Chasing Memories (Shadow Man Book 2)

  Chasing Memories

  The Shadowman Series

  BY: B.P Stevens

  Mystery Thriller Story

  Copyright © [2022] [B.P Stevens] – All rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Description

  After chasing down who she thinks is the Shadow Man, Harper Storm finds herself face to face with the harsh reality of the world of cold cases. Injuries, crazy truths, and the idea that someone from within the precinct is hurting the case begin to threaten to tear Harper’s world apart.

  That is until she’s forced to reveal a horribly painful truth to everyone she knows…

  One that could cost her the case.

  Tables of Content

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

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  Chapter One

  Harper didn't hear anything around her. She couldn't see anything before her except for the Shadow Man running away. She memorized everything about him – his lanky, skinny build, the way he limped like an injured deer when he ran, and the sound of his feet slamming against the leaves and soil. She didn't hear Jill calling for backup, telling Harper to wait. She didn't hear the sounds of screaming from the people nearby. She heard nothing but her pounding heartbeat and footsteps.

  His footsteps.

  She could feel her entire body pumping forward as fast as she could. Her flashlight moved with her, going up and down as she ran faster and faster. It shined on the tops of the trees, the tree trunks, and the soil when she pointed it down. The air smelled of wet ground and salt. If Harper tuned her senses better, she could hear the waves in the distance lapping against the shore of the island. At that moment, the only things in the world were the Shadow Man and herself, running in the woods.

  Her thighs burned, but she only used the pain to push her forward. Her strides were wider than she ever thought they could go. Her throat felt like someone had lit a match and forced it down her mouth. She could hear the loud pounding of her heart in her ears - like someone was slamming a large drum repeatedly.

  She felt like she was gaining on the Shadow Man the harder she pushed herself. When she could almost reach him and prepare herself for a tackle, he would suddenly jump out of reach. He knew the woods so much better than she did. She wasn't the one who hid in them for years, hunting children.

  Harper slipped in the wet mud after he cut her off into trees and rocks, but she quickly got up and gained her footing. As she chased him, she could feel herself getting heavier with what she thought was the rain.

  She blinked a few times, continuing her pursuit after the Shadow Man. She was shocked to find there was actually no rain, even though the ground felt wet as she ran. Just like that night when Beth had…

  Harper wanted to snap out of it. This wasn't the time to slip back into that dark space in her mind when her best friend was taken – the night she had failed. She would never let that happen again. Not on her watch.

  She wanted to call after him, but she had no breath left in her lungs. She hadn't realized she was heaving until she heard herself gasping for air. She lunged forward, grabbing at her chest.

  Thunder boomed overhead.

  Harper shook her head. No, it wasn’t raining she was daydreaming, confusing the past with Beth with her current pursuit. She was here now, twenty years old. She wasn’t a kid, and she had to get up.

  She slammed her hands down into the soil before forcing herself back into the darkness. Her flashlight was left on the ground as it was only slowing her down. She didn’t need a light to guide her after that man. She was the hunter, he was the prey. The faster she ran, the more she could smell sweat, blood, and urine on him. She pushed forward and now was so close she could almost touch him.

  Then, as if by some miracle, he stopped. He turned to look back at her, and Harper screamed. She wanted to say ‘Police!’ or ‘Stop!’, but all that came out was a scream of primal rage and hatred – of anger that ran seven years deep, of a hunter close feasting, who could feel their belly rumbling with desire.

  Harper lunged at the man, but he slipped from under her.

  She gasped in shock as he suddenly jumped, falling down a winding path and rolling like a log. She could see him clearly now, cursing and moaning as he hit rocks and branches that cut his fall. Harper was breathing heavily, and her eyes searched for a safer way to catch him. One that didn't require her launching herself downhill to chase after him. However, she was running out of time.

  She cursed and jumped after him.

  Her body hit the soil with a loud thud. The rocks slammed against her ribcage, skin, and clothes. She kicked up dust as she rolled down the trail as he had before her. She tried curling into a ball to lessen the impact of her fall, but she barely managed to get her hands above her face to protect it. She was rolling way too fast.

  The next thing she knew, her body was slamming into the trunk of a tree.

  The wind was knocked out of her chest. Harper groaned in pain, curses rolling off her tongue as she tried to breathe. Loud gasping sounds came out of her throat. She heard soil breaking near her, but she was too disoriented to understand where the sound came from.

  “HARPER!” Jill screamed from somewhere in the distance behind her.

  Harper didn’t respond. She didn’t want to, and couldn’t.

  She saw the Shadow Man from the corner of her eye. He was limping away, but stopped when he heard Jill cry out Harper’s name. He stared at the slope they had just fallen from. Harper couldn't see his expression, but she had a feeling that it was one of shock. He probably didn't expect the police to be this close on his tail.

