Shadow Casting - Paul Kane

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had the money now, and it would really help him out (his flashy cars and dinners a front for covering how badly he’d got into debt). Selling the family business wasn’t asking too much, was it? Her father had been the one hanging on to the past, why should she?

      So she’d done it, even though she was doing other things behind his back (he could talk), hiring that P.I. for example. Audrey had sold up because she loved him.

      The scrap business scrapped, Ted bailed out.

      He saw the horse’s feet now, pulling up outside, the cart behind. And from this angle, Ted could also see the boots when they jumped down—big, hobnailed ones, crunching the gravel around the back of the house. A faint whistle drifted down into the cellar, echoing throughout.

      Audrey pulled back, waving a hand and inviting the newcomer in. The larger figure descended. Bulky, wearing some kind of long coat, he also sported a cap that was pulled down low on his head. His frame virtually blocked out any light from above, leaving the figure in silhouette as he glanced at Audrey—awaiting orders, it seemed. She pointed to the bodies and the man nodded, stomping over to the first. He hefted it onto his shoulder like it weighed nothing, whistling happily.

      So that was the plan? thought Ted. Get this bastard to dispose of the evidence of Audrey’s sick and twisted exploits? He said nothing as, one by one, the corpses were carried up the steps and—though he couldn’t see properly—he assumed, dumped into whatever cart was up there. Why a cart, he had no idea. Why not a van or truck? Was he some kind of purist or something? Not even Frank had been that bad.

      Frank ... Ted thought about the old man now, and about what he’d done.

      He shook his head; there wasn’t time for that. He was in real trouble. As the last of the women were carried and loaded up, Audrey pointed towards Ted. She obviously couldn’t bring herself to do anything to her lover. Instead, she’d shown him what she’d done to his “whores” and was now leaving Ted to the attentions of this nutter. He didn’t know which was worse. At least he might stand a chance of talking Audrey round. Possibly. Maybe.

      But there was no chance of that now, because the collector was next to him, whistling, shouldering Ted and cutting the rope attached to the ceiling. Ted groaned as he was given the fireman’s lift, the rotten stench of the man like garbage. It was only when he was being carried that Ted noticed the shabby clothes the guy was wearing, the state of the coat not dissimilar to the dress of Audrey’s victims; trousers scuffed and tatty.

      Then Ted was being hauled up into the night air. He tried to struggle, but again it was either the position he’d been in or the after-effects of the drugs that prevented him—he had hardly any strength at all. So, when he was thrown in the back of that cart, an old-fashioned wooden one just like those Frank had described, he couldn’t fight back. “Audrey?” he just about managed, as the Rag and Bone man left him, skirting round to the driver’s seat at the front.

      But Ted’s fiancée simply stared after them. Then, as the transportation set off, Ted saw her retreat back down into the cellar—no doubt to clean up—leaving him to his fate.

      The ride wasn’t a comfortable one. Apart from the stench, some of it from the bodies, most of it from the cart and the man driving it, there were the jolts as it went over rocks or uneven terrain. On one particular bump, Ted found himself rolling over to face a girl who’d had her eyes plucked out, the black sockets staring back at him (what had been her name? Jackie, Debra, Sandra? Who the Hell knew?). He couldn’t even muster a scream and was thankful when the next jolt came and righted him again. They seemed to be travelling quite fast though, hardly enough time for Ted to worry about where this guy would be dumping them: burying them in a wood, weighing them down in a lake perhaps? In a deserted quarry?

      He was wrong on all counts, because when the cart eventually arrived at its destination, the Rag and Bone Man had returned to his home (one of Audrey’s dad’s old places perhaps? Had this bloke bought it?). Ted took in the yard when they rode through the gates—a typical scrap merchant’s, with bits of old bicycles, worn out beds, washing machines and every other bit of discarded detritus you could imagine piled on every side. It wouldn’t be hard to lose a few bodies in that lot. The perfect place, in fact.

      The man pulled his horses to a standstill and clambered down. The moon was slipping behind a cloud so Ted still couldn’t get a good look at the man’s face as he began to unload the contents of his cart. He needed to see him, for when he got away—he’d need to describe him to the police. Audrey first. Then this guy. The cops would throw the book at them both!

      (Oh yes, and what happens when they go digging around in your past? What happens when they find out about Frank?)

      The huge figure began picking up the corpses again, putting them over his shoulder. He whistled once more as he worked, which made what he was doing all the more disturbing. He tossed them on the heaps of rubbish as if he was flinging old tyres.

      Ted tried to twist away, to get his legs and arms moving, to climb out and get free of this place. Run, find a phone and—

      But he was going nowhere. They were down to the last few women in the cart, which didn’t take the man long to clear.

      “Look ... Hey, I have money,” Ted managed. (Oh yeah, whose?)

      The man ignored him, heaving the last of the scrawny bodies onto a pile of trash.

      He turned and began making his way back towards Ted.

      “Can’t we at least talk about it, please?”

      “Help me. P-Please!” The words of that woman back in the cellar rattled around in his head.

      The man was drawing nearer. “Please, I don’t want to die!” shouted Ted, with more force than he’d been able to muster since he woke.

      His captor paused then, lingering as if mulling something over. Then he began to walk off to one side.

      Yes! I’ve got through to him, thought Ted. Maybe I should offer him some money again? He frowned, though, as he watched the man rooting around in the rubbish there, fishing something out. As the large figure turned, Ted saw he was holding up a cracked mirror.

      And, as the guy came back, the moon passed from behind those clouds at the same time as the Rag and Bone Man raised his head. Ted just about had time to register those features—and realise just how appropriate his name was—before the mirror was lifted.

      Then it all fell into place. Flashes of the man’s face, so similar to Frank’s, something he himself had inherited through a bloodline and profession that went back so far. (A lot of people think that Rag and Bone men only go back a couple of hundred years, but some say it’s further. To the middle ages, or maybe even before that ...) A trade plied during plague times, when they would carry the dead away from infected areas? You don’t, you can’t, do something like that without being granted some kind of immunity by Death himself. They were His helpers, in effect: some even changing to resemble their master.

      The rags and bones, all that was left of the dead, were collected by them. By people who were little more than rags and bones themselves. It was a bloodline that had been broken when Ted came along—not simply persuading Audrey to sell up, but engineering the little “accident” that would take Frank’s life and provide the means for her to do so. Frank was an old man, his heart weak: it wasn’t that hard to sneak inside the house and give him a little ... scare.

      Just like Ted was scared now. Because not only was he seeing something he really didn’t want to in the mirror, he was also remembering. That it hadn’t been the first time he’d woken up back there in the cellar, that Audrey had already done things to him which made the others look like she was just getting started. Pain so intense he’d blocked it out, kept alive—barely—while he watched her cut up the women.

      But not kept alive long enough.

      The image, the face—or what was left of it—staring back at Ted was barely recognisable as his own. It had been shredded, along with the rest of him: skin flayed from his body so that you couldn’t tell where his clothes ended and his flesh

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