Streets of Shadows Read online

  “Enough running, Kai. Face what you’ve done, and reap what you’ve sown.”

  Father called him Kevin, not Kai.

  Leave me alone, Dad! Leave me alone the way you left mom alone! The way you drove her to …to …to do what she did! Drove her to the bottle and to the razors and to the pills and then out the door.

  “I’ve forgiven him, Kevin.” The voice had changed, now. Or a different voice had come to the fore. A woman’s empathic tones. “But you? I can’t forgive you, Kevin. Not for what you said. For the way you sat next to the tub and told me those terrible things when I was bleeding from the cuts in my wrists. I needed help, Kevin, and you sat there crying and useless to me. It was so disappointing.”

  Kai turned now. Mom?

  She was there. And Dad. And Sharon Zulkowski, who he had really liked when he was nine and she was ten and coaxed her into a game of doctor–we were playing, and you were cool with it; you told me so! But he had always known she wasn’t cool with it. Not at all. And there was Kane Hogan, whose left eyeball Kai had cut with a carelessly thrown rock on Wilson Woodrow Elementary School’s playground–accident! It was an accident! Others stepped forward, when those he identified stepped back. Kai knew them all. Everyone he had ever hurt. Everyone he had ever made cry. Every person he had ever betrayed. Everyone he had stood by and let suffer, knowingly and unknowingly. They swarmed together, dark and terrible and creeping forward slow and relentless, a hellish oil puddle.

  “We hate you, Kai. We’ve always hated you, and we always will. You deserve this, our hatred. You know you do.”

  God help him, he did. In his mind’s most remote place, the Siberia where the truth that is too terrible to acknowledge is held behind locked doors, he knew. He deserved whatever they were going to do to him. He–

  He pleaded with them all, a catalog of denials, which culminated in his holy trinity. Don’t, Dad. Don’t, Mom. Please don’t. I didn’t mean to hurt any of you. I didn’t mean it. Didn’t mean any of it. I’m so sorry! So sorry!

  Space shimmered. Went indistinct. Collapsed into a point. Sped toward him.

  This time, it did not pass around him like water. It slapped and pulled him like a riptide. Knocked him backwards, through the table and its terrible statue.

  And the cold darkness surrounded him. Cinched in noose tight. A crushing womb. Kai tried to shriek. It squeezed him into a ball. Then tighter. Smashed his spirit into its components.

  As it threatened to crush him further, squeezing him to nothingness, a pinprick appeared in the womb. Through it, light. He squirted through the hole, extruded.

  Into his own body.

  Someone held him tight, singing nonsense in whispers. The music was damned familiar. The lullaby theme, he finally realized, from Pan’s Labyrinth. Kai’s head leaned against a bosom.

  Song turned into comforting words. “It’s okay, Kai. You’re back. You’re safe.”

  “Alice?”

  “That’s my name,” she said.

  “Alice, I saw my mom.”

  “Shhh. It’s okay. You’re home.”

  “I saw my fucking mom!”

  “No you didn’t,” she said. Her tone was firm and final.

  “I–”

  “You didn’t see anyone you knew,” she said. “And now you’re back, so it doesn’t matter what you saw.”

  But it did. Of course it did.

  “What just happened to me?” he demanded. “Tell me something, anything.”

  “Call it tulpa, if you like,” she said. “Call it yearning. Call it a spirit vulture. Call it a feeder on the soul’s darkest guilt. Call it an opportunistic scavenger. They’re different attempts to constrain an uncontainable entity. It was real, but what it showed you wasn’t.”

  Her mouth found his. Taste. He realized he had been without real taste sense during his out of body experience. The feel of her reminded him that what he had taken as touch-sense was pure perception and imagination. She felt more real than anything he had encountered.

  Her hair carried weight and scent and strands. Her mouth moved in a way that he could not articulate but could wholly appreciate. Her taste was heady. He wept, and their kiss broke, and she held him for a while longer.

