Shades (2 page)

As Gustav approached, the blue crabs scattered, abandoning their feast. The gulls above continued to circle and shriek.

Danny’s legs felt frozen, his mind numb.

Gustav drew closer, and the cigarette butt spun towards Danny. The concentric circles grew smaller. Then it stopped swinging altogether. Gustav looked up, saw Danny standing over the dead body and the fleeing crabs, and stopped.

I am
so
busted.

The old Russian blinked at him, inquisitive.

Danny offered a smile. “Hi…. Umm… Look what I found.”

The smile was not returned. Saying nothing, Gustav stuffed the string and the cigarette butt in his pocket, and scratched his bearded chin. He gave the body a cursory glance as if it were no more than litter on the freeway, but studied Danny intently. At first, he appeared confused. As the moments passed, he seemed angry, amused, annoyed, and saddened. Finally, he spoke.

“Here you are.”

Danny didn’t reply immediately because he was not sure if it was a question or a summation. He looked down at his feet. The crabs—and his dirt bike—scurried away on segmented legs. When Gustav said nothing further, Danny finally stammered, “I—I was just…”

Ignoring him, Gustav bent down over the corpse. He looked from the body to Danny, and then back again. He shook his head and muttered in Russian, then reached for Danny’s shoulder to pull himself up.

Danny took a step backward. “I—I found him.”

“Did you?” Gustav arched an eyebrow. He motioned for Danny to help him rise.

Danny didn’t move.

“Come,” Gustav grumbled. “Help an old man to his feet.”

Danny complied. Gustav slapped dirt from his knees, and looked at Danny.

“Did you, indeed?”

“Yeah, I did. I mean, what—you think I killed him?”

Gustav laughed. Overhead, the gulls screeched in chorus. Glaring at the flock, he muttered something under his breath. Immediately, the circling birds fell silent.

“Now we will not be interrupted. Do I think you killed him? Nyet.”

“Huh?”

“Nyet. No. You do not kill. Not yet.”

Danny frowned. Was the last “nyet” or “not yet”? He knew what it
sounded
like, but it made no sense.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

“You said, ‘Did you?’ like you didn’t believe me when I said I found him.”

Gustav nodded. “That is because you did not find him.”

“I swear! I didn’t
put
him here or anything. He was laying there under all the crabs, I just—”

Gustav waved his hand, silencing him.

“He was not meant to be found by anyone. The body was hidden in plain sight. You did not find him. He found
you
.”

“Found me?” Danny forced himself to laugh. “Come on. That’s crazy.”

“Crazy?” Gustav plucked three long hairs from the dead man’s head. “Crazy, you say. Madness. Yes. Yes, it is. But true? Oh…perhaps? Perhaps that also, no?”

Danny blinked, watching in revulsion.

Gustav chuckled as he braided the three hairs into a tiny rope.

“I…I don’t understand what you mean. And what are you doing with his hair?”

“What do you like to be called, boy?”

“Danny.”

“Okay, Danny. And I like to be called Gustav.”

“I know who you are.”

“Do you?” The Russian pinched the braid of hair in his left hand. It fluttered in the breeze. With his right hand, Gustav fished a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. He offered one to the boy.

“You accept my offering, yes?”

Shrugging, Danny took it. Gustav slid a chrome Zippo lighter with a strange symbol on it from his pocket. He held it out for Danny’s smoke, and then lit his own. As he exhaled, he looked deep into Danny’s eyes. Danny wondered if the old man was a pervert. Maybe Jeremy had been right about him.

“Uh…thanks.” Danny took a drag.

The aroma of tobacco filled the air, momentarily blocking out the dead man’s stench. This was the first time Danny had smoked in front of an adult. Usually, it was with his friends. They’d sneak cigarettes from their parents’ cartons and smoke them on top of Hook Mountain, flicking the butts off the cliff, hoping that no one down below would recognize them and tell their parents. All of their parents subscribed to “Do as I say, not as I do.”

“You’re welcome.”

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

Crazy shit…
but true?

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

“No. I actually don’t.”

“Actually?”

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

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

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

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

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

The sun moved higher in the sky.

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

TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he walked away.

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

But Bedrik did, and he smiled.

Michael Bedrik cast no shadow.

