From “The Gyres”

- William Butler Yeats

Irrational streams of blood are staining earth…

What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?...
What matter? Those that Rocky Face holds dear,
Lovers of horses and of women, shall,
From marble of a broken sepulcher,
Or dark betwixt the polecat and the owl,
Or any rich, dark nothing disinter…

OVERTURE

THE plaque is fastened securely to the wall, the primary artifact in the glass case of room fifty-six of the Ancient Mesopotamia section of the British Museum. It is surrounded by a few other small artifacts, and immediately to its left is a short explanatory description.

She looks at it when she can. She has a direct feed into the security camera mounted on the ceiling across from it. She is very concerned with the security of the plaque…her plaque…and requires her agent at the museum to keep her apprised of how many people spend more than a few minutes with it.

The plaque is approximately twenty inches tall, fifteen inches wide, with the major portion of it around an inch thick. It is made of terracotta. And it is old, having lost its paint and some of its intricate detail over the centuries. Nevertheless, it is beautiful.

It has a number of interesting figures in relief upon it. The two owls and two lions don’t concern her as much as the central image. The goddess. Even as worn and damaged as it is, the woman is just as beautiful as she remembers. She wants to tell the world about her, about the goddess, but she has to be patient…be subtle.

When the plaque was purchased by the British Museum in 2003, she had tried to influence the narrative written about it, but she had raised suspicions, so she let the curator be. In the end, the museum was brilliant. She couldn’t have done better. But the Internet… She occasionally visits Wikipedia and other sites, tweaking the articles: some details true, some not. She loves the Internet. It has made her mission much easier.

She minimizes the camera window on her desktop and opens the “Pics” folder, scanning the hundreds of files to find her favorite. It is a close-up of the plaque, of the goddess’s face. The smile is perfect. The artisan who had created this plaque had captured that smile and all its complexities—most notably, the “I know something you don’t” curves at the ends of the lips. But it is the eyes. So empty, like two holes into oblivion. She could fall into those eyes…had fallen into them many times…wants to fall into them again.

Soon, Mother…soon.

ACT ONE

The Night

October 17, 2002

PRELUDE

OCTOBER 10, 1992

The detective warned him: “Listen, Mr. Carlson, this isn’t like what you see on Law and Order.” The detective put a warm hand on Ben Carlson’s shoulder. They were in a small room in a police station, much like Ben had indeed seen on Law and Order.

The detective’s partner brought a chair around to set in front of a thirty-six inch T.V. sitting on a metal table—in fact, the very same model Ben had in his bedroom at home. “No one goes to the morgue anymore,” this second detective said. He was younger, perhaps in his late twenties. Short and wiry, he looked like a scrapper—that’s what she would have called him: a “scrapper.” She…who was dead on a table at the morgue. “This screen is a direct feed to the Coroner’s office.”

The first detective, a little taller, a little heavier, shaved bald with dark squinty eyes, the one with his hand still on Ben’s shoulder, asked, “Would you like to sit?” They were going to sit him in front of the monitor, like he was going to watch a movie.

At first Ben was inclined to say no, but he had never seen a dead body, let alone the dead body of someone he knew. That excluded, of course, the myriad bodies he had seen in caskets over his years. This was different. This was a fresh body, hours old he had been told. So he sat. “Could I have some water?” he asked the bald detective.

The detective patted him on the shoulder and nodded at his partner who returned momentarily with a paper cup of cold water. Ben took a sip and held it in his lap. The bald detective went to a phone hanging on a wall and hit four numbers. “This is Detective Kurnal. Yeah, go ahead,” he said quietly. He stayed on the phone.

The young detective reached down and pushed the power button on the T.V. The familiar “NO SIGNAL” message appeared on the screen. Ben saw it nearly every evening when he got home. Somehow his wife always managed to turn off the cable box. This made him smile until the screen lit up with something white, a sheet with a number of hills on it. It struck Ben that these hills were the head and shoulders and breasts of her. One small hill pointed right at him—her nose. She had a long pointed nose, he remembered.

“Now,” Ben heard from the detective on the phone. He had just heard the man’s name again, but it had evaporated like it had earlier when they had come to his office. Ben was on the phone with his daughter when they had knocked on his door. He knew exactly what they were, for his daughter had just told him that police had come to their door at home. Angelique could not have been home from school longer than five minutes.

Angelique…the reason why all this was happening.

Ben felt something hot welling up in his heart, and he pushed it down just as he saw two hands reach to the top of the sheet then slowly pull it down to the tip of the chin, no further. All Ben could see was the gray-white face on a stainless steel surface, a face that seemed at peace, asleep even—a face that would never pucker its lips into that familiar grimace Ben had gotten used to over the past few months.

Standing next to the screen, the young detective asked, “Is that Nancy Gorman?”

That’s it? They weren’t even going to show her neck and shoulders? Just her face? Ben got the impression they were hiding something. Ben looked at the detective. “What—I’m not sure. Why can’t I see her shoulders?”

“Is that Nancy Gorman?” the detective asked again.

Ben shrugged and shook his head. “She has a little tattoo on her left arm near the shoulder.” He knew it was Nancy, but now he wanted to see more, had to see more.

The detective on the phone asked, “Can you show the left arm and shoulder? There’s a tattoo.”

On the screen, a hand held the sheet at her chin. The other reached over to pull up the sheet to expose the left shoulder, but the sheet was caught. The hand tugged at it. The other hand left the chin to help. The hands yanked—

And the head moved exposing a deep hole in the neck below her left ear, where the Coroner or whomever had been holding the sheet. Strange marks and rips made a dotted parentheses around the hole which seemed to fall forever into her throat.

Ben gasped, dropping the paper cup of water, and the detective on the phone exclaimed, “Shit! Turn it off.”

The young one had been watching Ben, had not seen what had been exposed on the screen, and when he saw it, he was stunned a moment then fumbled with the power button. The screen went black.

Ben threw up on the floor between his feet.

THE detectives had apologized to Ben all the way to a new interview room then left him for a time. Maybe they had to report about what had happened, and perhaps to clean up the mess in the other room. This gave Ben a chance to think about what had happened—what was happening, he corrected himself, for he knew Nancy’s murder was a message to him as well.

Dark forces, the “shadows” as his daughter called them, were telling him that he was meddling in things that will get him killed.

He took a haggard breath and looked about. The small room was much like the ones in Law and Order: metal table secured to the floor, two metal chairs facing each other across the table with a third chair in the far right corner. The walls were some kind of light gray, and there were three mounted video cameras: one on the wall across from him, one in the upper left corner and one on the wall to the right. He guessed that the days of one-way mirrors were gone. The police had gone digital. He smiled. They were probably watching him right now. And what would they see? A lanky man of thirty-nine, thinning brown hair, no gray yet, with a pleasant face graced with many laugh lines—which would be mostly absent at the moment. His dark eyes were brown, and many told him they sparkled in the right light. There were no characteristic smiles right now; there was nothing to smile about.

In fact, Ben Carlson was a scared man, not so much for himself as he was for his daughter Angelique. Her shadows were coming for her, and he had to get home to be with her.

BEN looked at his watch: It was a little before four. He had been here only thirty minutes, and it seemed like hours. He wondered if his wife Diane had made it home. He had called her just before he departed the office for the police station. Angelique could not be left alone. Not now…with night only a couple hours away.

“Shadows,” his daughter called them. She had seen them for years, and he and Diane had never taken her seriously. There had been no physical or mental issues. They had been certain to take the child to the best specialists. All the doctors echoed the same conclusion: The child has an active imagination. Even the therapist said as much, though added, “Perhaps you should eliminate the horror movies.” But that was it: They didn’t watch horror movies. The Carlsons were a church-going, nightly-praying, God-thanking family—with a child who claimed she saw shadows where no one else could. Her strange imaginary friends, he and Diane had concluded.

Then three months ago it had all changed with Nancy Gorman—“seventy-years of concrete and steel” she said proudly every time she was asked her age. Nancy had joined their Bible study group, and said casually one evening, “People embrace darkness all the time. What with all those shadows flittin’ about.” Ben felt like he’d been kicked in the balls. Diane exchanged a quick look with him. But Nancy, she had looked right at him when she said it. The other members nodded heads and mumbled agreements. Ben and Nancy just looked at each other. And on the way out from their host’s house that night, with Diane a step behind, Ben had followed Nancy to her car.

“What did you mean about ‘all those shadows flittin’ about’?”

Nancy didn’t even slow down. She threw up a dismissive hand and replied, “You know what I mean. You’ve seen ‘em too.”

The next day, Nancy called him. And when they met for lunch, she reminded him of a Sunday five years ago. Eleven o’clock worship. The music team rocking the Worship Center. Ben and his family sat in their usual section in the left balcony. He remembered Angelique had grabbed his hand and had pulled him down to whisper, “I love you, Daddy,” and as he responded, “I love you too, Angel,” he saw her, saw Nancy, turned around and looking him. The old woman was moving her head strangely, and Ben thought for a moment she was having a seizure. When he straightened, she moved and that was when he realized she was looking at something behind and above him. He turned around and…

Something black moved deeper into the corner and disappear into the dark. Ben looked at that corner for a few moments. Perhaps it was the stage lights. The song ended and one of the singers began a prayer. Ben turned around and looked down—and the old woman was staring straight at him. In a sea of hairy heads, her white face accused him of something. A woman next to her tugged on an elbow and the old woman reluctantly turned and joined in the prayer.

“Daddy…” whispered Angelique, prompting Ben to pray with the congregation, and Ben let the entire episode evaporate away.

Until Nancy had reminded him.

Then she said something that made Ben shiver: “I think that thing was watching you.”

It hadn’t been her words so much as it had been the logical leap he made in that moment: Not watching me…watching Angelique!

It had been that very night, that Sunday five years ago, when Angelique had come running into Ben and Diane’s room complaining about things moving around. The shadows had come, and had been with Angelique ever since.

Ben poured out everything to Nancy that day, and over the past three months, they met Tuesdays and Thursdays for lunch and talked about the shadows, about Angelique, and about what, if anything, they could do about any of it. His wife Diane knew of the growing friendship, knew there was some strange connection between the two, and knew there was something they were keeping from her, but she was patient, Ben knew, and she never pushed Ben to talk about it, knew Ben would tell her everything in good time.

But there was no good time. Not before…not now. And it had all become darker with Nancy’s death.

Ben sat at the metal table in the police interview room avoiding the denouement of his little retrospect. He wanted the detectives to come in right now…to keep him from remembering…

It had been Nancy’s idea: to watch the house. She figured the shadows had to get in and out of his house; maybe the two of them could see them. For three nights they sat in his car across the street from his house and saw the shadows flow oily into Angelique’s window, ooze in and out of the attic vent and down the side of the house. There were at least two, and only once did they see a third. What they wanted with his daughter, Ben and Nancy could only speculate. Nancy believed they weren’t demons or ghosts. She was a superstitious one, and believed in such things. “They’re in the Bible,” she argued. But these shadows? She had never heard or read about such things. Ben didn’t subscribe to the supernatural, even though Nancy was quick to remind him that he believed in God and all the magic in the Bible. Only once did he suggest that believing in monsters was a far cry from believing in God and his miracles. They had agreed to disagree. But he had to admit that he could not dismiss what he saw moving around his house—and within it too, he reminded himself. And he wondered: Did the shadows know they were being observed? Did they care?

Then three nights ago, Nancy had invited Ben to her home. It was a large house—too large for a single elderly woman—and as he walked up to the front door, he noticed all the lights inside were on. Before he could knock, the door opened, light flooding out into the night, and Nancy stood within, glasses of bourbon in each hand.

As Ben stepped inside, Nancy thrust one of the glasses at him. He waved it off. “No, thanks.”

“You’re gonna need it,” she said flatly. She kept it and added, “Follow me.” She explained that she and her late husband had planned on a large family, but they never had children. “Never took any fertility tests. Never saw the use for something that was already decided by the Lord.” She motioned Ben into a large room at the back of the house. “I do all my livin’ back here. My T.V. room and the kitchen next to it. Had a full bath and laundry room put in next to the kitchen.”

Entering the room, Ben saw what must have been a four-foot back projection television, a monster of a thing that stood out nearly one third of the way across the room. A long coffee table sat between the T.V. and a nice leather sofa. Along the right wall stood a bookshelf filled with a variety of Bibles and Bible study books and workbooks. Nancy had been a religious student all her life, she had told Ben and their Bible study group when she had joined. She had not exaggerated. Ben even noticed a few texts from other religions: a few translations of the Koran, the Torah, and books on Eastern religions and philosophies.

“You like my library?”

Ben smiled and nodded. “Yeah, impressive. I wish I had the time to find some of these books, let alone read them.”

Nancy took a sip of her bourbon. “I got, what, thirty-odd years on you.” She moved to a desk across from the shelves and grabbed a VHS video camera. “Got something to show you.”

