Shadows Fall Read online

  “Yes,” said Erikson. “It probably is. But the town does what’s best for the town, not for the people who live in it. We stand between them and the town, and that’s all that makes living here bearable. People weren’t meant to live this close to magic; it brings out the worst as well as the best in us.”

  Rhea looked at him thoughtfully. “I can’t believe we’re actually just standing here chatting, for a change. Are you sure there isn’t some dire emergency you want to drop on me from a great height and a safe distance?”

  Erikson smiled slightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Everything seems to be in order. Or as close as it ever gets in Shadows Fall. But I’ve a bad feeling about this evening, and it won’t go away. If anything, it’s getting worse. Have you noticed how many of the paranormals are out tonight, even those who wouldn’t normally put in an appearance for anything less than divine intervention? I’ve seen faces tonight I thought I’d never see, and some I thought were just rumours.”

  “What are they doing?” said Rhea, frowning. She tried to look about her without giving the impression of doing so.

  “They’re not doing anything,” said Erikson. “They’re just… waiting. Waiting for something that’s going to happen. You can feel the expectancy almost crackling on the air when you get near them. Something’s coming to Carnival, Rhea. Something bad.”

  Rhea scowled, and glared openly at the crowds around her. Reluctant though she was to admit it, the Sheriff had a point. There was something in the air. There were too many nervous eyes and forced smiles, and laughter that rang too loudly and too long. Nothing special, nothing you could put your finger on, just… something. Rhea shuddered suddenly, and had to fight down a growing urge to peer back over her shoulder in case something was creeping up on her. She breathed deeply and pushed the thought firmly aside. There was nothing wrong. It was all in the mind. She’d been perfectly happy with the Carnival until Richard turned up to infect her with his paranoia, and she was damned if she was going to let him spoil her evening.

  She searched the surrounding crowd for an excuse that would let her change the subject, and she smiled wryly as her gaze fell on Leonard Ash, talking animatedly with a bronze head on a pedestal. Of course; if everyone else was out and about, it stood to reason he would be too. There was a time when she and Ash and Erikson had been close friends, so close they were practically family. But things changed, as they do, whether people want them to or not. Erikson became Sheriff, she became Mayor, and Ash died. She remembered standing with Richard at the funeral, wearing a formal black dress that didn’t suit her, and throwing a handful of earth down into the grave. She remembered crying. But then he came back from the dead, and she didn’t know what to say to him. The man she’d known was dead, and this stranger with a familiar face had no right to Leonard’s place in her affections. So she and Ash and Erikson drifted apart, separated by their shared past, until they each had their own lives, and barely nodded to each other in the street.

  Rhea shook her head. You’d think living in a place like Shadows Fall would inure you to things like ghosts and revenants, but it was different when it happened to you, or someone you knew. Had it really been three years? Where did the time go… Ash always used to be one of the Carnival’s main organizers, but he lost interest in a lot of things after he died. She felt a sudden need to talk to him again; him, Leonard Ash, whatever he was now. She squared her shoulders and gave the Sheriff her best business-like look.

  “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Richard. There’s nothing wrong here; just people enjoying themselves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I need to talk to.”

  Erikson looked across at Ash, and then back at her. “Do you really think that’s a good idea, Rhea?”

  “Yes,” Rhea said flatly.

  The Sheriff looked at her for a long moment, until she grew uncomfortable under his gaze, and then he looked away. He sighed quietly. “Sometimes I wish he’d just go through the Door and get it over with. It’s not fair on you.”

  He turned and walked away before she could say anything, and she was grateful to him for that, at least. She wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. Perhaps that was a sign of how far apart their lives had drifted. There was a time when they could have said anything to each other; anything at all. She looked back at where Ash had been standing, and was immediately relieved when she saw he was no longer there. She didn’t know what she would have said to him, either. She shook her head sourly, amused despite herself. She wasn’t usually at a loss for words. That was after all one of the reasons why she’d been elected Mayor; she’d talked her opponents into the ground.

