Chapter Club: The Shadowrunner Chapter 6
It’s November! Thus begins the mad dash to the end of the year. Take a minute to read a piece of The Shadowrunner and let me know what you think in the comments below!
Luke stepped onto the springy surface of the playground. It was vacant for now, a victim of the school day. The swings gently oscillated in their frames, but other than that, the playground was still. Luke paced the perimeter, looking for anything that was out of place.
After completing the sweep and finding nothing but a candy wrapper and a half-chewed lollipop stick, he sat on one of the benches next to the structure, thinking. The green outlines could have meant a lot of things, but he thought they could have been light. If there was a connection between the light they had found and Owen, it would make sense. Maybe Owen had met three glowing children and decided they were imaginary.
If the friends were like what they had found by the river, he wouldn’t be able to see them when the sun was shining. His eyes focused on the part underneath the structure, obscured in shadow. It was as good of a place to start as any.
He crossed the playground and crouched to inspect underneath. He walked the length of the structure, checking the corners where plastic met plastic, but found nothing but spiderwebs. When he had finished, he climbed out from under the playground and examined it. Every wall he looked at had some hole or space in it, some that were just part of the wall and some that were a byproduct of the small games the architects had built into them. His eyes went up to the very top of the structure, at the little hut of plastic. Even that had doorways and windows and the slide…
His eyes fixed on the slide. It was a yellow helix that looped up to the top of the structure and all the way down to the ground. The tube would be somewhat shielded from the sun.
Luke went to the bottom of the slide, realizing quickly that unless Owen’s imaginary friends were already sitting there, he was unlikely to find them. As he made his way up the stairs to the top of the play structure, he couldn’t help but feel a little childish. The thought prompted the realization that if anyone saw what he was doing, they would think he had lost his mind. Maybe he had.
The idea seemed a little more likely when he heard the hushed laughter coming from the slide.
Luke rushed forward and stopped when the slide came into view. A little boy was sitting on the edge of the slide, looking up at him with a smile. He had blond, messy hair, and was wearing a red and white striped shirt. It didn’t have long sleeves. He must have been freezing.
“Hey! Are you—“
“Wee!” The child disappeared into the slide. Their voice echoed off the walls of the slide. When Luke stepped to the edge of the top platform, he didn’t see the slide shaking as it would have if someone were really going down it. He also didn’t see anyone come out the bottom.
Luke looked down at the opening to the slide once again. He heard rumbling as the kid came back up the slide. Except, when they made the last turn, it wasn’t the boy he had seen before. Now it was a Black girl wearing a pink shirt and her kinky hair pushed up with a headband.
“Where did the other—“
The girl stepped out of the slide. One moment she was there, then the next she wasn’t. Luke looked behind him, wondering if the girl would had somehow gotten behind him. When he turned back to the slide, the boy in the red shirt was back.
“Come down with me!” he said, waving for Luke to follow.
“I…” He struggled with what to say next. These obviously weren’t actual kids, at least not like any he had ever seen before. How far would they act like kids, though? And would they be dangerous if they stopped?
Deciding the safest option was to treat them like Lucy as much as possible, he replied, “I don’t think I’ll fit.”
The boy shrugged, then turned and pushed himself down the slide. Right answer, or so it seemed. Luke guessed that once he got to the bottom, he would vanish just like the girl had.
He started when she appeared just as suddenly as she had vanished and then went down the slide after the boy in the red shirt. Luke watched the slide, expecting one of them, if not a new child, to appear.
As he stared, he noticed that the interior of the slide was brighter than it should be. There was a kind of glow in there, something like the light from the river.
No sooner had he realized he had found Owen’s imaginary friends than another child appeared. This one was wearing shorts and a yellow shirt and had bandages over his knees and elbows. He was standing on his toes, looking over the edge at his friends below.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Luke asked. If he was going to get anywhere with them, he needed some answers, and he couldn’t get them if they kept vanishing at the bottom of the slide.
The boy turned back at him, continuing to hold on to the rail with both hands. He kept his body close to the slide, as if it were glued there.
“Spencer,” he said.
“How long have you been here, Spencer?”
