James Swain - Shadow People

“You cry in your sleep a lot,” Liza said. “Did you know that?”

What an icebreaker. He shook his head.

“What do you dream about?” she asked.

“Can we talk about this some other time?”

“No more running away. I want to know.”

“I dream about the night I lost my parents.”

“Were you traumatized?”

There are events in a person’s life which change everything. The night of his parents’ deaths was such an event. His life had been one thing before, another thing ever since. Not a fair thing to do to a seven-year-old, but life was hardly fair. He’d accepted that hard fact long ago.

“Yes,” he said.

“Is the dream always the same?”

“Pretty much. Three men whisk my parents down an alley in the theater district. I start to run after them, fall down, and rip my pants. When I look up, my mother and father are being hustled into the back of a waiting car. My mother looks over her shoulder at me. Her face tells me everything. I’m never going to see her or my father alive again.”

“Your mother knew she was going to die?”

“People were chasing them. They left England and came to New York. She knew.”

“You were seven. You’re twenty-five now, and still having nightmares. Don’t you think you should talk to Sierra about this?”

“I’m not going back there. Sierra’s no good.”

“He’s a highly respected expert in his field. You’re just making excuses.”

One doughnut remained on the plate. Peter tore it in half, and munched on his piece. He was not going to let Dr. Sierra peel back the layers of his soul. Not in this lifetime.

“Is that a no?” Liza asked.

“Let’s find someone else,” he suggested.

“And start over? You think I want a repeat of this? No, thanks.”

He wiped his mouth on a napkin and looked across the table at Liza. “Why are you stuck on this guy? Do you like seeing me getting hurt?”

“That was low,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Stop it.”

“Why are you the only one that gets to ask the tough questions?”

“I’m going outside. Come out when you have something nice to say.”

“Can I have the other half of the doughnut?”

“Is that supposed to be a joke? You’re not funny.”

Peter stuffed the remaining piece of doughnut into his mouth as Liza walked out the front door. He hadn’t told her the whole story about his nightmares. The pain of his parents’ passing had eased over time. What hadn’t gone away was the helplessness he’d felt as they were abducted. The pained expression on his mother’s face was one he’d never forget. Help us, her eyes had cried out. Help us.

But by the time he’d reached the street, the car was gone.

He’d failed her and his father.

That was why he wept in his sleep at night.

The key to dealing with tragedy was to avoid thinking about it. But that wasn’t always possible. When Peter thought about the night he’d lost his parents, it made him grow angry, and the demon reared its ugly head.

“Help!” a voice cried out.

The owner raced out of the kitchen, followed by his son. Both men had their arms in the air and were moving fast. The owner grabbed his wife from behind the cash register, and the family fled to the street.

The restaurant was filling with smoke. Rising from his chair, Peter pushed open the swinging kitchen door to see what the problem was. A grease fire on the stove had jumped onto a wall and was burning out of control. The demon inside of him was like that. It was capable of creating havoc and destruction with little regard for the consequences. It had no conscience, or sense of right and wrong.

He looked straight up. The kitchen ceiling had turned transparent. In the apartment above the restaurant, an older Italian couple was eating a late breakfast. In the apartment next door, four women were playing gin rummy while chatting away. Next door to them, a young mother was nursing a newborn. The building’s other apartment units were also occupied. So was the apartment building next door. It was filled with people, maybe fifty in all.

They were all about to die.

Within moments, the fire would be as hot as a nova, and eat through the structure with the speed of a runaway train. Once that happened, there would be no stopping it. It would race up the walls of both buildings, becoming so hot that the bricks would catch fire. The occupants of both buildings would hear a loud whoosh! like the sound of wind passing through a tunnel. That would be the last thing they heard. No a soul would be spared.

The fire trucks would come, and the city’s bravest would give battle to the roaring flames, but it would be too little, too late. The block between 26th and 27th streets would be destroyed, the street’s foundation buckling from the heat. Before it was eventually contained, the fire would destroy tens of millions of dollars in real estate and ruin countless lives.

And Peter knew in his bones that it was no mere accident, that it had been his temper that had started the fire.

But Peter also knew that the things he started he could stop. It wasn’t easy, but he could do it. He walked into kitchen and faced the burning wall. The fire had eaten through the plaster, and was heading to the second floor. He had a few seconds at most to stop it.

He had to make the demon leave. There was only one way to do that-through his mind. He thought back to when he was a kid, and the Sunday afternoons he’d spent with his father going to see the Yankees play in the Bronx. His father had showered him with attention, and bought him baseball caps and hot dogs and anything else his heart had desired. They were his fondest childhood memories, and he could not help but smile.

The demon began to recede into the deepest regions of his soul. It was like pushing back a boulder, and took all his strength. As it did, the flames rolled down the wall and returned to the frying pan on the stove. The heat vanished, and the choking smoke evaporated like fog being burned off by the sun. The room returned to normal in the blink of an eye.

Even Peter had to marvel at the illusion.

Liza stood at the open door with her hand over her mouth.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Did you do that?”

“I sure did,” he said.

He heard voices. The owner and his son were coming back. Peter couldn’t explain what he’d just done without exposing his psychic powers to them.

“Stall them,” he told her.

“What?”

“You heard me. Stall them. Please.”

Liza turned around and blocked the owner and his son and from entering. Peter found a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and he quickly doused the room with white foam until the interior looked as if a snowstorm had hit it.

“All clear,” he called out.

Liza stepped away from the doorway, and they rushed in. The owner clapped his hands together joyously, and embraced the young magician.

“Thank you for saving my restaurant,” he exclaimed.

The police were the first to show up, followed by a fire truck and an ambulance, then more police, followed by a gaggle of onlookers. Peter had wanted to bolt, but did not want to raise eyebrows. So he gave a statement to a uniformed cop, and asked if he could leave. The cop said okay, and they headed up Lexington Avenue with their heads bowed to the punishing wind.

“Did you cause that fire to happen?” Liza asked, her hands tucked in her pockets.

“I think so. I was mad.”

“Bad things happen when you get angry.”

“I’ve never burned down a building before. I know that sounds juvenile, but it’s true.”

“I believe you. But there could always be a first time.”