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I Miss Shadowlings
Written By: Karen Stahl
Fiction
I know we had a protocol for this. It's just, they'd said the drills were for hypothetical threats. We were supposed to be ready for any crazy thing that came our way. Like this was just supposed to be an example of one thing we could face, not that it was real. It's why no one took them seriously. And this all got so out of control so fast, so we-
From the beginning. Okay.
(Sigh)
So... the start of my shift, or-
When I first saw them.
Alright.
I was on patrol. Chatter was streaming out of the radio at my breast. Nothing important, I guessed, and with hindsight I was probably right. I think I was the first to see anything.
God... it could've been anyone else. I could've gone that whole shift completely unaware. I hear Bowchief-
Sorry.
You seen the maintenance tunnels? There's no lighting in there. Meant to conserve station power in case of an engine failure, because the only people who are expected to be in maintenance are engineering staff, who have helmet lights anyway. Security has flashlights too, though, because maintenance is so secret that it's where all the crime tends to flow to.
Crime... against space law and against nature alike. So I'm at this T-junction, alright, coming up on the intersection, and there's this glowing red... flash. This red light crossing the intersection, way too fast, dead silent. At least I think it was silent. There could have been some really quiet noise, but I drowned it out with a gasp.
And then there's a moment of tension. Like... if whatever that was was a person - no way it was a person, mind you, people don't move that fast without me hearing them - then they heard me. And I was right. That... thing... what do you call them?
Eugh. Fits them too well.
(Pause)
It came back for me.
(Pause)
I'm sorry. I need a moment. It's... you've got to understand. In the moment, it was nothing like...
Okay.
Dead silent, again, that light came back for me. And it stops at the junction, and with me just standing there, sweating in my boots, my grip on my flashlight slipping, it... turns. And then there's two lights.
Eyes.
I couldn't see the body. It was too dark for that. I don't know when my flashlight went out. For all I knew there was no body. Just these eyes, and going back to that moment, I have no idea, no idea at all, why I didn't do anything, grab my gun, anything. Just looking at the eyes, sir... it was unnatural. Something had me in a trance. I think I felt my throat closing up, I could barely breathe. I don't know if I was terrified or if this was the start of that... process... the thing they did to everyone else.
No. Sir I need to describe this in full detail. A clinical perspective doesn't capture what happened. It doesn't explain a bloody thing.
I... I wish I knew who came in after me. It was a complete accident, but they saved me. I'd give anything to thank them. But they're gone. What happened was, the airlock behind me opened up to let them in, and from nowhere in particular there came this screeching as the light came in as well. Then the eyes were gone, and that's the last I remember of it. I hear I collapsed.
No, they didn't move. They just vanished on the spot.
It doesn't matter if it lines up with your reports or not, that's what I remember and you can't change it.
Sir, with all respect, I was on the bleeding edge of unconsciousness. I couldn't possibly tell you whether or not it blinked. The eyes disappeared and I was out.
Yes. I didn't see anything for a while after that. I woke up pretty quickly, I think while I was still on the way to the medbay. I felt fine, just hazy. I didn't fully remember what happened until later. The doctors checked me out, and sent me on my way.
One of them wore a mask, yes. Surgical mask.
Maybe. It was early on still. I don't remember seeing him again after.
My next encounter was a good half-hour later. Reports were coming in fairly frequently of crewmen seemingly forgetting their pasts, putting on masks to cover deformities that they didn't have at shift start. Lights were going out, some of them looked smashed, others were simply removed from their fixtures. Some just stopped working. Engineering was stumped, and swamped with work.
Yeah. I can see them being the first to go. They had to work in the darkness to replace the lights.
(Pause)
I keep doing it, but I really don't want to imagine what that's like. When they take you.
Enthrall... there you are again with the painfully accurate names. They were thralls. Slaves. Nothing mattered to them anymore but those bloody aliens.
