Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations

THE CASE OF THE STALKING SHADOW Joe R. Lansdale

I’ve mentioned Dana Roberts before, though with less kindness than I do now, and if anyone would have told me that I would be defending, even supporting, someone who in layman’s terms might be known as a ghost breaker, or a dealer in the supernatural, I would have laughed them out of the room.

It should also be noted that Dana does not consider what she does as dealing with the supernatural, which she believes is a term that often assigns some sort of religious aspect to her work. She believes what others call the supernatural is an unknown reality of this world, or some dimensional crossover that has yet to be explained, and if it were truly understood would be designated as science.

But here I go trying to explain her books, which after her first visit to our club I have read extensively. That said, I should also note that my conclusions about her observations, her work, might be erroneous. I’m a reader not a scholar, and above all, I love a good story.

The first time she was with us, she told us of an adventure she called The Case of the Lighthouse Shambler. At the end of her tale, or her report, if you take it as fact—and I do—she showed us something trapped in a mirror’s reflection that was in my view impossible to explain away. She was also missing the tip of her right index finger, which went along nicely with the story she had just finished.

Her visit to our club was, without a doubt, a highlight.

Though I suppose I’ve gotten a little out of order, I should pause and tell you something about our group. It now stands at twelve—three women and nine men. Most of us are middle age or better. I should also mention that during our last meeting I recorded Dana’s first story for our gathering, unbeknownst to her. My intent was to do so, and then replay parts of it to our treasurer, Kevin, with the intent of obvious ridicule and a declaration that dues spent on spook hunters as guests was money wasted.

Instead, I was so captivated with Dana’s story that I went home forgetting I had recorded her. Of course, Kevin had heard it all firsthand and had been as captivated with her adventure as I was.

A few weeks later I was finally brave enough to call Dana’s business, which is registered simply, Dana Roberts, Supernormal Investigations, and tell her what I had done. There was no need for it, as she would never know, but I harbored a certain amount of guilt, and liked the idea of having contact with her. I encouraged her to come to the club again.

To my relief, she found my original skepticism more than acceptable, and asked if I might like to transcribe my recording for publication in her monthly newsletter. I not only agreed, but it appeared in the April online magazine, Dana Roberts Reports. And so, here is another story, recorded and transcribed with her enthusiastic permission.

The night she came to us as a speaker, she was elegantly dressed, and looked fine in dark slacks and an ivory blouse. Her blond hair was combed back and tied loosely at her neck, and she wore her usual disarming smile.

She took her place in the large and comfortable guest chair, and with a tall drink in her hand, the lights dimmed, a fire crackling in the fireplace, she began to tell a story she called The Case of The Stalking Shadow.

It follows.

Since most of the events of the last few months have turned out to be hoaxes or of little interest, and because I am your invited guest, I decided tonight to fall back on one of my earlier cases—my first in fact—and the one that led me into this profession. Though at the time I didn’t know I was going to become a serious investigator of this sort of thing, or that it would require so much work, as well as putting myself continually in the face of danger. I’ve done more research for my current job than I ever did gaining my PhD in anthropology. Mistakes in what I do can have dire consequences, so it’s best to know what one is doing, at least where it can be known.

I was not paid for this investigation. It was done for myself, with the aid of a friend, and it happened when I was still in college. In the process of discovering my lifelong occupation, I nearly lost my life on more than one occasion, for there were several touchy moments. Had this particular case gone wrong, I would not be here today to entertain you with my adventures, nor would my friend and cousin Jane be alive.

Simply put, I come from what must be defined as a wealthy family. There were times when there was less wealth, but there was always money. This was also true of my close relatives, and so it was that my Aunt Elizabeth, on my father’s side, invited us each year to her home for the summer. It was a kid event, and children of both my mother and father’s siblings were gathered each year when school let out to spend a week with Aunt Elizabeth, whose husband was in oil, and often gone for months at a time. I suppose, having no children of her own, she liked the company, and in later years when her husband—my then Uncle Chester—ran off with a woman from Brazil, it became more clear to me why she looked forward each year to a family gathering, and why she surrounded herself with so many other activities, and spent Uncle Chester’s money with a kind of abandon that could only speak to the idea of getting hers while there was something to be got.

