Shadowshift

SHADOWSHIFT

Peter Giglio

First Edition

Shadowshift
© 2015 by Peter Giglio

All Rights Reserved.

A DarkFuse Release

www.darkfuse.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedicated to my beautiful wife Shannon

You are the love of my life

“A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.”

—André Maurois

“You’re going to reap just what you sow.”

—Lou Reed, “Perfect Day”

PROLOGUE

The man rose from the rented sedan and squinted up at the tall gray house. Wisps of smoke billowed from the chimney, the sharply slanted roof hiding beneath a patina of snow. Walking around the car, the man, who hated winter almost as much as he hated his present assignment, bunched the lapels of his duster together with one hand, damned the fierce wind, then opened the door.

The boy in the passenger seat gazed up at him with sad, distant eyes, but the man felt no sympathy. The boy was tainted in the man’s estimation; he deserved to die. The man couldn’t fathom why his boss didn’t see things the same way, but none of that mattered. Orders were orders, and no one disobeyed orders from Saul Chaplain if they hoped to live.

With a firm hand against the boy’s back, the man led him up steep stairs toward the porch, pressing the boy through a diagonal torrent of icy rain.

When they finally reached the landing, the door opened, and the desperate couple, who the man had only glimpsed in photographs, stood in the entryway with pensive smiles. But the hesitation in their mouths didn’t reach their eyes, their hopeful gazes squarely resting on the boy.

The couple stepped aside, gesturing for their guests to enter. Without a word, the man walked through the living room, removed his Stetson, and lowered himself onto an antique mohair chair. The boy sat on the edge of a Queen Anne sofa and gazed absently downward. The couple clustered close together on the other side of the ornate couch, leaving a wide gap between themselves and their new son.

“Rule number one,” the man said, “this is not an adoption.”

“We understand,” Ray Mitchell said. The man knew Ray’s name from the file he’d been assigned. He also knew Ray was the proprietor of an antiques dealership in downtown Akron; a store that did far more business than Ray’s tax returns led the I.R.S. to believe. But the man wasn’t concerned with income tax evasion. In fact, he didn’t trust anyone who worshiped at the altar of Uncle Sam.

The man reached into his duster and pulled out a Social Security card and birth certificate. Leaning forward, he handed the items to Ray and said, “The boy has
always
been yours, and these documents will prove it.”

Molly Mitchell nodded. “We don’t have any living family, and Ray and I don’t have any friends so—”

The man threw her a dismissive wave. “I know your backstories, and trust me when I tell you that if assurances had not already been made, I wouldn’t be here right now. All you have to do is follow the rules, and that way I won’t have to come back. It won’t be pretty if I have to come back. Do you understand?”

The couple nodded like marionettes controlled by the same puppeteer.

The man continued: “The boy hasn’t spoken in months. It’s your job, when he decides to start talking again, to convince him he’s yours. He’s only six, and not very bright, so we don’t think it will be hard. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Molly Mitchell said.

“He’s been through a lot,” the man said, “but the only way this is going to work is if he turns away from the mess he found himself in, and you must ignore any wild stories he tells you. I can’t offer you more than that.”

The man stood, put on his hat, and walked toward the foyer. Gripping the door handle, he turned back to the new parents. “Oh, and one final rule,” he said. “I was never here.”

PART ONE: WAS & IS

CHAPTER 1

Chet covered his eyes and sneezed when the gray-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt stepped up to the convenience store counter.

“See no evil?” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Chet replied, shaking his head, “can’t say I understand.”

“Not much to understand,” the man said, “just odd you cover your eyes when you sneeze. Thought you might be blocking your eyes to ignore those who you’re likely to get sick.”

“Oh,” Chet said. “I…I’m sorry. Must be tired. Don’t worry, though, just allergies, nothing contagious.” Truth was, he felt a thousand miles from tired, and he routinely covered his eyes when he sneezed. Just an old habit. Not something he could explain, even if he felt inclined.

