Kingdom of Shadows (7 page)

“Fuck that,” Landon snaps.  “Somebody switched out those bags or the money or something and one of you pricks is gonna tell me what’s going on or I swear to God I’ll shoot every last fucking one of you.”

“How could we switch the bags out?”  Nauls frantically moves his gun from one person to the next then back again.  “They went straight from the armored car to the van, and we were all in the van until we got here.  Nobody could switch anything out!  We were together the whole time!”

Snow, who has been holding one of his .45s on Landon and the other on Nauls, lowers them both.  “He’s right.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Landon says.  “That money didn’t just disappear, so where is it?  Rooster, you and Nauls were the ones who loaded it, and since Nauls is a fucking mongoloid, you better start talking.”

“Mongoloid?”  Nauls cocks an eyebrow.  “What the hell is a mongoloid?”

“It’s them little elf-looking motherfuckers,” Snow explains, “the ones with the pointy heads and shit.”

“No, those are cretins,” Landon says.  “Mongoloids are the redheads.”

Nauls tucks his gun into the back of his pants.  “I don’t have red hair.”  

Landon sighs but keeps his attention on Rooster, who lowers his weapon as a peace offering.  “Get your piece off me,” he says, “and we’ll figure this shit out.”

“Nah, asshole, first you’re gonna tell me where the—”

An enormous muscle-bound arm shoots out of the darkness behind him and wraps around Landon’s throat, strangling him with such force that his feet leave the ground.  He drops his revolver and the flashlight and clutches at the arm with both hands in a futile attempt to dislodge it.  The flashlight rolls across the floor, tumbling through the room and painting the farmhouse with sweeping arcs of twisting light that eerily illuminates then plunges each man back into darkness.  “Listen to me and listen to me good,” Starker says, holding the smaller man effortlessly, his voice just above a whisper in Landon’s ear.  “We got a lot more to worry about here than that money.  Now you cut the shit, keep your mouth shut and do what Rooster tells you to do or I’ll snap your neck.  You feel me, boy?”  Landon manages a gurgling response and Starker releases him.  He crashes to the floor with a thud and one of his feet breaks through the boards.  

Landon lays there a moment, clutching his throat, then pulls free, retrieves his revolver and slowly returns to his feet without further comment.

Nauls scurries to the corner and retrieves the flashlight.  As he brings it round, he stops on something beneath the old staircase.  “Hey, there’s a—”

“Door under the stairs,” Rooster interrupts.  He knows he’s right but has no idea how he’s come to possess such information.

Starker finds Rooster’s face in the dark.  “It leads to another staircase.”

“Then a hallway,” Snow says quietly.

“And there’s doors on both sides of the hallway,” Nauls adds.

Everyone looks to Landon.  He rubs at his throat.  “Oh I’m allowed to talk now?”  He glares at Starker.  “Just wanna make sure it’s OK with fucking Albert DeSalvo over here before I say anything.”  Nauls aims the light at him, leaving no doubt that despite his bravado, even Landon is terrified by what’s happening.  He finally nods reluctantly, fidgeting about tensely.  “Yeah, I—I don’t know how I know it either, but behind the doors there’s a bunch of rooms.”

“Even if we’re right, end of the day it’s just an abandoned old farmhouse with scarecrows out front and some rooms where a cellar ought to be,” Snow says.  “Why we all so scared?”

“There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“Aw, fuck me running.”  The beam of light begins to tremble as Nauls heads for the porch.  “I want out right now, man, this is bullshit.”

Starker lifts the AK-47 higher on his hip, and with one short sidestep, blocks the doorway.  “We’ve all been here before.  We need to know why.”

“But what happened to the money?” Snow asks, his face a mask of barely contained terror.

“Maybe there never was any money,” Starker says.  “Maybe there wasn’t even an armored car.”

“Tell that to Carbone,” Landon counters.  “Fuckhead died robbing it.”

“Maybe that’s not how he died.  Maybe that’s just what we remember.  Maybe this is all some kind of sick game.”

