Shades

“No. No more tonight, Danny. You learn fast. Took me many weeks to learn my first spell but you got it in one day. Go home to your mother now.”

Danny stood up. His legs tingled as blood flowed into them again. He’d been sitting for so long, completely lost in the book, and his muscles were stiff. He had to piss, and was hungry and thirsty. But when he saw what time it was, he forgot about all that. He was late. His Mom would be pissed—if she was awake. He bid his new mentor goodbye and headed for home.

The streets were empty, except for the occasional passing car. Danny jogged until his sides ached. Then he stopped. He leaned against an abandoned building, a Greek restaurant that had closed down three years earlier. The boards over the windows were covered with graffiti. Trash littered the sidewalk. Something fluttered above him in the darkness, hidden beyond the reach of the sodium lights; a bird, maybe, or a bat.

Unable to hold it any longer, Danny pulled down his zipper. He shivered with relief. While facing the wall, he heard another noise. It was a faint sound, a distant whisper carried through a long tunnel, only there wasn’t a tunnel around. He quickly pulled his zipper up. Then he turned around. The sound continued, but there was nothing to see. Still, there was something out there. He was sure of it. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

Maybe it’s looking for me—whatever it is.

The sound was closer now; shifting, never seeming to be in one place. Danny closed his eyes and tried to think of any of the lessons he’d learned through the night, but nothing seemed coherent.

I spun a fucking string propeller on my fingertip and learned how to stop bleeding! How’s that gonna help me now?

The sound changed, snuffling like a dog on the trail of something to eat. Not just any dog, but one like Dusty, the big as sin brute that guarded Silecki’s Recycling. Danny knew Dusty from the last time he and his friends had tried sneaking over the fence to collect a few pounds of aluminum to sell back to the cheap bastard. Ronnie had gotten his ass bitten and half the left leg of his jeans torn off before Jeremy nailed the mutt with a rock and made it let go.

For the first time in a very long while, Danny wished for the comfort of his mother. In the shadows, a black shape disengaged from the rest of the darkness and slid towards him. Danny tried to shout, but all that came out was a wheeze. The shadow stretched, reaching for him.

Danny pushed back against the boarded up door of the derelict building. A humming filled his ears, but it wasn’t a sound—it was a feeling. The shadow slunk closer. The door vibrated. For one instant, his body felt frozen and burned at the same time. Danny closed his eyes, screamed…

…and then slid.

He opened his eyes, gasping in surprise. The restaurant was gone. The shadow was gone. He was home, standing in his living room. He stood pressed up against the wall. His mother was asleep on the sofa, curled up in her nightgown. An empty bottle of tequila on the coffee table told him all he needed to know about her condition. The living room was dark, except for the glow of the television. A guy on Channel 11 was talking about a body found on the banks of the Hudson earlier in the day and how it had been identified as recent prison escapee Martin Bedrik.

Danny shivered from adrenaline rush. He closed his eyes again, trying to calm down. The shadow was gone, whatever it had been, and he was home. All he had to do was figure out how he’d gotten here. Slowly, he smiled. The crappy old restaurant he’d been standing against was six blocks away. It was like he’d been teleported, like on one of those old Star Trek shows.

Danny looked at his sleeping mother, and his smile grew wider.

“Magic,” he whispered. “Fucking magic.”

He checked the garage. His piece of shit bike, the Schwinn which he’d left along the Hudson at Gustav’s insistence, leaned against the wall.

Laughing, Danny wondered if he’d done that, too.

Then he wondered what he couldn’t do…

789

By three in the morning, Brackard’s Point slept soundly. Hook Mountain watched over the town, a dark and dour sentinel. Lightning flashed on its peak, but no thunder followed. There was no one to witness it anyway. The streets were silent and empty, the homes dark, their curtains drawn. The bell atop the Baptist church rang out with three solemn tolls. Even the hardest of the partiers and drunks were asleep.

But out in the graveyard, the dead were awake, and they talked for those who could listen. Most of it was a litany of pain and suffering, an endless sigh of desperate frustration.