Shadowshaper (16 page)

Getting to the Q train didn’t take too long; it was waiting on the Prospect Park station platform that seemed endless to Sierra. Everything was fine as long as they were moving, but standing still was making her anxious. She kept trying to imagine some scenario where Manny was okay, walking around somewhere, joking with the domino guys about whatever had happened, but all she could think about was the throng haint looming in the shadows of the printing press. Had it been there? Was that its ragged breath she’d heard as they made their way toward Manny in the darkness?

Izzy and Tee were sitting on a bench, Izzy splayed out in Tee’s lap like an old sweater, and they were talking quietly. Big Jerome was telling Bennie some story about getting picked up by the cops on Marcy Avenue. Bennie nodded and said “Oh, wow” occasionally, but her eyes wandered up and down the subway map, and Sierra could tell her thoughts were elsewhere. Juan sat against a pillar, his head locked between his arms and bent knees like some surly, spiky-haired statue. He probably understood better than any of them what all this was about, having grown up in it and never let on to Sierra …

An angry flame surged inside of her. Juan and her grandpa, talking endlessly about all these deep spiritual things, whole other worlds that Sierra had been completely excluded from. How could they? She breathed in and tried to let the anger go. She stared impatiently into the dark, empty tunnel.
This has to end
, she thought to herself,
and this is the only way I know to do it.

Lonely women dance in the mirror
, she texted Robbie.
the mirror = the ocean —> coney isl. we on the way. c u there?
Then she put her phone away, trying not to wait for a reply. Who else should know? Certainly not her mom. María would just bug out and tell them not to go. She speed-dialed Nydia’s cell instead.

“Sierra? Are you okay?”

“Hey, Nydia! Listen, sorry to call you so late,” Sierra said. “You know that whole thing I’m researching ’bout Wick?”

“Of course, hon. Whatsup?”

“We’re following up with something out in Coney Island. I think … I figured something out.”

Nydia chewed gum for a second. “You sure you okay out there? Coney Island at night? Not so much.”

Apparently all Puerto Rican moms were the same, even if they weren’t your mom. Sierra rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, Nydia. Thank you. But don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be careful.”

“Alright, I’m at the library if you need anything. They got me keeping crazy hours.”

“Thanks again. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

After what seemed like forever, but was really only fifteen minutes, the bright train lights finally came flooding around the corner. Sierra felt a flush of excitement. Whatever happened, this train would bring them that much closer to Lucera.

A scruffy homeless guy was laid out across four seats, stinking up the whole car. They sat on the opposite end. A few seats over, two well-dressed Russian guys slept with their heads on each other’s shoulders, sure to wake up in a concerned flurry at their stop and pretend it had never happened.

Sierra was staring out the window, trying not to see Manny’s endlessly open mouth in the flickering darkness, when Bennie leaned over to her. “Sierra?”

“What is it?”

Juan sat off to one side, still deep in his own world, but Izzy, Tee, and Jerome were all in seats directly across from Sierra, looking right at her.

“You gotta tell ’em,” Bennie said. “They coming all the way out here with you and they don’t even really know why. It ain’t right.”

“Yeah, wassup, Sierra?” Izzy said.

Sierra rubbed her face. “I know, I’m sorry, I just … I don’t know how to tell you this. I’ve wanted to since it started.”

“Well, tell them how you told me,” Bennie said. “Just start from what you found out about the freaky corpsy thing and the shadowshapers. They’ll believe you.”

Sierra wasn’t sure if she would even believe herself, but she started talking, tentatively at first and gradually with more confidence. Juan put in little annoying factoids here and there, but mostly Sierra had the floor. One of the drunk Russian guys woke up and sat listening intently too.

“And that’s … that’s about it, I guess,” Sierra said. It felt like she’d just told her life story, but, really, only a few minutes had gone by. She looked at her friends’ faces, all wide eyes and mouths hanging open. “Um … hi?”

“Whoa,” Jerome said.

Tee nodded. “Yeah. I don’t even know what to say.”

Sierra scrunched up her face. She hated having to explain something so huge in such a hurry, and hated even more that she felt so dependent on what her friends thought about it all. She sat back.

Izzy had been shaking her head the whole time. “I just … It creeps me out.”

“What does?” Sierra asked.