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

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

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

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

Prison or cemetery; they were the same thing, really. But there were no breakouts from the latter.

At least, very few. Bedrik planned to change that. Edward T. Rammel was going to be the first. The first of many. Bedrik knew his name. Felt his anger. That was all he needed. That gave him the power.

And magic was all about power.

Bedrik stood up and brushed the grass from his pants. He wandered amongst the tombstones, attuned to the clamoring beneath his feet. Soon, the girl left. The artist slinked after her like a wounded spaniel begging his master’s forgiveness for pissing the rug. The sun followed them both, leaving Bedrik alone in the cemetery. Night fell. Solitude engulfed him—the one exception being the restless dead.

He heard them call out; beg for release in frustrated, pitiful tones for lack of anything else to do. Most did not expect an answer, feared they would never receive one.

“I’ll be back for the rest of you,” he whispered. “But for now, I can take only one. Rules are rules, after all.”

Off in the distance, a small yellow-green light flashed weakly. Then another, a few feet away, then some more further toward the wall, near the trees. Lightning bugs. Miniature will o’ wisps pulsing in the near-summer night.

As a child, Bedrik had collected them in Mason jars, poking holes in the lid so they could breathe. Then he learned to smash their bellies and paint his skin with their guts so that he, too, would glow in the dark.

Just like names, innards contained power.

Bedrik held out his hands and whispered a word. Then he bit down on the inside of his cheek. Blood filled his mouth. He spat the blood onto the grave. Bedrik waited, ignoring the taste in the back of his throat.

The lightning bugs came to him. They were not swift fliers, but he’d had long years to learn patience. Every few seconds, the lights in their bellies flashed, the duration becoming longer, the intensity brighter as more bugs joined together to fly in tight formation. By the time the horde of insects reached him, it traveled as a pulsing ball of yellow light, bright enough to make him squint. Shielding his eyes with his hand, Bedrik spoke another word and the pulsing stopped. The glare stayed steady, hovering before him. He pointed, and the light followed his direction, coming to rest a few feet over Edward T. Rammel’s grave.

Bedrik watched.

A shadow appeared on the ground, right on top of the grave. The shadow turned its head, inspecting its form—the dark suggestions of torso, arms, and legs. It rose as only shadows could—projecting itself onto small clods of grave-dirt, blades of grass, its own headstone. The shade turned to look at its epitaph, then back at Bedrik.

Bedrik looked at the shadow and said, “I bind you, Edward T. Rammel. Your shade will do my bidding, as my own.”

The black shape stared at him with unseen eyes.

“You wanted out of there,” Bedrik explained. “This is the only way I could help you. Trust me. You’ll come to enjoy it. This is your lucky day.”

The shadow knelt before him and sobbed. Invisible tears of gratitude fell, swallowed by the unforgiving night.

“Come,” Bedrik said. “We’ve much to do, you and I.”

Bedrik walked out of the cemetery and down the street. The shadow followed in his footsteps. The streets were crowded, but no one noticed them. No one noticed that Bedrik’s shadow seemed to be a bit darker than others or that it did not follow his movements exactly, that it would, at times, reach out to stroke a woman’s hair, or pause before a store window that did not exist when it was alive. No one noticed that the lightning bugs in Gethsemane Cemetery were hovering over the grave of Edward T. Rammel in one large cluster. No one noticed anything was amiss because Bedrik wished it.

People had such narrow worldviews. They lived their unimportant lives, believed they knew what to do with them, believed they could separate truth from lie and in so doing, live well according to the parameters of a society they did not understand. They looked out on the world through a soda-straw perspective. If the reality could not be fully seen in their microvision, then it was discredited, debunked, and denied. Such was the mentality of the populous today, as it was in millennia past, and would be eons into the future. People were stupid. That truth was as absolute as death and taxes; it was not going to change.

In fact, people like Bedrik counted on it.

Bedrik knew all too well how stupid men were; his brother Martin, for example. So desperate for recognition from his sibling that he’d volunteered to place himself in harm’s way to gain a modicum of Bedrik’s respect. The respect was not forthcoming, but his brother’s fate was grievous. Death usually was.

