Shades (3 page)

In order to see Bedrik for what he was, one would have to know some things—certain truths, certain lies…see through certain illusions, dismiss certain pretences. All far beyond the capacity of the plebes. Bedrik was an extraordinary man, and it would take another extraordinary man to identify him, his power and position. And extraordinary men, by definition, were scarce.

Gustav could have identified him, but Bedrik had masked his presence from the old man—so far. He would save Gustav for last.

His neighbors knew nothing about him, but he knew everything about them. Things they didn’t even know about themselves. He knew their names—the secret names given to them long before they were born. He knew their sins and trespasses, their signs and sigils. All they knew about him was what he wished them to know.

“I have something for you to do,” Bedrik told the shadow. “I’m going to give you a new lease on life. Tonight, you must pay a visit to Tony Amiratti Junior.”

The shade listened.

789

Danny took another cigarette from Gustav. “What do you mean, he found me?”

“You are a smart boy. You know things without ever being taught them, no?”

Danny looked away. Gustav’s words made him uncomfortable, as did the old man’s stare.

“Yes,” Gustav continued. “You know things. I know this because I know things too.”

“Jeremy was right about you. You’re weird.”

“Yes. I am. You are too, no? Many kids at school make fun of you behind your back. They do this because they’re afraid of you. Why?”

Danny shrugged. “Because of my friends? I don’t know why they’re scared of me. But Matt, Jeremy, Ronnie, and Chuck are pretty tough.”

“Your friends…Perhaps, but I think not. I think it is
you
who frighten them more than your friends.”

“Why, though?”

“Because you know things. You can know things about your classmates…their nightmares.”

“I don’t know anything about them.”

“Ah, but you do, you do. You know things about them intuitively; it’s second nature, yes? You are not always aware that you know these things, yet know them you do—and well. Understand?”

“No, not really.” But Danny’s dismissal had little heart.

“Not really, you say. Really, yes, you do, but you choose not to see your talents for the sake of your friends. They would think differently of you, yes? So you play dumb to make them feel better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friends. You all pretend you’re dumber than you are as to not offend each other. It would not be seemly for one of you to excel intellectually; such is against your sensibilities.”

“Don’t be calling my friends dumb, you crazy old Commie bastard. President Reagan is gonna take care of you guys! Just wait and see.”

Gustav sighed, and took the string out of his pocket. He plucked the still-burning cigarette from Danny’s lips and quickly tied it to the end opposite the other butt, then extended his index finger. When he laid the string on his fingertip, it began to rotate, spinning like a propeller.

Danny’s anger vanished. “How are you doing that?”

“Stick your finger out.”

Hesitant, Danny offered his index finger. The spinning cigarette butts floated from Gustav’s finger to Danny’s. The speed of rotation increased, and the butts were a bit wobbly, but after a moment they stabilized.

“How the hell are you doing that?” Danny asked again. The butts quit spinning and lay limp at the ends of the string. “Hey! Why’d you make it stop?”

Gustav smiled. “Me? I wasn’t controlling it. You were.”

“No.” Danny shook his head. “There’s just no way. I don’t know how to do that.”

“It quit spinning when you questioned yourself. No?”

“Oh, come on,” Danny said.

“So hard to believe in yourself, is it? Is easy to dismiss all that’s happened to chance?”

“You’re still saying this dead guy was looking for me?”

“Perhaps he was calling for you. Looking for you, he was. I was. Lots of people are looking for you.”

“Like the truancy officer,
maybe,
” Danny said. “But anyone else? C’mon. No one gives a shit about me. Mom couldn’t care less. Now, seriously—how did you do that?”

“Again, I did not. You did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I’m talking about your future.”

“My future? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come,” Gustav said. “I would show you things. Things you need to know, yes? Come…come.”

He started walking away from the corpse, toward the trail. He did not turn around.

“What about him?” Danny pointed at the corpse. “Shouldn’t we call someone?”

Gustav looked back at the body, then back up to Danny. “Now that he found you, others can find him soon enough. Understand?”

“Not really.”

Gustav turned away again and continued walking.

“What about my bike?”

“It is taken care of,” the old man called over his shoulder. “No one will find it.”

“But it’s lying out here in the open.”

“There are many things in plain sight that cannot be seen. Just like that dead man was.”

With one last glance at his Schwinn, Danny followed Gustav, giving only a passing thought to the half-eaten body in the water. He thought more about the crabs he didn’t catch, the silent gulls, and how Gustav made the string spin. Try as he might, he could not get the string to stay on the end of his finger. It slipped off with each step he took. Danny tried slowing his pace to keep steadier but that didn’t help much either, though it did manage to stay on his fingertip for a fraction of a second longer.

Five steps ahead, Gustav muttered something under his breath.

“What’d you say?” Danny asked, hurrying to catch up.

“So hard you try. Too hard, perhaps?”

“You always answer a question with a question?”

“Questions…you must dare to ask, and learn. Too simple is it to be told answers. They become…invaluable, see? That which
you
put together in
your
mind…this is true learning. This is
understanding,
yes? Repeating answers by rote…good for parrots. They get crackers. Bad for boys. Bad for men.”

“That’s all they want at school,” Danny said. “That’s why I hate the place.”

Gustav frowned. “Hate the place, or the learning?”

“They don’t teach us anything…they just…recite, you know? And they want you to spit it back at them same way they said it to you.”

“This I understand. You understand, too. Question, question, and question some more. Every question leads to a better question, until there can only be silence as an answer.”

Danny’s face scrunched up. “I think I get you.”

“Good. Then you begin to understand.”

They walked on in silence.

…and the string spun.

