A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  Airborne again, he lands in Boy’s lap, his breath hot enough to burst ripe berries, his eyes licking fire.

  Go on, tell him.

  “What’s going on?” the doctor asks. “What are you seeing?”

  The boy’s head is now twisting from side to side following something that isn’t there. He is mumbling, trying to answer but too afraid to form words…

  Shadow straddles Boy in his chair. His black, indecipherable features singing of the blackest of legends, his airs smelling of lore.

  I fucking own you, Boy. You’re mine. Say it now. Say it aloud.

  “I’m all yours.”

  Dr. Bowden cocks his head like a parrot and offers Boy another thoughtful, therapist smile.

  “For the next few minutes, anyway.”

  He belongs to the Razor Lady.

  Boy slips out of his chair until he is down on his hands and knees. He starts shaking his head, no no no. Dr. Bowden stands, rubbing his palms together, looking around with growing anxiety.

  “The Razor Lady,” Boy whimpers.

  Tell him what you saw

  , says Shadow. He runs a claw underneath Boy’s chin. Tell him everything.

  Boy begins to sob. He falls face down on the carpet and rolls over onto his side. Dr. Bowden kneels next to him. He looks at the closed office door; he’s nervous, wondering what Boy’s mother will think if she barged back in. Should he move in? Back off? But Bowden is too enthralled to stay away.

  Boy’s eyes are squeezed shut and he is trying to cover them with his palms.

  Dr. Bowden’s professional voice is gentle: late night jazz program FM soothing. “What is it you don’t want to see?” Boy abruptly removes his hands and covers his ears instead. His eyes are still squeezed shut.

  Listen…the fear will enchant you

  , says Shadow.

  “What’s going on, son? Where are you? What are you hearing?”

  Answer him.

  Boy forces a response. “I hear my sister screaming.”

  Bowden’s eyes widen. Pay dirt. “Why is she screaming?”

  Silence is a therapist’s best friend—it can cause emotions and memories to fester in the heart and blossom into abscess. Anything long buried, long avoided can enlarge, become overpowering and rush to the surface. Dr. Bowden leaves plenty of silence until Boy feels like he will implode. He grunts because of the ongoing inner war between the forbidden and the true.

  Bowden waits, acumen and patience are a lethal combination. Five minutes in a therapist’s office can seem like five hours. Soon Boy is hyperventilating, turning pale, and Bowden finally feels pressured to speak, to intervene.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “I can’t.”

  Bowden risks a touch—two fingers on his patient’s trembling arm. Boy recoils. But Dr. Bowden leans closer, using that low and hypnotic voice to great effect.

  “Listen to me, son. Whatever you are seeing has already happened. It feels powerfully scary like stepping off the ground and dropping into a deep, dark well, but those are just feelings, and feelings aren’t facts.”

  Boy sobs, writhes, trembles.

  “You are not alone. I’m here with you.”

  Tell him

  , Shadow cries.

  Bowden continues: “The place you are in? We are just visiting, okay? We can leave any time we want, and we will be leaving soon. In just a few minutes. But I need you to tell me where you are and what you see first.”

  The world expands into a clear bubble of possibility, pops and contracts into a black hole. The sound Boy now emits is deep and alien.

  Things in the room change.

  Dr. Bowden repeats his question, velvet soft. “What did you see that is causing you so much pain?”

  “I see… I saw her take my sister—my sister,” Boy cries. For just a moment, Dr. Bowden’s chest tightens. He feels a twinge of pain. Probably from this revelation, but he doesn’t know for sure.

  “Pulled her into the dark!” If Boy’s words were filth, Shadow would bathe himself in them chapter and verse—he is clapping, wringing his claws, flapping his tail. His body changes and seethes in madness.

  Bowden probes deeper. “What happened to your sister?”

  “They found her—” Boy chokes on his tears. “They found her a few weeks later in the bathroom at a bus station, tucked between the stall and toilet like an old doll. Her head was half shaved and she was dressed in rags.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bowden offers, weakly. “That’s terrible.”