But that is all sour family business, and I will pass over it. I’m sure I’ve told too much already.

The year I’m talking about, when I was thirteen, my Aunt and Uncle had moved from their smaller property upstate and had bought what could only be described as a classic estate, made to look very much like those huge British properties we see frequently in older movies and television programs. It was in America, in the Deep South, but it certainly had the looks of a traditional upper-level British residence, with enormous acreage to match. In the latter respect, it was more common to America’s vast spaces. One hundred acres, the largest portion of it wooded, with a house that had no fewer than forty-five rooms, and a surrounding area dotted with gardens and shrubs trimmed in the shape of animals: lions and tigers and bears.

It was overdone and overblown. For a child, those vast rooms and that enormous acreage were a kind of paradise. Or so it seemed at the time of that initial gathering of my cousins and myself.

After arrival, and a few days of getting to know one another—for in some cases our lives were so different, and things had changed so dramatically for each of us in such a short period of time—it was necessary to reacquaint. We were on the verge of leaving childhood, or most of us were, though some of us were younger. For me, this year was to be particularly important, and in many ways the last year of what I think of as true childhood. Certainly, I was not grown after this year passed, but my interests began to move in other directions. Boys and cars and dating, the whole nine yards. And, of course, what happened changed me forever.

But this summer I’m talking about, we spent a vast amount of time playing the old childhood games. It was a wonderful and leisurely existence that consisted of swimming in the pool, croquet, badminton, and the like. At night, since my aunt would not allow television, we played board games of all varieties, and as there were a huge number of us cousins, we were often pitted against one another in different parts of the house with different games.

One night, perhaps three days into my visit, my cousin Jane and I found ourselves alone in a large room where we were playing chess, and between moves she suddenly asked, without really waiting for a reply: “Have you been in the woods behind the estate? I find it quite queer.”

“Queer?” I said.

“Strange. I suppose it’s my imagination, being a city girl, I’m not used to the proximity of so many trees.”

I didn’t know it at the time, and would probably not have appreciated it, but those trees had been there for hundreds of years. And though other areas had been logged out and replaced with “crops” of pines in long rows, this was the remains of the aboriginal forests.

Jumping ahead slightly—the trees were not only of a younger time, but they were huge, and they grew in such a way the limbs had grown together and formed a kind of canopy that didn’t allow brush and vines to grow beneath them. So when someone says there are as many trees now as there once were, you can be certain they are describing crop trees, grown close together without the variance of nature. These trees were from a time when forests were forests, so to speak.

Anyway, she said perhaps a few more words about the trees, and how she thought the whole place was odd, but I didn’t pay any real attention to her—and there was nothing in her manner that I determined to be dread or worry of any kind. So, her comments didn’t really have impact on me, and it wasn’t until later that I thought back on our conversation and realized how accurately impressionable Jane had been.

There was something strange about those woods.

After another day or so, the pool and the nighttime games lost some of their appeal. We did some night swimming, lounging around the pool; but one moonlit night one of the younger children among us—Billy, who was ten— suggested that it might be fun to play a game of tag in the woods.

Now, from an adult standpoint this seems like a bad choice, mucking about in the woods at night. But we were young and it was a very bright night, and it seemed like a wonderful idea.

We decided a game would be delicious. We chose up teams. One team constituted eight cousins, the other seven. The game was somewhere between hide-and-go-seek and tag. One team would hide, the other would seek. The trick was to chase down the hiding team and tag them, making them a member of the hunting team. In time, the idea was to tag everyone into the chasing team, and then the game would switch out.