  In time, his sobbing subsided. His body relaxed. It was then he realized there were two cases on the floor. And a table with a Santa Muerte statue atop it, her costume jewelry eyes gleaming with mirth and deadly promises.

  Success had come hand-in-hand with a profound emptiness.

  He stood up. Pulled on his pants. Carried the drug case downstairs. Halulu still held court in the living room. Without looking up, the king said, “We need a plan for dealing with the guys in Detroit.”

  Kai dumped the case on Halulu’s lap, and the Hawaiian’s words–“Is this my case? No way!”–quickly trailed into confused syllables.

  “This is over,” Kai said. “I want you out of here before morning.”

  “How did you get this?” Halulu looked up. Whatever he saw in Kai’s face made him flinch. “I’ll be gone, man. Gone.”

  Mikey still stared at the pistol on the floor. “I shot him.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Kai said. Mikey looked up, wanting to believe. “Halulu, take that gun with you when you go. Make it disappear.”

  “I will.”

  Kai trudged back to his room.

  The act of walking was downright therapeutic. Nothing quite connected a body to life the way that walking did. It quickened the heart. Kai drew deeper breaths. Being out of his body had removed so much of his sense of what was right and real. He wondered if he’d ever get it back.

  Alice had draped the comforter over the statue. “She unnerves me.”

  “I can’t do that again,” Kai said. “Be out of my body.”

  Alice nodded. “I’m sorry I sprung that on you. It seemed like the only idea.”

  “It was a shitty thing to do,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” She winced, looking sad and small. “You want me to leave like Halulu?”

  He held out his hand, and she took it. He led her to the bed and sat her down.

  “I really like you,” he said. “We haven’t known each other long, but it feels …like we should stick together. At least for a little while longer. And see what happens.”

  Her face brightened. “You mean that?”

  He considered this for almost a second and then nodded.

  They kissed, and then they loved again. Afterward, she brushed her blue painted fingernails across his temples before she asked, “Don’t you wonder how this all happened? I mean, what started hours, days, or weeks ago that built to this moment?”

  “Actually, no,” he finally said. “I don’t wonder that at all. Wanna go to the ‘Dube and get some burgers?”

  She swatted his chest and laughed. It was a pretty sound, her laughter. Kai couldn’t help himself; he joined her.

  * * *

  Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. She has two new books out in 2014: Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide from Post Mortem Press, and her story collection Soft Apocalypses from Raw Dog Screaming Press. Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Jamais Vu, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Dark Faith, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck and is a mentor in Seton Hill University's MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com.

  Daniel R. Robichaud lives and writes in the mean streets and piney woods of east Texas. He is the author of the hardboiled novel The Devils of Los Angeles (under his tough guys pseudonym C. C. Blake), as well as the hard-edged fantasy short novel Fr
om Hell’s Heart (under his own name).

  Morrigan’s Girls

  Gerard Brennan

  The Raven’s flight traced a shaft of moonlight, down, down, down. Its wings swept outwards and its descent slowed. The black bird looped, dipped and landed on the peaked roof of a squat two-story building. It hopped from the rain-slicked slates to an old Guinness sign, unperturbed by a sudden gust of wind. The sign – the only hint that the building was once a pub – was cracked and the electric light had burned out. Car headlights approached from the North and the Raven cawed; its chest feathers bristled.

  While the Raven monitored the vehicle’s approach, waves hammered the stonework of a nearby harbor, the wet slap carried miles by the brutal weather. The wind shrieked like a banshee, her tears a sudden torrent of hailstones. Outside the old pub, the unlit gravel yard was packed with abandoned cars that rocked with each fresh blast of the late night storm. The Raven dropped from the Guinness sign to a stone windowsill. Its beak beat a tattoo on grimy glass. A blackout curtain twitched to reveal a sliver of electric light, the only sign of life from within. The curtain fell back into place seconds before the oncoming car slowed to pull into the yard. The Raven launched upwards and circled the car until it came to a stop in front of the pub’s front door.

