Authors: John Urbancik
The footsteps were to his left now. Across the two-lane street, the double yellow lines. Houses behind that sidewalk, and trees, and plenty of places to hide. The echoes stopped when Jack stopped.
Maybe they were normal sounds, his own feet bouncing off of curved metallic objects, or cars, or 200-year-old oaks. He didn’t believe it.
He crossed Magnolia, a one-way, three-lane street, where trees gave way to buildings. A lot of cars were parked along here, and in a private lot at the corner. He passed the library, a parking garage, a few clubs, a tattoo parlor.
The echoes came from above now.
He turned down
Orange
, the main thoroughfare of downtown, and passed a row of clubs. Pretty people in designer clothes lined the sidewalks, partitioned from the rest of the world by velvet ropes, let in one at a time by an overly muscular Hispanic man in a tuxedo. A crowd of Goths gathered near another bar, the same where the vampire chick had winked at him.
There, in the window (which was not a window at all, painted black on both sides)
,
a shimmering ghost stared at him. He had tried to tell Jack stories the other night.
He watched Jack approach with an expression resembling sorrow, or maybe pity.
“Back for my stories?” the ghost asked. “A drink, perhaps?”
“Nothing,” Jack said.
The ghost squinted, as if trying to look at Jack more closely. “Ah, but you have changed.” No one else heard or saw the ghost. It was a private showing, just as it had been the night before.
Jack stopped alongside the window, lowered his voice so as not be overheard. “Shouldn’t you be off haunting something?”
“Oh, I am, really,” the ghost said. “But you can’t fault a man for curiosity. Kill a man for it, certainly, that’s been done. Oh, I could tell you stories.”
“So I’ve heard.” People walked behind him, most ignoring him entirely, some sparing a second look. Jack pretended to be examining the flyers posted on the window: advertisements for bands, techno nights, parties.
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” the ghost asked. “Someplace you haven’t been before. I can tell. You’re the opposite of what you were. Attracting rather than repelling.”
“If you have something to tell me,” Jack said, “something so important you came to the very edge of your…habitat.” Jack tapped, once, on the window, “then quit fucking around and tell me.”
The ghost smiled. After a minute, he said, “Come back when you have time for a story.” He faded backwards, into the club.
3.
Quiet: the room, the whole apartment, the entire world. Sitting at the edge of her bed, staring out the window, Lisa Sparrow felt the thickness of silence. The depth of it.
She couldn’t see the street, just the lake and the path around it, buildings on the other side, even the theatre. Movement, too, of people and night birds, shadows and silhouettes, merely shapes, all of them.
She didn’t feel the scratches on her face, back, and breasts. They had burned at first, itched afterwards, but now she wouldn’t know they were there if the window didn’t reflect them—and it did a poor job of that. She, and the room behind her, looked ghostly. The glass also reflected recent memories: yellow eyes and teeth, dropping, slashing, slicing, laughing.
It would be easier to forget Jack.
Would he come back again? Did he feel as strongly as she suspected—as strongly as she felt? What did she feel? Better to focus on questions about Jack Harlow, wandering mystery man who had returned, than the champing teeth, the biting, the slashing.
approached.
The Witching Hour.
The beginning of tomorrow.
Sleep, perchance to dream
—as Hamlet had said—
what dreams may come?
None good for Lisa Sparrow.
Though tired, her eyes refused to shut before Jack returned. If he failed to, she would never sleep again. That thing would haunt her dreams. Better to sit on the end of the bed and never lay down again. Stare outside until the sun rose and fell and rose again, endlessly, infinitely, until the very thought of dreams—and all visions, images, and ideas—disintegrated within her mind. She had need of none.
Lisa inhaled deeply, held the breath. It wasn’t like her to fold up or collapse. She released the air slowly, through her mouth, expelling anxieties and tension. There, those were things she didn’t need.
She could prepare better next time. Get pepper spray, or a gun for her purse. Take karate lessons. Pump iron. Cast spells that burned three-foot-tall teeth-baring creatures to ash. Life was simpler when she only had to worry about random drive-by shootings, terrorism, and co-workers going postal.
Jack was out there. He had her key. He’d be back. Next to him, she could sleep. Dream of flowers and sunshine and . . .
No, that was wrong. Not sunshine. Jack belonged to the dark. She knew it, then, as truth. Something she should have realized right from the beginning—and something he’d never be able to change. That’s why he’d left.
But then he’d come back.
4.
The street grew darker as Jack passed the parking lot and police station. No kids got in his way this time. Still, he cast furtive glances left, right, over his shoulder. He watched the distance ahead of him. The sky above.
The footsteps, no longer mere echoes, followed him. Or paced him. Alongside? Ahead? He saw nothing, not even the things that never hid from his eyes. No sign of movement except trees in the wind, litter on the streets, normal living people in the parking lot or at the pizza place. Nothing else. No one. Nada.
He didn’t like it.
Jack couldn’t shake the sensation of eyes. In the leaves, the bricks, the
clouds, the street. Watching. Spying. The ghost had been right: he’d changed
. How? Did the whole world feel this different because he’d found hope?
The footsteps were human enough, not that clattering beast from Lisa’s apartment. Solid, so not a ghost—at least, no phantom he’d ever seen. Vampires were generally stealthier. Werewolves shouldn’t be out yet; the moon wasn’t quite full, and they certainly didn’t walk like normal men. That still left endless possibilities. Jack didn’t like any of them.
Most likely, it was an echo, his imagination, the weird acoustics of a city too warm for October. A low pressure system moving in, planning to drop rain. The strange configuration of satellites in the sky, the position of Venus, something in retrograde. The last vestiges of Jack’s sanity.
