Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

Trix would die for Jenny or Holly. But please let me live, she thought, looking at Anne. Let us all live.

What would happen afterward, when it was time for Trix and the Banks family to go home, she did not know. But for now, she relished the feel of Anne’s hand in hers and the knowledge that in this world-in this Boston-they had once been happily in love. “Come on,” she said, tugging Anne’s hand. “We should catch up.”

The two women hurried after Sally, Jim, and Jennifer, making their way past Trinity Church and starting across Copley Square. The park in front of the church had been partly converted into a staging area for rescue efforts at a building on Boylston Street that Trix thought had once been the Globe Bar. City workers and civilians alike were pulling apart the rubble of the collapsed building, looking for survivors. From the looks of it, the bar had been destroyed not by being merged with another structure from its parallel Boston but by the quaking of the city during the collision.

“I wish we had time to help them,” Jennifer said.

“So do I,” Sally said. “There are three people still alive in there, and one of them not for much longer.”

“How do you-” Anne began.

“Are you serious?” Jennifer said. “You know that? You can, whatever… sense it? We’ve got to go and tell them.”

Jim looked at her, eyes narrowed in pain. “You can go if you want to, but it won’t help them dig any faster. I’ve got to keep going. My daughter needs me. And my wife, my Jenny. My you. She needs me, too.”

Jennifer flinched. Trix saw the recognition in her eyes, and wondered if her desire to help everyone else sprang solely from her empathy or if it also came from her fear of what they would find ahead. This Jennifer had never married, never had a daughter. Trix couldn’t imagine how the woman felt.

Jennifer held out a hand to Jim. “Let’s go. We can always come back and help. After.”

They cut across the park, headed for the Boston Public Library, its imposingly beautiful facade with its row of arched windows looking out over Copley Square. The McKim Building, the library’s main structure, appeared untouched by the disaster that had shaken the city. Its red tile roof, crested with green copper, had not been disturbed, which mean that the building existed in all three Bostons.

Trix had known that, of course. Sally had told them. The Boston Public Library had been preserved by the people of three cities-with one difference. The Abbey Room, among the best known of the library’s features, boasted richly textured mural paintings by Edwin Austin Abbey, including a series entitled The Quest of the Holy Grail. In the Boston from which Trix and Jim hailed, the room was sixty or seventy feet in length, but in the Irish Boston, the city’s one and only terrorist attack had destroyed half of the room. Instead of restoring it, the architects had decided to separate the unaffected portion of the room with a wall and a door, on the other side of which they designed a new room, filled with paintings by Irish masters. It was meant to be a place of reflection, to honor the seven people who had died that day.

In the heart of the library, the Reflection Room was an island of stability, a place where the parallel cities did not overlap.

That was where the Shadow Men were holding Holly.

Trix took a deep breath, held Anne’s hand more tightly, and followed Jim, Sally, and Jennifer up the library’s front steps, passing between the statues that represented Art and Science. The middle of the three arched doors stood propped open, inviting them in. Holly awaited within.

As for Jenny…

Trix let go of Anne’s hand, giving her a soft smile to let her know that she hadn’t done anything wrong. But as they passed through the doors, she found clarity returning. Anne was a beautiful fantasy, but Trix could not succumb to that dream. Not yet. Not when the Jenny she had always loved still needed her.

She glanced around anxiously as they walked through the vestibule, the pink marble deceptively warm. There were people moving about in the entrance hall, but she glanced within and saw nothing threatening about them, and no trace of the Shadow Men. Jim went in first, and Trix watched the door through which they had entered, just to make sure they would not be attacked from behind. When she walked into the entrance hall, Trix glanced at the vaulted ceiling, imagining that at any moment the Shadow Men would emerge from the tile mosaic and attack.

“Trix,” Jim said, and gestured for her to join them.

The others had gathered a few feet inside the hall and off to the right. The sound of weeping echoed off the walls, and she glanced up to see a grieving woman coming toward the doors, attended by a trio of comforting friends. Moments later, Trix caught sight of a woman who could only be the twin of the one who’d been grieving, and who was apparently following the group but trying not to be seen. She looked bewildered and afraid.

“It’s real,” Trix told her.

“What?” the woman asked, flinching, as though afraid Trix might try to strike her.

“All of this,” Trix said, waving her hand to indicate the women who had just left and the city as a whole. “It isn’t your imagination. It’s just what is now.”

The woman’s eyes widened and she hurried out the door, leaving Trix to wonder if the truth had done the woman good or harm.

“Stay with me,” Sally told them as Trix came to stand between Jennifer and Anne. Her little-girl face seemed anything but innocent now. She was grim and determined. “Veronica must have Shadow Men holding Holly, so be prepared. If they grab you, shake them off. They’ve got to partially solidify to hold you, so fight them. But don’t try to beat them, because you can’t.”

“You’re going to call some of them up, though, right?” Jennifer asked. “Some of your No-Face Men, the ones who answer to you?”

Uncertainty flashed in Sally’s eyes. “I’m going to try. But it takes focus to call them and to command them, and I’m so tired I can barely stand. All of this… it drains me.”

“You’ll do fine,” Jim assured her, one hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

But Sally was looking at Trix for reassurance. Trix smiled. They had bonded a little in the short time they’d known each other. “You’re the Oracle of two Bostons now,” Trix reminded her. “If there’s magic in all of this, you’ve got more of it than ever. You’ll kick ass.”

Sally smiled. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” Jim said. “You heard her. Sally knows exactly what room Holly’s in. We follow her in, get Holly, and let Sally worry about the Shadow Men. And we try not to let them take us into the In-Between.”

“What happens if they get one of us?” Anne asked.

“Let’s just say it would be bad,” Jim replied.

“Bad?” Trix said. “Great. Thanks.”

“We’d turn into them,” Jim explained. “Shadow Men.”

Trix felt sick, a terrible dread spreading like poison in her veins. She tried to shake it off, reaching out to clutch Anne’s hand, but it clung to her and would not be dispelled.

“Ready?” Sally asked.

“Not even close,” Anne said.

Jennifer glanced at her, their faces mirror images. “In some other world, this girl is your daughter.”

Anne shifted uneasily. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t go. Just that I’m not ready. How could anyone ever be ready for this?”

Trix squeezed her hand and glanced at Sally. “Let’s go,” she said.

The atmosphere inside the library crackled with static electricity. Jim wondered if he might be the only one who felt it, and if it sprang from the knowledge that his daughter-his little girl-was so close. During the trek across town, he had forced himself not to hope, and now he put it inside an iron box in his heart and turned the key, not to be released until he held Holly in his arms again.