The Shadow Men

by Christopher Golden

He would kill for her.

  Jim stepped forward, ignoring Jenny’s gasp of surprise and Holly’s hands trying to pull him back.

  “What?” Veronica said, mocking. “Going to paint me to death, Mr. Artist?”

  “In my dreams, I’m sure,” Jim said. As he dropped to the floor and reached for a small side table—the only piece of furniture that could be a weapon, and his only hope—he sensed Trix leaping past him to his right, and heard Jenny telling Holly to run.

  And then everything froze.

  Jim saw the small table before him but could not touch it. Past the table were Veronica’s legs, their shadows confused by those of her moving arms and flexing fingers. He could hear the strange words she muttered but could not move his head—or even his eyes—to look up and see what she was doing.

  Trapped, he thought, and he could feel the No-Face Man trapped inside him writhing against its confines. No. God, no. They carried Sally’s mark upon them, enough to allow the No-Face Men into the home that had once belonged to Thomas McGee. The No-Face Men had been the backup plan. If Jim and his family couldn’t get to Veronica, then Sally’s echo creatures were there to help, to kill her the way the Shadow Men had murdered Peter O’Brien. But the No-Face Man inside Jim was just as paralyzed, just as trapped and helpless, as Jim himself.

  From the corner of his eye he could make out Trix, her form impossibly unbalanced where she had been halted in the act of diving at Veronica.

  “Stupid people,” Veronica said, voice rank with disgust. “You think that defying me bought you the right to come back to attack me. Kill me? Is that what the bitch-girl told you to do?”

  Happily, Jim thought, but he could not speak. His blood flowed, his heart thudded in his ears, but his muscles felt like they were made of glass, a fragile skeleton conjured by this woman’s mad magic.

  “There’s only one killing happening here today,” the woman said. Jim heard more of those language-less words, and then a shadow passed him by. A small shadow. Holly, dragging her feet as something drew her forward. Her hand brushed against Jim’s cheek as she passed, and he thought, Is that the last time I’ll feel my daughter’s warmth?

  Jim struggled and fought and raged, his eyes burning as he defied the spell to lift them. They burned more than when he and Trix had first attempted to see the alternate Bostons, up in that room where Thomas McGee, in his greed and hubris, had split the world asunder. They burned, but he did it, only to see a reality he wished he could instantly forget.

  Holly knelt before Veronica, her knees awash in spilled tea. The old woman grinned in delight, reveling in victory, and from behind him Jim heard a faint, desperate whine coming from his wife.

  If only we could close our eyes, he thought, because there was nothing he wanted to see less than his daughter’s death.

  “I’ll always be here,” Veronica said, “and each Boston will be my Boston.” She held up one hand and pointed a finger at Holly. A blue light gathered on the end of her finger, dancing like a faraway star. And at one word from Veronica, it leaped forward and struck Holly’s face.

  “Nnnnn …,” was all Jim could say, but he felt his heart crushed and broken, chewed up and spat out, as Holly’s head flipped back and her arms went wide, and he saw that terrible light burning from her ears and eyes, nose and mouth. It spilled down her body like the In-Between’s mist given form, leaving slick, luminous trails in her hair and on her skin.

  “Now, then,” Veronica said, turning around as if to deal with the day’s next order of business.

  “You stupid, stupid bitch,” Holly said. It was her voice, but the words … the words were Sally’s. And suddenly Jim understood that the girl Oracle had never shared with them her true plan.

  “What?” Veronica turned back, amazed, to see Holly shake her head slowly, then stand.

  “You think a mark is sophisticated?” Holly said. “In my Boston, that type of witchery has gone the way of the street-corner card trick. In my Boston, I’m so at one with the city that sometimes it loses itself in me, and I have its magic and its history, its soul, at hand. My Boston gives me real magic.”

  “You should be dead,” Veronica whispered.

  “This?” Holly picked a dreg of the terrible light from her arm and waved it like a string of spit. Then she breathed on it, and it turned into a blade of grass. “How pretty.” She dropped the grass, and it fluttered to the ground.

