Free The Shadows, Kith and Kin by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

grease-fried goodness he had poked into his mouth earlier that day.
     
    The sheriff and the other deputy stopped and stared, and the sheriff said, "My God," and turned away, and the deputy said, "Stop them, Hirem. Stop them. They done done it to him. Stop them."
     
    My father called the dogs back, their muzzles dark and dripping. They sat in a row behind him, like sentries. The man, or what had been a man, the convict, lay all about the base of the tree, as did the rags that had once been his clothes.
     
    Later, we learned the convict had been on the chain gang for cashing hot checks.
     
    ––
     
    Time keeps on slipping, slipping. . . Wasn't that a song?
     
    ––
     
    As day comes I sleep, then awake when night arrives. The sky has cleared and the moon has come out, and it is merely cold now. Pulling on my coat, I go out on the porch and sniff the air, and the air is like a meat slicer to the brain, so sharp it gives me a headache. I have never known cold like that.
     
    I can see the yard close up. Ice has sheened all over my world, all across the ground, up in the trees. The sky is like a black-velvet backdrop, the stars like sharp shards of blue ice clinging to it.
     
    I leave the porch light on, go inside, return to my chair by the window, burp. The air is filled with the aroma of my last meal: canned Ravioli, eaten cold.
     
    I take off my coat and hang it on the back of the chair.
     
    ––
     
    Has it happened yet, or is it yet to happen?
     
    Time, it just keep on slippin', slippin', yeah it do.
     
    ––
     
    I nod in the chair, and when I snap awake from a deep nod, there is snow blowing across the yard and the moon is gone and there is only the porch light to brighten it up.
     
    But, in spite of the cold, I know they are out there.
     
    The cold, the heat, nothing bothers them.
     
    They are out there.
     
    ––
     
    They came to me first on a dark night several months back, with no snow and no rain and no cold, but a dark night without clouds and plenty of heat in the air, a real humid night, sticky like dirty undershorts. I awoke and sat up in bed and the yard light was shining thinly through our window. I turned to look at my wife lying there beside me, her very blonde hair silver in that light. I looked at her for a long time, then got up and went into the living room. Our little dog, who made his bed by the front door, came over and sniffed me, and I bent to pet him. He took to this for a minute, then found his spot by the door again, laid down.
     
    Finally I turned out the yard light and went out on the porch. In my underwear. No one could see me, not with all our trees, and if they could see me, I didn't care.
     
    I sat in a deck chair and looked at the night, and thought about the job I didn't have and how my wife had been talking of divorce, and how my in-laws resented our living with them, and I thought too of how every time I did a thing I failed, and dramatically at that. I felt strange and empty and lost.
     
    While I watched the night, the darkness split apart and some of it came up on the porch, walking. Heavy steps full of all the world's shadow.
     
    I was frightened, but I didn't move. Couldn't move. The shadow, which looked like a tar-covered human-shape, trudged heavily across the porch until it stood over me, looking down. When I looked up, trembling, I saw there was no face, just darkness, thick as chocolate custard. It bent low and placed hand shapes on the sides of my chair and brought its faceless face close to mine, breathed on me—a hot languid breath that made me ill.
     
    "You are almost one of us," it said, then turned and slowly moved along the porch and down the steps and right back into the shadows. The darkness, thick as a wall, thinned and split, and absorbed my visitor; then the shadows rustled away in all directions like startled bats. I heard a dry, crackling leaf sound amongst the trees.
     
    My God, I thought. There had been a crowd of them.
     
    Out