Page 4 of Shadow Man

There’s an explosion in my chest. It steals my balance away from me.Stumbling backward, I collide with another body. Hunkered down, knees drawn up to his chest; his eyes all wild and crazy like that mustang Cash broke last summer. The same red paint covers his hands and arms.

Not paint.

“Pa?”

He glances up, but I know he’s not seeing me. I’m just another ghost to him already.

“My twister made me do it, Joey,” he says, all mournful. “The voices. The damn voices.” His lips won’t stop moving as he rocks, back and forth, like a wounded animal.

No no no!

The pain train’s gathering speed inside of me, and its destination is a town called agony. This is the storm I’ve been waiting for.The madness in Pa’s fists has finally moved to his brain.

Run, Joey. Run.

The bastard won't stop moaning and crying.

The pain train smashes a hole through the walls of my heart and anger starts pouring out.

Run, Joey. Run.

Cash’s voice slams into my mind again, but my father’s crazy is too busy overtaking my own mouth. “You’re a thief, Pa!” I scream at him, my scrawny twelve-year-old body towering over his crumpled six-two. “You’re a dirty, bastardy thief! It was Cash’s twister to ride outta here, not yours, and you stole it from him! You stole it from him!”

Pa blinks twice, and then his chanting stops. That’s when I find I ain’t so angry anymore.

“My twister’s coming for you too now, boy.” His thin lips curl into a snarl. “Better hide from it while you still can.”

He lunges for my foot and I go down like a sack of shit. The back of my head smacks into the floor, and everything goes fuzzy.

“Stop, Pa!” Steel fingers close around my ankle, dragging me out onto the porch after him. He pulls so hard and fast, my T-shirt catches on the doorframe, ripping it up and leaving my belly exposed.

“Those damn voices,” I hear him muttering again, and with his other hand he reaches down for his shotgun.

Terror explodes in my veins—not the same fear that I keep locked away inside of myself, but one that’s real and present.Those holes in my heart are letting everything out.

Rocking sideways, I feel his grip on me loosen. Kicking out, I manage to drive him backward away from me and onto his knees.

Flying from the porch, I smack my hip on the broken railing at the bottom of the steps, and then I'm cannoning off the hood of his dirty Ford. The pain drags at me all over, but I don’t stop running. The open door of the barn is beckoning to me like Ma’s embrace.Don't think about Ma’s head.

Behind me, I can hear theclink clinkas Pa reloads his shotgun with a couple of the loose shells from the porch floor.

“You can't hide from me, boy! I’m the motherfucking twister, remember?”

I hurl myself into the darkness, the sweet scent of straw blasting into my senses as his first shot splinters the wood next to me.Crying out Cash’s name, I lose my footing again, throwing myself down behind the same stack of bales we were sitting on earlier. My shaking fingers find his cigarette butt, and I hold it close to me like a talisman.

Don’t think about the red pool leaking out from underneath him.

Clink clink.

Pa’s in the doorway. He’s staggering around, drunk on something far worse than whiskey. He fires two more shots above my hiding place, blowing holes in the back wall and inviting the rest of the world into my horror.

I whimper into the floor.

Time stretches and sags.

Wax drips.

His footsteps shuffle closer.

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