Alchemy of Shadows

  Frontispiece

  david l. burkhead

  Published by David L. Burkhead

  © David L. Burkhead 2018

  Cover Sarah A. Hoyt, © 2018 Used with permission.

  About this Work

  ALCHEMY OF SHADOWS

  David L. Burkhead

  ALCHEMY OF SHADOWS

  by

  David L. Burkhead

  CHAPTER ONE

  This century I used Johann Schmidt as my name. The security guard, whose eyes overtopped mine even though he sat on a chair, grunted as he looked for it in today's list of appointments.

  He reached for a phone with his left hand. His bulging biceps strained the cuff of his short-cut sleeve.

  Very intimidating, I thought.

  He punched a number into the phone.

  "Security, Mr. Tanaka," the guard said after a moment. "I have a Johann Schmidt here. Says he has an appointment with you?"

  The guard listened for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, sir."

  He hung up then pointed. "Elevators just down the hall. To reach fourteen you'll use the left-hand bank."

  "Thank you," I said.

  I placed my hand on the handle of the inner door and waited. Mr. Caldwell Securities reached under the desk. A loud buzz came from the door accompanied by a click. I pulled it open.

  More faux marble and a great deal of polished brass assaulted my eyes on the other side of the door. A short hallway stretched past the double bank of elevators before "T-ing" to provide access to the various offices that occupied the first floor of the building.

  I made a mental note of each detail as I walked to the elevators. You don't live seven centuries without paying attention.

  I pressed the call button on the left-hand bank of elevators. The sign showed that these elevators served floors twelve to twenty-three. A glance over my shoulder showed the other bank served floors one to twelve. A single elevator at the end of the bank, with a keyed lock-plate next to it, served floors twenty-four and twenty-five.

  I could remember when three floors were positively palatial.

  The wait for an elevator to reach the ground floor was brief. I stepped into the elevator, alone. At two in the afternoon, most of the residents would be at work, or perhaps engaged in leisure activities. Few would be coming or going. The ride up to fourteen was equally brief.

  The door opened to flickering dimness. I frowned. Only a single guttering fluorescent light illuminated the hallway. Typical. The builders could spend money on fake marble and bright metalwork but simple maintenance?

  I frowned. Or was it simple faulty maintenance? Darkness was the hallmark of my ancient enemy. Still, careful was one thing. Letting it paralyze me from living my life was something else.

  Fourteen Oh Six was the third door on the left. If the floorplan I'd studied at the city planning office was correct, that would give it a nice view of the courtyard and the swimming pool.

  I pressed the doorbell. A musical chime sounded inside. The door opened and a wizened man stood facing me.

  The man stood about five foot six and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Grey salted his short-cropped hair, neither thinning nor receding. He wore a dress shirt and slacks, tie loosened but not yet removed. Mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and concealed his eyes.

  The sight brought me to a stop. Sunglasses. Indoors.

  "Mr. Schmidt?"

  I nodded, still looking at the sunglasses. I let my left hand fall to my waist. My fingers stroked the powerful LED flashlight snug in its holder, a comforting presence.

  He must have noticed my stare. He waved in the direction of his face.

  "Dilated. Eye doctor this morning. It's why I was free to meet you. Please. Come in." He stepped back.

  I passed through the doorway into the lower level of a two-floor apartment. A kitchen on my left opened into a dining and living area.

  Tanaka pressed himself flat to the closet door to my right to allow me room to pass. I suspected the closet storage space extended underneath the stairs to my right that led up to the loft/bedroom.

  Three torchiers illuminated the living and dining area and an LED bulb in a decorative ceiling fixture cast its light in this short hallway. Heavy blackout curtains concealed the sliding doors that opened onto the balcony. A single futon and a small coffee table were the only other furniture visible.

  "I don't know what you expect from me," I said as Tanaka closed the door behind me. “Normally I work with remodelers, or even architects when people are building. If you're just wanting decorating, I can give you the names of some good people who charge less than I..."

  "No," Tanaka's voice came as little more than a whisper. "You're the one we want."

  I froze, then slowly turned. "We?"

  Tanaka reached out to a switch on the wall. His fingers slid down, flipping the toggle. The apartment went dark.

  "We."

  I backed away. By the dim light spilling around the edges of the blackout curtain I saw Tanaka remove the sunglasses. Eight centuries earlier, or even seven, I might have imagined the black pools that filled his eye sockets. Now I knew better.

  Scientists say that darkness is simply the absence of light. It's not a thing in itself. They are wrong. Oh, how they are wrong. Darkness extruded from Tanaka's eyes, reached for me.

  I scrambled backwards. One of the tendrils lashed out and struck my right hand. My hand went dead, frozen from elbow to fingertips. It did not hurt. The pain, I knew, would come later. If I lived that long.

  Another tendril struck. I fell backward in a roll, avoiding it, barely. Something tapped the sole of my left shoe. My foot went numb.

