Forest of Shadows (39 page)

For the first time in years, John was completely sure of himself. 

The shade of George Bolster disappeared, following the glowing orb’s path through the floor. John looked at the closed door down the hall, thought of his beautiful daughter, felt a painful swelling in his chest, and almost went to the room. 

Stay on target John, he commanded himself. 

Images of Eve and Liam made his decision all the more difficult. 

Think what will happen if you don’t. 

Fighting against the current of his emotions, he made his way down the stairs where madness reigned. Horrible, pulsating black shapes had pinned everyone to the walls like trapped butterflies. A torrent of snow poured in through the open door, pooling around the feet of the possessed sheriff. High Bear leveled his gun at Wadi’s head and was pushed away by a darting ball of light. 

“Let us down now!” Erica was shouting over and over again. 

Ahanu and Mai were reduced to blubbering while Wadi shouted obscenities at his shadow captors and the sheriff. 

“Come on, you dickless wonder, shoot me!” Not only was his hand a bloody mess, but it appeared as if he had taken a glancing blow to the side of his head, shearing off his ear in the process. Gunpowder burns streaked his hair in grisly black. “My sister has better aim than you!”

John saw three balls of blindingly bright light zipping around the room, resting on a shadow before darting to the next. It appeared as if they were trying to pry the living prisoners free from their spectral bonds. 

Wind howled through the house and the bone chilling temperature had dipped precipitously.

John drew in a cold breath, then shouted above the storm, “Hey, over here!”

High Bear turned his head. His lips were blue, his skin gray from the cold. 

He took aim and this time the ball of light steered clear from his path. 

Muraco, who had been left unattended, rolled to his feet and lurched at the sheriff. His wolf-like howl gave the possessed sheriff pause. He tackled High Bear in a state of raw, animal fury, wrapped his arms around the sheriff’s knees and brought him to the ground. 

Fresh gouts of blood poured from Muraco’s wound and he winced in agony. 

John leaped over the banister, landing on his feet in the living room. High Bear quickly scrambled to his feet with the aid of a shadow that had raced over and hoisted his weight. 

He placed his boot on Muraco’s head, grinding it into the floor. 

“Let him go,” Erica shouted, most of the conviction behind her words lost in hopeless defeat. 

“
We’ll let you all go when your bodies are nothing but rot and ruin
,” the sheriff replied in a voice morphing between masculine and feminine. 

He was going to shoot Muraco in the head. John only had a second to act. He ran at the sheriff, grabbing hold of his jacket just as they were both scooped up by a pair of shadows that had formed a giant vice. 

The shadows squeezed and John grunted, feeling the sheriff’s ribs slowly grind into his own. The gun had fallen to the floor, landing beside Muraco’s head. 

“Get up, Muraco!” John yelled. “Take the gun and shoot us both.”

Muraco pushed himself up by his elbows and shook his head, dazed. The loss of blood was making it hard to concentrate. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. 

“Don’t do it,” Erica pleaded. “It’s probably one of those things inside him.”

The shadow that had cemented her to the wall engulfed her entire body, cutting off her words. 

“Look at me, Muraco. If you don’t shoot me, they’ll kill all of you.” Their eyes met as snow blew in thick sheets between them. “You have to trust me. I’m not afraid to die.”

And then John did something that would haunt Muraco until the end of his days. He smiled. It was warm and sad and even thankful. 

Muraco shakily picked up the gun before a shadow swooped down and slammed him into the opposite wall, hanging him just above the fireplace.

“I have to go down there,” Judas exclaimed and made for the door. As he passed into Sharon Bolster’s spectral body, he was filled with a chill so intense his exposed skin stung. He quickly jumped back.

Jessica stood up and took his hand. “You have to stay here with us,” she said soothingly. 

Frustrated, Judas strode over to the boarded-up window and spied through a crack in the wood. His blood froze when he saw Millie standing in the yard, her eyes locked on his. He was struck mute with fear. He watched helplessly as a pair of shadows coiled from their station at the side of the house and whirled around Millie’s stark white spirit form. She looked like she was screaming but he couldn’t hear through the howling of the wind and the madness downstairs. She was torn to pieces by the shadows, the shreds devoured by the black horde.

When she was gone, the shadows returned to their assault on the house. 

Judas dropped to the floor and buried his head in his hands. 

Jessica had never felt more scared in her life, though somehow she was able to control her fear. Mostly, she was scared for her father. Her stomach twisted when she tried to think of what he was facing. To think too much made every cell in her body hurt. 

I love you, Daddy. 

I love you, Daddy. 

Please come back to me. 

Erica was lost in a void of limitless, stygian emptiness, trapped in a dream of infinity. Even if she wanted to scream, she was no longer sure if she had lungs or a throat or a mouth. 

This is what it feels like buried alive, she thought in a panic. 

What had Gary done? What had their fathers and mothers and grandparents done to create such evil? 

She could feel anger and betrayal and fear, yet none of these emotions were her own. She was swimming in the collective vibrations of dozens of murdered men and women. 

White men and women. 

People killed because they were different. Not just their skin color. They were decent people, workers for a common good, vanquished by an amoral cabal because they wanted to right what had been wrong. For some, it was simply a matter of taking the wrong turn into a town desperate to keep its secret. 

And now the sins of the founders of Shida were being paid in full. Their rage, now that they had fully emerged like a genie from a bottle, would continue until it fizzled into the nothingness they had been cast into. 