  She sighed and shrugged and looked around for something to distract her. This was supposed to be one of the few nights of the year when her office became redundant; when she could put her duties and obligations behind her, and just relax for a change. A conga line streamed past her, an endless line of flushed and laughing faces, and Rhea felt a sudden desperate desire to join the line, and laugh and sing and kick with the others. It seemed years since she’d done anything simple and spontaneous, just for the hell of it. But still she hesitated, held back by the dignity of her office, and by the time she’d brushed that aside, the conga line had moved on, leaving her behind, standing alone.

  Someone cleared their throat politely behind her, and she spun round, startled at being caught off guard. Leonard Ash smiled at her, and the familiar sight caught at her heart for a moment before she clamped down hard on her memories, and showed him a polite, noncommittal smile.

  “Hello, Leonard. Are you enjoying the Carnival?”

  “It’s very colourful. How are you, Rhea? It’s been a while.”

  “Being Mayor is a full time job, especially in a town like this.”

  “You never came to see me,” said Ash, his gaze direct and unwavering. “I waited a long time, but you never came.”

  “I went to your funeral,” said Rhea, forcing the words out despite a tightening in her throat. “I said all my goodbyes then.”

  “But I’m still here; still me.”

  “No, you’re not. My friend died, and we buried him, and that’s an end to it!”

  “Not here, not in Shadows Fall, Rhea. Anything can happen here, if you want it badly enough.”

  “No,” said Rhea. “Not everything. Or you wouldn’t be standing here with my dead friend’s face and voice, pretending to be him.”

  “Rhea; how can I convince you this is me? Really me?”

  “You can’t.”

  They stood there for a long moment, neither wanting to be the first to look away. In the end, Rhea pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, and pretended to blow her nose.

  “So,” said Ash after a while. “How’s life treating you these days?”

  “Oh, the usual,” said Rhea, concentrating on tucking the handkerchief back into her sleeve. “Good days and bad days. The job keeps me busy.”

  “Yes. I heard about the trouble with Lucas.”

  They shared a grim smile, brought together for a moment by a problem that made their own seem almost trivial. Everyone in Shadows Fall knew about Lucas DeFrenz. When he’d been alive, he’d been nothing special. Ran the local drugstore and liked to second guess doctors’ diagnoses. Then he died in a stupid street accident, the kind that could have been avoided if everyone had been paying attention. But Lucas looked the wrong way as he stepped off the kerb, and the driver of the car was daydreaming, and Lucas died in the ambulance taking him to the hospital.

  One week later, he came back from the dead. Nobody paid much attention, at first; this was Shadows Fall, after all. Dead men walking were rare, admittedly, but not unheard of. But it didn’t take the town long to discover that when Lucas returned from the dead, he’d brought something back with him. Lucas was possessed, by an angel called Michael. The angel was unthinkably powerful, able to work miracles, and could unnerve a whole room just by entering it. He called himself God’s Assassin, come to judge the unwor
thy. He hadn’t actually killed anyone yet, but everyone was ready for the other shoe to drop at any time.

  “Have you met Michael?” asked Rhea. “I would have thought the two of you had a lot in common.”

  “Hardly,” said Ash. “I’m just a revenant, a memory of a man made flesh and blood. I don’t know what Michael is. Or Lucas, come to that. I take it you’ve met him?”

  “Once. Scared the shit out of me. He walked into my office one morning, and all my potted plants died. The temperature dropped to freezing, and he glowed so brightly I could hardly look at him. But I didn’t have to see him; his presence filled the whole office. A deaf and blind man would have known who it was. While he was there I literally couldn’t think of anyone or anything but him. He announced he’d come to sit in judgement on the town, told me to go to church more often, smiled, and then left. I always thought angels were supposed to be warm, kindly beings with wings and a halo and a harp fixation. No one ever warned me about things like Michael.”

  “You should read your Bible more often,” said Ash. “The angel Michael is supposed to have slain a dragon with a spear and wrestled with Satan himself. Hard to imagine someone like that lolling about on a cloud in a long nightie. He’s here, you know; at the Carnival.”

  “Oh great,” said Rhea. “Just what I needed. What was he doing?”

