Shade City (7 page)

"It's just a connection. Maybe that will be cut one day too."

I smiled sadly as I looked at Violet. Would losing her be a happy occasion, a signal that she had finally moved on and found peace? Was it selfish that I enjoyed her company and appreciated the power it gave me?

"The path is rough," I recited, "and simple feet step better with a shoe. One's not enough; like lonely streets, they're better walked with two." I thought I saw a faint smile creep past her guard. I decided then and there that I was going to help her, one way or another, even if she didn't know about it.

"Why did you speak to me," I asked, "back in that antique store?"

"Have you looked around this place? Do you really need to ask why I would want some company or even... a friend?"

I smiled softly. "I mean, why did you tell me about shades and teach me how to expel them?"

Violet stared at the marble floor tiles and thought a moment. Her answer carried the innocence of a child. "I don't know. I guess I figured that people should go where they're supposed to go."

"And where is that?"

Violet raised her eyes to me. "If I knew, I wouldn't be here."

* * *

Like all dreams, it wasn't clear if time had passed or if I just wasn't paying attention. One moment we were talking and the next the room trembled, threatening to dislodge the glass mirrors from the walls.

I sensed the disturbance but didn't know what to make of it. I had lived through several Los Angeles earthquakes before, and frankly, they were unnoticeable. Nothing but passing tremors. This incident had the same physical properties that a cartoon earthquake might. It was more foreboding, though. It wasn't clear why until Violet spoke up.

"Somebody's coming."

I turned to the door and noticed the heavy metal frame wiggling on its hinges. The glass panel, however, revealed nothing outside but the desaturated gloom.

"Get out of here," I commanded. Although I had visited this world many times, tonight was the first that it had solidified. That anything of consequence happened. Really, I was ready to expect anything, and I didn't want Violet to be in danger.

The little girl wasted no time and banged at the elevator call button. The shaking grew worse.

"What is it?" I asked.

Violet just shook her head.

A loud ding announced the arrival of the elevator as the brass double doors slid open. "You should come too," said Violet, looking concerned.

"Don't worry about me." The girl hesitated but I nodded her on. She stepped into the car and allowed the doors to close. That should have kept her out of it.

The trembling came to a head all at once, thrashing violently as if to collapse the building, and then silencing so quickly it seemed to have been nothing more than a hallucination. A complete stillness filled the dense air and I was completely alone.

And then the front door swung open.

"Dante Butcher, you say?"

I trained my eyes on the source of the spectral muttering. A lanky figure materialized on the threshold. It was a sad imitation of a human with ratty patches of orange hair and skin blotched with scabs. He was both flesh and ghostlike at the same time and had the urgent twitches of a heroin addict. I'd never seen this man in my life before, but I had felt him. He was instantly familiar.

"Soren."

A bothersome tick spasmed in the man's left cheek as he tried to smile. "That name isn't mine here," he said.

Of course that was true. Soren was the name of the man this shade had possessed, the name of the man I had freed. This spirit was an entirely different person.

"Who are you then?"

"You can call me Nero." The fiend spoke in a way that made it difficult to understand individual words. As if he was in pain.

"What do you want?"

"To dance," he answered. "To drink. To fuck." His words wheezed out of his skeletal frame. "To live."

Violet had told me about the spirits, lost and wandering the Dead Side, usually unable to help themselves in death just as in life. When they broke down enough they became more like animals. Not even understanding their own desires, but fighting viciously for them as if it meant their survival.

In a way, it did. Try as they might, many shades never succeed in making a connection with the living. Of those that do, most have trouble staying for long. They inevitably fall back into exile on the Dead Side. Sometimes, however, they find a way to bond with a host, like Violet attaching to the pocket watch. In these cases, when the shades do lose their grip on the material world, they are sometimes able to reclaim their foothold. Again and again, they can return to the same human being. Coming and going as chance and pleasure allow. It's the kind of fateful oppression that destroys lives.

Expulsion, however, disrupts the connection. Exsufflation results in a forceful split. Not only are body and spirit sundered, but the long-term bond is obliterated as well. Soren had sucked in the white sage, so any permanent hold this fiend may have had on him was gone. The living Soren was safe. More importantly, this desperate creature before me had been cast out. The sage had done its work; this shade would more than likely never see the material world again.

"It's time to move on," I told him. "This is all that's left for you here."

The man's neck jerked before he recovered his composure and approached me. "I wanted to break you and you escaped me."

