Shadow of the Past (19 page)

“Yeah, yeah, you’re real fucking sorry.
I bet. Get’cher phone and TV down here. You’re not gonna have any
luxuries after talking that shit to me.”

Mark opened his mouth to protest, but
realized it was pointless. He unplugged the small TV first and
brought it down the stairs, trying to think of anything he could
say that could keep his lifeline to the outside world intact. Joe
just motioned for Mark to drop the TV by the door, clear he didn’t
even want Mark to see where it was going.

“Do I really have to give you the
phone, too?” he said, desperate.

“Yes, goddamnit!” Joe barked, giving
Mark a light shove back towards the stairs. “And I don’t want to
hear any more of your shit, alright?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, turning and heading
back up the steps. Grabbing the cord, he had to resist the urge to
yank the thing right out of the socket. He stood at the top of the
steps and in his mind’s eye he could see the phone flying down the
steps and smashing into Joe’s thick, drunken skull.

Go ahead, give it a shot.
You better fucking pray it knocks him out and gives him amnesia,
because you can bet what the next thing to go flying down the
stairs will be.

Mark marched back down the steps and
thrust the handset out, Joe grabbing it from him after a couple of
tries. Mark turned to go, but Joe pushed him into the door frame
with a swipe of his arm.

“Hey, look at me.
Look at me!
” Joe snarled.
“You listen to me real good. I’m in charge here, okay Mr. Smart
Guy? I’m the boss. You, my little smart friend, are nothing. The
sooner you get that through your head, the better things are going
to go for you. You’re grounded. For two weeks. You’re going to come
right home after school and you’re not going to do a damn thing but
chores and homework. Got it?”

“Oh, come on! You just got done
grounding me!”

“And I wouldn’t have to keep doing it
if you stopped fucking up! You keep this up and I’m going to take
an axe to that faggy little scooter of yours! Do you get
me?”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “I get
you.”

“So I’m grounded. Again.”

“Are you serious?” Steve said, flopping
down onto the grass. Mark hated bringing up the bad news but he
knew it was better sooner rather than later.

“What happened?” Christine
asked.

“Turns out he wasn’t too happy with the
whole ‘going down to the police station’ thing. So yeah, grounded.
For two weeks.”

“Christ,” Steve said sitting up with a
great sigh. “Cops, groundings. It’s like you’re turning into the
bad seed or something.”

Mark wished he could prove him wrong
but from the looks he’d gotten from not just students but other
teachers it was clear that word of his questioning at the police
station had spread as far as he’d feared. He never thought he’d
wish for his painful anonymity or his crybaby reputation to return
but they were so much better than “possible murder suspect.” The
only thing he could be thankful for was the fact that the news
crews that had been camped out that morning when students had
arrived were gone by the time he’d been taken down to the station.
Without much more to go on they’d been fairly stymied in their
“Breaking News!” coverage, with the exception of talking heads from
concerned citizens that “didn’t think something like that could
happen in a nice town like this.”

“So what are you going to do?”
Christine asked.

“I dunno. I’ve got to be home 15
minutes after school is over to get a call from my Uncle and if I’m
not there then he adds another week to my grounding.”

“Wow, that’s way harsh,” she
said.

“Oh you have no idea,” Steve chimed in.
“That dude is Mister Order and Discipline. He makes the guy from
Full Metal Jacket look like Ryan Seacrest. There was this one
time--”

“Look,” Mark said, not knowing which
embarrassing Joe story he would trot out but knowing none of them
were suitable for Christine’s consumption. “It’s not that bad. I
just have to do some stuff around the house and that’s it. We still
have lunch and class and we will be able to talk on the phone again
soon.”

“He took your phone?”

“Yeah. Totally lame.”

“One of these days you’ve got to get
yourself a cell phone,” Steve said. “This ‘handset’ thing is just
so . . . primitive.”

“Any time you want to pay for it let me
know. Plus he can keep track of who I’m calling with a land
line.”

“No chance to try calling before he
gets home from work, huh?” She asked.

“I don’t want to risk it. He catches me
and he’s going to make these next two weeks look like a
vacation.”

“It’ll be okay,” Christine said, giving
him a quick kiss. Mark couldn’t help but catch Steve’s eye-roll in
the background. “Steve and I are here for you. Right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said, nodding. “I
mean, I’m not sure what I could do but I’m here for you, 100
perfect. Go Team Grounded.”

“Maybe you could loan him your phone or
something one night?” Christine said.

“No way, man. I’ve got dick picks on
there.”

“What? Do you mean--”

“Yes, it’s what it sounds
like,” Mark said. “One of the reasons why I’m actually glad
I
don’t
have my
own phone.”

She looked back to Steve, who just
shrugged and smiled.

“You are so weird,” she said, leaning
against Mark. “It’s only two weeks, right?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, kissing the top of
her head. He was thankful that he’d been able to catch her before
she made it to homeroom that morning so she could accept a nearly
tearful apology. Now thanks to this stupid grounding that kind of
early morning meeting and a quick one at the end of the day were
going to be the only times the two of them were going to have by
themselves.

He looked over at Steve, who tossed a
potato chip into his mouth with a smile. He wanted to find a way to
ask Steve if he’d be able to get the lunch period alone with his
girlfriend but he didn’t really want to hear whatever excuse he’d
come up with as to why he couldn’t.

Chapter
Nineteen

The door swung open with a
loud shriek or rusted metal, waking Darren. He’d fallen asleep,
curled up on the concrete floor in the front corner of the cell
next to the doorway, and when he looked up he saw the Shadow Man’s
form silhouetted by the furnace light.

