James Swain - Shadow People

Utterly embarrassed, Holly stared at the floor. He wanted things to go back to the way they used to be, and gave her a hug.

“Can’t we just be friends?” he asked.

She started to cry. He hated when she did that. He got a paper towel from the kitchen, and wiped away the tears. She looked vulnerable now and more than a little afraid. He grabbed the bag with the remaining necklace and went to the front door. She followed him as if blind.

“Good-bye. I’ll call you in a few days,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to explain?” she blurted out.

“Explain what?”

“You were under a spell.”

He waited, certain there was more.

“No one can break a witch’s spell. It’s not possible.”

“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

“Be serious, Peter. How did you do that?”

There were certain things that even Peter didn’t understand about himself. Like how he moved objects with his mind or set off car alarms or made cups of coffee boil or flames jump off kitchen stoves. At the most unexpected of times these things just happened, and he never knew why. His temper was partially responsible, but there was another reason, and he had yet to fathom its meaning. Now he had another strange power to add to the list. He could not be kept under a witch’s spell. It pleased him to know that Holly could not make him her prisoner, and he hugged her before going out the door.

Ray was freaking out.

What if someone came, and saw Jucko’s headless body lying on the ground? They’d most certainly call the police, and he and Doc Munns would be arrested and sent to jail. He could not let that happen, not unless he wished to anger the Order of Astrum.

Ray was more afraid of the elders of the Order than he was of the police, or of going to jail, or just about anything else he could think of. He’d seen the kind of horror the elders were capable of wreaking upon people in their service who did not perform up to their standards. They were brutal, and he had made it a point to never make them angry.

Ray made Munns get into the passenger side of the van. Munns had calmed down and was reverting back to his old self. The transformation was as startling as it was remarkable One moment, he was the embodiment of a beast that had guarded the gates of hell for over two thousand years; the next, he was a pudgy slob, and easily the world’s biggest loser.

“Stay here,” Ray said.

“What’s going on? What happened?” Munns asked, sounding bewildered.

“You don’t know?”

“No. Did I kill Jucko?”

“You cut his head off. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Ray went about cleaning up the mess. He dragged Jucko’s body into Munns’s storage unit, near the footlockers that contained Munns’s previous victims. Then he threw in Jucko’s head. Keeping the victims in airtight footlockers had seemed like a good idea, until now. The bodies were a liability, and Ray wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them, or with Jucko. He’d think of something, it was just going to take a little time.

Ray had known that Munns had problems when he’d first recruited him. Men who killed had troubled pasts, which was why they killed. It was sweet revenge for all the terrible things that had happened to them growing up.

Munns’s childhood had been a living hell. Ray had heard the stories from the people in town. Munns’s parents were no-good drunks who’d taken turns torturing him. One day his father was beating the snot out of him while his mother looked on; the very next, Mom was giving him the belt while Dad smoked a butt and watched. Beating their son had been a sick sport that had lasted for many years. It had stunted Munns’s growth and left psychological scars that no amount of time would ever heal.

That was Munns’s story, at least part of it. There was another sordid chapter, although Ray had never gotten the details. Something had happened when Munns was a teenager that had been the icing on the cake. It was so ugly, that at times Munns lost control, and did crazy things, like try to run over townspeople’s dogs.

Ray had known all these things about Munns, yet still had recruited him into the Order. In hindsight, it now seemed a mistake. Munns was too imperfect for the job, too flawed. The Order did not tolerate mistakes, and Ray would pay for his lack of judgment.

As Ray started to leave the unit, the sliding metal door clanged shut in his face, throwing the interior into darkness. The door wouldn’t budge. Was Munns playing a trick on him?

“Let me out!” he said, banging on the door with his palm.

A scraping sound made him jump. Something was crawling across the floor. He dug out his lighter and flicked it on.

He gasped. Jucko’s severed head was rolling across the floor by itself. Coming to its own body, it stopped. Before Ray’s disbelieving eyes, the tendons and sinew rejoined in perfect union, and the dismembered corpse became whole again.

Jucko stood up. His face was lifeless, his eyes unblinking. Ray had thought he knew evil. But now, he realized he didn’t know evil at all. The evil he knew was clever and sly and played wicked tricks on the world. The evil standing before him was different. It was pure, and came straight from the depths of hell.

“Give me your lighter,” came a ghostly voice out of Jucko’s mouth.

Ray hesitated. He did not want the room to return to darkness. Then his imagination would take over, and he’d lose his sanity.

“No,” he squeaked.

“Do as I say. It’s for your own good,” the voice said.

The voice of reason, coming out of a dead man’s mouth. Ray reluctantly handed over the lighter. In the dead man’s hand, it turned into a torch, which illuminated the entire room.

The lid to one of the footlockers popped open, and a female corpse climbed out. It was no longer shrouded in plastic, but wore stylish city clothes and had a skeletal face. The lid to a second footlocker popped open, and a second victim emerged, this one dressed like a much older woman. The dead women stared at Ray with hollow eyes.

Their number gave them away. It was the elders, come to pay him a visit. Ray had never felt more afraid in his life. “Guess I screwed up, huh?” he said.

The unholy trio did not reply.

“I can do better,” Ray promised them. “I swear I can.”

“To who do you swear?” came a voice out of Jucko’s mouth.

“To Satan and everything he stands for.”

“Forever and ever?”

“Yes, forever and ever.”

“Good. There has been a change in plans. We need you to speed up the process. Munns needs to bring the woman named Rachael out on the train sooner. Munns must call this woman, and convince her to come out right away.”

“But everything’s in place for Friday night,” Ray protested. “She’ll become suspicious and start questioning him.”

“Help Munns deal with her suspicions. Work with him.”

“Munns is a basket case. He’ll screw up,” Ray said, speaking his mind.

“We’re giving you another chance,” said the voice. “Make the most of it.”

“You’re crazy,” Ray said under his breath.

“Deal with him,” said the voice.

The two dead women charged across the shed, and pinned Ray against the door. Their bony fingers gripped his arms and held his struggling body in place. The one to his left bit into his cheek and held the flesh between her teeth; the one on his right clamped her teeth down on his earlobe, and tugged on the skin. At any moment, he expected to be eaten alive.

“Care to reconsider?” asked the voice.

Ray took a deep breath, expecting it to be his last. Not once had the elders asked him his opinion. They didn’t care what he thought. He was just a slave.