Ben got cold, a physical shiver that started in his tailbone and went up his spine and neck and out his arms. He watched Nancy sit on the coffee table, plug in a few cables, then turn on the T.V. and video camera. She set the camera on the table, set his supposed bourbon next to the camera, and patted the table next to the camera. She had been looking at the screen the whole time. Ben almost left. He suddenly knew what she had done, and he didn’t want to see it. Sitting in the car, seeing the shadows—that was maybe some kind of shared hallucination. They both wanted to see something so they saw it. But to get the shadows on video?

Nancy waited for Ben to move around the sofa and sit where directed.

Before she pushed play, she said, “This is gonna get me killed.” The large screen filled with Ben’s house taken from across the street. A time stamp stated “10/8/1994 2:13 AM” in the lower right corner. The three turned to a four…four to five…then: “Gotcha,” Nancy whispered from the recording. The camera zoomed in on—

Both Ben and Nancy sitting on the coffee table leaned toward the screen.

A fuzzy…something…emerged from Angelique’s window. It was not a shadow as they had seen before. It was the absence of an image, as if someone had erased only that single thing in the screen.

“I don’t think it reflects light,” Nancy whispered to Ben.

The fuzziness moved down the side of the house then away into the dark of the backyard. The screen went black.

They were both silent a few moments, then Nancy reached down and took the glass of bourbon on the table and held it in front of Ben who still looked blankly at the screen. He absently took it and looked at his friend. So much was going through his mind that he could not focus.

Nancy clinked her near-empty glass to his. “Let’s drink to my impending doom.”

“What’re you talking about?” Ben took a little sip. She was right: He would need it.

She chuckled sarcastically. “You think they’ll allow this kind of hard evidence to exist? Who knows how old, how ancient, they are? I think they wanted us to see them—but not record them.”

Ben took a larger swig of the bourbon. “No one will believe it anyway.”

“You’re probably right, Ben, but I know it just as certain as I am holding this empty glass: I’m gonna be dead soon, and you’ll have to deal with this alone.”

Ben didn’t stay much longer. He went home and stood in the dark of his daughter’s room, knowing that the shadows might be there.

THE interview room door opened and the two detectives entered. The bald one sat across from Ben; the young one stood in the left corner.

Ben looked the detective in the eye. “What’s your name again?”

The bald one smiled. “That’s okay, Ben. Happens all the time. Probably shock.” He took out a wallet and removed a card. His partner did the same. “Detective Kurnal.” He allowed his partner to give a card. “That’s Detective Bittner.” Kurnal continued to look at Ben but said to Bittner, “How about some waters, Keith?”

“Yeah, sure.” The young one left.

One-on-one. Just like Law and Order. Ben smiled. Kurnal returned it then sat back and uncoiled. “Now,” he began, “I don’t want you to get all huffy and think you’re under arrest or even under suspicion. It’s just that—”

“What did that?” Ben asked. He pointed at his own neck, but Kurnal knew what he meant.

The detective opened his mouth, but Bittner entered with bottled waters. Ben and Kurnal opened theirs and sipped. A third stood alone at the edge of the table. “Well, Ben,” he said, “that unfortunate hole in Nancy Gorman’s neck? We were hopin’ you could tell us?”

Ben started to take another sip but froze. “Me?” He started shaking.

“Now, we know you had nothing to do with her death, but, well, Nancy Gorman told us you’d have answers.”

“Me?”

Kurnal held out his hand at his partner and the detective put a folder into it. "Well, that’s not entirely true." He placed the folder in front of Ben then opened it. "The actual note is still being processed, but you can see what I mean."

On top of a number of papers was a large photograph of a sheet of paper. Ben realized he had never seen Nancy’s handwriting before, but he knew the woman a little, and these capital letters, slanted slightly to the right, were exactly what Ben would have expected to see. He didn’t expect to see his name:

TELL BEN CARLSON HE KNOWS WHAT HE HAS TO DO.

"We found it in a Bible," Kurnal said, "so you obviously know something..." The detective let the comment float in the air between them, expecting Ben to take it and define the something.

Ben almost smiled. Nancy was—was, past tense—a smart one. She sent him one last message. He wondered if it was before she was killed or if they, the shadows, allowed her this note. Ben could almost see her dealing with them, appealing to their vanity perhaps, to leave this note for her partner—she would have called it a warning. Yes, in his mind’s eye he could see the little drama: Nancy sitting in her T.V. room calling them out, expecting them to come. They facing her...a brief talk...her writing the note and slipping it into the Bible on the coffee table. Then…

The hole in her neck.

Ben felt the lava in his belly try to rise again. He forced it down.

The note—Nancy was a wily one—she had sent the message within another.

Ben looked up at Kurnal. "This is not what you think. I don’t know when it was written, but it is referring to Bible study and my wife."

They had indeed discussed such a thing, the day after their last Bible study. The group had studied Scriptures dealing with marriage and the love between husband and wife. Ben had said to Nancy that he was thinking of renewing his marriage vows with his wife, a secret getaway and ceremony. This note could easily be referring to that.

Which is what he explained to Kurnal. The detective seemed to take it, like a fish to bait, allowing him to be pulled in and caught in its innocence. He did not want to believe this man had any knowledge of the gruesome murder. If Law and Order were remotely true, Ben knew they already had an outline of his average life, his life outside the walls of his home. There was no way these detectives could know about them, about the shadows.

"I have a question," Ben asked, and Kurnal nodded. "What did that to Nancy’s neck." He didn’t really expect an answer, knew that they were at the beginning of the investigation.

But Kurnal closed the folder and answered, "The Coroner believes it was two things. The first is some animal that had latched on to her neck." The memory of the curved parenthetical bite marks made the lava rise in Ben’s throat. "But the hole?" The detective shrugged. "It’s like some kind of spike was stabbed there. The Coroner is still trying to figure it out."

“And no saliva, no DNA, no prints,” the young detective, Bittner, added. There was a disappointed silence. They had indeed hoped Ben Carlson had some answers. For now, they were stymied.

SOME hours later, after a late dinner with his wife and daughter, after an abbreviated and edited explanation of what had happened, and finally after Angelique fell asleep, Ben Carlson stood in the dark of his child’s room, peered into its darkest corners, and whispered, "I know you’re here. I want to talk."

It was what Nancy had told him he had to do.

It was the only thing he could do.

1

ANGELIQUE Carlson loved her shadows, but that was not always the case.

Since she was a little girl, Angelique could see shadows flutter and shift. They moved, and not just because of the sun. She would point and yell, and her mother and father would look—exchange another look with each other—and try their best to calm their little girl.

The ophthalmologist could find nothing wrong with her eyes.

But the shadows still moved. As if they followed her.

It was rare that she saw them outside of her house. There were a few times at the store, rarely at school, once at her friend’s house, and never at her grandmother’s. Mostly she saw them in her room. Sometimes in the day, but always at night.

She could never have a friend sleep over. The few times she had, the shadows became jealous, causing her to scream out at night. Soon, any friend she had faded away.

Angelique Carlson had been a scared and lonely little girl.

As she aged into double digits, the shadows became inky blots of darkness in the edges of her vision, swirling in a corner or coagulating like spilled oil under a sofa. When her schoolmates ostracized her, all she had were her shadows.

By the time she entered high school, she had grown used to the shadows, had come to appreciate them. They were like pets, welcoming her home. She had her acquaintances at school by day, but at night, in the quiet of her room, her shadows kept her company. They never let her down. Always on the periphery, they had become loyal friends, an intimate part of her life.

Today, she was to see some other friends, one of whom was to have a birthday party tonight. She found a pen in a drawer and signed her name to a card then slipped it into an envelope that matched the gold foil and iridescent bow of the boxed gift. “The Gang” had met last year as part of a study group preparing for a midterm political science test. The class’s professor was known at Johns Hopkins for ass-kicking exams, and after the disastrous first one, students self-organized into groups. Angelique found herself in a good one. They all ended up with great scores and decided to continue their association after the class was over. Even her shadows didn’t seem to mind The Gang. They would follow Angelique to gatherings and parties and mingle with her human friends. And these friends would catch her smiling at them, misinterpreting it as affection. She was really laughing inside at the antics her shadows played. One of her favorites was the shadowy tickle on a neck with the person jumping and shivering and exclaiming how cold it is. Or the thick black blotch that would sneak over a girl’s shoulder and linger on a breast, or come crawling up a guy’s leg to sit in his lap, looking like he had peed himself. Her human friends thought she was happy; she was only amused.

The October evening would be a little chilly, so Angelique slipped on her leather jacket. She grabbed her little black purse. But for her red blouse, she was all in black tonight, her black jeans oh-so-snug and her black pumps making her legs even longer and sleeker. She was not one for much jewelry; tonight she wore the diamond studs her father had given her…what?...eight years ago, when she had turned “dubs” as he called it—double digits. Why those dubs were important to him he never had a chance to tell her. He died almost a year later, just before her twelfth birthday. He had promised something even grander on her twenty-second birthday. She would never see it.

This memory swirled up other painful ones, and she put them down as she grabbed the gift and opened the apartment door, pulling it shut, the sound traveling down the hall and stairwell. Angelique lingered a moment. She was the closest the dorks in this apartment building got to a beautiful woman, and she could hear them sometimes, cracking a door to watch her walk down the stairs. She relished their worship. She waited to hear her neighbor’s door creak open before starting down the stairs.

Angelique looked up the stairwell at the bright upper floors. The western windows allowed the setting sun to shoot bright, yellow-red light along the hall and across the stairwell. Motes of dust floated in the stuffy air. The trees that surrounded the western and southern sides of the building hid the sun from the lower floors. She looked from the light above, down the stairwell, to the darker floors below.

Down there waited her shadows.

Angelique looked at her watch. She was going to be late, but that was okay. It was only a birthday—Ashley’s birthday. Angelique would be the last to arrive, make an entrance. She liked entrances. She’d spend a couple hours with them then use tomorrow’s massive psych test as an out. Maybe she’d even rush back to review before bed. Maybe not.

A fluid movement of blackness caught her eye two floors down. She knew if she looked longer she would see more, but she was anxious to get to the bar. Angelique smiled. “Hello, old friends,” she whispered, and she started down the steps, and they greeted her, moving up the stairwell as she made the turn on the first landing.

On the way down the next flight to the second floor, something cold touched her hand, and she yanked it away from the railing. She stopped. She remembered as a child how she would sleep with one arm over the edge of the bed and be startled awake by this same cold, a cold she had not felt in years. Angelique looked about and noticed her friends getting darker, thicker. A door to one of the geek’s rooms clicked shut. This calmed her, and she smiled, knowing that the dork was probably starting some perverted fantasy about her. She finished the last few steps, moving around the second floor landing and down the next flight.

Something grabbed her ponytail, a little tug to get noticed.

"Hey!" she called out angrily. Another door clicked shut. He probably thought he had been seen. She looked up to the hall and the line of apartment doors. She looked at her shadows. They were a little impertinent this evening, touching her for attention. She continued slowly down the steps to the next turn.

The next landing became thick, and Angelique grew a little worried. The shadows were behaving strangely, exhibiting a physicality that she had rarely encountered—definitely not since her early high school days. They had coagulated about her in her room one evening, as she was getting ready for a party. They had gone into her mouth and nose, embracing her, squeezing her. When she finally screamed, her mother had refused to allow her to go. That night, the boy whom she was to meet had been arrested for assault on another girl. She had always believed the shadows had saved her from that same fate. It had been the worst of all the times they had ever dared to touch her.

Were they trying to tell her something now?

Angelique stopped at the top of the last flight, perhaps twenty steps then another twenty feet to the exit door. Cold hands from behind pushed her, and she let out a yip, stumbling down a few steps. She paused again and looked up. She could run back to her room. Something gripped her left breast as if to pull at her heart. She tried to swat at them, struggling down the next few steps. Her friends had turned on her, and a little part of her mind pleaded to know what she had done to piss them off.

At the bottom of the steps, hands felt all over her body, squeezing and probing, pushing at her crotch, oozing into her ears and nose. She gasped and they flowed into her mouth. Something squeezed her eyes and they watered. She felt guided to the door. They wanted her out.

The door was just there, the light of its outline dimmed in the curdling dark.

Two. More. Steps.

Her hand hit the handle, her thumb fumbling with the button to release the door. The door swung out and thumped against something.

“Shit!” a voice called out.

Angelique’s eyes adjusted quickly as the shadows pulled away from the twilight, flowing back into the dark hall. An arm flailed in the air in front of her and she reached out and grabbed it, relieved another human being was there. She steadied the person and saw it was John Paul Wilkins, the student who lived just below her. His backpack slipped off his left shoulder and fell. Blindly—and impressively—he caught it as his body bumped against the porch rail.

His mouth popped open.

“Sorry,” Angelique said quickly, recognizing that moon-eyed gaze all these geeks in the building gave her, like a starving waif with no courage to ask for a bite to eat. Just not hungry enough, she thought. Not that she would have anything to do with any of them. Wilkins was the worst of them. He deferred to her, almost bowing to her like a servant, at every opportunity. She wanted a man with nads, not a eunuch. More than that, she needed a beer. “Hey, good catch,” she added three more words. Four words in a week: more than he deserved.

“What?” he stammered, looking nowhere but at her eyes.

