clear and sharp, flooding him with input: the scent of damp soil from the park and spilled beer from the sidewalk, the night sounds of doors closing and car engines ticking as they cooled, the kiss of fine rain against his skin. As he turned around to look across the street at whatever was watching them, Trix was already doing the same.

  “It’s just the darkness,” he said, staring past the street lamps and trying to penetrate the small park. There was a bandstand at its center and a network of pale paths crissing and crossing, and here and there planting beds exploded with the silhouettes of shrubs and small trees.

  “No,” she said, “not just the darkness.”

  “Bums, then. Lonely lovers. Drunk teens fucking.” But he knew that none of these was true, either. Whoever or whatever watched from over there was more connected to their journey than that. He rubbed the envelope between his fingers and wondered what it contained.

  Jim heard the bar door open. He turned away from the dark park and took a step back toward the curb, and the shadow that filled the doorway seemed to swallow the weak light emerging from inside the building.

  “Already poured your drinks,” the shadow said, and his voice was higher than Jim had expected, and much more welcoming. “It’s not cold, and the rain’s not too bad. But I’ll welcome you in to take shelter from the night.”

  Take shelter from the night. Jim almost asked if he sensed the watcher as well. But that would be no way to greet the Oracle of this Boston. “Peter O’Brien?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “That’s me. And you’ll be from out of town.”

  Trix actually laughed, an unconscious reaction to such a mundane observation. “You could say that!” she said.

  “Hope you like good beer,” O’Brien said. He moved back from the doorway to let them in, and in doing so allowed them to make him out properly for the first time. As Trix stepped into the pub, Jim held back and sized the man up. Smartly dressed in black trousers and shined shoes, a white shirt and black suede waistcoat, he was a barrel of a man, well over two hundred pounds, but he carried the weight well. He was tall and broad, and even before he’d turned a little to fat, Jim knew that he’d been a powerful presence. Yet there was a lightness about him that quelled any unease Jim might normally feel in the company of such a huge stranger. He moved back like a dancer to let them in, graceful and gentle, and his smile lit up his face. His hair was long and tied in a ponytail, and a scruff of graying stubble softened his features more.

  “Jim Banks,” Jim said, extending his hand as he entered. For a second he saw a flicker of something on O’Brien’s face—fear? Discomfort? The smile flexed a little, but it returned just as fresh and welcoming as before. He took Jim’s hand and pumped it twice, firm but not
too hard. In that touch, Jim felt the warmth of hope.

  “Pleased to meet you, Jim.”

  “And you. I hope you can help me.”

  “Well, I’ll say to you what I say to anyone coming to my bar seeking more than a drink and a pie and a place to rest their feet. I can only do my best.” He closed the door behind them but did not lock it. Jim thought perhaps this bar was open every hour of every day, but not always for drinks.

  O’Brien showed them to a table in the corner. A candle burned in the mouth of an empty wine bottle, spilling hot wax down the green glass, and three recently pulled pints sat before the chairs. Three chairs. The table was large enough to seat six, at least.

  “You knew we were coming,” Trix said.

  “Not you specifically,” O’Brien said. “Just someone.”

  “We know who you are,” Jim said. “And what. And we were sent here by someone like you.”

  O’Brien raised his eyebrows. Then he held up a hand and nodded at their chairs. The three of them sat, and the process felt almost ceremonial to Jim, a thought given more gravity by O’Brien’s nimble manner. He placed both hands flat on the table and seated himself comfortably, spine straight, shoulders loose, before picking up his pint and taking a long draft. He smacked his lips and nodded gently. “Nectar of angels,” he said.

  “What’s the brew?” Trix asked.

  “My own. I’ve a microbrewery in the basement. I call it Old Bastard.”

  Jim took his first swig. The taste exploded, the alcohol evident but not overpowering, and he felt the rush of its influence spreading through his body. “Certainly well named. And delicious.”

  “A bartending Oracle,” Trix said softly. She was looking at O’Brien with a mix of fascination and wonder.

  “Who better to have their fingers on the pulse of a city?” O’Brien said. He took another long drink, swallowing half of his pint in one go, and looking back and forth between them over the edge of the glass. He wiped his mouth and placed the glass gently back on the table.

  “So, you’re from elsewhere,” he said. “That much I know, and I’ve known it for the last hour. Kicked out the last of my patrons. Pretended I was closing early, when sometimes I don’t close at all. ’Cause I figured you’d be along. Sometimes …” He looked at the window and sniffed softly.

  “You can smell trouble?” Jim asked.

  “Is that what you two are, then? Trouble?”

  “No,” Trix said, shaking her head.

  “No,” Jim confirmed. He placed the envelope on the table, keeping one finger on it. “We’re partly messengers, but mainly …” He felt tears threatening, as the weight of events pressed down on him. Sitting here in this ordinary bar with this extraordinary man, he felt control slipping away. By coming through and beginning his search for Jenny and Holly, he had been taking positive action. But now he was about to place himself in the hands of another once again, and he wasn’t sure quite what he thought about that.

  The only person he knew he could trust for sure was Trix.

  “We’re looking for Jim’s wife and daughter,” Trix said. “They’ve been pulled through from our own Boston into another. Maybe this one.”

  “Yeah,” O’Brien said. He looked back and forth between Jim and Trix, his expression unreadable, eyes twinkling with humor or, perhaps, disbelief. He crossed his arms and sighed heavily, but it was merely the action of a tired man. “And you’re Uniques. The both of you. Friends.”

  He knows, Jim thought.

  O’Brien looked at Trix, seeming to see deeper than mere flesh and skin. “Good friends. And that”—he nodded down at the envelope, which Jim had placed facedown on the tabletop—“that’ll be for me.”