So there I was, blissfully unaware of what I'd seen in the tunnels, on the beat in the regular hallways. Most of my path was well-lit at the time. It started when I saw a man, bartender's uniform, wearing a gas mask, unscrewing a light tube from the wall. Standing orders were to arrest anyone I caught sabotaging the lights, for questioning. I shouted at him, and he just looked at me, and slammed the tube with his fist. It shattered and drew blood, but he had shadows to duck into now. I tried to chase him, tried to turn on my light but it didn't work. There was only this little spot of darkness now, he'd only taken out the one light out of all of 'em in the hall, but I still lost him in it.
Yeah, I'm sure he was just a man. Over the course of the shift, I saw all three of them, the things, the uh... shadowlings. None of them had his uniform.
That's all I can say.
There was that flash of red light again, and they didn't even turn to me and I was already in a blind panic. It all came back to me at once, then. I didn't want it to look at me. I don't do fight or flight. I fight. I got my gun, raised it, fired. The muzzle flash was muted, I remember. And the bullet, far as I could tell, didn't do a thing. I saw it starting to turn. I screamed, emptied my clip into the red. Eyes. Radio blazing with questions. Ears ringing. The thing screamed back, the eyes got closer, I fumbled for another clip. Shot after shot into that dark spot. It was retreating. I felt that trance coming on again, I tried my hardest not to let it in. I think I only made it because the shots were throwing the thing off.
Think I went through four whole mags. I carry a lot of ammo. Eventually, it just... jerked to the side. Right into where there was supposed to be a wall, a wall I couldn't see in the dark. I saw the eyes in the wall, then they turned away. And that was it.
There were tears in my eyes. I felt lightheaded. I didn't want to, but I kept peering in that shadow for the bartender for a while after. Never turned anything up.
I eventually thought to respond to the radio. People heard me screaming, heard the shots, heard my breaths coming in hard, weren't sure why I wasn't talking. I told them what happened, and they went quiet. I stayed quiet too. The warden called us to meet. All that happened was they listened to me tell them what I saw again. I mean... they tried to. I was hysterical. I remembered what they did to me that first time, I still felt echoes of whatever that stare had made me feel. I felt helpless. Something was here. It was evil, and it wasn't going away, and I couldn't shoot it down. And all it had to do was look me in the eyes. And it lived in the dark. And people were taking out the lights. And we were all here, having a meeting instead of stopping the people taking out the lights.
I think that last part was all I got through to them.
I had a lot of encounters like that. I went through a lot of bullets. I put on a dark pair of shades because I didn't want to look the things in the eyes. I didn't see them every time, mostly I was just dealing with the lightbreakers. Thralls. At the time, they were lightbreakers Didn't have to shoot them, they weren't violent. Just always removing lights. Always masked. Never said a word to us when I took them in, if I took them in, some just vanished into the dark exactly like the bartender did.
When we took off the masks...
First thrall I arrested was this woman. I'd always considered her rather pretty before. Personality was forgettable, but her face could really catch the breath. She had a gas mask too. She squirmed in her cuffs as I took it off, like she really wanted to stop my hand, and when I got it off, what I saw - I could barely recognize it. This wasn't the same woman at all. Her eyes were wild and bulging and pale. Her skin was taut and drawn, I could see the bones trying to poke through. Didn't make a sound, just stared at me, stopped her writhing once the mask was off. I tossed her in a cell and tried to forget. I'd already seen a lot that day, but if it weren't for everything else, that face would have been what I had nightmares about.
That was how I spent the next hour. Sometimes I saw people fine one time, then found them later in my patrol, masked and tugging at lightbulbs. The halls were going dark. I eventually got my flashlight replaced. The whole force was on this now, all ten of us, and some of them were starting to report seeing the monsters... some were cut off during their reports. One, I saw again, masked like the rest. He didn't respond to his own name anymore.
It was a losing fight. I stopped seeing engineers rushing around to replace the lights. I saw the lightbreakers more and more. I had to have my light on all the time, I saw flashes of red darting across halls that used to be bright and safe. They didn't stop for me anymore. The lightbreakers were starting to resist arrest. They seemed to see fine in the dark, they didn't carry lights of their own. They started rushing me the minute they saw me, some carrying an improvised weapon, some with their bare fists. Not one of them stopped for the gun. They were swinging to kill. I started having to shoot people down. I didn't think about it. I gave up trying to get them to the medbay when the lights went out in there too.
