The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

  She’d once spent days walking a certain street in Boston and feeling disconcerted for no reason that she could identify. She’d been convinced that something had changed, but the more she walked that street, the more certain she’d become that something within her had altered, not something without. When she’d finally searched the Internet for images and found photos of the same view, she’d realized that an old clock tower in the distance had been taken down. It was the fresh spread of sky that had disturbed her, a space where there should have been no space, and realization had banished the feeling immediately.

  Now it was not something missing that made her so unsettled, but something added. They walked through blocks of houses and residential buildings, many of which had been ruined by the clash between the upscale neighborhood of Irish Boston and the forgotten Southie of Brahmin Boston. Others in the street stared in horror and awe at these invading structures. The sense of panic was palpable, its incidental music the screams and cries of those injured or bereaved.

  For long blocks they walked, attempting to reach Harrison Avenue, with no chance of any taxi picking them up now. When they reached the intersection at West Fourth Street and Dorchester Avenue, they saw the aftermath of a horrible accident. At least seven cars were involved, and people swarmed over the carnage pulling survivors from the wrecks. Several people sat along the curbside nursing injuries, and in the distance sirens screamed.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jim said, and for a moment Trix panicked. He saw Jenny in one of the cars, she’s one of those bodies hanging from that station wagon’s windows, and if she’s there, then where is Holly?

  But he had not seen his dead wife. When he grabbed her hand and nodded across the road, what they witnessed was altogether more surreal.

  Two women stood staring at each other. One must have just emerged from one of the less damaged cars, her right foot still in the footwell, right hand curled around the door frame. She had long blond hair tied in a ponytail and wore a tight-fitting dress and knee-length boots. The other woman stood a dozen paces away, close to the overturned truck that the first woman had crumped into. She, too, had long blond hair, though she wore jeans and a light jacket. Her boots were of slightly darker leather. Her hair was slightly longer.

  The women must have been identical twins. Looking from one to the other caused a strange tingling sensation at the nape of Trix’s neck. They were equally attractive, but something seemed to draw the beauty from their faces. Something like terror. “They don’t know each other,” Trix whispered, and Jim’s hold on her arm strengthened.

  The women stared, utterly motionless while the rescue went on around them. No one else seemed to have noticed this frozen tableau. The woman by the car went to speak; the other woman lifted her arm to point.

  “Come on,” Jim said.

  “Wait, we need to see—”

  “Come on.” And his voice was so heavy that she could not help but look at him. His eyes were haunted, and she suddenly knew how, and why. Somewhere in the ruins of this city were his wife and child. And somewhere else … Jenny’s other, her echo, her alter ego.

  They moved off, bypassing the accident and the injured people, and Trix kept glancing back at the blond women. Before a drift of smoke hazed them from view, she saw that still neither of them moved. They simply stared.

  There were three bodies laid on the pavement outside a collapsed seafood restaurant on Dorchester Avenue. They were lined up as if sleeping side by side, but as they closed on the corpses, Jim saw blood. Before today the only dead body he had ever seen was his mother in the funeral home.

  As he approached the bodies, Trix grabbed his shoulder. “Jim?”

  “There’s something about …,” he started, trailing off as they drew closer. One body was covered in a thin net curtain, blurring its features and molding to its skin with blood. For a moment he’d feared it was one of them. “Maybe the ghost guys are already ahead of us,” he said.

  “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Trix said. “Here.” She moved past the bodies and through the restaurant’s collapsed façade. Rooting around in the rubble, she pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to Jim.

  “That’s looting,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She blinked at him a couple of times, then pulled a five-dollar note from her back pocket. She used a small chunk of broken brick to weight it down on the sidewalk before the slumped restaurant. For some reason, that brought tears to Jim’s eyes.

  “We’ve got to run,” he said. “We can’t let anything distract us. Anything like that.” He gestured over his shoulder back the way they’d come. Those women are the same person, he thought, and he could only think of what would become of Jenny if she met herself. The results could be devastating. What would that do to a person?