The man nodded and flashed a nicotine-stained smile. “Figures. Pollen count’s through the roof today. Pulling up to the store here, saw a man standing in front of the bank, sneezing so hard I thought he’d fall down. Poor bastard.”

“Oh?” Chet thought about the thick yellow powder covering his car. Even though his employer gave him free car washes, he hated polishing the old piece-of-shit Subaru of his. It was an exercise in futility, and Chet didn’t suffer dead-end duties well.

The customer chuckled. “Yeah, or maybe he’d just checked his bank statement and that spun him into a foul mood. Hard to tell, and hard to blame the poor soul, if that’s the case. Can’t trust banks any further than you can throw ’em these days.”

Chet’s eyes widened, a thunderbolt of awareness lighting his mind. Here stood the mark he’d so desperately waited for. Though the man wore no wedding ring, most of his fingers were adorned with bands of gold. And despite his loud shirt, this was no tourist. He was a local, a Wilmington Island Salt-Lifer. Chet had seen him before, sold him countless packs of Marlboros and the occasional sixer of Land Shark lager. But he’d never seen him like this, in the right light.

“No,” Chet agreed. “Don’t suppose you can. But let’s face it, friend, who
can
you trust these days?”

The man nodded. “You can say that again.”

People never expect a thirty-year-old clerk at a convenience store to be observant. Then again, Chet thought, normal people were pretty fucking stupid when you got right down to it.

“Two hard packs of Reds, please,” the man said.

“Sure,” Chet said, “just need to see your ID first.”

The man frowned. “You must be joking. Hell, I’m old enough to be your father.”

“Maybe,” Chet said, “but I gotta card everyone who looks under forty. They’re cracking down. One girl lost her job last week and—”

“You think
I
look under forty? Christ almighty, you need to get your eyes checked. I come in here all the time, and you’ve never carded me before, son.”

Chet glanced around the store, then held a finger to his lips, not that anyone was listening. Brenda, his supervisor and the only other person on duty—if you could call playing computer solitaire while cramming expired snack cakes in your fat mouth “on duty”—was holed up in the back office. But this unsuspecting customer didn’t need to know Chet’s boss never gave half a shit.

Chet leaned forward and whispered, “You trying to get me in trouble, man?”

Shaking his head, the man pulled his license from his money clip and handed it across the counter. “Well, guess I should take the whole thing as a compliment.”

“That’s the spirit,” Chet said, then he studied details that weren’t the man’s date of birth.

Phillip Wise. 157 Palmetto Way.

After committing the address to memory, Chet handed the card back. He then pulled down two packs of Marlboro Reds and scanned them into the register. “Cash or credit?”

Phillip—though he probably went by Phil, Chet decided—snapped a limp twenty from his thick clip and slid it across the counter, and Chet wondered how much paper money resided in the man’s home. The answer came fast to his mind—

Can’t trust banks any further than you can throw ’em these days.

Sunlight glinted from a row of gold rings as the Buffet-wannabe tapped his fingers on the counter. He bowed his head and coughed, covering his mouth, then looked up at Chet with an expression that shouted: That’s how you show a little courtesy toward your fellow man, asshole.

Chet could read this guy like the back of a cereal box. But his sudden cognizance wasn’t magic, and it wasn’t his special power, the thing that separated him from normal people. This was his turn to take a piece of the pie; reparations for the shitty life he endured. Least of which included two years without a score, suffering, supporting Tina and Hannah and himself on eight dollars and thirty-seven cents an hour, sometimes only getting thirty hours a week on the schedule at the Circle K.

In many ways, his life was not a life worth living. But sometimes his luck turned, and things became better, for a while. All he had to do now was keep his nerves calm. Stay in control.

Chet put the twenty in the register and slowly counted the change onto the counter while Phillip—
Phil
—peeled cellophane from a pack of Marlboros and shook a cigarette into his mouth.

“Anything else I can do for you?” Chet asked. An impatient line was beginning to form, but the man just stood there, eyeing Chet up and down. His evident suspicion didn’t bother Chet.

