Greg Gifune - Kingdom of Shadows

“Even if we’re right, end of the day it’s just an abandoned old farmhouse with scarecrows out front and some rooms where a cellar ought to be,” Snow says. “Why we all so scared?”

“There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“Aw, fuck me running.” The beam of light begins to tremble as Nauls heads for the porch. “I want out right now, man, this is bullshit.”

Starker lifts the AK-47 higher on his hip, and with one short sidestep, blocks the doorway. “We’ve all been here before. We need to know why.”

“But what happened to the money?” Snow asks, his face a mask of barely contained terror.

“Maybe there never was any money,” Starker says. “Maybe there wasn’t even an armored car.”

“Tell that to Carbone,” Landon counters. “Fuckhead died robbing it.”

“Maybe that’s not how he died. Maybe that’s just what we remember. Maybe this is all some kind of sick game.”

Nauls looks at the floor. “Well I don’t wanna play no more.”

“Think about what he’s saying,” Rooster says. “Does anybody really remember anything before the job today?”

“Of course we know what happened today,” Landon says.

“Do we?” Rooster watches him, doing his best to keep his face void of emotion. “Do any of you remember anything before the van? Because I’m not sure I do. I mean, I think I do, it feels like I do but…”

“It’s in your head,” Starker says, “but you don’t actually remember it.”

“Yeah,” Snow agrees. “What he said.”

Rooster nods.

“So I’m the only one who wants to leave then?” Nauls paces about wildly. “Really? Are you guys fucking high?” The light drifts back and forth across the dark room, cutting shadows and revealing quick glimpses of a long-dead house.

In that moment, eyes following the beam, fear wells in Rooster the likes of which he’s never known. He’s sure he sees something more, something there yet not quite there, waiting in the darkness, slipping from sight like scuttling insects just as the light passes over them. He grips his weapon tighter but it does little to calm his rising terror. “We need to search this place.”

“No we don’t.” Nauls shakes his head. “We can just leave.”

“We need to know what’s happening here.”

“We can’t get upstairs,” Starker tells them. “Staircase is blocked with shit and it’s all rotted out. But there’s something dead up there and whoever killed it did some finger-painting with its blood.”

“There’s something wrong with this place, man, it’s—you guys all feel it too, I know you do. Shit Starker you and Rooster felt it outside, and…I don’t…” Nauls suddenly becomes strangely calm, his voice quiet and childlike. “I don’t want to die out here.”

“Easy, Nauls,” Landon says. “Don’t wanna trip and fall on your vagina.”

“Bring the light around to the door under the stairs,” Rooster tells him, his gaze moving between the horrified faces before him. “We’re going down there.”

As daylight splintered night, it brought with it an icy rain that descended upon the city in violent torrents. Shaking off the residue of nightmares, waking and otherwise, Rooster adjusted his position in the chair. He’d placed it in front of the window and watched the street all night. Every muscle in his body hurt, his neck was stiff and sore and his temples pulsed with a dull ache. Ice ticked against the window, mixing with the sluicing rain to blur the glass and world beyond. Numerous lost souls had come and gone throughout the night, hurrying through the darkness, but the priest had not returned.

Though he couldn’t be certain, Rooster thought he’d briefly nodded off a few times during the night. After asking him countless times to put the gun away and come to bed, Gaby finally gave up a little after midnight and drifted off to sleep. She lay sprawled out across the bed, her breathing slow and deep. He watched her a while. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It didn’t seem right, Rooster thought, for someone so intelligent, so caring and just, so uncorrupted and faithful to be associated in any way with such madness and horror. Yet somehow it made perfect sense, a pure and tranquil soul like Gaby existing amidst the mayhem, calm beauty at the eye of an otherwise violent storm. His storm.

He sat on the bed next to her and gently caressed her face. She stirred and moaned quietly but remained asleep. Who are you ? He wondered. Why are you here with me?

The pain in his temples drifted behind his eyes, lingering there as he gently kissed Gaby on the cheek.

With the 9mm tucked into the back of his pants, he threw on his jacket, swallowed a handful of aspirin and slipped into a cold and unforgiving rain.

Rooster found himself standing in the same rain some minutes later, having traced the address on the card to an old restaurant in a long-dead neighborhood. A small dark hole-in-the-wall, it sat alone between a series of boarded-up storefronts and a huge lot of bricks and debris that had once been a building. The street was filthy, cold and lifeless. No cars out in front of the restaurant, but the sign in an otherwise dark window blinked: Dante’s . There was no one else around, and the second floor above the restaurant appeared deserted, most of the windows blown out or boarded up. Rooster looked to the end of the block, checking the corners in both directions. If he was being watched or tailed, they were the best he’d ever encountered.

He moved through the door, which alerted those inside to his arrival with the jingle of a little bell. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting as he was met with a blanket of thick, oppressive heat. A series of tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and small candles encased in glass orbs at their centers lined the walls to his left and right. The open area between them provided a path through the narrow restaurant to, he assumed, the kitchen in back, but it was so dark he couldn’t make out much beyond the first few tables. The smell of burned food hung in the air, and although there was a podium for a maître de the restaurant appeared empty, perhaps closed.

“Here,” a voice said from the rear of the room.

Rooster casually slid a hand to the gun in his belt and moved down the center aisle toward the direction of the voice. As the shadows parted, the candlelight danced along the floor and walls, flickering about, alive in the dark. As he cautiously approached the only occupied table in the place, the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders emerged.

“Mr. Cantrell.” Not a question. Said with what almost sounded like adoration. “Nasty rain out there this morning.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s not important,” he said. “Call me whatever you’d like.”

Same aged and drained voice as on the phone, Rooster was sure of it.

“Mr. Snow seemed fond of Poindexter .” The man motioned to the chair across from him with a spindly arm, his hand brushing through the circle of candlelight cast across the table. Skeletal and liver-spotted, his pale flesh was laced with bulbous blue veins, the fingers gnarled with arthritis. “Not terribly original, but we can go with that if you’d like.”

“Snow’s dead.”

“Yes.”

Rooster looked behind him. He could see the front door and the light beyond, though it seemed farther away than was possible.

“It’s all right, Mr. Cantrell, you’re safe here. Please. Sit.”