Kingdom of Shadows

-7-

Silence fills the night again.

“Starker’s right,” Nauls says, “six scarecrows… six of us.”

“Not anymore.” Landon makes sure he smiles at Snow before he takes the lead, moves by the first scarecrow and heads for the rotting remnants of the old farmhouse. “Scratch one Carbone. Dead guys don’t count.”

“Before this night’s over,” Snow mutters, “I’m gonna end that fuck.”

The others move on, following Landon now, who has gotten several yards ahead of them and is barely perceptible in the darkness and fog. When they catch up to him, they find themselves standing before a ramshackle two-story structure with a dilapidated porch. To the side of the house and further back on the property is a barn in even worse shape. From the face of the farmhouse, a series of blown-out windows stare down at them, opaque eyes gaping in judgment, perhaps in warning.

A rusted metal sign has been staked a few feet from the front porch steps.

“Yeah,” Landon says with a smirk, “didn’t see that coming at all.”

Rooster immediately feels something so unsettling it leaves him breathless. He squints through the darkness at the looming structure. “I know this place,” he hears himself say.

Snow nods, eyes fixed on the house, his mouth hanging open. “So do I.”

“Me too,” Nauls says, voice shaking.

“Like we’ve been here before,” Starker says.

“Don’t worry about it.” Landon tests the first step, and once satisfied it will hold his weight, climbs up onto the porch. “These old farmhouses upstate all look alike. You’re spooked, that’s all. Come on.” He ambles across the porch to the front door, which lies on its side next to the doorframe.

“Got to love Landon.” Nauls chuckles nervously and climbs the stairs, hoisting the duffel bags of cash along with him. “He ain’t afraid of anything.”

Snow climbs the steps next. “Too busy being an asshole.”

“Let’s get this done.” Battling uncertainty, confusion and a growing sense of dread, Rooster forces himself up the steps. “I don’t want to be here.”

Already fearful they will never leave this awful place, Starker, who began in the lead, is the last to enter the house.

He joins the others in a large filthy room just inside the entrance. A few broken pieces of what was once furniture are scattered about the otherwise empty area. The floor is rotted in several spots, littered with jagged holes.

Landon sticks the revolver he’s been carrying into his belt and pulls free a flashlight. He switches it on, punching a hole in the darkness. Countless dust motes float about in the beam. He sweeps it around. Thick spider webs dangle from the ceiling and fill every corner. A moth flits into the light then spirals off. “Check it out, Nauls. Looks like your apartment, only nicer.”

Their movements disturb something in the air, stirring up a pungent odor.

“What the hell is that smell?” Nauls asks, dropping the duffels to the floor and crouching down next to them.

Landon points the flashlight at Snow. “Dude. Seriously. Put your shoes back on.”

“You don’t get that off me it’s going up your ass sideways.”

Drifting deeper into the room, Starker watches the ceiling as if expecting something to attack from above. His considerable size causes the floor to creak and shift. He sniffs the air. “It’s sulfur.”

Nauls opens the first duffel, stares at it dumbly a moment then scrambles to the second one and begins rifling through it. “Landon, put the light here!”

He illuminates the duffels. Both are stuffed with neatly banded pieces of blank paper designed to resemble money.

Snow leans in for a closer look. “Where’s the cash?”

“It was here,” Nauls says, “I—”

“Unbelievable!” Landon spits. “You assholes stole scrap paper!”

Rooster steps back for a better angle on the others.

Nauls struggles to his feet. “Me and Rooster loaded the cash into the bags. I saw it. It was all there. The bags were full of it.”

Landon draws his revolver. “Yeah they’re full of it all right.” He points it at Rooster. “Where the fuck’s my money, crew chief?”

Rooster, Snow and Nauls simultaneously pull their weapons and point them at each other. Preoccupied, and unconcerned with the others, Starker wanders to the back of the room, where a large unusable staircase resides. Littered with broken wood and debris, he gazes up into the shadows of the second-floor. Something dead—probably an animal of some sort, though he cannot be sure—lies in a mangled heap at the very edge of the landing. The walls and upper portion of the banister are streaked with what might be blood.

“Everybody calm down,” Rooster says. “We’ll figure this out, we—”

“Fuck that,” Landon snaps. “Somebody switched out those bags or the money or something and one of you pricks is gonna tell me what’s going on or I swear to God I’ll shoot every last fucking one of you.”

“How could we switch the bags out?” Nauls frantically moves his gun from one person to the next then back again. “They went straight from the armored car to the van, and we were all in the van until we got here. Nobody could switch anything out! We were together the whole time!”

Snow, who has been holding one of his .45s on Landon and the other on Nauls, lowers them both. “He’s right.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Landon says. “That money didn’t just disappear, so where is it? Rooster, you and Nauls were the ones who loaded it, and since Nauls is a fucking mongoloid, you better start talking.”

“Mongoloid?” Nauls cocks an eyebrow. “What the hell is a mongoloid?”

“It’s them little elf-looking motherfuckers,” Snow explains, “the ones with the pointy heads and shit.”

“No, those are cretins,” Landon says. “Mongoloids are the redheads.”

Nauls tucks his gun into the back of his pants. “I don’t have red hair.”

Landon sighs but keeps his attention on Rooster, who lowers his weapon as a peace offering. “Get your piece off me,” he says, “and we’ll figure this shit out.”

“Nah, asshole, first you’re gonna tell me where the—”

An enormous muscle-bound arm shoots out of the darkness behind him and wraps around Landon’s throat, strangling him with such force that his feet leave the ground. He drops his revolver and the flashlight and clutches at the arm with both hands in a futile attempt to dislodge it. The flashlight rolls across the floor, tumbling through the room and painting the farmhouse with sweeping arcs of twisting light that eerily illuminates then plunges each man back into darkness. “Listen to me and listen to me good,” Starker says, holding the smaller man effortlessly, his voice just above a whisper in Landon’s ear. “We got a lot more to worry about here than that money. Now you cut the shit, keep your mouth shut and do what Rooster tells you to do or I’ll snap your neck. You feel me, boy?” Landon manages a gurgling response and Starker releases him. He crashes to the floor with a thud and one of his feet breaks through the boards.

Landon lays there a moment, clutching his throat, then pulls free, retrieves his revolver and slowly returns to his feet without further comment.

Nauls scurries to the corner and retrieves the flashlight. As he brings it round, he stops on something beneath the old staircase. “Hey, there’s a—”

“Door under the stairs,” Rooster interrupts. He knows he’s right but has no idea how he’s come to possess such information.

Starker finds Rooster’s face in the dark. “It leads to another staircase.”

“Then a hallway,” Snow says quietly.

“And there’s doors on both sides of the hallway,” Nauls adds.

Everyone looks to Landon. He rubs at his throat. “Oh I’m allowed to talk now?” He glares at Starker. “Just wanna make sure it’s OK with fucking Albert DeSalvo over here before I say anything.” Nauls aims the light at him, leaving no doubt that despite his bravado, even Landon is terrified by what’s happening. He finally nods reluctantly, fidgeting about tensely. “Yeah, I—I don’t know how I know it either, but behind the doors there’s a bunch of rooms.”

“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.