Forest of Shadows (23 page)

Slow breath in through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. 

There was a scraping sound down in the basement, like something heavy and sentient had shifted, possibly to get a better look at the intruder at the top of the stairs. 

He didn’t dare direct his light down into the basement for fear of seeing what was responsible for the sudden sound. 

Another scrape, closer this time. 

An overpowering smell, like rotting flowers, wafted up from the open stairway. 

Unable to move, he continued to gaze into the dark and he was sure something was looking right back at him. 

If I run, Judas thought, I have to make sure I get to that window before whatever or whoever the hell is down there gets me. One wrong move, one stumble and I’m dead. Sweet Jesus, I know I’m dead. 

The wood of one of the stairs made a soft creak. It was coming. 

Judas felt an icy clamp at the back of his neck and shoulders and he was suddenly jerked backwards off his feet and onto the floor. He watched in terror as the basement door slammed shut on its own accord. He started to scramble while still on his ass when he heard something heavy and fast pound up the stairs and slam into the door. 

By the time he was back on his feet, the thing in the basement was pounding on the door with wild abandon. He heard the wood begin to crack under the might of whatever was laying siege to it. 

“Who’s there?” he shouted. 

In response, another arctic prickle touched the small of his back and shoved him back down the hallway. The relentless thrashing of the door faded in the distance as he fled into the main reading room and skidded into the doorway to the periodicals room. 

Thank God the window was still open. 

He almost dove out headfirst but thought better of it just before he hit the sill with his gut. Swiveling so he could drop feet first onto the pavement, he let go, rolled once then was up and running, this time onto Main Street. Taking the shortcut through the trees wasn’t all that appealing at the moment. 

Judas turned onto the side street and made a dash into his truck. He didn’t even bother to turn on his headlights as he gunned the Ford, kicking up gravel and making a hairpin turn back onto Main. 

“Holy crap, is the whole goddamn town haunted?”

He nervously ran his hand through his hair over and over as he sped towards his apartment. Once inside, he locked the door, turned on every light and the television. It took a full ten minutes to settle his heart and breathing down. As he crashed onto the couch, he heard the muffled crumple of paper in his back pocket. 

“What the—” he said as he reached behind him. 

And realized his night trip to hell was not in vain. 

Chapter Twenty-Six

Muraco pounded once on the door. 

The black fog rose from the ground while misty shapes coalesced and advanced towards him. 

He punched the door again. 

The harsh glare of interior lights spilled from the upstairs windows. 

He stole a backwards glace. Were those people? Muraco fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his knife. 

“Come on, open up!” he shouted, his voice high and taut with fear. 

Aaauuuhhhhhhhhhh.

A terrifying thought flashed through his mind. What if they didn’t open the door? Then what? Did he make a break for the woods or should he barrel through the shadowy figures that steadily approached the porch? If they were nothing but shadows, he should pass through them easily, right? 

Something told him he would be wrong. Dead wrong. 

Yeeeeeeeessssssss.

It was like a chorus of asthmatics gasping their final plea. 

With his back to the door, Muraco flicked his butterfly knife open and waited. Whatever the fuck they were, he wasn’t about to let them overtake him without a damn good fight. If he could fend off his old man when he was blasted, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him, cutting his way through some foggy phantoms would be a piece of cake. 

Suddenly it wasn’t so cold outside and large beads of sweat soaked his armpits and neck. 

Yeeeeesssssssssssss. Cuuugggghhhhhhhhh.

The shadows became whole beings, negative images of a dozen human forms. It was like looking at a paper cutout of a chain of small people made from black construction paper except some were larger than others with smoky tendrils for arms and legs. 

A light snapped on the front porch and was swallowed up by the obsidian specters like chum down the gullet of a great white shark. 

Muraco heard the snapping of the lock and the whoosh of the door as it was thrown open. 

Sensing their prey was about to escape, the phantoms quickened their advance. They were almost on the front step of the porch when Muraco felt someone pull him through the doorway. A bearded white man in a Mets T-shirt held him by the shoulder and said, “Who are you?”

“Man, don’t you see those things?” Muraco turned to him and sputtered. 

The man’s eyes were transfixed on something just over his shoulder. 

Good, I’m not seeing things, Muraco thought and turned to face the phantoms one last time before shutting the door. 

Instead, he saw a small boy standing with his back to them on the porch. He had short, sandy hair and was dressed in a three-quarter sleeved shirt and shorts. As the boy soundlessly walked across the small porch and down the steps, the phantoms began to retreat and disintegrate back into the darkness. 

The farther the boy walked from the house into the caliginous front yard, the more he too began to dematerialize, starting from his feet and slowly working up to his shoulders. For a full ten seconds, he was nothing more than a buoyant head floating away until it blinked out as suddenly as turning off a light. 

And as quickly as it began, the terrifying ordeal was over.

“That was downright unreal,” John said. He still held Muraco’s shoulders and his eyes were locked on the now empty spot where the boy’s head was seen last. 

“You’re pretty big on understatements.” 

An hour and one pot of coffee later, John and Muraco sat in the living room and retold the events in the front yard to Eve for the third time. John had placed an audio recorder on the table between them after taking some photographs of the front yard. 

“I don’t know whether I’m glad or sad I missed it,” Eve said. 

“That’s the fine line we tread,” John quipped as he went from the living room into the basement. 