How we started was, the chasing team was to stay at the swimming pool while the hiding team had a fifteen minute head start into the woods. It was suggested that the more open part of the woods was to be our area, but that no one should go into the thicker and darker part, because that was a lot of acreage and more difficult.

At the signal, we shot off like quail, splitting up in the woods to hide, each of us going our own route.

I went through the trees, and proceeded immediately to the back of the sparser woods and came to the edge where it thickened. The trees in the sparser area were of common variety, but of uneven shape. They didn’t grow high, but were thickly festooned with sickly widespread branches, and beneath them were plenty of shadows.

As if it were yesterday, I remember that as soon as I came to that section of trees, I was besieged by an unreasonable sensation of discomfort. The discomfort, at this point, wasn’t fear—it was more a malaise that had descended on me heavy as a wool blanket. I thought it had to do with my overextending myself while on vacation, because I was used to a much more controlled environment and an earlier bedtime.

The trees seemed far more shadowy than they had appeared from a distance, and I had the impression of being watched. No, that isn’t quite right. Not of being watched so much as of a presence in the general locale. Something so close, that I should be able to see it, but couldn’t.

I marked this down to exhaustion, and went about finding a good place to hide. I could hear the seekers beginning to run toward the woods, and then I heard someone scream, having been tagged immediately. I chose a place between two trees that had grown together high and low in such a way as to appear to be a huge letter H placed on a pedestal; the trees met in such tight formation they provided a near singular trunk and the bar of the H was an intermingled branch of both trees. I darted behind them, scooted down, and put my back against the trunk.

No sooner had I chosen my spot than it occurred to me that its unusual nature might in fact attract one of the seekers. But by then, I felt it was too late and pressed my back against the tree, awaiting whatever fate might come.

From where I sat, I could see the deeper woods, and I had an urge to run to them, away from the grove of trees where I now hid. I also disliked the idea of having my back against the tree and being discovered suddenly and frightened by the hunters. I didn’t want that surprise to cause me to squeal the way I had heard someone squeal earlier. I liked to think of myself as too mature for a child’s game to begin with, and was beginning to regret my involvement in the matter.

I sat and listened for footfalls, but the game went on below me. I could hear yelling and some words, and I was bewildered that no one had come to look for me, as my hiding place wasn’t exactly profound.

After awhile, I ceased to hear the children, and noticed that the moonlight in the grove, where the limbs were less overbearing, had grown thinner.

I stood up and turned and looked through the split in the H tree. It was very quiet now, so much in fact, I could almost hear the worms crawling inside the earth. I stood there peeking between the bars of the H, and then I saw one of the children coming toward me. I couldn’t make out who it was, as they were drenched in shadow, but they were coming up the slight rise into the ragged run of trees. At first, I felt glad to see them, as I was ready for my part in this silly game to be over, and planned to beg off being a seeker.

However, as the shape came closer, I began to have a greater feeling of unease than before. The shape came along with an unusual step that seemed somewhere between a glide and a skip. There was something disconcerting about its manner. It was turning its shadowed head left and right, as I would have expected a seeker to do, but there was a deeply ingrained part me that rejected this as its purpose.

The closer it came, the more my nervousness was compounded, for the light didn’t delineate its features in any way. In fact, the shape seemed not to be a shadow at all, but the dark caricature of a human being. I eased behind the trunk and hid.

Dread turned to fear. I was assailed with the notion that I ought to run away quickly, but to do that, I would have to step out and reveal myself, and that idea was even more frightening and oppressive. So I stayed in my place, actually shivering. Without seeing it, I could sense that it was coming closer. There was a noise associated with its approach, but to this day, I can’t identify that noise. It was not footfalls on leaves or ground, but was a strange sound that made me fearful, and at the same time, sad. It was the kind of sound that reached down into the brain and bones and gave you an influx of information that spoke not to the logical part of your being, but to some place more primal. I know that is inadequate, but I can’t explain it any better. I wish that I could, because if I could imitate that sound, most of this story would be unnecessary to tell. You would understand much of it immediately.