  “Nothing too worrying. Just walking about, glaring at people. Like he was looking for someone. Everyone’s been giving him plenty of room.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Rhea hesitated for a moment, and Ash winced inwardly. He recognized the look on her face. It was the one people always wore when they were about to ask the Question. The Question everyone asked him sooner or later.

  “Leonard; what’s it like, being dead?”

  “Restful,” said Ash simply. “It takes a lot of pressure off, knowing nothing’s expected of you any more. Of course, sometimes it’s frustrating, knowing that my life is over in every way that matters, but I’m still here. There’s not much for me to do. I don’t eat or drink, unless I choose to, and mostly I don’t see the point. Hunger and thirst are things of the past for me, like sleep. I miss sleep, being able to escape from everything for a time. I miss dreaming too. Mostly, I miss having a sense of purpose. Nothing really matters to me, any more. I can’t be hurt, but I don’t grow old. I can never be more than what I am now. I’m just marking time, waiting to be released, so I can go through the Forever Door, to whatever lies beyond.”

  “How long do you think it’ll be before your parents release you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ash. “It’s my mother, mainly. She needed me so badly she brought me back, and it’s her will, her love, her denial that holds me here.” He paused, and held Rhea’s eyes with his own. “It really is me, in every way that matters. I remember everything that happened while I was alive. I remember you, and Richard. The things we did, or were going to do.”

  “But that’s the point, isn’t it?” said Rhea. “You’re not going to do those things any more. You can’t. You went away and left me, Leonard. And you couldn’t even do that right.”

  Her mouth twisted as she fought back sudden tears. Leonard put out his arms as though to hold her, and then lowered them again as she looked at him angrily. She sniffed a few times, and then was back in control, as though it had never happened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said brusquely. “This can’t be any easier for you than it is for me, whoever you are.”

  “It’s something you learn to live with,” said Ash, solemnly.

  Rhea smiled reluctantly.

  “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

  They smiled at each other. It was a moment that could go either way, and they both knew it. Rhea opened her mouth to say something polite, that would let her walk away, and was honestly surprised when she found herself asking something else entirely.

  “Does it frighten you, Leonard, knowing you’ll die again, permanently, when you finally go through the Door?”

  “Damn right it scares me,” said Ash. “I’m dead, not crazy. But it’s not like I have a choice in the matter. I can’t go on like this, and wouldn’t if I could. I don’t belong here. You know, it never ceases to amaze me that in a town as crammed full of strange and wonderful people as this, I can’t find anyone who can give me any clear idea of what lies beyond the Forever Door. There are lots of theories, and any number of religions claiming to know, but there’s no real evidence. The only person who might be able to tell me is Lucas, and so far I haven’t been able to work up the courage to ask him. Maybe because I’m frightened of what his answer might be. I’d hate to think Heaven was full of people like Michael.

  “But this is worse. This… limbo. I’m getting fuzzy at the edges. I’ve started forgetting things; memories, personality traits, all the little things that made up who and what I was. If I don’t go through the Door soon, I have a horrible suspicion that I’ll just fade away, bit by bit, day by day, till there’s nothing left at all. That really does frighten me.”

  He stopped abruptly, and smiled briefly at Rhea. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I’ve waited for so long for a chance to talk to you. There are so many things I want to say…”

  He stopped again as he saw her face change. The warmth was gone from her smile, and shutters had come down in her eyes, until there was nothing left before him but the polite and friendly mask she used for strangers.

  “You still don’t believe I’m me,” said Ash. “Or maybe you can’t afford to believe it. Because then you’d have to open up your heart again, and risk being hurt when I have to leave.”

  “I really don’t think about it that much,” said Rhea. “Leonard Ash was a part of my past, and that’s where he belongs, with my other memories. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  Ash nodded tiredly, and started to offer her his hand to shake before realizing he was still holding his cup of mulled wine. He offered it to her.

  “Would you like this? I haven’t drunk any; I couldn’t taste it anyway. I bought it for the bouquet. I always enjoyed the smell of spiced wine.”

  Rhea started to say no, and then took the cup anyway. She was thirsty. She sipped cautiously, and then swallowed hard as the wine seared her tongue. A pleasant warmth filled her head, and seeped slowly down her chest. She smiled at Ash, and then turned away from him. The spiced wine was bringing tears to her eyes. Ash took a step after her, and then they both stopped as a running figure burst out of the crowd and headed right for them.