  My roll brought me next to the coffee table, a lightweight decorative piece, not the solid wood of my own day. I grabbed it with my left hand and hurled it in Tanaka's direction. That bought me enough time to push myself unsteadily to my feet. I could not feel my foot but it held my weight so long as I did not rely on it for balance.

  My right arm still was not functioning, hanging as dead weight from the elbow down. With my left, I removed my LED flashlight from its holder on my belt. I pressed the button on the end.

  Nothing happened.

  Tanaka, or the thing in his place, cackled.

  "You belong to us now."

  I backed up another step, coming to a stop as my back pressed the curtains into the closed sliding door.

  I smiled.

  Reaching up, I took a firm grip on the curtain and dropped, bringing my full weight onto the fabric, onto the rod mounted above the door.

  The rod tore loose from its mounting and the curtain cascaded around me. Light, the diffuse light of the afternoon sky, but light, flooded the room.

  The thing screamed, throwing an arm over the space where Tanaka's eyes should be. It retreated back into the shadows of the hallway.

  I untangled myself from the curtains.

  Light, welcome light, my one weapon against these creatures, these Shadows.

  The creature cackled again. "You are trapped 'Schmidt’ and we are patient. You have assaulted me in my home. The police will come. And you will have nowhere to run when we come to take you at last."

  I looked left, then right. No exits. Up. The loft? No. The floor plans showed no exit up in the loft.

  Working behind me, I slid open the door. I backed onto the patio. Fire escape?

  Mounting brackets but no ladder.

  I glanced over the railing. That was a long way down.

  "You have lost. You are ours at last."

  "Will you shut up?" I fumbled in the inside breast pocket of my jacket for my emergency vial. I held the cap in my teeth and spun the vial under it. Once it opened I spat out the cap and poured the liquid within the vial do
wn my throat.

  I turned and backed to the doorway. I dashed forward and leaped.

  "This..."

  I got my good foot on the rail of the balcony.

  "...is going..."

  I propelled myself out into space.

  "...to hurt."

  It takes just under three seconds to fall fourteen stories. You hit the ground at just under sixty-five miles per hour. Even for me that could, probably would, be fatal. If I missed the pool. Even if I hit it, it would not be deep enough for what amounted to urban cliff diving.

  Three seconds does not sound like much but it's a long time when you are falling. I twisted in the air. I hit the pool feet first. The water slowed me. Then I hit the bottom.

  The bones in both legs shattered, tibia, fibula, femur, not to mention the splinters the impact made of the smaller bones in my feet. My left arm twisted, dislocating my shoulder. Two ribs broke. One drove deep into my lungs. Just enough energy remained when my head struck the cement, face first, to break my nose and knock loose two teeth.

  Then the elixir began to work. Bones realigned and knit. Torn muscle wove together. Marrow burned as it poured new blood cells into my veins. I stood, gasping. My right arm still hung limp, my left foot remained a nerveless lump at the end of my leg but of the damage from the fall, only the pain remained.

  Coughing as my lungs expelled bloody water, I staggered through the spreading pool of crimson to the shallow end and rolled onto the deck.

  Above, I could see people at windows and on balconies. Pointing. Shouting. There would be calls for the police, for an ambulance. I had to get out of here.

  I struggled to my feet and spotted the gate. Limping heavily on my numb foot, I stumbled toward it.

  Time for Johann Schmidt to disappear.

  The Shadows had found me—again.

  #

  I made my way to my car, a late-model BMW sports-sedan in keeping with Johan Schmidt’s status. As I reached for the door handle, feeling finally started to return to my arm. Pain stabbed along my nerves, like severe frostbite, the aftereffect of the Shadow’s touch.

  No pain medicine, not my elixirs and not modern medicines, relieved the Shadow pain. I just had to endure. I stopped and tried to clench my right hand. The fingers moved, but lacked strength. I shoved my hand in the pocket, trying to scoop out my keys.

  “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

  I looked back. A young man stood, stopped in the middle of stepping off the sidewalk in my direction. Mid-twenties, average weight for here and now which meant he was quite a bit overweight by my standards, a weight that would have indicated great wealth in my childhood. Beyond him two women stood, their eyes wide, the brunette whispering to the blonde. Still farther away, others were turning in my direction.

  I was drawing too much attention.

  “I’m fine,” I said, putting gruffness into my voice in the hope of discouraging further interest.

  I managed to rake the keys out of my pocket but my fingers would not close on them. The keys fell to the ground.

  Cursing in German, hoping no one would notice the obsolete dialect, I supported myself with my right elbow against the side of the car as I squatted to pick up the keys with my left hand. I stood and got the door open. At least my left hand was working.

  In the car, I got the seat belt fastened one-handed, managed to get the key in the ignition and the engine started. Steering with my left hand, I put the car into gear, thanking the All for automatic transmissions.

  Traffic was light and I soon left the curious crowd behind. I wondered if any of them thought to get my license number. Yet another reason that I had to disappear.

  The question was, could I go back to my apartment or would the Shadows be waiting?

  And what had happened to my flashlight? Light, bright light, was the one weapon I had against the Shadows. The invention of those brilliant lights that one could carry in a pocket had given me a sense of security.