Martin Bedrik was the
bad
twin. All his life, he was the case study. He got caught doing things. He made poor choices. Rebelled against his situation of birth; tried to establish himself as an individual, a separate entity from his brother. When they were in high school, Martin got into fights, and was caught selling coke and pot. He was always in trouble for something or another. Michael joined the chess club, played cello in the school orchestra, and was on the yearbook staff. He was sociable and extroverted and got along easily with not only his fellow students, but also the teachers and administrators.

Michael never spoke ill about his identical twin, but he never said much good about him either, and no one blamed him for doing so. No one, except Martin. The older they grew, the more Martin got into trouble, and the more often he lamented his miserable existence compared to his brother’s gifted one. When he was at his lowest points, drunk and maudlin, Martin would bemoan the lack of respect he felt he had always received from Michael.

When Martin crossed from misdemeanors into felonies, and graduated from county jail to the state penitentiary, Michael began visiting him. Talked with him. Bestowed kindness, the miniscule favors one could give to a state-housed convicted felon. It didn’t take long before Martin viewed his brother as a god and savior. He’d do anything his twin asked of him.

“Well,” Michael said one day, staring through the thick glass partition separating them. “There is something you could do, actually.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not while you’re in here.”

“I won’t be getting out for a while. Not this time.”

“I know,” Michael said. His sympathy was a reasonable facsimile of genuine.

“So throw it by me,” Martin said. “What could it hurt?”

“There’s no point,” Michael said. “It’s not something we could do anyway.”

“Whadda ya mean,
we
?” The thought of doing something—anything—with his brother brought Martin too much hope. His hope was his weakness, and Michael preyed on that. Martin played his hand too early. The pitiful thing was that he had no idea he’d already lost the game.

“They’re listening,” Michael said. “We’ll talk about this later. Okay?”

Martin looked into his brother’s eyes—the mirror of his own.

Get me out of here,
he thought,
and I’ll do whatever you want.

“You take it easy,” Michael said. “I’ll come back soon as I can.”

He placed the phone in its cradle and stood up.

Martin pressed his palm against the glass.
Don’t leave me in here. Please, don’t let me rot in this shit-hole.

Just before Michael turned to exit, he locked on to his brother’s stare and responded in kind:
I won’t.

His mouth never moved, but Martin had heard him anyway.

A car horn blew, bringing Bedrik back to the present.

He’d kept his promise. He hadn’t let Martin rot in that shit-hole. Instead, Michael had let Martin rot on the beach, after binding his own shadow to Martin’s corpse.

Bedrik adjusted the chain around his neck. His fingers traveled down and touched the symbol hanging upon it, then over his chest. He remembered that the shadow following him that was not his own. Self-consciousness got the better of him. His hand dropped to his side, swinging along with his gait.

Behind him, the shadow’s hand did the same.

789

He’d bought the house and moved to Brackard’s Point a year ago. He’d taken a job at the school, was polite, did his best to fit in, and kept to himself. Bedrik’s home was no different from the rest of the middle-class neighborhood. It was a raised-ranch style, and sported the typical vinyl siding,
faux
shutters. The root system of a large maple tree had cracked his sidewalk about three-fifths of the way down. Most of the homes in the older developments such as this had similar minimal flaws. Real estate agents called these defects “character.” Homeowners maintained the rose-tint perception, too proud to admit fault.

In the autumn, Bedrik’s maple leaves stayed only a few days before disappearing. The grass was trimmed, with few dandelions or crabgrass, and only the occasional unhealthy spot. It was not immaculate, but it wasn’t an eyesore. He could have made it lush and weed-free with a few whispered words and a few scattered ingredients, but that might have attracted attention. His mailbox looked like any other, his driveway nondescript. It was on the swell of the bell curve—so average as to be invisible. When the neighbors compared yards, his was mentioned only because of the maple. If they discussed his house at all, the only thing they came up with was that no one could recall seeing Mr. Bedrik lift a finger to maintain the place.

To his neighbors, Michael Bedrik was just another drone. He preferred it that way. He’d return a smile or wave, engage in meaningless chit-chat, gripe about the potholes on Pensie Avenue, politely bitch about politicians, but that was all. He was recognized, but not known, for none of his neighbors could comprehend the presence of such a man in their midst.