James Swain - Shadow People

That had been two years ago. Liza had entered his life, and become his lover, while her younger sister had replaced her in the family troupe. He had showered Liza with everything she could have asked for, and treated her like a princess. A perfect arrangement, except he’d hidden his psychic abilities from her, fearful that she’d think he was a freak, and run away. He knew now it had been a mistake, one that he must fix.

“Do you have someone in mind?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“I did some research on the Internet. One name kept popping up. A professor at NYU Medical School named Dr. Raul Sierra. He’s written several highly regarded books on relationship counseling. He teaches partners how to communicate with each other.”

“You want to go see him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How much do I have to tell him about myself?”

“Enough for him to understand you.”

“You mean everything.”

“If that’s what it takes, yes.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. It’s now or never, Peter.”

They shared a brief silence. It carried in it an unstated answer that he didn’t want to hear, and it went like this: If we don’t fix this relationship, I’ll go back to the circus with my family. But he’d never told anyone everything. His life was filled with secrets that he’d expected to take with him to his grave, and maybe beyond. Yet at the same time, if he didn’t come clean with Liza, she’d walk out on him, and his heart would be forever broken.

“Okay,” he mumbled halfheartedly.

“You mean that?”

“Uh-huh.”

She kissed him on the lips in the darkness. The fear and anxiety of the past few hours went away, and he felt whole again. Just a single kiss had done it.

“Thank you,” she said.

“When do you want to go see him?”

“Monday morning, nine thirty. I booked a session a week ago. For me. But you can come, too.”

“You were going to see a shrink?”

“I had to do something. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

He suddenly felt like a shit. Liza had been agonizing for days, and he hadn’t noticed. Too busy with the show and his Friday night séances to be paying attention to her needs. He vowed to change that, too. His Droid vibrated on the night table, and he lifted the phone to his face. “The FBI never sleeps,” he said.

“Garrison?”

“The one and only.”

“It must be something important for him to be calling this late.”

“Your intuitive skills are amazing, Dr. Watson.”

“Answer it, smart-ass.”

He answered the call. “Hello, Special Agent Garrison. What a pleasant surprise.”

“Sorry for the intrusion, but I thought you’d want to hear this,” Garrison said. “The pattern in your broken frames struck a nerve. I was sure I’d seen it somewhere before, so I sketched it from memory, scanned it into my computer, and ran it through a database of symbols the FBI has found at different crime scenes. I got a hit.”

“From where?”

“Westchester County a decade ago. He killed five homeless men, and dumped their bodies in a field. The bodies were laid out in this strange pattern, like an upside-down cross. It was the same pattern that I saw in your broken frames.”

“Then it’s him.”

“Has to be. The FBI did up a profile. He’s a white male in his late forties, lives by himself, is smart, and has no social life.”

Peter groaned. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten to tell Garrison that he’d glimpsed into the killer’s mind, and seen him entering a room of students. “He’s a college professor. I forgot to tell you.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“I read his mind right before he tried to shoot me. There can’t be that many college professors who fit that physical description in Westchester. Your haystack just got smaller.”

“It sure did. See you tomorrow.”

“Still want that composite?”

“Damn straight I do.”

Garrison was a hunter, and his prey was in his sights. This was good news, because once Dr. Death was behind bars, the shadow person would lose its sponsor, and return to wherever it came from. He returned the Droid to the night table, feeling better than he had a minute ago.

Liza’s cool breath tickled his skin. “Good news?” she asked.

“Getting better,” he said.

Holly was being a bad girl. After coming home from the séance, she’d lit candles inside her studio apartment, put on some classical music, and drawn the shades. When she’d deemed the mood was just right, she’d filled a round vase with tap water, added a mixture of magic herbs, and begun to scry on Peter, the man she loved.

Holly knew that playing voyeur cam with Peter’s private life was wrong. Witches had a dreadful reputation for snooping, and she was only making it worse. But she couldn’t help it. She had loved Peter since she was a child. For the longest time, she’d kept these feelings bottled up, and her emotions in check.

No more.

She’d had an epiphany. Life was fleeting, and terribly short. Peter had nearly died, and she’d never gotten to express her true feelings to him. That was about to change.

Water, water, oh so clear, show me the boy that I hold so dear.

I love him with all my heart, and feel terrible when we’re apart.

The water in the vase grew cloudy, then cleared. The image of Peter at his brownstone on the East Side appeared. For a while, Peter sat on the stoop talking on his cell phone. Then a shoe came through an upper window, and landed at his feet. Peter raced inside in alarm.

She should have ended things right there. But instead, she recited the mystic words that let her follow Peter inside.

Oh spirits from above, take me inside the house of the man that I love.

Let me see what’s happening to dear Peter, so that I may help him and be near him.

It wasn’t the best rhyme she’d come up with, but it would do. The image inside the vase changed, and she saw Peter bound upstairs and run down a hallway to the master bedroom. She’d visited Peter’s brownstone during her supernatural visits before, but never ventured inside his bedroom. It had not seemed the right thing to do

She now followed him, hoping she might help. A dark spirit waited in Peter’s bedroom, and it snatched Peter’s soul away to the spirit world, while his body lay motionless on the floor. Every few moments, one of his arms or legs twitched, signaling he was still alive.

Every time that happened, Holly’s heart skipped a beat.

Peter’s beautiful girlfriend, Liza, and a gang of stern-faced FBI agents appeared. Holly knew they were FBI because of the badges clipped to their chests. Seeing Peter on the floor, Liza had tried to shake him awake. She was crying, her face flush.

Holly cried as well. If Peter died… she tried not to imagine it.

Finally, Peter’s eyes opened and he returned to the real world. Holly yelped for joy. The sound had a strange effect, and the water in the vase grew cloudy, ending the session.

“Damn it,” she cursed.

Vase in hand, she crossed the studio and dumped the water into the sink. She tried to look on the bright side. The danger had passed and Peter was now safe. But she could not avoid seeing the dark side. Her beloved was still with Liza, and not with her. That wasn’t fair, was it? Liza didn’t have any powers, and she could never love Peter like Holly did. She was going to go crazy if that situation didn’t change soon. Sometimes, she felt like she already had.

Holly lived in Morningside Heights, not far from Columbia. The space was small, but the view of the Hudson River made it feel big. On the walls hung her witch’s things: astrological charts along with those devoted to numerology, plus shelves lined with jelly jars filled with magical herbs, rainbow powders, and bone-white charms. She lived by herself, which was depressing in a city as large as New York. She’d considered getting a roommate, but it couldn’t be any roommate. It would have to be a person with an open mind, one who’d tolerate her strange habits. Like talking to ghosts and seeing into the future, for one thing.