Red Shadows (3 page)

The sound of a soft metallic chime announced he had reached the requested floor and the elevator doors opened before him. Relieved to have space to breathe in at last, William stepped out into the hallway, his eyes scanning the numbers on the line of apartment doors either side of him as he searched out his destination. Brenda Maddens: Apartment 56-C, thirty-second floor, Kitty Genovese Block. In his mind's eye he could see her name on the list he had memorised as clearly as if he were holding it in his hand. Soon now, he told himself as he felt a sense of anticipation rising darkly within him, soon now. He looked at the numbers of the apartments again. Apartment 56-C must be right around this corner.

"Bad dog! Look at this drokking mess! I thought I told you to wait until we got outside!"

Startled by the sound of a voice ahead of him, as he rounded the corner, William saw a middle-aged man berating a cringing robo-pet as it stood beside a realistically steaming pile of synthi-shit further down the corridor. The man was angry, his features flushed crimson with exasperation, but as ever what registered more intensely to William were the colours of the man's soul. To William's eyes the robo-pet's owner was surrounded by a hazy cocoon of colours made up of shifting shades of green and brown, shot through with pulsing black lines of anger.

The exact palette of colours varied, but William had always been able to see the same cocoon around every living being. The aura, one of his doctors had called it, before trying to persuade him it was all a figment of his imagination. William preferred to call it by the same name he had given it as a child, back before he had come to understand that other people were not able to see the same things he did. The soulshadow, he had called it then. In the same way a physical object blocked out light and cast a shadow shaped in its outline on the ground beside it, so a person's soul radiated a shimmering envelope of colours that surrounded their body and revealed the outlines of their psyche: the soulshadow. It was as good a name for it as any. Certainly, William had never heard a better one.

"Damn stupid dog," the man muttered quietly, the black lines of his soulshadow pulsing wider as he bent down to clean up after his pet. "I told the wife we should've got one that didn't produce any shit. But no, she had to insist on getting the latest model."

Still complaining to himself, the man did not even glance up as William walked past him. It had always been the same. Ever since his childhood, William had known what it was to be ignored. Unless he did something particularly strange or noteworthy, people hardly noticed him. Even when they did, they seemed to find it difficult to remember what he looked like afterwards. I guess I must have one of those faces, he told himself from time to time. Average, unmemorable, with nothing distinctive about it to make it stand out from the crowd. Deep inside however, he suspected there was a good deal more to it. Sometimes, it was like he was invisible; as though the same gift that allowed him to see the colours of the souls around him had somehow blinded the world to his presence in equal measure.

He had experienced it all the more intensely in the last few days, since his arrival in Mega-City One. At times, walking the pedways of the city and seeing thousands of people pass him by without even one of them pausing to look in his direction, William knew what it was to be a ghost. Not that he felt any great regret at this curious state of affairs, far from it. Given the nature of the work he had come to do in the city, the fact that its people ignored him could only be to his advantage.

After continuing a short way down the corridor, William waited for a moment as the man with the robo-pet made his way around the corner towards the elevators. Hearing the distant chime of an elevator door opening once the man was out of sight, William turned to resume his search for the apartment of Brenda Maddens. Coming at last to the door he wanted, he looked around to make sure the corridor was empty before ringing the doorbell.

"Who is it?" he heard a woman's voice call out from inside the apartment after a few seconds.

"Synthi-Flora delivery," William said. Staring at the black spyhole in the centre of the door, he wondered whether she was looking at him through it as he spoke. "I got a delivery.flowers and candy for Ms Brenda Maddens in Apartment 56-C."

"A delivery for me?" The voice on the other side of the door was suspicious, distrustful. "Who's it from?"

"There's no name on the card," he said. "It must be from a secret admirer. You'll have to open the door. I need you to sign for it."

For a moment there was a pause. Then, from within the apartment, he heard the sound of locks turning and the rattle of a security chain being pushed into place. An instant later, the door cracked open a few centimetres.