Nauls looks at the floor.  “Well I don’t wanna play no more.”

“Think about what he’s saying,” Rooster says.  “Does anybody really remember anything before the job today?”

“Of course we know what happened today,” Landon says.  

“Do we?”  Rooster watches him, doing his best to keep his face void of emotion.  “Do any of you remember anything before the van?  Because I’m not sure I do.  I mean, I think I do, it feels like I do but…”

“It’s in your head,” Starker says, “but you don’t actually
remember
 it.”

“Yeah,” Snow agrees.  “What he said.”

Rooster nods.

“So I’m the only one who wants to leave then?”  Nauls paces about wildly.  “Really?  Are you guys fucking high?”  The light drifts back and forth across the dark room, cutting shadows and revealing quick glimpses of a long-dead house.  

In that moment, eyes following the beam, fear wells in Rooster the likes of which he’s never known.  He’s sure he sees something more, something there yet not quite there, waiting in the darkness, slipping from sight like scuttling insects just as the light passes over them.  He grips his weapon tighter but it does little to calm his rising terror.  “We need to search this place.”

“No we don’t.”  Nauls shakes his head.  “We can just leave.”  

“We need to know what’s happening here.”

“We can’t get upstairs,” Starker tells them.  “Staircase is blocked with shit and it’s all rotted out.  But there’s something dead up there and whoever killed it did some finger-painting with its blood.”  

“There’s something wrong with this place, man, it’s—you guys all feel it too, I know you do.  Shit Starker you and Rooster felt it outside, and…I don’t…”  Nauls suddenly becomes strangely calm, his voice quiet and childlike.  “I don’t want to die out here.”

“Easy, Nauls,” Landon says.  “Don’t wanna trip and fall on your vagina.”

“Bring the light around to the door under the stairs,” Rooster tells him, his gaze moving between the horrified faces before him.  “We’re going down there.”

*  *  *  *

As daylight splintered night, it brought with it an icy rain that descended upon the city in violent torrents.  Shaking off the residue of nightmares, waking and otherwise, Rooster adjusted his position in the chair.  He’d placed it in front of the window and watched the street all night.  Every muscle in his body hurt, his neck was stiff and sore and his temples pulsed with a dull ache.  Ice ticked against the window, mixing with the sluicing rain to blur the glass and world beyond.  Numerous lost souls had come and gone throughout the night, hurrying through the darkness, but the priest had not returned.

Though he couldn’t be certain, Rooster thought he’d briefly nodded off a few times during the night.  After asking him countless times to put the gun away and come to bed, Gaby finally gave up a little after midnight and drifted off to sleep.  She lay sprawled out across the bed, her breathing slow and deep.  He watched her a while.  She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.  It didn’t seem right, Rooster thought, for someone so intelligent, so caring and just, so uncorrupted and faithful to be associated in any way with such madness and horror.  Yet somehow it made perfect sense, a pure and tranquil soul like Gaby existing amidst the mayhem, calm beauty at the eye of an otherwise violent storm.  His storm.

He sat on the bed next to her and gently caressed her face.  She stirred and moaned quietly but remained asleep.  
Who are you
?  He wondered.  
Why are you here with me?

The pain in his temples drifted behind his eyes, lingering there as he gently kissed Gaby on the cheek.

With the 9mm tucked into the back of his pants, he threw on his jacket, swallowed a handful of aspirin and slipped into a cold and unforgiving rain.

Rooster found himself standing in the same rain some minutes later, having traced the address on the card to an old restaurant in a long-dead neighborhood.  A small dark hole-in-the-wall, it sat alone between a series of boarded-up storefronts and a huge lot of bricks and debris that had once been a building.  The street was filthy, cold and lifeless.  No cars out in front of the restaurant, but the sign in an otherwise dark window blinked:
Dante’s
.  There was no one else around, and the second floor above the restaurant appeared deserted, most of the windows blown out or boarded up.  Rooster looked to the end of the block, checking the corners in both directions.  If he was being watched or tailed, they were the best he’d ever encountered.

