The Shadow Men

Every Dog Has Its Day

It was daytime. Smoke hung over the city, drifting gently westward and tearing the sunlight into veils of gorgeous color. Jim remembered hearing of similar electromagnetic effects in the atmosphere after other earthquakes. He wondered what more this tragedy might have done, but for now he had his family with him, and he really did not care.

They looked like a party of refugees. Jenny wore a pair of pants and a man’s shirt they’d found in a storage room in the library, and she had taken the shoes from the dead woman’s body. Jim had been shocked at that, but Jenny had barely blinked as she sat and put them on. Life, death-their distinction was still strong, but now the space In-Between was vaster than ever before. Holly was tired and bedraggled, Trix and Anne leaned on each other for support, and Sally walked ahead of the small group. Some people recognized her and moved aside, almost as if making way for a queen, but most did not. Most of the others they passed in that blighted city had tragedy of their own to contemplate, and their attention was focused inward.

“Can we… can we get these things out of us now?” Jenny asked, shuddering with revulsion at the presence of the No-Face Man still inside her.

Jim had been wondering the same thing. They were out of the In-Between. They didn’t need the shadow creatures merged with them anymore. But Sally shook her head again, and Jim saw that old wisdom working behind her eyes. “You’ll need them a little while longer,” she said.

“But-” Trix began.

“Please,” Sally said with a tired sigh. “You’ve trusted me this long.”

Holly took her hand. To her, it was clear Sally wasn’t a child at all. At four or five years older, the Oracle was one of the “big kids”-at least in Holly’s eyes. “We trust you, Sally,” Holly told her, and Jim shuddered, because now there was some of that old wisdom in his daughter’s voice, too.

They had another walk ahead of them, in this city where traffic was mainly restricted to emergency vehicles. Not every street was blocked, but there were many more bicycles being used today, and with crowds of people traversing the city in search of something-or perhaps, in some cases, fleeing something-it was a safer bet to walk.

“McGee’s house,” Sally had said. “That’s where she’ll be waiting.”

“Why can’t we just get there through the In-Between?” Anne had asked, shocking Jim, because that was the last place in the world he’d ever want to go again. But Anne’s eyes were filled with a fury he had never before seen in his wife. In his Jenny.

“No,” Sally had replied. “What’s left of McGee-whatever he’s become-has seen you now.”

“I’d fight him.” Anne had pursed her lips, her cheeks glowing red, and even Trix’s soft touch had done little to quell her shaking.

“And you’d lose,” Sally had said. “He’s not our enemy. He’s not the threat. His crime happened more than a century ago, and he was its first victim. Whatever he is now, I don’t think there’s much of Thomas McGee left in him.”

So they walked, and Jim wished it was all over. He could not let go of his wife, and he wanted to hold his daughter to him, but it was impossible to walk holding them both. So he gave Holly a piggyback ride and got Jenny to curve her arm through his. Soon Holly was snoring gently on his right shoulder, and he felt the sting of tears at that gentle, innocent sound. “How could she be such a bitch?” he asked out loud, and Jenny shook her head because she didn’t know what he meant. But Trix did.

“I can still hardly believe it,” Trix said. “After what she did for my family. What she’s done for so many.”

“You can’t purge your sins with good deeds,” Sally said.

“So what are we going to do to her?” Jim asked. Before, his desire had been for revenge, payback for what Veronica had done to Jenny and Holly-using them as objects, disregarding their humanity, and causing the disaster he walked through even now. But now, with his family back, gentler emotions had swallowed his rage. He still hated her for what she had done, but the thought of perpetrating violence on the old woman-whoever and whatever she might be-was horrible.

Still, he wasn’t the only person here. And Anne’s anger glowed like a beacon.

“What happens to her will be her choice as much as my own,” Sally said. “But you know I can’t go through with you, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Jim said. “But you Oracles… you don’t need to be there to get things done.”

As they crossed Boston, the closeness of his family-he included Trix in that circle now, and Anne as well-inspired conflicting thoughts. He felt stronger than ever before, and able to face any and all dangers that could be thrown their way. But he also felt incredibly vulnerable. He had gone through so much to save his family, the idea of something happening to them now…

He heard Jennifer’s screams, and knew he always would. She knew we were running, knew she was doing it to make time for us, and she’d have done her very best not to scream. How terrible it must have been .

