The Lord of Shadows
I didn’t take the chef for the vintage car type, but he was. Idling outside was a late-60s Jaguar MK10. All black. Four-door. Tinted windows. Big trunk. Perfectly round headlights at the end of a long sloping hood. Milan was behind the wheel, looking casual and graceful, as usual. And patient. She had clearly been waiting, as if she expected we would come.
I got in and glanced to the bistro. The staff was getting ready to close.
That big engine rumbled and we pulled away. It wasn’t long before we were on the freeway. That late, traffic wasn’t so bad.
I was sitting in the back, next to the chef. After a few minutes, I realized he was looking at me in the dark. I turned.
Not creepy at all.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
Why public health. I shrugged again. “It’s generally not something most people care about. You know how it is. You start talking about work at cocktail parties and everyone’s eyes glaze over.”
But the chef’s didn’t. He waited.
“I don’t suppose you know much about cholera,” I said.
“It’s very unpleasant.”
I laughed. Milan smiled at my reaction from the front.
“Yeah,” I said. “So it is.”
“It took someone close to you?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just, I read this book. In college. I had no idea what I wanted to be at the time. I was on athletic scholarship and just happy to be there. And terrified that I was expected to actually get a degree. I always liked science but I never thought I was smart enough for it. So I took this class on ‘science and society’ because it sounded more my speed, and we read this book that talked about cholera.
“The author started by saying how science wasn’t just about describing the world. It was about explaining it. Not just that it’s such-and-such a way, but why. If a person gets sick, he said, you can blame a bug. Chance, basically. That’s fair. But if a whole bunch of people get sick, and if they keep getting sick, over and over, can you really keep blaming chance? At some point, blaming the bug is just a description. Not a reason.
“Then he asked: Did all those poor folks die because they contracted cholera, or because the class structure of European society prevented access to clean water by the poor? Seems academic. I know. But at the time, it really got me thinking. I’d never thought about things that way. Guys from where I’m from, you know, they’re always complaining about this or that, institutional racism and everything, but I never thought there was a legit way to dissect society like that. Scientifically. Where it wasn’t just some folks bitching about thing they didn’t really understand. In hindsight as an adult, it seems obvious of course, but I never realized there actually were people who understood that stuff. Not just an opinion. And what that guy said made a lot of sense. It made sense of where I came from and why it is how it is and why other places are different.”
“And you wanted to fix it?”
I laughed. “I mean, yeah. I wanna do my part, same as anyone. But mostly I think I just wanted to understand. I wanted an honest explanation. Not just a description. I felt I deserved it.”
“The truth,” he said.
I nodded, and without pause, he added “Would you sacrifice yourself for your daughter? Without hesitation?”
I laughed again. “What?”
That’s how it was with him. The whole time.
But he was serious.
I looked out the windshield. I think we’d miraculously caught every single green light. We were already in Jersey.
I thought for a moment. It was an easy question, but the severity of his tone got me. It was the phrase at the end, I guess — without hesitation. I felt like I should be extra sure before answering. Like he was going to call me on it later.
“Would I sacrifice myself to save my daughter? Of course. Without hesitation.”
He nodded, like he wasn’t sure what I was going to say but that that was the right answer.
“Why?” I asked.
But he didn’t have the chance to say. We pulled to a stop in front of a dour, hulking man with dull eyes and a hairline halfway up his scalp, the kind of guy who might have played offensive lineman in school and who had to shop at the Big & Tall store. He stood on the curb in jeans and a waist-length buffed leather coat.
Milan parked and popped the trunk and everyone got out without a word. I felt like I had been cast in a play and had missed the dress rehearsal. I got out as well and stepped to the back.
“Whoa.”
The trunk of the Jag was organized like a mobile tool shed. Even the interior of the lid was covered, mostly with hand tools like pliers and screwdrivers. Two tanks of gas rested side-by-side on the floor next to a stack of folded towels, washed but stained. I saw bolt cutters and a long-handled fireman’s ax and duct tape and binoculars. Lodged along the curved interior wall was a baseball bat studded in nail heads.
I picked it up. I couldn’t help it. Between the basketball team and school work, I didn’t have much time for anything else, but I’d played a little baseball in my day. I gripped it with two hands. You could really do some damage with that thing.
The big man glanced at me but didn’t say anything. I mistook his cool demeanor for machismo at first, but that wasn’t it. He was just always flat, like day-old soda. He took the bat out of my hands and put it back.
“Sorry.”
He didn’t respond. He was busy gathering supplies. He handed me a small LED headlamp on an elastic strap.
“This is Mr. Dench,” Étranger said. “An associate of mine.”
I looked at the trunk again, just as Dench slammed it shut.
“Who are you people?”
“Plumbers,” the big man said. He lifted the gas tanks from where he’d set them on the road and followed the others toward the pit.
It was dark now. The little bit of light that had penetrated to the basement before was totally gone. Dench, Milan, and I wore headlamps, and the beams swung about like crossing swords as we moved through the darkness. Étranger walked like he could see clear as day. He stepped lightly across the collapsed floor and was the first to reach the basement. When the rest of us arrived, he was standing in the dark before the altar with his hands in the pockets of his coat.
Dench set the gas tanks down and immediately set to work trying to break the lock on the door with the bolt cutters. He was straining hard.
