Shadow Land

by Adam J. Wright

  When the creature was fully out of the drain and standing on the ground, I guessed its height to be at least seven feet. It would have had no problem plucking Sammy from the top of his jungle gym.

  It went over to the grate, picked it up with its free hand, and placed it back over the hole that led down to the drain. Then the creature moved to the stream and began splashing along it.

  “Come on,” I said to Felicity, “we need to follow it.”

  We got into the stream and waded behind the creature, following its path from last night. I had to lower the stone every now and then to avoid some obstacle in the water—a fallen branch or a rock—and everything would become bright again with no sign of the creature in front of us. Then, when I raised the stone to my eye again, darkness returned and the fish-thing was there, wading ahead of us with Sammy Martin slung over its shoulder.

  Sammy was still crying but his sobs were drowned out by the constant chattering of the shells that hung about the creature’s body and collided noisily with each other.

  We followed the creature for maybe a mile before the vision vanished.

  “What happened?” Felicity asked.

  I looked at the woods around us. “We’ve gone beyond the spell’s area of effect. I need to cast it again so the trees here, and the ones farther downstream, show us the vision.” I quickly recited the words of the spell and the vision reappeared. We continued following the monster downstream.

  An hour later, we reached Dearmont Lake. The woods reached all the way to the lakeshore and the stream flowed into the larger body of water. The creature waded into the lake, holding Sammy tightly over its shoulder. Then it slid into the water face first and disappeared beneath the rain-speckled, moonlit water.

  “Alec, it’s going to drown him!” Felicity said, splashing into the lake as if she could stop the events that were unfolding before our eyes, even though they had occurred hours ago.

  I watched the surface of the moonlit lake through the faerie stone, waiting for the creature to reappear from beneath the surface. Why would it travel from the lake to Sammy’s house and then bring the boy all the way back to the lake simply to drown him? It didn’t make sense.

  “There,” Felicity said suddenly. “It’s there, Alec!” She was pointing south, at an area where a spur of rock jutted out from the shoreline into the lake.

  I turned my attention to that area and gazed through the faerie stone. The creature’s head was visible in the moonlight, moving through the water faster than an Olympic swimmer. Sammy’s face was also visible above the surface of the water. I could see him gasping and spluttering but he was too far away to be heard.

  We sprinted along the edge of the lake, keeping the creature in sight until it swam out into deeper water and then sank beneath the surface again. We waited for it to reappear but its head didn’t surface. Only the falling rain broke the stillness of the water.

  Felicity said, “Perhaps it went around the rocks and came up on the other side.”

  That made sense. The spur of rock was at least twenty feet high and if the creature had surfaced on the other side, we wouldn’t be able to see it from where we were standing on the shore.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s take a look.” We reached the spur and scrambled up its side, clambering over large boulders until we reached the top. Looking through the faerie stone, I searched the water on the other side of the rocks, desperately hoping to see the creature.

  But it was gone. “You see anything?” I asked Felicity.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “It can’t have stayed underwater for long. Even if it can breathe down there, Sammy can’t.”

  “Do you think it…drowned him?” Her voice was hesitant, as if she didn’t want to speak the words.

  I knew how she felt. The possibility that the creature had snatched Sammy from his back yard and drowned him in the lake was almost too heartbreaking to consider. “No,” I said, “it didn’t do that. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “We have no idea how the creature thinks or what it wanted with Sammy,” Felicity said. “For all we know, it might have taken him as food.”

  I lowered the faerie stone and blinked against the light. Looking around at the rocks, the water, and the rain, I felt frustration building up inside me. We’d seen the exact spot where the creature had disappeared under the water yet we couldn’t track it any farther.

  It would have had to surface somewhere around here. If it hadn’t, then Sammy was dead. I wasn’t ready to accept that.

  I set the backpack on the rocks and took out one of the enchanted daggers. Its blade glowed bright blue with magical energy. Then I took my phone out of my pocket and placed it into the backpack, along with the Maglite. When I began removing my shirt, Felicity looked at me questioningly.

