Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

Jim nodded. “She wasn’t here to tell him.”

“I’m dreaming,” she said, and that was the only alternative, wasn’t it? She was dreaming, because this was impossible. If she spent some time and started thinking back, she’d reach the moment when she’d fallen asleep, and perhaps that would wake her again. She’d snap back into the world she knew and feel her hair with one hand, blond and cut short, not pink and spiked up. And with the other hand she’d clasp her unpierced breast, and then lift her sleeve to see the smooth, non-tattooed skin of her upper arm. But she could not think back to that moment because it did not exist. Even if she was dreaming, she might well be here forever.

“Look,” she said, turning the car’s interior light on and lifting her sleeve. It was a Celtic band, intricate and beautifully wrought.

“But you hate needles nearly as much as I do,” he said softly. He didn’t sound surprised.

“Tell me about it,” she said. It had been a constant joke between them-one that Jenny always found a little weird-that she’d never liked pricks. She glanced around quickly and lifted her T-shirt. She was braless, something else she’d rarely done before. The light glinted from the ring in her nipple.

“Shit, Trix,” Jim said, startled and embarrassed for a moment. Then he saw the piercing and looked up at her as she lowered the top again.

“Fucking hate needles,” she said. She nodded down at his lap. “Think you should be checking?”

Jim smiled. It was good to see. The surreal, gentle moment of humor amid such trauma lasted only for a second, but that second seemed to clear her head a little, and in that space an idea began to form.

“Okay, my place,” she said again. “We can’t stay sitting in the car forever.”

“Right,” Jim said, and he placed both hands on the wheel.

“Er… best to start the motor.”

“Yeah.” But he made no move to turn the key, just staring ahead at the building before them. A couple passed along the sidewalk arm in arm, and Trix watched Jim’s eyes follow them. He and Jenny had a strong, safe marriage, and she knew that even though she was sitting here with him right now-the only person he’d found to acknowledge the impossible thing that had happened-he must be feeling very alone.

“It’s okay,” Trix said, and she felt tears burning behind her eyes. But she had to keep them in, because Jim was suffering more. He’d lost his entire family.

“That’s our home,” he said.

“And it will be tomorrow. But maybe for tonight it will be best to stay at mine.”

“What if they come back?” he said. “What if they find their way home and I’m not there, Trix?”

Trix had no real answer for that, though she thought: Wherever we are, Jenny and Holly have never been here. It was an odd idea, and it shocked her to think that maybe she and Jim had gone somewhere else instead of the other way around. But in some respects it seemed to fit. This was not the exact world she had known a few hours ago-there were differences close to her and Jim, and those changes must stretch farther afield-and she dreaded what she would discover when she arrived home. “Losing it won’t help them,” she said. “We need to recharge. Think it through. And maybe find someone who can help.”

“Someone?” he asked. Trix just shrugged. She remembered everything they had to do, and where they had to go. That is, if the Trix she was now would even consider such things.

“I’ll come back later,” he said, nodding at the apartment. “Tomorrow. I’ll come back.”

“Good plan,” she said.

Jim started the car and drove them across the city, and Trix watched from the windows. She searched frantically for signs of something being as wrong out there as it felt inside, but the shop names were the same. Dunkin’ Donuts wasn’t spelled differently, and the mix of old and new Boston architecture presented familiar facades. They passed Monument Square, and the Bunker Hill Monument looked exactly the same as before. But Trix couldn’t tell how high it was, nor could she read the inscriptions or identify the face on the statue standing before it.

Boston looks just the same, she thought. It’s just us who are different. But that wasn’t quite true, either. Jim’s agent, Jonathan, was dying. The brain cancer that had been cured due to Jenny’s involvement years before had run riot, and soon it would take him. “Because Jenny’s not here, and never has been,” she whispered.

“What?” It had started raining, and Jim turned on the wipers. They whispered left and screeched right, a rhythmic gasp and moan.

“Jenny and Holly,” she said. “I was just thinking aloud. It’s not just that they’re gone now, but that they’ve been gone…” Forever, she almost said. But that was too final. “Their past has been stolen, as well as their present.”

“And their future?” he asked, voice breaking on the last word.

“I’m going to help you,” Trix said. She eyed Jim in the car’s dark interior, wondering how much he had changed and where. He seemed a little thinner than before, perhaps a bit more heavily muscled, facial structure more defined. He’s a bachelor; he’ll want to take care of himself more so that the women flock to him. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and something about the familiar smells of Boston-wet streets, car fumes, coffee, and a suggestion of Italian food-calmed her. At least the city smelled the same.

As they neared the old townhouse on St. Botolph Street-not far from Symphony Hall-where she had her apartment, Trix sat up and clasped her hands in her lap. She checked out the cars parked along the sidewalks and recognized some of them. She saw a tall, thin woman walking her standard poodle along the street and went to wave. But would Mrs. Wilkinson recognize her with her pink hair and punky gear? In this world, yeah, Trix thought. It’s only me who doesn’t recognize myself. She lowered her window and leaned out to put that to the test, but by then they’d passed Mrs. Wilkinson and Jim was pulling up at the curb.

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

“No, Jim, it’s okay, I’ll-”

“I’m coming with you!” His tone invited no dispute. She tried to smile, and he reached out and squeezed her hand. “Trix,” he said. “Whatever we find…” He looked past her at the building.

“I know,” she said. “Whatever we find, I’m still me.” She opened the car door, got out, and stood waiting on the sidewalk, staring at her apartment’s drawn curtains. They did not look familiar. And when she ran up the three steps and checked the nameplate beside her buzzer, she groaned and leaned against the wall.

“It doesn’t mean…,” Jim began.

Trix went to try her key in the front door, but it had been left unlocked and drifted open as she leaned against it. Inside, she heard music emanating from her apartment. The harsh, thrashy guitars, drums, and growling lyrics of the Dropkick Murphys. You couldn’t be young and living in Boston and not know the Dropkicks, but they had always been a bit too brash for her taste. “Jim,” she said, “I always open my curtains in the morning.”

“Maybe not this morning.”

This morning I was someone else, she thought, and she swayed as unreality washed over her. She felt Jim’s hand steadying her and leaned into him, and then a horrible sense of anticipation lit inside her chest. Who am I going to find in there? she wondered. In her real life in the real world she hadn’t had a girlfriend for over a year, since her last long-term relationship had ended badly. And as Jim’s hand rested against her upper arm, a startling, electrifying certainty hit her.

This was a world with different rules. Perhaps here Jenny loved her as much as she loved Jenny.