I spoke of shivering with fear, but until that day, I didn’t know a person’s knees could actually knock together, or that the sound of one’s heart could be so loud. I was certain both sounds would be evident to the shadow, but I held my ground. It was fear that held me there, as surely as if my body had been coated in an amazingly powerful glue and I had been fastened and dried to that tree with it.

Eventually, I steeled my courage, turned and peeked between the trunks of the H tree. Looking right at me was the shadow. Not more than a foot away. There wasn’t a face, just the shape of a head and utter blackness. The surprise caused me to let out with a shriek—just the sort I’d tried to avoid—and I leapt back, and without really considering it, I broke around the tree and tore through the woods toward the house as if my rear end were on fire.

I looked back over my shoulder, and there came the thing, flapping its arms, its legs flailing like a wind-blown scarecrow.

I tripped once, rising just as the thing touched my shoulder, only for a moment. A cold went through me as it did. It was the sort of cold I imagined would be in the arctic, a sensation akin to stepping out of a warm tent, soaking wet, into an icy wind. I charged along with all my might, trying to outrun the thing I knew was right behind me. It was breathing, and its breath was as cold as its touch on the back of my neck. As it ran, the sound of its feet brought to mind the terrors I had felt earlier when I first saw it making its way through the woods—that indescribable sound that held within it all the terrors of this world, and any world imagined.

I reached the edge of the woods, and then I was into the clearing. I tried not to look back, tried not to do anything that might break my stride, but there was no stopping me. I couldn’t help myself. When I looked back, there at the line of the woods, full in the moonlight, stood the thing waving its arms about in a frustrated manner, but no longer running after me.

I thundered down a slight rise and broke into the yard where the topiary animals stood, then I clattered along the cobblestone path and into the house.

When I was in the hallway, I stopped to get my breath. I thought of the others, and though I was concerned, at that moment I was physically unable to return to those woods or even the yard to yell for the others.

Then I heard them, upstairs. I went up and saw they were all in the Evening Room. When Jane saw me, her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak. The others went about joshing me immediately, and it was just enough to keep me from blurting out what I had seen. It seemed that everyone in the game had been caught but me, and that I had been given up on, and that switching the game about so that the other side might be the pursuer had been forgotten. Hot chocolate was being served, and everything seemed astonishingly normal.

I considered explaining all that had occurred to me, but was struck with the absurdity of it. Instead, I went to the window and looked out toward the forest. There was nothing there.

Jane and I shared a room, as we were the closest of the cousins. As it came time for bed, I found myself unwilling to turn out the light. I sat by the window and looked out at the night.

Jane sat on her bed in her pajamas looking at me. She said, ”You saw it, didn’t you?”

She might as well have hit me with a brick.

“Saw what?” I said.

“It,” she said. “The shadow.”

“You’ve seen it too?”

She nodded. “I told you the woods were strange. But I had no idea until tonight how strange. After the game ended, the others thought it quite funny that you might still be hiding in the woods, not knowing we were done. I was worried, though.”

How so? I thought, but I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.

“I actually allowed myself to be caught early,” Jane said. “I wanted out of the game, and I planned to feign some problem or another and come back to the house. It was all over pretty quick, however, and this wasn’t necessary. Everyone was tagged out. Except you. But no one wanted to stay in the woods or go back into them, so they came back to the house. I think they were frightened. I know I was. And I couldn’t put my finger on it. But being in the woods, and especially the nearer I came to that section where it thinned and the trees grew strange, I was so discomforted it was all I could do to hold back tears. Then, from the window, I saw you running. And I saw it. The shadow that was shaped like a man. It stopped just beyond the line of trees.”

I nodded. “I thought I imagined it.”

“Not unless I imagined it too.”

“But what is it?” I asked.

Jane walked to where I stood and looked out the window. The man-shaped shadow did not appear and the woods were much darker now, as the moon was beginning to drop low.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve heard that some spots on earth are the homes of evil spirits. Sections where the world opens up into a place that is not of here.”