  “She told us!” Boy screams. “My sister told us it was her!” He opens his eyes and beholds the demon. Shadow is shaking his head, smiling from ear-to-ear. He relishes human anguish, feeds on it like a pig in slop.

  “Go on, son.”

  Boy doesn’t notice the word son. It is all puking up out of him, now. He babbles. “Mother took her home, and she was good for a while until one night when she finally went to sleep. But in the next room, He was fucking her! Him! Doing Mother!” Boy beats his fist against the floor. His tears drop like diamonds on the throw rug, splatter on the hardwood flooring. “They f-f-found her in the morning—she choked on her tongue.”

  Shadow hums tunelessly and begins to stroke himself erect at the sound of Boy’s anguish. That’s it, that’s it…

  “And while they were doing that, she died. My sister died.”

  The doctor’s arms are shaking. “I’m confused, son. Who took her?”

  The Razor Lady

  , Shadow whispers. He laughs as he spins cobwebs of ejaculate across the room. Wanted to cut her—wanted to slice her good. Would’ve sucked her bones dry, too when she was done if it weren’t for her getting away. Those dying little fuckers wriggle like earthworms.

  Too much silence. Dr. Bowden asks again. “Who took her?”

  “Razor Lady did!”

  Boy rests his forehead against the hardwood floor and cries enough for one thousand funerals.

  Now lay your head down to sleep

  , Shadow sings as he fingers hexes across the walls in spittle and sperm. And ask the Lord your soul to keep.

  “This… Razor lady.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not real,” said the doctor. “She’s…in your mind. She’s like a nightmare. I guarantee you, she did not take your sister.”

  Shadow shakes his head as he continues to spell out curses on his dripping mural.

  “Are you in a place where you can understand what I am saying right now? Can you hear me?”

  Boy has curled into himself, sucking his thumb like a fetus. Every few seconds another wave of goose bumps paces his pale skin. The Boy is making small, soft whimpering sounds now; exquisitely high chirps that remind Dr. Bowden of a nest full of hungry little birds.

  “Focus on my voice, okay? Just let go of the memories, the images that are so upsetting to you. A breeze is coming, hear it? Let those feelings just blow away like leaves in the wind.”

  Another therapeutic touch, a palm on the child’s forehead. His breathing begins to slow and the noises drop in frequency and volume. Dr. Bowden swallows, keeps his own breathing slow and easy.

  “See? It’s better now, isn’t it?”

  “Y-Yes. A little.”

  “We’ll have to stop soon. Our time is almost up.”

  And just then the door bursts open, bangs against the wall. Boy’s mother walks in already talking, “—that’s been fifty minutes, and we should get going” then she stops. Shadow turns to greet her. He crab-walks over, sniffs her face, his fingers paper-sliced and dripping. Dr. Bowden stands; his face looks wan and worried. Boy sits up, his hair egg-beaten and greasy. His cheeks are soaked and his eyes bloodshot.

  “What happened?” Mother manages to ask, although her eyes say she’s more angry than concerned. The meta-message.

  “Your son is having a breakdown, or perhaps something of a breakthrough. He told me about his sister.” His face hardens. “He told me the rest, too.”

  Boy’s mother
winces and pinches off tears. Boy sees this and cries: “Mommy!” He reaches his hands out to her, desperate for contact, but she pulls away.

  “His sister—” she stammers. “His sister?” She balls a fist, brings it up to her mouth and sobs silently. Boy goes over, hugs her. Shadow runs circles around the two, growling and spitting. Dr. Bowden lowers himself into his high-back chair. He is sweating from the session and his temples are pounding. He hasn’t worked this hard in years.

  “Come on,” Mother says, and she ushers her son out of the office.

  Dr. Bowden knows he should schedule another appointment if possible, but wisely says nothing, only watches them leave. He can call when things have calmed down. When they are gone, he opens his desk drawer and removes a pen and pad. He scrawls page after page of notes. Meanwhile, Shadow hoists himself back up onto the desk, bends until he is at eye level with the doctor, and growls a warning.

