Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

Then why haven’t you killed her already? Jim wanted to ask, but didn’t dare for fear of spurring them on.

“Mommy?” Holly shouted, bucking against the weasel’s grip. The old woman pressed the knife closer to her throat, and the little girl-his daughter!-whimpered as it drew blood. “Mommy, where did you go?” Holly demanded.

Confused, Jim glanced around to see that Jennifer had come up behind him, stepping into enough light that Holly could make out her face. She thought Jennifer was her mother, but Jim knew that now wasn’t the time to explain anything. “Sally,” Jim whispered. “Help my daughter.”

The young Oracle, not even twice Holly’s age, nodded once, gently.

“Let her go, now,” Jim said to the two Half Shadows who had been left to guard her-to kill her.

The grandmother pointed her free hand at Sally. “Take the Oracle. Break her neck. Finish that job and we’ll give you your daughter.”

“She’s lying,” Trix whispered, coming up beside him. “They just said killing Holly was their job.”

Jim took a deep breath to steady himself. His face and body ached from the beating the Half Shadows had given him in the other room. His fists opened and closed, wishing for a weapon, for something to attack them with, though he could not risk Holly’s life. Powerless and full of fury, he knew there was nothing he could do.

Holly’s eyes went wide, then narrowed in confusion and suspicion. “Mommy?” she said again, and he didn’t have to turn to realize that she had just gotten a good look at Anne.

Jim had a lot of explaining to do.

“Hollybaby,” he said, focusing only on his daughter. “What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?”

Holly began to cry.

“Listen to me,” Jim said firmly. “What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Pancakes with butter and lots of syrup,” she said quickly, as though the words had been pushing to be set free.

“You got it, kid,” Jim said. “Now, this is important, Holly. Listen closely. I want you to close your eyes and imagine those pancakes, the taste of the syrup, the smell of the bacon I’m going to make to go with them-”

“I don’t want bacon.”

“Just the smell,” Jim went on. “Picture us at the kitchen table. I’ll have the newspaper. You can put the Disney Channel on while I’m flipping pancakes and making coffee for your mom.”

The weasel looked entirely befuddled. He turned toward the grandmother. “What the fuck is he talking about?”

The grandmother did not reply. Instead, she stared at Jim, head cocked. Her Shadow Twin had partially emerged from her body, and it cocked its head as well, trying to figure out what to make of him, what he might be up to. “He’s snapped,” the grandmother said. Something in her appeared to soften, and Jim thought he could see the woman she had been before being swept away by a wave that had washed into her world and sucked her into the In-Between.

The knife at Holly’s throat dipped slightly.

Jim shot a sidelong glance at Sally, who made the tiniest of gestures with her right hand, as though grabbing a fistful of the air. The No-Face Men who had come in behind her drifted back slightly, as though wishing to be less imposing to the Half Shadows holding Holly. Even more confused, the grandmother and the weasel stared at them.

They didn’t even see the ghost hands that thrust up through the floor and pulled them down. The grandmother’s eyes went wide, her arms flailing back, and then panic set in and she reached for Holly’s chair, but too late. The weasel held on, fighting furiously, spitting and snarling. The hands of his Shadow Twin thrust out, helping as he tried to take hold of something solid, something of this world. One of his smoky gray nothing hands slapped the stones of the raised Zen rock garden. But he could not hold on, and Sally’s No-Face Men dragged them both down through the floor and back to the In-Between.

Veronica’s creatures had failed.

“Holly!” Jim said, rushing to his daughter.

He ran right through the rock garden, stones shifting underfoot, and nearly toppled into the fountain pond. Holly looked around in confusion, not sure yet that she was actually safe. But then Jim pulled her out of the chair and into his arms. He tried to speak and could not, because emotion had overwhelmed him. He laughed, but every time he tried to speak, tears sprang to his eyes and the words caught in his throat.

“You came, Daddy,” Holly said. “I love that you came, crazy Daddy.”

“Of course I came,” he said, sitting back, holding his little girl in his lap even though she was getting too big for that, pushing her hair away from her eyes and wiping tears from her face, smearing dirt.

“Mommy said you would,” Holly said proudly. She frowned and reached up to touch the blood trickling from the slice on her neck. “I’m cut.”

“It’s okay, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

“It stings,” Holly informed him. And then she turned to look at the others. Her eyes widened as she got her first good look at Jennifer, and then she frowned in confusion when she saw Anne.

“Mommy?” Holly said, hopeful but unsure.

“No, honey,” Jim said. “These ladies are… they’re relatives of Mommy’s.”

Holly’s disappointment seemed mixed with a sort of relief, as if instinct had told her neither of the women was her mother.

Holly studied Sally for a second, and then beckoned to Trix. “Aunt Trixie, c’mere.”

Trix went over and knelt down beside them. She hugged them both, and Jim felt such love for her then that he sobbed again. Trix kissed Holly on the top of the head and then, seemingly on impulse, kissed Jim’s cheek.

“Aunt Trixie,” Holly whispered, looking suspiciously beyond her, toward Jennifer and Anne. “Those ladies who look like my mom are staring at me.”

Trix laughed and Jim chuckled softly, shaking his head. He let out a long breath.

“They can see how amazing you are,” Trix told Holly.

“Why do you look like my mom?” Holly asked, bending over to peer at them more closely. “She doesn’t have any twin sisters or anything, ’cause she would have told me. Unless she didn’t know, like that movie with the two girls whose parents never told them they were twins. I can’t remember the name.”

“Holly, listen to me, baby girl,” Jim said, holding her cheeks and forcing her to focus. Sweet and funny as she was, she was definitely in shock. “You need to tell me what happened to your mom. When did you see her last?”

Pain creased his daughter’s face, and Jim hated being the cause of that. But they needed to know. “A long time ago,” Holly said. “Like, hours. I slept for a while, and then there was the earthquake-did you feel that earthquake, Daddy? I was totally freaked out! After the earthquake, they took Mommy away.”

“Where?” Trix asked, gripping Jim’s arm to steady him. “Where’d they take her, Holly?”

Holly pointed at the wall. “Right there. Right through the wall, like Mommy was a ghost or something.”

Jim felt his insides turn to lead. He turned to look at Sally. “Into the In-Between?”

Sally nodded.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jim whispered. He kissed Holly’s forehead and then looked up at the Oracle again. “How long? How much time are we talking about for this transformation?”

Trix looked at him. “What transformation?”

Jim stroked Holly’s hair, wishing she didn’t have to be here for this. “Into one of them,” he said. “If she’s in there long enough, she’s going to turn into one of the Shadow Men.”

Jennifer covered her mouth in horror. Trix sank back on her haunches, then sat down hard on the floor.

“So we go in after her,” Anne said. “How long do we have?”