  Suzanne Dubois skidded to a halt before Rhea, and then had to stand and breathe heavily for a moment before she could talk. She looked dishevelled and anxious, but then, she often did. Suzanne was a tall, leggy blonde in her mid-thirties who dressed in accumulated rags and tatters that looked as though they’d come from the Salvation Army’s reject box. She was pretty in a Nordic sort of way, all washed-out eyes and prominent cheekbones. She wore her long hair in braids that looked as though she’d run out of patience half-way through. She read tarot cards for a living, and was an unofficial mother figure for anyone who needed one. She looked… A sudden tension pulled at Rhea’s stomach as she realized Suzanne didn’t just look frightened. She looked terrified. Rhea quickly handed her cup to Ash, took Suzanne by the arms and smiled at her reassuringly.

  “Take it easy, dear. Get your breath back; I’m not going anywhere. Now what’s happened?”

  “The Sheriff sent me to find you,” Suzanne said finally, forcing the words out. “You’re to come at once. I can’t explain here. Too many ears.”

  Rhea and Ash looked about them automatically, but no one in the surrounding crowds seemed to be paying them any undue attention.

  “All right,” said Rhea soothingly. “I’ll come. Lead the way.”

  “I’ll come too,” said Ash.

  “This sounds like official business,” said Rhea. “There’s no need for you to be involved.”

  “Stop arguing and come with me!” Suzanne snapped, and then plunged back into t
he crowd, without looking back to see whether they were following. Rhea glared at Ash exasperatedly, and hurried after Suzanne. Ash threw the cup of wine aside, and followed Rhea. They caught up with Suzanne easily enough. She was too winded to keep up her pace for long. They moved in on either side of her, trying to reassure her with their presence. She smiled briefly at them both, to show she appreciated the intention, but the fear never left her face for a moment.

  “Just how bad is this?” said Rhea, beginning to feel worried herself.

  “Bad,” said Suzanne. “Very bad.”

  She led them down the side of the hill, past the brightly-coloured tents and awnings, and people gave way automatically before them, reacting as much to Suzanne’s urgency as Rhea’s authority. A few people called after them curiously, but Rhea just flashed them a quick smile and kept going. It was only a short distance to Suzanne’s home, standing alone surrounded by weeds at the edge of the river Tawn. It wasn’t much of a place, just a one-room wooden shack held together with tarpaper and rusty nails. Ash shook his head slowly as they approached the shack. Suzanne’s friends had been trying to get her to move somewhere more civilized for years, but in this as in so many other things, Suzanne was quietly stubborn, and would not be moved.

  There was only one door and one window. A light burned behind the drawn-together curtains, and the door was closed. Suzanne knocked twice, waited a moment, and then knocked again. Rhea and Ash exchanged a glance behind her back. There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and bolts being pulled back, and then the door swung open, spilling bright lamplight out into the evening gloom. Suzanne darted into the shack, and Rhea and Ash followed her in. They both jumped as someone shut the door behind them.

  They spun round to see Sheriff Erikson lock the door and slam home the bolts again. He nodded to Suzanne and Rhea, raised an eyebrow at Ash, and then gestured at the body lying on the floor, the upper half covered by a blanket. Blood had soaked through the blanket by the head, and there was more on the floor. Suzanne dropped into a chair, clearly exhausted, while Rhea knelt by the body. Ash took the opportunity to look around him. It had been some time since he’d visited Suzanne’s home, but nothing had changed. The place was still a mess. There was an unmade bed, pushed up against the far wall, with a battered dresser next to it. The broad mirror on the dresser was covered with lipsticked messages from Suzanne to herself, and a motley collection of curling photographs. There were three chairs of varying designs and comfort, mostly buried under old clothes and general junk. Empty fast-food cartons lay scattered across the bare wooden floor. The walls were covered with fading posters from films and shows that never were. The place was a tip, but it was a homely tip, and most of the many people who came to visit Suzanne found it cosy. Ash had always felt at home there.