Ammo was running down and the radio was going silent. I had one officer left who still replied to my voice. Lafortune. Forensics. Took it upon herself to join the patrol when our manpower started to drain hard. Just ignored the chief, got her .38, told him he'd soon be eating his words, and walked out to the sounds of her losing her job. By this point, the chief had gone, too.
So we joined up. Buddy cops among blood, bodies and the blackness. We didn't see anyone without a mask anymore. We heard screeches in the dark, when we saw lights they were always damaged, dim, flickering, and sometimes they went out right in front of us.
None of this made any sense. Aliens made their way on board from time to time. Sometimes they were hostile, sometimes they were monstrous. They were easily controlled, though. Tasers, stunbatons and gunshots stopped anything. Not these. The darkness made them invincible, and their - thralls - they brought the darkness everywhere.
Without Lafortune I'm sure they would have gotten me eventually. But she had the idea to set up, make a stand. I didn't want to, but she didn&'t listen. She dragged me to the brig, disemboweled a filing cabinet in her office, scattered the papers everywhere. Lit up a cigarette, and then lit up the paper.
"They're all hunting the lights. The aliens, the people. They're scared, for now, to attack head-on. To take a bunch of losses in a fight just to have us escape. Once we have no lights to run to, they'll finally come for us."
She took off my shades. "Won't help. Doesn't matter how clearly you see their eyes. Keep them off so you can see in the dark better."
I heard several footsteps outside, saw a theatre mask lean into the firelight, stare through the window, and back out.
"They're communicating without speaking. I don't think there's a distance restriction. They all coordinate telepathically."
Three glowing red lights streaking past the window, to the door.
"The aliens lead them. Now that they're all here, the attack isn't far."
"The people don't mind the light, but it hurts the aliens more than any gun. Remember that."
"Don't treat the people like people. They don't remember anything about their old life. It's all about the aliens now. They're husks."
"Remember your earplugs. They'll keep rushing us until they go down."
I don't know how she figured all this out, but she was right about all of it. They kicked the door in before the fires even fully caught.
(Pause)
They'd taken their masks off. They were deformed, but I recognized most of them. I'm sure it was on purpose, to make me hesitate. I didn't, though.
(Pause)
I don't remember much in detail. I didn't want to focus on anything but aiming my shots right. I remember it was cold in there, despite being shut in with the flames and smoke. I remember Lafortune never stopped firing, even though she had a revolver. Maybe she handled the reloads well. I...
(Pause)
We barely missed any shots, but we still had to reload. That's not how firefights are supposed to go. It was a massacre. The monsters, the shadowlings, screamed outside, but the lightbreakers, the thralls, didn't make a sound. I saw the monsters' eyes out the window, out of the corner of my eye. I was drawn to them, I could barely focus on my shooting. I knew I couldn't look. I just kept going. The whole crew. Almost the whole crew. I heard after that some had managed to hide through it all, but it felt like everyone. Every face I recognized. Bam. Down. Facefirst in this inky smoke curling in between their feet. Some of them got back up, I put them down again. I don't know how I did it.
But, years later, they stopped coming. Most had never quite made it through the doorframe.
I still saw the faint crimson glow outside the window, still heard high-pitched screeching and hissing outside. Our victims sometimes twitched or started crawling again, sometimes back outside, sometimes toward us. I only shot the ones who came for us. Lafortune attacked all of them that moved.
I can't say whether or not there's any justice to dispense, sir. Were they even still human? It was certainly self-defense, at least. The ones that retreated... we probably just going recuperate and come back again.
No. They all wanted us dead. Don't make me think they were innocent, I'm going to be sick.
The aliens... right. They just sat outside. They were waiting out the fire, she said. She kept dumping things into it. Rescue would come eventually. And thank god it brought floodlights.
They left well before the response team reached the office. Maybe they still had people out there, scouting for trouble. I guess they heard the warnings and fled into the dark.
I'm sure they're still there. The repair and cleanup teams may not have reported anything. But the monsters, they're everywhere that you can't see. They're waiting for us to let our guard down.