  Veronica gathered herself quickly, hissing three words that sent her Shadow Men streaking across the room.

  What happened next was so fast that Jim could not make it out. Later, he would put events together from what little he saw, and Holly’s few comments about that afternoon, and then the picture would be clear.

  He felt a wrench as something inside him burst out. It winded him, shattering Veronica’s strange hold over him and jerking him to his feet, and as he gasped he heard Trix and Jenny doing the same. The darkness moved away from him, and he saw, gathering Veronica in its arms, a No-Face Man—not a prisoner after all, now that Sally’s real mark, the spells she had hidden inside Holly, had been released.

  Veronica screamed, but though her Shadow Men heard, they could do nothing. They were being ripped and shredded by the other two No-Face Men, the violence sudden and intense. And when they had finished, they turned their attentions to Veronica.

  “No,” Holly said, and Jim could not tell who spoke. Was this his daughter telling those shades not to kill the Oracle? Or was it Sally, through his daughter?

  He would never know, and Holly would never say.

  Instead, the No-Face Men dragged Veronica from the room and up the stairs. She screamed and railed against them, muttering spells that did not work, incantations that dispersed to the air. And none of them worked because Holly was this Boston’s next chosen Oracle, and such violence against her could not be allowed. That was why Veronica had needed the little girl out of her Boston—the soul of the city, in this reality, would not allow one Oracle to kill the next.

  Jim wanted to watch what happened to the old woman, but Jenny hugged him and held him there, and Trix quietly closed the door. Still, they heard the heavy footsteps upstairs as Veronica was dragged across the small bedroom, and then lighter impacts as her feet fell in the farther room. After that, one long scream, fading, growing distant in space and time, until it was finally cut off by a shattering silence.

  Jim turned to his daughter. She was still facing away from them, but her head turned ever so slightly to the left and right, left and right. It was as if she was reading something from the air before her.

  Without turning, and in a tone that told Jim he might never hear his daughter’s innocent voice again, Holly spoke three words.

  “I know everything.”

  Epilogue

  What’s Left of the Flag

  JIM STOOD in the doorway of their new kitchen, watching Holly coloring at the table. Delicious aromas filled every room. Jenny had decided to make jambalaya, and Holly loved nothing more than to help her mom cook. Sometimes she helped cut vegetables or stir eggs or perform some other task appropriate for a girl who was not quite eight. But most of the time she was content just to be with Jenny. If anything, that inclination had only increased in the six weeks since their ordeal in the other Bostons.

  Jim knew how his daughter felt. Ever since they had come back to their own city, he had rarely been parted from his family. At first, he had been unwilling to leave them at all, and had even insisted that Holly sleep in with him and Jenny. He had not worked at all, not a single brushstroke on canvas or anything more intricate than a casual sketch on a napkin, for almost a full month after their return, and had only left them twice to meet with Jonathan. The first time had been to assure himself that the world had returned to normal and that Jonathan was not, in fact, dying of cancer. The second had been to visit a gallery where Jonathan had arranged a display of his work.

  Yet the past weeks had been anything but stable. They had put their apartment up for sale and moved i
nto Veronica’s house. Thomas McGee’s house. With the passage between realities so much easier through that upstairs room, they could not allow it to be sold to some ordinary, unsuspecting family. For weeks they had been redecorating the place, moving in their own furniture, refinishing floors and painting walls, and buying new appliances. No matter what changes they made, though, Jim found it impossible to think he would ever feel at home here.

  But what mattered was not what he and Jenny felt. This wasn’t really their home, it was Holly’s. She was the Oracle, chosen by the city. At first, Jim had feared that there would be many complications in attempting to buy the building from Veronica’s estate. When his attorney had done the research, however, he had found that there had been two names on the deed—Veronica Braden and Holly Banks. Holly’s name had been added to the deed on the day she was born.

  There was no way that Veronica had done such a thing, but somehow, through its influence, the city of Boston had arranged for it to happen. It had chosen its next Oracle that long ago.

