Matt was taken aback.

                “His body?” he asked.

                Allie nodded.  “About a year ago.  He was… he was stabbed.  They never found his killer.”

                “****.  Now what do I do?”

                “What we do is call in some help.”  She pulled out a cell phone and dialed quickly.  “Hey.  You’re not going to believe this... yeah no ****.  Ok, hold on.”

                Allie fiddled with her phone’s settings for a moment, then aimed the camera lens at Matt’s feet and clicked a picture of his black sneakers in mid-step.  She waited for a moment as the picture mail went through.  Then she put the phone back to her ear.  “Okay, it’s sent.”  They both waited as a few long minutes stretched out and strained their nerves like over-taut rubber bands, despite their casual, slow pace.  “Of course I’m still here.”  She listened intently for a few moments, worry and confusion clouding her face.  Then she turned to Matt and held out the phone; “Here, he wants to talk to you.”

                Matt took the phone.  “Hello?”

                A man’s voice answered him.  “Hello, Matt.  Let’s get the clichés out of the way first, shall we?  You’re a little deep into the supernatural right now to be denying its existence, don’t you think?”

                Matt drew some strength from the confidence in the man’s voice.  At least someone seemed to know what was going on. “I guess.”

                “Guess?  You’re being possessed by your shoes.”

                “I see your point.”

                “Good, because you’re neck deep in right now, and it’s not smelling so great.  Now, are you a good news first or bad news first type of person?”

                “I think I need some good news.”

                “Okay, the first good news is that the shoes don’t seem to be actively malicious.”

                 “Actively Malicious?”

                “What I mean is they’re not going to, say, burst into hellfire and barbecue you from the feet up.”

                Matt glanced fearfully down at the shoes.  “Does that happen often?”

                “You’d be surprised.  Anyway, they might still be dangerous, so watch out where they lead you and what they try to have you do.  The other good news is that I’m pretty sure that with enough time, I can figure out exactly what they are and how to get them off.”

                The thought dawned on Matt like enlightenment, “Why didn’t I think to take them off.”  He tried to stop in his tracks, which didn’t turn out so well.

                “Don’t!” the man snapped.  Matt began walking again.  “I have no idea what they do.  That’s part of the bad news.   It’s hard to explain.  Do you know anything about programming, Matt?”

                “I’m a computer science major.”

                “Good.  Now this is a rough analogy, but I want you to imagine your shoes as a computer program.  Or maybe more like the hardware it’s written on.  Anyway, at some point, someone who can do these things wrote a program to make the shoes do something normal shoes can’t do.  At some point after that, someone else rewrote certain elements of the shoes’ ‘code’, adding new features to the program, if you will.  They haven’t got the talent to change the primary purpose, but they can twist it a bit, make it work in different ways.  That’s why they’re going to be hard to figure out.  There are two people with distinct styles that have enchanted these, and I have to unravel the threads to understand the effects.  Are you with me so far?”

                Matt nodded.  “I think so.  Who are you?  How do you know all this?”

                “Let’s just say I’m something like a hacker.  From what Allie’s told me about her brother, we’re on a pretty tight timetable, but I’ll do what I can.  Unfortunately I’m too far away to intervene personally, but I’ll get what information I can and Allie should be able to take it from there.  In the meantime, stick close to her and let her keep an eye on you.  Now let me talk to Allie again.”

                “Thanks for your help.”

                The man seemed surprised.  “You’re welcome.  Good luck, Matt.”

                Matt handed Allie back the phone, and she listened for a few more minutes, nodding and saying “yeah” every once and a while.  Matt waited apprehensively.