Authors: John Urbancik
For a long while, nothing happened, as though time had stretched infinitely. No life flashed before Jack’s eyes, just images of Lisa. Their time together was short, but it had given him a deep joy with which to die. She was the only happiness he’d known since the night he turned seventeen.
He had no expectations of death, nor certainty that it would come. The cold crept around him, pricked his skin, caressed him like a lover—a deeper, harsher cold than the ghost Claire. It enveloped him slowly, slipping between fingers and through his lips, under his eyelids, into his nostrils and ears, into every pore of his skin. It snaked under his clothes, coating him, in his hair like wind, under his fingernails. It wrapped around his tongue, his wrists, his chest. It touched every cell, every molecule, every ion that made Jack what he was, and siphoned him out of himself. Strength ebbed. Consciousness wavered. His hearing muted. Muscles locked. And the cold intensified.
Hours might have passed. Seconds. Years. The air around him shimmered, threatening to knock him over, but he was frozen. He opened his eyes, best as he could, as the cold seeped away.
Claire
.
She stood, back to him, her arms locked around the shadow. They struggled, dancing, fingers locked, neither fully visible but both solidifying in the cold.
“Run!” Claire said.
Jack still couldn’t move. The ice left gradually. His muscles were achy and stiff. Ghost and shadow melded together, joining at the hands, the hips, even the mouths locked in an eternal kiss as their bodies hardened together.
The shadow’s scream was so high-pitched, Jack heard nothing but had to cover his ears because of the excruciating pain. Windows on a nearby car splintered. In the distance, in every direction, dogs started barking, and wolves. Bats took flight. Shadows receded. The shade, and Claire Winters, became a solid thing. They dropped to the street, no longer floating, all sense of cold gone from Jack’s body.
He’d been an inch from death. Closer.
Where they fell, their legs crumbled away like dust. The rest of their bodies, united and distorted, began to break apart. Chunks that hit the ground puffed into gray dust and were gone.
“Claire?” Jack asked.
No answer. A section of the ghost/shadow’s legs split away, shattering, and the upper bodies fell to one side, disintegrating to dust on impact.
Jack stepped back, his muscles sore and timid but working. After another moment, nothing remained. The shadows around him were normal, albeit dark and thick. The air was warm, almost hot. She’d sacrificed herself for him, the great moment of a hero’s life, but he wasn’t worth it. He hadn’t earned it. It was a debt he might never repay.
No longer content to walk, to wait for whatever else lurked in the dark, Jack ran. His first steps were stumbling; his muscles had almost given up on life.
A sudden fear struck him: if these things attacked Jack, how did Lisa fare, alone in her apartment?
With all his belief, every ounce and fiber of it, Jack knew he was the target, not Lisa. She was fine, sleeping, maybe, and dreaming beautiful things, daytime things, puppies and dandelions, windmills and roses, diamonds and seashores. Logically, there was no reason to go after her.
He
was the watcher, the
DarkWalker
, the eyes in the night. She was a bystander. Innocent.
Though he knew this, he ran.
1.
Half way back to the
apartment where everything began, Nick Hunter paused. He was on the sidewalk, same side of the street as the lake, when the smell assaulted him.
He hadn’t been looking for it. Tonight, he stalked a human quarry. But there was no mistaking the horrendous
vampiric
stink. Most people would attribute the odor to bad gas, or dog shit in the gutter. Nick had lived with that smell for years.
He looked left and right, then scanned the tree limbs above him. So strong a smell meant the beast was near. If it saw Nick, he lost his most important weapon: surprise. Vampires expected to live forever. They never seemed to realize someone might come after them with a stake and an attitude.
Slowly, Nick reached for his gun. He heard only the crickets and the wind.
He followed that breeze toward the lake, and the source of the stench.
Half way between the street and the path, amid a sparse plot of trees, a vampire, crouched alongside the lake, looked at something on the water. It was male, ashen but not the alabaster of the type he’d slain the night before, with a full head of hair and decked out all in black. Ears like a cat’s, folded back, twitching.
Nick aimed his gun. Certain vampires were more resilient than others. The gunshot had given him plenty of time to stake the
nosferatu
beasts; this type, a prince of a man complete with cape and, likely, a false Transylvanian accent, generally did not fall easily.
One of its ears snapped suddenly back. Muscles tensed. It heard Nick. Slowly, it turned its head. When their eyes met, Nick pulled the trigger.
The bullet struck the vampire’s forehead. The force knocked it backwards, into the lake with a splash.
“Shit.” Nick surged forward, drawing a stake.
The vampire floated on its back, next to the zombie’s body. Its eyes were open, looking up at Nick, and its teeth were bared. Hideously deformed canines dominated its smile.
Nick leapt into the water, stake first, and plunged the wood into the beast’s heart. Its grin turned sour. A fountain of black blood erupted.
The water, here, was only thigh deep. Nick dragged the vampire back to the edge and, with some effort, shoved it over the artificial lake wall and onto the grass. Climbed out himself. Pulled a lighter from his jacket. It started on the second try.
The vampire flared and, despite being wet, was quickly reduced to ash.
Nick looked around, and saw that he’d been seen. No people, not yet. Owls. Rats. Cockroaches. A cat. They’d paused in their movement, as they’d all been headed in a singular direction, and turned their heads to watch.
“It’s done,” Nick told them.
They didn’t listen, didn’t acknowledge him, and continued when they were ready—cat first, but not in any sort of procession. Knowing where they headed, Nick followed.
2.
Not much further.
The apartment’s vestibule came into view as Jack rounded the corner. Forty feet. Thirty. Maybe less.
A black limo stopped in the road, directly in his path. The rear door opened and a blond man beckoned with one finger. “Quickly,” he said.
