Shadowville: Book One of the Shadoweaters

  The day was clear and bright, a sky so high and blue it was like an ocean stretched overhead, ascending for miles and miles on the backs of fluffy sheep clouds. Grassy plains rolled away on all sides of them to a sloping riverbank in front and away to bush behind. Ben's car sat by the edge of a dirt track to their right.

  "That was really nice," said Kath, pushing away the picked-clean remnants of the picnic basket.

  "Mm-hm," agreed Ben, laying back and staring up at the clouds. A flock of birds circled and sang overhead and Ben was studying them, trying to work out what kind of birds they were. He couldn't quite make out their shape, they seemed to be black and triangular, not so much birds as-

  "Ben," said Kath. "Can we talk?"

  "Anyone can talk, Kitty-Kat," said Ben. "The trick is to listen."

  "No, really," she said. "We have to talk. I need to tell you something."

  Ben sat up at the urgency in her voice. "What is it?" he said.

  "It's," she stopped, flustered, staring down at the checked blanket they sat upon. She looked up, looking him straight in the eye. "I love you, Ben," she said.

  "Love me?" said Ben in surprise. It was a surprise development, he loved her, always had, and he'd hoped, prayed, that she still felt the same for him. But to hear her come out and admit it like that... he floundered.

  "I love you, too," he said, threw his arms around her and they kissed. As they kissed a cloud floated overhead, casting a shadow briefly over them and Ben felt his heart chill.

  The sudden chill made Ben look up and he realised why he hadn't been able to pick the birds. They weren't birds at all but bats. Dozens of bats circling overhead.

  "Kath," said Ben. "Get up."

  "What?" she stared blankly at him.

  "Just get up. Now. We have to go."

  "But we were having fun," she said, pouting.

  Ben gestured to her to look up and she did. Fear filled her face. "Now get up, we have to go," he said.

  Ben realised he was starting to sound like a broken record but he didn't care. Their lives were at risk. He didn't know where he'd acquired this terrible knowledge, it had just popped, full grown into his head.

  Kath stood up and started to pack away their lunch.

  "No, forget about that. Just go," hissed Ben, glancing up at the bats.

  Suddenly the light shifted and Ben panicked. Kath was standing a few feet away from him now, across the other side of the blanket. The sun itself was moving in the sky like a child waving around a magnifying glass. Ben watched as their shadows moved with it, twisting and twirling about them as if dancing.

  His own shadow swung across to the right before circling back around to his left. It crept across the checked picnic blanket to where Kath stood and Ben was filled with a sudden fear.

  "Kath. Look out," he cried, but it was too late. He tried to move to get his shadow away from her but the sun kept pace with him and the shadow crawled inexorably closer to her sneakered feet.

  His shadow fell upon her toes. At first nothing happened, but as it made its way over her shoelaces and onto the cuffs of her jeans Kath smiled.

  "It feels nice," she said. "Sort of cool. I like it." She wriggled her toes and stood her ground as the shadow moved up her legs. "It tickles," she said, screwing up her face.

  "Kath, I think you should move away from it," said Ben uneasily.

  "There's no need," she said. "I'm—"

  "Kath, look!" Ben said, fear making his voice waver.

  Kath looked down at herself and began to scream. Her legs were disappearing!

  "Ben! Help me!" she screamed. "Drive a stake through it! Kill it! What's happening to me? I can't feel my legs! Ben, I can't feel them!"

  His shadow moved more quickly now, as if, having discovered the taste of human flesh, it wanted more. Although Ben couldn't tell if it was eating her flesh or if she was just... disintegrating.

  The shadow continued to eat its way up her body and Kath collapsed to the ground, still screaming, her arms waving like she was having a fit. The shadow crept to a point above her belt buckle and the sun snapped back to its normal position, his shadow resumed its standard place, pooled about his feet like a puddle of water.

  Kath was dead.

  "Oh God, Kath," he said, kneeling by her side. The shadow hadn't completely devoured her where it stopped but had left her waist in a ruined, melting mess. Bones and body organs stuck out and were fused together with the material of her jumper like burnt plastic.

  Her eyes were squeezed shut and Ben reached down and smoothed her forehead. Tears ran down his cheeks and spotted her jumper and he felt a hot, burning sensation inside the back of his skull.

  "Kath, I'm so sorry," he said.

  "Ben," she rasped. Her eyes snapped open and her hand latched onto Ben's arm. "Oh, Ben," her voice was raw and bubbling, like she was speaking through a throat full of mucus. "Come and join me here in the shadows, Ben," she said. "It's so nice and cool. Sit with me in the sssshhaaaaayyyydd..."

  Ben snapped into wakefulness and fumbled for the lamp, sure that at any second Kath's icy hand was going to close around his wrist. In the darkness he could still hear her voice, gurgling with the fluids from her ruined lungs.

  He smacked the light switch on and lay with the covers pulled up to his chin, breathing in short, shallow breaths. His eyes were wide, staring about the room.