“Not of here?”

“Some slice in our world or their world that lets one of us, or one of them, slip in.”

“Where would you hear such a thing?” I asked.

“Back home, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. They say there was an H tree there. Like the one in these woods. I’ve seen it in the daytime and it makes me nervous. I know it’s there.”

“I hid behind it,” I said. “That’s where the shadow found me.”

“Lansdale was home to one of the three known H trees, as they were called.”

This, of course, was exactly what I had called the tree upon seeing it.

“It was said to be a portal to another world,” Jane said. ”Some said hell. Eventually, it was bulldozed down and a housing project was built over the site.”

“Did anything happen after it was torn down?” I asked.

Jane shrugged. “I can’t say. I just know the legend. But I’ve seen pictures of the tree, and it looks like the one in the woods here. I think it could be the same sort of thing.”

“Seems to me, pushing it over wouldn’t do anything.” I said.

“I don’t know. But the housing division is still there, and I’ve never heard of anything happening.”

“Maybe because it was never a portal to hell, or anywhere else,” I said. “It was just a tree.”

“Could be,” Jane said. “And that could be just an odd tree in the woods out there.” She pointed out the window. “Or, it could be what the one in Lansdale was supposed to be. A doorway.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“Neither does a shadow chasing you out of the woods.”

“There has to be a logical explanation.”

“When you figure it out,” Jane said. “Let me know.”

“We should tell the others,” I said.

“They won’t believe us,” Jane said, “but they’re scared of the woods. I can tell. They sense something is out there. That is why the game ended early. I believe our best course of action is to not suggest anything that might involve those woods, and ride out the week.”

I agreed, and that’s exactly what we did.

The week passed on, and no one went back in the woods. But I did watch for the shadow from the backyard, and at night, from the window. Jane watched with me. Sometimes we brought hot chocolate up to the window and sat there in the dark and drank it and kept what we called The Shadow Watch.

The moon wasn’t as bright the following nights, and before long if we were to see it, it would have had to stand underneath the back yard lights. It didn’t.

The week came to an end, and all of us cousins went home.

There was an invitation the next summer to go back, but I didn’t go. I had tried to dismiss the whole event as a kind of waking nightmare, but there were nights when I would awaken feeling certain that I was running too slowly and the shadow was about to overtake me.

It was on those nights that I would go to the window in my room, which looked out over a well-lit city street with no woods beyond. It made me feel less stressed and worried to see those streets and cars and people walking about well past midnight. And none of them were shadows.

Jane wrote me now and again, and she mentioned the shadow once, but the next letter did not, and pretty soon there were no letters. We kept in touch by email, and I saw her at a couple of family functions, and then three years or so passed without us being in communication at all.

I was in college by then, and the whole matter of the shadow was seldom thought of, though there were occasions when it came to me out of my subconscious like a great black tide. There were times when I really thought I would like to talk to Jane about the matter, but there was another part of me that felt talking to her would make it real again. I had almost convinced myself it had all been part of my imagination, and that Jane hadn’t really seen anything, and that I misremembered what she had told me.

That’s how the mind operates when it doesn’t want to face something. I began my studies with anthropology as my major, and in the process of my studies I came across a theory that sometimes, instead of the eye sending a message to the brain, the brain sends a message to the eye. It is a rare occurrence, but some scientists believe this explains sincere ghostly sightings. To the viewer, it would be as real as you are to me as I sit here telling you this story. But the problem with this view was that Jane had seen it as well, so it was a nice theory, but not entirely comforting.

And then out of the blue, I received a letter from Jane. Not an email. Not a phone call. But an old fashioned letter, thin in the envelope, and short on message.

It read: I’m going back on Christmas Eve. I have to know.

I knew exactly what she meant. I knew I had to go back too. I had to have an answer.

Now, let me give you a bit of background on my Aunt’s place. She and her husband separated and the house and property were put up for sale. I knew this from my mother and father. They had been offered an opportunity to buy the house, but had passed due to the expense of it all.

