Dark Side of the Shadows

By W. Totten Reynolds

DARK SIDE OF THE SHADOWS is a collection of six thrilling, compelling and provocative tales of suspense, mystery and the supernatural. WARNING: If you summon the courage to enter the realm of the DARK SIDE OF THE SHADOWS, be prepared to encounter your own dark alter ego during your journey!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543981223

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by W. Totten Reynolds

All Rights Reserved

ISBN (Print): 978-1-54398-121-6

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-54398-122-3

For Katherine, Emily and Billy

Contents

The Seed Sorter

The Remaindermen

The Empath

Reverberation

Damocles

The Canopy

The Seed Sorter

A lovely young expectant mother screams out in agonizing pain, as she’s about to give birth in a dilapidated shack, located in America’s rural coastal South in the early 1980s’. The sound of her unborn baby’s heartbeat resonates against her screams, in an almost syncopated fashion.

A trusted black midwife named Rachel removes her rusty old stethoscope from the woman’s swollen abdomen, then gently strokes her patient’s soaking wet forehead and says, honey, I’s sorry, it’s gonna’ take some time, you needs to be real strong.

The young woman grabs Rachel’s hand with a grip so firm that she recoils in distress. Rachel exclaims, do you wants me to get the doctor or your man? Her patient screams out, no doctor, no man…you hear? Rachel’s very elderly grandmother who is standing close by, whispers into her granddaughter’s ear, it be a breech-born girl child. Rachel smiles, sweetly kisses her grandmother on her forehead and says, grandma, you can’t know that for sure.

The feisty grandmother steps back, begins laughing and starts shaking a small leather bag full of human bone fragments in front of Rachel’s face. She says, these bones never lie, this baby girl she be smart, she be beautiful, but her mama’s love alone sure ain’t gonna’ protect her much.

Rachel dismissively shoos her grandmother out of the shack. With cane in hand, the old woman slowly walks out onto the nearby beach and struggles fitfully to sit down on the hard and very compacted sand. Then, while securely holding her precious bag of bones close to her heart, she starts rocking her body back and forth while chanting in a low rhythmic tone.

Moments later, she drops the contents of the bag onto the sand and the bone fragments form an ominous pattern that greatly distresses her. She never informs her granddaughter about her puzzling visions of a powerful but unknown male presence in the pattern.

In a busy modern reproductive health clinic in present day suburban Los Angeles, the blurred image of a sonogram slowly comes into focus on a monitor screen, accompanied by the familiar sounds of another unborn baby’s heartbeat.

Squeals of unmitigated joy and delight triumphantly emerge from the expectant parents Paula and Drew Price. In tears, they both loudly exclaim in unison, oh my God, oh my God…thank you…thank you so much Sam!

Thirty something OB-GYN and superstar fertility specialist Dr. Samantha (Sam) Bradley hugs both of the Prices and proudly proclaims, I told you we’d make it happen. Sam looks closely at the monitor, carefully checks its steady stream of positive electronic data and confidently exclaims, the baby’s heartbeat is strong, everything looks normal…we’ve definitely got a keeper.

Since the proud parents had specifically expressed a desire that they didn’t want to be advised of their baby’s sex and to cover all possibilities, Drew gleefully passes out blue and pink bubblegum cigars to all of the clinic employees present. Everyone agrees this remarkable pregnancy represents a true medical miracle.

Sam reminds Paula to continue to take all of her prescribed medications, vitamins and supplements and tells her, please remember you’ll really need to try and avoid stressful situations and activities. An exhausted Sam shoos her excited patients out of the office but immediately follows them out the front door of the clinic to happily wave them good bye.

Only a few hours later, Sam stands partially dressed, facing a full-length mirror in the darkened bedroom of her luxury condo. She holds a cellphone off to the side in one hand and begins stroking her exquisitely beautiful body with the other.

She pridefully whispers to herself, you’ve still got it babe…I’d say at least a strong 9. As she continues to proudly gaze into the mirror, she blissfully closes her eyes for just an instant. When she opens them she observes what appears to be the hazy reflection of the discolored and scabby hands of an otherwise unseen man, as they grasp both of her shoulders from behind.