“The whole thing! The haint creature that came at you in Flatbush, the thing with Manny, all the shadowshapers getting corpusculed. I mean … I don’t even know what to say. I’m freaking out right now.” Tee rubbed soothing circles on her girlfriend’s back, but Izzy swatted her away. “No, stop. I’m serious. What if, Sierra, you’re wrong about all this stuff? We’re doing a whole lot right now, going all the way out to Coney Island, and I’m not saying you’re crazy per se but I’m saying —”

“What are you saying?” Sierra asked. “That I made all this up?”

“I don’t think she’s saying that,” Jerome said. “But there’s gotta be some other explanation.”

“I mean, you don’t
know
that’s what’s happening,” Izzy said. “All these ghosts and things. It just seems like it right now.”

Tee scooched a few inches away from Izzy. “Are you serious, babe?” she said. “You saw Manny today. Can you think of some other explanation?”

The train screeched to a halt at Avenue J and the doors swung open.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of possibilities,” Izzy said as the doors slammed shut and the train started back up again. “I mean, I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks this whole thing sounds completely cra —”

“No.” Sierra’s voice sounded cold and faraway, even to herself.
Crazy.
It was the same word María and Tía Rosa flung at Grandpa Lázaro. The same word anyone said when they didn’t understand something.
Crazy
was a way to shut people up, disregard them entirely. She shook her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t try to … Don’t. If that’s what you think, then go.”

“Sierra, I didn’t mean …”

“I know what you meant. You said what you meant. Fine. Get off at the next stop. Go home. And take anyone else with you who thinks I should just sit back and chill because I’m crazy.” She scanned the startled faces of her friends. Juan stared glumly out the window.

Izzy stood up as the train slowed into another station. Tears threatened the edges of her eyes. “I didn’t say I thought you were crazy. But fine. Honestly, I think this is ridiculous and probably dangerous. Tee?”

Tee shook her head. “Sorry, babe,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m with Sierra on this one. I said I’d have her back and I do. I can’t run home now. Besides, I wanna see how this plays out.”

Izzy looked like she’d been slapped. Her glossy lips quivered and her eyes narrowed into furious slits.

Jerome stood up. “I’m out too,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sierra. This all just creeps me out. I can’t … I can’t do it. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I just … I can’t.” He shrugged, looking infuriatingly blasé about the whole thing. “I’ll make sure Izzy gets home okay, though,” he said, looking at Tee.

“Such a gentleman,” Tee said, rolling her eyes.

Sierra turned to Bennie. She didn’t want to look desperate, but she’d never felt like she needed her best friend so badly in her entire life.

“What?” Bennie said. “You think if these two losers leave, I’ll leave too?”

The train stopped and the doors slid open. “I don’t know, B. You think I been makin’ the whole thing up?”

Jerome and Izzy looked expectantly at Bennie. Bennie showed them two fingers. “Peace, my people.” She turned to Sierra. “No, Sierra, I do not.”

Sierra smiled, ignoring Izzy and Jerome’s glares as they watched from the platform. “Thank you.”

They pulled out of the station. Sierra and Bennie fist-bumped.

“Alright then!” Tee yelled, disturbing the old homeless man from his slumber. He pulled his filthy baseball cap farther down his face and grumbled. “That was awkward. Now can we go get this Lucinda chick out the sea or whatever?”

“It’s Lucera, Tee,” Sierra laughed.

“Oh, shoot!” Bennie yelled. “The poem!”

Sierra stared at her. “What?”

“The one lures the other who in turn lures the one.”

“So?”

“The full moon killing the sun …. I’m just saying here we are, being lured out to some creepy place, basically chasing the moon, right? Or its reflection anyway.”

Sierra’s heart sank.

“Either way,” Bennie said, “it does speak to Izzy’s whole theory that we just walking into a great big trap, doesn’t it?”

No one answered her.

“Last stop,” the conductor’s voice garbled over the intercom. “Coney Island. Everybody off.”

“Where to now?” Bennie said as they walked onto the platform. Juan trailed a few paces behind the girls.

“The beach, I guess,” Sierra said.