  Jim felt a familiar sadness engulfing him as he watched his little girl color. Holly sang to herself, a little snippet of a song from some Disney Channel series, and did a little jerky dance movement while kneeling on the chair. He smiled but could not chase away the melancholy in his heart.

  “She’ll be all right,” Jenny whispered, coming up behind him and sliding a hand around to rest on his stomach. She kissed his neck. “She’s got us with her. We can do this together.”

  Jim nodded but couldn’t speak. In Sally Bennet, he had seen what happened when a child inherited the role of Oracle. She knew the city intimately, knew the secrets and mysteries of its people, the joy and hatred and despair that seeped into every brick and beam. She had inherited the city’s ancient magic, yes, and a profound wisdom far beyond the capacity of a child to wield. In years to come, she would benefit from that wisdom and power, but now she was simply too young to process it all. She knew of murders and infidelity and perversion, and there were months yet before her eighth birthday.

  “No child should have such things in her head,” he whispered.

  “I know,” Jenny said, pressing her warm body against his back, kissing his neck again. “But the city chose her. We can’t erase that. All we can do is help her carry the weight of it.”

  “I’ll be all right, you know,” Holly said.

  Jim stiffened and stared at his daughter. She hadn’t looked up from her coloring. He didn’t think they had spoken loud enough for her to hear.

  Now Holly turned to look at her parents, her eyes full of a wisdom beyond her years. “Trust me, Daddy. Everything will be all right.”

  The doorbell rang. Holly’s eyes lit up, and suddenly they were a little girl’s again. “Auntie Trix!” she cried, jumping down from the chair and bolting past her parents.

  Jenny caught Jim’s hand, and as he turned, she kissed him. “We’ll be all right. Think of all of the people we’ll be helping.”

  Jim nodded. It would feel good to know that they could do so much good, but he would never feel it had been worth the sacrifice of his daughter’s innocence. He vowed to protect her childhood as best he could.

  “Without you, this would have broken me,” he told Jenny, gazing into her eyes.

  “Duh, I know that,” she said. “That’s why I knew you’d find a way to come after us. Your life would be so boring without me in it. And who would nag you to take out the trash?”

  At last, he smiled. Together, they walked along the hall into the foyer, where they heard voices fussing over Holly, telling her how big she’d gotten.

  Trix had arrived, but it appeared that their other dinner guest had come at the same time, for Jonathan crouched down in front of Holly and, with a flourish, produced a small gift-wrapped present from inside his coat. “For your new bedroom,” he said.

  Holly made little excited noises and asked if she could open it immediately. Jonathan insisted, and she tore off the paper and opened the little box to find a small crystal prism inside.

  “You hang it in front of your window, and on sunny days, it makes little rainbows all around the room,” he explained.

  “Uncle Jonathan, I love it! Thank you so much!”

  Holly darted to the window to see if she could make the prism throw rainbows, which gave the adults a few moments to exchange greetings. Jonathan shook hands with Jim and kissed both Jenny and Trix. He nudged Trix’s overnight bag with his toe. “Spending the night?” he asked, turning to gaze at Jenny in mock admonition. “No one told me it was a sleepover.”

  Jenny and Trix seemed awkward and at a loss for a reply. Jonathan seemed to sense this, and seemed about to apologize for something he could not possibly understand.

  “It’s a girls’ thing,” Jim said, rolling his eyes. “They’re all going to camp out in Holly’s room tonight.”

  A lie, of course. But they had all agreed not to tell anyone the tale of the Oracles and the other Bostons. Jonathan might have been able to believe them, but perhaps not. Jim thought that his own life had been better, and simpler, before he had learned the truth of the world, and he didn’t think they had a right to spoil that simplicity for anyone else.

  Tonight, Trix would be leaving their reality, going to live permanently in the Collided Cities, and they would need to make an excuse to tell Jonathan. The wider worlds of the Collided Cities were still coming to terms with what had happened and the staggering implications, but this world—the place Jim was thinking of as the first Boston—was protected from that. After all they had been through, he was glad.

