A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  Zoms are on her, scratching, clawing, pulling his beloved Maria away from his outstretched, shaking hands. Pitt screams and without hesitation jumps back down to try to help her, pulling his back-up, a .9 mm Glock from his pants. He fires the moment his feet hit the grass. “Take me!” he cries. But they have no interest in him. They are rapidly backing away; content to protect the prize they already have in their filthy clutches.

  Pitt uses all fifteen rounds, but only drops the Zoms on the outer fringes of the group. They are gone in a heartbeat, disappearing back into the bathroom, locking and barring the entrance behind them, Pitt still outside pounding on the door all alone with his tears and screams of hopeless rage as he hears Maria pleading…

  “Mr. Pitt?”

  Hands grabbed Pitt by the shoulders. He reacted violently, jumped to his feet ready to lash out. But it was only young Jon. “Sorry, we all know you need your rest, but you were screaming in your sleep. Keene asked me to check if you were okay.”

  Pitt tried to get the world to stop spinning. Was I dreaming? He’d dozed off. “Fuck! What time is it? How long was I out?”

  “It’s nearly midnight,” Jon said, gently. “You need more than five hours. Why don’t you try to go back to sleep?”

  “I have to go,” Pitt said matter-of-factly. He gathered up his gun and ammo belt, headed for the door.

  Jon followed, shifting from one foot to another, building up his nerve, finally saying: “You’ve got to stop doing this, Mr. Pitt. It’s killing you. You can search for her forever, but it won’t do any good. Accept it and get on with your life. The Zoms took her and she’s gone!”

  Pitt turned in a flash. He tossed Jon against the concrete wall, clutched his throat, screamed into the ebony face just inches away, “Fuck you, you little punk. You don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about, so stay out of this, you hear me? Stay the fuck out of it!”

  “Yes, sir,” Jon croaked. Pitt saw his own spittle on the boy’s cheek and felt a wave of shame heat his belly. But he could not bring himself to apologize.

  Pitt released the young man and bolted out the door into the parking lot stairwell. He knew no one would follow, but he ran down the stairs two at a time anyway, not slowing his pace until he was out on the street and several blocks back into the dark, rotting belly of the city. Only then did he slow to a walk; raggedy breath sucking in and out of clenched, chipped teeth; heart pounding in its bone cage; pulse loud enough that he was sure any Zom within a mile radius could hear it. He could picture one suddenly sitting up, rotting ears turned to the wind, picking up the tiny thump-thumps, then lurching to its feet, greedily searching for him.

  Bring it on,

  Pitt thought. I don’t care anymore.

  He held up his lantern. As if his thoughts had given substance to reality, three decaying females moved out of the shadows across the street, running in their broken high-heeled shoes and tattered fancy dresses. Pitt drew the Glock and put a blue-tinged hole in the center of the first two foreheads. They dropped instantly. But the third ducked at the right time and was on top of him before he could aim again.

  She hissed and spat but she was weak, likely starving. Pitt was able to throw her roughly to the ground. He pinned her beneath his weight. She tried to claw and bite, but he used his knees to keep her helpless. He wanted to shoot her and get on with things, but he paused anyway. He needed to look into those wild, bloodshot eyes and ask her something very important.

  “Do you remember your name?”

  The Zom snarled and hawked an unmentionable fluid. Pitt slapped her, tried to hold her gaze. “Can you remember who you were? I need to know.”

  She hissed again, spat a mouthful of blood at his face and started thrashing with all her might. Pitt felt an almost unbearable sadness take him. He jammed his gun into her gaping maw and pulled the trigger three times. The top of her skull exploded into a jigsaw puzzle; tiny pieces scattered across the cluttered street.

  Pitt climbed to his feet and walked away. He moved further into the city. Three blocks later, his vision blurred and his equilibrium doing cartwheels again, he collapsed in a heap against the front window of a boarded up dry cleaning company. His consciousness drifted into a fugue state. He rested for several minutes, stomach queasy, until his head suddenly cleared again. He got to his feet.