"Pass it through to me." The woman's voice was wary. Craning his neck around to look through the gap between the edge of the door and the doorjamb, William caught a glimpse of the apartment's interior, but found the woman was still hiding unseen behind the door itself.

"The gap's too small," he said. "I told you, it's flowers and candy. If you want it, you'll have to take the chain off the door."

The door closed once more. Then, from inside, he heard the noise of the chain being released as she finally relented. The door opened again, revealing a small, dark-haired woman of perhaps forty years of age. She was attractive in a somewhat nervous way, but for William her good looks went almost unnoticed. Instead, he found himself all but transfixed as he caught sight of the colour of the soulshadow around her. It was a brilliant, vibrant shade of red - so bright he almost had to squint just to look at her. Red. Abruptly he felt a pressure building behind his eyes: a stabbing pain growing stronger inside his head.
Red
. Brenda Maddens was exactly what he had been told she would be. She was red. So red. She was everything the Grey Man had promised him.

"You said there were flowers?" Agitated, the woman shifted nervously, as though having gone against the received wisdoms of the city by opening her door to a stranger, she now felt naked. "Flowers and candy, you said, from a secret admirer?"

"That's right," he replied. Smiling, he held up his open and empty hands in front of her. "Flowers and candy. Look, you can see them here. You can see them, can't you Brenda? In my hands?" Seeing her nod her head in agreement, he continued. "And you know what goes good with candy? A nice hot cup of synthi-caf. That really would be delicious. You'd like a cup of synthi-caf, wouldn't you Brenda?"

"Synthi-caf would be nice," she said. "Delicious." Still standing in the doorway, as though unsure what to do next, she looked uncertainly into the apartment behind her.

"Yes, it would be," he told her. "And I'd like a cup of synthi-caf as well. You should invite me in and we'll have some synthi-caf together."

"Yes. I should invite you in." Her eyes were glazed and distant, her voice strangely listless. "Would you like to come in for a cup of synthi-caf?" she asked, already turning away from him to head back into the apartment.

"I'm sure that would be lovely," William replied. Following her as she walked from the apartment's hallway towards the kitchen, he closed the door behind them. "But Brenda, before you make the synthi-caf, there's something else..."

Seeing the woman pause, he put his hand to the knife inside his coat. He felt a flutter in his chest, and he knew his hand was shaking. He tried to soothe the excitement within him. Soon now. The red glow of her soulshadow was painful to him, the colour of it sending little jolts of agony coursing through his brain.
Soon now.

"Turn around, Brenda," he told her. He saw her obey him. As she turned to face him, the red glare around her seemed to grow ever brighter, the killing urge within him becoming stronger and more compelling with it. He felt the blood thundering at his temples, his heart beating wildly in his chest. "Turn around and look at me. Good. Now, lift your chin. That's it, Brenda." He pulled out the knife, the excitement building within him to a climax as he saw a look of dull comprehension dawning slowly in her eyes. But, even frightened, she did not resist him. "Higher, Brenda, higher. There's a good girl. Just a little bit higher and soon it will all be over..."

He looked and saw the colours of her soul shining from within her. He saw a red light spilling from her body, suffusing her surroundings with a blinding vivid haze.

He saw red. He felt the knife in his hand, the blade cold, sharp and ready.

He saw red. The rest came easy.

"Red!" Ahead down the corridor an old woman was screaming, her hands flailing in front of her like frantic, desperate claws. "Someone help me! I'm blind and all I can see is red!"

A Med-Judge grabbed her, wrestling with the old woman for a second as he administered a shot from the pressure hypo in his hand, before cradling her gently to the floor as the sedative took effect and her body went slack. Moving down the corridor towards them, Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson paused for a moment to peer over the Med-Judge's shoulder as he pulled out a mediscanner to examine the patient's injuries. There were twin tracks of bloody tears running down the old woman's face, while the whites of her eyes were disturbingly opaque and scarlet.

