William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

“What’s the book?” I said.

“Alekhine.”

“God bless you.”

“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you keep your mouth closed so we don’t learn just how stupid you really be?” A chuckle from the onlookers. “I’ll let you move first, seeing as you’ll need every advantage you can take.”

“You know, I’ve played before,” I said.

“I suppose you probably screwed before, too, don’t mean you know what you doing.”

The men watching laughed out loud.

“Go ahead,” he said.

I surveyed the board, nodded a bit, pushed the pawn in front of my knight two spaces.

“You might as well give me that five right now,” said Horace with a chuckle.

“I made one move.”

“One was enough,” he said, and then proceeded to beat me bloodless in just a few short minutes. The men around him cackled as his queen sliced through my defenses with alarming savagery and checkmated my king.

“Again?” I said as I held out the five.

Horace shrugged, snapped up the bill, set up the board. The men who had been watching shook their heads at my stupidity and dispersed. My chess had been so ugly they couldn’t bear to stand through another game.

“Go ahead, boy,” said Horace. “Make your move.”

I reached into my jacket pocket, took out a folded document, dropped it on the board.

I watched carefully as Horace T. Grant read the order appointing me as counsel to Tanya Rose, a minor, location unknown. There was something in his face, something soft where I had never seen softness in him, something trembling just beneath the surface.

“I need your help,” I said.

It could have taken me weeks to find the exact location of the fortune-teller named Anna that Julia Rose had told me about. I would have called some cops I knew in the district, I would have checked out the Yellow Pages under “Tellers, Fortune,” I would have gone door-to-door in the general vicinity asking the question, and let me tell you, going door-to-door as a stranger in a strange neighborhood asking about someone who’s a stranger to you and a neighbor to them is not the most pleasant or efficient way to maintain your teeth. It could have taken me weeks to find her, if I found her at all.

I gave Horace T. Grant my phone, and he had the exact address in ten minutes.

“She’s in that there house,” barked Horace.

I had followed his directions, had parked where he told me to park. Now we sat in my car across the street from a sagging brick row house with a long stoop. “The old lady’s got herself the entire first floor.”

“Does she know we’re coming?” I said.

“Don’t be a dumb cluck. Of course she does. She’s a fortune-teller.”

“I meant, do you think any of the people you talked to might have tipped her as to what we were after?”

“I didn’t tell none of them what we wanted with her. Just said I had a fortune that needed telling. You think the girl’s in there?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but if the old lady knew we were looking for her, I’m pretty sure she would have packed her off somewhere before we showed up. You get any more information about this Anna other than her age?”

“Just that she’s got deep connections in the spirit world.”

“Why don’t I find that comforting?”

“Because,” said Horace, “you don’t believe in anything beyond your own infinite ignorance.”

“And you, I can tell, are much more at one with the great mysteries of the universe.”

“I like to think I have a spiritual dimension to my nature. I’m a churchgoing Baptist, if you need to know. Besides being good for the soul, it helps keep me regular. And let me tell you this, boy, you been on this earth as long as I have, you learn there ain’t nothing much more important in life than keeping regular.”

“Thank you for that advice.”

“No charge for it neither. But this Anna, she’s nothing but a charlatan. The only fortune worth telling is that we’re all going to die, and I don’t need no witch to tell me that.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “And, Horace, let me do the talking.”

“Oh, I intend to. Nothing more entertaining than watching a young fool trip all over his own damn self.”

We stepped slowly up the cracked cement stairs and then across the bending floorboards of the porch. Beside her door was a clay medallion of a cherub’s face. The cherub was smiling, but its expression was more doleful than glad, and its eyes were blazing with some awful certainty. It was disconcerting seeing it sitting there staring, as if it were looking into my soul and not liking what it found. Hell, I didn’t blame it, but still. I looked away as I pressed the doorbell. I didn’t hear anything inside, so I banged lightly on the door. I was about to bang harder when it slowly opened just a crack.

“What you want?” said a whispery voice from inside.

“We’re looking for Anna,” I said.

“What you want with Madam Anna?”

“We just have some questions,” I said.

“You the two men she expecting?”

I looked at Horace.

“What two men?” he said.

“A young one and an old one.”

“I suppose, then,” said Horace, “that would be us.”

The door opened wider. A thin old woman with wild, straggly hair and one milky eye stepped forward into the light. “Tell me your names.”

“I’m Victor Carl,” I said. “He’s Horace.”

“Come on in, then, Victor Carl. And you, too, Horace,” she said, stepping aside. “You got any cell phones, you better turn them off now. Madam don’t like radio waves slipping into her home. They interfere with her readings.”

I took out my phone, pressed the off button until the light went dead, and followed her inside.

We were swallowed by the gloom of the apartment’s parlor. Pushed to the walls were a pair of shaggy couches, a passel of old chairs, a high and heavy breakfront. A hooked rug lay like a beaten corpse in the middle of the floor. And all of it was covered by a thick layer of dust and the twining scents of must and incense. It was a room for meetings of unnameable associations, for bizarre sacrificial rites involving roosters and snakes. I looked around for any sign of a child’s presence, dolls or toys or small shoes; there was none. But if this Anna had actually been expecting us, then maybe Horace had slipped up in his inquiries and she knew what we wanted. It wouldn’t be a trick to clean the place of the girl’s presence for our visit.

“Wait,” said the woman, standing now at the far side of the room. We waited as she slipped through a doorway. A moment later she came back out, leaving the door open for us. “Have a seat, and Madam Anna will be with you shortly.”

She watched us carefully with her one good eye as we stepped through the opening, and then she closed the door behind us.

The room we found ourselves in was small and dark, devoid of windows, with two doors. The walls were painted a glossy maroon and covered with strange symbols painted in yellow: swirls and stars and staring eyes. Set in the middle of the room, surrounded by four chairs, was a round table painted a pale blue, with the same yellow symbols. The flames of three thick candles, each placed in the center of a yellow star on the table, provided the only light. A stick of incense smoldered, the air thick with mystery.

I looked at Horace T. Grant in the flickering candlelight, tilted my head, widened my eyes. “I see dead people.”

“Shut your mouth, boy. This place gives me the creeps enough without you adding the horror of your sense of humor.”

We both pulled out chairs and sat and waited. And waited. I checked my watch. I sneezed at the incense. I tapped my foot. Horace, sitting next to me, was literally twiddling his thumbs.