She knew he wanted to look her all over, but he struggled to keep her eyes. Angelique smiled and nodded at the pack in his left hand. “Good catch.” Two more words. A little devil in her squeezed John Paul’s arm almost affectionately. “Later, J.P.” She hopped down the few steps, walking swiftly to get away from him and the shadows within the building.

She turned right onto the sidewalk, knowing he was lusting after her, and she put a little extra swivel in her hips. In a matter of minutes, he would be in his room whacking off.

All these little boy-geeks did every night.

ANGELIQUE could run to Alternatives in twenty minutes, taking the right shortcuts. She would be sweaty and tired…and her hair would be a mess. The ordeal with the shadows had worn her out. The city bus took at best thirty minutes but normally forty. That would put her at the party a little after seven o’clock. And she would look good.

The bus it will be.

Angelique caught up to it two blocks away and used her student pass to board. She found a seat on the right side next to a window. It rumbled down the road and came alongside a truck, its shadow covering her. For the millionth time she thought about darkness and light and what comes between them: the shadow. It always came down to her shadows. And they were not a little naughty this evening, she reflected as she settled into her seat. What did they want of her? A little part of her feared they might be changing their relationship with her, becoming more physical.

The bus lurched into motion and moved out of the truck’s shadow. Angelique’s world went from shadow to light.

Light and shadow and darkness...

And that brought out her father.

Angelique kept him locked away, out of her consciousness, memories too painful to hold. When she mused about shadows, however, he came out to tell her about the dark and the light. Ben Carlson had been a simple, church-going man, a banker who had done well for his family and his God. He did everything right yet called himself broken. He called Angelique his “Little Broken Angel,” which he knew annoyed his daughter. He would smile and sometimes laugh when she would stomp off, and he would always find her to tell her that because people lived between the dark and the light, they sinned. But that was okay, for God had sent his Son to the world to fix the broken people. That Little Broken Angel could never understand this brokenness her father often spoke about. Everything looked fine to her. As always, he would find a flashlight and take one of her dolls, and together they would go into her large closet (it was always safe there with her father), to talk again about the dark and the light.

Her father would sit against a wall in the dark closet with his Little Broken Angel on his lap.

“The dark seems very deep,” he would say in the thick darkness of the closet. “It is everywhere. Even though you know your toys and clothes are here, the dark surrounds everything, covers everything. You can’t see anything, but you know it’s there.” He turned on the flashlight. “This is what Jesus does. He shines a light so that you can see. It is much better in the light than in the dark.” The Little Broken Angel could not argue with that. With just a little light, she felt better. “Our world is half in light and half in dark—”

“Day and night!” the Little Broken Angel would say. But this memory was an early memory, one of the first ones. “Miss Wellish showed us how day and night works,” the Little Broken Angel continued. “She had a globe and she turned off the lights and she shined a flashlight on the globe and she showed us where day ended and night began and she turned the globe and…”

Her father hugged her fiercely.

“Is Jesus the Sun?”

She could feel her father smile. “Jesus is the Sun because he is the Son of God. And God is everything everywhere.” Her father moved the flashlight around the closet. “He made everything even though you cannot see it.” He turned off the light then turned it on. “It’s all there—He is there…even when you cannot see Him.”

Daddy knew the eventual question would come.

“If God made everything, then how can it be broken? Why are you broken? Why do you think I’m broken?”

“That’s where Barbie comes into the story,” her father replied. “We had a choice a long time ago to stay in the light.” He shined the light across from them and put Barbie in front of the light. Her slim little figure made a large shadow on the wall.

“Adam and Eve?” The Little Broken Angel touched the bright face of the doll. She saw her hand make a shadow too. She was like Eve.

“Yes, good. Adam and Eve were tricked into choosing both the dark and the light.” He turned Barbie to the side. “And just like the earth, we have light on one side of us and darkness on the other. We are divided in what we want to do. This causes us to sin, and when we sin, we create a little crack in our soul.”

“Are you more broken than me?”

Daddy chuckled. “I have thousands of cracks because I am older than you. You have maybe two or three.”

The Little Broken Angel sat there quietly looking from the bright profile of Barbie to the doll’s shadow on the wall. She took a deep breath, nearly a gasp, and confessed. “I think I have more cracks than two or three.” She paused. “Maybe eight.”

Daddy hugged his Little Broken Angel again and whispered, “Try hard not to make any more cracks, Angel. They’ll let out too much light from in here.” He kissed the tip of his index finger and touched her chest where her heart was. She could feel its warmth through her shirt. Daddy was always a warm man, as if the light within him burned fiercely, like a torch.

Now I have hundreds of thousands of cracks, Angelique thought. Part of her had enjoyed earning them, but another part—where Daddy stayed—knew they had let out too much of her light…most of it when he had died. She’d quit crying about her father long ago, yet something moved under the thick, twisted scars that knotted her heart. There was no way it could ever come out.

The bus accelerated through another stoplight.

If the light is God, and if God is eternal, wouldn’t the universe be bright white?

She remembered asking that question in a teen Bible study group. No one could answer. If the universe is darkness with specks of matter in it, then that means darkness came first. More silence. Isn’t darkness eternal, since light fills it?

She was invited less and less to parties and get-togethers with her Bible study friends. Within a semester, she quit going. She made different friends with similar questions.

The truck caught up with the bus at the next red light. The shadow came up from behind and enveloped the bus and her within it. With the exhaust and dust in the air, Angelique could see the sunlight stream over the top of the truck. Or was the light actually going toward the sun? Conventional wisdom and physics said that light emanated out from its source. And Angelique believed that was true until dusk. Twilight. She remembered one day (was she sixteen?) when she was sharing a joint with some boy (what was his name?), and she had been talking about light and dark and the universe and God…and she wondered aloud where the light went when the sun went down.

Maybe the sun fills our world with light and when it leaves it takes the light with it.

Angelique remembered hearing his words and seeing the light that evening flow toward the sun as it moved beyond the horizon. She created a new Theory of Evening at that moment. The sun pulled its light with it as it disappeared. With the pulling of the light came the shadows. The farther the sun moved, the longer the shadows until the light faded away into night. It made so much sense to her then.

She fell in love with that boy that day, and allowed him have his way with her. He was a puppet to her for quite a few months until she fell in love with another boy who could give her more than the other. She discovered that her sexuality could manipulate any man.

That was when she had turned fully to the dark. Barbie had turned to her shadow on the wall. Angelique’s soul had become crisscrossed with cracks after that—so much so that she no longer cared to mend it. Besides, she smiled, the cracked ones have all the fun.

Watching the sunlight with that sixteen-year-old’s eyes, seeing it move to its source, summoned to come home from filling the world, Angelique also saw that the shadows had to be there before the sunlight covered them. Like the toys and clothes in her closet, the shadows were eternal. They were something other than light and dark. When that last light faded, the night covered them too. Or perhaps the night released them, as she had seen too many times in her life. They had free reign to do what they pleased when the sun went away.

For Angelique—as a frightened child, as a precocious teen, and today as a young woman who contained them both—the shadows seemed to want to play with her mostly at dusk.

She remembered with a smile that first night of sex, still high and feeling so expansive from the release the boy had for her and within her. She remembered lying in his bed, sweat cooling on her skin, he next to her, both silent and floating. She remembered him grabbing another joint and lighting it up, taking a long toke, holding it a few moments then breathing out the smoke and these words:

Maybe the shadows are already a part of everything. Like they are different than the physical things, but they are attached or something.

Angelique knew what that boy had said was true. She had seen it all her life: shadows moving and roiling and poking at her, whispering. She had experienced it a little while ago, and she was now a little afraid that it was going to get worse.

The bus and the truck moved together, the shadow still covering her. How could anyone say that the shadow was not a part of the truck—that shadows were not a part of everything? Angelique knew too that she had a shadow. More than one, actually. And she knew one day they would turn her into a shadow too.

Ahead she saw Alternatives, and the bus slowed as it approached the next stop. Angelique looked at her watch: 7:04. She was not too late. She had a couple hours to enjoy herself and her friends.

ANGELIQUE Carlson was…notorious…at Alternatives. And she liked it like that. She had dated three of the four male bartenders who worked there, picked up at least one Adonai a week, and was best known for losing a darts game and having to give the guy a hand job in the bathroom. The entire bar had waited expectantly while the two were busy, and when she came out, they had cheered and had bought her drinks the rest of the night.

To say that she was often challenged at darts was an understatement.

She refused politely, these days, but over the last year for the few times she did accept, she never lost. The guys she beat had to wear whorish makeup at least an hour at the bar. Only her few closest friends knew that she had a darts board in her apartment and practiced often.

Angelique mused about all this as she hesitated a moment at the door. She pushed and entered.

“Hey everybody, look who walked in!” It was Bartender Steve who had seen her. He had been one of her conquests a half-year ago.

“Norm!” came the collective yell. A few men even whistled.

Thursday night was Cheers night at Alternatives, and everyone was a “Norm” when they entered. When the cheer went out, drinks were raised and a swig taken. The old T.V. show played on the fifteen flatscreens all night, and when the opening theme started, the patrons joined in. Alternatives was always packed on Cheers night.

“Angelique!” a young woman squealed, and a cute brunette ran to her and crushed her in a hug. Ashley Wetzel turned twenty-two today, and by the looks of her she may have already had half her age in drinks. Her wavy hair smelled of chemicals, and Angelique noticed the faint blond and red highlights the girl must have had done today. Ashley smiled, moving her head slightly left then right, posing to get Angelique to notice her hair and her white teeth. She wore a sluttly black bustier to enhance her breasts, a cream half sweater over it, skinny jeans that were perhaps too skinny, and Uggs.

Ashley opened her mouth. Here it comes, Angelique thought. This certain birthday girl had a propensity for “loquacious liquidity,” as Angelique’s mother would call it. It was one of the few things on which she agreed with her mother. Someone needed to tell this girl that she remained cute when she kept her mouth shut. Angelique gave Ashley a kiss on the lips—perhaps a few seconds too long, generating a “wheeeew!” or two—then whispered into Ashley’s ear, “Happy birthday.” She brought the present up between them. Ashley hugged her friend again anyway and grabbed the box.

“I wonder what the bee-yotch got you, sweetie.” This said half in fun by Lauren Ellis, her straight blond hair pulled severely back, who came up behind Ashley and put an arm around the birthday girl. She challenged Angelique whenever she could, and was still her friend only because she harbored a little crush. She and Angelique had had a little experimental affair when they had been floor mates their freshman year. Angelique, however, found she could not manipulate Lauren (and she imagined any other girl) as easily as a man, so she broke it off after a couple months. Lauren had on a tight blue cashmere sweater and faded jeans. As usual, she had on too much makeup.

“’Bout time you got here.” Mike LeRoy handed Angelique a beer and put an arm around Lauren, but he looked keenly at Angelique. Ever since Lauren had told her boyfriend about their little fling, he had given Angelique some hungry looks and managed to worm the phrase “three-way” into every conversation. Angelique wondered if he understood he was Lauren’s seconds. He was pleasant-looking enough, a little skinny—a typical frat boy with short brown hair, narrow nose, and ornery smile. He wore a white, untucked Oxford shirt, black jeans, and loafers.

Brian Amery and Jarrod Jambotti joined them, Brian with arm around Ashley and Jarrod with arm on Mike’s shoulder. They were all linked together in more ways than one. Brian liked Ashley, Ashley liked Jarrod, Mike liked all three of the girls, and Jarrod had been a conquest of Angelique’s. Angelique stood apart—just the way she liked it.

“A toast to the birthday girl,” Angelique announced, holding up her beer. The others disengaged and hurried to get their drinks, swarming back to stand around the birthday girl. Angelique smiled slightly and said, “To Ashley Wetzel: Enjoy the Swatches.”

Ashley squealed and hunched over the gift, tearing off the wrapping pulling open the box. "Two of them!" she screamed. "Just like Kerri Walsh!" Ashley played volleyball for John’s Hopkins and she idolized Walsh, arguably the best American beach volleyballer.

Frozen with glasses high, the others looked at Angelique as if she had popped all their balloons, which she had. Taken together, their gifts did not compare to Angelique’s. Jarrod, knowing more about Angelique than the others, frowned and as he opened his mouth to say something, one of the bartenders called out, “Hey everyone, say hello to Anders!”

The gang along with the rest of the bar called out, “Norm!” They did not drink but continued to hold their glasses high, an awkward moment that hung off their raised drinks and threatened to pull them down. They looked at each other like a game of blink. Angelique wondered who would blink first.

It was Jarrod. “We’re like some perverted mix of Friends and Cheers.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Lauren added.

Ashley giggled.

The awkwardness fell away. They all chuckled and downed what they had in hand.

2

HE put his key into the lock. It stopped half way. “C’mon, c’mon,” he mumbled and jiggled it until it slipped in. He smiled. Now he had to push in and pull out ever so slightly while turning. With the right touch, the lock would—

The door swung open almost hitting him in the face. He jumped back and teetered on the edge of the top step of the building’s porch, his arms flailing and causing his backpack to fall from his shoulder. Something grasped his right arm.

He heard, “Oh! Hey, sorry…” It was a woman’s voice—her voice. He looked up and smiled, embarrassed. “Good catch,” she said and smiled back.