Could I fight here? How would that even work?

"I was lost and desperate and wondered who you were," he continued, getting closer. "And then, here you are."

I backed up slowly, even if it made my position less threatening. This thing I was looking at wasn't quite human. The thought of it close to me was frightening.

I could just wake up, right?

Nero's eyes glazed over in a deathly white pallor. "You should never have come here."

I felt stuck as I tried to step back again. My arms were at my sides and they wiggled like soggy noodles. I couldn't raise them. The thing that had been Soren advanced and my entire body heaved in place.

I was stuck in water again, but that didn't prevent the scabbed spirit from effortlessly gliding forward and snatching my neck into his long hands. Overgrown, twisted, and broken fingernails scratched my skin. I opened my mouth wide and let out an empty scream.

And then I was in my bed, convulsing. The comforter was wrapped around me snugly, and I had to wiggle back and forth to free my arms and roll over onto my elbows.

The sun was already up, although the shuttered blinds did a good job of holding back the day. My shoes, shirt, and jeans were where I had left them, right on the floor, and everything appeared normal.

I needed to stop drinking right before bed.

 

 

 

The next morning was like most Sunday mornings. I slept in a little later than I would have liked, first only getting up to swallow an aspirin, take a dump, and force down a glass of water before passing out again. That is as good a prescription for hangovers as I've found.

By the time I woke up for good it was noon. My apartment still had a slight November chill so I opened the vertical blinds and got a lovely view of the North Hollywood Metro Station across the street. The buses that periodically shuffled in and out were a bit loud but the convenience of the location trumped the distraction—I could hit Hollywood and Downtown with the Red Line without needing to drive or look for parking or suffer valet service. I did like to drive, of course, but I also did a fair share of drinking.

I sat down on the couch with my laptop on the coffee table in front of me. I worked in the video game industry, and I had some contract programming to catch up on. I had originally thought to get ahead this weekend, but I couldn't bring myself to open Visual Studio. It was easy to find distractions. Right now, front and center were the other objects on the table. I was drawn away by a chunk of metal sitting next to an empty rocks glass from last night.

It was Soren's ring. I must have removed the bulky thing from my pocket before I went at it with Rachel. I hefted it in my palm and examined it. It was heavy. Looked like a small horseshoe that wrapped around the finger, open at the top end just enough to preserve the effect. It was oblong and bulky and not at all convenient to keep on one's finger. But Soren did. Or Nero, anyway.

What was it they said about horseshoes bringing good luck?

I browsed Wikipedia and new age Wicca blogs. Going from encyclopedic style, heavy on references, to trust-me-I'm-mysterious was interesting. But the information was more or less the same. Horseshoes warded off spirits because they were iron of the earth. I leaned back on the couch. Fat lot of good the iron did for Soren.

That shade, that fiend on the Dead Side—it still sent chills down my spine. I glanced out the sliding glass doors to the balcony and enjoyed the light of the day. If I was going to one day be stuck on the lonely streets of a gloomy Downtown Los Angeles, I might as well enjoy the sun when I could. Of course, the bliss didn't last long. I kept thinking about my dream. Then my thoughts drifted to other mysteries. The owl. The man in the plaid trench coat. Livia.

I had known Violet for four years and there was so much about her that still puzzled me. Now I had finally uncovered new clues to the events of her death. It took all of three minutes before I was googling "double murder", "murder-suicide", and other relevant terms. Violet wouldn't have liked it, but she was on the nightstand in the bedroom.

It took some doing, but newly armed with the name of her mother, I found an interesting parallel. It wasn't an exact match. The daughter's name wasn't Violet but maybe that was an alias. It would certainly explain why I hadn't been able to find the details of her death before.

Ever thorough, and positive I was on to something, I dug into secondary sources to paint a picture of the events of Violet's death, six years ago.

* * *

* * *

It was a perfect beach day. The sun ducked behind the clouds before it became unbearable but reappeared before it got too cool. Of course, the beach was perfectly supplanted by the pool in my complex. It was large and had cute girls hanging around. Especially on Sundays. I sighed and put the thought out of my mind. There would be no pool today. I had things to take care of.

I strolled across the street and appreciated the short walk to the Red Line. Most people don't realize Los Angeles has a working subway. Probably because it's serviceable for some trips but doesn't exhaustively cover the city. I had read that there used to be more tunnels under LA but tire and automotive companies bought out and dismantled all the tracks in the thirties. It was the kind of big conspiracy that was actually true. In the end, the corporations were fined but the city was left more dependent on cars anyway.

