Chapter 5
1364 Words
5
By the time we reached my apartment building the wind had picked up. The gale threw the rain against the windows and soaked me the minute I stepped out of the cab. The moment I slammed the door shut the cab sped away, hungry for more passengers. I scurried up the stoop of my ancient apartment building and my wet fingers fumbled with my keys.
Lightning exploded across the sky followed closely by its loud brother. For a moment everything was illuminated as though God had turned on a night light.
Caitlin.
My heart stilled and I spun around. I could see no one, and the light faded into shadows. My heart, however, didn’t fade but quickened its pace.
“Was that-?” I whispered to myself.
I shook my head. It couldn’t have been. That was all an old dream.
I found my key and let myself in. The apartment had a rickety old elevator, but out of concern for a mechanical mishap I took the stairs to my second-floor apartment. The walls had once been papered in a flowered pattern, but time and a few episodes with a leaky ceiling had led to fading and some stains that resembled Rorschach blots. The floor was in dire need of sanding and sealing, but some well-placed rugs hid the worst spots. I plopped my purse on the table beside the door just as another flash of lightning illuminated the outside.
“Dark Walk. . .” I whispered, remembering the name that Harriet’s grandmother had used for such a storm.
I walked over to the window and threw open the worn curtains. Another building stood across a narrow alley, but I could see a sliver of sky above its rooftop. The clouds were as black as pitch and rumbled like a hungry lion.
“Or a griffin. . .” I murmured.
I shook myself from my fancy. That had just been a very vivid dream, that’s all.
“I need some food,” I suggested in my usual habit of talking to myself in my domain.
A quick meal and a short movie, and I was ready for a long sleep. The morrow would be Saturday morning, but I planned to skip that and go straight to the afternoon. Since the night was chilly from the rain, I slipped into a heavy shirt and sweat pants, and jumped into my worn but comfortable bed. Another flash of lightning followed by a boom of thunder like a cannon shook the panes of the window close beside where I lay.
Caitlin.
I shot up and swept my eyes over the room. There were no unfamiliar shadows in the corners, but I fumbled for my lamp and switched it on, anyway. The light illuminated nothing out of the ordinary.
“J-just your imagination,” I scolded myself as I lay back down, though I was careful to throw the covers over my head.
Twice? my inner voice pointed out.
“Shut up,” I snapped as I shut my eyes. “We’re trying to sleep here.” After a few minutes my nerves calmed and, with the backdrop of that terrible storm raging around me, I slipped into a peaceful sleep.
The shatter of glass awoke me followed quickly by a roar of thunder. I shot up in bed, my first thought being that my window had been broken by those hoodlums again. My head cracked against a hard, sharp piece of wood.
“Ouch!” I snapped as I jerked back and clutched my head. I felt something sticky and pulled my hand back to see blood coating my fingers. My blood. “What the-”
My cursing was interrupted when I looked around. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, much less my own bedroom. A dingy alley was my new premises, complete with oozing trash, puddles of unknown depth, and the aroma that only a back alley could give off. Overhead, however, was the same stormy sky that crackled with energy.
Speaking of cracked, I had cracked my head against a stack of wooden crates that stood beside me while another flanked my other side, shielding me from view, but also blocking my view. I tried to ignore the warm stickiness on my forehead as I leaned forward and looked both ways. To my left the alley extended to nearly out of sight. To my right and a short distance away was the mouth of the stench fest. Pale, weak streetlights illuminated a hard-packed dirt road with sidewalks made of stone and mortar. People walked to and fro dressed in a style reminiscent of the turn of the nineteenth century. Carriages and automobiles wove in and out of each other, ignorant of the rules of the road and instead following the Law of Chaos.
“What have we got here?”
I whipped my head to my left where two thin men loomed over me. They wore soiled clothes made more of patches than solid material, and their faces were grimy. One had their sleeve pulled up and I could see tiny dots on their skin where a needle had been inserted. The lecherous grins on their faces told me all I needed to know.
I dashed to my right, but the leader grabbed my arm and dragged me back into my little nook. “Where ya going?” he cooed as he shoved his face into mine. His teeth were yellowed and his breath wreaked of booze and tobacco.
“Help!” I screamed at those dark figures that passed by, but my cry was drowned out by the booming thunder.
“Just hold still and this’ll be over with soon, ya b***h!” my other attacker snapped as I was pulled down to the filthy ground.
The dank water soaked into my white pajama shirt and pants. I struggled against their pull, but even their scrawny arms were stronger than I and soon one of them sat on top of me. He slapped my with the back of his hand and I saw stars as I felt his filthy hands fumble for the neck of my shirt to tear it open.
Please I whispered in my mind as the blood from my injury clouded one eye. Please someone help me.
“You gentlemen appear to be lost.”
My attackers paused and whipped their heads up to look into the depths of the alley that had spawned them. A sharp crack of lightning followed by the boom of thunder illuminated the darkness and revealed a figure that stood twenty feet from us. The person was of average height and wore a cloak about their shoulders.
“What the f**k are you talking about?” the rough man who stood over me snapped.
The dark figure inclined their head. “My apologies. I surmised that since you hand no business here that you were lost.”
The other man’s lecherous grin reappeared and his eyes flickered back to me. “Oh, we’ve got business here, all right.”
“And it doesn’t concern you,” his companion growled.
“Quite the contrary,” the dark figure argued as they strode toward us.
“I said get back, you dumb f**k!” the standing stalker ordered him as he drew out a small pistol.
The figure shot forward and something silver glistened in the darkness. In a second the barrel of the pistol slid off and clattered onto the hard cobblestones.
The man stumbled back and gaped at his broken toy. “What the-”
He didn’t have time to show off more of his limited vocabulary before the figure punched him on the side of the face. The man dropped to the ground and didn’t stir.
His friend, however, pushed off me and took a swing at the stranger. The figure stepped out of the line of attack and cracked the butt of a large knife against the back of the man’s skull. My second assailant dropped to the ground atop his friend and, other than a slight groan from both of them, they didn’t speak nor move.
With their fall so, too, did my adrenaline. The strain of this strange new place, the oozing wound on my forehead, and the attack were all too much and the world around me began to spin.
The blurry figure knelt in front of me and stretched out their hand to me, and I found myself looking into a pair of familiar blue eyes with that same dazzling smile. “I’ve got you.”
“Asher?” I whispered.
The figure started back, but I didn’t get to see any other reaction before I fainted dead away.
- Writer
