Geoff Cooper: Shades

Prison or cemetery; they were the same thing, really. But there were no breakouts from the latter.

At least, very few. Bedrik planned to change that. Edward T. Rammel was going to be the first. The first of many. Bedrik knew his name. Felt his anger. That was all he needed. That gave him the power.

And magic was all about power.

Bedrik stood up and brushed the grass from his pants. He wandered amongst the tombstones, attuned to the clamoring beneath his feet. Soon, the girl left. The artist slinked after her like a wounded spaniel begging his master’s forgiveness for pissing the rug. The sun followed them both, leaving Bedrik alone in the cemetery. Night fell. Solitude engulfed him—the one exception being the restless dead.

He heard them call out; beg for release in frustrated, pitiful tones for lack of anything else to do. Most did not expect an answer, feared they would never receive one.

“I’ll be back for the rest of you,” he whispered. “But for now, I can take only one. Rules are rules, after all.”

Off in the distance, a small yellow-green light flashed weakly. Then another, a few feet away, then some more further toward the wall, near the trees. Lightning bugs. Miniature will o’ wisps pulsing in the near-summer night.

As a child, Bedrik had collected them in Mason jars, poking holes in the lid so they could breathe. Then he learned to smash their bellies and paint his skin with their guts so that he, too, would glow in the dark.

Just like names, innards contained power.

Bedrik held out his hands and whispered a word. Then he bit down on the inside of his cheek. Blood filled his mouth. He spat the blood onto the grave. Bedrik waited, ignoring the taste in the back of his throat.

The lightning bugs came to him. They were not swift fliers, but he’d had long years to learn patience. Every few seconds, the lights in their bellies flashed, the duration becoming longer, the intensity brighter as more bugs joined together to fly in tight formation. By the time the horde of insects reached him, it traveled as a pulsing ball of yellow light, bright enough to make him squint. Shielding his eyes with his hand, Bedrik spoke another word and the pulsing stopped. The glare stayed steady, hovering before him. He pointed, and the light followed his direction, coming to rest a few feet over Edward T. Rammel’s grave.

Bedrik watched.

A shadow appeared on the ground, right on top of the grave. The shadow turned its head, inspecting its form—the dark suggestions of torso, arms, and legs. It rose as only shadows could—projecting itself onto small clods of grave-dirt, blades of grass, its own headstone. The shade turned to look at its epitaph, then back at Bedrik.

Bedrik looked at the shadow and said, “I bind you, Edward T. Rammel. Your shade will do my bidding, as my own.”

The black shape stared at him with unseen eyes.

“You wanted out of there,” Bedrik explained. “This is the only way I could help you. Trust me. You’ll come to enjoy it. This is your lucky day.”

The shadow knelt before him and sobbed. Invisible tears of gratitude fell, swallowed by the unforgiving night.

“Come,” Bedrik said. “We’ve much to do, you and I.”

Bedrik walked out of the cemetery and down the street. The shadow followed in his footsteps. The streets were crowded, but no one noticed them. No one noticed that Bedrik’s shadow seemed to be a bit darker than others or that it did not follow his movements exactly, that it would, at times, reach out to stroke a woman’s hair, or pause before a store window that did not exist when it was alive. No one noticed that the lightning bugs in Gethsemane Cemetery were hovering over the grave of Edward T. Rammel in one large cluster. No one noticed anything was amiss because Bedrik wished it.

People had such narrow worldviews. They lived their unimportant lives, believed they knew what to do with them, believed they could separate truth from lie and in so doing, live well according to the parameters of a society they did not understand. They looked out on the world through a soda-straw perspective. If the reality could not be fully seen in their microvision, then it was discredited, debunked, and denied. Such was the mentality of the populous today, as it was in millennia past, and would be eons into the future. People were stupid. That truth was as absolute as death and taxes; it was not going to change.

In fact, people like Bedrik counted on it.

Bedrik knew all too well how stupid men were; his brother Martin, for example. So desperate for recognition from his sibling that he’d volunteered to place himself in harm’s way to gain a modicum of Bedrik’s respect. The respect was not forthcoming, but his brother’s fate was grievous. Death usually was.

Martin Bedrik was the bad twin. All his life, he was the case study. He got caught doing things. He made poor choices. Rebelled against his situation of birth; tried to establish himself as an individual, a separate entity from his brother. When they were in high school, Martin got into fights, and was caught selling coke and pot. He was always in trouble for something or another. Michael joined the chess club, played cello in the school orchestra, and was on the yearbook staff. He was sociable and extroverted and got along easily with not only his fellow students, but also the teachers and administrators.

Michael never spoke ill about his identical twin, but he never said much good about him either, and no one blamed him for doing so. No one, except Martin. The older they grew, the more Martin got into trouble, and the more often he lamented his miserable existence compared to his brother’s gifted one. When he was at his lowest points, drunk and maudlin, Martin would bemoan the lack of respect he felt he had always received from Michael.

When Martin crossed from misdemeanors into felonies, and graduated from county jail to the state penitentiary, Michael began visiting him. Talked with him. Bestowed kindness, the miniscule favors one could give to a state-housed convicted felon. It didn’t take long before Martin viewed his brother as a god and savior. He’d do anything his twin asked of him.

“Well,” Michael said one day, staring through the thick glass partition separating them. “There is something you could do, actually.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not while you’re in here.”

“I won’t be getting out for a while. Not this time.”

“I know,” Michael said. His sympathy was a reasonable facsimile of genuine.

“So throw it by me,” Martin said. “What could it hurt?”

“There’s no point,” Michael said. “It’s not something we could do anyway.”

“Whadda ya mean, we ?” The thought of doing something—anything—with his brother brought Martin too much hope. His hope was his weakness, and Michael preyed on that. Martin played his hand too early. The pitiful thing was that he had no idea he’d already lost the game.

“They’re listening,” Michael said. “We’ll talk about this later. Okay?”

Martin looked into his brother’s eyes—the mirror of his own.

Get me out of here, he thought, and I’ll do whatever you want.

“You take it easy,” Michael said. “I’ll come back soon as I can.”

He placed the phone in its cradle and stood up.

Martin pressed his palm against the glass. Don’t leave me in here. Please, don’t let me rot in this shit-hole.

Just before Michael turned to exit, he locked on to his brother’s stare and responded in kind: I won’t.

His mouth never moved, but Martin had heard him anyway.

A car horn blew, bringing Bedrik back to the present.

He’d kept his promise. He hadn’t let Martin rot in that shit-hole. Instead, Michael had let Martin rot on the beach, after binding his own shadow to Martin’s corpse.