She screams out in fear just as her cellphone rings and the illusory image of the man’s hands slowly fades away. In a complete rage, she throws the still ringing phone at the mirror and they both immediately shatter. Stupid…stupid, she mutters to herself, as she walks barefoot across the room towards her bathroom shower, carefully avoiding the jagged shards of mirror glass on her carpet.

After her exceedingly long shower, Sam sits on the edge of her bed in her bathrobe, dries her hair and activates her home phone answering machine. She starts listening to a series of heartbreaking messages from an obviously terrified young girl named Edie. "Sam, it’s Edie, I thought you were at home and need to talk to you right away. I finally told that asshole Duwayne I was out for good, no more tricking and he said he’s coming over. Sam he’s really pissed off this time and thinks I know way too much about what he and his homies are plannin’ and says he’s gonna’ hurt me. I know he’ll kill me if I call 911…please pick up!"

The first message abruptly clicks off and the second begins, oh God, please pick up if you’re there…please! After a painfully long pause, the second message also clicks off.

Now in an absolute panic, Sam tearfully listens to the third now whispered message, Sam, I’ll try your cell again…I’m sorry I left without telling you…oh God, all I want to do is come back home. The sounds of glass breaking are heard in the background along with the sounds of Edie’s screams. The tiny helpless voice on the other end of the phone simply says, I love you Sam… please forgive me.

Edie’s voice breaks off and the sinister voice of her notorious pimp Duwayne Carter takes over, I told you to stay away from my ladies bitch, and the line goes dead.

Sam yells helplessly into the disconnected phone, if you hurt her you bastard, I’ll effing’ kill you! Sam completely breaks down when she realizes the ringing cellphone she threw at her mirror in anger, might have been yet another call from a desperate Edie.

An attractive LAPD detective, Sergeant Erica Ryan, stands partially dressed, facing a full- length mirror in the darkened bedroom of her modest house, gently rubbing her abdomen. She closes her eyes for a second then opens them to observe the hands of an unseen man touching her shoulders from behind.

With a huge smile on her face, she turns around to passionately kiss and embrace her husband Dan. Excitedly, she whispers in his ear, take a look over on the top of the dresser.

Dan sees the blue positive symbol on the pregnancy test stick lying on the top shelf of the dresser and lifts his wife high off the floor in excitement. Is it for sure, this time, ? he pleads. She says, we’ll know for sure at my next doctor’s appointment…but I hope so babe…I hope so. He pleads with her to stay home from work until after the appointment but she diplomatically refuses.

LA’s self-proclaimed King of the Pre-Nups lawyer and former high school and collegiate star athlete Terry Graham, sits at his messy office desk making paper airplanes out of his personal stack of unpaid bill collection notices.

He periodically throws them out of his office window at unwary passersby on the street below. Bombs away,! he gleefully yells out as he directs his final paper plane towards the head of the totally unknown but now despised UPS delivery man just re-entering his truck.

Seconds later, Terry’s enraged and still unpaid administrative assistant-cum paralegal Melinda Shaw, abruptly opens his office door and yells, screw you asshole, you’re a total piece of shit Terry! After forcefully delivering an additional lengthy stream of unmitigated profanity, she flips him off with both hands and storms out of his personal office.

Totally undeterred by Melinda’s outburst, he rapidly completes one final paper airplane out of a document entitled, Notice of License Suspension/Revocation Hearing, just delivered by UPS and issued by the California State Bar Association. After futilely launching it at her rapidly disappearing back, he picks up the expensive but half empty bottle of scotch next to his computer station and liberally starts to indulge.

A couple of hours later, Terry wakes up in his office with a nuclear sized hangover, when his cellphone begins to ring. It takes him a set of at least a dozen rings, over a series of three separate calls, before he finally locates his phone under a pile of newspapers and greasy fast food wrappers covering the floor.

With his head throbbing, he reluctantly answers and begins speaking to the young wife of a former client, who desperately wants a divorce. He explains to her that the restrictive pre-nuptial agreement he prepared for her and her extremely wealthy elderly husband just a couple of years before, was ironclad in nature and would be strictly enforced in any divorce proceedings.