“Wh-what?” He looked down at the strap in his hand. He had caught the pack without thinking.

“The pack,” she stated. “Good catch,” she repeated. Her right hand had grabbed his forearm, and now her left gripped his elbow to stabilize him. Even through his jacket, her touch tingled his skin and a barely perceptible flexing of his back, like a single shiver, moved through him. Her hands were warm. He wanted her to hold him a moment more…an eternity more.

She let go. “Later, J.P.,” she called out as she undulated down the steps, floated along the walkway, and continued right onto the sidewalk to whatever divine destination she had planned.

Angelique Carlson was indeed a goddess, and he memorized every minute movement of her perfect face, her perfect body, her perfect—everything. The way her pendent brown hair moved from shoulder to shoulder…the confident upward tilt of her chin…the provocative sway of her hips. He growled. How she filled those jeans. He absently put his arm out to catch the door before it could close and lock again. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. He’d worship at the altar of Angelique forever if she let him.

Look back at me, he willed, but as she turned onto the sidewalk, the divine profile remained fixed ahead. He was a momentary thought, a casual gesture. She was gone.

That was all he ever was and ever would be to Angelique Carlson: momentary and casual.

Anger set in, burning, annoying anger. She had called him J.P.—a name he was certain she had started—a name that the entire building now used. That’s the problem with goddesses, he thought. Fickle and capricious at best. He shouldered his pack and pulled the door open. But you gotta worship them, he countered, smiling wryly.

A part of him knew she knew he worshipped her, and a little place in the back of his mind knew this was dangerous.

He passed from the light into the dark entrance of the apartment building. Day or night, it was always dark here, and he could never understand why the building manager couldn’t install a simple light. Today, this shadow was thick and substantial, like walking in a cold, deep pond, and it made him even more uncomfortable. As with most people, if pressed to say the truth, he didn’t like the dark, be it a hallway, an alley, or a forest. He needed a light here, and he would bring it up again with the manager.

He took the steps two at a time up to the second floor and his apartment.

He had a while before he had to go to work.

JOHN Paul Wilkins took the bus every weekday to the Community College of Baltimore County Essex Campus. He took the bus straight home from classes. He rarely made any detours in this routine. Typically he would have an hour to change clothes and grab something quick to eat, heading back out the door and down the steps to the back of the building and his 1995 Toyota Tercel in the back lot. He would drive this reliable eyesore to his job. He would drive it home after work. He would grab a snack and study a little. He would repeat this procedure every day.

Except on the occasion that he worked the late shift—like tonight. He didn’t have to be at work till eleven. Being the assistant manager really meant being the manager’s assistant. But that was what responsibility meant: filling in the holes those less responsible made. And that meant working late when all one wanted to do was chill and study a little. He grabbed a Mountain Dew from the fridge, the half bag of Funyuns from the counter, and he plopped onto the sofa to watch two hours of M.A.S.H.

Except that at times like this, he rarely watched the reruns. By the end of the first segment, another him—not John Paul (the student) or Juan Pablo (the assistant manager)…but another him—would sit down next to himself. He was a dangerous, feral part of John Paul that had lately emerged at times like this, times that allowed him to think, to ruminate on his life. In fact, John Paul knew, this wild John had appeared a few months ago, after the building had a little Fourth of July party. Angelique and her friends had come, as they always did, giggling and chuckling at the geeks, drinking the beer and eating the food, then leaving not even an hour after they had arrived. John Paul remembered that was the first time the Wild One had appeared at his side, whispering, “Why don’t you go too? Ask them if you can come with them…with her?” John Paul remembered a physical reaction like one of those shivers one has when taking a piss.

Then he appeared again a week or so later on a night like this, a night of M.A.S.H. and waiting for work. The Wild One had appeared a total of five times now, and he always started with the same question:

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Watching M.A.S.H.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Let’s get this over with,” John Paul would reply, and they would start their little game.

“So what the hell are you doing?”

John Paul was a creature of habit. He had no real friends and only a handful of acquaintances. The last time he had a girlfriend was—hell, he couldn’t remember. But he did have one long ago. School and work. That was his life. Neither one particularly rocked his world. He always argued that it was better than jail, so he rationalized that his life wasn’t so bad. But to be in jail meant that he had to go out and do something against the law. And that wasn’t going to happen—especially the breaking the law part. School and work. Nothing more.

“Why don’t you go out, pick up some chick and bring her back here?” the Wild One would say.

Disgusted with himself, John Paul would reply, “Then I wouldn’t be a creature of habit.”

“Make it a new habit.”

John Paul would give the only answer he could give, a stock response he had heard his father say to him countless times: “Time enough for fun after the work is done.”

The Wild One would chuckle. The chuckle would become a low growl. He always leaned close at this point, and John Paul always had this sense of openness, of the forest, of running free between the trees. And there was a musky smell of fur and the tang of raw meat. John Paul never looked at the Wild One. He faced the T.V.—looking at the images on the screen but not really seeing them. He wanted to look at him, but he knew he would see nothing but himself.

John Paul sat on the sofa and knew the devil inside sat beside him. Their conversation would come to this point when the Wild One would whisper what it always whispered. John Paul wondered about the other side of himself, the side that won out but never managed to appear. Where was the angel to shoo off the devil like in those old cartoons?

The Wild One leaned close and said the words that had been haunting him for two years now, words that had become even more poignant since Angelique had moved into the building: “What happens to a dream deferred?” The Wild One sat back and laughed, a mocking, snarling sound that made John Paul’s stomach sour.

A dream deferred…

John Paul recalled the Hughes poem from 11th grade English in high school, but like most teens, he only let it be an assignment, allowed it to touch the patina of adolescence that protected him from individuality and independence. He said all the right things and wrote all the right analyses, but he never let it in. It wasn’t worthy.

Then he encountered the poem again a couple years ago, and it slipped into him and made his life come a little more into focus.

A dream deferred…

His whole life was a dream deferred. He did nothing for himself. He lived his life for his parents.

School and work.

Whatever he wanted or needed out of life was deferred until he graduated college.

“No,” the Wild One replied, “then there is the family business.”

It was a shackle that his parents euphemistically called a legacy, but it meant that his life would become no better than what it was now: school and work. Except it would become work and work.

A part of John Paul secretly hated his parents and their expectations. They had mapped out his life long before he ever realized that there was even a map to be made, making choices for him to set him on a path that would mimic their own lives. Safe adults in a safe world, a simple, little world they wanted to pass on to their son.

“What the hell are you doing?” came the question again.

It was a waste of time to study tourism management, let alone to throw hospitality and marketing on top of it. But his parents insisted that if he were to take over managing the five bed and breakfast establishments they owned, then John Paul had to be educated. The B’n’Bs practically ran themselves, so why all this time and money thrown at CCBC was beyond him.

“A dream deferred, buddy,” the Wild One whispered in his ear. “Perhaps you have to prove something to them,” it chuckled again, “before you can be a part of their little dream.”

The American Dream, his parents called it. What was this American Dream? It was something from the distant past that Boomers like his parents held on to and did their best to push it on to the next generation. He wanted to make them happy, but that meant—

“A dream deferred…”

Actually, John Paul had done well, these three years. After a mediocre start of a 2.6 grade point average his first semester (and the accompanying groans from his parents), John Paul had realized that with a tad more effort, a 3.0 or better was achievable. And an increase in achievement transferred into a decrease in harassment from his parents, especially from his father.

“But you don’t really care about the grades,” the Wild One stated. “It’s all for them and nothing for you.”

A dream deferred…

John Paul had lived with his father’s sister Aunt Mary through his freshman year, and knew she provided weekly reports of his activities to his parents. She had been visibly upset—so too had been his parents, for that matter—when he announced that he was moving into an apartment with a total stranger the summer before his second year. He had been working in a computer writing lab during his spring semester, when the director asked him to stay on for summer school. Then he fell into a part time job at a bodega. The owner, Mr. Jarrez, told him he knew of a student who needed a roommate.

He moved into this very apartment in which he now sat as soon as he could. It was nothing fancy. Two bedrooms, a kitchen dinette that opened into the living room, a decent bathroom. But it was in a nice area, and it was filled with bookworms. There would be no distractions. No women.

“No fun,” the Wild One added. “One step toward a dream, then two steps back.”

John Paul shook his head, a slight little movement that half agreed with the thing next to him.

For the following school year, he took the minimum requirement of hours to maintain his full-time status at CCBC (which he needed to do to keep his work-study grant and the job at the computer lab), worked at the bodega part-time, and lived with Emilio who just happened to be Mr. Jarrez’s nephew. “You’re a good boy, Juan Pablo,” the old man would say and pat him on the hand. “Keep eye on my Emi.”

“Freedom,” the thing sitting next to him whispered, “the freedom to find your dream.” It sighed and shook its head, this Wild One. “But you had to get involved…”

In March, however, Emilio announced he was moving in with is “fiancé,” and left John Paul with twice the rent. Mr. Jarrez, sympathetic to his plight, increased his hours and pay, enough to make up for the wrong his nephew had done, and since that point—

“You got locked into another path of deferment.”

Essentially, John Paul became Emilio, who was supposed to take over Mr. Jarrez’s bodega, cheesily named Corazon. John Paul remembered when he had finally gotten the courage to ask Emilio one day about the name, and the boy had responded, “Mi, Tio…es fucking loco, man. Says he puts his heart into this place.” It was obvious to John Paul that Emilio didn’t have his heart in the bodega like his uncle had hoped. He split at the first opportunity. Then Juan Pablo became Emilio.

A strange relationship had developed between Mr. Jarrez, whom the old man insisted being called Tio, and “Juan Pablo” after Emilio left. John Paul kind of looked at that part of his life as an alternate him. Juan Pablo was another personality, a surrogate son to Tio. He helped to expand the store hours, hired another cashier, got Tio to add a lottery hub which brought in more business. Juan Pablo got to use some of his schooling, which had become a little less worthless. Tio was happy to announce to anyone and everyone that he had a new assistant manager—and he especially made it a point to tell every young lady.

“The old man has been pulling you down.” The Wild One was still in John Paul’s ear, its scent strong and pungent and oddly exciting. “He is no better than them.” That part of John Paul wanted to say, Fuck them all, and take off and do something…wild.

But the biggest part of John Paul, the part that wasn’t whispering next to him, loved Tio and had come to love Corazon.

One of Tio’s endearing qualities was his easy slippage into Spanish. He had been obviously used to speaking so with Emilio, and as the new Emilio, John Paul often became lost when Tio started into conversation. In the months he had been working at Corazon, he had picked up some Spanish, but Tio rattled it off like a machine gun. Then he would see Juan Pablo’s face and smile and blush and start over in his broken English.

Recently, Tio’s focus had been on Juan Pablo’s love life—or lack of it. (“As if you have time for a woman,” the Wild One chided.)

“Why you no have…buena novia?” Tio had asked a few weeks back.

John Paul smiled and returned, ”Novia?”

Tio had a way of tisking when he was frustrated over language. “Una… compañera.”

John Paul recognized companion and his smiled faded a little. He thought of Angelique.

“Ahhhh…” Tio said, grinning. “You have?”

“No,” he replied too quickly.

Tio took John Paul’s hand and patted it, nodding his head. “Listen to me, Juan Pablo.” The store was empty at the moment. Tio waved a hand to encompass the whole store. “Este es mi corazon. Cuando mi amor—” He caught himself and said, “When my love died, this is all I have left of her. Esta bodega. My wife and I made it our heart. Si? You are young, Juan Pablo. You need to find your love, and there you will find your heart.”

John Paul wished that had been the end of it; it was only the beginning. Tio proceeded to make overtures at every girl who came into the bodega, culminating in a folded piece of paper he had handed to John Paul two nights ago.

“Un buen hombre es en la demanda, Juan Pablo.” He chuckled. “You are in demand. Los hobrecitos that…bob around the barrio, they are like the produce we throw away. Foul y podrido. You are un…pepino fresco, Juan Pablo.”

John Paul couldn’t help but to smile at being called a fresh cucumber. Cucumbers were Tio’s favorite thing to eat. He often had a plate of sliced cukes behind the counter. But John Paul tried to be serious, and said, “You aren’t being fair—”

“No, no, I see them come in here. They are rotten because their hearts are rotten.” He poked John Paul’s chest, at his heart. “But your heart es fuerte. A beautiful woman desires a good, strong heart.” Tio handed the paper to John Paul. “No hang your heart on a woman like a coat on a peg.” He pointed at the paper in Juan Pablo’s hand. “One of these may want to wear it.”

John Paul unfolded the paper. It listed seven names and phone numbers of women.

Tio smiled and said, “One for each day of the week.”

JOHN Paul indeed loved the old man. He felt…okay…about that part of his life.

“What are you going to do next May when you graduate?” the Wild One asked.

That was indeed the Big Question.

Someone was going to be disappointed whatever happened.

And as always, the Wild One left John Paul with the Big Question in his lap, like a steaming pile of shit that demanded to be cleaned up.

So John Paul…deferred…the Question and focused on the T.V.