I'll take reassignment. But I'm not going back to that station.
Another untitled story I decided to share while I waited for a new idea to pop into my head.
Karen Stahl
From the beginning. Okay.
(Sigh)
So... the start of my shift, or-
When I first saw them.
Alright.
I was on patrol. Chatter was streaming out of the radio at my breast. Nothing important, I guessed, and with hindsight I was probably right. I think I was the first to see anything.
God... it could've been anyone else. I could've gone that whole shift completely unaware. I hear Bowchief-
Sorry.
You seen the maintenance tunnels? There's no lighting in there. Meant to conserve station power in case of an engine failure, because the only people who are expected to be in maintenance are engineering staff, who have helmet lights anyway. Security has flashlights too, though, because maintenance is so secret that it's where all the crime tends to flow to.
Crime... against space law and against nature alike. So I'm at this T-junction, alright, coming up on the intersection, and there's this glowing red... flash. This red light crossing the intersection, way too fast, dead silent. At least I think it was silent. There could have been some really quiet noise, but I drowned it out with a gasp.
And then there's a moment of tension. Like... if whatever that was was a person - no way it was a person, mind you, people don't move that fast without me hearing them - then they heard me. And I was right. That... thing... what do you call them?
Eugh. Fits them too well.
(Pause)
It came back for me.
(Pause)
I'm sorry. I need a moment. It's... you've got to understand. In the moment, it was nothing like...
Okay.
Dead silent, again, that light came back for me. And it stops at the junction, and with me just standing there, sweating in my boots, my grip on my flashlight slipping, it... turns. And then there's two lights.
Eyes.
I couldn't see the body. It was too dark for that. I don't know when my flashlight went out. For all I knew there was no body. Just these eyes, and going back to that moment, I have no idea, no idea at all, why I didn't do anything, grab my gun, anything. Just looking at the eyes, sir... it was unnatural. Something had me in a trance. I think I felt my throat closing up, I could barely breathe. I don't know if I was terrified or if this was the start of that... process... the thing they did to everyone else.
No. Sir I need to describe this in full detail. A clinical perspective doesn't capture what happened. It doesn't explain a bloody thing.
I... I wish I knew who came in after me. It was a complete accident, but they saved me. I'd give anything to thank them. But they're gone. What happened was, the airlock behind me opened up to let them in, and from nowhere in particular there came this screeching as the light came in as well. Then the eyes were gone, and that's the last I remember of it. I hear I collapsed.
No, they didn't move. They just vanished on the spot.
It doesn't matter if it lines up with your reports or not, that's what I remember and you can't change it.
Sir, with all respect, I was on the bleeding edge of unconsciousness. I couldn't possibly tell you whether or not it blinked. The eyes disappeared and I was out.
Yes. I didn't see anything for a while after that. I woke up pretty quickly, I think while I was still on the way to the medbay. I felt fine, just hazy. I didn't fully remember what happened until later. The doctors checked me out, and sent me on my way.
One of them wore a mask, yes. Surgical mask.
Maybe. It was early on still. I don't remember seeing him again after.
My next encounter was a good half-hour later. Reports were coming in fairly frequently of crewmen seemingly forgetting their pasts, putting on masks to cover deformities that they didn't have at shift start. Lights were going out, some of them looked smashed, others were simply removed from their fixtures. Some just stopped working. Engineering was stumped, and swamped with work.
Yeah. I can see them being the first to go. They had to work in the darkness to replace the lights.
(Pause)
I keep doing it, but I really don't want to imagine what that's like. When they take you.
Enthrall... there you are again with the painfully accurate names. They were thralls. Slaves. Nothing mattered to them anymore but those bloody aliens.
So there I was, blissfully unaware of what I'd seen in the tunnels, on the beat in the regular hallways. Most of my path was well-lit at the time. It started when I saw a man, bartender's uniform, wearing a gas mask, unscrewing a light tube from the wall. Standing orders were to arrest anyone I caught sabotaging the lights, for questioning. I shouted at him, and he just looked at me, and slammed the tube with his fist. It shattered and drew blood, but he had shadows to duck into now. I tried to chase him, tried to turn on my light but it didn't work. There was only this little spot of darkness now, he'd only taken out the one light out of all of 'em in the hall, but I still lost him in it.