There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do, so I stood next to the chef. “You know what it means?” I asked.
He nodded. “The rat without its skin is a symbol of the underworld, a land of shadow and deception.” He pointed to the spires of the spent candle. “Whose Lord is crowned when light is extinguished.” He raised his finger to the deer skull. “In the time before civilization, the stag was revered as a majestic spirit. A swift and powerful animal — difficult to bring down with spears and arrows — with a coronet that rose and fell with the seasons. Chieftains and mages wore the antlers of the stag as a sign of potency.”
“So this is an altar to a king?”
“This is not an altar, Doctor. This is a totem. And a warning.” He pointed to the rat. “The Lord of Shadows.” Then to the stag at the top of the bonelike lattice. “Will rise and rule.”
“It’s been sealed,” Milan said.
The chef walked over and put his tattooed palms on the door. He held them there for a moment before whispering something. Then he stepped back and nodded and Dench cut the lock. It fell with a clatter. Milan slid the heavy door to the side with a grunt and it rumbled in its rusty groove.
The room beyond was…
Wow.
It was almost a perfect cube. Rusted chains hung from the ceiling, left from some earlier use. Neon yellow spray paint made symbols on the walls and ceiling — six of them like simple labyrinths, repeated over and over, including the one I had seen in the condemned apartment. Dead bodies slumped sideways against each of the three interior walls. Their faces had been smashed and there was very little left to identify them. Their hair was gone and seams of liquefied rot ran in spurts across their chests, arms, and legs. Their flesh had grown soft and putrid and split open like spoiled fruit. Mushrooms sprouted from the gaps.
Glowing green.
Instinctively, we shut off our headlamps and let our eyes adjust to the faint but persistent light. Almost immediately the fungi seemed to get brighter. I could see the shapes of the flowerets — whimsical and eerie. The iridescent hook-shaped stalks erupted from inside decaying bodies, which were now all but invisible in the dark, and ended in broad caps that shone brightest at their centers. In the silence, I half-expected leprechauns or demented pixies to leap from the shadows and dance their soul-stealing reverie.
Then the stench hit. It had moved slowly in the still, cool air, and when it came, it hung over us like the heavy perfume of too many flowers. It was both acrid and pungent, like a dog waste bin left to bake in a how summer sun. I covered my nose. But the silent assault on my senses, I couldn’t move from the gruesome scene. I was fixed.
“What do you know of toadstool rings?” Étranger asked me softly, eyes reflecting the green light.
“They’re an artifact of how fungi grow,” I said through my fingers. “They start at a point and move outward, depleting the nutrients in the soil and leaving a gap.” I stopped. “That isn’t what you meant.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the room. “Early peoples noticed rings that sprouted from the earth where none had been the evening before. Children were warned to stay away, lest they step into the circle and be whisked away to the fairy realms. Those who did were lost. Or returned decades later not having aged a day, all their family and loved ones gone.”
Dench and Milan began dousing everything in gasoline while the chef watched. The smell of the gas on top of the rest made my stomach boil.
“Like Rip Van Winkle,” I said.
“This is much different,” the chef explained. “Much worse. A ring of dark light. Light that doesn’t come from the sun.”
“It’s an enzyme,” I added. “Called luciferase, actually. If you can believe that.”
Etude shook his head. “This has nothing to do with mechanisms and energy, Doctor. This light is born of sickness. And suffering. And death.”
Dench threw the rat carcass and twig lattice, complete with deer skull, into the room just as Milan struck a match and dropped it. The gasoline ignited with force, and I felt a blast of heat wash over me. The mushrooms shriveled in the heat and went dark. The larger ones started popping, which sent clouds of tiny yellow embers into the air, like fireworks.
The fire grew. Flames rose and bent around the door, licking the ceiling. Smoke billowed. Étranger turned without a word and started for the stairs.
“If we had time,” he said as we followed him up the steps, “I imagine we would discover many of the properties that lie along your circle have been bought and sold recently.”
“What do you mean ‘if we had time?’”
When he didn’t answer, I turned to Milan, but she was on the phone anonymously reporting the fire to 911. I listened to her frantic voice as we walked out of the building and onto the litter-strewn field that surrounded the school.
“Hold on,” I urged.
But the chef kept walking, hands in his pockets. He didn’t even turn.
“Wait a minute!” I shuffled faster after him. When I turned to see if the others were following, I caught a glimmer from inside the school. A yellow flicker, rising and falling, backlit a few of the openings, giving the appearance of a hollow skull. I stopped.
The fence rattled as the others made it over. I turned to join them, but the Jaguar rumbled to life before I made it to the top.
Red parking lights illuminated the dark street as the chef rolled his window down. “Thank you, Doctor. Your help has been immeasurable.”
I got the distinct impression they were about to leave me on the side of the road. I jumped down.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you would permit me to call on you again.”
“Call?” Had I been called?
“There is somewhere you can go that I cannot.” And just like that, he nodded and the car pulled away and left me the sole witness to a building fire.
It was only then, as the bright red taillights turned the corner, that I realized I had just stood idly while they burned all my evidence.
“Awwww SHIT!”
I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming hardboiled occult mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.
Sign up here to be notified when the book is released.
The next chapter is: (not yet posted)
cover image by Piotr Jablonski
[image error]