“A little while,” he replied. He crawled into the slide and peaked out back at him. He didn’t look mischievous so much as cautious. Like he wasn’t sure what Luke was going to do next. He still had that small smile on his face though.
“Did you know a boy named Owen?”
He nodded. “He comes to play with us sometimes.”
“His mom told me he wouldn’t be able to come play with you for a little bit.”
The boy drew back at little further into the slide. Luke leaned forward, not wanting to lose the image. Or whatever it was that was talking to him. He glanced backward into the slide, wondering if he would find another one of the glowing orbs. But there was nothing, just a lambent green glow.
“We miss him,” the little boy said.
“Would you like to help me bring him back to the playground?” Luke asked.
Just then, there was a flash and there were two more bodies there. One belonged to the boy with the red shirt. The other was the girl with the headband.
“Come on! Let’s go!” The girl said as she pushed the boy with the bandages.
“Yeah, you’re holding up the line!” The boy in the red shirt said.
Luke crouched so that he was eye-level with the kids, “Now hold on there. Your friend and I were having a conversation.”
The other two children turned to look at him. The girl spoke first. “What are you doing all the way up here? Grownups don’t play on the playground.”
Luke forced himself to smile. It was deeply unnerving to talk to these kids. He felt as though he were talking to ghosts, and he didn’t like to wonder if that was actually the case. With all the strange things he had seen so far, he didn’t know if he was about to discover that ghosts were real.
“I was looking for you,” he said.
“He wants to bring my friend back,” the boy with the bandages added.
“That’s fine if he wants to bring him back. We’ll be here when he comes!” The boy in the red shirt said.
“I need your help,” Luke said. It felt strange to say that to a child. Or something like a child.
“What do you need our help for?” the girl asked.
“Your friend got sick and then went missing. Have you seen him back here?”
The two children looked to the boy with the bandaged elbows, who shook his head. “I don’t know where he went.”
“Did you see what happened to him? His mother told me he was playing with you when he got sick.”
Again, the boy shook his head. “I didn’t see anything like that. I just saw other kids playing on the playground.”
“How many did you see?” Maybe their descriptions would lead him to more witnesses.
He pointed to the other two children. “Both of their moms were here too.”
“You can ask them about it if you want,” the girl said.
“Where are they?” Luke asked.
“They’re just down on the bench,” the boy in the red shirt said. He pointed over the edge of the wall at one of the vacant seats surrounding the playground. After a moment he waved.
His hope for more information evaporated. “I can’t see them,” Luke said, frowning.
“You need to get your eyes checked then. They’re right there,” the girl said, waving at her invisible mother too.
If there were invisible people sitting there, they would have responded if he walked past him. Maybe they were hallucinating. Was it even possible that ghost children could hallucinate?
The thought startled him. If they were ghosts, maybe it wasn’t that they were hallucinating. Maybe they were reliving a memory.
If that was the case, there might be something more to find if he followed their lead. He said, “maybe now isn’t a good time. If you point to your house I could visit some other time.”
“Sure,” the boy in the red shirt said. He pointed again at another one of the houses bordering the grassy area next to the playground. “That’s my house.”
“My house is around the corner,” the girl said, pointing in the opposite direction of Owen’s house.
“And that’s my house,” the last boy said. He pointed to the house that was right next to Owen’s. Luke noted them mentally, reminding himself to grab the addresses from the GPS.
“Thank you, kids. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”
“Thanks!” The girl said.
As Luke stepped down the stairs, he heard the kids yelling with joy while they went down the slide. He stopped at the bottom of the slide and looked into the opening. He could hear the kids inside, but they never made it to the bottom. His best guess was they disappeared right at the point where the slide made its last left turn before hitting the ground. Lucy would be able to fit in there.
He shook his head. She might have been able to fit, but she was at school and safe. He couldn’t fit, but maybe he didn’t have to.
Luke pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Sally’s number.
“Sally? Can you patch me in to Rebbecca?”
Twenty minutes later, Rebbecca’s Honda pulled up next to Luke’s police cruiser. He had moved it around to the parking lot and made himself look busy in the driver’s seat. He didn’t think there were many people watching, but if there were, he didn’t want to scare them.