  Harper's breath found her. She couldn’t tell whether it was because she had sat on the ground long enough to catch it or because of her primal urge to turn this creature in and tear him to shreds. She rolled over and jumped to her feet as she screamed at the Shadow Man.

  "POLICE! STOP!"

  But he didn’t.

  He took off in a sprint into the woods, escaping her line of vision. Harper didn't know such places existed in these woods, but the more she ran after the Shadow Man, the more she felt that the trees were enveloping her, swallowing her whole. She couldn't think about that. She could smell rain in the air as she ran this time.

  A storm was coming.

  As she ran, she was suddenly interrupted by a sharp pain in her side. She screamed in pain and leaned against a tree, her body forcing her to stop. She peeled her hand back, revealing blood. She cursed. She must have seriously injured herself when she slammed herself against the tree.

  She looked up to see the Shadow Man limping away. He must have hurt himself too when he jumped. It didn’t matter, though, because she was losing him.

  The world was spinning before her. Mud was slowing her down again. Harper needed to run, but she was scared that if she took a step forward she would collapse.

  "No," she begged. "I'm so close… please."

  She heard footsteps beside her, and a girl’s voice.

  “Harper.”

  Beth.

  Harper inhaled sharply. She couldn't let this creep who took her friend escape.

  Screw the rain, I can do this.

  She just had to outrun him. She was the fastest in her graduating class. She could easily reach him, she only needed to focus and push the pain down.

  Beth would do it for her.

  Harper took off again. Each step brought more and more excruciating pain with it, but she wouldn't let it stop her. Regardless of her injuries, whether it was a flesh wound or a broken rib, she needed to get him. He couldn't get away.

  Harper was much slower now. She considered shooting him with her gun as he hobbled away from her, but she knew if she did, there would be so much paperwork to fill out and other things to handle. Plus, she didn't exactly trust herself to aim correctly. She would have to catch him or get creative.

  She thought about tasing him, but he was too far away for her to get a clear shot. She cursed. Eventually, her body would succumb to the wounds. The more she blinked, the faster the world spun. The more she breathed, the more she could taste mud and rain. The more she tried to listen, the more she heard Beth’s cries. Her laugh.

  Her screams.

  Harper screamed back.

  “YOU’RE NOT REAL!”

  She peeled her eyes away from the Shadow Man for a second.

  She looked by the side of a tree and saw it.

  The perfect rock.

  She wasted no time ripping it from the soil with ferocity. She was aiming directly at the Shadow Man. If she couldn't use her gun, she would have to use other means to stop him. She didn't need him dead by any means. Harper wanted answers, and she wanted him to pay for what he had done. She needed him wounded. That way, she could run after him.
br />   She flung the rock as hard as she could, screaming in anger and agony. She watched as it sailed overhead, crashing into the back of his head. He fell to his knees, screaming in pain, as Harper hobbled faster after him.

  She got to him. He was still on his knees, trying to force himself to his feet, but they were wobbling underneath him that even Harper could see. She smiled in relief as she realized that she finally had him.

  She reached for the collar of his coat and tugged him closer toward her.

  He threw something at her face.

  Harper screamed and rubbed the soil from her eyes. The more Harper scratched her eyes, the more she felt the tiny specks tear at her eyelids. She blinked, tears of frustration and pain rolling down her cheeks.

  Surely, in the time it took her to realize what was going on, he had to be gone.

  She felt for the nearest tree and took a deep breath.

  She took a second to feel every bit of pain in her body. She felt the pain in her ribs, the blood dripping down her side. She felt the coursing pain in her eyeballs, the tears washing out the dirt that the Shadow man had thrown at her. Then, she exhaled and heard the footsteps and shouts of her co-workers who were trying to find a safer way down.

  Then she heard a tree branch crack, not too far away from her.

  She snapped her head in that direction.

  Even in her blurred vision, she could see the Shadow Man. Harper steadied herself, ready to fight. If she messed this up, she could lose the man she had been chasing for years. She needed him to tell her what he had done to Beth.

  She took one final breath, steadying herself, and took off in a dead sprint in his direction.

  Harper soon realized he was trying to hide behind the tree in the bushes. He was squatting, his head in his hands, trying to be as still as ever. The next thing he knew, Harper was slamming her body into his.

  The collision was stronger than she thought it would be. Maybe it was because she was already weak from running and hurting herself, but she couldn't be sure. The Shadow Man was such a figment of her imagination, that even Harper had to admit that at first, she thought that she was simply going to tackle air. His body being real and something that she could hold was a shock.

  She couldn’t believe she finally had him.

  “Get off of me!” He begged.