Hawkeye and Trapper were in their bloody scrubs, operating on wounded soldiers. That was what they were supposed to do. They made their fun out of the time they had outside of the O.R. But they had writers and directors and great actors to make their lives interesting.

John Paul had John Paul and Juan Pablo. Neither of them had the courage to go out make time to do something fun.

He thought of the list Tio had made him put in his wallet.

With a Funyun halfway to his mouth John Paul Wilkins realized that soon this life was going to change. He crunched down on the Funyun and followed it with a swig of Mountain Dew.

JOHN Paul lived in a fortress of solitude. The apartment building contained sixteen units on five floors. It had to be the most boring apartment building in Baltimore. The occupants were genial if they happened to bump into each other in the hall or out in the parking lot. They might even help each other with carrying large boxes or bags of groceries if asked. For the most part, the thirty occupants kept to themselves and rarely saw each other.

Every year, a week before Halloween, they had a building meeting in one of the larger apartments on the fifth floor to discuss the Masque, the annual Halloween party. It typically didn’t even double the building’s occupancy—and the few females who did attend were as nerdy as the tenants. Not that that was an issue with the all-male residents: physics majors, economics majors, mathematics majors, statistics majors, surrounded by mostly med students. They all attended Johns Hopkins University. John Paul was the only outsider. But no one minded because their minds were in their studies. They considered their two annual events, the Fourth of July and the Masque parties, wild and crazy, but that part of John Paul that he kept down most of the time called them lame and weak. But they all put their books aside for a weekend and allowed themselves to have a little quiet fun.

John Paul had lived in a fortress of solitude. That all changed when Angelique Carlson arrived over a year ago on a hot late-July day. One of the stats majors, James Something-or-Another had graduated in May and moved out the beginning of that summer. In his place came Angelique. The only female in the building.

Long muscular legs… long thin arms…long brown hair…long eye lashes… She was long—as in a long distance away from John Paul ever getting close to her. Within a week of her moving in, he knew what unrequited meant. She barely said two words at any given time to any of them, and for that entire summer, she quietly made all their lives miserable, appearing in the laundry room in tight shorts and a T-shirt, or worse: laying out in the sun in a white string bikini in the small front yard. Her friends, birds of a feather, came a went, and by the time school started up again, the apartment building became Angelique’s little glass globe for her to shake into chaos whenever she shook her pretty little ass.

And if that wasn’t agony enough, she lived right above him. The soft thump of a step or faint squeak from the ceiling became magnified. He had never noticed it when James Statistics lived up there.

John Paul’s parents, on one of their few visits, had immediately picked up on his unrequited infatuation. His father began whistling a tune and chuckling; his mother laughingly scolded her husband and chuckled too. John Paul asked about the tune, but they refused to tell him. Then one day a few weeks later, a package arrived from them, a CD of an old ’70s group Tony Orland and Dawn. “Listen to track one,” the note said, and John Paul heard for the first of a thousand times the song “Knock Three Times.” He hated them for it…but the song was so right.

And that was his life: school, work...and momentary, casual encounters with a goddess that lived above him. The drollery was punctuated by Angelique’s rare sight or an even rarer bright smile that never filled the hole in his heart she’d dug out the day she had moved in.

JOHN Paul reached into the bag of Funyuns. Empty. He finished his Mountain Dew. He decided to study before heading to work. It would take his mind off her.

INTERLUDE

SUMMER 1988

The penny shined brightly on the ground. The morning sun caught it just right to glint in the boy’s eye.

He looked up at his mommy. She was warbling (as his father called it) with Jimmy Sampson’s mom. They all stood off from the entrance of the grocery store, as they did every Monday morning. Other mothers would show up shortly, sometimes up to six total, and Johnny would be the only boy amongst them. He wondered why his mommy didn’t get a sitter like the other mothers did. The one time he had asked, she had promised to give him five pennies for the gumball machines. Five gumballs for an eternity of warbling mothers and boring shopping.

Johnny looked back at the penny. Like a mirror it flashed, lying on the sidewalk at the corner of the building. Cars stopped at the intersection, taking their polite turns before moving on. The boy watched them a moment, then looked at his mommy...then looked at the penny.

A car turned and shadowed the penny, making it flicker. He could swear he heard the penny say, "I’m here for you, Johnny. I miss you. Come and get me!"

He looked again at his mommy. Still warbling.

Not taking his eyes from her, he took a small step at the penny. He didn’t have to look back at it. It’s call now was a physical thing.

Come and get me, Johnny!

Another small step. She took no notice.

Just for you, Johnny! No one else!

He had to be patient.

Johnny stood to the right of the main entrance. The cement was still wet from its morning cleaning. He didn’t like the damp smell that rose from it. One more step took him to the front doors, and they slid open. The store breathed, and Johnny smiled. O, the sweet smell of fresh bread. He loved that smell. He was in luck as an elderly lady inched her way out. That heavenly scent wrapped around him and pushed away the wet cement. Any other Monday, he would have stood there until his mommy tired of the warbling, but the penny was insistent:

Johnny! I’m waiting, Johnny!

He gave it a quick half-look, and watched his mommy. He was waiting for her hands to start. When her hands moved with her mouth, she would be focused on the conversation, giving Johnny the chance to get the penny.

But luck gave him a better chance: Stephanie’s mom approached from the opposite direction.

Johnny took three big steps which took him to the other side of the entrance. His movement caused the doors to open again. Ah, that smell. His mouth watered.

Then it happened. The hands started. Mommy must have something important to say. His father was right: Only an act of God could stop the birds from warbling. Johnny turned. The penny shined even brighter. It was just him and the penny.

He ran to it.

Did he hear bells? A hundred—no!—a thousand bells sounded from the shiny penny!

And there it was between his feet. A brand new penny.

Johnny squatted down. He remembered his day care teacher saying that the man on it was important. Abe-lee-cun. Was he the one calling to him? He picked it up, warm and smooth between his fingers. He stood, looked back at mommy (wings flapping and still warbling), and put the penny in his pocket.

Another penny sat on the cement between his feet. Glowing like the first one. Where did it come from?

He squatted back down to get it too, and two men’s shoes, shiny black, appeared in front of him. Blue dress pants rose up to a black belt, a bright white shirt, a matching blue suit jacket—inside it all, a smiling man whose teeth were as bright as his shirt.

"Those your pennies, child?" The man’s voice was musical, rising and falling like he was reading a poem, soft like a single bell...

Johnny quickly put it in his pocket with the other. "Uh-huh," he replied. He wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but this man’s smile was good: yes, that wide smile and white teeth told him this was a good man. Mommy would talk to this man, maybe even his father. So he added, "I got two of them."

"Did you find them on the ground like that one?"

Johnny thought the man was talking about the first penny, but the man’s blue eyes (as blue as the suit he wore) gazed down at the cement.

Another shiny penny lay between Johnny’s feet.

"How?" Johnny was pleased to find the other two pennies still in his pocket. He picked up the third.

"You losin’ your pennies, child?" the man asked amused.

"No," Johnny drawled out in wonder. "That’s the third one I’ve found in that spot." He was amazed.

"Really?" the man responded. "You know what they say about finding a shiny penny?"

"No, what?"

"Well," the man said, now serious—no longer smiling, "they’re pennies from Heaven."

"Wow," Johnny said. "You mean God gave me these?" He put a hand on his pocket.

Now the man laughed. His head moved back and his hands clasped in front of him, just above Johnny’s head. It was the first movement the man had made. Johnny thought he heard that single bell again. "No, child," the man finally said, "God has given you more than mere pennies. No...they say that if you find a shiny penny on the ground, that an angel put it there to let you know you are special."

Johnny considered this and said, "That means three angels gave me these." He squeezed his pocket and felt their solid warmth.

"Or one angel thinks you are very special," the man added. "But look, child, there are more pennies." He pointed behind Johnny, back toward his mother. "You must have many angels thinking of you today."

A line of shiny pennies led straight back to his mommy.

Johnny jumped at the first and picked it up. He turned around to show the man, but he was gone.

Johnny shrugged and turned back to get the rest of the pennies.

"John Paul Wilkins!" his mother yelled then saw the boy picking up the last two pennies just behind her. Somewhat relieved he was nearby, she asked, "Did you find a couple pennies, dear?"

He dug into his pocket and pulled out at least a dozen bright pennies. "The man said that angels gave them to me, that they are pennies from Heaven."

"Man? What man?" his mother demanded.

Johnny shrugged. "He’s gone. Can I get some gum?"

"What did I tell you about talking to strangers?"

"He didn’t feel like a stranger," Johnny replied. In fact, he felt like he should know the man.

His mother looked about briefly, exchanged worried glances with the other ladies, and said, "C’mon, John Paul," nearly dragging the boy into the store. The ladies followed in their wake.

An hour later, Johnny twisted the handle on the gumball machine. The ten machines were lined up five over five, bright red bottoms with their glass tops filled with a rainbow of colored candies or toys. Only one was filled with gumballs. His pocket already bulged with eleven of them. He heard the last one hit the metal door. He put his hand under the opening and lifted the door. A blue ball, that was the seventh, rolled into his hand. What were the chances of that happening? Seven blue gumballs out of eleven. The blue made Johnny think of the man in the blue suit. He shrugged and popped it into his mouth.

He turned to his mommy who watched him as she handed the cashier some money. Bags of groceries filled the cart at the end of the register area. He worked the hard ball between his teeth, knowing that in a few minutes it would reduce to nearly nothing. He looked down to his bulging pocket to dig into it for another gumball. He froze, stunned.

There on the floor, beneath the machines, was a shiny new penny.

3

BARTENDER Steve flashed her a grin and set a full beer in front of her before she could say anything.

Angelique wondered a moment if he was buying…and more than beer. He was certainly marvelous to look at, in or out of clothes. But he couldn’t hold a logical discussion with a turd. The affair she had had with Steve lasted for five sexual encounters in two weeks, and she dumped him. He was so oblivious to what had happened—he was such a player, or so he thought—that he believed he had split with her. Whatever. He was like one of those old roller-coaster rides: short and intense but nothing special. Once was enough. Besides, hooking up with him again was going backwards, and she only went forwards.

Angelique put her purse on the bar, took the beer, and cocked her head, expressing a You? look.

Steve smiled and replied, “Dark and Lonely at the end of the bar,” nodding to a stranger sitting literally alone near the waitress station. No one was within five feet of him, which was odd since the bar was filling shoulder to shoulder. “He specifically requested you be covered for the night.”

Dark and Lonely brooded over a drink, swirling it around and watching the ice move in circles. Oddly, he wore black gloves, the expensive thin leather ones that fit like a second skin. Long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, his face was down, shadowed from the light directly above him. He wore a black leather jacket that matched his gloves and a black, yellow, and red plaid scarf at his neck, obscuring his shirt. What Angelique could see, he was good-looking. More importantly, he was intriguing.

Steve recognized the look Angelique gave the stranger. “That’s Anders.”

Anders. Angelique remembered it called out earlier. An odd name. It sounded Germanic or Scandinavian, which fit, given the somewhat European, metro-sexual look he had. He probably wore the gloves to protect his manicure. He had that look of wealthy sophistication that Angelique suddenly found appealing. He was probably well-traveled too. She could imagine a trip to Paris or Athens in her near future. She smiled.

“I know that look,” Jarrod murmured. He had appeared at Angelique’s side and motioned to Steve for a drink, placing two fives on the bar to pay for his own and Angelique’s

Angelique rolled her eyes and turned to her ex. “Used to know that look.”

Steve took one of the fives and said, “She’s covered.”

“Ouch,” Jarrod cocked an eyebrow at Steve. Both men grinned.

Angelique ignored him. She opened her purse and took out her compact, checking her makeup and hair in its small mirror.

Steve returned with Jarrod’s beer. “Dark and Lonely at the other end.” He pointed at Anders who now had looked up at them, as if he could hear every word they said. The right edge of his mouth turned up.

Angelique became bored with the past that surrounded her and turned back to this Anders. He looked directly at her. The small ceiling light above him made his face glow—especially his eyes…

Gray whirlpools, reflecting the dim light of the bar. The strangest eyes in the world. Angelique immediately thought rabbit-holes and wondered if she looked a moment longer, she would fall into them? She felt something grip her and the bar shifted vertiginously to the left. She leaned into something soft and heard her blood rush in her ears.

The bar lights dimmed, and the crowd became quiet. Were they all watching her?

Hands gripped her shoulders. The lights became normal. “You okay?” Jarrod whispered in her ear.

Angelique grabbed her beer on the bar and pulled three long draughts from it. A little panicked, she looked back to those gray eyes.

People crowded the end of the bar.

ANGELIQUE was bored.

They sat around a table, Ashley thanking them for her gifts. Every twenty seconds, though, she looked at her Swatches, adjusted them on her arm, pretending to look at the time.

Lauren brooded, shooting Angelique a glance every time Ashley looked at her watches.

The guys argued over football bullshit.

Typical get-together.

The bar lights dimmed, and for a moment Angelique swallowed a glob of panic. She looked around for her shadows until she heard the sound system’s volume increase.

The panic melted with a familiar tinkle of piano notes; the Cheers theme song started, and everyone sang along.

