Trent shook his head. “I don’t know, but she’s better off with her own family than with us. They can get out of the city, maybe, until this blows over.”
“What was that? How did he–?”
Trent turned on her then, yelling. “I don’t know, okay?” The outburst drew a hurt look from his wife. He felt ashamed for yelling at her and lowered his voice. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never seen anything like that. I’m sorry.”
And yet, even as he said it, Trent felt a weird sense of déjà vu. He had seen something like it, something unnatural and powerful and frightening, though he couldn’t quite place the memory and could not dredge up the images; just a lingering sense of fear and a memory of smoke of fire and his airplane hurtling toward the ground. Anxiety about the lost memories buzzed around him like biting flies.
Celia’s cries reached a pitiful wail that reminded Trent of police sirens. “Kiddo, it’s gonna be–” he started, but then he realized, with a sinking feeling, that he did hear sirens. He looked in the rearview just in time to see a police car squeal out of a side street and pull in behind them, red-and-blues flashing as it caught up with their van. The headlights flashed and the siren let out a short whoop.
Trent did not want to stop. All he could imagine, after the chaos in the hospital, was that no cop could possibly protect them from a force like the old man and his powers. He wanted to get Celia home, to reunite her with her parents, and then maybe he could deal with the cops. Then, he and Susan would get the hell out of Las Vegas. Coming back had been the worst decision of their lives; he was sure of that now.
The officer flashed the headlights a second time, punctuated by another whoop from the siren.
“Shit!” Trent yelled and banged a fist against the steering wheel. The loud noise caused Celia to look up in alarm.
Susan had already turned in her seat and was watching the cop behind them. “We’ve gotta pull over, baby. Just tell them the truth. We’re taking her home.”
Trent, frustrated, shook his head and eased the van into the parking lot of a convenience store. The van came to a stop in a parking space and he shut off the engine.
The squad car pulled in behind them, pinning the van between the cop car and the curb that bordered the street. Trent looked in his rearview and saw two officers now–a bald, clean-shaven man and a diminutive woman in the passenger seat with spiky black hair. The man put a megaphone to his lips.
“Out of the car, now! Hands over your heads! Leave the child inside!”
Oh shit, thought Trent. They think we’ve kidnapped her!
Trent kicked open the driver’s side door and stepped out, hands in the air. Susan did the same. Trent turned to face the cop car and yelled, “It wasn’t us! We–”
“Shut up and lie down, hands behind your back!”
“But we’re not–”
“Down!” the cop yelled. “Now!”
“Fuck,” Trent mumbled beneath his breath. He looked over at Susan, who had already dropped to her knees. He shook his head and did the same.
The two Metro officers got out of their car. Trent looked up at them. They both had guns drawn, aimed at him and Susan. The man matched Trent’s gaze for a moment and then yelled again for him to get down. Trent dropped flat on his stomach and felt the ice-cold, oily puddles soaking into his white, button-up dress shirt. He idly wished that he had remembered his jacket.
“Face down!” yelled the cop.
Trent could hear their footsteps as they came nearer.
“Get the kid,” said the male cop to his partner.
Her feet splashed through a puddle as she jogged to the van.
Trent lifted his head to look at the male cop again. “Have you seen what happened at the hospital?” he asked. “You really think we–”
“Shut up!” the cop replied, and used a booted foot to grind Trent’s face back down into the asphalt. He started to rattle off the Miranda. “You have the right to remain silent anything you say may be used against you in a...” There was a strange moment of silence and Trent wondered why the officer had stopped talking. And then he said, quietly, “What the hell is that?”
Immediately, Trent imagined Salvatore striding across the street toward them. His heart raced with fear as he pictured the Children’s Center massacre, the bodies writhing in midair, choked by tentacles of water, blood everywhere, screaming, crying, and for a split-second he flashed back again to the airplane crash and had to fight back the waves of panic that rolled through him.
“What the fuck?” said the cop.
Trent could see the officer’s feet as he turned to run. He looked up. The cop was sprinting away from the van, toward the squad car. Trent looked over his shoulder in alarm and saw the thing coming on.