  Gradually the shaking subsided and he climbed out of bed to make himself a coffee. Why not, he wouldn't be getting back to sleep for a while anyway.

  The most unnerving part of the dream was the sheer weirdness of it. It had all come from nowhere, the bats, the whole bizarre thing with the sun and his shadow. And what was it Kath had screamed?

  "Drive a stake through it," a voice bubbled up from beneath the kitchen counter.

  Ben cried out and leapt backwards as if he'd seen a particularly big and hairy spider. Laying on the floor beneath the counter were Kath's remains. Except now her whole body was desiccated, a dried out husk. It looked as though she were decomposing right before his eyes.

  This time, Ben did scream when he woke up. He pinched his arm, bit his finger, raked fingernails across his legs and anything else he could think of to make sure he really was awake and not still dreaming.

  Not wishing to tempt fate a second time, he stayed in bed where he lay wide awake and staring at the ceiling with his mind whispering terrible things at him until dawn.

  Sitting in his motel room and cleaning up the last of a MacDonald's breakfast, Ben kept looking at his watch, wondering how long he had to wait before he could call Kath. It was already half past nine. That was after the time most people started work, wasn't it? Ben thought so, even in Casino. At exactly 9:35 he picked up the phone and called Kath's work.

  "McDonald Donovan Solicitors, can I help you?" said a girl's voice.

  "Could I speak to Kathleen Bryce, please?"

  "Speaking," said the voice. There was a pause, then, "Ben? Is that you?"

  "It's not the pope," said Ben. "How are you?"

  "I'm good," said Kath, but her voice sounded forced, tight. "How are you?"

  "Not too bad," he said. "Working hard and staying out of trouble. You know, the usual."

  "Listen Ben," she said. "Can I call you back? We're a bit run off our feet at the moment."

  "Yeah, sure, okay," said Ben.

  He hung up and stared moodily at the phone. How busy could they be? It was Casino! And while it was possible there were enough business to keep half a dozen solicitors afloat, he was sure they weren't exactly over-run with customers.

  While he waited for Kath to call back, if she was going to, Ben booted up his laptop and fiddled a little with the web page he was meant to be working on. He'd already designed an opening Flash sequence for them. The company's diamond symbol logo opening up onto a world of possibilities. Now all he had to do was design the content.

  Like a lot of web-designers he knew, Ben could probably whip the site up using Front-page Editor or one of
the other instant web-site programs and get a pretty decent result from that. But those pages tended to be flat and bland and filled your coding with a lot of not-strictly-necessary tags. He preferred the hands-on, personal touch that you could only get in designing a web page from scratch. Plus, it was a great ego-booster, creating something out of nothing.

  He was up to his eyebrows in HTML coding when the phone rang again. It's shrill tone cut across Ben's brain like a splinter of glass under your fingernails and half-scared the shit out of him. It made him jump and he almost knocked the laptop to the floor.

  "Hello," he said into the phone.

  "Hey, Ben," said Kath. "Sorry about before but we've got a back log of work because I've been off."

  "Sick, huh?"

  "Yeah, a bit of a stomach bug. I came down with it suddenly, sorry I couldn't meet you at the hospital."

  "That's all right," said Ben. "I don't think we missed out on much."

  "Me neither," she said.

  They fell silent for a moment, the weight of what they really wanted to say to each other hanging between them. Ben wanted to ask Kath out but he wasn't quite sure how to proceed. He didn't know how to phrase it without it actually sounding like he was asking her out. She was probably thinking the same thing, hoped Ben.

  In the end he just blurted it out, "Would you like to have lunch today?"

  "Oh, Ben," she said. "I don't know. I'm not sure if I can get away..."

  "Please, Kath," he said. "It would mean a lot to me if I could see you again."

  "We can't, Ben," said Kath. " What if somebody saw? I'm married, remember?"

  Remember? How could he forget?

  "If anyone does see, so what?" said Ben. "We'll tell them the truth. We're old school friends out for lunch together. There's nothing wrong with that is there? Friends go out to lunch together every day. I won't be trying to kiss you or anything."

  Kath laughed. "Would it be so bad if you did?"

  Ben floundered, unsure what to say.

  "All right," she said finally. "I guess lunch wouldn't hurt. But no kissing and no touching—"

  "Oh."

  "Unless I ask you to," she finished.

  "Okay" said Ben. "That sounds good to me. I'll meet you at your office at twelve and I can tell you all about my dream where you got eaten by my shadow."

  "Uh-huh," said Kath doubtfully.

  "Oh it was great!" said Ben cheerfully. "Scared the hell out of me! But I'll tell you about it later."

  By the end of the conversation two things were perfectly clear in Ben's mind. The first was that he was definitely falling in love with Kath all over again (the ear-to-ear grin was evidence enough of that) and the second was that, judging by how much cheerier Kath was when she hung up, she was starting to feel the same way about him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN