Shades

Gustav nodded at the braided rope of hair in his fingertips. It bent toward Danny. Danny considered accusing the Russian of making the hair do that, somehow manipulating it with his fingertips in imperceptible movements, but he knew better. It was like the spinning cigarette butt when Gustav approached, the silencing of the gulls and the banishment of the crabs to their rocky hidey-holes—a whole bunch of shit that shouldn’t be, but was regardless.

Crazy shit…but true?

Gustav coughed. “Yes. You begin to understand now.”

“No. I actually don’t.”

“Actually?”

“Yes, actually. I don’t understand anything you just said.”

Gustav flicked the Zippo and touched the flame to the hair. It flared bright in his hand, intense and white. It took a moment to fade, leaving purple blotches in his vision. The smell filled Danny’s nostrils, powerful even over the cigarette and the corpse.

“You do not understand? You do not know?”

Danny breathed through his mouth. “I said I don’t.”

“You know much.” Gustav grinned. “Much. You just don’t know it yet.”

The sun moved higher in the sky.

The corpse had two shadows, but Danny didn’t notice.

TWO

Michael Bedrik walked along the path through Gethsemane Cemetery, chuckling to himself.

A man—a boy, really—clad in a pretentious amount of black sat on one of the benches. He drew in a sketch pad. His model was unaware. She sat fifty feet away against one of the graves, engaged in an internal guilt-ridden conversation with her dead sister.

The artist had convinced himself that he was a tragic romantic. As he drew, he entertained a fantasy of shyly presenting his work to her and introducing himself. She, being both intrigued and flattered, would agree to a cup of coffee with him at the café on the corner. Following the coffee, they would have a deep, intellectually stimulating conversation, then a slow sensuous fucking amongst many pillows and red satin sheets.

Bedrik stopped in front of the kid. The boy looked up, his face like one of the concrete angels on the family tombs; manipulated and false.

“May I help you?” His eyes still swam with erotic fantasy.

Bedrik stuck his hands in his pockets. “No.”

Then he walked away.

“Asshole,” the kid whispered, careful not to let the man hear him.

But Bedrik did, and he smiled.

Michael Bedrik cast no shadow.

He turned left at the next intersection, up the hill toward the girl. For a moment, he worried about the kid drawing him into the scene on his sketchpad, but the kid was far too self-absorbed in his fantasies to include another man in his drawing. The artist wanted no rivals, even if they could be easily erased. So beat the passive hearts of the weak-willed.

Bedrik strolled amongst the stones. He passed the family tomb of a musician from the State Philharmonic; the headstone of the Harborview Diner’s original owner; the individual graves of convicted murderer Francis Dwight Lundgren’s victims; the marker for the unnamed homeless man found frozen behind the lumber yard last winter; senior citizens; infants; children; thieves; preachers; police officers; town selectmen; war heroes; dozens more. Saints and sinners. Losers and winners. Each grave in Gethsemane told a story. All one had to do was listen.

The girl didn’t notice his passing. She was busy apologizing to her dead sister. Two rows down, Bedrik stopped and knelt down in front of a grave. The marble stone indicated that it was the final resting place of Edward T. Rammel. Names were power. He did not know the name on the stone, but noted it anyway. The dates meant nothing to him. He gave them only a cursory glance. Only the name mattered. The name—and the restlessness he felt emanating from beneath the earth. Whoever Edward T. Rammel was, he did not want to be dead. He’d died angry. Too young for his liking, but most people felt that in the end. In Michael Bedrik’s experience, graveyards were full of those that died too young. Ask any of them, and they’d tell you the same. They were gypped, robbed, cut down in their prime by disease, disaster, discontent.

Bedrik chuckled. The bitchings of the dead were like the bitchings of imprisoned men. Across the river in Sing Sing, everyone was innocent. Ask them and they’d tell you. They were set up, victims of circumstance and prejudice, accident of birth, wrong place, wrong time, disaster, discontentment.

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.