Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

“And you believe her?”

Jim shrugged.

“Well, then,” Trix said. “If the Irish Boston and the Brahmin Boston just… merged, then there’s another Oracle in the city now.”

Jim whipped the envelope from his pocket. “Her address is on Harrison Avenue. Sally Bennet. Maybe she’ll know. Maybe she’ll be able to find them!”

Jim’s eyes were filled with the desperate knowledge that this was no longer only about them. And Trix understood how heavy that knowledge weighed on him, because she felt it, too. Jenny and Holly’s disappearance had led indirectly to this. And what about those things in the bar, those wraiths? Those things followed us there, she thought, shivering as she remembered the faceless things standing motionless as the earthquake struck. Watching.

In the distance came the grumbling, earthshaking impact of a building’s collapse, and Trix couldn’t help thinking, I’m listening to people die. She remembered watching the Twin Towers struck by hijacked aircraft, and each time the impact was shown on the news that day-again and again, the blossoming explosions as regular as the country’s panicked heartbeat-she’d thought, I’m seeing hundreds of people die, in that single moment. It had been unbearable, and hypnotic.

“Those things,” Jim said. He pushed her gently into a shop doorway, feet crunching over shattered glass. Mannequins wearing expensive clothing had toppled into the street, and behind them the ceiling had come down, broken water pipes spraying the shop’s interior. “They followed us to O’Brien, then killed him while we were asleep. They needed us to come through-it’s like they were waiting for us-and we both felt spooked on our way to O’Brien’s. It was them, watching.”

“Yeah.” Trix nodded.

“So, what if they follow us to Sally Bennet, too? If they kill her, maybe this will happen again.”

Trix closed her eyes. Frowned. Opened them again. “Jim, Veronica gave you their addresses. She knew where they lived.”

“But something in that envelope, or on that note… I heard O’Brien’s reaction when he opened it.” He took the folded sheet from his pocket.

“Just a black dot,” Trix said.

“Maybe not to an Oracle.”

“Something to let them attack him,” Trix said.

“Maybe,” Jim said. “She talked about McGee’s magicks. Maybe this is some of her own.”

“But all this destruction,” Trix said. “Could she possibly want this?”

Jim shivered. “I think we have to at least consider it.

The timing is too fucking convenient otherwise, don’t you think?”

He turned pale, and Trix held his arms and pulled him close. Over his shoulder she saw a family walking along the opposite sidewalk, mother and father on either side of a little girl. They all held hands, and were dressed in smart, dust-covered clothes. The only signs that they had acknowledged the earthquake were the father’s coughing and the little girl looking around with eyes wide open. Trix wondered what they’d been doing out so late, or whether they’d dressed and gone for a walk after the quake had struck.

“We have to warn the Oracle,” he said. He stepped out into the street and looked around for more of the wraiths, scanning street level, then up at the broken windows and the buildings that should not be there. “I can’t see them!” he said to Trix. “Maybe they’ve gone already.”

Trix looked for herself. There was no sign of the wraith-things, but the air was filled with smoke and dust, making a blur of anything more than a hundred steps away.

“Come on,” she said. “We might not have much time.” So they ran. With a destination in mind, and an aim, she tried in vain to distract herself from some of the sights surrounding them. Because the terrible was merged with the impossible, and that did nothing to detract from the awful reality.

Some of the buildings’ facades had tipped outward into the road, exposing the floors and rooms within. Many had collapsed altogether, and the broken roofs of three-story buildings now sat a story above the roadway. Most windows were shattered, and the street was carpeted with glinting glass, smashed tiles, dust, and other debris such as drifting papers, broken bricks, and personal possessions that looked so out of place. I shouldn’t be seeing shoes, Trix thought. I shouldn’t be seeing someone’s bloody nightgown, or a kid’s toy gun, or a music system’s speaker.

Beyond the earthquake destruction was the more unlikely damage. Trix could see the difference between the two, and she was sure that Jim did as well, but to other people on the street it must present a bewildering mystery among the chaos. A car showroom had seemingly appeared, straddling one corner of an old market hall and the narrow parking lot beside it, its walls buckled, forecourt cracked, as if dropped from a height. The cars were familiar models, all of them thrown around as though stirred by some angry god. Inside the showroom, where the finest models were kept, two cars were ablaze. The flames spewed across the ceiling and fingered their way up the showroom’s front facade, plastic sign bubbling. The only words still visible on the sign were BOSTON’S BEST. Around one edge of the incongruous showroom the older, more attractive market had collapsed, and an avalanche of goods was slewed across the street.

Elsewhere on the street, other buildings had collided in the impact of two worlds coming together. A couple were aflame, some had collapsed, but here and there were structures that remained surprisingly undamaged.

To the south, beyond the ragged outline of collapsed rooftops, Trix could make out the ghostly presence of taller buildings that had not been there before. There was the tripod-like building that had burst from the giant cathedral, but closer to them were other structures. She had the sense that these, too, were new, and that before the cataclysm she would have been able to see open sky where they now stood, and that the buildings’ presence here was as invasive as her own. They shimmered through the smoke and reflected firelight from their broken glass and steel facades, giving them the impression of having their own apocalyptic glow. Like giant faces, she thought, and the image sent a cold chill through her.

She’d once spent days walking a certain street in Boston and feeling disconcerted for no reason that she could identify. She’d been convinced that something had changed, but the more she walked that street, the more certain she’d become that something within her had altered, not something without. When she’d finally searched the Internet for images and found photos of the same view, she’d realized that an old clock tower in the distance had been taken down. It was the fresh spread of sky that had disturbed her, a space where there should have been no space, and realization had banished the feeling immediately.

Now it was not something missing that made her so unsettled, but something added. They walked through blocks of houses and residential buildings, many of which had been ruined by the clash between the upscale neighborhood of Irish Boston and the forgotten Southie of Brahmin Boston. Others in the street stared in horror and awe at these invading structures. The sense of panic was palpable, its incidental music the screams and cries of those injured or bereaved.

For long blocks they walked, attempting to reach Harrison Avenue, with no chance of any taxi picking them up now. When they reached the intersection at West Fourth Street and Dorchester Avenue, they saw the aftermath of a horrible accident. At least seven cars were involved, and people swarmed over the carnage pulling survivors from the wrecks. Several people sat along the curbside nursing injuries, and in the distance sirens screamed.