Finally, the man stepped aside so that a large woman could unload her bounty of chips and candy onto the counter.

“Have a nice day,” Chet said to the man, then he turned to the woman and said, “Did you find everything all right?”

“Y’all got any of them chicken-and-waffle chips left in the back,” the woman said. “Couldn’t find none out there on your racks. Damn, I love them things!”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Chet said. “Company that makes those isn’t supplying us anymore.” He glanced at his mark, who continued to linger by the door longer than Chet liked. Finally, the man nodded at Chet and stepped back into the sweltering Savannah day.

* * *

The blue security sticker on the back door didn’t scare Chet. Everyone around here had them. Stickers that was, not security systems. The ’90s had been a boon decade for companies like ADT among the middle class. Now, most of the remaining systems decayed without service, and most of Savannah’s former middle class lived someplace else.

What did rattle Chet’s cage was the guilt trip Tina had laid on him all night. Phone call after phone call—her begging him to come home, saying Hannah needed her dad.

“Of course she needs me,” Chet had whispered, trying not to draw attention to himself as he sat in his darkened car, which was parked five houses down from Phil Wise’s house. That’s where Chet had spent hours, waiting for his target to leave…go out for beers, try his hand at picking up the ladies, whatever the hell guys like him did at night. Snarling, he’d added, “She also needs money for clothes and toys and all the other shit that makes a six-year-old girl happy.”

“First of all, it takes a lot more than money to make Hannah happy,” she’d replied, “and secondly, I don’t want you doing anything stupid and reckless to make money. Do you understand?”

“For someone who values money so little, you sure bitch about it enough when the bills come due?”

“Yeah, but there are other ways to take care of our problems. I’ll get a job. I
want
to get a job.”

“No,” he’d shouted, immediately mad at himself; not because he’d lost his shit, but because he’d lost it here, on a stakeout. Lowering his voice to a growl: “Hell no.”

And then it’d happened. House lights off. A widening rectangle of yellow light replacing the garage door, then Phil’s Lincoln Towncar slowly driving away. He’d cut the connection with Tina and strode in the direction of the house.

Now, Chet kneeled on back deck and lowered his head, inspecting the gap between the frame and the door with the security sticker on it. A tenth of an inch—not wide, but wide enough. He looked up through a blanket of Spanish moss. Lovebugs cartwheeled against a sliver of moon, the night alive with chattering insects.

The time had come for Chet to join them.

He closed his eyes and cockroaches invaded his mind’s eye; hundreds of them, crawling over each other. Antennae twitching. Jagged legs scurrying.

Turn away,
a distant voice urged. It belonged to Molly Mitchell, Chet’s mother, long dead. The scent of ragweed invaded Chet’s nose; with that, the crack of his father’s belt echoed through his mind.

“Turn away,” Chet whispered. His eyes burned beneath their lids.

You’ll get what’s coming to you, he told himself.
Amends.

But amends came with a price. If only for a moment, he had to remember. And, although the transformation process was always different for some inexplicable reason, remembering was always part of the deal.

Turn away…

Chet felt his body shrinking, caving in on itself. The physical sensation, oddly, was never agonizing, perhaps numbed on some level by the tragic remembrance of the darkest moments of a childhood without light. His father’s brutality, his mother’s complicity. She had always asked him to “turn away,” as if casting his eyes away from the source of terror would somehow make it leave.

It never did, until he had learned to
really
turn away, become smaller, stronger, less confined. Until he learned to see the truth and use it against his tormentors.

Darkness ebbed, replaced by sharpening cycloramic vision. The two thousand lenses of his newfound eyes adjusted fast, telescoping on his goal, finding passage inside the house. The time for remembering vanished. Everything other than his objective fled—pain, sorrow, anger.

As long as he didn’t have to remain one for long, being a cockroach didn’t suck.