It was something dark and oddly shaped and at moments looked something like a spider and at other moments like an indistinct mass of roiling, smoky shadow. Its protean form culminated in a series of long, shadowy appendages, whose number seemed to change with every movement. The appendages appeared as pointed legs that came to perfect, sharp tips where they touched solid surface, and each appendage touched down upon a pool of shadow as it advanced.
It flitted suddenly into the shadow cast by a nearby telephone pole. Then it jumped to the shadow of the van. Its shape collapsed as it disappeared into the darkness and it looked for a moment as though the black thing had vanished entirely. But then it reappeared again; a sudden, lurching movement that carried it out of the darkened recess. It expanded in a split-second until it was bigger than a man, and soared through the air toward Trent, who lay astonished on the asphalt.
“Trent!” yelled Susan.
Her shout broke his bewildered fascination with the creature and he rolled quickly to his right as its shadow-legs stabbed into the ground next to his face. It seemed insubstantial, ever shifting, and yet it had a strange solidity. Its legs splashed into the greasy puddles on the pavement, throwing up sprays of rainwater. Radial cracks appeared in the asphalt, as though the thing had a weight and a force that the ground could hardly withstand.
Trent leapt to his feet and ran towards Susan. When he reached her, he grabbed her arm and hoisted her off the ground. The creature sprung into motion again, jumping from shadow to shadow as it chased them, its body emitting now a strange, humming sound, a vibration that buzzed into Trent’s skin and rattled his bones and skull and sinuses and made his eyes water as he worked his way, with Susan on his arm, toward the van. They ran hard, legs pumping, toward where Celia and the female cop stood side-by-side, mouths agape, watching the impossible.
Trent knew without a doubt that this creature had come for the girl. He figured it was something that the old man had brought into being, some aspect of his horrible powers made manifest. Holding Susan’s wrist, he ran to Celia and the cop. The creature’s humming sound grew louder. He could feel the vibration traveling the length of his body, all the way to the bones in his feet. He shoved Celia down and pushed Susan behind him and turned to face the thing.
It reared up out of a shadow cast across the parking lot by a street sign, its two foremost appendages raised, the deepest black emanating from them like an anti-glow, dripping smoke-like coils of black nothingness that dissipated as they fell. Trent could feel intense cold as the thing lurched forward at him.
He felt a painful thump in his chest then, like someone taking a hammer to his lungs, and he blinked with pain and, for a second, saw that other world, that black place that came when his fate stood on the edge. It was the odd thing that had happened from time to time on the poker circuit. It was his impossible ace-in-the-hole, whose mechanism he had never understood, and only partially believed. He imagined a million possibilities for this moment, and desperately wished for one where he could get through alive. He hoped that his luck might hold out again.
“Duck!” he screamed, knowing even as he did that they stood no chance, that the thing would descend and slice through them in an instant.
A bri
ght flash of light burst from the nearby squad car, a spotlight beam from the top of the car, accidentally engaged as the male cop fumbled in the driver’s seat, desperately trying to start the vehicle. The beam illuminated the spider in an instant and the creature’s deep hum became an ear-splitting screech. The dark tips pulled back like a child touching a hot stove. It dropped from its mid-air leap and tumbled into a nearby puddle of black, legs writing as it vanished, like a black widow spider under a child’s magnifying lens on a hot day.
Trent turned to the others cowering behind him, terrified and hunched over. “Run!” he screamed, and they did.
Susan grabbed Celia and they splashed across the parking lot toward the van.
The female cop sprinted for the squad car. With every step, her throat let out a panicked, incoherent shriek. She had lost all of a cop’s composure, her arms waving wild, frantic, her legs churning across the pavement. She sprinted up to the police car, but as she reached out for the passenger door, the thing reappeared, its black, ever-changing shape looming out of the shadow cast by the vehicle. She shrieked and fell backwards onto the pavement and drew her gun. She raised it and pulled the trigger as rapidly as she could.