None of those choices appealed to him, either.
5.
After hours of fruitless searching, Nick Hunter gave up. He returned to the apartment building where he first saw the creature.
The hand was gone, but bloodstains remained.
He didn’t quite know what to do. Expand his hunt? Forget it and move on? Wait for someone or something to return with answers?
Ultimately, by default, he decided to wait. Easier than continuing the vain pursuit. Less final than surrendering.
Nothing moved in the shadows, watching or stalking. As the night progressed, the wind strengthened, making finding a scent more difficult. If it rained—there were enough clouds up there—he’d lose all traces of its putrid scent. He had no such traces to lose.
Nothing skulked around the lake. He scanned the entire length of the path. Watched the park. Studied the veranda. Even the water’s surface, just in case.
Eventually, Nick noticed movement. It wasn’t anything to worry about, specifically, as many things moved through the night. But the things he saw—an owl, a cat, even the wind—all moved in a single direction. Toward downtown.
Once he noticed it, he couldn’t avoid it. Shadows, a stray dog, a homeless man in camouflage, a pretty teenage girl . . . all flowed in a singular direction.
Nick tried to accept it as coincidence. Couldn’t.
6.
Jack reached his car without incident. The footsteps stopped when he unlocked the Mustang. He opened the door, reached under the seat. He didn’t plan to search his database here, in the open. Too many eyes; too many that he couldn’t see. He didn’t trust it. The dark had turned. Every breath came uncomfortably. Goosebumps ran up his spine and down his arms.
He locked the Mustang. Scrutinized everything around him: every tree, every lamppost, every scrap of paper in the street. Listened to each sound until he knew its exact origin. Night had never before held secrets from Jack Harlow.
To others, invisible threats filled the night, unseen monsters and unimagined dreads. Jack knew these things; they were plainly visible to him. Tonight, they hid.
He hurried back toward the apartment.
He avoided the ghost in the club by taking a different street. Echoing footsteps followed again, two pairs now. Right and left. Forward and above.
Around the corner from a shoe store, a cat sat on a newspaper vending machine. It was perfect black. Its wide green eyes followed Jack as he approached and passed. It flicked its tail once, then jumped down to the sidewalk after Jack passed.
With the footsteps, he heard whispering—nothing definitive, nothing he could quite grasp. A single voice. Slow, drawn out words. Something between awe, fear, and hatred. Dangerous.
He listened carefully. The footsteps had ceased, but not the whispers.
1.
Without a sound, Jack Harlow
turned. He scanned all he saw, but noticed nothing. The whispering quieted. He said, “Come on out.”
No response.
“I
can
see you. And hear you,” Jack said. “You can’t play your games with me.”
Whispers—whispers that may have been just the wind. Faces in the windows—or simply shadows, reconfigured by his imaginings. Footsteps. Laughing. Down the street, a couple, arm in arm, stumbled in his direction. Regular people, drunk and happy, passing the cat which continued to stare.
Jack walked on.
Bats overhead. He was near the eastern shore of
Lake
Eola
. Eyes became more visible now that there were fewer people, little rat eyes in the alleys, the eyes of roaches and palmetto bugs.
Laughter again—the couple had crossed the street and stepped into a parking garage.
Their sound died suddenly. Unnaturally.
He stopped at a red light. Cars streaked by. Drivers slowed to look at him—or to turn, or find a parking spot on the side of the road.
When the cars cleared, he crossed the street. A path led straight toward the lake; he followed it. A lonely howl sounded in the distance, the call of a wolf—even in the city.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, brushstrokes against Jack’s ears. A chill rose around him. He recognized the voice: the blind ghost from the hotel. But ghosts were usually restricted to a particular place.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“The voices,” she said. “The feet. I hear many things.
Many
.”
He looked around, but the whispering had died down. The footsteps had ceased. “Weren’t you going into the light?”
“Can’t see light,” she said. “You said I could go to the warmth. You’re warm.” She paused. “What else can I do?”
He didn’t see her—or anyone else. This section of the lake appeared empty. He didn’t stop walking. “I didn’t mean for you to follow me. Isn’t there a next step for you, something beyond being stuck here?”
“I don’t feel stuck,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“Have you been with me all this time?”
It was another voice that answered. “Not all this time, no.” The knifeman, holding a gun now, stepped out of the shadows. Not as tall as Jack, close cut blond hair, eyes masked by shadow, he looked older than he was.
The ghost said nothing. If the chill was any indication, she swung behind Jack even as he turned to face the hunter.
“I didn’t think you’d seen me,” the hunter said. He held the pistol loosely, aimed toward, but not at, Jack. “I followed the wind.”
“The wind?”
“Strange, huh? That’s what I thought.”
They were bathed by moonbeams; no streetlights near them seemed to be lit. Jack had seen hunters before. Usually, they never noticed him.
A vampire hunter, Jack decided. Most had little imagination, no inkling of what else existed. Silence fell between them. Neither seemed to know what to say or do. Their situation was unique; Jack was no vampire, nothing to be hunted, neither threat nor ally. There should’ve been more space between them.
“Not just the wind,” the hunter said.
Jack felt it, too, how the wind came at him from all directions. It wasn’t strong. Surely just an illusion.
“Cats, rats, birds,” the hunter said.
The chill behind Jack—the ghost—tensed. Pressed tight against him, like feathers, imperceptible except to someone like Jack.
“Even them,” Nick said, nodding toward a homeless man a hundred yards up the path. He stood there, head tilted, between lampposts. Flexing the fingers of one hand open then shut, open then shut.