Muraco watched him scamper from the room like a man on a mission. 

“So, you’re the one that left that girl here a few weeks back?” Eve said to distract him. She wanted to break the apprehension that was growing in their unexpected guest. 

He finally stopped looking at the basement door and shook his head. “You mean Mai? Yeah, that was me. We had a fight, is all. She wanted to get out, so I let her. I knew she’d find a ride home eventually.”

Eve narrowed her gaze. “So you do that kind of thing often?”

He smiled back with a poorly constructed look of innocence. “That was the first and last time. It’s not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend or anything. We’re more like friends.” He gulped his coffee and burped. 

John emerged from the basement carrying a video camera with a larger than normal lens attached to a tripod. He went out to the front porch, snapped the legs open and positioned it so the camera was facing the shrouded woods. After looking through the eyepiece and making some adjustments, he pressed a button on the side of the camera and came back into the house. 

“More coffee?” he asked, picking up the empty pot on the dining room table.

Muraco hunched forward with his elbows on his thighs. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” John replied. 

“What’s with all this recording stuff and the pictures? I heard you were from Hollywood. You making a movie or something, man? Was this all some kind of setup? Cause I gotta tell you, if it is, I ain’t too happy.”

John instantly became serious and sat opposite him. 

“Trust me, this isn’t some Hollywood movie set that you walked into. Whatever happened out there is the real deal. I just want to figure out what the hell it was.” 

“Why the fuck would you bother?” Muraco cast a sideways glance towards Eve to see if she disapproved of his vernacular. “If I was you, I wouldn’t even think of going out there. I’d be packing my shit right now and going back to Hollywood first thing in the morning.”

“That’s definitely what the majority of people would do,” Eve said. She looked out the front window and involuntarily shuddered. 

“I know a little bit about you,” John said to him. 

“Like what?” Muraco replied warily. 

“I just know that you’re not considered by folks around here to be the townsperson of the year.”

He tried to laugh it off. “Oh yeah, who told you that?”

John answered him with silence. 

Muraco visibly stiffened. “Judas,” he said just above a tight whisper. “I heard he’d been seen around with you. So what? You gonna turn me in to the police for trespassing?”

Now it was John’s turn to laugh. 

“Actually, the fact that you aren’t in tight with this village of the damned is a good thing. First of all, I’m not from Hollywood. I’m from New York. Long Island, to be exact.”

Muraco stared at him, confused. 

“I’m not up here to write a book or work on a script.”

“Then why the hell would you come up here?”

John tilted his head towards the front door. “For that.”

The morning after the nighttime commotion, which Jessica overheard parts of until Eve came upstairs and urged her to go back to sleep, she sat quietly on the floor in the great room watching a cartoon and eating mini chocolate donuts. A glass of milk sat in front of her with tiny bits of chocolate floating across the creamy surface. 

Everyone was still asleep, even Liam. She was glad because it gave her a chance to watch her cartoons in peace. If Liam was awake he’d only distract her by crying for her attention or plain old wailing just for the heck of it. Sometimes he could be such a poop head. 

Jessica could tell by the tone of the adult voices last night that something serious was being discussed. She’d only been able to catch bits and pieces of the conversation, a few stolen words from a mid-sentence here and there. She heard the strange man curse a few times and her father talk about back home. Eventually she was lulled to sleep by the steady thrum of conversation. 

She wondered if Allison was home right now watching the same cartoon. It would be great to call her and ask, but she wasn’t allowed to use the phone by herself and she didn’t even know where her dad kept his phone book. Things would be so much better if she was a teenager. Then she could have her own phone and call her friends any time she wanted and have sleepovers and pierce her ears and go to the movies without her dad and all kinds of cool stuff. 

She took a bite of the donut and laughed as SpongeBob fell into a deep fryer on the screen. 

This would be so much more fun back home, with Allison. 

She’d been growing homesick bit by bit for the past couple of days. All she could think about was jumping through the sprinkler in her yard and riding her bike down the cracked pavement of their front sidewalk. 

Weirdest of all was the fact that she was starting to miss the idea of going back to school after summer vacation. Sure, school could be a pain. It was also where all her friends were and Ms. Gallen, her first grade teacher, was the nicest person. Ms. Gallen had assured her on her last day of school that her second grade teacher would be equally as wonderful. 

Alaska was pretty but it was also getting boring. 

When the cartoon ended, she looked down and saw the flotsam and jetsam swishing around her milk glass. 

“Eeww,” she groaned, disgusted by her own backwash.

She put the glass in the sink and went to the refrigerator to get a juice box and another donut. At least with a juice box she couldn’t see the donut pieces. 

As she was returning to the great room, she passed by the patio doors and saw a boy staring at her through the glass. 

Unfazed that a strange boy was peering in at her, she instead waved with the hand that held the donut. He looked just like the boy she had seen in the house a few weeks ago but she could be wrong. He continued to stare at her with deep, penetrating eyes. His face was an expressionless mask. 

Jessica walked over to the patio doors and placed her hand on the latch. 

“You wanna come in and watch SpongeBob?”

She knew she wasn’t allowed to let strangers in the house but he was just a kid, like her. What harm could it do?

Her little fingers fumbled with the latch and she dropped her juice box on the floor. 

“Oopsie,” she giggled and jumped back so it didn’t land on her bare feet. 

The boy outside finally broke his stare and was now looking down at the juice box.