He finally says, I thought we both thoroughly talked through this months ago Cindy...you’re essentially screwed. Cindy pleads, I had no idea what I was doing when I signed off on this Terry and didn’t have a clue about what this bastard was going to try and pull off on me.

Terry and Cindy readily agree that her husband is indeed a cruel and abusive monster and Terry finally but reluctantly commits, give me a chance to talk to him to see if we can come up with something a little more equitable for you.

They both hear an ominous click over the phone connection. After a few seconds, Cindy’s husband’s familiar voice angrily blurts out, if either of you tries to change anything in the agreement, you’ll both end up in the same unmarked grave! and the phone line goes dead.

A shaken Terry actually starts to feel a slight sense of remorse for all of the women he had so willingly placed in similar positions and always in return for large legal fees from their husbands.

His ironic sense of remorse accelerates, but only with respect to Cindy, when he also begins to internally acknowledge a certain strong possibility. The very real chance that a better served and inevitably more grateful trophy wife named Cindy could potentially be willing to show her appreciation for his more noble efforts on her behalf, in a variety of extremely pleasurable ways.

Late that same night, a totally enraged Sam surveys Edie’s totally trashed-out apartment and quickly retrieves some treasured personal items she had recently purchased for her ward. She then angrily runs down the front stairs of the apartment building and starts to conduct a frantic search for Edie, out on the hazardous streets of a seedy lower downtown neighborhood.

She instinctively knew that seeking police assistance involving the possible whereabouts of a lowly missing hooker, would be an exercise in complete futility. She quickly begins to ask several obvious hookers if they’ve seen Edie, in a manner that clearly reveals her intimate familiarity with their sordid lifestyle.

All of the girls nod, no and shy away from Sam, until one very young and sympathetic hooker stealthily motions Sam to follow her down a nearby alley.

Sam guardedly accepts the invitation and encounters the girl halfway down the alley. I seen Edie’s best friend Kat hiding behind the old furniture warehouse on Central, the girl reveals. Sam says, yeah, I know her, thanks and hands her some money. As Sam heads further down the alley, on her way to the warehouse, she turns and tells the girl, if you see Edie, tell her to go to Sam’s place right away. The girl shouts out, don’t you tell nobody ‘bout this, promise? Sam simply nods, yes.

Now in the middle of an even more dangerous neighborhood, Sam quickly locates Kat hiding behind some old crates in a loading area adjacent to the abandoned warehouse. Kat notices someone approaching her and flees into the building with Sam in hot pursuit.

As Sam carefully enters a broken rear door to the warehouse, she is immediately overcome by the overpowering sights, sounds and stench of human despair, misery and decay. Her odious surroundings make it increasingly difficult for her to remain focused on her mission.

Sam delicately steps over numerous broken syringes, piles of excrement of multiple origins and odiferous puddles of various indeterminate fluids, while quietly calling out Kat’s name. She finally hears someone whimpering behind a large cardboard box and finds a trembling and frightened Kat sitting in her own puddle of urine.

After finding such an unanticipated level of comfort in Sam’s willing arms, Kat tearfully tells her, I was hidin’ at Edie’s place and saw that prick Duwayne beat the shit outta’ her. She wasn’t movin’ at all…dude I just stayed quiet and snuck out a while later. There was no way I could’ve helped her. Tears well up in Sam’s eyes as she hugs Kat tightly and she sobbingly replies, no, no…it’s not your fault baby, I was the one who always promised to protect her.

Kat adds, "that ain’t all girl, I saw some real familiar Vice cops standin’ guard at the front door of her building. Sam asks Kat, did any of those guys see you? She shrugs her shoulders and replies, I tried to stay quiet but they might have seen me runnin’ down the street afterwards. I’m not sure, I was too scared to look back. Sam says, you need to come and stay at my place, you’ll be safe there."

As the two women begin to leave the building, their path is blocked by a large and sinister looking transient, demanding money and much more. Sam immediately pulls a compact nine- millimeter semi-automatic pistol out of her purse and deliberately invites the man to try something…anything.