Interestingly enough, I learned that Jane’s family, who had later been offered the opportunity, could afford it, and plans had been made. Jane’s father had died the year before, and a large inheritance was left to Jane’s mother. No sooner had the house been bought than her mother died, leaving Jane with the property.

Perhaps this was the catalyst that convinced Jane to go back.

I acquired Jane’s phone number, and called her. We talked briefly, and did not mention the shadow. It’s as if our conversation was in code. We made plans: a time to arrive and how to meet, that sort of thing.

Before I left, I did do a bit of research.

I didn’t know what it was I was looking for, but if Jane was right, her hometown of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, was a former home to an H tree. I looked it up on the Internet and read pretty much what Jane had told me. As far back as the Native Americans there had been stories of Things coming through the gap in the H tree. Spirits. Monsters. Demons. Shadows.

As Jane had said, the H tree had been destroyed by builders, and a subdivision of homes was built over it. I looked for any indication that there had been abnormal activity in that spot, but except for a few burglaries, and one murder of a husband by a wife, there was nothing out of the average.

Upon arrival at the airport I picked up my rental car and drove to a Wal-Mart and bought a gas can, two cheap cigarette lighters, and a laser pointer. Keep in mind, now, that I was doing all of this out of assumption, not out of any real knowledge of the situation. There was no real knowledge to be had, only experience that might lead to disappointment, the kind of disappointment that could result in a lack of further experience in all matters. I had that in mind as I drove, watching the sun drop in the west.

When I arrived at the property and the house, it had changed. The house was still large and regal, but the yards had grown up and the swimming pool was an empty pit lined at the bottom with broken seams and invading weeds. The topiary shrubs had become masses of green twists and turns without any identifying structure.

I parked and got out. Jane greeted me at the door. Like me, she was dressed simply, in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. She led me inside. She had bought a few sandwich goods, and we made a hasty meal of cheese and meat and coffee, and then she showed me the things she had brought for “protection” as she put it.

There were crosses and holy water and wafers and a prayer book. Though I don’t believe that religion itself holds power, the objects and the prayers, when delivered with conviction, do. Symbols like crosses and holy water and wafers that have been blessed by a priest who is a true believer, contain authority. Objects from other religions are the same. It’s not the gods that give them power, it is the dedication given them by the believer. In my case, even though I was not a believer, the idea that a believer had blessed the items was something I hoped endowed them with abilities.

I placed great faith in the simple things—like gasoline and fire starters.

Shortly after our meal, we took a few moments to discuss what we had seen those years ago, and were soon in agreement. This agreement extended to the point that we admitted we had been, at least to some degree, in denial since that time.

Out back we stood and looked at the woods for a long moment. The moon was rising. It was going to be nearly full. Not as full as that night when I saw the shadow, but bright enough.

Jane had her crosses and the like in a small satchel with a strap. She slung it over her shoulder. I carried the gas can, and had the lighters and laser pointer in my pants pocket. By the time we reached the bleak section of woods and the H tree was visible, it was as if my feet had anvils fastened to them. I could hardly lift them. I began to feel more and more miserable. I eyed Jane and saw there were tears in her eyes. When we were to the H tree, I began to shake.

We circled the tree, seeing it from all angles. Stopping, I began to pour gasoline onto its base, splashing some on the trunk from all sides. Jane pulled her wafers and holy water and crucifixes from her bag, and proceeded to place them on the ground around the tree. She took out the prayer book and began to read. Then, out of the gap between the trees, a shadow leaned toward her.

I tried to yell, to warn her, but the words were frozen in my mouth like dead seals in an iceberg. The shadow grabbed her by the throat, causing her to let out a grunt, and then she was pulled through the portal and out of sight.

I suspected there would be danger, but on some level I thought we would approach the tree, read a prayer, stick a cross in the ground, set the tree on fire, and flee, hoping the entire forest, the house, and surrounding property wouldn’t burn down with it.