  His mother, dear doctor, is the evil he speaks of. She is the thief.

  Dr. Bowden licks his lips and continues to write, only occasionally looking up to recollect his thoughts.

  It is she who wields the razor.

  Dr. Bowden leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.

  Shadow does a back flip, flattens wafer thin and slips out underneath the closed office door…

  They are outside, on their way to the car, when Boy catches something out of the corner of his eye. Across the street there is a barren playground. The swings play tubular bells on strange winds—it is a sound only ghosts could interpret. On one end of the seesaw sits Shadow, bobbing up and down. He waves. Boy leaves the woman behind, walks over. Behind him he hears Mother call something, but he does not hear, doesn’t even turn around. He swings his leg over the other end of the seesaw and sits opposite his demon.

  Shadow whispers again: Ashes to ashes, we all fall down…

  They rock for a bit, and together they soon find a balance.

  The Need for Illusion

  Clyde Harrow was a gaunt broomstick of a man; rail thin, with long limbs and a splay-footed walk. He wore faded blue overalls that shined at the knees and torn sneakers stuffed with old newspapers. October evenings back in the 1950s generally found him on the porch of Sam Peterson’s General Store, sending smoke signals on a cheap corncob pipe; gossiping about crops or making highly suspect predictions about the weather.

  “Naw, it ain’t just the bugs.” Harrow’s mouth was known to run, and this night was no exception. He had an incongruously deep and booming baritone voice, and it carried. “There’s something unholy going on at my place.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Said I got me some bugs, that’s true. But there’s something else going on, something that ain’t…natural.”

  Julie Dawson and I were playing spin-the-bottle in the dark alley by Petersons Mercantile, halfway under the long wooden porch. I was just about to slide my sweaty right hand up under Julie’s flannel shirt when she grabbed me by the wrist.

  “Stop,” she whispered. “Listen.”

  Listening was not at all on my mind. She held me fast, suddenly powerful in that way only young women can be. I tuned in and just caught the last part of the conversation.

  “Ain’t my imagination, damn it!” Clyde insisted. “And I ain’t crazy. I know what I saw.”

  Mr. Peterson, a kindly man, tried to calm things. “Now, Clyde Harrow, I never said it was only your imagination. I just meant that imagination can add to events, twist them around a little and such. Go on.”

  “You sure you want to hear this?” Clyde lowered his voice like a man confessing sins. Julie pushed me away. She leaned forward, romantic notions abruptly abandoned; something else only girls seem to be able to do. I eased the bulge in my pants to one side and settled in to wait. Maybe I’d get another shot if I was patient.

  “I saw something walking at the edge of my land, Peterson. It weren’t no man, neither. It moved like it didn’t know how to use a human body.”

  “Clyde, you’re spooking me.”

  “It’s coming for me,” Clyde whispered. That’s what he said, word for word. “It’s coming for me.”

  “Who, for Chrissakes?”

  “I told you, it’s not a who,” Clyde said. He paused, and when he spoke again his voice cracked with fear. “It’s a what.”

  Mr. Peterson sounded confused. “What are we talking about here?”

  “A verdulac.”

  “What?”

  “My grandmother taught me that word. One of the undead. And I know that’s what it is ‘cause she said it always sends a bunch of bugs first, to prepare the way.”

  “Clyde, you probably saw somebody walking home all liquored up. And like I said, maybe you’ve got roaches.”

  “I’ve seen roaches, damn it. But what these bastards are is big. And I want ’em gone before they bring that bloodsucking sonofabitch right to my door.”

  Mr. Peterson was silent for a moment, as if choosing his words very carefully. “Well then, for your garden variety roaches and such, make sure you don’t leave any food on the floor. Get yourself a couple of them roach motel ‘they check in but never fucking check out’ type things and put it in the corners. Why, I recall one time…”

  “Damn you, Peterson,” Clyde exploded. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said! Look at me!”

  Julie and I giggled when they heard some buttons popping and a zipper. Mr. Peterson was speechless. But we could no longer see them clearly, as it was now starting to get dark.