As I walked, I thought about promises to little girls. I thought about Violet. I had left her home. She didn't mind being alone as long as I spent time with her once or twice a day. It was normal for me to head out and do my own thing. Besides, I was just fact-finding. She wasn't needed.

The taken aren't as active during the day. I don't know why. Maybe the sunlight hurts their eyes, or maybe they're sleeping off the previous night's debauchery. There was a reason I worked the nightlife circuit. It was as simple as going to where my customers were. Or prey. Suffice it to say that the strange characters I passed in the California sun were good old regular Los Angeles crazies.

As I descended into the station on the escalator, the stagnant air deflated my mood. I had told Violet I would find the man in the trench coat for her, but I had another promise to keep. One I made to myself. And the dark story of Alexander and Aster gave me shivers.

Sunday train rides tended to be the least eventful. People traveled for pleasure so there was a lower number of suspect passengers. A single aging woman announced to the entire train car that she was collecting donations before we set off, but besides that, everybody kept to themselves.

There were only a couple of stops in the Valley before the subway cut under the Hollywood Hills. A ten minute ride brought passengers to the beating heart of Tourist-town. Not bad, considering it would usually take that long just to find a parking spot. Downtown was twenty minutes further. That left me ample time to question my actions.

Alone time wasn't the only reason I had left the pocket watch behind. For this specific trip, I didn't want Violet to see that I was snooping into her family. She kept her past preciously private, but I had to move forward regardless. Her father, Alexander McAllister, was still in a coma at Keck Hospital. I didn't know anything about the place but read that it was a state-of-the-art facility with cutting-edge technology, located near Union Station. It made sense that Alexander would be cared for at an esteemed location since he came from a rich family, but I still didn't know what to expect. Something tugged at me.

I hated hospitals.

* * *

I talked my way to the neurological ward, posing as a family friend. Walking through the serene halls sent chills up my spine. It was depressing to stroll past bed after bed of patients hooked up to machines that staved off their deaths. In truth, it was likely that several of them were already dead inside, and not in the way that most expected.

The dead don't operate like most movies portray. Shades require tangible vessels to substantiate their immaterial forms into our living world. Inanimate objects and animals are mere conduits and windows; they enable interaction but are not doorways. They aren't true escapes from the Dead Side. I saw where Violet really spent her time. The Dead Side was her home; she only communicated through my pocket watch.

Humans, however, are another matter entirely. When people find themselves weakened, whether through harm or drugs or sickness, they expose themselves to certain spirits that have found a way to pass through. Many nights I hunt the fiends who get high and play in the minds of the reckless youth, but there are other kinds. As Violet had said, the Dead Side transforms spirits into any manner of twisted perversions.

There is a whole class of shade that thrives on sickness and decay. They possess men and women and break their bodies down until they are either expelled or their host dies. This kind is usually rampant in hospitals, no matter how nice or expensive, and it is often self-defeating to fight them. By the time it becomes obvious that these unfortunate people have decay growing within, it's usually too late to save them. I had tried on occasion, and sometimes the patients underwent immediate complications and degraded. Or died. It was a facet of the dead that was unfamiliar to me and Violet. I figured, with a hospital staff working around the clock, it was better just to let their sad songs play out. But the tune grated my conscience. I was relieved when I finally arrived at my destination.

I stepped into the private room and was alone with the dormant form of Alexander McAllister. The shades were drawn, creating a gloom that was brightened only by the displays of the medical equipment. Besides the lights and beeps and the white noise of the breather, it would have been a crypt in here.

I stood at the edge of the bed longer than I should have, afraid of what I might discover.

Violet had said that her father abandoned her. She said he was lost. Out of reach. Since he was here, was it possible that he was left behind? Was it possible that she was just waiting for her father to join her among the dead?

Then, like an idiot, I was smacked with the obvious, way too late. If Livia had been taken and tried to kill the whole family, that would explain why Violet was helping me banish the dead. Perhaps she wasn't in a hurry to see her father. She was on a crusade instead. And I was her soldier.

It was a sound theory but I had to collect the facts where I could. I may not have known anything about medicine, but I could see something that no one else in this building could.

I placed my hand on the quiet chest of Alexander McAllister. I closed my eyes and breathed relief when I felt no foreign shadow within him. The man was not possessed; except for the grievous wound he had suffered, he was normal.