  “Alec, what are you doing?”

  “I’m going to take a look down there,” I told her, pointing at the water. Tossing my shirt and T-shirt onto the backpack, I said, “Wait here, I won’t be long.”

  Before she had a chance to protest, I made my way down the rocks and jumped into the lake feet first. I gasped as the frigid water rushed over me. Then I took a breath and dived down into the depths.

  The dagger’s blue glow lit my way as I swam along the edge of the rocks underwater, searching for a fissure or a hole that might lead to a cave. If the creature was keeping Sammy alive, then an underwater cave was the only logical explanation for its sudden disappearance. It would have had to surface to allow Sammy to breathe but it could have done that within a cave, out of sight.

  I searched until my lungs began aching for air. When I had to swim back up to the surface to breathe, I wondered how long Sammy Martin had been able to hold his breath after the creature had pulled him under the water.

  The moment my face was out of the water, I gasped in a lungful of air. Felicity was standing on the rocks by the water’s edge, watching me with a concerned look in her eyes. “Did you find anything?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m going to try again. There has to be some sort of cave down there, a cave with air. It’s the only explanation.”

  Her dark eyes saddened suddenly. “It isn’t the only explanation, Alec.”

  “I don’t believe Sammy’s dead,” I told her. But even as I said the words, I wondered if I was just trying to convince myself. Felicity was right. We had to prepare ourselves for the worst outcome, but I couldn’t imagine having to tell Mrs. Martin that her son was dead. It would destroy her.

  I angled my body so that I was facing the rocks and took a quick breath before diving underwater. A swift kick of my legs propelled me down into the cold depths of the lake.

  Using the dagger’s blue glow to light my way, I explored the rocks again, this time heading out into deeper water. The deeper I went, the murkier and colder the water became.

  I noticed a gap in the rocks and swam toward it, dagger held out in front of my face, illuminating the area in a ghostly blue hue. The hole was large enough for the creature to swim through and led deeper into the spur of rock. I poked the dagger into the hole but the glow only penetrated so far. Beyond the blue light, darkness reigned.

  Estimating that I had enough air in my lungs to swim a little way into the sunken hole, I kicked forward, feeling suddenly claustrophobic as solid rock seemed to press in on me from all sides. I could only see a few feet in front of my face thanks to the dagger’s light and I expected to see the creature come rushing at me from the darkness, eyes flaring and teeth bared.

  My lungs began to ache but I pushed on as the tunnel angled sharply upward. If there was a cave within the rock spur, as I hoped, then it couldn’t be much farther.

  A few seconds later, I broke the surface of the water and took in a lungful of air that tasted of rotten fish. The dagger’s blue glow picked out walls of rock that curved away into darkness. I was inside a cave that could only be reached by the underwater tunnel. The fish stench was almost overwhelming. />
  The question was: who was in here with me? Was the creature lying in wait in the shadows? Was Sammy Martin in here somewhere, waiting to be rescued from the jaws of the monster?

  I pulled myself out of the water and crouched on the cave floor, listening for a sound that might give away the creature’s location. Something rustled in the darkness.

  Staying low just in case the creature came leaping out at me, I moved forward, the dagger held at arm’s length in front of me.

  The blue glow illuminated the source of the sound, and when I saw what it was, I rushed forward.

  Sammy Martin lay on his side on the cave floor, knees drawn up to his chest. He wore a blue padded jacket but it was wet and probably provided no warmth at all. The boy was shivering and the rustling sound I’d heard was his coat moving against the rocky floor.

  “Sammy,” I said, holding the dagger high up so that it lit my face and he could see me clearly. “My name’s Alec. I’m here to help you. Your mother sent me.”

  He looked at me with dull eyes. “Will you take me home?”

  “Yes, I’m going to take you home. Come on, buddy, let’s get out of here.”

