Broken Shadows Read online

  The bank sloped sharply down to the swollen stream here, but though he tried to slow down, momentum and his injured ankle got the better of him. He lost his balance and tumbled headfirst toward the water. He managed to get his hands out in front of him in time to catch himself as he hit muddy-brown water that was surprisingly cold for late July. Water sprayed against the side of his face as the stream rushed around him, and he closed his eyes, though his mouth stayed open, treating him to a taste of grainy silt. His chest and waist were soaked, but his legs—which still remained on the bank—were dry. As he pulled himself to his feet, he looked down at the muddy wet stains on his suit jacket and pants, and though he was running for his life and knew it was absurd to think about his clothes right now, he couldn’t help feeling a wave of disappointment. He’d just gotten this suit a couple weeks ago, and now it was probably ruined.

  Jared heard a sound behind him, and he whirled around to see the three undead hunters standing at the top of the bank. John Deere raised his shotgun to his shoulder, took aim, and let loose with both barrels this time. As the shot tore through Jared’s clothing and into his skin, he knew that a few mud stains were the least of his worries now.

  * * *

  Jared jerked awake and sat upright in his chair. He saw the PowerPoint presentation playing automatically on his computer screen, but at first he didn’t know what it was. But then his mind cleared and he realized what had happened. He’d been so exhausted that he’d fallen asleep at his desk. How long…

  He glanced at the time display in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. 1:06 p.m. He’d slept through lunch hour and was now officially six minutes late for what might well turn out to be the most important meeting in his life. He yanked the disk containing his presentation out of the computer without bothering to close the PowerPoint program, leaped out of his chair, and ran from his cubicle. He hurried past the other cubes, ignoring the curious stares and knowing snickers from his fellow wage-slaves, and headed down the hall toward the meeting room. Ordinarily he would’ve stopped off in the men’s room to check his hair, straighten his tie, and make sure his shirt was tucked in. But it was too late to worry about the niceties of personal grooming. Maybe too late to worry about a lot of things.

  He walked the last few yards to the meeting room, both so that no one would hear him running and to give himself a chance to catch his breath. He took a last deep breath and then entered. The lights had already been turned off for his presentation and the room was dark. He couldn’t see much more than their silhouettes, but he knew they were all there—Donna from Human Resources, Robert from Accounting, a half dozen more…including Malcolm, who no doubt was doing a piss-poor job of trying to conceal a smirk. And sitting at the head of the oval table and undoubtedly scowling in the dark was Ned Wilkerson, AKA The Boss.

  Jared tried to sound calm and relaxed as he spoke. “Sorry I’m late everybody.” He didn’t bother to offer an excuse. Not only did Ned frown on them, no matter how legitimate they might be, Jared didn’t have the mental energy to think up a good lie just then.

  The presentation screen had already been erected in a corner of the room, and the laptop and projection unit on the table were on and running. Jared walked over to the computer and inserted the disk with his presentation. He opened it, and the words New Challenges, New Opportunities appeared on the screen.

  “If no one has any questions, I’ll go ahead and start,” Jared said.

  “You don’t mind if we snack while you talk, do you?” Donna asked. “I worked right through lunch today, and I’m starving.”

  “Me, too,” Robert said. “But Ned wouldn’t let us touch anything until you got here.”

  Because the lights were off, not to mention how nervous he was, Jared hadn’t noticed what sort of food was on the table. Ned always made sure there were snacks of some kind, though. Often, it was the only way to guarantee attendance at the meetings—especially the most boring ones. It was never anything elaborate, just finger food, but Jared’s co-workers had gotten so used to having it at every meeting that he sometimes thought they’d go on strike if they didn’t get it.

  “Sure, don’t let me stop you.”

  Shadowy hands reached toward a large serving bowl, snatched fistfuls of goodies, and deposited the food on smaller plates. Then Jared’s co-workers pulled their snacks over in front of them and began to feed. They tore into their food with more gusto than usual, and Jared wondered if they’d all skipped lunch.

  He cleared his throat and started talking.

  “As you all know, the downturn in the economy has hit our industry hard in the last six months, necessitating that we take a clear-eyed, rational look at our current budgetary needs, and decide what we need to do to keep our company strong and healthy as we move forward.”

  He paused for a moment to gauge everyone’s mood, so he’d have a better idea how to proceed. Should he be serious and somber, encouraging and guardedly optimistic, or continue with light-hearted fatalism? But all he could hear was the sound of his co-workers chewing, several of them moaning softly just like…on…his… radio.

  Trembling, he walked over to the wall, fumbled for the switch, and turned on the lights. He already knew what he would see: everyone would be gnawing on fingers, toes, ears, and other parts from the vending machine in the break room. But he was wrong. Because of the importance of today’s meeting, Ned had pulled out all the stops and ordered some truly special food.

  A glistening mound of organs sat inside a chrome serving bowl in the center of the table. Loops of intestine, livers, kidneys, gall bladders, spleens, hearts…Jared’s co-workers were stuffing the soft wet delicacies into blood-rimmed mouths, gore and bits of meat splattering onto the table as they feasted. One by one they stopped chewing and looked at Jared—faces grayish-green, dead eyes wide and staring—as if they’d only just realized that he’d stopped speaking and had turned on the lights.