“No.” Jack raced around the side of the limo, over the curb and under the awning of the apartment. The car door closed, but Jack did not look back. He keyed his way past the double glass doors, ran past the elevator and into the staircase. He was tired, but he wasn’t going to give away his destination via floor indicators in the lobby.
Large black numbers announced each floor: 2, 3, 4, and finally 5. He burst through the door, half expecting the corridor to be crowded with ghouls and goblins.
Nothing.
Emotions raced through him.
Fear, anxiety
—was Lisa safe behind that door?
Regret
and
guilt
at Claire’s second death—she’d wanted to tell her story, he’d refused it, and now she’d never get the chance.
Anger
, too, but without direction. Something, someone, was responsible for this shift. It could not be what he thought.
Relief
, at having reached Lisa’s apartment. The door was shut tight, locked, just as he’d left it. Was it a sanctuary? No. He’d be no safer inside . . . and Lisa would be endangered by his arrival.
Jack paused a moment to catch his breath. He looked right and left, left and right, then up, down, and behind him, checking for sudden apparitions and silent arrivals. None. No one. Nothing. He wiped a line of sweat from his brow, took a deep breath, and inserted the key.
3.
After Jack left, Lisa Sparrow waited, then stared out the window a while, tried reading, and finally settled into a mindless exercise routine. She was in the middle of a long, low stretch when she heard the key in the door. Her stomach twisted, rose to her throat. The coating of well-earned sweat chilled. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it might break her ribs.
She rose too quickly, almost losing balance. She grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and wiped her face. Lowered the radio as the doorknob turned. Only two possibilities: Jack Harlow, or something else—not someone, she no longer feared the unknown man in the shadows, just the shadows themselves . . .
Jack Harlow entered, locking the door behind him. He smiled broadly when he saw Lisa, but she caught something before that: a sliver of fear. Whether it was fear of what was outside, or of Lisa (and all the associated possibilities), she didn’t know. She shared both, but neither would overwhelm her. Not now. Blood pumping, adrenaline and endorphins flowing, dopamine and serotonin, nothing could bring her down.
He hugged her. Tight. For a long time. He trembled—with something other than anticipation.
“It’s going to be a long night, isn’t it?” Lisa said.
“It already is.”
When Jack released the embrace, grudgingly, he set the laptop on the kitchen counter and turned it on. Opened screens, scrolled through them, searched for particular pieces of text.
Imp
. That’s what he looked for first. Then he tried other words, and read what he found, Lisa looking over his shoulder.
The words on the screen began to gel, to make a weird sort of sense they should not have. This wasn’t a horror movie. Ghosts existed in films and books and campfire stories, but not in the modern world. Lisa never truly disbelieved; it wasn’t hard accepting that things like phantoms and . . .
zombies?
. . . existed. But who was Jack Harlow, that he had this on a computer?
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
Jack paused, but didn’t answer immediately. She understood, too: how to explain what he was, what he was searching for. She put a hand on his arm, kissed him lightly, and whispered, “It’s okay. I don’t care
how
.”
“I don’t know how,” Jack finally said. “It’s . . . it’s a long story, I think, but I don’t know it.”
“The short version, then.”
Jack nodded. Swallowed. Lowered his eyes. “You know how, when it gets dark out, shadows obscure what you see, hide things that tend not to even be there?” Lisa nodded. “I see through those shadows. I see the dark.”
“In the dark?”
“That, too,” Jack said.
Lisa rested her head against his shoulder. “I won’t pretend to understand,” she said, “but I do. A little.”
“The thing is,” Jack said, “they’ve always seen me, too, and ignored me. Like I was
supposed
to see, and they didn’t really care.”
“And now?” Lisa asked.
“Now,” Jack said, “I’m a target.”
“And me?” Lisa asked. Jack pulled away from her, returned to the computer. “And me?” she asked again.
“The catalyst,” he said.
No.
That couldn’t be right. Lisa understood him completely, if not the details. Her life had changed when Jack Harlow stepped into it—but could she have changed his life
that
drastically? No way. Not a chance.
“It’s got to be something else,” she insisted.
“Something,” Jack said, “but I don’t have it. Nothing.”
“The . . . the thing that attacked me?” She shuddered; just mentioning it revived images of chomping teeth and razor claws. Cuts all across her body burned in remembrance.
Jack nodded, but turned away from the computer. “I’ve never seen anything like it, or a lot of the things I’ve seen tonight.”
Lisa smiled. “Not all bad, I hope.”
“No,” he said, stepping closer to kiss her. “Not all bad.”
“So now what?”
“Now,” Jack said, shaking his head, “I don’t know. I don’t think you’re safe with me, and I don’t think I’m safe in your apartment.”
“Maybe you are,” Lisa said.
He laughed. “Maybe. But I doubt it.”
“Where are you safe?” she asked.
“Different places for different things,” Jack said. “I don’t know of any one place from which I can hide from everything.” He sighed. It wasn’t much of a stretch to say he’d been hiding, running, from himself, from the thing he was. “I don’t really want to spend my life in hiding.”
“Then don’t,” Lisa said. “You’ve been seeing these things for long enough, haven’t you? Don’t you know how to fight them?”
Jack nodded once, but closed his eyes. “Some.”
Someone—or something—knocked on the door.
4.
Nick Hunter returned to the apartment building. From across the street, he’d watched Jack run into it (around a limo, its door open—something else chasing him?—which pulled away when he went inside). He picked the lock to get inside.
Jack hadn’t taken the elevator, but that didn’t matter. Nick climbed in, let the doors open on every floor until he noticed a spot of blood on the tile. Fifth floor.