Christopher Golden - The Shadow Men

Even the smells were different. She pushed the door closed behind her and heard it snick shut, then stood there with her eyes closed for a few seconds. The apartment felt different, smelled different, and when she opened her eyes and took a few steps into the hallway, it sounded wrong as well. She looked around. The large leather sofa looked the same as before, but it was newer, unscuffed, and not smothered with the usual mountain of scatter cushions. She was sure that the big flat-screen TV was a different make, and the Wii game console was gone, along with the slew of game boxes usually piled beneath it.

It could have been a different apartment entirely, but Trix didn’t believe that for a second. All the spaces were right, it was just what those spaces contained that seemed so wrong.

“What the fuck is this?” she said aloud, and the apartment swallowed her voice. She’d always been careful not to swear here in case Holly heard. She walked past the living room and gasped as something moved to her left. She stumbled back against the wall, bringing her fists up, shock surging through her until she realized it was herself. The mirror was a new addition to the hallway as well, perhaps there to make the space look larger. She stared into the mirror and only just recognized herself. Her sporty, urban chic style was gone. Her hair was more spiked and punky than she’d ever worn it, even as a rebellious teenager. Her face was thin and delicate, body hard and lithe instead of curvy. She knew her eyes-the pain and shock there, as well as the subtle green color that had always been her most distinctive feature.

“Trix,” she said, and the reflection named itself. “Okay… okay…” She hurried on, because being somewhere so familiar and yet so utterly different was freaking her out. In Jim, she’d found momentary respite from the nightmare her life had suddenly become, and she wanted to return to him as soon as possible. But first there were two places he’d asked her to look, and one she wanted to see for herself.

She entered the bedroom, and here Jenny’s absence was harsher still. It was obviously a man’s room; although Jim’s artistic flourishes extended this far, there were no feminine touches. Bedside cabinet, he’d told her. Third drawer down, hidden beneath the file of old newspaper clippings at the bottom. A poem I wrote to Jenny the day Holly was born. I never gave it to her, because I was embarrassed. Stupid, I know. But I could also never throw it away. Trix had nodded, understanding where he was reaching. The poem was entirely to do with him, and because it had never been a part of Jenny’s awareness, perhaps it would still be there now.

She sat on the bed and opened the drawer. Blinked. For the briefest instant she thought, They’re doing this as a practical joke, maybe they’re even filming. But that idea went as quickly as it had come. In these days of the Internet, she didn’t even know that guys looked at magazine porn anymore. She took the magazines out and laid them on the bed beside her. They seemed safe enough, and there was almost a retro feel to the covers, as if they might even show pubes instead of the preferred shaven parts of modern porn. But the dates were recent.

Beneath the magazines was a brown folder. Trix took it out and flicked through the contents. Newspaper clippings, as Jim had said-a variety of stories and features that often inspired him for a painting. And beneath the folder in the drawer… nothing. No poem. No envelope or folded paper. She examined the drawer in case it had a false bottom or she’d missed something. Scanned through the paper clippings more thoroughly. Held the magazines up by their spines, shaking them, expecting the sheet of paper to fall out at any moment. But there was nothing, and she didn’t even bother placing the items back in the drawer before moving on.

After she had encountered him on the street, Jim had sat in the driver’s seat of his car with her beside him, his hands gripping the wheel, his face a mask of concentration as he tried to think of something that would provide evidence of his wife’s and daughter’s existence. The poem had been one idea, and then as she’d opened the car to leave, he’d reached out, hooked a finger into her belt, and pulled her back inside. Then he’d leaned across the seats, so close to her that for a second Trix had been a little scared. Jim had never unsettled her before, but his breath had smelled of fear, his eyes were wide as a rabbit’s in headlights, and she’d wondered, Am I really on my own after all?

“There’s a painting,” he’d said. “It’s… special. Jenny knew about it, but no one else, not even Jonathan. Not even you.”

“Special how?” she’d asked, and instantly felt at ease once again. She was as eager to cling on to Jim as he was to her, because right now he was all she seemed to know. In Tallulah’s, the waitress had recognized her right away. No shock at the pink hair, no confusion over this subtly changed woman. I’ve always been like this here, Trix had thought, and the idea distressed her more and more.

“I painted it before I met Jenny,” he’d said. One hand rested on Trix’s knee, and the warmth was comfort to both of them. “I don’t usually do portraits, and this one… well, even this isn’t quite that. But it’s me and a woman, bodies enveloped with storm clouds, sunlight, reveling in the natural. And the woman is Jenny.”

“What do you mean?”

“I painted it before we even met.” He’d waved his hand. “Oh, there are differences. It’s like Jenny how she might have been, not exactly how she is. But it was as if I’d created a vision of my perfect woman, and then two years later…” He’d sobbed then, and Trix closed her hand over his and squeezed.

“Just tell me where it is.”

So now she climbed the narrower staircase to his studio, desperately hoping that the painting of Jim’s wife-her friend, the woman she’d loved for a long time-was still up there.

When she clicked the studio lights on she knew to squeeze her eyes shut. Jim had special lighting there, designed to be as close to real daylight as possible. She waited a few moments, then opened her eyes slowly, letting them adjust as she looked around the room. The fact that the studio appeared completely different was not what surprised and shocked her; she’d anticipated that, and the canvases propped around the place lived up to her expectation. Most of them seemed to be part of one advertising campaign or another, but their style was markedly different from what she was used to seeing from Jim. Before, his paintings had always had a soul about them, some element of tone or mood that she always found moving, whether they were seascapes painted for his own pleasure or advertising images for a new brand of sneaker. He’d always found some way to affect the viewer, and Trix always attributed that to Jim’s own sensitive personality. These paintings were different: brash, loud, technically brilliant but lacking in something profound. She imagined that they pleased many advertisers with their directness, and probably earned him a lot of money. But the soul had gone.

She crossed to the rear of the studio where the large storage racking system still stood behind two doors. Pulling the racks out and pivoting them aside, she flicked on the soft light inside the cupboard and entered. There was a mess of old canvases at the back, and he’d told her that the painting of him and Jenny lay buried behind them. Not because it was bad, but because it had always unnerved him. Jenny found it beautiful; he just wondered where it had come from.

Trix moved canvases aside, frowning at the different sense of Jim these paintings gave her. That’s the Jim I know down there, she had to keep reminding herself. But in that case, where was the Jim who had painted all these? She shivered, shook her head, and started whistling as she searched. But the whistle made the studio feel even more deserted, so she stopped.