"Multiple pinpoint haemorrhages in the blood vessels around the orbits of the eyes," the Med-Judge said, glancing up from the mediscanner as he noticed Anderson standing over him. "That's what made her eyes go red. Can't blame her for panicking, but the blindness should only be temporary. Either way, you have to figure she got off easy." With a jerk of his head, he indicated the half-dozen other wounded citizens sitting along the block corridor ahead of them. "So far we've got one confirmed fatality, with a couple of others taken to hospital in a critical condition." He nodded towards the door of an apartment at the end of the hallway. "Crime scene's in there. I warn you though, if you've eaten anything recently you might want to give it a miss."

Nodding towards the Med-Judge by way of acknowledgement, Anderson continued down the corridor towards the apartment. By the watch on her wrist it was 22.47. The graveyard shift was barely three-quarters of an hour old, and already it showed every sign of being another busy night. She had been wrapping up the first case of her shift, finishing the psychic interrogation of a suspected arsonist, when she had heard the call come over her Lawmaster radio. "Psychic incident at Frank Assisi Block," the controller had said over the airwaves. "Judges on the scene request Psi Division backup. Psi-Judge Anderson, please respond." Fifteen minutes later, having left the arsonist chained to a holding post to await pickup, Anderson was on site at Frank Assisi, having seen an old woman whose terrified, sightless eyes streamed blood like water, wondering exactly what kind of situation she was about to get herself into.

Just another night in the Big Meg, Cass, she told herself. If you wanted a quiet life you shouldn't have let yourself be born with psychic powers.

Passing the group of wounded citizens sitting along one wall of the corridor, Anderson saw they all had blood running from their eyes, ears and noses. For a moment, she wondered whether the high pressure compression wave of an explosion had caused their injuries. Then, she noticed several of them had dark red patches staining their trousers - front and back - as though they were losing blood through every orifice of their bodies. Whatever lay ahead of her inside the apartment, it seemed likely it was going to be more than the aftermath of a simple bombing.

"We thought it was a sign from Grud," a woman said from among the casualties. Sitting at the end of the line, she seemed younger than the rest - perhaps in her mid-thirties, where the other casualties all appeared to be oldsters. She looked up as Anderson passed, holding her hands open before her with the palms cupped upwards, two spreading pools of blood gathering in her hands and slowly dripping to the floor as her palms overflowed.

"A sign from Grud," the woman said again. Gazing into her eyes, Anderson saw she was in shock. "But Father Grigori... he said we were wrong... He said the boy had the Devil in him... The Devil... My poor little Alexei..."

Her voice trailing away, the woman lowered her eyes to stare at the blood welling in her hands, her body rocking back and forth as a low, keening moan escaped her lips. Caught between duty and compassion, Anderson wavered for a moment as she considered trying to comfort the woman. In the end, duty won out. The Med-Judge was here to aid the survivors. She had another job to do. Her business was inside the apartment, with whatever had caused all this havoc.

No time like the present, Cass. As she pushed the apartment door open she saw that the outside of it was plastered with bloody handprints. After this kind of build-up, all we need now are some screaming teenagers and a psycho-killer in a jetball mask, and we'd have the makings of one of those horror-dramas they show on late nite Tri-D.

Inside, once she had stepped from the hallway into the living room, the apartment resembled a scene from a nightmare. There was blood everywhere: staining the carpet and furnishings, splattered and dripping from the walls. Every visible surface was coated with the same slick patina of blood. Noticing the furniture had been pushed back and stacked against a wall as though to clear a space for a performance, Anderson saw the body of an old man in black robes lying in the centre of the room. Approaching it, she realised it was the body of a priest.

A gold crucifix around his neck, rosary beads on his belt, a thick black beard framing what must once have been a stern and hawkish face. From the style of his robes and accoutrements, she guessed he had belonged to a Christian sect. Eastern Orthodox maybe, she thought as she knelt down beside him. It was clear the priest had been the source of most of the blood now staining the room. His features were chalk-white and shrunken as though there was barely a drop of blood left in him. But while Anderson could see a quantity of blood congealing in the priest's beard, there was no sign of any obvious injury to account for his death - much less the sheer magnitude of the blood splatter around him. It was a mystery.