While he mutters vicious obscenities and turns away, Sam tells Kat to quickly exit the building then points the pistol at the back of the man’s head and releases the safety muttering, bang.

Early the following morning, Sam is trapped in a fitful nightmare while lying on a large couch back at her condo. She, at the age of twelve, lies crying in a puddle of her own urine, at the feet of a large, drunk and fearsome looking man. A man she’s always known as daddy.

He’s struggling to pull up the broken zipper on his overalls with his familiar discolored and scabby hands. He smiles at her, revealing a mouthful of rotting teeth, then grabs her by the neck with one powerful hand, places the muzzle of a large revolver on the top of her head and cocks the hammer.

He says, now you know honey, this is our little secret, don’t you be tellin’ your mama or nobody else, you hear? He then asks her, you still love your daddy, don’t you, you don’t want to make daddy mad? She replies, I ain’t tellin’ nobody, I promise daddy, please don’t hurt me no more. Ain’t there somethin’ else you want to tell me baby,? he replies. She wipes off her tears and says, I love you daddy.

As had been the case with innumerable similar nightmares, she is abruptly shocked awake when she suddenly gasps aloud and struggles to breathe.

While Kat sleeps soundly in Sam’s bed, Sam throws Kat’s soiled clothes into her washing machine. She sarcastically wonders aloud, "Kat, I wonder whether your daddy loved you as much as my daddy loved me?"

Sam, now desperately in need for some support, places a call to her former boss, mentor and dearest friend Madame Beverly (Bev) Armstrong. Sam originally met Bev during her undergraduate years in New York City and they had both relocated to LA just five years ago.

Sam had always been Bev’s personal favorite and incandescently bright pupil, during their successful years in New York together. Bev had never encountered a female who possessed such an undeniable aura of power and dominion over all of the men who occupied any portion of her life. Including her time with many of these same men both in the bedroom and the classroom.

In a distinctly similar fashion, Sam’s peers viewed her as the ultimate version of an alpha-like sex goddess.

When Bev answers, Sam immediately begins crying and stammers, Bev, I think those bastards have killed Edie. Bev replies, I’m so sorry baby, I just heard about it and know how much you loved her…we all loved her. Sam says, just another couple of months and I could have finalized her adoption and now…those pricks are dead, I mean it, they’re effing’ dead.

They both acknowledge they should have taken decisive preemptive action against Duwayne and his other violent associates long ago. They then decide it’s way past time to finalize their own very special form of justice, revenge, retribution and perhaps even start developing some formal and very personal retirement plans. They also agree that they will not allow for any police involvement since this mission was now strictly a personal matter for both of them and some of the men in blue might be very dirty indeed

Finally, Bev, who couldn’t be more pleased with Sam’s decision, says, baby, you know once we start down this road, there definitely ain’t no turnin’ back. Sam simply but confidently confirms, I’m down with that girl!

Bev hangs up the phone with an exclamation of pure joy, then hears the voice of a very drunk and belligerent man in her bedroom yelling, you best get your big black ass back in bed right now bitch! She smiles broadly and mutters to herself in a low but malevolent voice, you’ve just signed your own death warrant…fool.

The following day, Erica walks by several of her male counterparts in the homicide division at city police headquarters. The men openly tease and taunt her and make outrageous and totally inappropriate comments about her decidedly attractive appearance, but her tart rebukes and responses reveal her to be anything but a politically correct cop.

She sits down at her desk, across from her senior partner Sergeant Dave Nielson, then spins around in her chair to smile at and then flip-off her brother officers. All while mouthing the word, pussies.

She leans over to her partner and whispers, I’ve heard some rumors from a couple of my snitches about some bad cops in Vice, we need to talk soon…off-site. Dave abruptly changes the subject and asks, how was your vacation? She replies, it was great and I might have some more good news to report, real soon...but the other matter’s not closed Dave.

Dave smiles and shoves a thick stack of open case files on Erica’s desk, points to the file on top and says, "check this one out first, the Community Police Oversight Board has finally issued their formal reprimand against Captain Hoffman."