  He sat up slowly. His lips were blue, his face gray. “Hey, I know you. You’re the P.I. guy. I’ve seen you around town. You fight monsters.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Listen, we’re going to have to swim out of here, okay? All I need you to do is take a deep breath and I’ll do the rest. Can you do that?”

  Sammy nodded. “Okay.”

  I led him to the water and climbed in, holding my arms out. He slid into the cold water and grabbed me, teeth chattering. “It’s…cold.”

  “I know. Don’t worry, you’ll be warm and dry soon. You just take a deep breath and I’ll get us out of here as quickly as I can.”

  He took a deep, loud breath and I slid underwater, holding him tightly as I followed the tunnel out of the rock spur and back to the lake. As soon as we were clear of the rocks, I kicked my legs hard and propelled us upward.

  We both gasped for air as we surfaced, then Sammy screwed up his eyes and gasped again, this time in pain. “The sun,” he said. “It hurts.”

  “Felicity, get my shirt,” I shouted.

  She scrambled up the rocks to where I’d left my shirt on the backpack and had returned by the time Sammy and I had climbed out of the water. I placed the wet shirt over his head, protecting him from the sun.

  “You okay, Sammy?” I asked him.

  He nodded beneath the wet flannel and hunkered down with his arms folded, trying to retain the little body heat he had left.

  “Call Mrs. Martin,” I said to Felicity. “Tell her we’ve found her son.”

  5

  An hour later, I was at home, standing in the shower while hot water pricked at my skin, taking the chill from my muscles and bones.

  After finding Sammy, Felicity and I had carried him to the highway near the lake to await his mother’s arrival. She had appeared two minutes later, driving an old Ford LTD and skidding to a stop when she saw us. I told her it might be best to take Sammy to the hospital but she said she was going to take him home and warm him up with some soup.

  She was in such a hurry that she sped off as soon as her son was in the passenger seat, leaving Felicity and me on the highway. We had to walk back through the woods to get our cars.

  There were still unanswered questions regarding Sammy Martin’s abduction. Where was the monster now? Why had it left him in a cave and then vanished? And the most perplexing question of all: how had Sammy drawn a picture of the creature before it had taken him?

  Maybe it had been in the yard before, skulking in the bushes, and Sammy had seen it from his bedroom window. But if he’d seen a monster in the yard, surely he would have told his mother. Why had he stayed quiet about it?

  A knock at the door brought me out of my thoughts. At first, I thought it might be Felicity but the knocking was too loud, too insistent.

  Grabbing a towel and wrapping it around my waist, I yelled, “Yeah, I’m coming,” walked through the kitchen to the front door, and opened it.

  Sheriff Cantrell was standing outside, in the rain, looking like a bear that had eaten a lemon. When he saw me, he screwed his face up even further in disgust.

  "Harbinger, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Well, I was taking a shower until you interrupted me," I said.

  "I'm not talking about that. I mean what the hell are you doing sticking your nose into police business where it doesn't belong?" He looked down at my towel. “For Pete's sake, get some clothes on before I charge you with indecency."

  I shrugged and went into the living room.

  "You're gonna tell me everything that happened," he said, stepping inside and closing the front door. "But first, get some damned clothes on. I can't talk to you while you're standing there with all that witchy stuff on your body."

  I looked down at the magical protection symbols tattooed on my arms and torso. "You're bothered by these?"

  "Just get dressed."

  Leaving him in the living room, I went up to the bedroom and put on my jeans and the Miskatonic University T-shirt that Jim Walker had given me a long time ago.

  When I went back downstairs, the sheriff was gone. Strange. Why come here to bawl me out and then disappear? I walked through the kitchen to the bathroom door. "Sheriff, you in there?"

  No reply. I opened the door and looked inside but the room was empty.

  Maybe he’d been called away on police business.

  But when I returned to the living room and looked through the window, I could see his patrol car parked next to my Land Rover.