The forensic technician stepped out of her car, holding the cardboard box that she had brought from the station. Luke stepped out to meet her and said, “thanks for coming, Rebbecca.”
She smiled, no longer from behind the glasses she used at the station. “Of course, Officer Alden. I am surprised you asked me to bring this here after the fuss you made about keeping secrets.”
“Oh, we’re still keeping secrets, Rebbecca.” Luke replied.
“Which is why you asked me to bring the big glowing secret to a children’s park.” Before he could reply, she lifted two fingers from the handles in the box, shushing him. “I don’t ask questions, Officer Alden. Just tell me where to put the box.”
He gestured to the playground and the two of them walked over. Just before they hit the stairs leading up, Rebbecca said, “You’re in luck. My apartment has a stair machine.”
“I didn’t know you were exercising, Rebbecca.”
“I’m not.”
At the top of the stairs, Luke motioned for her to set the box down. After she did so, she passed him a pair of latex gloves. He had just finished pulling them on when he heard the little girl call out, “you’re back!”
“Yes, I am.” Luke said, opening the box. Inside was the glowing orb of blueish light. If these kids were connected to something similar, maybe they could identify it.
He pulled it out of the box, trying not to look at it for too long out of fear that it would make him dizzy. He turned to find all three of the children there now. Rebbecca was watching with upturned eyebrows, silent.
“What’s that?” The boy in the red shirt asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Luke said.
“Can I touch it?” Red shirt asked.
Luke considered the idea. He was confident thinking that they didn’t have hands like he did. Would they see the same things he had when he had first touched the orb? Was he prepared to pick up the pieces if this went poorly?
His thoughts turned to Lucy. She was their age. Would he let her touch the sphere, knowing what he did? Perhaps the better question was if he would he let her touch it with how much he didn’t know.
“You can touch it if you want,” Luke said. “But when I touched it, it made me feel scared.”
“How did it do that?” Spencer asked.
“I’m not sure. I think…” he hesitated. The next words would make them understand, but they would also force him to admit that what he and Officer Bradley had found was so far outside of the world they knew that it couldn’t be accommodated. Then again, he was talking to what appeared to be ghosts.
“It’s magic,” he finished.
“Woah,” the boy in the red shirt and the girl in the pink dress gaped. Spencer still looked suspicious, even more so than when he and Luke had talked.
“Does that mean you still want to touch it?”
The two nodded, but Spencer shook his head. The boy in the red shirt saw this and tapped Spencer’s shoulder. “Come on, don’t be scared!”
“But he said we would be if we touched it.”
“It won’t be so bad if we do it together,” the girl said.
Luke wasn’t sure about that and from the way that Spencer bit his lip, he didn’t seem convinced either. But something must have pushed him over the edge, because a moment later, he said, “alright.”
The three of them stretched their hands out. Luke glanced at Rebbecca. She was still wearing an expression of surprise, but she nodded in his direction. He turned back to the three children and nudged the orb in their direction. As it got closer to them, its light grew more intense and Luke had to look away. When he opened his eyes again, he saw more green light spilling out of the slide. He pushed the orb a little bit closer, closing his eyes to try and dilute the brilliance.
He heard the children gasp and then the light disappeared. Hot wind blew through the playground and when Luke opened his eyes, the sky was turning hues of purple, orange, and gold. It was too warm to be October though. Much too warm.
“Owen!” Spencer yelled.
Luke spun around, trying to find where Spencer was yelling to. The three kids were pressed against the edge of the playground. Luke and Rebbecca hurried up behind them, and they saw the form of another little boy walking across the grass to the house Luke had just visited. It was Owen.
No sooner had he identified the figure than he saw movement in the left corner of his eye. He turned and saw a man walking towards Owen. It was far enough away that Luke couldn’t make out any details besides the man’s silver hair.