  Ned—bald, bespectacled, looking like a rotting version of the husband in the American Gothic painting, only in modern dress—mumbled through a mouthful of pancreas. “Somefing wong?”

  “Don’t ssstop,” Donna said, spraying a tiny jet of blood as she pronounced the S. “It was jussst getting good.”

  “We’re looking forward to hearing your ideas about the budget,” Robert said, a coil of intestine drooping from one corner of his mouth.

  Ned grinned, displaying blood-slick teeth with shreds of pancreas caught between. “Especially the cuts.”

  Everyone laughed. Jared turned and fled.

  * * *

  Everything would be fine once he reached home. Fine-and-fucking dandy.

  Jared drove well over the speed limit, wove in and out of traffic, ran stop signs and stoplights, and had more near-collisions than in the entire twenty-five years since he’d received his license. His tires shrieked as he whipped the Maxima into his cul-de-sac, and he nearly lost it right there, almost spun into the front yard of the dentist that lived on the corner. He managed to maintain control out of sheer desperation, and he zoomed down the street, the Maxima’s engine roaring and juddering as if it was about to explode. Hold on, just a little more…

  He saw Dale sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, Zoe’s savaged corpse splayed on his lap. The old man’s gray-green face was smeared with the dog’s blood, and he waved one of her chewed-up legs at Jared as he passed.

  “Home, home, home, home, home…” Jared repeated the word as if it were both a calming mantra and a protective charm. He was almost there, almost home-free.

  He pulled into his driveway, not bothering to open the garage door. He slammed on the brakes, leaving skid marks on the concrete as the Maxima slid toward the garage, but the front bumper only tapped the door before the car finally came to a stop. Jared turned off the engine without bothering to put the vehicle in park, and then threw open the driver’s side door. He left the keys in the ignition as he got out, not caring that the car might roll back into the street, not caring that
someone might come along—maybe Dale with his bloody mouth and half-eaten dog leg—and decide to take the Maxima for a spin. All that mattered was that he’d made it: he was home.

  As he started toward the front door, he heard a gunshot echo through the woods, followed closely by a scream of pain. He then heard someone thrashing through the brush, yelling, “Help! Help me!” in a desperate, terrified voice.

  Jared wanted to ignore the pleas for help, wanted nothing more than to go inside his house, lock the door, and never come out again. But he turned in the direction of the trees, and walked away from his car, his driveway, and his beloved home, toward a figure in a mud-stained blue suit emerging from the woods. As they drew near one another, Jared could see the man was drenched with sweat, one side of his face bleeding from dozens of tiny wounds, his paunchy stomach bleeding from a single large one. One Jared fell into the arms of the other, looked up into his own eyes, and in a hoarse voice whispered, “Run…”

  Jared released his other self, and the wounded doppelganger slumped to the ground, dead or close to it. Jared looked up and wasn’t surprised to see the three undead hunters come striding out of the woods, grinning their too-wide grins, weapons held at the ready. Nascar stopped, lifted his rifle, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet slammed into Jared’s shoulder, nearly knocking him off his feet. The wound blazed with fiery pain, and he pressed his hand to it, finding the navy blue cloth of his suit already moist with blood. He turned and started running toward his backyard as Nascar fired another round. This one missed, though, and Jared kept on going. He didn’t look back to see if the hunters followed. Of course they did.

  He nearly laughed with joyous relief as he entered his backyard and saw the old oak tree with the tire swing, the green turtle sandbox with the lid slightly askew, the inflatable wading pool filled with water. But then he realized: his family was home, and he had come bringing Death in his wake. He started to turn, intending to run back across the field at an angle, hopefully make it into the woods once more before the hunters could finish him off. He didn’t care about his own survival now. All he cared about was luring the three grinning killers away from his family. But before he could take a step, he saw that the water in the pool was tinted a faint red.

  Despite the afternoon heat, Jared shivered with cold as he walked over to the edge of the pool and saw what was left of Peter’s body floating there. He heard the back screen door open and shut, and he looked up to see Michelle walking toward him, carrying Heather’s head by the hair. She brought the head up to her mouth and took a bite out of it, as if she were eating an apple. She chewed as she continued toward him, swallowing as she stopped.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart? You don’t look so—”

  A rusty axe blade hissed through the air and buried itself deep within Michelle’s skull. She dropped Heather’s head as blood jetted out of her own, and the hunter in the Reds cap yanked the axe free and struck her again. Michelle’s body jerked and spasmed as the damaged brain inside her split skull misfired one last time, and then her body fell to the ground.

  Jared looked at the man in the Reds cap. He stared at Michelle’s corpse, axe handle held tight, blood dripping from its blade and pattering onto the grass. He was breathing hard, and lines of sweat ran down his face…a face that was no longer that of a dead man. Jared turned to look at John Deere and Nascar and saw that they too appeared to be perfectly normal, living men.

  Then he looked down at his own grayish-green hands.

  “End of the line, motherfucker,” Nascar said, and pointed his rifle barrel at Jared’s forehead. “Game’s over.”