None of them had been to Coney Island in years, and it looked more like an alien planet than their childhood stomping ground. Trash trundled past like tumbleweeds in old Western movies. The streetlights were dim, leaving most of the corners and alleyways shrouded in darkness. All the pizza spots and souvenir stores hid behind graffiti-covered metal grates. Off to their left, massive housing projects cut into the night sky. No one was around. Sierra wasn’t used to seeing any part of the city so deserted.

“This sucks,” Bennie said. “What happened to happy-happy Coney Island?”

“I think that’s a daytime thing,” Tee said. “After midnight it’s grim tower-of-terror Coney Island, apparently.”

“Apparently.”

Up ahead, the ancient Wonder Wheel hung over the sprawl of carnival that hadn’t been torn down or converted into fancy shops. Farther off, the shinier Luna Park cast its orange haze into the dark sky. The wind whipped down the open walkway, through various sideshows, fun houses, and arcades, all grated over and shut down for the night. On the other side of the Wonder Wheel was the boardwalk, and beyond that the beach. They’d have to cross through the darkened carnival area to reach it.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Sierra said.

“Well,” said Bennie, “we’re chasing ghosts into an empty amusement park. How’s that for starters?”

Sierra clenched her teeth. “When you say it like that …”

“I know, I was trying to be funny, but it backfired.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Tee said.

“Alright then,” said Sierra. “Let’s go.” No one moved. “Okay, I’ll start.” She stepped forward. “See, it’s fine.” She took a few more steps, felt the chill ocean breeze. “C’mon, guys.”

Bennie and Tee walked to where Sierra stood, and then the three of them fell into stride together, heading toward the beach. Juan still trailed morosely behind. Grotesquely painted signs announced that the Human Cat and the Living Cyclops lurked nearby. Some kind of hunchback with three eyes and a long tongue gawked from a banner stretched over the street. The air stank of fried food and salt water.

“What do we do if we bump into creepy pale guy and them?” Bennie said.

Tee shushed her, stopping suddenly. Nobody moved for a few seconds.

“Maybe … just the wind,” Bennie said very quietly.

All the darkened inlets and corridors that stretched into the carnival’s back alleys seemed to writhe and simmer. Each scurrying rat and windblown soda can racked up Sierra’s growing nervousness. “We’re so close,” she whispered. “The boardwalk’s just up ahead.”

Then why did it seem so far away?

A cloud bank drifted slowly by above them, and for the first time that night, the nearly full moon made a timid appearance. Sierra looked up and felt a wash of relief at the sight of that somber, shining face looking back at her.

“Do you know how we’re gonna find Lucera once we get to the beach?” Bennie asked.

The boardwalk stretched dark and empty to either side. Occasional lampposts opened up dreary patches of light.

“Uh-uh,” Sierra said. “But we’re gonna figure it out. Look!”

As they stepped onto the boardwalk, the whole ocean seemed to spread out before them. It looked like it went on forever; both the sky and the sea were so dark you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. The moon hung huge and low over the water, sent ripples of light dancing along a pathway toward the shore. “That’s it. The mirror,” Sierra said. “I know it.”

Something was pulling her toward the water. All she wanted to do was beeline for the waves. The beach before them was empty except for a few bums sleeping in little huddled circles. Their bodies were splayed out at odd angles amidst candy wrappers and empty beer bottles. Sierra felt a familiar edginess creep over her.

“Oh, great, here we go,” Bennie was saying. “Can’t go nowhere in New York without some bum tryna get fifty cents off ya. I swear.”

One of the drunken slumberers had risen from the pack and was stumbling toward the boardwalk. He was wider than the others and lumbered with an unsteady gait. Sierra caught her breath as a scratchy, familiar-sounding voice blasted through her mind:
Sierra!

Everyone squinted into the darkness.

“Who is that?” Bennie said.

Two other figures were standing now, walking toward them.

“I don’t know,” Sierra said. “But I don’t like it. Let’s get …”

Sierra! Sierra!
The raspy whisper kept burning through her thoughts. It was the throng haint, she was sure of it. She didn’t know where it was, but it was approaching fast.

She froze, transfixed by its beckoning.

Then Bennie screamed as the figures coming toward them broke into a run. Bennie and Tee shot down the boardwalk toward the Wonder Wheel. Juan grabbed Sierra and yanked her toward one of the shuttered-up fried-food stands.