I had also hoped, for reasons previously stated, that the religious symbols would carry weight against whatever it was that lay inside that gateway, but either the materials had not been properly blessed, or we were dealing with something immune to those kinds of artifacts.

Now, here comes the hard part. This is very hard for me to admit, even to this day. But the moment Jane was snatched through that portal, I broke and ran. I offer as excuse only two things: I was young, and I was terrified.

I ran all the way to the back door of the house. No sooner had I arrived there than I was overcome with grief. It took me a moment to fortify myself, but when that was done, I turned and started back with renewed determination.

I came to the H, and with a stick, I probed the gap between the trees. Nothing happened, though at any instant I expected the shadow to lean forward and grab me. I picked up the bottle of holy water that Jane had left, hoping it might be better than a prayer book. I climbed over the communal trunk, ducked beneath the limb that made the bar on the H, and boldly stepped through the portal.

It was gray inside, like the sun seen through a heavy curtain, but there was no sunlight. The air seemed to be fused with light, dim as it was. There were boulder-like shapes visible. They were tall and big around. All of them leaned, and not all in the same direction. Each was fog-shrouded. There were shadows flickering all about, moving from one structure to another, being absorbed by them, like ink running through the cracks in floor boards.

Baffled, I stood there with the bottle of holy water clutched in my fist, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, the only thing that came to me was to start forward in search of Jane. As I neared the boulders, I gasped for breath. They were not boulders at all, but structures made of bones and withering flesh. The shadows were tucked tight between the bone and skin like viscera. I stood there staring, and then one of the bones—an arm bone—moved and flexed its skeletal fingers, snatched at the air, and reached for me.

Startled, I let out a sharp cry and stepped back.

The structure pivoted, and a thousand eyes opened in the worn skin. It was a living thing made of bone and skin and shadow. As it slid along, a gray slime oozed out from beneath it like the trail of a slug.

I flung the holy water violently against the thing, but the only reaction I got was a broken bottle and water leaking ineffectually down its side. As it turned, I saw sticking out from it a shape that had yet to become bone and dried skin. It writhed like a worm in tar. Then it screamed and called out.

It was Jane, attached to the departing thing like a fly stuck to fly paper.

Other mounds of bone and shadow and flesh were starting to move now, and they were akin to hills sliding in my direction. They were seeking me, mewing as they went, their sliding giving forth that horrid shuffling sound I had heard years before from the running shadow. The sound made me ill. My head jumped with all manner of horrid things.

I realized escape was impossible—that no matter which way I turned, they were there.

Now the shadows, as if greased, slipped out of gaps in the bones and skin, moved toward me, their dark feet sliding, their arms waving, their odd, empty, dark faces turning from side to side.

I knew for certain that it was over for Jane and me.

And then I remembered the laser pointer in my pocket. I had brought it because shadows are an absence of light, and if there is one thing that is the enemy of darkness, it is the sharp beam of a laser.

That said, I was unprepared for the reaction I received when I snapped it on. The light went right through one of the shadows, entering it like the thrust of a rapier. The shadow stopped moving, one hand flying to the wound. The beam, still directed to that spot, clipped off its hand at the wrist. It was far more than I expected; my best-case plan had been that the light would be annoying.

I knew then that I had a modern weapon to combat an ancient evil. I swung the light like a sword, and as I did, the shadows came apart, fell in splashes of inky liquid, and were absorbed by the gray ground. Within moments, the shadows were attempting to leap back inside the structures, but I followed them with my beam, discovering I could cut flesh and bone with it as well, for what had once been human had been sucked dry of its essence, and was now a fabric of this world.

As I cut through them, the bones were dark inside, full of shadow, and the skin bled shadows; the ground was sucking them up like a sponge soaking up water.

I darted to the beast that held Jane. It was sliding along at a brisk pace. I grabbed one of Jane’s outreaching hands and tugged. I was pulled to my knees as the thing flowed away. I didn’t let go. I went dragging along, clinging to Jane with one hand, the laser with the other.