It took them almost two hours to walk the two miles to Hanover Street. They crossed Boston Common, where thousands of displaced people had set up temporary shelters, and relief agencies were busy erecting tents and treatment areas. There were tears, but there were also children running between the tents playing hide-and-seek, teens playing soccer, and many groups of people had joined forces to prepare and hand out food and water. Spirits were generally high, but Jim knew that would not last longer than a couple of days.

None of them had any true idea about the level of destruction wrought on the city, or the death toll. That was for afterward. For now, they still had more than one world to consider.

Holly snored, and Jim wondered what was going on in her mind. Veronica wants your daughter dead because she’s the next Oracle of Boston, the redheaded kid had told them. That gave Jim and his family’s future a whole new landscape-but it was something else he was desperate not to think about right now.

When they finally found themselves closing on Veronica’s house, Sally called a halt and gathered them together in front of a tall townhouse. “Right,” she said, and told them what to do.

“I won’t let you go. I can’t lose you again.”

Trix and Anne faced each other. They had spoken at the same time. On any other occasion that might have made them smile, but not now.

“No,” Trix said. “Just… no. If anything happens to me through there, you’ll be stuck, and it’s a different world, and-”

“Is it?” Anne asked.

“Yes,” Trix said. And it was a different world. One where she and Jenny were best friends, but nothing more, except in her own guilty dreams. A world where Anne had never existed and could never live. Over there-back where Trix had come from-she hoped to find that everything was still normal, hoped that bringing Jenny and Holly back would weave them into the fabric of that world again.

And yet…

“I’ll see you again,” Trix said.

Anne’s eyes opened wider, and she swallowed hard.

“I’m coming back,” Trix said. “I promise you that.”

“A promise isn’t enough,” Anne said. “ Nothing’s enough. I’ve lost you once already, Trix. I buried you and buried myself in grief, and I can’t go through that again.”

The others were milling, speaking in low voices while Trix said her good-byes. She caught Sally’s gaze over Anne’s shoulder, and the little girl nodded. Maybe she really can read my mind, Trix thought. Sally crossed the sidewalk and held Anne’s hand. “She’s right,” Sally said, not quite able to sound like a little girl. “You can’t go. But Trix is Unique. She can come back.”

Anne lowered her gaze, muttering something.

“What’s that?” Trix asked.

Anne lifted her eyes and Trix saw the tears streaming down her face. “Will you want to? Once you’re back to your old life and everything is normal again, maybe you’ll forget all about me. Maybe you’ll just be happy things are the way they’re supposed to be, and-”

Trix silenced her with a kiss, her own tears falling as she twined her fingers in Anne’s hair. Then she broke the kiss, reluctantly. She pressed her forehead against Anne’s and looked into her eyes. “You don’t get it, do you?” Trix whispered. “This… in my heart, this is the way things were always supposed to be.”

Anne smiled, wiping her tears. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Trix could have made a joke out of it, but she didn’t even return Anne’s smile. “No,” she promised. “Never.”

Anne took a shuddering breath, then nodded. She would go along with Sally’s plan. “You make this work,” she told Trix. Then she looked at the others. “All of you. Take care of each other.”

Jim put his arms around his wife and daughter. “We always have.”

Trix kissed Anne’s forehead. “We’ll try our best not to die.”

Anne hit her. “That’s not funny.”

“No,” Sally agreed. “It’s not.”

The young Oracle closed her eyes and muttered something, words lost beneath the roar of a police cruiser passing by. Anne’s eyes widened in surprise as her No-Face Man slipped from her and flickered in the sunlight, fading quickly to nothing as it obeyed Sally’s careful orders. “You won’t need him anymore,” Sally said.

Trix held Anne as she slumped slightly. Anne sighed as she realized she was only herself again.

“I love you,” Trix whispered. And Anne relaxed before letting her go, because that seemed to have made everything all right.