“What’s wrong with you, sis?” Juan panted as they dashed down a greasy alleyway and stopped to catch their breath.

“That voice, calling my name,” Sierra said. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her head. The gravelly voice spoke her name like a native Spanish speaker would, a light roll of the
R
s leading into the clipped
A
. It didn’t matter. The beast could be Puerto Rican all day long, it was still a horrible, lurking, festering …

“What voice?”

Footsteps clomped toward them. Terror exploded through Sierra. She couldn’t think straight, couldn’t slow her heart, could barely breathe. She closed her eyes.

“They’re coming,” Juan whispered. “We gotta do something!”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“The bigger one?”

“No. They’re both skinny. Sierra, we need to —”

“There’s … something else …” Waves of nausea crashed over her. She fumbled in her pockets, praying her fingers would miraculously close around some chalk that Robbie had snuck her when she wasn’t looking. Instead, she found the pen Juan had used to scribble the words of the song. It would have to do. Somewhere beyond it all, the ocean was still beckoning, a distant and urgent cry, but the terrible voice saying Sierra’s name drowned out almost everything else. The throng haint was getting closer. She knelt down.

“What are you doing?” Juan demanded.

“I’m … trying” — Sierra scratched furiously at the wooden boardwalk with the ballpoint pen, but only a few broken lines came out — “to make something I can shadowshape with.”

In the corner of her eye, Sierra could see Juan pulling on his fingers and shaking his head at her. “Sierra, we ain’t got time for that right now. C’mon.”

She finally put together some semblance of a figure and raised her left hand in the air, trying to ignore how much it was trembling.

“Sierra!” Juan whispered.

She touched the drawing and closed her eyes. Nothing happened. A few seconds passed. The footsteps came closer.

“I gotta do something,” Juan said. “Can’t just wait here for them to come get us.” Before Sierra could stop him, he pulled out his pocket blade and ran onto the boardwalk.

“No!” Sierra slammed her hand on the drawing and felt the jolt of spirit flood through her. The figure bolted from beneath her fingers and skittered out on the boardwalk.

The whisper got louder.
Sierra! Sierra!
The throng haint was coming.

On the boardwalk, two corpuscules barreled toward Juan. Sierra recognized one as the guy from outside Kalfour. The other she hadn’t seen before. Juan crouched, blade ready. Just before they reached him, Sierra’s shadowshaped figure slid across the planks and then up the first corpuscule’s pant leg. It etched itself like a sudden scar across its face. The corpuscule reared back, hands splayed, and Juan took the opportunity to shoulder-check it. It collapsed backward, but the second corpuscule lurched toward Juan.

Juan stopped in his tracks. “Mr. Raconteur!” he gasped. “I … What are you … doing?”

“No!” Sierra yelled. “Juan, it’s not him, it’s a corpuscule! Run!”

Sierra.
The throng haint’s voice sent spasms through her stomach. She looked up; the corpuscule swung at Juan. A flash of bright color splattered across its face. The corpuscule let out a guttural cry and toppled over, clawing at his eyes. The first corpuscule rose from where Juan had shoved it, just as Robbie stepped out from a pile of old boxes and raised one hand in front him, palm out.

Juan looked stunned. “Robbie, what are you …?”

Robbie yelled, and Sierra saw the tattoos surge forward along his arm and flash through the air. The corpuscule stumbled backward, waving his hands in front of his suddenly color-stained face, then fell to its knees, screaming. Robbie’s ancestors swirled viciously around the neck of Raconteur’s corpuscule. They were a colorful blur against the pale flesh, a raised ax, a swinging machete. The corpuscule scrambled to its feet, took two steps, and then dropped.

SIERRA!

Sierra almost collapsed from the sudden ferocity of the voice. The ocean, the perfect endless ocean, was her only hope. She didn’t understand that thought, couldn’t even think logically anymore. All she knew to do was get away from that horrible voice and make it to the water.

The corpuscules lay still. Robbie turned around and smiled at Juan and Sierra.

“Not bad,” Juan said.

Robbie nodded, and then his eyes met Sierra’s. “Sierra, what’s wrong?”

SIERRRRAAA!!

The throng haint was upon her. About to pounce.

Sierra broke into a run and burst across the boardwalk, out onto the milky darkness of the beach.