  The new arrival drove a black Range Rover; high-end spec with custom bull bars and a roof rack. The Raven swooped down and perched on the rack; another caw cut through the stormy clamor. A woman pushed open the heavy driver’s door and stepped out. Her hair, black as the Raven’s feathers, flowed with the wind. Twisted strands whipped at the shoulders of her long, red coat. She nodded to the Raven then approached the pub, her posture yardstick straight and her stride sure. From her coat pocket, she drew a large brass key and unlocked the front door. It swung open with ease.

  The woman stepped inside the old pub, and with a final glance at the Raven on her car, eased the door shut, locked it and tucked away the key. From her other pocket, she pulled out a torch and flicked it on, moved swiftly up a flight of bare wooden stairs that led to an attic room. She shoved open a once-white panel door and stepped inside.

  In the upstairs room, three men sat around a table. A thickset brute faced the door, his broad face split by a grin that revealed too many teeth. On either side of him a pair of square-jawed twenty-somethings with frizzy ginger hair tied back into ponytails slouched in their seats. They avoided the woman’s gaze, occasionally glancing at each other with unreadable expressions. Their similarities were so striking that they had to be brothers, possibly twins.

  The brute spoke up. “There’s her majesty now. How’re you, Morrigan?”

  Morrigan tipped the man in the middle a wink. “Hiya, Bull.” She grinned. “Hello, boys.”

  The brothers chanced a curt nod, first towards Morrigan and then each other.

  “Where’s your protection?” Bull asked.

  “Watching my car.”

  Bull snorted. His smile quivered. “Useful, like. We’re in the middle of nowhere. That flash motor’s safe as houses.”

  “You never know. I hear there are a lot of thieves out here.”

  One of the brothers spoke, his voice low. “Can we get on with this?”

  “You scared?” Bull asked.

  “Fuck up.” This from the other brother.

  Bull ignored him. His eyes met Morrigan’s. “Well?”

  “There are a lot more cars outside than there are men in this room,” Morrigan said.

  “Don’t worry about it. There’s just a wee bit of fun going on down in the cellar.”

  “Can you take me down for a nosey, Bull?”

  Bull shifted in his seat. “Business first, then pleasure.”

  “Vice versa for me, Bull. You know that.” Morrigan glided forward a couple of paces so she could place her hands on the table and lean forward. “Take me to the cellar.”

  Bull gasped as if he’d been holding his breath unconsciously. “There are minimum stakes, Morrigan. You’ll need your purse.”

  “So be it.”

  Bull offered no further resistance. “Boys, take Morrigan to the cellar. Don’t let anybody bother her.”

  * * *

  A crowd of men lined the edge of a rough-dug pit. They looked down on the scene of imminent savagery with a glint of the feral in their narrowed eyes. A white Staffordshire bull terrier strained on its lead. Its opponent was a much larger, illegal, American pit bull with a brindle coat. The pit bull tilted its head, seemingly confused by the white Staffy’s gameness. Money and slips of paper exchanged hands. The spectators didn’t notice Morrigan and the brothers’ approach. They only had eyes for the impending fight.

  “The little white one looks like he’s punching above his weight,” Morrigan said.

  “Maybe he’s a bait dog,” one of the brothers said.

  “Somebody should tell the Staffy that.”

  The more talkative of the two brothers sidled up to a skeletal bookie. They spoke to each other out of the sides of their mouths until the brother nodded and loped back to Morrigan.

  “It’s a fight. Odds are with the big one, funny enough.”

  Morrigan nodded. “Tell the bookie I want a grand on the Staffy.”

  “You’ll need to flash the cash. They don’t operate on credit here.”

  “He’ll know I’m good for it.”