It should have been impossible for her to fall in love so fast-in a single day, only hours, really-but in a fundamental way, she had been in love with this woman for many years. Thomas McGee might have done something monstrous, and become a monster in the process, but the splintering of the city had also given both Trix and Anne second chances at the love they’d always wanted.

“Remember,” Sally said, “the only way is to fool her. Holly goes forward. You’re offering her.”

“She’ll never believe that,” Jim said.

“It’ll confuse her long enough for you to tackle her.”

“And then?”

“And then kill her.”

They shuffled their feet, none of them wanting to catch another’s eye.

“That’s just nasty,” Holly said at last.

Trix sighed and looked around. The street was relatively undamaged other than smashed glass and a few fallen tiles. People walked here and there with shopping bags, panic-buying food and drink. Others stood on their stoops and watched the world go by, perhaps counting their blessings. What would they think of this strange group of scruffy, serious people?

“Gotta be done,” Trix said softly. Though her voice was strong, she had no idea if she could do what Sally asked.

“So these things in us?” Jim asked.

“I’ve already instructed them,” Sally said. “When it’s over, they leave. One way or another.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” Jim said. But Sally’s awkward smile made him realize something-she was socially inept, even for a girl of her age. She might be the Oracle, but that meant she would never be normal. Relationships were her work, in many ways, but she could never have one of her own. She was doomed to a life alone. It made him fear for Holly, and wonder whether there had been Oracles in the past who had managed to have love in their lives.

“Good luck,” Sally said, and she turned and walked away.

“Sally,” Jim said. The girl paused and turned around, and Trix had a sudden, shattering sense of deja vu. She remembered watching a program once with Jim and Jenny about the discovery of the concentration camps in Germany and Poland. It had been a moment of pure immersion, when the camera had focused on a young girl walking behind a wire fence. She had paused and turned to look at the camera, and even that seventy-year-old footage had done nothing to lessen that girl’s haunting, hopeless expression. Who is she where is she now is she still alive? Trix had thought, and it had become a preoccupation of hers to find out. She never had, and she often dreamed of that little girl, still standing there staring through a fence, waiting to be discovered. Sally reminded her of that little girl now-eyes deepened by exhaustion, mouth slack, her skin wan and ashy.

“It’ll be okay!” Trix said. Sally glanced at her and smiled, and Trix thought perhaps she’d found that little girl at last.

“I’ll be watching from here,” Sally said, “but you’ll be a world away. I don’t have to stand here and watch.” She tapped her foot on the sidewalk and looked down at the tinkle of broken glass. “Besides, I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied now. So many who need my help.”

They watched her leave.

“So, what’re you waiting for?” Anne asked. She sat on a fire hydrant, arms crossed, head tilted to one side. “Get it done, and get your cute ass back here.”

Holly giggled. Even Jenny managed a soft laugh and said, “That’s not something I ever thought I’d say.”

“Don’t know what you’re missing,” Anne said, and winked at her. The two women, facets of each other, smiled conspiratorially.

“So?” Trix said. She looked from Jim to Jenny to Holly and felt a rush of love.

“So,” Jim said. And as they walked along the street toward Veronica’s house, even Holly was silent, because the unspoken truth hung heavy around them.

If they were successful, today would end with a woman dead by their hands.

“We need to go upstairs to your bedroom,” Trix said, and the man’s expression barely changed. Behind him in the hallway stood another version of him, slightly plumper, longer-haired, but wearing the same shell-shocked expression. As both wives peered from the living room doorway, Trix began to really understand how fundamentally everything here had changed. Her Boston was still safe and sound, ignorant in its single existence of anything so surreal as what she was witnessing right now. But here, everything was different. The earthquake had not only taken lives, it had shattered them as well. The two worlds where these merged Bostons had once been different were forever changed. How would people overcome such a shock? How could they?

But then she saw the two teenaged girls coming giggling down the stairs, and she thought maybe it would be fine after all.

“You two again!” one of the girls said.

“You know these people?” the other girl asked.

“Sure. Well. Not really. But they were in our house, and Dad scared them off.”

“I like your hair,” the other girl said.

“Thanks,” Trix said. “Er…” This was becoming more surreal by the moment, and when the women started berating their daughters, that only increased.