Making your way in the world today, takes everything you’ve got.

The bar: “No shit!”

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

The bar: “Oh, yeah!”
Worries…test… Angelique looked at her watch: 9:27. “Fuck!” she spat.

Wouldn’t you like to get away?

The bar cheered.

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name…

“Norm!”

And they’re always glad you came.

“Norm!”

You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

“Norm!”

You wanna go where people know, people are all the same. You wanna go where everybody knows your name.

“Norm!” More cheering.

Angelique downed her beer with the rest of the bar. She slammed her glass on the table, grabbed her purse, and announced to the gang, “Gotta run!”

DANCE music thumped as the bar door shut behind her.

Angelique wished she could run. She had run the short cut only a few times, and she calculated the route in her mind. Twenty minutes. But that was with flats on. She wore her pumps. A brisk walk along the short cut would still get her home more quickly than the bus. That would put her in her apartment a little after ten.

She gripped her small purse tightly and turned down the street to the first of many turns, an alley between two buildings. It was dark and cluttered with heaps of garbage bags and stacks of boxes. Near her end squatted a large, green metal dumpster; one of its plastic lids was up and leaning back against the building. The distant light at the other end of the alley revealed another one, both its tops down. Between the two was darkness. She thought of her naughty shadows. “A little cooperation would help,” she murmured. And there was the rotten stench. She took a few deep breaths of cool, fresh air and moved as fast as her pumps would let her, weaving around the dumpster and some boxes.

A prickling moved up her spine to the back of her head. Her shadows were waiting. Shit. Angelique decided she didn’t want to deal with them. She halted. The clocking from her pumps echoed down the alley. She turned to go back as a shadow detached from a heap to the left. It growled.

A large dog barked, its hackles standing straight. All Angelique could see were white teeth and a white bob tail. It moved and barked again, blocking her way. Angelique saw Rottweiler in it. Growling, it lunged at her. She let out a scream and jumped back, hitting the dumpster and falling to the ground.

The dog snarled a bark and came at her.

She covered her head with her arms, shrinking back from it. She heard a thump then a quick yelp.

The yelping faded down the alley.

Angelique opened her eyes to find a brick where the dog had been.

Steps came close. “Miss? Are you all right?” The voice had a slight foreign lilt to it. A dark gloved hand appeared in her face. She smiled. She knew that glove.

Trying to master whatever grace she could from sitting on her ass next to a dumpster, Angelique put her hand into his. The leather was thin and supple—and definitely expensive. He pulled her easily up, and she looked around.

He held her elbow to steady her. “Be still, miss,” he cooed, his voice smooth and musical. “The cur is long gone by now.” He picked something from her hair and from her shoulder. He looked her up and down. “None the worse for wear, though your jeans will need a proper cleaning.”

Angelique felt her ass. It was wet, and she wondered what disgusting muck she had sat in.

He produced a handkerchief and announced, “I am Anders Saffenssen.” He bowed slightly: “At your service.”

What was this man, this hero who had saved her from a mauling? Who spoke like that? Like some 19th Century gentleman?

Angelique took the handkerchief and wiped the wetness on her jeans.

He moved back a step and motioned to where she had entered the alley. His right arm was bent behind him, his left hand, gloved palm up, directing her to proceed. It was a courtier pose like she had seen in books about the Renaissance.

Who was this Anders? “Th-thank you,” she said. “I don’t know—“

“Miss,” he interrupted her, “I am only happy that I was here.” He smiled warmly, motioning to the safety of the main street.

“Why—“

“Am I here, in the darkness of this alley, at this time of night?” The smile shifted, and he answered, “I am following you, Angelique.”

He had moved into a little light, and she saw again his blond ponytail, black leather jacket, and plaid scarf. His pants, too, were black as well as his boots. The Man in Black, she thought, conjuring an image of Wesley from the movie The Princess Bride. All Anders needed was a mask. The Man in Black saved the Princess as Anders had saved her.

Before she could even formulate the questions he said, “The bartender, Steve, gave me your name. Of all the women in that bar, you by far are the most intriguing.” He motioned again to the street. “Please.”

Angelique considered handing him back the dirtied handkerchief but decided to toss it into the dumpster. He smiled and followed her out of the alley.

Back into the main street, Angelique stopped. Anders stopped with her, smiling. The light from a street lamp illumined him better. He was indeed good looking and somehow taller in the light than in the darker alley. His eyes were gray, like she had seen earlier in the bar, but there was no strange swirling. She chalked that up to the alcohol.

His brows furrowed slightly—and that was when she saw it.

He had no brows. They were painted on. And behind his left ear: a makeup line. It was why he obviously wore the scarf.

“Is something amiss?” he asked.

Cur…amiss…be still… No man spoke like that.

“I, ah…my purse.” Angelique really had lost her purse.

Anders smiled. He held it out to her. “I was hoping you would have forgotten it until later and made me look more of a hero.”

She laughed. “You’re enough of a hero already.” And you’re gay! Such a pity.

Anders chuckled as if he knew what she was thinking. He put two fingers into the open clasp and said, “It was open. You might want to check to see if you are missing anything important.”

“Wha—oh…” Angelique moved her long black hair behind her right ear, took the purse and rummaged through it. “At least my wallet is still here.” She held up the purse so that she could get a better view of his face. His expression hinted of an on-going joke to which only he was privy. His red lips (lipstick?) curved up, his nose was long and thin, and his strange gray eyes sparkled. Ponytail and leather, he had the air of one of those European rich boys who came to the States to partake of the urban safari. And there was the make-up… Definitely gay.

“Perhaps I should walk with you for a time—in case there are other street vermin looking for a victim.” Anders held out his arm like some Rhett Butler. Angelique smiled and took it. “That’s the first of many, I do hope.”

“Many of what?”

He led her to the intersection and the light of the corner. “The first of many smiles, of course.”

My luck he’s gay. Pity…

THEY were three blocks from her apartment when they parted company. It was such a fabulous walk and talk they had that it went by too quickly for Angelique. As she was going to suggest they detour to get a coffee (actually, she had thought to suggest tea since Anders was indeed from Europe), the man abruptly took his leave.

“I fear I have put your studies in jeopardy, Angelique.” He took her hand and gently squeezed it in his gloved hand and placed his other hand atop hers. “But I have thoroughly enjoyed our time.” He let go and began to turn away.

“Wait!” Angelique said, and Anders turned back smiling.

“We will see each other again, soon I believe.” He gave her a slight nod of his blond head, and turned back to the sidewalk and away from her.

Angelique was dumbfounded and troubled. She stood and watched him walk casually around a corner and he was gone. The last forty minutes were some of the best she had had with a man in years. Gay or not, she wanted to know him more…to see him again.

She turned and walked slowly to her apartment building, savoring the feelings she had of this strange man named Anders.

She reached the door to her building and inserted the key. It stopped halfway. She jiggled it and pushed. Nothing. “Fucking door,” she muttered. This was the second time this week it had done this to her; others in the building had complained too. She walked down the four front steps and proceeded around the building to the back. Halfway along the side, she saw the back light go out. Fucking light, too, she thought, and considered calling the management tonight.

She turned the corner of the building and stepped up to the back door, using the moonlight to find the correct key.

Something grabbed under her arms, lifting her sharply, compressing her ribs, causing her to say, “Oh.” Keys and purse fell to the landing and the back of the building moved quickly away from her. Her hands and arms pointed out; her head moved forward, hair flowing into her face.

“You should think happy thoughts, Tinkerbell.”

Anders!

Angelique flew quickly across the parking lot, the few cars there passing in a blur. There was no sound, but a rushing of air—no steps or labored breathing. It was as if Anders himself flew and carried her. In a matter of seconds she was in darkness again, between two garages. He slammed her against a wall, knocking out her breath. Her vision swam with botches of white.

Her eyes could see nothing, but she felt his cold breath on her cheek and left ear. “Parting was such sweet sorrow that I could not wait for the morrow.” A small part of her mind felt it odd that there was no smell to that breath. All people had some kind of smell to their breath, so a doctor had said in a nutrition seminar.

Angelique fought to see, blinking her eyes to get them to work. Why was there only darkness?

She gasped. The shadows!

**Remember…**

Her head buzzed—a hive of bees trying to get out.

She could hear him smile. “Yes, little Tinkerbell. Life is only the shadow of death.” The shadows evaporated and he stood against her, his left arm pinning her right against her body, the hand pulling her tight to him. He was so strong. Cold, living steel. She looked down, unable to look into his mad, smiling face. His hand moved slowly up her back to her head. It took a handful of hair and pulled back roughly. But he wasn’t smiling. He grimaced as if fighting back something, as if he wanted to do something.

The other gloved hand came up to her face and moved some hair back behind her left ear and glided along her jaw to her neck. It squeezed and pushed her up the wall to make their faces even, his perfect white nose an inch from hers. “That’s better,” he purred. The hand around her throat let go and his body pushed her harder against the wall. She could feel a coldness radiating from him, through his clothes and jacket.

She couldn’t breathe. The buzzing increased, filling her ears, drowning out the screaming in her mind.

**Remember…**

A room…a white bed…

Silence. The bees were out.

Anders looked back to the apartment building then smiled and turned to her. “When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial.” He shook his head as if to a child. “Naughty Tinkerbell. Didn’t your daddy teach you never meet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon?”

**Remember…**

…a shadow…her shadow…a boy, his flailing body seizing up…

The gloved hand lifted to his mouth. It opened to reveal two rows of perfectly white, almost glassy teeth—with two long fangs!

Her mind screamed. This wasn’t real—it wasn’t happening.

**Remember…**

…the boy falling to the floor…where the boy had been…

A white hand…long thin fingers…

**Remember…**

…the white hand…it…it moved…into the shadow!...

Anders continued to smile as his front teeth bit gently down on one of the fingertips, pulling his hand and loosening the tight glove. “This October night, this lonesome October night of this most immemorial year.” He sighed and bit on another fingertip, loosening the glove even more. “I will make night still darker by this deed.” Then he chuckled and pulled his hand free.

It appeared in the air near her face, the white fingers moving and flexing—

A white hand…long thin fingers…

REMEMBER.

Bryce! He had tried to rape her and he hung in the air and the white hand was around his neck and it let go and Bryce fell to the floor.

And there was a girl and she was holding Angelique down and she screamed and then the shadow…the white hand in the shadow…the THING in the shadow…it leaned down to Angelique on the white bed…it whispered,

**Remember.**

—The white hand took the glove from his mouth. It appeared again, and the hand in her hair pulled a little harder and to the left, exposing her neck even more.

“You will want to scream as you die, but you will be a helpless little Tinkerbell. Know that I really did enjoy your company.”

The white hand touched her neck, and a sharp coldness spread through her body, traveling through her veins and arteries, shocking her nerves like a funnybone. The faint sound that issued from her mouth came from somewhere deep inside—even deeper still, from every cell of her body to coalesce in her belly, rush up her throat, and out into the night like a soft vomit.

Before she passed out, she saw the look of pure entertainment on Anders’ face as he opened his mouth to do what she couldn’t believe he was about to do…

4

WHERE the hell is that wallet?

He had been searching for nearly ten minutes. He looked at his watch: 10:36. Shit. He should be on his way to work. Tio was old school—punctual. Now John Paul was going to be late. He hated to disappoint Tio.

He pulled the cushions off the sofa and felt into the crevasses. A piece of Funyun. Nothing. He put the cushions back.

The wallet sat on the coffee table in plain sight. John Paul had looked there—twice—yet there it now was. He grabbed it, patted his jacket pocket for his keys, pulled the door shut, and locked it. He stuffed the wallet into his back right jeans pocket, and all but leapt down the two floors of stairs, turning at the bottom to go to the back door to the lot where his car was parked.

The end of the hall was dark. It should have been partially lit from the bright back porch light. “Fucking light,” John Paul growled to himself as he turned the knob and opened the door to the cold, dark October night.

There was just enough light from the moon to see down the steps. He took them quickly one at a time then darted across the gravel lot to his red Tercel. He dug out the keys from his jacket and inserted the car key, unlocking and opening the door. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he turned on the headlights and noticed a paper flyer under the wiper. Then there was a movement beyond his focus. His headlights illumined a couple necking between the two garages just across the alley not twenty feet away. But there was something odd…the woman’s feet were off the ground. She looked limp as if unconscious. A buzzing began in the back of his head.

John Paul stepped out of his car. A part of him said to leave them be, that if he were to cause a fuss, he would most certainly be embarrassed. A larger part of him screamed that something was wrong.

The man had his hand on the woman’s neck. He moved it down to her jacket and unzipped it. He reached up to her blouse collar and ripped it down. The sound of it was huge in the night.

John Paul yelled, “Hey! What’s going on?”

A short whimper. A turn of her face. A turn of his face… White eyes…and…

Was he smiling?

The woman gurgled and mouthed something, and John Paul recognized her. “Angelique!”

The man dropped her, his face feral…and something else. A trick of the light?

And in a heartbeat the man was gone.

John Paul ran over to Angelique. Her dark hair was disheveled, her face a grimace of pain and horror. When he touched her, she took a deep and sudden breath as if she had been holding it a long time.

