“So what now?” Patrick asked as he put the paint back in his knapsack. He looked down at the dead man, who was now surrounded on all four sides by his great-uncle’s marks. These wouldn’t last as long as the ones that Uncle Alf had etched in stone all over the Little Kovoko neighborhood and then filled with his special salt and paint mixture, of course, but they looked about the same.
“Now?” The old man lay a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “We tell the police about this, and get something to eat, maybe? I don’t know about you, boy, but I am starving.”
Patrick grinned. “Pizza?”
“Do you ever want to eat anything but pizza? You live in a city with so much to choose from, and always want to eat the same thing, every time.” The old man rolled his eyes and guided Patrick back toward the street. “When I was your age, back on the island, we didn’t have that kind of choice. We had good food, don’t get me wrong. Really good food. But if you didn’t want to eat what there was, you didn’t eat. Not like here.”
The street lights were beginning to warm up as the sun set, and in the distance Patrick could hear the mothers of the neighborhood calling from their front steps for their kids home for dinner.
“Uncle Alf? Do you ever miss it?”
“Hhn?” The old man turned to look in his direction. “The food? Your aunties cook island food as good as anyone back home, and—”
“No.” Patrick shook his head, a slightly embarrassed expression on his face. “Do you ever miss the island?”
“Oh. Yes. And no.” The old man looked away, a distant expression on his face. He took a deep breath and sighed. “I miss the island I knew as a boy, but it isn’t really there anymore. Places can change and grow, just like people do, and not always for the best. Even true places.”
“Besides,” the old man said, stopping in his tracks and pointing at the ground at his feet, “I knew that this was where I was needed. Even if I had wanted to stay on the island, it would have meant turning my back on my people here. Maybe I did want to stay, but in the end, it didn’t matter. . . .”
The old man paused, looking up at the sky. When Patrick followed his gaze, he saw that the first stars of the night could faintly be seen overhead. The old man sighed deeply, his eyes shut tight. Then he opened them, looked down, and shook his head a little sadly before turning to Patrick with a smile.
“After all, if I had stayed back on the island, who would be here in the city to look after all of you?” He gestured back the way that they had come, toward the alley where the dead man lay. “Who would protect you from the things in the shadows? Things that would stare back at you from a dead man’s eyes?”
The old man continued on up the sidewalk toward home, chuckling, but Patrick couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of it, unable to get the image of the dead man’s blank stare out of his head.
Patrick almost collided with the old man when his Uncle Alf stopped short on the sidewalk.
“Nice. Clean.” The old man was looking at a tight spiraling pattern etched into the pavement beside the front steps of a row house. He glanced in Patrick’s direction. “Your work?”
Patrick nodded. He had visited the house earlier in the day while making his rounds, sweeping away dirt and leaves from the mark, cleaning out the deep grooves until the glittering paint sparkled in the midday sun.
“How many you get to today?” The old man gave Patrick and appraising look.
“Um . . .” Patrick tallied up the numbers in his head. It was important to keep track, since every job meant another twenty-five cents coming to him at the end of the day, and he was saving up to buy some new comic books. “I was hoping to do three dozen today, but I got sidetracked by . . . well, everything. So, thirty-two houses today, I guess?”
“Very nice.” The old man had his hand on his chin, thoughtfully. “You know, I think it’s time you learn how to make the marks yourself.”
Patrick’s eyes widened.
“Sure.” The old man started walking again, gesturing for Patrick to follow. “Someone has to look after our people when I’m gone. I won’t be here forever, but the things in the shadows aren’t going anywhere.”
Patrick trailed along behind the old man, silent for a moment, eyes on the pavement and lost in thought.
“Uncle Alf?” he finally said, looking up from the sidewalk. “Is it real?”
“Hhn?” The old man glanced back over his shoulder at him.
“The things in the shadows?” Patrick clutched his knapsack a little tighter. “I mean . . . are they real, or just like something from a story? Like, I don’t know, a metaphor or something.”
A lopsided grin spread across the old man’s face. “Just because something is from a story doesn’t mean it can’t be real. Don’t you remember me telling you about how the time that Pahne’i conquered fire, and then he climbed down below the earth and found the god of Shadows in—”
He stopped suddenly, shoulders lurching forward and an expression of intense pain twisting his face. His hand, the index finger still faintly stained with sparkling white paint, clutched at his chest.
“No . . .” He gasped, eyes wide, and then fell sideways, landing hard on the pavement with a sickening thud.
“Uncle Alf?” Patrick threw his knapsack to one side and rushed to the old man’s side. “Uncle Alf!”
The old man wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, but his eyes were wide open and staring straight ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Following the death of his great-uncle, Patrick had become an angry agnostic, railing against what he thought to be nothing more
