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Shade

By John B. Olson

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A moonlit night. Silver-frosted shadows frozen in the stillness of an early Minnesota fall. A weathered farmhouse looms over a fog-cloaked bog, leaking soft candlelight from a second-story window. Flickering silhouettes beat against the window panes. Clacks and sharp cries, injecting the silence with echoes of ringing pain.
Rising out of the mist, a dark shadow rolls through the clearing. Blotting out the farmhouse. Obscuring the moon.

“Recite the Gateway Prophecy. Now!” A hooded man swung a staff in a sweeping arc toward a young boy's face.
“`The ancient enemy–’” the boy ducked and hopped backward on feet bound together with new hemp rope—“`–in the last dark days of hunt shall rise up to destroy the Standing.’” The boy twisted his staff upward, deflecting the next blow in one fluid motion that circled his staff beneath his master’s defense. “`Only the long-awaited shall stand.’”
The man sprang back, spun around and swept at the boy's feet, but the boy leaped into the air even as he brought his staff down on the man's shoulder, pulling back on the blow an instant before impact.
“Good!” The old man smiled against the strain of another swing.
“`By becoming the enemy, he shall shield the world from the enemy’s dark–’” The boy flinched, just managing to parry the next blow. He shuddered as a cold shiver crawled up his spine. Something…something dark…touched his mind like a foul stench.
“What is wrong, child? You’ve dropped your guard.”
The boy frowned up at his beloved master. “Do you not feel it?”
“Feel what? Are you ill?”
“I don’t know. It’s awful–wicked!”
“Don’t use slang with me, boy. If it’s wickedness you feel, you need look no further than yoursel—” A rasping gurgle choked off the old man’s voice. His eyes rolled back, then clamped shut until the creases surrounding them showed white against blood-red skin. Veins bulged at his neck as his lips drew back from his teeth in a piercing scream.
“Evil!” The man’s howl echoed around them as he smashed his staff into the boy’s shoulder, knocking him to the floor.
The boy tried to roll to his feet, but the force of the blow left him stunned. The air around him swirled with rage. A deep, dark unquenchable hunger.
“Pay attention, foundling!” The old man glared down at him, his face twisted into a mask of loathing and disgust. “Think you get a second chance with It?” The master swung his weapon down upon the boy’s now upheld staff. “Never underestimate its capacity for evil.” The staff struck again, sending pain radiating through the boy’s arms. “No atrocity is ever too small. Too twisted. Too profane!”
Again and again he rained blows down upon the boy’s staff until it splintered in his aching hands. The boy rolled to the side, dimly aware of a sharp smack inches away from his ear. Springing to his feet, he hopped to the window and dove at it headfirst.
But the window mullions were too heavy.
With a sickening crunch he bounced off the window and sank to the floor.
A crash sounded above his head. The spray of glass and splintered wood. Shielding his eyes with his hands, he pushed onto his feet. “Master, please. I don’t under—”
Pain exploded in his arm as a powerful blow knocked him back through the jagged window. Icy darkness. The shriek of howling wind. He hit the ground with a soul jarring thud.
Pain.
Glorious, wonderful, delicious pain!
Every heartbeat, every movement that convulsed his body with searing fire was answered with surges of perverse pleasure. Lying in the weeds, curled around his throbbing arm, a dark presence pressed down on him, rose up within him.
The sound of a slamming door broke him free from the nightmare’s grip. He struggled to his feet, but tripped on the rope and toppled back to the ground. A dark shadow, invisible to the eyes but chilling to the soul, passed over him as he lay on his side fighting with his good hand to work the rope over his bare feet.
A low growl rumbled in the night. Feet free at last, the boy rose to a crouch and searched the swirling darkness. The sound… it was all around him. Everywhere, nowhere, filling his mind, his soul, the spaces in between.
The angry voice of his master lashed out at him from the front of the house. The boy sprang to his feet and fled for the barn. Leaping against the bolted door, he attempted to run up its reinforced surface, but slipped and crashed back to the ground.
Risking a backward glance at his approaching master, he took a deep breath, and then, his right arm dangling, picked his way up the exterior braces of the door. He jumped out into space, twisting in the air to catch with one hand the rope that dangled from the loft beam overhead. He clung desperately to the rope, wrapping his legs and feet around it as he squirmed his way toward the overhanging beam.
A dark, rumbling growl filled the night, freezing him where he clung. A sharp cry of agony followed by a rasping wheeze. Wave upon wave of unholy exultation battered him as he clung, trembling, to the rope. He looked down at the twisted shadow on the ground, but even without seeing, he knew.
His master was gone.
The steady, familiar presence had disappeared. For the first time in his life, he was alone.
A blurred, man-shaped shadow moved toward him. The hazy figure flickered like a moth beating erratically against the light. Hunger. A dark terrible longing. Invisible eyes locked onto him. An irresistible tug on his soul. He was hungry. So very hungry. There was no escape. Weariness sang through him. Despair. Surrender. He had to give up. Climb down. He moved to lower himself down the rope…
Searing pain exploded in his right arm. The boy cried out, blinking into the night as if waking from a nightmare. His fingers tightened and he clung to the rope for his life. The dark presence reached toward him from below, but he didn't look down.
Relax. Release the rope. All will be well.
“No!” Scrambling blindly against the tears and pain, heedless of the crashing of the barn door and the roar that echoed in his mind, he pulled himself onto the overhanging beam.
He couldn’t escape. Mustn’t.
Gritting his teeth, he stepped out onto the practice cable that stretched between the barn and the old farmhouse.
He couldn’t do it. It was too dark. He was weak, cowardly, full of loathsome sin.
Fixing his eyes on the light from the second-story window, he took a faltering step, feeling for the thin cable with his bare feet.
He was going to fall. He’d never practiced in the dark.
A jolt passed through the cable and rattled in his mind like a thunder clap.
And then he ran.
Across the cable, over the rooftop, down the trellis. Through field after field after screaming, shrieking field, he ran. Through the night and long into the morning until exhaustion left him panting in his sleep, cradling his arm in the fork of a tree in front of a small Minnesota farmhouse.

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