The spider shuddered and twisted as the bullets tore through it, pop pop pop, throwing off swirling puffs of smoke that vanished into the air. The gun ran dry and, as Trent watched in horrified awe, the creature dove down at her, leaping from the car’s shadow into hers, front legs hungrily devouring all of the light around them as it disappeared beneath her. For a few seconds, the woman scuttled around on the pavement, eyes wide, screaming wildly as she threw her head from side to side, trying to see where the thing had gone.
“Help!” she screamed, looking first at Trent, then at her partner in the car, whose attention was focused purely on putting the vehicle into reverse.
“Helpmeomigodhelpme!” She sat upon the wet pavement on her knees, legs folded, fists balled, and screamed in abject terror.
The spider burst out of her shadow then and the woman convulsed as the roiling blackness traced her edges. Then it leapt away from her and onto a dark line cast atop the squad car. Her scream shifted and became almost inhuman, an animal noise, a horrid squall. She turned to look up at the rain-filled sky and brought her fingers to her face. She screeched and clawed at her eyes. Blood ran down her cheeks in glistening streams.
Trent, frozen with revulsion, realized suddenly what had happened. The woman no longer had a shadow. She knelt upon the ground as if she bore no real connection to the world any longer, her flesh and clothes touching pavement that seemed unaware of her presence, not darkened by her interposing before the light. His breath caught for a moment, his own sanity briefly questioned. He forced himself to inhale and focus. A sudden, loud honking recaptured his attention.
He turned to see Susan pounding on the van’s horn, Celia squeezed tight against her, face blank and horrified. He needed no further encouragement. His cowboy boots clattered against the asphalt as he sprinted for the van. He jumped into the passenger seat next to the teenager and slammed the van door shut as Susan gunned the engine.
She dropped her foot on the gas. The tires squealed against the wet pavement. Suddenly, the van caught traction and lurched forward and Susan sent it hurtling through the convenience store lot, past the squad car and the flailing man inside who was still desperately trying to get the vehicle started. With every motion, the spider sent a darkened leg piercing through the roof of the car, ripping it open like a flimsy soda can. Finally, it opened a hole in the top and then leapt inside and disappeared. The cop screamed and banged on the windows, staring desperately at Trent and Susan and Celia as they sped past in the moving van.
Celia dropped her head and began to vomit again. Trent averted his gaze. As the van bounced over the curb and onto the street, he could hear the howling behind them as the creature severed the cop from his shadow.
“What the fuck was that?” said Susan, yelling now as tears ran down her face. She nearly clipped another car as she maneuvered the van through traffic. Her voice lowered. “What the goddamn fu–” She looked in the rearview and her eyes went wide and the tears came faster. “Oh God, no. No!” She screamed and pounded the wheel, causing the horn to honk several times in rapid succession.
Trent glanced into the side mirror and saw the black monstrosity. It had turned its attention on the escaping van. It leapt over the ruined squad car and hit the ground on the other side in a shadow cast by a tree, then burst from that and came after them, pouring itself into the shadows of the vehicles moving through the busy midday traffic.
Susan had the gas pedal smashed against the floor, but Trent knew the creature could move faster. He looked forward, seeking options, and saw an alleyway approaching on the right.
“There!” he shouted, pointing.
Knuckles white, Susan threw the wheel to the side and the van careened into the alley, knocking aside piles of trash and trash barrels and old plastic paint buckets. The rain drummed noisily on the van’s metal roof. Trent looked in the mirror again. The creature had slid into the shadow of an unlit streetlamp and then reemerged and shot into the alley, hopping through the shadows cast by the tumbling debris in the wake of the van.
“Faster!”
“I can’t!”
Celia shrieked, head still between her knees, her voice cracking with the bloodcurdling volume.
The van rumbled out the other side of the alley, crashed through a flimsy chain link fence, and burst into a busy street. A taxi hit its brakes and swerved sideways as the van passed. A delivery truck squealed, smoke erupting from its axles. The van dodged both obstacles, and just barely cut in front of a bulky SUV with its horn blaring.
