Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

Jaw set, hands clenched, he marched grimly across the entrance hall, his companions nearly forgotten. A glance into the main reading room showed precisely what he had expected-not the quiet studiousness of an ordinary day but the shock and hushed trauma of the aftermath of catastrophe. People sat on the floor, or at reading carrels, faces buried in their hands or laid upon the shoulder of another, who might try to provide comfort in the midst of their own astonishment and horror. The whole city was like this now, and it would take time for them to wake from this shock-trance and try to see how much of their lives remained.

“Upstairs,” Sally said, nudging him as she passed by and went through the triumphal arch to the marble staircase.

Jennifer, Anne, and Trix followed, but Jim hesitated a moment. Something wasn’t right in the reading room. Something was off, a sense that no one there was concentrating on whatever they appeared to be doing. He met the gaze of a white-haired old man who had begun to stare at him and turned away so that the man would not think him some kind of ghoul, entertained by the dozens of little tragedies unfolding in that room. Then he caught sight of a plump black woman standing beside a pale white teenage boy with orange hair. They seemed to sense him looking and turned toward him. Jim felt himself the focus of unsettling attention.

Holly, Jim thought, tearing his gaze from them and hurrying through the arch toward the stairs. The others were already moving up the steps, and Jim hustled to catch up, glancing around warily. At the landing above, where the steps turned before continuing up to the second floor, the marble lions seemed ready to pounce. He couldn’t help feeling that the air held a similar threat.

“It’s like some kind of weird Roman palazzo in here,” Jennifer whispered, her voice echoing off the marble walls and staircase as she stared at the paintings in the arched recesses at the top of the steps.

Jim barely acknowledged that she’d spoken, quickening his pace so that by the time Sally reached the second floor he was only two steps behind her. In the shuffle of echoes that their climb had sent cascading from the walls, he thought he heard something that shouldn’t be there, something that didn’t match, and it took him a moment to realize that there were footfalls below them on the stairs. He glanced over the balustrade and spotted the plump woman and her ginger-haired teen companion starting up the stairs.

“This way,” Sally whispered, spurring him on.

They went through the arcade that separated the stairwell from the second-floor corridor, a gallery named for the artist whose paintings hung there but whose name Jim could not recall. His mural of the Muses of Greek mythology was one of the best-known pieces of art in the library, and two men stood in the corridor staring at it with the casual air of tourists, despite the disaster the city had become. Jim frowned at the sight of them, but now they were so close to Holly he could practically feel the presence of his daughter.

At the southern end of the gallery corridor was the Abbey Room. Jim passed Sally, but the young Oracle grabbed the tail of his shirt and forced him not to rush ahead. The girl glanced back at Trix and Anne. “I’m kind of a wreck. If I have to call up my No-Face Men, I may pass out,” Sally said. “Will somebody catch me?”

“I’ve got you,” Anne said.

“Me, too,” Jennifer added. She had been lagging behind, the shocks of the day catching up to her, turning her gaze distant and hollow. “Do what you have to do.”

They went into the Abbey Room and spread out instantly, Jim taking the lead with Sally and Trix behind him, and Jennifer and Anne coming last. The room rivaled the greatest museums Jim had ever entered, not just because of the paintings but because of the beauty of the room itself, all oak and marble, with thick ornamental rafters on the ceiling. As Sally had told them, the room had been divided by a wall, this portion just over thirty feet to a side. The far end of the room had heavy oak doors set into the dividing wall, and Holly waited on the other side.

There were half a dozen people in the Abbey Room already. Two middle-aged women-European tourists by the look of them-huddled together on a bench, holding each other as though cowering in fear. A sixtyish Asian man in a business suit stood in the center of the room, facing Jim and the others as they rushed in. A young couple, perhaps graduate students, flanked the far door as if they were guarding it.

The sixth person was a dead security guard. He lay on the marble not far from the Asian man, a pool of blood beneath him.

Sally stopped short, glancing anxiously around, and the rest of them followed suit. “I should have realized…,” Sally said. “I sensed them, but I didn’t see them. I never thought she’d risk it.”

“Sally?” Jim said warily.

“What the hell is this?” Trix asked.

Jim glanced back the way they’d come and saw the woman and the orange-haired kid from downstairs follow them into the room. The old man who had caught his eye entered a moment later, still staring at Jim. “Who are they, Sally?” Jim asked.

“Not ‘who,’ “Sally said. “But ‘what’? They’re Shadow Men.”

“But they look normal,” Trix whispered, glancing at Anne and Jennifer, the five of them clustering together as the strangers began to close in on them. Only the two terrified women on the bench did not rise-they were ordinary people, trapped here in the midst of the horror.

“They haven’t been changed completely yet,” Jim told her, glancing at Sally to confirm his suspicion.

Sally nodded. “They’re not dead yet.”

The white-haired Asian man had remained in the center of the room, but now he glanced at the others, and the strangers all paused. Jim blinked, thinking his vision had begun to blur, but it was the strangers that were blurring. The orange-haired teen’s shadow seemed to separate from him, wavering just a few inches to one side like a ghostly conjoined twin. The others all shuddered as the same transformation went through them. Part human and part wraith, they were bodies with living shadows.

One of the women on the bench screamed; the other sobbed hysterically.

Jennifer grabbed Jim’s arm. “What do we do?”

Jim glanced at Trix. “We fight.”

“What?” Trix asked.

Jim grinned, all his anger and fear swelling up inside him, fists clenching. “They’re solid, Trixie. Let’s get Holly. And if they try to stop us, kick the shit out of them.”

“Jim…,” Anne said.

Sally nodded, reached out, and gave Jim a shove toward the door at the far end of the room. “Go!” she shouted.

Even as her voice echoed off the walls, the Asian man made a single gesture, and the Half Shadows attacked.

They were inhumanly fast.

Trix swung a fist at the redheaded kid, but he darted past her blow and grabbed her wrist. He started dragging her toward the wall that separated the Abbey Room from the Reflection Room. She tried to fight her way free, but now he had her by both wrists, and he was strong. She planted her feet, but the soles of her shoes slid across the marble floor.

“No!” Anne shouted. “Let her go!” But as she launched herself at Trix and the redhead, the terror of losing her lover twice in a lifetime clearly making her crazed, the woman who’d come in with the teenager grabbed the back of her neck with one splayed hand and hurled Anne at the ground. Her head struck marble and she cried out. For a second, Trix feared the worst, but then Anne scrambled away from the Half Shadow, who stalked her across the room.

Scuffles and shouts echoed all around. The old man who’d entered last seemed focused on Jim, as did the couple who had been guarding the door to the Reflection Room. Jennifer stood in front of Sally as though to protect her, which seemed strange, considering the girl had more ability to fight back than any of them. The screaming woman had gone silent with fear, and now she got her sobbing friend up from the bench. With one last glance at the dead security guard, they ran for the exit.