  The brother shrugged and went back to the skinny bookie. At first the frail man shook his head, his angry expression easily read in the low wattage light. Then the brother pointed to Morrigan and the bookie’s sunken face went blank. He gave Morrigan the thumbs up and scribbled something on a notepad before ripping out the page and stuffing it into the brother’s fist.

  Morrigan edged closer to the pit and the men cleared a space for her without waiting to be asked. The fight was quick and brutal. Before the pit bull could even warm up, the Staffy had clamped its jaws around the bigger dog’s throat. Roars of bloodlust, joy and frustration rang out. A handler jumped into the pit and tried to prise the Staffy from the pit bull. The Staffy, now more red than white, didn’t make life easy for the handler. Three more men came to the handler’s aid. One of them drew back his leg to kick at the Staffy’s flank.

  “Stop.”

  It was Morrigan’s voice. Loud and clear. All activity ceased.

  “I’ll be taking that dog with me. Anybody that hurts it, answers to me.”

  The man who’d raised his leg looked up at Morrigan. “It’s killing my best fighter.”

  “If that’s your best, maybe you should think about a new hobby,” Morrigan said. Then to the Staffy. “Enough!”

  The Staffy released the pit bull and bounded to the edge of the makeshift arena. Its tongue hung from the corner of its blood-drenched maw. With its forepaws scrabbling at the side of the pit, the Staffy set its tail wagging.

  Morrigan nudged the most talkative brother. “Collect my winnings and give it all to the owner of this dog. Tell him it’s payment in full.” She turned to the quieter brother. “You crate the little warrior up and put him in my car.” She handed over a key fob.

  The quieter brother nodded.

  “Right you are,” the talkative brother said.

  “That dog’s not for sale.” This from a young man, barely out of his teens. He wore a tatty tracksuit, the trousers tucked into a pair of rubber boots. “My da will kill me…”

  The talkative brother cleared his throat. “Your da has a bit of sense. Shut your gob and see if you can’t find some of your own.”

  The skeletal bookie blindsided the young man with a back-hand slap to the ear then led him away.

  “I’m going up to see Bull while you boys do me that wee favor.” Morrigan said.

  * * *

  Bull rose to his feet as Morrigan took her seat at the table. “Where are the lads?”

  “Doing me a favor.”

  Bull sat back down. He interlaced his fingers and rested his hands on the bulge of his big stomach. Morrigan stared at him until he cleared his
throat.

  “So…the girls,” Bull said.

  “They’re under my protection now.” Morrigan carved a groove in the wooden tabletop with her thumbnail. “That’s non-negotiable.”

  “Then why even bother to meet with me about them?”

  “We need to agree on a way to avoid these disagreements in the future.”

  “Maybe if you stop costing me money. I kickback plenty to you and yours and you can’t even turn a blind eye to something so minor?”

  “Stealing from me is not minor. No matter who you think you are, you don’t get to visit my brothels for free, and you certainly don’t get to ‘lend out’ my workers.” Morrigan pursed her lips. “But I may have something that will make you feel less hard done by, Bull.”

  “Aye?”

  “Of course. Just answer one question for me.”

  “You think I know something you don’t?”

  “I know you know. And that’s rather frustrating for me.”

  “I don’t believe it. The mad bastard said he could get off your radar. Said he could get me off it too, but I guess he was dealing in half-truths again.”

  “You’ll not mind giving him up, then. So tell me. Where is Chris Cúchulainn?”

  “Shacked up with two of your girls in Belfast. The new hotel in the center of the city.”

  “He’s still in Ireland? Still so close?”

  “For now.”

  “More fool him. How long do I have?”

  “So far as I know, he’s in no rush to leave.”

  “Arrogant to the last.”

  “His time’s near up, then?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he should have looked out for me.”

  “You can’t trust anybody these days, Bull.”

  “Not even you?”

  Morrigan pushed back her chair and rose. She rounded the table and tossed it across the room with a casual backward swipe. Then she sat on Bull’s knee.

  “I told you it was pleasure first, then business, right?”