They’d taken to sleeping
during the day, but it was hard to tell exactly what time it was
since it was so hard to see one of the small windows from their
dark little cell and they were too dirty to let much light in. The
Shadow Man spent most of the night in front of the furnace, staring
into it and muttering to himself. It was during these fits that he
would leap to his feet, storm to their cell in the back of the
basement and drag someone out to be forced to “witness.”

After several days he’d
brought another boy down to the basement. Like Darren had been, he
was unconscious when the Shadow Man dropped him off in the little
cell. When he woke he screamed and yelled and nothing Darren or
Suzie could do would quiet him down. Eric, the boy Darren had seen
beaten after he first woke up, was too weak to do much of anything.
After hours of screaming the Shadow Man came back downstairs and
made the new boy, Oscar, “witness” for the first time. It gave him
something else to scream about.

It took Darren a moment to
realize that the Shadow Man had another boy with him, unconscious
and being held up by one limp arm. Darren scooted out of his way as
the man ducked down and pushed his new captive into the cell with
the other children.

Darren could see the Shadow
Man more clearly now. His face was narrow and his eyes were wide
with dark circles under them. He scanned the crowded cell as if he
was taking it in for the first time. His nose wrinkled at the smell
of bodies confined in close quarters mixed with the lingering smell
of the bucket he’d left for them to “do their business” in. He took
away the plate he’d been piling food for them on and the canteen
that he filled with water, placing them just outside of the cell’s
door.

The new arrival was lying
next to Eric, who hadn’t moved at all since the Shadow Man had
arrived. He’d been listless when Oscar first arrived but had barely
moved or woken up since his last session in front of the furnace
and his breathing had settled in a slow, uneven wheeze.

The Shadow Man reached in,
his arm going right by Darren, and shook the unconscious boy’s
foot. At the far end of the cell next to Eric’s outstretched arms
Suzie and Oscar pressed themselves up against the wall.

“Wake him,” he said to
them

Oscar reached down and shook
Eric’s arm, but Suzie didn’t move, just muttered “Wake up, wake
up,” so softly Darren could barely hear it. Eric did nothing but
twitch at the boys’ touch.

“Useless.”

The Shadow Man leaned into
the cell and grabbed Eric by the foot, dragging his limp body out.
Darren watched as Eric’s head lolled slightly to the side, the
rough concrete opening one of the many cuts on his cheek and
starting a bright red trail towards the door. Eric still didn’t
move, but the new boy stirred as Eric brushed past him.

“Leave him alone!” Darren
yelled, grabbing one of Eric’s limp arms before they cleared the
cell’s doorway and tugging as hard as he could. Eric finally
stirred, moaning in pain as the jagged chain-abrasions on his
wrists began to crack and bleed. Darren could feel his fingers
begin to lose their grip.

The Shadow Man reached into
the cell, shoving Darren and pinning him down on the floor. Darren
flailed and tried to get up, but he was lifted and then slammed
down onto the concrete.

“No!” The Shadow Man
snarled. “He can’t see any more, and if he can’t see then he’s
useless. Then he’s fuel.”

Darren tried to sit up and
say something, but his head flopped back onto the ground with a
painful thud as the rusted metal ceiling swam above him.

The door slammed shut and
the bar clanged back into place, echoing in Darren’s shaken brain.
He rolled over on his side, pulling himself up to his perch by the
window so he could see what he’d failed to stop.

Instead of hanging Eric from
the chain, he’d been left on the floor in front of the furnace. The
Shadow Man picked up the cane from its resting place and pulled a
long, thin sword blade from it. He placed the cane sheath on the
floor and then picked up one of Eric’s legs, holding it up off the
ground by the boy’s heel.

The blade wavered for a
second before it came down in a great big sweep, right where Eric’s
leg met his body. “No, no, no, no,” Darren muttered over and over,
but he could barely hear himself over the screams of the other
children in the cell as they realized what the wet, tearing sounds
were.

Eric never woke up. It was
the only thing Darren had been thankful for in a long
time.

When it was finished, he
picked up the various pieces that had been Eric and threw them into
the open furnace mouth. When each piece hit the flames the furnace
roared. Darren watched the entire gruesome spectacle, until all
that was left of Eric was stains on the concrete and the roar of
flames.

The Shadow Man dropped to
his knees in front of the roaring furnace, lowering his head to the
ground and resuming whatever strange prayers he made to his god of
iron and fire.

Throughout the entire ordeal
Darren didn’t budge. The buzz in his head was gone, replaced with
the roar of the flames whispering in his ear as the fire raged in
front of him.

“I’ve missed this,” Christine said,
stretching and repositioning herself on Mark’s lap.

“Me too,” he said, absently stroking
her hair. After two weeks of home incarceration and lunches
hampered by a third wheel being alone together was
heavenly.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, faking a smile.
“I’m just thinking.”

“Anything good?”

Go ahead, tell her: Well, my
nightmares have progressed from beatings to dismemberments and I’ve
been trapped in my house unable to look into what I think might be
the answer. Same old, same old.

“Just stuff.”

“Mark,” she said, sitting up, “is there
something going on? I thought you’d be a little bit more excited to
be here.”

“I am, really. I’ve just been stuck at
my place without much to do but think about all this stuff that’s
happened. It hasn’t exactly been thrilling.”

“Well, if you need to talk about
this--”

“Why?” he blurted out. “Why is the
answer always talking about it? Why can’t we just let it lie and
maybe it’ll just go away?”

“Because life doesn’t work like that,”
she said, sitting up. “You can’t just ignore the problem and hope
it’ll go away.”

“I’m not ignoring, I’m just . .
.”

“Just what?”

“It’s nothing.”