In the rearview, Trent saw the creature bound into the street, leaping through the shadows of the cars. It soared over the taxi and came down amidst the shadow of a building cast atop the roof of the SUV. The SUV’s top buckled and the driver hit the brakes. The shadow-creature’s momentum carried it off the vehicle as the SUV tipped and rolled and crashed into the pavement with an explosion of glass and chrome.
The van’s tires cried out as Susan sent it down another alley. It dove between a liquor store and an old diner, and at the far end, Trent could see Interstate 15, wide and free of trees and buildings, open to the sky, and he knew that this was their chance to lose the creature, there in the open, rain-gray light, free of the complex shadows of the inner city.
He pointed and yelled at Susan, “Get to the Interstate!”
She downshifted and floored the gas again and the engine revved to a high-pitched whine. The moving van barreled toward the stack of cardboard liquor boxes at the end of the alley.
Celia had her hands over her ears now, still shrieking, still looking at the floor between her feet, and she had leaned into Trent. Susan’s hands gripped the steering wheel tight. Her eyes were wide. Trent gritted his teeth as they shot toward the opening. He squeezed the teenager tight to protect her.
The creature jumped then and soared into a shadow of a window overhang and then rocketed down at the top of the van. Trent could feel its humming vibrations and could hear the screech as its front legs cut through the metal roof.
The first shadowy point to puncture the cabin came down fast at the passenger seat. Celia was still hunched over in Trent’s arms, and with the new hole in the roof, the rain poured in on her. But instead of washing over her and Trent, instead of the creature’s point piercing into either one of them, Celia let out a high-pitched wail and the rain solidified in an instant. The arcing streaks turned to ice, forming a hemispherical, glittering shield above them. The black spike slammed down onto it and the shield vaporized in a burst of steam. But the creature’s leg whipped back as if it had been burned. Trent blinked, unable to comprehend what he had just seen. All he could think was that it wouldn’t happen twice; the creature was regrouping for another strike and they needed to get it off the van before it killed them all.
The hammer to his chest ca
me on fast. He blinked, saw darkness for an instant, and then squinted as his eyes adjusted to the bright light beyond the alley. A billboard truck barreled past, heading up the on-ramp to the Interstate, its flat panel side advertising a casino magic show with a bright silver logo and hundreds of glittering mirrors. The mirrors caught the overcast light from the gray-white sky and glared for a split-second at the van. Trent could hear the spider’s screech and felt the van rock as the thing tumbled off the top and dropped back into the shadows in the alley behind them.
Susan maneuvered the van across the road, onto the ramp and swerved into place with the southbound I-15 traffic. In the mirror, Trent watched as the thing made tentative, writhing advances into the street for a moment, and then leapt back into the alley shadows and disappeared.
11
THE SCREAMING IN SALVATORE’S HEAD died away and his headache burned off like cold morning mist, but his flesh still trembled from the dropping temperature outside and his neck ached and he felt a burning sensation at the base of his skull. He sat up in the dingy alleyway between what appeared to be a run-down strip club and an abandoned commercial pad that had once been a convenience store. A chilly wind whipped through the concrete canyon, blowing with it tumbleweeds of plastic bags and escort service flyers and fast-food wrappers.
He tried to stand, but his throbbing legs gave out and his knees buckled. He staggered backwards a few steps and collapsed into a heap of black plastic trash bags. His thighs and calves screamed with pain. He felt as though he had run a marathon. He put a hand to the back of his neck, felt the sudden twinge of searing pain as his fingers touched, and grimaced. He brought his arm back around and saw that his fingers were sticky with blood and his arms were similarly streaked. The blood on his arms, though, was dry, crusted, older than the glistening fluid on his fingertips.
What have I done?
He looked down at his other arm and saw that it too was coated. His hands glistened in the gray, midday light. A part of him wanted to insist that it was not the obvious, that the red streaks were pasta sauce, or cayenne pepper soaked into his skin from a dry rub on a filet. Or maybe it was the blood from a juicy cut of steak. But he knew otherwise. He had done something horrible.
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