  Pitt pressed on. He was tired, angry and confused yet knew that he was only delaying the inevitable. He paused in a doorway, took a series of deep breaths to steel his nerves then picked up his pace. He headed straight for the old warehouse on the corner of Columbia and Market Streets, determined to finish things.

  The warehouse was a plain old rectangular box, three stories high, spread out covering most of a city block. Pitt had no idea who had once owned the property. There was no logo anywhere on the building, only the sprayed graffiti of long-dead gang members. The warehouse belonged to Pitt now. He had claimed it weeks ago by chaining the rusty door shut and applying a sturdy lock.

  Pitt unlocked the door, slipped quietly inside. Locked it behind himself.

  It was still inside the building and much chillier than out on the street. Pitt stood, weaving in the darkness, eyes closed and fingers tightly gripping his gun. He listened for any movements in the gloom. Nothing. Wait…no, nothing.

  Then he heard the scrape of a chain dragging across cold concrete. A nervous smile touched the corners of his mouth.

  Thank God!

  Pitt started the backup generator. He flicked the light switch. The dust-covered fluorescents cast a dull but adequate amount of light. Maria stood exactly where he’d left her, inside what had once been a small storage room. The walls, floor and ceiling were solid concrete. Pitt had hurriedly constructed a set of bars to seal off the front of the small room. She wasn’t going anywhere, but for safety he’d also fashioned a chain around her ankle and attached it to the rusty bed frame.

  Pitt walked nearer to the bars. Maria hissed at him and tried to claw through the gate, but it was something of a reflexive gesture, with little real effort behind it. Pitt took that as a very good sign. She remembers me. She knows who I am! God, even turned, she’s still beautiful.

  It had taken two seemingly endless, bloody nights to find her again—to battle his way into the tunnels under Waterfront Park where they were keeping Maria for extra food. She’d already been bitten several times and was well on her way to turning Zom, but Pitt hadn’t been able to shoot her. So he had brought her here, to this abandoned warehouse. He’d kept her existence secret from the group and continued the charade of searching for her night after night.

  Pitt removed his coat and shirt. Maria growled and shuffled. Saliva drooled from her shattered lower teeth.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Pitt said, kindly. “It won’t be long, now.”

  He started to prepare the needle. Maria paced back and forth like an impatient panther. Pitt jabbed the large wooden needle into his left forearm, successfully hitting the vein on the first try. He quickly attached the hollow rubber flex-tube. He didn’t want to waste a precious drop. Maria grabbed the end of the tube that protruded into her cell. She sucked hungrily. Pitt groaned, a mixture of emotional pleasure and physical pain. She started to drain his life away and once again the loss of blood made his vision blur and his ears ring. Pitt clenched his jaw and pinched himself to stay conscious.

  It’s for the baby. The baby.

  Maria’s distended belly was huge now. Joy raced through Pitt as he imagined the baby as it kicked inside of her. I’ll make it up to you, honey, he thought. Thank God our baby’s still alive.

  Pitt finally yanked the needle from his arm. He heard Maria growl at the abrupt end of her feast. Pitt debated returning to the parking garage, but sank to his knees. It’s over, he thought. I’m staying here with my family. Before he could change his mind, Pitt unbolted the door leading into the small concrete cell. He opened the door and collapsed.

  Screaming…

  A horrible keening sound made Pitt bolt
upright; fireworks exploded in front of his eyes and a white-hot knife of pain shot down his spine. He nearly lost consciousness again but fought his way back. After a long moment, he remembered what he had done and adrenaline flooded his veins. He knew he was as good as dead. After a long moment, there came another shriek. Pitt opened his eyes.

  The door to Maria’s cell was yawning open. She was no longer inside. A trail of clotted blood led out the door and past where he sat on the floor. With a supreme effort, Pitt managed to get to his feet to see where Maria had gone.

  He found her curled in a ball over on the far side of the building. She was slowly rocking back and forth, keeping a watchful eye on her surroundings. It was early morning now, and pale light filtered through the skylights. Pitt could see that Maria was holding something in her arms. Something small that writhed.