  Tonight in this city, it must be happening all over.

  “How far to Sally Bennet’s?” she asked.

  “Not far. Across the bridge over the train tracks, under the highway overpass, then a couple of blocks. Not sure how far up Harrison she lives …”

  “Let’s go, then.” And they went.

  The sights Jim saw that day he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. There were the stunned people wandering the streets, so many of them that he wondered whether there had been some sort of gas leak that had numbed them all to what had happened. Some of them were crying silently, and others seemed to be attempting to go about their nighttime business, skirting fallen walls or bodies in the street as if they were minor inconveniences. The sight of ruined buildings went from overwhelming to almost unnoticed, and even the structures that were so obviously out of place soon failed to move him. Maybe it was because he was out of place here himself. But the suffering people—the wounded, the bereaved, the confused, and the many bodies he saw in the shadows of ruins or laid out in the street—never failed to touch him. Humanity tonight was suffering more than an earthquake, and he had no idea how they would deal with what was to come. The two blond women could not stare at each other forever.

  The sounds of the damaged city pressed in as they ran. Shouting and screaming, the roar of fires, the grumble of falling buildings, the smashing of glass shattering from window openings still under tension, car engines, the throbbing of helicopters passing overhead, sirens, alarms, and somewhere the slow tolling of church bells, mourning the past and solemnly welcoming the future with every chime. And the smells told the same story, the warm aroma of cooked food mixed with the stench of ruptured sewers, the acid tang of fires overlying the sharp sting of dust.

  Everything soon became a blur, and he concentrated only on moving. Trix was always by his side, and they swapped frequent glances and strained smiles. He found comfort in his friend, and knew that she felt the same way. She was stronger than he was. He feared losing her.

  It was Trix who saw the first wraith, when they were already on Harrison Avenue and headed north. First she was beside Jim, then she’d disappeared, and when he skidded to a halt and looked back, she was staring across the street. A row of five shops had slumped down in the middle, roofs exploded outward by the intrusion of a modern brick church. “It was there,” she said when he joined her. “In the arch of the church doorway. Then it was gone.”

  “You just saw a shadow,” Jim said.

  “No!” Trix said, frowning at him. “I know what I saw, Jim. They’re following us.”

  “We have no idea how fast they can move,” he said, vocalizing what he had only just been thinking. They might have reached Sally already, stepping away from and back into this ruined Boston as he’d seen them do outside O’Brien’s. She might already be dead, and the first they’d know about it was when a great, more cataclysmic quake struck.

  “That’s why we have to move as quickly as we can.”

  They went on, pausing between two parking lots on Herald Street and finding a brief moment of normality until Jim looked to the north. The ruined cathedral was so tall it was visible from this distance, the air betwee
n it and them apparently clear of smoke. Fires burned elsewhere across the city, but the cars in the parking lots appeared miraculously untouched. A flock of pigeons hopped from roof to roof, woken from their slumber by helicopters, and sirens, and the sounds of the wounded city.

  Jim saw a wraith rushing across the street a hundred feet from them. He saw it again past the next block, keeping pace with them a block away. Waiting for me to deliver the note, he thought. And however simple it might seem, disposing of the note seemed far too easy. There’s more to it than that.

  At the corner of Oak Street a building had collapsed. There were scores of people there digging with their bare hands, and Jim felt a tug of guilt as he and Trix sought a way around the destruction.

  “Another one,” she said. “Keeping pace with us.”

  “I saw it,” Jim confirmed. They paused, waiting for a convoy of police cars and ambulances to pass by. One of the cops, eyes haunted, a smear of dirt across his face, looked out at Jim. “Hid away in a doorway when we turned around. So why not just flit away like they did back at O’Brien’s?”

  “They don’t mind us seeing them.”

  “Yeah.” And if they could just step into and out of this world, why not just reappear at Sally Bennet’s?

