Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

A roar of pain rose from the bar, becoming a scream. The pounding stopped in a violent splintering of wood, and Peter O’Brien’s voice fell silent.

Trix slipped up beside Jim, reaching out to stop him from opening the door. “What the hell are we doing?” she whispered.

She didn’t need to explain. Jim wondered the same thing. From the sound of it, whatever was going on downstairs wasn’t some simple bar fight.

“He’s our best chance of finding them!” Jim whispered back.

Trix nervously licked her lips, then nodded.

Jim tore the door open and burst through it, running down the stairs, wielding the crystal lamp like a club. Trix came right behind him. He had a moment to wonder if she was thinking what he was thinking-that they were batshit crazy, that these were piss-poor weapons-and then the silence in the bar was broken by a human voice. It might have been O’Brien’s, but the big Irishman sounded very small now. “Don’t,” the voice pleaded. “You’ll destroy it all.”

As they hit the curve in the stairwell, the words were punctuated with a terrible crash. Jim leaped the last few steps-there was no door, only an archway leading into the bar-and as he stepped into O’Brien’s, music started to play. Flogging Molly’s “Cruel Mistress.” He knew it well.

“Jesus,” Trix whispered as she stepped into the bar behind him.

The place was a ruin of overturned tables, broken chairs, and shattered glass, but Jim only got a glimpse of the wreckage-and the blood on the brass bar rail-before he noticed something shift near the huge square saw-toothed space where the plate-glass front window had once been. A figure stood amid the shattered glass, the puzzle of partially painted fragments that had once spelled out O’BRIEN’S in green and gold among them. Taller than a man, it was nevertheless shaped like one. A silver shadow, it seemed to have simply appeared there, standing atop the debris.

No. It was there, he thought. You just didn’t see it at first.

“What are they?” Trix asked, her voice a fearful rasp.

Jim blinked, and he saw that she was right. Beyond the demolished front of the bar, two more of the wraiths stood out in the street, faceless silhouettes who seemed somehow still to be looking at him and Trix. Shadows fell upon the smooth slopes of their faces, suggesting eyes and mouth where there were none, only minor ridges that hinted at noses. They were the memories of men, all personality torn away.

Fear clenched at his gut, but Jim took two steps toward the thing still inside the bar, feeling the weight of the crystal lamp in his hand. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, though he thought that Trix’s what was indeed a better question.

In the distance, sirens wailed, coming nearer. Jim held his breath. For the first time since he had fled a high school keg party where weed and coke had been in plentiful supply, he feared the arrival of the police. In this world, he and Trix didn’t even exist. They were the ultimate illegal aliens.

“Why did you do this?” Trix shouted at them.

The music from the jukebox changed to the Von Bondies’ “C’mon, C’mon,” and Jim glanced toward the source and nearly retched. Peter O’Brien’s lower torso and legs stuck out from beneath the heavy machinery, its glass case spiderwebbed with cracks but somehow not caved in.

“Jim!” Trix cried.

He turned, raising the lamp, thinking he had to defend himself, but she hadn’t shouted because they were under attack. She’d yelled in surprise.

The wraiths were gone.

“Did you see which way they went?” Jim asked, taking a few steps toward the front of the bar, glass crunching underfoot.

Trix didn’t move. “I’m not sure they went anywhere.”

Jim glanced over his shoulder at her. “What?”

She gestured with the iron. “They just… moved. First the one inside. Like it took a step and just… walked out of the world. Then the others went, too. How the hell do we know they’re really gone?”

Jim stared at the spot on the partially painted glass fragments where the first wraith had been standing. He moved to the left, trying to look at the space from different angles, but saw nothing. His heart pounded in his chest, full of fear of something he couldn’t see.

The sirens grew louder. A dog barked. Inside the bar, liquor dripped from broken bottles and beer from busted taps. The smell of it filled the place. A cold weight settled on his heart. This might not be his Boston, but it was not make-believe. This was a real city, with ordinary people who lived ordinary lives. He would have given anything to be one of them again-anything but the family he had lost. They were worth any sacrifice. “Screw it,” he said, dropping the crystal lamp, which broke apart when it hit the floor.

He walked toward O’Brien’s broken body. The racks of liquor bottles behind the bar had been decimated. Half of the mirror had fallen away, and the rest clung to the wall like the blade of a guillotine. The brass bar rail was bent and smeared with O’Brien’s blood, and red splashes of his life dotted the wooden floor.

“What now?” Trix said, and he heard a thunk behind him as she cast aside the iron. The optimism she had been trying so hard to project had been forgotten. “Jim, we’ve got to get out of here. We can’t afford to be questioned by the cops.”

“We’re going,” Jim said. But he made no move to leave. Instead, he moved closer to the Oracle of this Irish Boston, picturing Peter O’Brien’s face, still hearing the amiable bear of a man’s voice in his head. A couple of hours, that was all he had said he needed, and then he would have tracked down Jenny and Holly. How many years, even decades, had this man been the Oracle? And then within an hour or two of them showing up he was dead.

Oh, you bitch, Jim had heard him say, and he looked around for the letter, keen to see what it had contained.

O’Brien’s legs shifted.

“Jesus!” Jim shouted, staggering backward.

“Did he just move?” Trix asked, freaking out.

“Definitely,” Jim said.

O’Brien shifted again. His skull and upper chest had been crushed beneath the jukebox. No way could he survive that. Almost as if Jim had wished him dead, O’Brien’s legs settled and went still, and he knew that what they had just seen had been the man’s final throes.

Trix grabbed his arm. “Jim. We have to go!”

He nodded, backing away. Together they hurried to the door, only to find it locked from the inside. The wraiths had come in through the plate-glass window, with its painted letters and stylized shamrock. Jim unlocked the door and tugged it open, and he and Trix slipped out of the bar.

Along the street, the first police car sped around the corner.

“Don’t run,” Trix snapped.

Taking his hand, she led him away from the bar as though they were lovers out for a stroll. But Jim saw faces at windows, and people standing on the opposite sidewalk-it must be near last call by now, but they had spilled out of Dwyer’s New Dublin Pub just up the street-and already fingers were being pointed. Some of the spectators were shouting questions at them. A couple of them, wearing Boston Celtics basketball jerseys, started crossing the street.

“We waited too long,” Jim said, knowing that every moment they weren’t spending trying to find Jenny and Holly, the trail was getting that much colder.

Trix squeezed his hand. “Okay. Now we run.”

And that was when the earthquake hit.

Trix put her hands out as if learning to surf. The street bucked hard beneath their feet, then harder still. This was no mere tremor. Panicked people flooded from Dwyer’s New Dublin, across the street. The ground lurched up and then dropped, again and again, as though some wicked toddler had made it his toy and intended to shake it until it broke. The police car skidded to a halt, slewing sideways as a rift opened in the pavement.