“Really,” Holly said, “we need to do what Auntie Trix says. Otherwise my daddy says it might all happen again, and then there might be three of you. Or maybe there won’t be any.”

“You need to what?” the man said.

“Upstairs,” Jim said over Trix’s shoulder.

“Why?” the other man said.

“There’s…” Trix gave what she hoped was her best smile, unsure how her grubby, bruised face would present it.

“It’s something to do with the ghost, isn’t it?” the man asked. He nodded wisely. “I knew it the first time I saw you. The ghost.”

“What ghost?” Trix asked.

“We’ve never used the room,” he said. He turned to his longer-haired twin. “Have you?”

The man shook his head slowly. “Never liked it. Always felt weird. And smelled.”

“Cotton candy,” Trix said, and everyone facing her-the four adults, the two girls-knew what she was saying.

The man stood back from the doorway, his motion inviting them to enter. Trix went first, then Holly, and Jim and Jenny followed. “What’s happening?” he asked softly as Trix passed. She saw in his eyes the doubt and fear that he had been trying to hide from his family.

“It’s okay to be afraid, Conor. But everything’s going to work out fine.”

They climbed the stairs, reached the landing, and gathered outside the door. There was nothing to indicate that the room beyond was unused, but Trix had the very real sense that it was not part of the house. In my world, this place belongs to an evil woman, she thought, looking around the landing at family pictures showing smiling people and holidays gone by.

“When we go in, hold on to our hands,” Jim said to Holly. “We’re Uniques, and crossing should be easy for us. But Jenny… it might be different for you.”

“Different how?” Jenny asked, drawing Holly close to her.

“I don’t know,” Jim said truthfully.

“You have Sally’s No-Face Man still inside you,” Trix said. “It might provide a buffer.”

“So let’s go,” Jim said. He reached for the handle and opened the door.

Inside, the room was as they had seen it on their arrival in the Irish Boston. Yellow wallpaper, an antiquestyle bed, clothes hanging in the closet. But on their arrival they’d believed the room was lived-in. Now they knew otherwise, and Trix saw the signs they’d missed before. The bedroom was like a movie set rather than a real room, arranged to look genuine yet somehow tainted with falseness.

Beyond the bed was the door that led into McGee’s terrible room.

She led the way and they all went through. The stench of ash and age hit them as they passed into the ruined room, and she wondered what the family that lived here thought of this place. Perhaps they didn’t even know it existed. Maybe this was a ghost room to that family, and that would mean that Trix and the others were now ghosts as well.

She knew that wasn’t true, but still it gave her the shivers.

“What now?” Jenny asked.

“I can see,” Holly said, her little voice filled with wonder.

“What?” Jenny asked.

“Don’t be scared,” Trix said. “Jenny, please don’t be scared.” She held her friend and hugged her tight, and when she breathed in Jenny’s hair it was Anne smiling in her mind’s eye.

“Come here,” Jim said, welcoming them into his embrace. “And you, too, sweetie.”

Holly came, too, hugging their waists, stretching as far as she could to embrace the three adults and giggling as she said, “Group hug!”

“You think we need to do the…?” Trix said, swirling her eyes around to imitate the first time they’d perceived the weirdness of this room. But she already knew the answer to that. The thing she carried inside her was already urging her to cross the room. They stood on undamaged flooring right now, and when they crossed they would also pivot around reality-a pivot around which Thomas McGee had twisted Boston. He had created splinter cities primed with the potential for tragedy, but it had taken Veronica to realize that potential.

Jim stared at her grimly, and she tried to smile back. Sure, she wanted to say, I’m ready to kill. Sure I am. For everything she’s done, and everything else she’d do. But she had no wish to speak those words aloud.

It was Jenny who urged them to walk. As a group they crossed the room, and Jenny cried out as they pierced the skin between worlds.

Trix’s No-Face Man shivered at the change, a disturbingly sexual sensation.

For just an instant, the whole world seemed to flex outward, and a wave of dizziness swept over Trix. Jenny nearly collapsed with the sudden loss of equilibrium, staggering as though drunk, but her family kept her from falling. For several seconds, the four of them only stood and breathed, waiting for the world to right itself again.

When it did, Trix knew that they were through.

