Shadow Things

XX

School was cancelled indefinitely. Offices shut down. The local news channels were flooded with reports from all over Heart City, each one accounting the details of a new daylight shadow attack. Shots of blood-smeared streets and mutilated public property filled the screen one after another. Videos of victims played in loops: injured men and women taken away on stretchers, some being treated inside nearby shops and apartment buildings. Shocked eyewitness accounts.

People died. The casualties of the first day alone was 27 and it only kept climbing higher and higher as days passed, going from 33 to 49 and peaking at 81. People were dying everywhere, the number of attacks escalating so quickly that no one even wanted to step out of their houses anymore.

They played a short speech by the mayor on the news. He sweated before a microphone while he stressed that the government was monitoring the situation, that all new developments were being analysed diligently. He promised that things could be brought under control, although there seemed to be no conviction in his words. He advised them to be patient. Do not panic. Do not step outside of their residences unless there was an emergency. Do not spread fake news. Do not attempt to leave the city. Keep calm and stay put until a solution was met.

The scariest part of the situation was that there was a no way for a human to fight off a shadow. If someone encountered a shadow on the streets it was either run or die. The only saving grace about this whole nightmare was that the shadows were short-lived. They always disappeared on their own after a brief bout of attacks, when they couldn't keep resisting the sunlight. Still, even with only that small a window for action they were always able to deal a huge amount of damage.

"It looked like the Cthulhu," said a patient on TV, sitting up in a narrow bed in Ermo, one side of his face fully masked by bandages. "It had these tentacles hanging off its head like octopus arms. It was all black and it made some kind of noise. Like teeth, I guess. I don't know. It killed two people right before my eyes."

"It was a car," said an old lady in the next video, hanging out her head from her second-floor apartment window, her arms shaking with passive fear. "There was a car down there." She pointed downwards. "Then its shadow started moving on the ground, and I thought maybe it was an earthquake. That the ground was moving and not the shadow. Then the shadow just burst out of the street." She was breathing fast, as if she were suffering from an oncoming asthma attack. "It didn't look like a car's shadow then. It had long tusks and its ribs stuck out like sticks. I was scared." She pointed again to a gap between the buildings across from her. "But it went that way and did not come back."

The cameras switched.

"Are we all going to die?" asked a girl crying, crouched beside a rack inside the supermarket, packets of food littering the floor around her. "I'm scared."

The video snapped away from her.

"I think the shadows want to migrate," said a man in a suit, sliding his round glasses up his nose. His hair was parted neatly and his clothes were without any wrinkles. He appeared way too calm, almost bored, as if it were just another day and he was headed to his drab office job. "I think the shadows are going to kill us all off. And once the population falls, they are going to move out. They have got to be sick and tired of this city. I know I am."

Felix had stopped going out of the house during the day. He had been weakened so much that he could no longer bear to be out in the sun without collapsing. Instead, he planted himself in the couch in the living room, staring at the TV screen all day long, severe-faced and unspeaking. He looked like he could freeze the sun with his gaze alone.

"Is it Griffin?" Hansel asked him, broaching the shadow boy's name cautiously. "Did he ask the shadows to attack?"

"It is likely," said Felix succinctly.