  Pitt staggered over. He simply had to see. Maria lurched to her feet and tentatively offered up the child. It was a dirty, blood-smeared, oddly deformed little boy; a darkling who was half-living, half-dead.

  Pitt had never seen anything so beautiful.

  Maria yanked on his left arm, pointing first to his many scabs and then to the baby’s mouth. She wants me to feed him. And Pitt fully comprehended the darkness at last. He closed his eyes, crossed himself and prayed. When he opened them again, Maria was snarling in hunger.

  Zack Pitt looked down at where the needle lay on the filthy, concrete floor. He startled Maria by kicking it away toward the empty cell. He looked deep into her feral eyes, turned his head to the side and offered the baby his throat. The elongated, preternaturally sharp teeth quickly broke the skin…

  And their child began to suckle.

  _______________

  “And the light shineth in darkness

  Yet the darkness comprehended it not.”

  —The Gospel According to St. John 1:5

  In Darkness, Screaming

  with Jack Fisher

  There are reasons why there’s torture written on these walls…

  The therapist repeats the phrase. “And this is…Razor Lady?”

  Boy nods.

  “With her scalpel mouth,” says Boy.

  The office is all cherry oak and burnished gold. It smells like medicine. Both are sitting on leather, but the psychiatrist seems far more comfortable. His name is Dr. Bowden, and he is handball-handsome, maybe forty but already thinning on top. Boy thinks he looks a little full of it. The doctor twists his pen. His eyes roam up and down his notes, back and forth from patient to profile. Meanwhile, Shadow is behind him, licking his neck, pretending to jack himself off. Boy can’t help but grin.

  “What is it?” the therapist asks. His heart kicks. This boy’s eyes are as clear and as sharp as icicles.

  Behind Boy, in the corner, Mother sits in an extra chair, her chubby shoulders quaking. Shadow notices. He points at her and giggles. Your stepfather sticks it in her butt. Boy nods weakly.

  “Who is she?” Dr. Bowden is still on Razor Lady. He thinks he’s so smart. “And what does she do?”

  “She hurts. They say she can grab you and pull you in,” Boy says.

  “Who is ‘they’ in this instance, son?”

  “I’m not your son.”

  Strained smile, covering irritation. “Of course you’re not. Excuse me.”

  Boy relaxes. Who cares? “That’s okay.”

  The doctor flips a page. “You say Razor Lady can grab and pull you—into where?” Trying to be subtle about it, he adjusts his back, cracks his neck.

  Shadow’s head is rolling around like it’s full of lead pellets. He’s perched himself up on one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves like a gargoyle. Boy tries to remember what the doctor just asked.

  “Into the dark.”

  There is madness on these winds

  , Shadow whispers.

  Boy adjusts himself in the chair, one leg under the other. The doctor sees that Boy is growing agitated so he relaxes his body language and puts away his notebook. Dr. Bowden assumes now that they’re getting close to something significant. Years of training kick in to manufacture a reasonable facsimile of sympathy. The kid is displaying some intense psychopathology. In fact, the kid’s hair is almost white, which is why the kids at school call him Ghost Boy.

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “Okay.”

  “Any loss or increase in appetite to speak of? Irregular bowel movements, stomach pain, diarrhea?” Dr. Bowden is looking at Mother now, not Boy. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Have you been experiencing any headaches? Vertigo or nausea? Blurred vision?”

  “No,” she replies.

  “Hair pulling? Temper tantrums? Hearing voices when nothing is there?”

  “No!” Boy snaps.

  “Are you getting along with your stepfather?”

  Boy does not answer.

  Tell him

  , Shadow demands.

  All these questions and the doctor doesn’t even notice that Boy is picking his cuticles until they bleed. Shadow is sniffing the blood on the air, and he’s roiling with anger. His spine is arched and his spindly limbs seem too long compared to his body. He leers and offers forth a long strand of drool that stretches to the floor like crystal ribbon. He points down to poor Mother.

  Tell him how bad you want to fuck her.