THREE

Danny
had never seen so many books. Every room, every wall, floor to ceiling bookshelves, and not a single one was empty. Danny tried to read their spines, but it was too dark. The lights were off and the windows were blocked.

“Can you turn the lights on?” Danny asked.

Gustav clapped his hands. The lights came on.

“How’d you do that?” Danny asked.

“How?” Gustav grinned. “Guess.”

“I don’t know; some kind of weird shit, like the string?”

“Perhaps. Yes, perhaps that. Or perhaps not.”

“Well, what else would it be?”

“Maybe from the television, yes? You’ve seen the commercials? $19.95, plus shipping and handling. They double your order—for free! Can you believe? Act now and get a special bonus gift.”

Danny clapped his hands, and the lights turned off. He clapped them again and they went back on. “I can’t believe you actually ordered that thing. Everyone knows the stuff they sell on TV is a ripoff.”

Shrugging, Gustav walked over to a shelf, selected a book, and placed it in Danny’s hand.

“Read.”

Danny looked at the cover. It was blank. He flipped it over; the same. He opened it, turned a few pages. They were also blank. “There’s nothing here.”

Gustav clapped his hands. The lights went out.

“Hey,” Danny yelled. “Turn them back on!”

“No.”

“Turn them on, man. I’m warning you, if you try anything I’ll—”

“You talk too much. Read.”

“I can’t read if I can’t
see
, you crazy old commie!” Danny put the book down and clapped his hands to turn the lights back on.

Nothing happened.

He clapped them again. The darkness remained.

“Great, now that piece of shit As-Seen-On-TV thing you bought is busted.”

“Stop that.”

Danny tried clapping again. No lights. The darkness seemed to swell, as if it were pressing against him.

“Stop,” Gustav said. “Sit down. Read.”

“I told you, I can’t read in the dark.”

“No?”

“Of course not.”

“Why?”

Danny sighed. “You need light to see, stupid. And besides, there wasn’t anything in that book. It’s blank.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“Of everything.”

“I’m sure there was nothing in there, I’m sure you need light to see, and I’m sure that the stupid thing you bought ain’t—”

Danny clapped his hands

“—fucking—”

clap, clap

“—working!”

Gustav clapped and the light came on. He extended his hand. “Give me the book.”

Danny handed it to him.

“Stand on the chair,” Gustav said.

“What?”

“Stand on the chair.”

Danny grew nervous. “What for?”

Gustav said nothing. He stared at Danny, frowning.

“Fine,” Danny groaned. “I’ll stand on the frigging chair if it’ll make you happy. But then I got to get going. I can’t believe I came here.”

“Look at the light.”

Danny glanced at it. “Yeah. It’s a light. Big whoop.”

“Wait there.” Gustav left the room. Danny heard him open a closet door. He returned, carrying a light bulb. “You see? Sixty watts. Should be brighter, no?”

Danny shrugged. “What’s in there now?”

“Take it out. You tell me.”

Danny licked his fingertips, and touched the bulb. He was surprised. It was cool, not hot. He unscrewed it. The bulb came free of the socket…

…and glowed in his hand.

“How the…”

Clap, clap.

The light turned off in his hand.

Clap, clap.

Back on.

Danny was speechless. Gustav stopped clapping and fell silent again. Turning the glowing bulb over in his hands, Danny looked for a battery or an ultra-thin wire that he might have missed, but found neither. His mouth dropped open. There was no battery. No spider-silk-thin wire. No As-Seen-On-TV offer mechanism hooked up to the house lights. It was…

Like the spinning string.

Like the crabs. The gulls.

…impossible?

“Put it back,” Gustav said.

Danny screwed the light back in.

“Sit down.”

Danny sat.

“Read.”

Clap, clap.

The light went out again. Danny stared at the empty page, trying to wrap his head around all that had just happened. He saw nothing, between the darkness and the empty pages, but still he sat, looking at the book, trying to come to terms with the series of bizarre events. His mind replayed the whole day, the things that Gustav had said, the things he’d done …things that seemed impossible…but mostly, Danny thought of the string spinning on his own finger.

What
was
possible, really?

Anything? Everything?

His vision blurred. When it cleared, he saw that a series of strange symbols had appeared on the blank page.

Gustav squeezed his shoulder. “You see now, yes?”

“I see it, but I don’t understand it.”

“Of course you can’t understand that book,” Gustav said. “Never seen the language before, no?”

“Right. So why’d you give me this when I can’t read it?”

“I gave you the book to prove to you the light. It can only be read in darkness.”

“It’s some kind of invisible ink that glows in the dark, right?”

“Is it?”

Danny started to agree that it was, but deep down inside, he knew better. This was something else entirely. “Are all the books like this?”

“Like what?”

Danny hesitated. He knew the word, but it sounded wrong, foolish. Stupid. His friends would have laughed at him. But it was the only word he could think of.

“Magic.”

“All books are magic,” Gustav said. “Now try again. Try to read.”

“I can’t—”

“No. There is no ‘can’t,’ understand?”

“You sound like a Russian Yoda.”

“What is this ‘Yoda’?”

“Are you serious? You don’t know?”

“Nyet.”

“What?”

“Nyet. No. Explain.”

“He’s a Jedi master. Sort of looks like a frog.”

“Bah.” Gustav waved his hand in dismissal. “Read.”

Danny tried making sense of the symbols on the page, looking for a pattern.

“
Now
you’re trying,” Gustav said. “Yes,
now
you see.”

“Shut up,” Danny said. “I’m trying to read this.”

Gustav said no more. He watched as Danny engrossed himself in the book. Watched as the afternoon passed and turned to evening, and then to night. Watched as, outside, the shadows started to dance.

He stared into the darkness, and the darkness stared back.