  Jared looked up just in time to witness the muzzle flash with his dry, dead eyes.

  * * *

  “You ever wonder what goes through their heads?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know how they say that when it’s your time, your life flashes before your eyes? I just wonder what goes through their heads at the end. I mean, sometimes they just look so surprised, you know?”

  “I’ll tell ya what goes through their heads—a fucking bullet, that’s what.”

  The three men laughed as they walked away from the Tudor house and returned to the hunt. But despite their laughter, the men were hardly enjoying themselves. What they did was hard, bloody work, and it wore on a man after a while. But they couldn’t afford to rest, for there were a lot more deaders out there that needed to be put down, a hell of lot. The only thing that made it possible for them—and all the others like them—to keep going day after day was the knowledge that what they were killing wasn’t human. Oh, sure, they’d been human once, but not anymore.

  Not anymore.

  PORTRAIT OF A HORROR WRITER

  You stare at the laptop screen, trying to come up with a good opening line, one that’s suggestive without being obvious; atmospheric without being vague. No: It was a dark and stygian night.

  Slow minutes pass, but nothing comes, and now even dark and stygian night is starting to look good.

  You decide to try beginning with an image—it’s worked for you in the past—so instead of focusing on words, you now sift through pictures in your mind, odd snatches of daily life that impressed themselves upon you over the years: a single bloody sock you found at the end of your driveway one afternoon (perhaps thrown out of the window by someone in a passing car?), a purple rubber dildo attachment for a vibrator you almost ran over with the mower one spring (though how it got there, and what happened to the vibrator itself, you haven’t a clue), a replica of an electric chair bolted to the roof of a frat house down by the university. You read about it in the paper, clipped out the picture that accompanied the article and stuck it in your idea folder, though you’ve long since lost track of it. It’s probably packed away in one of the boxes stored in the attic after you moved a few months ago, along with dozens of old computer disks and print-outs containing the text of far too many stories and novels that will never be published but which you can’t bear to dispose of. Too bad. That folder sure would come in handy today.

  You glance at the clock on the dining room wall behind you (you know better than to set up your laptop where you can see the clock while you write—or in this case, try to write). 10:48. It won’t be long before your wife and three-year-old daughter get home from Tuesday morning playgroup. Have you really been sitting here struggling to get something down since they left at nine? It seems hard to believe, but clocks don’t lie.

  Wait, maybe they do! There’s an idea that just might…the initial rush of enthusiasm is gone before it has a chance to build. Stupid thought, not even worth jotting down and sticking in the idea folder—that is, if you knew where the damn folder was to stick anything into.

  Maybe another cup of coffee. You lift your hands away from the computer and notice how they tremble and decide that you’ve had enough coffee for now. How about a walk, then? A little exercise to get the old creative juices flowing. Besides, you’ve been meaning to do something about the spare tire around your middle. No time like the present, right?

  You leave the laptop on—it’s not like you’re going to be gone that long—get up from the dining table and walk through the living room, glancing out the picture window on your way to the hall closet. It’s been snowing on and off the last few days, and the ground is covered by white. Some flakes are drifting down, but the snowfall is light and will probably taper off to nothing soon. Good. You’ve never much liked snow.

  You put on boots and your winter coat (you decide to do without a hat, you hate the way your hair gets all matted down when you wear one), open the door and step outside. The air is cold and crisp, and when you inhale your sinuses throb. You figure they’ll adjust to the temperature soon enough, and you take your keys out of the pocket of your jeans, lock the door (this is a safe suburban neighborhood, but still you never know), put the keys away, turn and start down the terraced front walk. You shoveled it off yesterday evening, but enough snow fell during the night that
it’s covered again. You know you should probably clear the new stuff away, but you don’t want to put off your writing. Yes, you know that going for a walk is an excuse for not working, but at least there’s a chance you might really come up with an idea while you’re out. If you stop to shovel snow, you won’t even have the illusion that you’re still working.

  You make your way down the walk carefully, the corrugated tread of your boots giving you plenty of traction. Snowflakes descend lazily around you, and as they fall, you fancy you hear tiny shrill screams. A flake lands on your cheek, an instant of cold on your skin and then it starts to melt. You imagine the snowflake isn’t really a snowflake, that it’s some small creature that’s only masquerading as snow—one of hundreds, perhaps thousands that are falling from the sky—and now that it’s made contact, it’s not melting but rather seeping into your flesh, entering your bloodstream, riding the surging tides of your circulatory system toward your heart, or perhaps your brain.

  You smile. Not bad. You might be able to work with it.

  Feeling vindicated in your choice to go for a walk, you continue, dozens of tiny screams echoing in your ears as the “snow” keeps falling. You slip your hands into your coat pockets (you hate wearing gloves) and step off the curb and into the street. Your house is on the end of a cul-de-sac which borders a small park—open fields, a half dozen picnic tables, a swing set and slide. Sometimes in the morning, looking out the window and sipping coffee as you try to wake up, you see people walking their dogs in the park. One woman always brings three small white poodles, sometimes dressed in matching green and blue sweaters. You hate poodles…yappy little things with rheumy eyes that shiver and squirt pee when they get excited.