  “They get along just fine,” Mother interrupts. Her eyes are cat-wild and wavering. The doctor has struck a nerve. He diverts his stare back to Boy.

  “Fine?” he asked.

  Shadow leaps off the shelf. He gropes Mother’s tit, caterwauling. It’s all darkling and phantom-like to her; she feels nothing. Boy looked down at his trembling hands; they’re smeared with blood from picking. His mind plays like a slideshow: Stepfather has Mother by her hair, yanking her mouth over his meat.

  Boy says: “Sure, whatever she says.”

  “Therapists think in terms of message and meta-message,” says Dr. Bowden. He is being a patriarch, explaining carefully; a bit condescending to the both of them. “The message you’re giving me is that everything is…fine. The subtext, or meta-message, is louder than a fart at a church service.”

  Mother’s eyes flutter and she grimaces. Shadow silently roars his own amusement, so Boy feels free to chuckle. Dr. Bowden nods sagely. He thinks he has somehow managed, by his calculated scatological reference, to ‘meet the kid on his own level.’ He has lowered himself to speak the child’s language. He couldn’t be more proud if he’d managed a speech in Swahili.

  Dr. Bowden looks at Mother, looks down at her. “Perhaps it would be useful for your son and me to spend a few moments alone.”

  He stares at her expectantly. Mother is slow to catch on. While she waits, mouth slightly agape, Shadow mimes feeding her his cock. Boy does not find it funny this time. His mother looks as though she’s taken a thousand beatings and recovered from them all.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mother says. “I’ll just sit right here. I won’t be a bother to anybody; I won’t say a word.”

  “If you’ll excuse us…?” Dr. Bowden arches his eyebrows, communicates impatience and a hint of scorn. Boy thinks his eyebrows look like two caterpillars dying to hump.

  Mother is irritated. “You really mean I should leave?”

  She doesn’t want to—clearly doesn’t want to. But now the doctor’s facial expression speaks volumes—reminds her that she was originally supposed to leave at the start of the session, that she has overstayed her welcome. It also subtly hints that Boy’s problems might stem from her endless clinging and inappropriate intrusions into his psyche. Mother wilts as if he had raised his fist.

  “Huh… I never…”

  Boy can’t help but be a little impressed by the performance. This Dr. Bowden is an asshole, but he knows his stuff.

  Shadow reacts instantly to that positive thought. His ears twitch like a cat’s and he flexes his talons. He flies into a jealous rage. As Mother lets herself dramatically out of the room by slamming the door, Shadow bounces from wal
l to wall like a monkey being tortured by electrical shock.

  The whole while, Dr. Bowden calmly watches Boy as he follows Shadow around the room with startled eyes. Bowden is searching for clues to the source of the facial twitches, the obvious anhedonia the child carries like a quilted, black cloak.

  “Do you feel…different with your mother out of the room?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  This kid is a ‘tween’: not fully in puberty but no longer a child. To be sure, the onslaught of sexual feelings can be overwhelming, but that alone can’t account for the obvious auditory and visual hallucinations his patient seemed to be experiencing. Bowden makes a note to find another way to explore drug use, particularly crystal meth. The case is beginning to look a lot like severe amphetamine psychosis. A highly sedating antipsychotic, probably Haldol, may be in order.

  Unless, of course, the patient is defensively splitting; breaking down into multiple ego-aspects due to pressures from severe physical or sexual trauma. Dr. Bowden opts for further exploration.

  “Do you have anything you want to say to me in confidence?” Bowden feels a slight twinge of guilt. Confidence won’t legally apply to every possible secret, but there will be time to explain that later if necessary.

  “No-no.”

  Oh, but maybe he can help you!

  Shadow laughs and hurled himself up onto the doctor’s desk, his tail flapping like a dog’s. He pets Dr. Bowden’s scalp. He raises himself up slightly on his haunches, squats, and shits a steaming black pile onto the doctor’s case studies. When he’s done, he runs the palm of his hand up through the crack of his ass as he daintily parts what little remains of the doctor’s thinning hair.