She wanted to scream, but all that came out was a choke. Her body trembled. John Paul pulled her to him, trying to comfort her. He positioned his arms so that he could lift her, and as he stood he looked back at the apartment building. He saw a man on each side, each a silhouette but distinguishable in the night.

“Hey!” he called out. “I need help!”

They turned to each other in the darkness as if they had just then noticed the other’s presence. The man on the right disappeared, and the other moved to face John Paul and Angelique, standing there a few moments. He turned slowly and walked away.

“Hey, you! I said I need help, you asshole!”

John Paul, pissed off and disappointed, dragged Angelique to his car, her feet tailing behind them, bumping on the rough road. One of her shoes fell off. In the headlights, John Paul looked her over. She was in some kind of shock. Only her eyes moved, and they pleaded with him. A tear fattened and trailed down across her temple. “You’re safe,” he whispered. He moved her ripped shirt across her chest.

He stood and looked at the apartment building. The light in Tom the Med Student’s apartment was on. He looked down at Angelique, knowing he would struggle to get her up the steps and to the apartment’s door. He squatted and lifted her, awkwardly cradling her. He could only take small steps because of her weight.

Arms burning now, he used his foot to open the hall door, which luckily had not latched shut, and shuffled down the now seemingly narrow hall to Tom’s door. He laid Angelique down and thumped on the door. “Tom!” he screamed, thumping on the door again. “Tom! Open up!”

There was a fumbling of locks, and light streamed out into the hall. Tom looked out, not seeing John Paul and Angelique on the floor.

John Paul was trying to make her comfortable, and looked up. “Shit, Tom, down here! Call 9-1-1. Call now!”

JOHN Paul held Angelique’s hand all the way to the ambulance. As the paramedics came to a stop before loading her, she squeezed his hand and feebly pulled him to her. He leaned down.

She swallowed. She whispered, “Teeth…”

Something gripped his balls, and his head buzzed. Panic squeezed his throat.

What his brain could not comprehend—the attacker’s savage face in the headlights—had been long, sharp teeth.

“WHERE is my Angel? Oh, God, where is she?”

Like Moses parting the Red Sea, a short woman yelled, “Out of my way!” She did not rush, but the clocking of her heels down the hall announced that someone of authority had arrived. Approaching war drums. Two nurses, a doctor, a police officer, and two detectives made a gauntlet, and Mrs. Carlson entered the room. A police technician had just finished a rape kit and watched the short woman throw her fur coat and sparkling black purse on the floor. Adorned in a black cocktail dress, she had obviously been at some ritzy function. She looked like a dressed up doll next to Angelique’s bed. “Little Angel,” she whispered repeatedly, stroking her daughter’s hair. The tech watched this a moment, secured all the evidence she had collected, and quietly left. Those in the hall filed in. A nurse hovered over Mrs. Carlson, checking a monitor. The female detective stood at the end of the bed, while the male spoke with the tech and the doctor.

Mrs. Carlson tried to take her daughter’s hand and noticed the IV in it. She saw the strange young man holding her daughter’s free one. She frowned.

John Paul locked eyes with Mrs. Carlson. He tried to convey his helplessness, but she calmly asked, “Who are you?” It was more a question of What makes you important enough to be holding my daughter’s hand at a time like this? There was no anger in the question—just a kind of reserved curiosity, the kind that hinted at experiences with a daughter who unfailingly slung surprises at her parents…mostly of the bad sort.

The nurse looked down upon the anguished mother, bent to her ear and said, “He’s been here the whole time. Your daughter won’t let him leave.” She smiled at John Paul and added, “He saved her.”

John Paul felt compelled to say something. A strange mix of irritation, compassion, pride, and now embarrassment swirled within him. He had said little to nothing since entering the emergency room, running alongside the stretcher and holding Angelique’s hand. When the attending nurse forced him to let go, Angelique sent out a wail and thrashed about as she was rolled through the doors and out of site. John Paul heard her screams fade as she must have turned a corner. He had stood there a moment helpless and alone. Then the door thumped open and the nurse appeared. “You John Paul?” She waved him through and explained that they did not want to sedate her yet, but she was uncontrollable and screaming for him. He had to hold her hand, be quiet—like a machine in the room.

And that he did, sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding Angelique’s hand. The girl fell asleep immediately. The doctor and nurse quickly examined her. It was when the doctor had said, “Call for a rape kit,” that John Paul told them she wasn’t raped. They looked at him angrily, and he had kept his mouth shut since. The nurse who just told Mrs. Carlson that he had saved Angelique must have spoken with the paramedics. He had told them what had happened.

As he opened his mouth to respond to the mother’s question, all within the room froze a moment. The detective at the end of the bed stepped closer. The three at the door stopped and turned, waiting. John Paul said in the only way he could: “I, uh, live with Angelique, ah, but not with her.” He was as surprised with his awkwardness as all of them.

Mrs. Carlson continued to look from his face to the embraced hands. “Well…” She locked eyes with him a moment. “You must have a name, young man.” It was plain to John Paul that Angelique’s antics over the years had tempered this woman’s concern over the people in her daughter’s life—what few she may have met. She wanted to know in case he would be around any longer than her daughter’s two-week play period.

John Paul was still shocked at his inept response a moment ago, afraid to open his mouth again.

The detective stepped closer. She flashed a badge and said, “Detective Florent, ma’am. This is Detective Hamplin.” She motioned to her partner near the door. “We’re investigating what happened.” She stuffed the badge back in her jacket pocket. She nodded at John Paul. “This is John Wilkins, a student at a community college who lives in your daughter’s apartment building. He witnessed the attack and scared off the perp. Your daughter has been in this catatonic state since the ambulance.” She shrugged and added, “She won’t let go of his hand.”

Hamplin motioned her out to the hall. The rest of the room continued to wait to see if John Paul would say something more. He became hot and uncomfortable.

Another nurse entered the room and saved him.

“Diane Carlson?” When the woman turned, the nurse continued, “A man in the lobby would like to know if you would like him to stay.”

Mrs. Carlson slumped, making her even shorter. “Bill…” she whispered. She looked at the unconscious Angelique. She bent close and whispered, “You didn’t need to do this to stop me.” She locked eyes with John Paul again, knowing he had heard her. Her look asked for discretion. As she straightened to address the nurse, John Paul got an idea.

“Mrs. Carlson?” The room stilled again. All looked at him. “Can you come around here?” He motioned to her to come next to him. She did so. He pried Angelique’s hand from his, the girl started to whine and moan, and Mrs. Carlson immediately put her hand in her daughter’s. John Paul bent close to Angelique and whispered, “I’m here…”I’m here…” The girl calmed at his voice.

Mrs. Carlson’s face fell as her daughter writhed and she squeezed the hand as John Paul spoke. Her lip quivered as she said to him, “Thank you.”

John Paul smiled, rubbing the circulation back into his hand. “No, thank you, Mrs. Carlson.”

“Diane, please.”

John Paul put a hand on the short woman’s shoulder and said, “Okay…Diane. I’ll, uh, find your friend and tell him,” he swallowed, his mouth dry—Why is it so difficult to talk to this woman?—“you’re staying.”

She smiled and went back to looking at her sleeping daughter.

BILL hung his head dejected, but he did not look too surprised. He must have been hit by the “Angelique” stick a few times in the past. It seemed like everyone who knew her had this resigned look as if this tragedy tonight had happened before…a number of times.

No sooner had the man turned to leave than a familiar voice said, “We need to talk Mr. Wilkins.”

The hyenas come a-callin’. He wished he could say such things aloud and not care what people thought. He turned and saw the detective, noticing her for the first time as a pretty woman in her early thirties, brown hair to her shoulders, one side pulled behind an ear. Her dark brown eyes were accented by browns and tans, complimenting the brownish-red lipstick. Her tan jacket covered her blue blouse, which was filled rather nicely. John Paul did not want to look any father down, fearing he would look like a letch. She stood eye-to-eye with him, just a little shorter than Angelique.

This detective did something that shocked John Paul: She smiled…and she looked away as if embarrassed—as if she were the one caught being a letch.

“Can we, um, sit for a couple minutes?”

Is she going to buy me a coffee and ask for my number? That was how he felt at the moment. It was the strangest vibe he got from her. And he never got vibes from women. The pretty ones, like this one, always walked the other way. Then he connected this vibe with Angelique’s room, how every time he opened his mouth, anyone inside stopped and listened.

She put a hand on his arm and directed him to the elevators. “Let’s head down to the cafeteria and find a quiet table, maybe get a coffee.”

His imagination was churning.

“Juan Pablo!”

Tio! Oh, shit! He had forgotten to call. He looked at his watch: nearly midnight.

“Por Dios! Estas bien!” The old man hurried to John Paul and hugged him and looked him over. “Tomas called when you not come to work, so I call the police, and they tell me you are a hero, at the hospital.”

“I am sooo sorry, Tio,” John Paul said.

Tio shook his head. “No, no, no, no… You saved a girl’s life. Your place is here with her. Don’t worry about the bodega.” He noticed the detective.

“This is Detective Florent. She needs to talk with me.”

Tio looked her over again. “Oh! Si. Find the evil man.” He pushed John Paul at the detective. “Si, go tell her what she needs.” He backed away smiling proudly. “You save a life, Juan Pablo. No greater thing. Don’t worry about work.”

John Paul smiled and turned to Detective Florent. She was smiling too. “Yes,” she confirmed, “I guess you are a hero.”

“AND that’s all.”

It sounded like a leading question to John Paul, but he did not know to where. There was no way the detective could know about—even now he could not complete the thought. He looked about as if searching his memory, which probably did not convince her of anything. “Nope,” he confirmed. “That’s all I can tell you.”

She looked at her little notebook then took a sip of coffee (her treat, she had insisted). She searched back a couple pages (just like they did on TV). She shrugged as if that was it, but John Paul knew it was not. She shut the notebook. “I guess that leaves what Miss Carlson said to you in the ambulance.”

There it was, and he knew she probably knew the answer. He tried to be coy. “She didn’t say anything to me in the ambulance.”

Her look said she knew otherwise.

Here we go. “As we were getting into the ambulance she said,” John Paul hesitated a moment—not to be dramatic but to reaffirm in his own mind and memory just what Angelique did say. Then he saw again the horrible image of his headlights, illuminating in an alley a white man with white eyes and white hair and white…fangs.

“She said, ‘Teeth’.”

A phone beeped. Saved by the bell.

Detective Florent paused a moment looking at him. She said reluctantly, “Excuse me,” and brought out her cell phone. The text message raised her brows. She clicked it off and said, “It looks like Miss Carlson is awake…and asking for you.”

John Paul downed the last of his coffee and stood.

The detective flipped open her notebook and pushed it to him. “Write down your phone number, in case I need to contact you again.”

It did not happen exactly as he had imagined, but there it was: coffee and phone number. He smiled as he wrote it down. He pushed the pen and pad back across the table.

She took the pen and wrote something on the back of a card. “If you think of anything else, please call me. My cell’s on the back.”

She had written her first name as well. “Emily,” John Paul read. “Thanks…I will.”

Emily had that smile and look again: Hand in the cookie jar.

They went silently to the room.

JOHN Paul heard Angelique down the hall.

“Where is he? Fuck! What is that? He wouldn’t leave. The lights! JOHN PAUL!”

He and Emily ran the rest of the way, following two nurses rushing into the room.

A small light made a cone of light upon the bed. Diane Carlson struggled with Angelique, trying to hold the girl down. Bright blood covered Angelique’s hand where the IV had been pulled out. She was pushing her mother away, nearly slipping over the edge of the bed, when the nurses grabbed her. Angelique screamed, a horrified, shaking scream of terror. Another nurse came in, pushing past John Paul and Emily, and upon seeing the IV out, plunged a hypo into Angelique’s leg.

“You let them in! Turn the lights on!” Angelique screamed.

The scene was some crazy hospital drama, and John Paul felt it was somehow done for his benefit. A strange buzzing began in the back of his head following by a high-pitched stress tone. What the hell was happening?

He reached over to the light switch. “Hey!” he called out as the lights blinked on. The room shocked to stillness. They all looked at him. “Just turn on the light.”

Angelique relaxed and let out a short cry. Her arms reached out for him. It was…it was another Angelique on that bed. Why would she be calling for him, reaching out to him?

He moved to her, the nurses stepping back, Diane releasing her. John Paul took her slick, sticky hand gently, but she pulled him into a hug.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…” she whispered. When she did not release him, he slowly, tentatively moved his arms around her.

He fell into her embrace, and something audible…inside him…popped. He did not know what it was, but he moved his face into her neck, felt the soft tickle of her hair on his nose and forehead. His shoulders released as if he had just shrugged off a cold, wet, heavy coat. They stayed like that a few moments until she moved her hands to his face, cradling his hands and cheeks. Angelique beamed, honest relief and happiness in her smile and eyes.

“They go away when you come,” she said.

The universe shifted back when a nurse gently put a hand on his shoulder. The IV had to be put back in, and the other monitors had to be attached. John Paul moved back and Angelique’s face twisted into panic until he slid around to the other side, taking her free hand.

