James Swain - Shadow People

“I’m sorry I’m acting like such a turd,” she said.

“No need to apologize my dear. I wasn’t very tactful.”

“How will I know?”

“About Peter? You will see the change. It will not be pleasant to watch.”

“You mean he’ll grow ugly like he does when he gets angry?”

“This will be more severe. He will physically alter himself. It will not be pretty, to say the least.”

Holly brought her hand up to her mouth. “Have you seen him do this?”

“Yes, when Peter was a little boy. It occurred the night his parents died. The demon inside of him fully took over. It was like he turned himself inside out.”

“Did it affect your relationship with Peter?”

“It most certainly did. And it will change your relationship with him as well.”

Holly swallowed hard. “How can you be so certain?”

Her aunt smiled the way adults do when they’re talking to children. Her image in the mirror began to fade and turned a foggy whitish color. Just wait, her eyes seem to say.

“Do as I say for once,” Milly said, and then was gone.

Holly parted the blinds and gazed at the city’s canopy of blinking lights. Had she fallen in love with a monster? Or just someone who was frightfully different? Better to know what she was getting into right now, she supposed, than to get surprised down the road.

She had talked herself into it. She would scry on Peter and discover his terrible secret, her aunt’s warning be damned.

Like many New Yorkers, Peter’s sense of direction was useless once he stepped off the island of Manhattan, and he paid scant attention as Garrison followed the signs for the Cross Bronx Expressway and West 178th Street as he drove up the West Side Highway. Liza sat in the backseat, studying a traffic app on her iPhone. “This doesn’t clear up until the George Washington Bridge. We’re never going to get there.”

Garrison slapped a flashing red light on the dashboard and punched his horn. The lines of cars in front of them parted like the Red Sea, and the FBI agent began to weave between lanes with the skill of a NASCAR driver.

“That’s more like it,” Garrison said.

Peter rode shotgun and stared at the highway. His hands had grown sweaty and he felt nervous in anticipation of finally meeting Munns in the flesh. The greatest mass murderers in history were all associated with the Devil in some way, and there was no question in his mind that Munns would put up a terrible fight when the police tried to arrest him.

“You scared?” Garrison asked.

“A little,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Not really. I’ve dealt with serial killers before.”

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck stood up. Hadn’t he warned Garrison about the dangers that Munns posed? Munns was capable of causing more harm than Garrison could possibly imagine. “If you’re not careful, he’ll kill every cop in Pelham, and you and me as well.”

“Come on. Doc Munns is an angry little man. Most serial killers are.”

“What do you know about him?” Peter asked.

Garrison stopped talking long enough to merge onto the I-95 Lower Level North/George Washington Bridge exit out of the city. The sound of the bridge’s metal grating beneath their wheels was oddly soothing. “The chief of the Pelham Police Department said Munns was a troubled soul. His parents were alcoholics who abused their son. They made him live in the basement and didn’t let him eat with them. They also made him work around the house and do a lot of manual labor. He went to school in dirty clothes without lunch money.”

“Sounds like they tortured him,” Liza said from the backseat.

“That came later,” Garrison said.

“His childhood got worse?”

“Yes, unfortunately. When Munns was a teenager, his father got laid off work, and started hitting the bottle. He and his wife used to sit around the house all day, collect welfare checks, and get blistered. They convinced Munns to quit high school, and get a full-time job so they could pay their bills and support themselves in the lifestyle to which they’d become accustomed. It was a crummy thing to do, but that’s what kind of people they were.

“At first, Munns wouldn’t do it. He had dreams of going to college and being a medical doctor. One day, he came to school with a black eye and a busted front tooth. Everyone knew who had given it to him.”

“His father,” Liza said.

“That’s right, his father. Munns dropped out of high school, and took a job driving a truck. The money wasn’t good, and the family barely scraped by. On weekends, the police were often called to the house to settle domestic arguments. Munns’s father was beating up his son pretty regularly, and should have gone to jail, only Munns wouldn’t play ball with the cops.”

“So he was loyal,” Peter said.

“That he was,” Garrison said. “But that all changed one day. Munns got a phone call from a lady with the Social Security office in Washington. A woman claiming to be Munns’s birth mother was looking for him. Did Munns want to talk with her?”

“Wait a second,” Liza said, leaning through the seats. “The people who were torturing and treating him like a slave weren’t really his parents?”

“No, they weren’t. His biological mother gave Munns up for adoption when he was two years old. The torturers were his adoptive parents.”

“That’s so sick. What did Munns do?”

“That’s the strange part. He did nothing to his parents, and in fact, continued to care for them when they became sick and eventually died. The people he took his anger out with were his neighbors and other people who lived in Pelham.”

“Why? They weren’t responsible.”

“That’s not how Munns saw it. The townspeople knew he was being abused, and they also knew that his parents weren’t really his parents, yet they turned their backs and didn’t step in. Munns held that against them. Still does.”

“How old is he?” Peter asked.

“Munns is forty-eight years old. Is that important?”

Munns had been carrying his anger around for a long time. It had corrupted his soul and erased any semblance of decency. His joining the Order of Astrum and taking his anger out on the world by killing innocent women was yet another chapter in his sick life. But were those women the people Munns was really after? Peter didn’t think so. It was the citizens of Pelham he wanted to pay back, every last one of them. By joining the Order, Munns had been given the means to accomplish his grisly task, and one day he eventually would. Had that day arrived?

“You need to drive faster,” Peter implored.

“I’m already doing seventy-five,” the FBI agent replied.

“Faster.”

Garrison floored the accelerator and the vehicle lurched ahead. Peter watched the exit signs as they flashed by, praying they were not too late.

The exit for Mt. Vernon/Pelham appeared just as Garrison’s cell phone let out a sonic blast. He yanked it from his pocket and took the call. He listened for several seconds and made an ugly face. “What? When did this happen?”

Peter could have waited for Garrison to hang up and explain what was going on, or he could plumb the agent’s thoughts and find out himself. Liza’s hand came up and squeezed his arm. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

“A rookie cop in Pelham spotted Munns at the train station,” he whispered back. “He was asking a dispatcher for backup when he got cut off. Munns may have gotten away.”

“Ugh,” Liza said.

Garrison finished his call. “Quit reading my mind. I don’t like it.”

“Sorry. Just trying to save time.”