The door stood before them, closed where they had left it open. Beyond, in the depths of the house they had just left-a different version of that house, in which families no longer lived-a voice rose up in fury.

“Veronica’s home,” Jim said.

“And so are we,” Jenny said. “Let’s get this finished. I want my life back.”

And the things inside them craved release.

Veronica was in the living room, waiting for them in the chair where she’d told them about McGee and the In-Between, setting up the story she wanted them to know rather than the tale that was true. There was a tea service on the table before her, a plate of cookies, and several cups steaming with recently poured liquid. Her back was straight, her hands on her knees. She was every image the lady, apart from her face.

She had the face of a killer.

Her lips were drawn, her teeth bared, her eyes narrowed and cruel. Her skin was lined now, projecting every year of her age, and she glared at them with an anger Jim thought verged on madness. She made him want to draw back, grab his family, and run, but that would do them no good. It would do no one any good. Because while she was alive, Sally and the Bostons were still in danger.

“Murderer,” Jim said, and Veronica’s rage exploded.

“How?” she screamed, standing and knocking the small coffee table with her leg. Tea spilled, a cup broke. “How did you…?” She stormed at them and Jim grabbed Holly, pulling her behind him.

Veronica sneered. “You think you can protect her behind flesh and blood?” She waved her hands at the air and screamed, an incoherent outburst that darkened the corners of the room. Shapes parted from the walls-Shadow Men that screamed as they were dragged from the In-Between at Veronica’s behest. They swayed a little, and then solidified as they walked to the room’s two doors and single window. They were guarding the exits.

“All those people,” Jim said. “All those dead people I’ve seen, and every one of them because of you.”

“You don’t think she gives a shit, do you, Jim?” Trix asked. He glanced her way, saw her left hand bunched in her pocket. What did she have in there-a knife? A weapon?

“I think maybe once she would have,” he said. Sally had told them to offer her Holly, confuse her, then attack, but this Veronica was beyond confusion. Her madness and fury were driving her now.

“You should be dead!” she said, pointing her manicured finger at Holly. “You will be dead.”

The girl whimpered and hid behind Jim, grasping his right arm. He could never offer his daughter, as bait or otherwise. She was far too precious. He had always loved her with an honest devotion, but perhaps it took losing someone and finding her again to make you realize just how powerful love could be. Holly was a vital part of him, more solid and precious than his own heart and soul. He would die for her.

He would kill for her.

Jim stepped forward, ignoring Jenny’s gasp of surprise and Holly’s hands trying to pull him back.

“What?” Veronica said, mocking. “Going to paint me to death, Mr. Artist?”

“In my dreams, I’m sure,” Jim said. As he dropped to the floor and reached for a small side table-the only piece of furniture that could be a weapon, and his only hope-he sensed Trix leaping past him to his right, and heard Jenny telling Holly to run.

And then everything froze.

Jim saw the small table before him but could not touch it. Past the table were Veronica’s legs, their shadows confused by those of her moving arms and flexing fingers. He could hear the strange words she muttered but could not move his head-or even his eyes-to look up and see what she was doing.

Trapped, he thought, and he could feel the No-Face Man trapped inside him writhing against its confines. No. God, no. They carried Sally’s mark upon them, enough to allow the No-Face Men into the home that had once belonged to Thomas McGee. The No-Face Men had been the backup plan. If Jim and his family couldn’t get to Veronica, then Sally’s echo creatures were there to help, to kill her the way the Shadow Men had murdered Peter O’Brien. But the No-Face Man inside Jim was just as paralyzed, just as trapped and helpless, as Jim himself.

From the corner of his eye he could make out Trix, her form impossibly unbalanced where she had been halted in the act of diving at Veronica.

“Stupid people,” Veronica said, voice rank with disgust. “You think that defying me bought you the right to come back to attack me. Kill me? Is that what the bitch-girl told you to do?”

Happily, Jim thought, but he could not speak. His blood flowed, his heart thudded in his ears, but his muscles felt like they were made of glass, a fragile skeleton conjured by this woman’s mad magic.