Someone was talking. Diane. “…happened. She was waking and I put an ice cube on her lips like the doctor told me to do. She started screaming. I’m sorry.”

John Paul looked around the room. Emily…Detective Florent. “Angelique,” he said, “This is Detective Emily Florent. She needs to talk to you about what happened.” Angelique sat up a bit. “Yes,” she said, “the police.”

The detective came forward, notebook and pen at ready. “Miss Carlson, can you tell us anything about the man who attacked you?”

Angelique looked at John Paul then back to the detective. “I know exactly who did this,” she declared, “and he wasn’t a man.” She looked back at John Paul. “You saw?” she pleaded.

The detective looked questioningly at John Paul then asked Angelique, “What do you mean?”

That buzzing started again in the back of John Paul’s head. Something was trying to get out. An image…a memory… He knew exactly what Angelique was going to say, and he wanted to stop her. She was going to sound insane.

Part of him was certain it must have been a trick of the light. A deeper part of him grew cold.

Angelique closed her eyes and shuddered. She squeezed John Paul’s hand. “I—I was frozen.” She shook her head slowly, staring blankly at the white hospital sheet covering her. When she looked back up at the detective, her eyes brimmed and her mouth contorted. “I mean, he touched me, and I was literally frozen.”

The detective nodded and wrote something in her pad.

“No!” Angelique shook her head. “It wasn’t fear.” She raised the hand with the IV in it and felt her neck. “He just touched me, and this cold spread through my body.” She rubbed her neck as if to erase that touch. She seemed in pain, and she gasped. “He—” she swallowed. “His teeth—he had fangs!” She spat the last word, and all but John Paul physically moved back. Angelique gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. “His name is Anders Saffenssen,” she announced, “and he is a vampire.”

Time froze. All within the room must have been playing back what Angelique had said, just as John Paul was. Even though he knew what she was going to say, hearing it was impossible to process.

Diane Carlson resumed the clock. “Of course, Angel, he was a monster.” She stroked her daughter’s hair.

Everyone else seemed relieved at what Diane implied. John Paul, however, felt the room tilt. He was going to get sick.

A nurse touched his arm. “Excuse, me.”

The world moved to normal. He looked at the nurse, a plump but cute woman with short black hair. “Huh? What?” His mouth had that strange pre-vomit saliva.

“Your face…you have blood on it.”

POSTLUDE

OCTOBER 17, 1992

“What would a Bright One want of a shadow?”

The words sounded next to his right ear, or perhaps even in his ear. Ben Carlson was half asleep as they were said, and he popped awake, his heart in his throat. He looked about, and he was alone in the dark of his living room. Perhaps he had dreamed the words. He wanted this over. Too many people had died already. His subconscious had brought the words into the swirl of his dreams. That was it.

He calmed himself and looked at his watch: 2:17 A.M. He had been sitting in his living room for a little over two hours. And just like all the other nights, he now would go to bed, get only restless sleep, stumble through the day at work, and come home only to whisper into the darkness of his daughter’s room again and sit in his living room and wait for nothing.

He reached to the glass of water on the end table next to his chair.

It was gone.

One of the last things he remembered doing was taking a sip from that glass.

Across the room from him, on the end table of the matching chair, sat the glass. The water settled into stillness. The glass had just been moved.

Ben’s mouth became even drier.

Twelve nights ago, his good friend Nancy Gorman had been brutally killed. Something had bitten her on the neck then driven some kind of spike into her throat, exsanguinating the body. There had been no evidence left behind: no drops of blood, no prints, no DNA. Just a note to Ben. So he did what he knew Nancy had cryptically told him to do: summon the shadows and try to negotiate. The shadows had killed her for videotaping them, and Ben was in danger.

But above all this, Ben’s daughter, Angelique, was in even deeper danger. These shadows had been haunting her for five years now, twisting his darling daughter into a skittish, introverted child. It broke his heart, and troubled his wife deeply, to watch the joy of life be pushed away from such a beautiful girl.

So ten nights ago, and every night since, Ben entered the dark room of his sleeping daughter, and whispered, “I know you’re here. I want to talk."

The day after the third night, the detectives Kurnal and Bittner showed up at his office. A courtesy call, they said, to let him know that there had been another murder similar to Nancy: Doug Derricks, another member of Ben’s Bible study. The media was going to report both as “the vampire murders,” and more than likely Ben’s name would be associated with them.

Two nights later, Linda Morely and then two nights ago, Kevin Schaegger—both also visited by the Vampire Killer. Four murders in twelve nights—four friends of Ben and Diane Carlson. There were four other members of the group still alive. All six survivors now had police protection which also meant no harassment by the media. Angelique didn’t need that circus around her, and Ben was thankful. But the girl had known all the victims, and she planned on attending the funerals. Angelique knew about the Vampire Killer, as did all of Baltimore, but she was oblivious as to what her shadows had to do with the murders.

Through all this, every night Ben stepped into his daughter’s room, whispered his request to the shadows, and withdrew to the living room to wait. Then disappointed, he would go to bed and repeat it the following night.

Now, with the words and the glass, Ben knew something was about to happen.

He looked around in the dark silence. He wanted to say something but no words of his own would come.

“What would the light want of the dark?”

It was female, the voice deep and provocative and woven with experience and authority. It echoed as if it had just crossed some chasm. Perhaps it had.

Ben Carlson felt a cold ooze into him, a winter freeze that burned the marrow of his bones and squeezed his eyes. His heart shrank and he felt small, sitting in his chair. He tried to move, but he felt disembodied. The thought of Angelique and Diane upstairs stirred him and he gasped—the love of a man for his family was a powerful force.

He licked his lips and croaked, “We both know you are more than a shadow.” The sound of his own words warmed him and he said, “Show yourself.”

It chuckled and emerged from the far corner of the living room as if it had been standing there all along. The darkness thickened and swirled like a smoke that flowed into itself. It moved around the matching chair where the glass had been moved and halted ten feet from him.

They faced each other quietly.

Ben felt an invisible gust of cold and the smoke expanded and dissipated. What he saw frightened and amazed him.

It was definitely a woman, but her image appeared to draw and erase itself in the same instant. He moved his head and eyes, trying to capture an angle that could give him a better view of her, but a strange vertigo gripped him after a few moments, and he had to look off from her at the lamp on the end table next to the chair. He wondered what would happen if he turned on his lamp…

“Nothing,” she said and sat in the chair behind her. The leather squeaked from her weight. “If you turned on every light in this house, child, nothing would change. Your kind cannot see me.” Her tone had changed, became conversational as if she now sat across from a respected colleague. Ben wondered, though, if it would be different in the full sunlight. “Perhaps you would see something of me.” He felt her shrug. “I don’t know.” He also wondered if she could read his mind.

She chuckled again.

They sat—she looking at him and he looking off from her. Was she measuring him, determining if he were dangerous? Or was she looking at an animal in a cage. Ben was desperate to see her face, to read something from her, but the thing that was her sitting in the chair, the physical image of her, unbalanced him. Ben felt he would fall off some strange edge of reality into oblivion. He continued to look at the lamp.

He realized the cold had released him and he took a sudden breath.

“That’s better, child,” she said. “You need to be able to breathe if you want a parley.” He heard the chair squeak as she moved in it. “You do want a parley.”

Parley. What enemies did to avoid a battle. A truce. Yes, that was what he wanted: a truce to talk. He nodded.

“Then I demand a sequester!” she announced, her voice echoing again.

Ten nights ago, Ben Carlson had envisioned something like this: He and whatever it was sitting and having a talk about his daughter. A parley. What this sequester was and why she said it aloud, like an announcement, he was not certain. But he was prepared to pay whatever was needed to secure his daughter’s welfare and safety—and he was willing to pay with the same coin as Nancy. This was his last recourse. These shadows were killing at their leisure, killing friends of his, and he knew they were saving him for last.

Ben knew he was dealing with something ancient, something that was beyond his simple human existence. You’re way outta your league, Daddy, Angelique would say right now. He smiled briefly.

“Yes,” the Thing purred, “your daughter.”

His smile fell. Ben fell into a cold river of despair, but he struggled—his love for Angelique gave him a little strength. “What does this have to do with her?”

The leather chair squeaked again. “I am required to tell you that you have three questions to ask of me, and I am to answer truthfully. Is that your first question?”

Ben nodded. In her short silence, Ben wondered what she meant by “required”—that there were rules in this game of which he knew nothing.

“I am of the Dark,” she said, “a Child of the Night. I eat the light of your life.” Ben felt her lean forward, and she added, “Your daughter is very bright—but so then are you.” She chuckled, “My turn. What are you willing to do?”

Ben was confused. She seemed to be more interested in him, yet it had been his daughter she had played with all these years. Had Angelique been a pawn just to move him into this very position? What was Ben willing to do? To save his daughter? His wife? The few other friends in his Bible study group? He had no illusions that this Thing could get them all and not be seen. No trace. She would quietly melt into the shadows to find some other family to terrorize. Ben would do anything to stop this.

He took a haggard breath. “I will do what you ask—if,” he paused to move his tongue around to wet his mouth, “you leave my family alone and stop the killing.”

The leather squeaked her movement. “You demand terms. You are not as simple a child as I took you.” She now paused, considering. “Done,” she announced.

A little emboldened, Ben asked, “How many of you are there?”

“We have existed for thousands of years,” she replied immediately, and Ben grimaced, realizing he should have added, terrorizing my daughter. “We have ranged across the Creation,” she continued, “working our dark magic. An exact number is impossible to say, but if I were to hazard a guess…perhaps two score.” She stood. “I have heard what I wanted to hear. I have no more questions. This next is your last.” She growled that final sentence, a mocking sound as if she were going to kill him in the next few moments.

Ben knew, however, that he would not die this night, knew that this Thing had something more sinister in mind. He asked the question that had been swirling beneath the immediate terror. “Why can’t I see you?”

She stood still a few moments, and Ben tried again to look at her. The room tilted. “You are an odd one, child. The thousands of questions you could ask, and this is it?”

“I won’t live long enough—“

“You’re just dying to know my terms, yes?” She chuckled. “But I will answer your question the best that I can. You are a Bright One, one of the few in this world whose light shines like a torch in a room full of candles. Because of this, you can see…” She pause to choose the right word. “…more clearly than others. Your friend was like that too.”

Nancy.

“My kind is attracted to this bright light of your life, and our darkness pulls at this light when we are near. It is the cold that you felt when I entered the room. I believe that as your life-light is pulled to me, it disrupts the regular light bouncing off me to your eyes.” She concluded, “That is what I believe.”

It was the longest answer she had given, and somehow, Ben felt, the truest. It made her other answers suspect.

She stood there in the moonlight of the living room, a fuzzy blob across from him, and she seemed to float to him, now within a few feet, the paralyzing cold returning. Ben felt sick and dizzy, and he called upon this light she spoke of, his life-light, to keep him from passing out.

“Oooo, you are bright,” she said, “but now our parley is over, and it is time to hear my terms and review our agreement. I will leave your family alone and stop the killing. You only need to do a simple thing: Turn away your daughter, divorce yourself from her life.”

The cold of her words gripped him more than the cold emanating from her. Ben would have something worse than a hole in his neck. He would have a hole in his heart, and in doing so dig a hole into the heart of his precious Angelique.

“And I will make this easy for you, child. That is how gracious I am.” She leaned forward and touched his forehead…

…and something entered his mind (her finger?), mixing into his being something of her, of her darkness. He felt it swirl and expand in his skull and move down into his neck—a numb lightning that filled his eyes like a thousand flashlights flickering on and off. Ben tried to grab onto one of those lights, believing it was his inner light reacting to what she was doing to him. He gripped it and it moved with the others like a tornado, pulling him into a maelstrom that was his soul. He looked into it and saw…

—he was in a movie theatre watching Alien…he should have been home helping Diane with their newborn daughter…he was tired…he wanted to do something for himself—

…Ben let go, guilt racking him over what he had done. He grabbed another light…

—he was telling his mom that he had not ridden his bike across the freeway…but he had in fact done so many times to see his girlfriend Amy…she sat across from him in Mrs. Dayton’s science class…they exchanged notes…they kissed once at the bottom of the stairs in D-hallway…they kissed a lot when he went to her house—

…They were sins. The lights were sins, and there were billions of them. Ben was overwhelmed with shame, how inadequate he had been as a human being. Like a skin molting in long strips, the illusion of his Christian life, the Godly life he had all this life believed he had lived, ripped away. He was exposed, to himself. The reality of his life of sin and lies…and…and…pride…outweighed what pitiful goodness he had tricked himself and others into believing about him. Diane. Angelique. His parents. His brother. Any friend he ever had. He was unworthy of any of their love. Naked now in this horrible storm that was his soul, Ben let go…

…something attached to him…replacing the old skin of pride…little pieces of soothing coolness…

**YES,** she said, **ACCEPT THE REAL YOU, BEN CARLSON.**

…Ben realized this was some obscene baptism. He saw more. This Thing that was now in his mind revealed a shadow of her own mind. All this had nothing to do with him at all. It was all about…

**YOUR DAUGHTER.**

…darkness…