Beneath the door, he—
it
—scurried. Even on this primal plane of existence, he knew there was no time to waste. If Phil, like most denizens on this bug-infested coast, treated the barriers of his house with poison, urgency—always vital to successful home invasion—became a matter of survival. Truth was, he had no idea the effects bug poison would have on him long-term, but that didn’t mean Chet was going to take the risk. He hated risks. He embraced sure things. And tonight’s score, in his mind, was a sure thing.

The carpet rose high, and Chet struggled through the fibers before stopping and surveying his surroundings. He sensed no nearby pets, which meant it was safe to change back. He unfocused his sight. His powerful exoskeleton relaxed. Splaying his legs, he sank into the shag. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself as he once had been. A younger man, though not much of one. His sad visage reflected from a steam-fogged mirror. Just more shadows of the past, he told himself. He always ignored the shadows.

Growth came swiftly, and he squinted hard to keep his hybrid vision shielded. He didn’t know what he would witness if he allowed himself to look mid-transformation. Would he catch his reflection in a mirror, see himself as a monster? He didn’t want to find out. Change complete, he straightened his posture, opened his eyes, and took stock of Phil’s dump.

The only light came from the galley kitchen. The scent of burnt food lingered on the stale, smoky air. A circle of cardboard rested next to a greasy cooktop. Frozen pizza for dinner.
Classy.

Beyond the dark living room, a narrow passage led to bedrooms; the direction of discovery.

Music flowed faintly down the hallway. But Chet didn’t consider fleeing. He’d watched the house closely and was certain Phil had been alone. He walked to the room at the end of the hall, the source of the off-tune offense, and pushed a half-opened door inward.

“Cheeseburger in Paradise. Heaven on earth with an onion slice.”

Shaking his head, he strode to a five-disc CD changer and pressed the stop button hard. Listening to Top 40 radio at his day job was bad enough, but if a tense break-in required a soundtrack—and it didn’t—Chet could do better than island ditties for over-the-hill drunkards.

He yanked a small flashlight from his back pocket and snapped it on. Motes of dust swirled in the thin beam as it revealed the room’s unimpressive condition—wood-paneled walls, unmade bed, clothes strewn across the floor, an overflowing ashtray on the nightstand.

On hands and knees, Chet peered beneath the bed. There, he discovered a military ammunition box. He pulled the case toward him and unfastened the latch. While he was certain this home contained its fair share of firepower, Chet didn’t suspect he’d find bullets when he opened the lid. Simple logic: men never stop being boys, which was a greater truth for bachelors like Phil Wise, and boys routinely hid things they didn’t want others to find under the bed.

The ammo case clanged open, and Chet’s hunch bore fruit. Within the box, a half dozen thick stacks of rubber-banded cash. Several gold eagles in coin-store sleeves gleamed. And cased in hard plastic, three Topps bubblegum relics from the ’50s and ’60s—rookie cards of Pete Rose, Nolan Ryan, and Hank Aaron. Not mint condition, but remarkably clean for their age.

Ray Mitchell, Chet’s father, had collected cards like these—no, he had coveted them—and Chet was filled with the urge to snap the cases and destroy the cards within. But, even in a depressed memorabilia market, these iconic offerings stood evergreen, and Chet feared how long it might be before his next windfall. Besides, destroying the cards would never do anything to fuck with dear old Dad. Maybe he’d deface them with a ballpoint pen, write lewd messages across their once glossy surfaces and mail them to his father’s address in Ohio.

Although dismissed faster than hatched, that idea made Chet grin.

Box in hand, he rushed from the room. At the back of the house, he turned the dead bolt, flung the door open, and heard the unmistakable bleating of a tripped alarm.

Running toward his car, he thought about the mystery this would leave for the cops. They’d probably determine he—the perp—entered and laid low with the resident present. He hoped that’d be the case. That shit would heap plenty of fear on Phil Wise’s already paranoid psyche.

Chet hated people, and killing the tattered shreds of a man’s remaining sanity was always a sweet bonus. Especially when the man reminded him so much of dear old Dad.