Yeah, I'm sure he was just a man. Over the course of the shift, I saw all three of them, the things, the uh... shadowlings. None of them had his uniform.
That's all I can say.
There was that flash of red light again, and they didn't even turn to me and I was already in a blind panic. It all came back to me at once, then. I didn't want it to look at me. I don't do fight or flight. I fight. I got my gun, raised it, fired. The muzzle flash was muted, I remember. And the bullet, far as I could tell, didn't do a thing. I saw it starting to turn. I screamed, emptied my clip into the red. Eyes. Radio blazing with questions. Ears ringing. The thing screamed back, the eyes got closer, I fumbled for another clip. Shot after shot into that dark spot. It was retreating. I felt that trance coming on again, I tried my hardest not to let it in. I think I only made it because the shots were throwing the thing off.
Think I went through four whole mags. I carry a lot of ammo. Eventually, it just... jerked to the side. Right into where there was supposed to be a wall, a wall I couldn't see in the dark. I saw the eyes in the wall, then they turned away. And that was it.
There were tears in my eyes. I felt lightheaded. I didn't want to, but I kept peering in that shadow for the bartender for a while after. Never turned anything up.
I eventually thought to respond to the radio. People heard me screaming, heard the shots, heard my breaths coming in hard, weren't sure why I wasn't talking. I told them what happened, and they went quiet. I stayed quiet too. The warden called us to meet. All that happened was they listened to me tell them what I saw again. I mean... they tried to. I was hysterical. I remembered what they did to me that first time, I still felt echoes of whatever that stare had made me feel. I felt helpless. Something was here. It was evil, and it wasn't going away, and I couldn't shoot it down. And all it had to do was look me in the eyes. And it lived in the dark. And people were taking out the lights. And we were all here, having a meeting instead of stopping the people taking out the lights.
I think that last part was all I got through to them.
I had a lot of encounters like that. I went through a lot of bullets. I put on a dark pair of shades because I didn't want to look the things in the eyes. I didn't see them every time, mostly I was just dealing with the lightbreakers. Thralls. At the time, they were lightbreakers Didn't have to shoot them, they weren't violent. Just always removing lights. Always masked. Never said a word to us when I took them in, if I took them in, some just vanished into the dark exactly like the bartender did.
When we took off the masks...
First thrall I arrested was this woman. I'd always considered her rather pretty before. Personality was forgettable, but her face could really catch the breath. She had a gas mask too. She squirmed in her cuffs as I took it off, like she really wanted to stop my hand, and when I got it off, what I saw - I could barely recognize it. This wasn't the same woman at all. Her eyes were wild and bulging and pale. Her skin was taut and drawn, I could see the bones trying to poke through. Didn't make a sound, just stared at me, stopped her writhing once the mask was off. I tossed her in a cell and tried to forget. I'd already seen a lot that day, but if it weren't for everything else, that face would have been what I had nightmares about.
That was how I spent the next hour. Sometimes I saw people fine one time, then found them later in my patrol, masked and tugging at lightbulbs. The halls were going dark. I eventually got my flashlight replaced. The whole force was on this now, all ten of us, and some of them were starting to report seeing the monsters... some were cut off during their reports. One, I saw again, masked like the rest. He didn't respond to his own name anymore.
It was a losing fight. I stopped seeing engineers rushing around to replace the lights. I saw the lightbreakers more and more. I had to have my light on all the time, I saw flashes of red darting across halls that used to be bright and safe. They didn't stop for me anymore. The lightbreakers were starting to resist arrest. They seemed to see fine in the dark, they didn't carry lights of their own. They started rushing me the minute they saw me, some carrying an improvised weapon, some with their bare fists. Not one of them stopped for the gun. They were swinging to kill. I started having to shoot people down. I didn't think about it. I gave up trying to get them to the medbay when the lights went out in there too.