“There’s only one killing happening here today,” the woman said. Jim heard more of those language-less words, and then a shadow passed him by. A small shadow. Holly, dragging her feet as something drew her forward. Her hand brushed against Jim’s cheek as she passed, and he thought, Is that the last time I’ll feel my daughter’s warmth?

Jim struggled and fought and raged, his eyes burning as he defied the spell to lift them. They burned more than when he and Trix had first attempted to see the alternate Bostons, up in that room where Thomas McGee, in his greed and hubris, had split the world asunder. They burned, but he did it, only to see a reality he wished he could instantly forget.

Holly knelt before Veronica, her knees awash in spilled tea. The old woman grinned in delight, reveling in victory, and from behind him Jim heard a faint, desperate whine coming from his wife.

If only we could close our eyes, he thought, because there was nothing he wanted to see less than his daughter’s death.

“I’ll always be here,” Veronica said, “and each Boston will be my Boston.” She held up one hand and pointed a finger at Holly. A blue light gathered on the end of her finger, dancing like a faraway star. And at one word from Veronica, it leaped forward and struck Holly’s face.

“Nnnnn…,” was all Jim could say, but he felt his heart crushed and broken, chewed up and spat out, as Holly’s head flipped back and her arms went wide, and he saw that terrible light burning from her ears and eyes, nose and mouth. It spilled down her body like the In-Between’s mist given form, leaving slick, luminous trails in her hair and on her skin.

“Now, then,” Veronica said, turning around as if to deal with the day’s next order of business.

“You stupid, stupid bitch,” Holly said. It was her voice, but the words… the words were Sally’s. And suddenly Jim understood that the girl Oracle had never shared with them her true plan.

“What?” Veronica turned back, amazed, to see Holly shake her head slowly, then stand.

“You think a mark is sophisticated?” Holly said. “In my Boston, that type of witchery has gone the way of the street-corner card trick. In my Boston, I’m so at one with the city that sometimes it loses itself in me, and I have its magic and its history, its soul, at hand. My Boston gives me real magic.”

“You should be dead,” Veronica whispered.

“This?” Holly picked a dreg of the terrible light from her arm and waved it like a string of spit. Then she breathed on it, and it turned into a blade of grass. “How pretty.” She dropped the grass, and it fluttered to the ground.

Veronica gathered herself quickly, hissing three words that sent her Shadow Men streaking across the room.

What happened next was so fast that Jim could not make it out. Later, he would put events together from what little he saw, and Holly’s few comments about that afternoon, and then the picture would be clear.

He felt a wrench as something inside him burst out. It winded him, shattering Veronica’s strange hold over him and jerking him to his feet, and as he gasped he heard Trix and Jenny doing the same. The darkness moved away from him, and he saw, gathering Veronica in its arms, a No-Face Man-not a prisoner after all, now that Sally’s real mark, the spells she had hidden inside Holly, had been released.

Veronica screamed, but though her Shadow Men heard, they could do nothing. They were being ripped and shredded by the other two No-Face Men, the violence sudden and intense. And when they had finished, they turned their attentions to Veronica.

“No,” Holly said, and Jim could not tell who spoke. Was this his daughter telling those shades not to kill the Oracle? Or was it Sally, through his daughter?

He would never know, and Holly would never say.

Instead, the No-Face Men dragged Veronica from the room and up the stairs. She screamed and railed against them, muttering spells that did not work, incantations that dispersed to the air. And none of them worked because Holly was this Boston’s next chosen Oracle, and such violence against her could not be allowed. That was why Veronica had needed the little girl out of her Boston-the soul of the city, in this reality, would not allow one Oracle to kill the next.

Jim wanted to watch what happened to the old woman, but Jenny hugged him and held him there, and Trix quietly closed the door. Still, they heard the heavy footsteps upstairs as Veronica was dragged across the small bedroom, and then lighter impacts as her feet fell in the farther room. After that, one long scream, fading, growing distant in space and time, until it was finally cut off by a shattering silence.

Jim turned to his daughter. She was still facing away from them, but her head turned ever so slightly to the left and right, left and right. It was as if she was reading something from the air before her.

Without turning, and in a tone that told Jim he might never hear his daughter’s innocent voice again, Holly spoke three words.

“I know everything.”