  It was a few minutes later when Jim realized where they were. Just a few streets north of here—in his Boston, at least—was Jenny’s parents’ restaurant. They’d been running the seafood-and-steak place for thirteen years, building a steady reputation for quality food and a comfortable, casual atmosphere. Jim and Jenny had eaten there frequently, and not only because the food was usually free. It was good. “Trix, we’re close to the restaurant.”

  “You’re thinking we should both go there?”

  “No, we can’t let Sally down. But I have an idea. You won’t like it.”

  Trix closed her eyes, and he realized how grubby she was. Her pink hair had lost much of its color to the dust. Her clothing was faded, her skin pale, and it was as if the earthquake was doing its best to erase her from the world. That was a concept he did not like. She sighed. “We’re going to split up,” she said.

  “It won’t be for long.”

  “We should go straight to Sally,” Trix said, but he could already hear the defeat in her voice.

  “It’s a distraction. A good idea. Their restaurant is half a mile from here, if that. Sally Bennet’s address is a handful of blocks away. We go into a building somewhere, hide you away, I leave and race toward the restaurant, the wraith-things follow … and you go and warn the Oracle.”

  “Is your secret name Jason Bourne?”

  He smiled again, and this time he meant it. Even in adversity Trix could quip. He wondered where she found the energy, and then thought perhaps such an attitude gave it to her. “I’ll meet you there in an hour,” he said.

  “Unless you find them?” And in Trix’s eyes he saw fear. She was afraid that she would lose him, run off into this altered, shattered Boston and never see him again.

  “Trix, I promise. If I find them, I’ll pile them into a car and drive there for you. This is all …” He looked around at the damaged city, smelled fire and death on the air, and somewhere in the distance a man was shouting an unidentifiable word again and again. Perhaps it was a name, or maybe an exhalation of pure rage. “It’s beyond us,” he said. “It’s catastrophic. But Jenny and Holly are still my whole world.”

  “I know,” she said, but he could still see her disappointment.

  “Hey, you’re strong.”

  “Yeah. I don’t feel like it.” She smiled and ruffled her hair, displacing a cloud of dust and brightening the color a few shades.

  “When we get back, keep the pink hair.”

  “I’m thinking of going for matching collar and cuffs, actually.”

  “Too much information.” He took her arm and they walked along the street, passing through a group of people heading in the opposite direction.

  “You seen home?” one of the men asked them. “You seen home? ’Cause it’s gone far as I’m concerned.”

  “Sorry,” Trix said.

  “Yeah, well …” The man looked Trix up and down, then walked on with the group.

  “In here,” Jim said. As he dragged open the warped, glassless shop door, he glanced over his shoulder, examining the street behind them, trying not to make it so obvious that he was searching for the wraiths. He saw none, but that meant little. He could feel their eyes on him. He’d heard that some people had a sixth sense that told them when they were being watched, but this was the first time he’d experienced it himself. It turned his skin cold.

  As he closed the door, Trix was already rooting around the shop. It sold candles and holders, their smell heavy and sickening on the air even though the window had been smashed. “Here,” she said, offering something to him.

  He grabbed it, a three-foot-long metal candle stand with a spiked cup on top. Designed to hold a large candle, it would make a formidable weapon.

  “Better than a lamp,” she said, and in the darkness he heard her nervous giggle.

  “Okay,” he said, suddenly uncertain. The restaurant called him, but so did the sense of solidifying guilt that their actions had caused all this. It was unreasonable and untrue, and yet he could not shake the idea.

  “I’ll see you at Sally’s,” Trix said. “You go now, or if they’re watching they’ll figure something’s up.”

  “Can they figure?” Jim asked. His fear of the wraiths, their alienness, had barely had time to figure over the past hour. But here and now, their actions and unknown nature suddenly hit home. Can we really fight them? he wondered, and his plan suddenly felt weak and pointless. And Veronica, that dear old lady … can we really fight her?