  Through McGee’s room upstairs, Trix might visit them from time to time. But she had promised Anne she would return, and wanted very much to find out if fate had allowed her to have her heart’s desire. She’d already returned briefly, and told Anne that she had things to finish here before moving over for good. Today’s date had almost taken on the importance of a wedding.

  It was strange for Jim and Jenny to know that Trix would give up her whole world—her friends and family in this world—for a chance at happiness with Anne, the Jenny of another world. They didn’t talk about it much, but Jim could see that Jenny looked at Trix differently, because the two of them loved each other even more deeply now that the depth of Trix’s feelings for her had become known.

  Anne wasn’t the only reason for Trix’s decision. The Collided Cities were full of people who needed help, not just to recover from the earthquake but to come to terms with the merging of two realities and what that meant for them—meeting their twins from an alternate Boston, or discovering that in that other world they had led very different lives.

  Jonathan smiled at Jenny and Trix. “Next time you have a girls’ night, include me, will you? It’s not like I have anything else to do.”

  Jenny touched his arm. “You’ll find someone else. Someone who loves you in spite of yourself.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Jonathan said, with a laugh that did not reach his eyes.

  “Don’t be sad, Uncle Jonathan,” Holly said, coming back from the window with the prism clutched in her hand. “You don’t need to find someone else. Philip still loves you. He misses you every day, and thinks what you do—that you’re both too stubborn to say it.”

  They all stared at Holly. She had been easing into her role as the Oracle, only helping people who went through the usual ritual to contact Veronica. They were surprised to find a little girl in her place but happily accepted Holly’s help. They wanted the Oracle, and Jim supposed it didn’t matter to them who the Oracle was. But this was different. Jonathan didn’t know anything about the Oracle of Boston.

  Jonathan looked at Holly, a range of emotions playing across his face. Finally, he forced a smile.

  “That’s sweet, Holly darling, but Philip has moved on with his life. It’s all right. I’ll try not to be sad, okay?”

  Holly shook her head, looking almost petulant. “You don’t have to pretend you’re all right just because I’m a kid, Uncle Jonathan. But I�
�m trying to tell you … you don’t need to be sad. If you love Philip, go and see him. He’s been sad, too. He doesn’t think you’d ever take him back after the things he said, but I know you would.”

  Jim and Jenny and Trix all shared a look, and Jonathan caught it. He glanced at them in confusion.

  “What are you guys not telling me?” he asked. “Did you hear from Philip? Has Holly been talking to him?”

  “Jonathan,” Jenny began, but Holly interrupted.

  “Listen to me, Jonathan,” she said—no more “Uncle,” and her voice had suddenly become startlingly mature. “Philip is sitting in the café in the big bookstore at Downtown Crossing. He’s alone. He’s reading and drinking—what is that?—chai tea. The sadness in him is so strong that even the people sitting around him can feel it.”

  Jonathan stared at her, then looked up—not at Jim, but at Jenny.

  Jenny took his hand. “We have a lot of things to talk about,” she said. “A lot to tell you. But before we do, maybe you should take a quick drive over to Downtown Crossing. It’s so close.”

  Confused, Jonathan looked at Holly’s wise expression and laughed uncertainly, then turned to Jim. He tried to speak but could not. Jim realized that Jenny meant to tell Jonathan everything, despite what they’d agreed, and though he was worried he also felt relieved.

  “Go, Jonathan,” Jim said. “You’ll be glad you did. Come back here after. Bring Philip with you. We won’t start dinner until you get back.”

  “You’re serious,” Jonathan said, staring at him as if he were insane, and then looking around. “You’re all serious?”

  Trix tapped his shoulder. Jonathan spun to stare at her. “Dude, seriously,” Trix said, grinning. “Go. You won’t be sorry.”

  Jonathan laughed, a smile stealing over his face. Jim could see that he thought they had done something wonderful for him, that they had been in touch with Philip and somehow conspired to arrange a meeting. But that was all right. He would learn soon enough that they had not spoken to Philip at all during the breakup, and then they would have a lot of explaining to do.