Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

“Holly will be her priority. She’ll be trying to figure out what the fuck has happened, but she’ll be steered by Holly. They’ll have to eat, and have somewhere to sleep. And if they can’t find anyone who knows them, it’ll be a hotel.”

“Providing she came through with money.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “And providing the currency here is still dollars.” He wondered what would happen when it came time to pay the cabdriver. He reckoned he had fifty bucks in his pocket, but would the driver recognize the president on Jim’s currency? And beyond that… would they have to steal? And if they were arrested, what story could they give? Their names here matched those of long-dead children.

As they left the North End, Jim took more notice of their surroundings, leaving the problems of money and identity until later. The overall impression he’d gleaned from that brief look at this new Boston’s skyline was becoming more refined now, and initially he was surprised by how little had really changed. The JFK Federal Building was still there, which told him plenty, and Boston Common was still a welcome oasis of nature within the city. It was across the Common, roughly in the theater district, that the cathedral they’d seen from the house rose toward the night sky. It was well illuminated by display spotlights, proudly flaunting its magnificence over the lower buildings surrounding it.

“That is massive,” Trix said, and Jim realized she was leaning across the backseat with him to get a better view.

“What’s the cathedral’s name?” Jim shouted, taking a risk. The driver glanced curiously at him in the mirror, then grinned again and switched into a new, even more verbose mode. Tourists, he must have thought, and Jim vowed to keep an eye on their route.

“That’s the world-famous Cathedral of Saint Mary in the Park, and that in front of it is Saint Mary’s Park. Green an’ lovely, even at night.” He turned the music down, and Trix glanced at Jim and raised her eyebrows. What have you started? But this was good. They needed information, needed to know what this Boston held for them. And who better to ask than a taxi driver?

“Almost thirty years to build, and fourteen souls taken into the cathedral’s bosom,” the driver said. “If you visit it on your stay, make sure you take a look at the shrine in there, built to those brave souls. Beautiful, it is.” He looked in the mirror again, the smile slipping.

“Where are you from?” Trix asked.

“Well, you’re asking me two different things there, young lady,” the driver said, his good humor restored. “As to where I was born, that was Cork back in the home country. But where I’m from?” He waved both hands around him, holding the wheel with his knees. “Lived here since I was three years old, and never been back. So anyone asks where I’m from, I say Boston. Who wouldn’t, eh?”

“Who indeed,” Jim said. A few raindrops speckled the cab’s windows, smearing his image of the cathedral, and he wondered whether Jenny and Holly were getting wet in the same shower.

“You’re here visiting?” the driver asked.

“Looking for someone,” Jim said. Trix tapped his leg, but he moved her hand aside. Why shouldn’t he tell the truth?

“Who’s that, then? Maybe I can help.”

“I doubt it. So… I haven’t been to Boston before, would you believe? The Irish influence is big?”

“You kiddin’ me?” the driver asked. “It’s way beyond just influence. Some of them”-he waved both hands again, a gesture that Jim thought perhaps the man used all the time, but which he was sure would wrap them around a lamppost within the next mile-“… New Yorkers. Y’know? There’s Irish there, for sure, but none of them are really Irish.” He looked in the mirror again. “You’re not New Yorkers?”

“Baltimore,” Trix said, and the driver nodded.

“Knew it. Baltimore. Good city. This one, though, yeah, heavy Irish influences. The best pubs in the States are here, and the best of them are run by guys who’ve come over from the home country to escape the Troubles.”

“The Troubles are”- over, Jim wanted to say, but the man was staring at him in the rearview mirror yet again-“terrible,” he said.

“Got that right,” the man said, voice more cautious now. “Since they started blowin’ up planes and trains… well, Boston’s like the Ireland that should’ve been. Peaceful. Mainly.” They were heading southwest toward Jim’s apartment, and as the streets flitted by left and right he found himself growing increasingly nervous rather than excited. He fully expected to find no sign of his wife and daughter at that address, and that should move him on in his search. But there was something else niggling at him.

He glanced over his shoulder into the glaring headlamps behind them.

“You, too?” Trix asked softly.

“What?”

“Getting the sense we’re being followed?”

“Yeah. Ever since…”

“We came through.”

“Probably the least of our worries. We’re dealing with this,” Jim said. “Coping. I don’t know how, or why, but we are.”

“The why is because this is for Jenny and Holly. We’ve come through to look for them, and that’s making us strong.”

“So what about them?” Jim asked, and his voice broke. What about them? They were dragged through; they didn’t come through of their own accord, with their own aims in mind. They didn’t understand like he and Trix. They had no inkling of what was going on. What could the trauma of this do to them?

“They’ll be fine,” Trix said.

“You can’t know that.”

“No, and I can’t say anything else. Just believe it.” She glanced behind them, then back at him.

“Unsettled, that’s all,” he said softly. “With all that’s happened, all the weirdness. No one’s following us. They can’t be.”

“Right,” Trix said, meaning it to sound emphatic. But to Jim she just sounded scared.

They settled close together in the backseat, not quite touching but drawing strength from proximity. And ten minutes later they pulled up outside what should have been Jim’s home, and he knew already that things here were very different. Through the rain-speckled windows he could see that Tallulah’s still took up the first floor, but above that the floors were dark, several windows boarded up, and it felt nowhere like home.

For a moment Jim wondered whether Miranda was still the restaurant hostess, and what her reaction would be were she to see him. But there would be no reaction. Back in the Boston he knew, she had been his friend and, after Jenny’s disappearance, apparently his erstwhile lover. But in this Boston he would be unknown. He had never been here before, and to attempt to imprint his memories on this place would be futile. And maybe even dangerous.

“It would have been too strange,” Trix said, leaning into Jim to see from his side window.

“Yeah. But this would have been the first place she’d come.”

“They’ve been gone for half a day.”

“And I doubt she’d have hung around.”

“So where to if you’re not getting out here, pal?” the driver asked. There was an edge to his voice now, nervousness or tension, as if he could suddenly sense that things were not quite right.

“Just… drive on,” Jim said. And he thought, Where to indeed? Where would Jenny go once she had been here, and seen the differences? Trying to put himself in her head was just too traumatic, because the confusion and terror she must be feeling were shattering. Instead, he started to analyze her probable approach objectively.

“After here, she’d go to your place,” Jim said.

Trix’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but then she nodded. “Yeah. But… I’m not sure I want to go there myself.”