He moved through the door, which alerted those inside to his arrival with the jingle of a little bell.  His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lighting as he was met with a blanket of thick, oppressive heat.  A series of tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and small candles encased in glass orbs at their centers lined the walls to his left and right.  The open area between them provided a path through the narrow restaurant to, he assumed, the kitchen in back, but it was so dark he couldn’t make out much beyond the first few tables.  The smell of burned food hung in the air, and although there was a podium for a maître de the restaurant appeared empty, perhaps closed.

“Here,” a voice said from the rear of the room.  

Rooster casually slid a hand to the gun in his belt and moved down the center aisle toward the direction of the voice.  As the shadows parted, the candlelight danced along the floor and walls, flickering about, alive in the dark.  As he cautiously approached the only occupied table in the place, the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders emerged.  

“Mr. Cantrell.”  Not a question.  Said with what almost sounded like adoration.  “Nasty rain out there this morning.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s not important,” he said.  “Call me whatever you’d like.”

Same aged and drained voice as on the phone, Rooster was sure of it.

“Mr. Snow seemed fond of
Poindexter
.”  The man motioned to the chair across from him with a spindly arm, his hand brushing through the circle of candlelight cast across the table.  Skeletal and liver-spotted, his pale flesh was laced with bulbous blue veins, the fingers gnarled with arthritis.  “Not terribly original, but we can go with that if you’d like.”

“Snow’s dead.”

“Yes.”

Rooster looked behind him.  He could see the front door and the light beyond, though it seemed farther away than was possible.

“It’s all right, Mr. Cantrell, you’re safe here.  Please.  Sit.”

He pulled the chair out, slid it to the side so he could still see the door then took a seat.  He’d never cared for sitting with his back to doors.  “Who are you?”  Rooster pulled his gun and laid it flat on the table, barrel pointed at the man.  “I’m not asking again.”

Until then the man’s face had remained in shadow.  He sat forward enough to allow the candlelight to reveal a glimpse of a loose-skinned face ravaged by age, his features sharp and birdlike.  A pair of eyeglasses with black frames sat high on his needle nose, the flickering flame from the candle reflected in lenses so thick they might have been comical under different circumstances.  “Don’t be an ass,” he said wearily, “put that away.  Our time together is limited.”

Rooster reluctantly returned the gun to his lap.

“Are the headaches getting worse?”

He nodded.

“It happens as the mind recovers and remembers more and more.  Truth always comes with some measure of pain.”  He folded his damaged hands before him on the table and sat back, his face again engulfed in darkness.  “Does
The Kingdom Project
 mean anything to you?”

Faraway screams tore at him.  “No.”

“Named for the famous Eliot poem ‘The Hollow Men’ which speaks of ‘death’s other kingdom’ compiled with numerous books on demonology and the occult that consistently referred to the darkness on the other side as a ‘kingdom of shadows,’
The Kingdom Project
 was a top secret program begun in the late 1970s and continued until the mid-80s.  The occult has always been of interest to the powers that be.  Hitler spent a fortune on its study and possibilities.  Many of the same scientists that worked for the Third Reich ended up here, in the United States, after World War II.  They weren’t all rocket scientists, Mr. Cantrell.  Many were those who worked on the Reich’s most classified occult projects.  Their work not only continued here in the states, it expanded and went farther than even Hitler could’ve imagined.”

Outside, the muted sounds of a siren rose then fell away to silence.

“The early programs of the 50s and 60s met with failure,” he continued.  “For much of the 70s nothing changed, and the majority of programs were scrapped.  Many concentrated on psychic phenomenon or the like, but
The Kingdom Project
had different, more sophisticated ideas.  Our goal was to discover a connection—a bridge, if you like—between our reality and the underworld.  We weren’t concerned with an afterlife that could only be entered through death, but rather alternate existences existing simultaneously with ours.”

A waiter materialized from the shadows holding a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a goblet of red wine.  He placed them before Poindexter without comment then slipped away.