  Julie looked like a woman in the throws of born-again rapture. “Clyde’s finally gone bat shit,” she giggled. “I do believe he’s wagging his weenie at Mr. Peterson! Wait till everybody hears about this.”

  After a long pause so complete we could hear cicadas clicking in the brush two hundred yards away, Mr. Peterson said: “Good Lord.”

  “Yeah,” Clyde said triumphantly. “You’re damn right.”

  “Clyde,” Mr. Peterson said, his voice trembling, “you need to see Doc Burke about those bites.”

  “My belly looks like a goddamned pizza, don’t it?”

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I got ’em all over my spread. Can’t hardly turn over the ground without a passel of ’em running out and shitting all over my boots.” His voice was tinged with exasperation at this point. “My grandma said they come to prepare the way for the undead.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned…”

  “No, I’m gonna be damned if I don’t do something soon. Now, you got any ideas for me? Any good poison?”

  “Just what’s in the store.”

  “Peterson, I need your help. I need something way strong, nasty enough to kick their little shiny black asses back down to hell.”

  “You surely do. Let me think on it some.”

  Clyde sounded mollified. “You do that,” he said. “But don’t think on it too long, or I may not be around to pay you.”

  “Hush,” Mr. Peterson replied. “Don’t be talking that way.”

  “You are looking at a frightened man, Peterson.” Clyde Harrow’s voice had gone flat and dead like the low, moaning wind creeping down a chimney. “I can’t hardly sleep since I saw that thing. Even had to ask my nephew Horace to come and watch over me. He says I’ve been tossing and turning nights, calling out to the Lord, and I ain’t done that since I was a little boy. My grandmother was from the old world. They knew about these creatures, the verdulac. She said that first they send bugs from the graveyard, sort of to soften you up. Then they come for your blood.”

  “That’s just superstition,” Mr. Peterson sputtered. But he sounded like a scared kid listening to a campfire story. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

  “I believe every word.”

  “It’s nonsense!”

  “Is it? Are you sure, Peterson?” And then Clyde Harrow giggled, totally out of the blue. Down under that porch, Julie and me, we looked at one another in pure amazement. Clyde sounded like a man one pubic hair away from in
sanity. He lowered his voice to an ominous whisper. “Why, I’ve been so spooked I finally built me a beware-man.”

  “Beware man? You mean, like a scarecrow?”

  “A beware-man is kind of like that, but different,” Clyde said. Warmth left his voice like the slamming of a coal grate. “Grandma called it something else but the closest thing in English would be ‘beware-man.’ It’s magic. She showed me what to do. How to chant over it. Taught me how to make a face and paint it up and then dress it in old clothes. She told me where to put the garlic, some chicken bones and a cross of sticks…and what to stuff it with.”

  “That’s plain silly, Clyde.”

  “All the same, I made me one, Peterson. And I put it up in my field last night, but it’s standing empty as of now. But once it’s done, I’ll be sleeping safe and sound. See, the secret is it’s all in how you fill them up.”

  “Fill them up?”

  “Grandma said the beware-man would protect a home. In the old days, it was supposed to keep the verdulac away. It’s all in how you fill it up, that’s the ticket.”

  Harrow giggled again. “Anybody tries to get past that son of a bitch will have to deal with the spirit I called on to protect my land.”

  Mr. Peterson sounded at once sad and condescending. “Why, Clyde Harrow you’re a good Christian man. I’m very disappointed. Shame on you for believing in such claptrap.”

  “I know, I know. It sounds silly, huh? But what the hell else am I supposed to do, tell me that?”

  “Aha!” Peterson said, after a long pause. “I know. We’ll call in the State boys.”

  “No we won’t,” Clyde replied, almost triumphantly. “May as well ask for help from President Dwight D fucking Eisenhower his own self, because I ain’t paid my taxes in ages and I got a still on my property.”

  “Oh.”

  “Promise me you’ll just keep thinking on some way to kill them bugs. My beware-man will handle whatever sent them here after my country ass.”

  “I will, Clyde. I’ll think on it.”