Ammo was running down and the radio was going silent. I had one officer left who still replied to my voice. Lafortune. Forensics. Took it upon herself to join the patrol when our manpower started to drain hard. Just ignored the chief, got her .38, told him he'd soon be eating his words, and walked out to the sounds of her losing her job. By this point, the chief had gone, too.
So we joined up. Buddy cops among blood, bodies and the blackness. We didn't see anyone without a mask anymore. We heard screeches in the dark, when we saw lights they were always damaged, dim, flickering, and sometimes they went out right in front of us.
None of this made any sense. Aliens made their way on board from time to time. Sometimes they were hostile, sometimes they were monstrous. They were easily controlled, though. Tasers, stunbatons and gunshots stopped anything. Not these. The darkness made them invincible, and their - thralls - they brought the darkness everywhere.
Without Lafortune I'm sure they would have gotten me eventually. But she had the idea to set up, make a stand. I didn't want to, but she didn&'t listen. She dragged me to the brig, disemboweled a filing cabinet in her office, scattered the papers everywhere. Lit up a cigarette, and then lit up the paper.
"They're all hunting the lights. The aliens, the people. They're scared, for now, to attack head-on. To take a bunch of losses in a fight just to have us escape. Once we have no lights to run to, they'll finally come for us."
She took off my shades. "Won't help. Doesn't matter how clearly you see their eyes. Keep them off so you can see in the dark better."
I heard several footsteps outside, saw a theatre mask lean into the firelight, stare through the window, and back out.
"They're communicating without speaking. I don't think there's a distance restriction. They all coordinate telepathically."
Three glowing red lights streaking past the window, to the door.
"The aliens lead them. Now that they're all here, the attack isn't far."
"The people don't mind the light, but it hurts the aliens more than any gun. Remember that."
"Don't treat the people like people. They don't remember anything about their old life. It's all about the aliens now. They're husks."
"Remember your earplugs. They'll keep rushing us until they go down."
I don't know how she figured all this out, but she was right about all of it. They kicked the door in before the fires even fully caught.
(Pause)
They'd taken their masks off. They were deformed, but I recognized most of them. I'm sure it was on purpose, to make me hesitate. I didn't, though.
(Pause)
I don't remember much in detail. I didn't want to focus on anything but aiming my shots right. I remember it was cold in there, despite being shut in with the flames and smoke. I remember Lafortune never stopped firing, even though she had a revolver. Maybe she handled the reloads well. I...
(Pause)
We barely missed any shots, but we still had to reload. That's not how firefights are supposed to go. It was a massacre. The monsters, the shadowlings, screamed outside, but the lightbreakers, the thralls, didn't make a sound. I saw the monsters' eyes out the window, out of the corner of my eye. I was drawn to them, I could barely focus on my shooting. I knew I couldn't look. I just kept going. The whole crew. Almost the whole crew. I heard after that some had managed to hide through it all, but it felt like everyone. Every face I recognized. Bam. Down. Facefirst in this inky smoke curling in between their feet. Some of them got back up, I put them down again. I don't know how I did it.
But, years later, they stopped coming. Most had never quite made it through the doorframe.
I still saw the faint crimson glow outside the window, still heard high-pitched screeching and hissing outside. Our victims sometimes twitched or started crawling again, sometimes back outside, sometimes toward us. I only shot the ones who came for us. Lafortune attacked all of them that moved.
I can't say whether or not there's any justice to dispense, sir. Were they even still human? It was certainly self-defense, at least. The ones that retreated... we probably just going recuperate and come back again.
No. They all wanted us dead. Don't make me think they were innocent, I'm going to be sick.
The aliens... right. They just sat outside. They were waiting out the fire, she said. She kept dumping things into it. Rescue would come eventually. And thank god it brought floodlights.
They left well before the response team reached the office. Maybe they still had people out there, scouting for trouble. I guess they heard the warnings and fled into the dark.
I'm sure they're still there. The repair and cleanup teams may not have reported anything. But the monsters, they're everywhere that you can't see. They're waiting for us to let our guard down.
I'll take reassignment. But I'm not going back to that station.
Another untitled story I decided to share while I waited for a new idea to pop into my head.
Karen Stahl