Games of the Powerful

  Chapter 4

  If anyone in the city had been paying any attention and peering down a dark alley, big cities like this always have them, they would have seen a dark swirling mass of energy suddenly appear then quickly disappear again. Some would think they were imagining it and keep walking or if a curious type who happened to be out at this late hour became curious enough they might walk down the alley for a closer look heedless of the danger alleys like this pose. So is the case with Engelbert Kennard Payne peering down the alley, knowing full well he would walk into the alley to see what if anything was there to assuage his curiosity.

  Ken most people called him that except his mother who called him by his first name Engelbert after some hardly known singer from the twentieth century, hated his first name because of the good-natured teasing he experienced for most of his life. Now that he is older, he never uses his first name and his middle name shortened to Ken is what he prefers. Ken is not a big or imposing young man nor is he the most intelligent either and this decision to walk down an unlit deserted alley in the middle of the night proved that. Most cities in the United States and that included postwar New York; the old New York was blasted into slag and molten metal, is not any different than most in that it did not have the resources to light every dark alley in the city.

  Unfortunately, for Ken he did not take a moment to considerer his actions, he has rarely done that for most of his short life, he would have realized he was making a very bad decision when he let his curiosity got the best of him. Obliviously walking through the puddles from the recent rain and discarded trash, he suddenly stopped in fear thinking a shadow moved near the end of the alley. He moved forward a step and the shadow did not move as before so he laughed nervously to himself thinking it is merely his imagination playing tricks on him. Something is pulling him toward the end of the alley. In the beginning, he thought his curiosity led him into the alley but now he knew it is anything but that.

  The fear he felt is a palpable thing soaking him like his sweat nearly crippling him but still kept walking toward the end of the alley. Suddenly, the shadow moved faster than anyone could ever imagine standing abruptly in front of him. Ken stood frozen in stark terror with the shade staring at him with unequivocal evil emanating from its coal-black eyes. The shade is typical height and build of a human with two legs and two arms but any resemblance to a human being stopped. Its outer flesh is like leather as black as night without body hair. The elongated head perched on it shoulders with its with a mouth full of sharp teeth looked like it could rip flesh to shreds. The creature's hands and feet end in long talons that it used for climbing or ripping flesh from it victims' bodies.

  With its right hand, the shade lightly dragged its talons down the right side of Ken’s face furrowing four lines of blood trailing from his cheekbone to his jaw line. Ken was terrified, more terrified than any human being should endure. His eyes were bulging from their eye sockets, and his breathing is nearly nonexistent. Moving closer the shade sniffed the blood on Ken’s face its nose slits covered with Ken's blood. Slowly and languidly, the shades tongue snaked out of its mouth licking the blood from Ken’s face his skin beginning to sizzle and burn as if acid were touching it. All the while, he looked on unable to move, unable to scream aloud in pain, he knew he was going to die a horrible death and he could do nothing about it not even run.

  Suddenly, faster than the eye could follow the shades talons were around Ken’s throat lifting him bodily from the ground. Darkness darker than any night moved down the shades arm quickly enveloping Ken’s head and in mere moments enshrouding his body. Receding back the way it came it left an empty shell of a man that looked nearly a hundred years old. Dropping the lifeless body to the ground the shade stepped back shuddering in ecstasy gradually changing its skin to a more human like appearance with body hair. Its appendages grotesquely reformed into human hands and feet the sound of bones snapping and repositioning themselves echoing up and down the alley. Its head shrunk and its evil heart changed into a monstrosity of a facsimile of a human heart that pushed human blood down transformed veins.

  The shade is a perfect copy of Engelbert Kennard Payne who lay dead on the ground. The shade hated this transformation but its masters have commanded it to do so and to refuse them was out of the question. Quickly stripping Ken's body of clothes, it dressed its naked body. It now had all of Ken’s memories and knowledge to work with to find the president of the United States and do its masters bidding.