  “What the fuck have we got ourselves mixed up in, eh?” Trix asked.

  “Yeah.” She came to him and they hugged, then she shoved him at the door.

  “I’ll hide,” she said, “but not for long. Then I’m out the back door and gone.”

  “Run fast.”

  “You, too.”

  Jim nodded in the darkness, and in the distance came another rumble as a weakened building collapsed. He dragged the front door open, smelled fires and dust and fear on the breeze, and then left his friend behind.

  Trix counted out a minute, using the counting to try to calm herself. Then she ran like hell. She found the rear door by touch, tugged it open, and emerged onto a wide alleyway behind the row of shops. There was little damage here—only the smashed glass that must be common throughout the city—and the area seemed quiet. Weird. The whole city had been shaken awake, and here—

  “Hey!” someone shouted, and that was enough for Trix. Jim was going west, and she sprinted north toward Chinatown as fast as she could. Should’ve taken the envelope and sheet from him! Should’ve arranged somewhere else to meet in case it’s too dangerous there! But there were so many shoulds, because this was a Boston of possibilities.

  There were two fire engines and a couple of ambulances blocking the street around the next corner, where a four-story building had collapsed. The structures on either side of it seemed stable and virtually undamaged—their architecture slightly off-center, as if built blind—and she saw the confusion in some of the firefighters’ stances and gestures. They don’t recognize those buildings. But they were professionals, and by the time she squeezed by, they were already in action. She glanced back at the next corner and saw them approaching the fallen building, ready to do their best even in the face of mystery.

  She ran through the streets of Boston’s Chinatown. Some areas seemed almost untouched but for the familiar scree of shattered glass splashed across the sidewalks and roads. Others were in ruins. The city had fallen strangely silent, many routes now blocked to vehicles. The quiet was broken on occasion by sirens and shouts, and from some far distance a long, rumbling explosion, but they were islands of noise in a strange, unsettling calm. It was as if Boston was in shock, and unable to speak its usual ebullient langu
age.

  Many times over that final block she wanted to stop and help. There were people in need: bleeding in the street, pawing at rubble, wandering in a dangerous daze. But she sensed eyes on her back every step of the way, and she was scared. She was terrified. Lost in a city that should be familiar and yet that was more alien due to its occasional familiarity, she craved the company of someone who understood. She hoped that Jim would find Jenny and Holly, though she doubted it; and she hoped that she would see him again soon, as they had both vowed. But right now, finding the woman named Sally Bennet was her one true aim.

  She did not once look back, because she feared what she would see. As she ran, she tried to analyze the wraiths’ capabilities, but laughed at the ridiculousness of what she was doing. Yesterday she was a normal woman in a normal city, with unremarkable concerns and a few personal demons. Now …

  What was she now? She was no longer sure.

  They killed him when we were there. If they are from Veronica, they couldn’t just kill him on their own. They needed us. They needed the letter. She couldn’t work it out, and her aching muscles and straining lungs distracted her from her thoughts.

  At last she reached Beach Street, in the heart of Chinatown, and looked back for the first time. She saw two wraith-things following, though they made some pretense at hiding. They had no faces, yet she knew they were looking her way. The plan had failed—perhaps it had never had a hope of success—and in a display of naked fear, she turned and gave them both the finger. “Fuck you!” she shouted. Her voice echoed emptily along the street.

  The road was lined with shops, several of them boarded up, and piles of refuse. There were signs in Chinese and colorful lanterns hanging from lampposts, but they looked as though they had seen better days. Where there ought to have been tailor shops and restaurants, there were mostly dingy apartments and shuttered storefronts. Walls had been sprayed with gang signs, and people were wandering the street in small, threatening groups. Though Chinatown in general seemed more badly damaged than other streets she’d passed down—which meant that it differed dramatically from one Boston to the next—this particular block seemed to have escaped substantial damage.