  A false sense, it would seem.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A College student is the easiest identity to create. It’s a new environment. If I claim to be a student far from my home high school, there is little chance of meeting someone who would expect to know who I pretend to be. And I look young enough that I can maintain the masquerade.

  So many jobs one might pursue in the modern day require a college degree, or if not a degree, then some form of professional certification. I have found it much harder to fake a degree or certification that to simply go through the motions to obtain them. While I do not need a job to survive, being independently wealthy draws attention, and questions about where I obtained that wealth.

  High school records are the hard part. Still, one does not live as long as I without learning a few tricks. The same tricks allow me to put birth records into various municipal systems every few years against future need. After all, even without the Shadows chasing me, I can maintain an identity only so long before people question my continued youth. And for every one of those identities, at the appropriate time, I have to take various college entrance exams.

  I have taken so many college entrance exams that I can pick, within five points, what my final score will be.

  Still, entering college takes time, time for paperwork, time for letters back and forth. You cannot decide on Tuesday to start college and then start college on the following Monday. No, you have to wait until a semester starts.

  And while you’re waiting, you have to do something or people talk.

  Tom Caldwell came up behind me and put he hand on my shoulder.

  “That’s it, Adrian. Go ahead and clock out after this customer.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” I said. I was going by the name of Adrian Jaeger. I tended to favor German names, one of the few things I hold onto from my birth. Perhaps that’s a weakness that the Shadows could exploit to find me, but how much of a weakness can it be? German is among the most common ethnic heritages in the United States. German names are common.

  There were times when German names raised questions, but I don’t look like a certain generation’s so-called Aryan ideal. My eyes are blue. That’s about it. At five three with dark brown hair I was nobody’s superman.

  “Sure, you won’t stay? Give me another couple of months and you could be managing your own shop.”

  I grinned. “You make it sound tempting but I’m looking forward to starting college.”

  Tom laughed. “Fair enough. Maybe I’ll see you again some time.”

  I smiled back at Tom. He was certainly an attractive man and had the situation been a little different, might have been an interesting diversion. Although he had been careful to remain professional, I could see the interest there.

  While I preferred women, somewhere in the centuries I’d lived I’d lost most of my early taboos about sex...and gained a new one: never become emotionally attached. The price I paid for such attachments was just too high.

  Tom was a good man, giving an eighteen-year-old orphan, on his own for the first time, a chance with a job over the summer. He deserved better than a casual fling.

  I did not think I would see him again. The Indiana college I’d selected was a good five hundred miles away. The fewer ties, the fewer connections, the better.

  After clocking out and signing my last time card I took off my apron and dropped it into the laundry bin. I waved to the dishwasher on my way out the back door. The Monster, an old Cadillac Eldorado that someone had painted a bilious green, waited. I fired it up, seeing the blue smoke pour from the exhaust in my rear-view mirror. At the shop an ongoing pool was when the Monster would finally die on me.

  Half a dram of the proper elixir in every tank of gas ensured that it continued to run like new. Another elixir maintained the smoke and a third gave the occasional rattle with no discernable mechanical cause. My elixirs generally do not work well on made things, doing their best on the living world, but for some reason they have always worked well on cars. Perhaps because so many people think o
f their cars as alive, possessing personalities, that it has become a kind of truth.

  A brief drive took me to my small apartment. The few belongings that I had acquired since my last encounter with the Shadows fit into two large suitcases. A third container held carefully padded glassware, burners, and other tools of my trade.

  I did not like being out at night, too much chance of encountering Shadows, but I decided I would be safe enough on the road. Car loaded, I hit Interstate seventy headed east.

  #

  I pulled into the parking lot for the apartment complex near downtown Indianapolis about ten o’clock. I removed a new flashlight from where I kept it tucked between the seat cushions—out of the way but still handy—and dropped it in my pocket. Two magnesium flares followed. I still did not know what had happened to my previous flashlight and wanted another way of making a lot of light.

  I had picked up the keys to the small student apartment the previous weekend, a one-bedroom that would have been luxurious in my youth but served for a struggling college student in the present.

  I opened the trunk and removed the first of my two large suitcases. I hauled the suitcase around to the front entrance to the apartment building and set it down so I could open the door.

  The sound of music blared from inside, some current fashion involving dissonant chords and excessive volume. Alcohol fumes wafted out the door to assault my nose.

  The noise increased as I climbed the stairs, dragging the suitcase behind me.

  As I reached the second floor, the door to the stairwell banged open and a young woman barged through it. She wore shorts with big pockets on the thighs, a style called cargo shorts and a T-shirt tied under her breasts, leaving her midsection bare. Sneakers of a garish purple covered her feet. No socks. I could not see her face as her head was turned to look back through the doorway but her hair fell in thick brown waves to just below her shoulders. Her right hand braced open the door while her left held a red plastic cup.

  “Be right back, Vonnie,” She said.

  “Whatevs,” someone in the hallway beyond the door, a woman by the sound of the voice, said.