  “From your counterpart in our Boston,” Jim said.

  O’Brien nodded thoughtfully, drinking the rest of his pint and putting down the glass so gently that it made no sound. He stretched and looked around the bar, glanced at his watch, then focused his attention back on Jim and Trix. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “You look tired, both of you. And it’s been a long day for me, too, what with …” He waved one hand, and Jim wondered what wonders O’Brien had performed today, what problems he had solved and lost things he had found. “A couple of hours’ sleep will do wonders for us all, and come sunrise I’ll be better able to help you.”

  “You can’t help us now?” Jim asked.

  “I could,” O’Brien said. “I could start. But I can’t just”—he clicked his fingers—“out of thin air. I need to talk to you about them. In depth, personally, and a lot of it will be about you as much as them. I need to understand your link to them in order to grab hold of it and pull them in. I need to know them so that I can find them. A name’s nothing to me without knowledge of who that name belongs to, and it might not be so easy for you, tired as you are. Maybe your Oracle’s better at this sort of thing. You understand?”

  “Not really,” Jim said.

  “I do,” Trix said, smiling, and Jim thought of her story about her grandfather.

  “But—”

  “A few hours,” O’Brien said. “There’s a room made up on the second floor, bathroom attached. It’s a double, but …” He raised one eyebrow.

  “That’s fine,” Trix said, smiling.

  “I thought it would be.” O’Brien leaned forward and used one finger to pull the envelope from beneath Jim’s hand. For a second Jim wanted to press down, hold it back, but he was not sure why. Insurance? Fear? Or maybe there was no reason at all. O’Brien dragged the envelope across the table to him—it whispered, like a voice in the dark—turned it over, and looked at the writing on the front without expression.

  “You’ll wake us?” Jim asked.

  “Sure. You’ll hear me.” O’Brien looked up from the envelope. “And Jim … Don’t worry. We’ll find your family, for sure.”

  Jim nodded, unable to talk because the tears were a pressure behind his eyes once again. He and Trix stood, and he realized how right O’Brien had been. He was exhausted. A couple of hours’ sleep would take the edge off his exhaustion, and then tomorrow … tomorrow, he would find his wife and daughter.

  “Come on,” Trix said, grabbing Jim’s arm and steering him toward the door O’Brien had pointed out behind the bar.

  “Sleep well!” the Oracle called.

  As they walked up the curving stairway, Jim heard the sound of paper tearing. And then he heard O’Brien speak again, cursing under his breath. “Oh, you bitch,” Peter O’Brien said, anger and resignation in his voice.

  What could Veronica have written? Jim wondered. But silence followed, and Jim continued up toward what he hoped would be a moment’s peace.

  The Worst Day Since Yesterday

  TRIX PADDED down the corridor of Peter O’Brien’s apartment in her bare feet, exhausted but still alert. Her skin prickled with awareness of her dislocation. In college it had not been that unusual for her and Jenny to end up sleeping on sofas and in guest rooms after parties off-campus or even across town. But she was an adult now, and she could not relax in a stranger’s home. Knowing that the city around her was foreign to her, that she was an intruder here, only made it worse.

  She opened the door to the guest bedroom, the hinges creaking, and stepped inside. Jim glanced up as she closed the door behind her. He sat in a captain’s chair by the window, sketching with a pencil he had found in a small drawer in the girl’s vanity in the corner. O’Brien might call this a guest room, but it had obviously once been occupied by a young female, and he hadn’t changed the décor enough to make it suitably neutral for a guest room.

  “Jim,” Trix said.

  His only answer was the scritch-scratch of his pencil on the notepad he’d found in the same drawer.

  Trix sighed and unzipped her pants, wriggling out of them and letting them puddle at her feet. She moved to the big queen bed, pushed a bunch of throw pillows onto the floor, and drew back the slightly dusty floral spread before sliding in, clad just in her T-shirt and panties.
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br />   Jim hadn’t even looked up.

  “Mr. Banks,” she said. “Earth to Jim.”

  That got him. He glanced at her, then looked out the window at the cityscape he had been sketching. “Don’t you mean parallel Earth to Jim?”

  Trix shivered. “This is fucked, right?”

  Jim nodded. “Entirely.” He put the pad down without even glancing at the art he had been trying to create, then stood up and started to wander the room, not quite pacing. He sighed in frustration. “I mean, what are we doing here?” he said, more to the beamed ceiling than to Trix, or so it seemed to her.

  “Taking the most direct approach,” Trix replied.

  Jim had his fingers pushed into his hair, like he might at any moment attempt to tear his own scalp off. Now he stopped his roaming to turn to her, looking foolish with his hands planted on his head.

  “You think?” he asked hopefully.

  Trix lay her head back on the pillow and stared at him. “I’m lying in a stranger’s bed in a parallel freaking dimension. Yes, I’m totally burned out and I need a rest. Half an hour of shut-eye might be enough to save my sanity. But do you really think I’d be lying here in my undies if I thought for a second that Peter O’Brien wasn’t our best bet, our fastest road to Jenny and Holly?”

  Jim exhaled loudly and dropped his hands. He came to sit on the side of the bed and took her hand. “If I didn’t have you with me, I’d already have totally lost it. I mean … if we hadn’t caught up with each other—”

  “—we’d both still be thinking we were going crazy, and that maybe there had never been a Jenny to begin with.”

  Jim nodded. “I keep thinking we should have looked longer. I know they had hours on us, and they could be anywhere, but she would’ve tried the familiar places first, and we didn’t cover all of them. We should’ve gone to her parents’ restaurant.”