  "Sheriff, where are you?" There weren't many places he could be. Unless he'd gone upstairs, which I was sure he hadn't because I would have heard him, he had to be in the yard or in the basement.

  Something told me he was in the basement. Maybe he'd heard the same whispering voice that had called me down there earlier.

  I went to the basement steps and called down. "Sheriff, you down there?"

  No answer.

  "Cantrell?" I slowly began to descend the steps. Something didn't feel right. The atmosphere in the house felt suddenly dangerous. My heart began to pound.

  When I reached the basement, I saw the sheriff standing with his back toward me. The cupboard on the wall was open and Cantrell was staring at Excalibur. At least I think he was staring at it. His body was motionless, as if he'd been paralyzed.

  "Hey, Cantrell," I said, going over to him. "You okay?"

  When I saw his face, I took a step back. His eyes, which were fixed on the sword, were glowing blue.

  He didn't seem to notice me at all. His glowing eyes stared at the sword and he nodded slightly, as if receiving some sort of secret instruction from the weapon and confirming that he understood.

  "Sheriff," I said. Then again, louder. "Sheriff!"

  The blue glow vanished from his eyes and he looked at me, confused, as if waking from a deep dream.

  "Where am I?" He looked around the basement.

  I closed the cupboard, throwing a dark look at the sword. I had no idea what it had done to Cantrell but it probably wasn't anything good.

  "Harbinger," he said weakly. "How did I get down here?"

  "Come on," I said, taking his arm and leading him to the steps. "You need to sit down. But not here." I glanced at the cupboard. It was probably a good idea to get Cantrell as far away from it as possible.

  I helped the sheriff up the steps and guided him to the living room, where he sank heavily onto the sofa. A dazed look remained on his face but at least his eyes weren't glowing.

  "Wait here," I told him before going into the kitchen to make coffee.

  While I was waiting for the coffee machine to do its job, I called Felicity. She was probably still in the shower or taking a bath because I got her voicemail.

  "Hey," I said, "we have a problem. Come over here as soon as you can."

  When the mach
ine was done, I poured a strong, black coffee for Cantrell and took it into the living room. I placed the mug on the coffee table in front of him. He stared at it blankly.

  "You should probably drink that," I said. "It might help."

  He nodded and picked up the mug, taking a sip before setting it down again. "It's hot," he said.

  "Do you remember what happened?" I asked him. "Do you know why you went down into the basement?"

  He pressed his fingers to his forehead as if that would help his memory. "I was waiting for you to put on some clothes and then I heard something. Like someone calling my name except I didn't hear it with my ears, it was...in my head. Then the next thing I knew, I was standing in the basement and you were there with me."

  "You don't remember anything else?"

  He shook his head and took another sip of coffee. "No, nothing at all.”

  There was a knock at the door and then Felicity came in. She was wearing dry clothes—jeans and a dark blue sweater—but her still-damp hair clung to her neck and shoulders.

  “I came as soon as I got your message,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  Leaving Cantrell on the sofa with his coffee, I took Felicity into the kitchen and, keeping my voice low, said, “Something weird has happened to Cantrell. I left him alone for a couple of minutes and then I found him in the basement, in some sort of trance, staring at Excalibur. And his eyes were glowing.”

  She frowned and looked past me to where the sheriff was sitting in the living room. “Does he remember what happened?”

  “No, he just remembers hearing a voice in his head.”

  Felicity thought about that for a couple of seconds and then said, “We have to take him to the Blackwell sisters. If the sword has cast a spell on him, they’ll be able to detect it. They might even know what kind of spell it is.”

  I nodded. Victoria and Devon Blackwell had discovered that I’d had an enchantment cast on me so having them check out Cantrell seemed like a good idea.

  “Perhaps there’s something in Arthurian lore about all this. I’ll do some research. But first, we’ve got to get the sheriff checked out by the Blackwell sisters.”