  Harper was stunned. That was not the kind of voice she expected to come from the Shadow Man. She hadn’t expected him to sound like a whimpering creature. She expected his to be a growling voice, someone who would take children away from their homes at night. Her shock was evident enough to give the Shadow Man a second to break away, squirming away from underneath her.

  “NO!” She roared, unable to contain herself.

  She reached out and grabbed around the brittle bone of his ankle. Again, it didn't feel right. Harper had dreamed of this moment for years. She had been dreaming of the day she would catch this monster since she enrolled in the Police Academy. Now, though, every bone in her body was screaming at her that she was wrong. That couldn’t be the Shadow Man.

  Yet she couldn’t bring herself to let go.

  She dragged him through the mud and stones over to her. He was screaming and thrashing about, but it was something she had to deal with before as a police officer. She knew how to handle people that didn't listen to her. But to Harper, it felt like the Shadow Man was fighting for his life. He was kicking and screaming like a child, wailing and sobbing. He reared his foot back, the one that Harper was grabbing, and slammed his heel into Harper’s nose.

  That made her let go. She screamed and grabbed her nose.

  “Please, let me go!” He whimpered. “I’m not who you think I am!”

  Harper's vision was almost non-existent now. With the damage the dirt had done to her eyes and the nose injury, every bit of her was aching. Still, from sheer determination, she locked her gaze on the Shadow Man. Her blood dripped down onto her upper lip, and she licked it away. The taste of iron and salt on her tongue was enough to spike her adrenaline.

  She was about to reach for him again when she spotted a young girl in the distance. She was standing in the middle of the path, illuminated only by the flashes of lightning. Her face was covered in dirt and bugs were crawling all over her skin.

  She reached her hand out to Harper.

  “Why didn’t you stop him, Harper?” The little girl asked.

  Harper gasped.

  The girl tilted her head, and it rolled off of her neck into the ground.

  Harper wanted to scream. She knew it wasn’t real. The little girl that looked a lot like Beth wasn’t her. They never found Beth’s body. She couldn’t be here, covered in dirt.

  Harper snapped herself out of the nightmare and reached again for the pathetic worm of a man trying to crawl away from her as fast as he could. Yet it didn’t feel like him. It didn’t feel right.

  Still, she had to do her job. She crawled on top of him from behind and pinned his arms behind his back, cuffing him. He was sobbing, wailing, saying that she was hurting him.

  “Yeah!?” She growled. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a stroll in the park for me either, pal.”

  She forced him to turn around, standing over him. Before she knew what she was doing, she grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him to face her.

  Through her blurred vision, she only saw an outline, but nothing else. Thunder boomed overhead as she screamed.

  Her hand flew into his face before she could stop herself.

  She punched him once, then twice. She was going to punch him again when she heard him crying. Harper stopped. She was at a loss for words as she looked at him.

  He looked so normal when her vision cleared.

  “What?” She whispered to herself. “How…”

  Even in the darkness, she saw that he was simply an old man with a skinny face. He had a white beard, long and dirty. He was covered in blood, mud, and dirt. His clothes looked old and worn. The trench coat he was wearing was a tan color. She frowned as she blinked at him.

  He was skinnier than a stick. He looked so frail that Harper wasn't even sure at this point how he ran away from her. He looked like she could snap him under her knee. He was a whining, sniveling mess. Sure, she'd seen perps cry when caught, but this…

  Once she got a clear look at him, Harper knew they had made a terrible mistake.

  Chapter Two

  Harper didn't know why it felt wrong, she just knew that it did. Maybe it felt wrong because she had built it up so much in her head. That wasn't as climatic as she wanted it to be, but something just wasn’t right. She couldn't put her finger on why?

  She remembered him being so much taller when she was a child. She remembered the way that Kaison described him as big and scary. This man was frail and tall. Maybe Kaison meant to say tall when he had described the Shadow Man as big, but regardless, the idea was just… weird. She didn't know why. She just felt like she remembered him differently.

  She was a child back then, and people changed. Maybe the person she was staring at was still the same man.

  She was shaken from her inner monologue when she heard the sounds of her coworkers coming up from behind her. She was pulled away from the Shadow Man by Jill, and the rest was a blur of shouting and lights shining in her eyes. Harper fell asleep before she realized it. The last thing she heard was the sounds of the Shadow Man screaming that they had the wrong man.

  Harper couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, and she hated that.

  ***

  Harper blinked slowly, then groaned. She could tell she was in the hospital from the distinct smell of bleach and the sounds of beeping monitors. Even blinking hurt. What the heck happened to her the other night? Why was she here now? What did any of this mean? She had no idea.

  "Ow," she whispered.

  She could hear someone to her left falling out of a chair and the sound of a book hitting the linoleum floor. Harper chuckled to herself.

  "Jill?" She asked, her voice still hoarse.