It was enough. He knew, somewhere in the flash of images, was that silver hair. Which meant that the orb was from Owen, which meant—
Luke flung himself over the edge of the playground wall, landing on the rubber surface hard and then bolting towards Owen. He shouted something at the two of them, but they didn’t seem to hear. The man’s lips were moving, the only features visible underneath the long silver hair. There was a long scar running over the left side. Luke was less than a yard away from the pair when a flash of white light erupted from the man’s hidden eyes.
In an instant, the park and the surrounding houses vanished, replaced by a ring of white flames that obscured everything outside. Everything that is, except for two glowing eyes set in a face made entirely of shadow.
Pushed on by instinct, Luke charged the face, not thinking about the flames. Not remembering that he had seen this in the orb too. When he connected with the shape on the other side, his ears filled with the sound of four voices screaming and the rushing of wind.
He was back in the park now, lying facedown in the grass. There was no figure underneath him, no man with silver hair. He looked up at the playground just in time to see a shower of sparks as five orbs of light shot into the air like a firework. Each one flew through the air in a different direction, landing at the edges of the park or on the far side of the parking lot.
Once the lights hit the ground, everything was quiet. Luke realized that the sun was now where it had been in the vision of Owen’s attacker. He glanced down at his watch. It was just past six o’clock now.
He put aside the question of how so much time had passed so quickly and jogged back to the playground. Rebbecca was stepping down to the ground, the evidence box in her hand.
“More miracles,” she said.
Luke was about to tell her they needed to grab the lights before anyone could see them, but she was already walking towards the two in the parking lot. Luke pulled his phone out of his pocket and fired a quick text to Jenni.
Sorry. Work is running a bit late. I’ll be home soon.
Then he dialed the number for the parks department. This park needed to be shut down. As the phone rang, he walked up to the slide again, bending down to inspect the interior of the slide. The lambent green glow was gone.
The phone went to an answering machine and he hung up in frustration. No one would be in until tomorrow morning and he didn’t want to risk anyone else getting hurt by whatever was happening here in the meantime. He jogged back to his cruiser and grabbed a roll of yellow hazard tape. As he wrapped the openings to the park, he scrambled to think of what to tell the families who might have seen the geyser of light. They had found a leftover firework on top of the park and a stray spark had set it off, yes. That could do it.
Rebbecca had gathered four of the orbs by the time he finished with the park. He dialed Sally’s number as he walked to meet her at the last of the orbs.
“How can I help you, Officer Allen?” Sally asked.
“I need your help shutting down Serenity Park. There’s been an incident and I don’t want anyone in the park for the next little bit.”
“I’ll make sure the city knows,” Sally said. “Anything else?”
He was about to continue, but the words died in his throat as the light came into focus. This one was glowing the same butter yellow as Spencer’s shirt, and his face was reflected deep within the nexus of rotating shards.
“Officer Alden?”
“Uh… sorry Sally. I… I need you to call the families that live right next to the park. Let them know we found a firework on the playground and it went off. Tell them the park is going to be closed while we investigate.”
“Yes, Officer Alden.”
He was still staring at Spencer’s face as Rebbecca motioned it into the now crowded evidence box. “Thank you, that will be all, Sally.”
He hung up and Rebbecca placed the lid over the box.
“That was exciting,” Rebbecca said.
Luke nodded, solemn. That same feeling he had had in the station watching her first examine the orb was back, but magnified ten fold. He felt as though the sky would fall on top of him and he would suffocate under the weight of it. This was magic, magic that Owen had been involved in and that had hurt him. And somehow, Silvia had known. She had known that little piece of Owen, that piece of his fear right before he was attacked, had come from the park.
He thought of the geyser of sparks and the lights that had flown out of it. Had that happened to Owen? Had he seen the little boy’s memory of exploding as bits of himself were thrown up into the sky? It would make sense. The lines had radiated out from the park as if thrown by an explosion, though pushed to the side.
Then he remembered the x’s. The one near his home. The one he had tried to ignore.
“I need to get home,” Luke said to Rebbecca. “Take these back to the lab and I’ll see you tomorrow… please.”
Rebbecca peered at him. “You’re more pale than usual, Officer.”
He tried to offer a wan smile, but he could feel it coming across as pained.
“Get some rest,” she offered. “We’re just getting started.”