Free The Shadow Men by Christopher Golden; Tim Lebbon Page B

playing on the sound system, photographs of Italian landscapes and cityscapes on the wall, and paper placemats upon which a map of “the boot” had been printed. But the moment they walked in, Jim’s stomach growled, betraying him. He hadn’t eaten anything since that morning, and hunger had been gnawing quietly at him, subordinate to hysteria and grief but now making itself known.
    Reluctantly, he agreed to eat. Trix ordered pizza.
    Now they waited, and Jim watched her as he sipped his whiskey. Glasses clinked. An old man celebrated his ninety-first birthday with what appeared to be three younger generations around a long table. When they sang to him, the whole restaurant joined in except for Jim and Trix, who feigned smiles and applauded politely. And then at last everyone turned their attention back to their own dining companions, and Jim took another sip, relished the burn of the whiskey in his throat, and looked at Trix.
    In the car she had fixed her hair as best she could, pushing her fingers through it, but still he knew they both looked like something the cat had dragged in. He had to wonder what the other diners must have thought when they first came in. But then he realized he didn’t care. None of these people meant anything to him. They weren’t even really of his world. In some unsettling way, because they were only aware of a world where Jenny and Holly had never existed, they felt like the enemy to him. In fact, it felt like he and Trix had snuck behind enemy lines and at any moment might be discovered as outsiders.
    We don’t belong here , he thought, taking another sip. And maybe that was true. It made him wonder if other people had vanished, too. If there were other people out there who were aware that the world had been subtly altered. He and Trix might as well be invaders from Mars.
    She stared at the bottle of Heineken on the table in front of her, passing her thumb over the green glass like she was trying to see something floating in the beer inside. Every ten or fifteen seconds she glanced toward the door.
    “Trix,” he said.
    She blinked, focusing on him like she’d forgotten he was there.
    “What the hell are we doing here?” Jim asked. “How is this helping, and what was that crazy shit about your grandmother?”
    Trix took a swig from her Heineken and gave him the Cheshire cat grin that he had seen before, whenever she felt stupid or embarrassed. “Do you know the story of the Oracle of Delphi?” she asked.
    Jim stared at her. “Sure. The Athenians went to her for guidance. She communed with the gods or something and could give them answers, see the future. That kind of thing.”
    Trix stared at her beer. Someone came in, and she looked up hopefully, then turned again to Jim, dejected. “I don’t know about seeing the future.”
    “What does this have to do with—”
    She cut him off with a glare. “Just listen.”
    “I’m trying,” he said sharply. “You’re not saying anything.”
    Trix sighed. “All right. So, you know my father took off for L.A. when I was little and that after my mother died, my grandparents raised me.”
    “Yeah.”
    She started to strip the label from her beer bottle. “When I was maybe nine or ten my grandfather started to slip. Dementia. Alzheimer’s. He went downhill fast, and he died the day before my twelfth birthday.
    “When I was in the fifth grade, I came home from school one day and my grandmother was a wreck. She totally flipped out. By then there were times when my grandfather had no idea who we were or where we were. He would think it was, like, the fifties again and that my grandmother was his sister Paulette. The neighbors all sort of kept an eye on him during those times. But this one day he’d been doing pretty well. My grandmother had been ironing in her bedroom, watching television, and when she went to look in on him, he’d disappeared.”
    Jim felt a sick twist in his gut. “Vanished? You mean like Jenny and Holly? You’ve