Unsure whether she was alive or dead, Erica prayed for forgiveness. 

“Fight it, Muraco. Kill me. Kill me now!”

John couldn’t believe the words coming from his own mouth. The face of the now lifeless sheriff pressed into the side of his own while the shadowy vise tightened. It was getting harder to breathe, and this time it wasn’t due to a panic attack. 

Urgent voices whispered in his head. 

“No more life. No more life. It’s cold in here, sooooo cooooold.”

“Shut up!” he shouted. 

“Sooooo dark, sooooo cold.”

And in a moment of piercing clarity, he remembered the words George Bolster had passed on through Jessica. 

“Don’t be afraid.”

He had been using fear as a weapon against himself for five years now.

He loved his family. And of all the tools and gadgets his money could buy, it was the only thing that could save them. He looked towards Muraco, hoping to will the man the strength he needed to end this madness. 

Muraco managed to raise his arm while the shadow trickled up his arm like jade mercury. He pulled the trigger, shooting wide. The bullet passed harmlessly through one of the shadows. 

If Muraco didn’t hit him with his next shot, it was over. 

“Shoot him, man!” Wadi wailed. “Move your hand up and to the right. Up and to the right.”

The gun wobbled in Muraco’s hand as he fought the wraith’s tug. Wadi was directly across the room, acting as his gun sight. His vision was starting to fail and the thought of just dropping the gun and letting the
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finish their job was so inviting. So much easier. So much…

“Now! Now! Now!” 

Wadi’s screams yanked him back into the living room. 

John stared into the barrel of the gun. 

Muraco’s finger twitched and the gun roared to life. 

John never saw the bullet, nor did he feel it as it entered his forehead, ricocheting inside his skull, turning his brains to mush. 

The weight of his fear of the inevitable was finally lifted, because all things must die, even dreams and ideas, love and hate. The malignity that had festered in this town, in these woods, fertilized by the fruiting corpses of good men and women, was finally going to perish today. He’d make sure of it. Jessica’s life depended on it and he would not fail her. 

A white man’s soul, given not in hate. The black power of the
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forever reversed. 

He felt his spirit ascend from his body like a vaporous cloud and hissed one word before the light dimmed in his eyes. 

“Anne.”

Suddenly, the phantasm of Sharon Bolster lit up like a white hot spotlight. Jessica, Eve, Liam and Judas slammed their eyes shut and shielded their faces with their hands. The room became exceedingly warm and the hair on their bodies stood straight up. 

When she sensed the light was gone, Jessica opened her eyes. 

The woman was no longer there. 

In the middle of her prayers, Eve saw a brilliant flash of light. It was the closest thing to being a front row spectator to a supernova. 

Her senses returned to her. 

She felt her knees smash into something hard and the wind was knocked out of her lungs. Liam was unharmed, still cradled in her arms. When she looked up, she was back in the living room. 

The light was breathtaking. 

Muraco watched John Backman die. 

Something sinewy and white vented from the bullet wound in John’s head. At first it looked like smoke, a dense column of alabaster. The tiny balls of light that had been bouncing around the room converged around the shadows that held John’s and Sheriff High Bear’s bodies. They flew into the smoke and became one with it. 

It was like detonating a flash grenade. 

The entire room was permeated with intense light. Muraco had to avert his eyes, his neck straining against his spirit captor. As the light bathed over them, the shadow instantly began to lose its strength and intensity. It faded, going from black to gray, and finally to the purest white he had ever seen. 

He was released from its grip and fell to the floor. He looked across the room and saw Erica, Ahanu, Wadi and Mai also on the ground. 

John’s and the sheriff’s bodies were still pushed together, except now they were held by a glimmering lasso of fluorescence. Every one of the shadows had been transformed into brilliant starbursts, the heat they radiated so intense, it melted the snow that had piled into the house. 

Their bodies slowly lowered to the floor and the now ivory shapes churned around the room like a whirlpool, faster and faster until their light began to fade. 

Muraco feared they were going to return to their sinister forms, but that fear was short lived. 

In moments, the shapes were gone. The room was littered with dead and wounded bodies. 

There was a hole in the ceiling, and sprawled beneath that hole was Backman’s family. He looked up and saw Eve burst into tears. Judas was there, holding her steady.

He was so damn tired. 

The
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thought they could whip his ass. If he had the strength, he would have laughed. 

Before he let sleep take him away, he saw the girl take John Backman’s lifeless hand.

She smiled, and a silent tear fell from her cheek onto her father’s. 

Epilogue

Thirteen years later

The tent was large enough to sleep four people comfortably. Luckily, there wasn’t any rain in the immediate forecast, though fast-moving storms that brought brief showers weren’t uncommon this time of year. 

An owl hooted somewhere in the canopy of trees. 

It would be getting dark soon. A cool breeze carried the warning that the cold season would soon be here. 

“Okay, it’s all yours.”

Her voice sounded so alien in the midst of the silent, deserted forest. 

She tapped some commands into a laptop computer the size of a paperback and adjusted the wireless microphone. 

“Oops, I almost forgot.”

With a grunt, she rolled over on her back and grabbed one of her nylon packs. After rooting around for a few seconds, she pulled out a transistor radio, placing it next to the microphone. She turned it on, fiddling with the digital tuner until she found a channel of pure white noise. She set the sound to medium and tapped the microphone.