Eventually, I lost my grip, stumbled to my feet, and pursued the monster as it moved into a gray mist that nearly disguised it. A shadow came out of the mist and grabbed me. When it did, an intense coldness went over my body. I almost passed out.

I cut with the laser. The shadow let go and fell apart. I had split it from the top of its head to the area that on a human would have been the groin.

I ran after Jane. The mist had become so thick I almost lost her. I ran up on the creature without realizing it, and when I did, its stickiness clung to me and sucked at me. I was almost lifted off my feet, but again I utilized the laser, and it let me go.

Aware of my determination, it let go of Jane, too. She fell at my feet. My last sight of the thing was of it moving into the mist, and of bony arms waving and eyes blinking and shadows twisting down deep inside it.

I pulled Jane upright, and it was purely by accident that I saw a bit of true light—a kind of glow poking through the mist.

Yanking her along, I ran for it. As we neared the light, it became brighter yet, like a large goal post. We darted through it and fell to the ground in a tumble. Making sure Jane was all right, I cautioned her away, and stuck the laser in my pocket.

I pulled out one of the cigarette lighters I had bought. Shadowy arms reached through the gap in the trees, into the light. The dark fingers snapped at me like the fangs of a snake. I avoided them with an agility I didn’t know I possessed.

I bent low and clicked the lighter and put the flame to the spot where I had poured gasoline. A blaze leaped up and engulfed the tree in a ball of fire.

With a shaking hand, I went around to the other side of the H tree and put a lick of flame to it. Coated in gasoline, it lit, but weakly.

I flicked off the lighter and grabbed the can with its remaining gas and tossed it toward the fire. The can exploded.

My ears rang. The next thing I knew I was on the ground and Jane was beating out tufts of fire that had landed on my pants and the front of my shirt.

We watched as the tree burned. Shadow shapes were visible inside the H, looking out of the gray, as if to note us one last time before the fire closed the gateway forever.

The tree burned all night and into the next morning. We watched it from where we sat on the ground. The air was no longer heavy with foreboding. It seemed . . . how shall I say it? . . . empty.

I feared the flames might jump to the rest of the trees, but they didn’t. The H tree burned flat to the ground, not even leaving a stump. All that was left was a burned spot, dark as a hole through the center of the earth.

Jane and I parted the next morning, and for some reason we have never spoken again. At all. Maybe the connection at that time of our young life, that shared memory, was too much to bear.

But I did hear from her lawyer. I was offered an opportunity to buy the house and property where the H tree had been. Cheap.

It was more than I could manage, actually—cheap as it was—but I acquired a loan and bought the place. I felt I had conquered it, and buying it was the final indicator of this.

I still own it. No more shadows creep. And that spot of woods where the tree grew? I had it removed by bulldozer. I put down a stretch of concrete and built a tennis court, and to this day there has not been a single inkling of unusual activity, except for the fact that my tennis game has improved far beyond my expectations.

Finished, Dana leaned back in her chair and sipped from her drink.

“So, that’s how I got my start as an investigator of the unusual. Beyond that revelation, I suppose you might want me to explain exactly what happened there inside that strange world, but I cannot. It is beyond my full knowledge. I can only surmise that our ideas of hell and demonic regions have arisen from this and other dimensional gaps in the fabric of time and space. What the things did with stolen flesh and bone is most likely nothing that would make sense to our intellect. I can only say that the shadows appeared to need it, to absorb it, to live off of it. However, their true motivation is impossible to know.”

With that, she downed her drink, smiled, stood up, shook hands with each of us, and left us there in the firelight, stunned, contemplating all she had told us.

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His novella, Bubba Ho-tep, was made into an award-winning film of the same name, as was Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. Both were directed by Don Coscarelli. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, the International Horror Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, his first novel for young adults, was published last year. His most recent novel for adults is Edge of Dark Water.