He sighs, "of course it’s total bullshit! There was never any excessive force used on that nasty little perp, although nobody would have deserved it more. In unison, Erica and Dave blurt out, bleeding heart assholes!"

A disconsolate but resolute Sam and her exceptionally bright confidante Bev sit comfortably in Sam’s condo calmly discussing and formally planning their decidedly gruesome rules of engagement against Duwayne and his brethren.

Bev says, "now Duwayne and his homies are starting to come after my stable of girls and planning, along with a couple of major Mexican drug cartel honchos, to completely take over the meth and coke distribution channels all over the city. I also heard that some real dirty cops are definitely right in the middle of everything. Sam replies, if this works out right, we’ll be able to take out most if not all of these ass clowns permanently, without firing a single shot."

Bev asserts, girl, we’re now at war with all of these pathetic thugs and they’ll never know what hit them. Sam smiles and says, "it’s our blood oath sister, we’ll be blinding them with science…with our own special versions of WMDs." They exchange an exuberant high five.

Good friends and former fraternity brothers Drew Price and Terry Graham play pool in a very popular downtown sports bar, admiring a bountiful surplus of beautiful women. They’re talking about the perfect woman Drew and his wife Paula have ostensibly found for Terry.

Terry exclaims, oh no…please not again, the last time around that psycho bitch you paired me with tried to separate my balls from my scrotum. Dude, you know I could be singing in a high soprano by now. Drew laughingly replies, or making a serious move on me.

They playfully shove each other and laugh. Terry had previously decided to remain totally silent about his profound sense of shame and embarrassment concerning his own decidedly acute professional, financial and personal problems.

Paula, who has just arrived at the bar, gives Terry a friendly hug and kiss on his cheek, then orders an orange juice. He says, congratulations, I’m really happy for you guys. She says, thanks…and please Terry, just hear me out this time, I promise this awesome chick could be a real keeper. Terry looks apprehensively at Drew who smiles and nods with a big yes.

Terry smirks and says, I’ll only consider this one if I get a financial guarantee of complete romantic success from you guys. Paula frowns, touches her tummy and begins to pout. Terry in turn pouts and exclaims, oh, okay…for God’s sake, give me the details.

That same evening, Duwayne and a group of four prostitutes he calls his A team sit in his large and fully tripped-out SUV, on a busy downtown street corner. As part of their normal nightly routine, they start handing him stacks of hard-earned cash.

When he orders them to get back out on the street, the youngest member of his team, the same young hooker who recently helped Sam locate Kat, complains that she’s feeling ill. He offers her some potent meth but one of the other hookers implores, she really needs to see Dr. Sam right away.

He angrily forces all four women out onto the street and screams out, if any of you bitches even think about talkin’ to her and I finds out, there ain’t no place nowhere you’ll be able to hide from me...know what I’m sayin’! As he speeds off, his entire team graphically and physically display their true lack of affection for their pimp.

Although none of the women would have dared to ask Duwayne about the possible fate or location of the still missing Edie, the ill young hooker finds some comfort in the knowledge that her recent treachery against Duwayne had not yet been discovered.

When the SUV finally disappears in the distance, the three older team members boldly agree to disobey Duwayne’s orders and take their suffering little sister to see Sam. As they head off to her clinic, the oldest woman says, "I heard a rumor that Dr. Sam and Ms. Beverly want to help all of us out and maybe we can finally…off that bastard brother Du…wayne, at the same time." The women all respectively express great interest in this potentially lethal possibility.

Several days later, Sam’s angry senior medical partner, Dr. Elvin Hall, sits in his clinic office scanning packing lists of some very expensive medical equipment, recently ordered by his partner. Multiple boxes and crates have just arrived at the clinic and are stacked up on both sides of a long hallway. Just what in the hell was she thinking,? he mutters to himself.

He storms out into the hallway and confronts Sam. He harshly yells out, just what the hell are you doing, you know you’re not authorized to order this type of equipment, without my explicit prior approval!

In front of an increasingly upset staff, Sam haughtily replies, "Elvin, the only reason we can even afford this stuff in the first place is because of my presence at this clinic and you know