Her mind reeling Sara nearly leapt from the car while Flair rushed outside to join her. His hands opened and closed, as if being deprived of opening the door for her wounded him somehow.
She did not care.
This is not happening.
Sara stumbled back a step from the car, the cellphone held loosely in one hand.
"His every desire...."she said under her breath.
Flair cocked his head and said, "I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."
She shook her head, "Nothing...it's nothing."
"Ok...goodnight, then, Miss Renardine,” he said as he eased the passenger door closed.
Just then a car turned at an intersection nearby and as its headlights swept over them, Sara saw something that should not have been.
In the years before she finally escaped the burg where she had grown up, where most residents were only one credit card payment ahead of being white trash, Sara had seen any number of times what lights at night did to animals' eyes. Hunters would scout the deer herds in harvested cornfields with spotlights, looking for that season's big buck...others were predator hunters out searching for those animals that stalked the shadows, revealing themselves only when their eyes betrayed them under unnatural light.
The car's headlights slipped over them and for a split second, Flair's eyes flashed in unnatural argent. But, just as quickly as the headlights had disappeared, so did that silver gleam.
His smile wavered as he saw her not just looking at him, but looking at his eyes. Flair slipped his sunglasses on and tipped her a salute which would have been ridiculous in any other situation.
But this day, and now this evening, had taught Sara that she should expect nearly anything, no matter how outlandish.
Her mind was racing as she walked down the sidewalk, past shoddy buildings, some with windowpanes broken out, others with hedges overgrown and paint peeling in dun colored strips from their walls. The impossible day was impossible for her to believe, and that was when she saw him.
Leaning against a derelict building's wall as he had been earlier that day, in a way that might have seemed nonchalant for anyone else, Sara recognized the homeless man from outside the restaurant.
Remembering his wild eyes and the bizarre way that he had looked at her in the alley outside the restaurant, Sara plunged her hand into her purse.
Whether it was to search for pepper spray or for a dollar she could not spare, Sara could not have said.
But the man did not try to advance upon her, only following her with his eyes as she walked by, the pace of her steps then as rapid as she could manage without actually running.
Sara only realized she had been holding her breath until after she had got well beyond the homeless man, releasing it in one long sigh. Then, believing herself foolish for thinking that the poor man meant her any harm, she heard a voice in the darkness.
"Danger...she walks the paths of monsters...she must heed the warning and turn aside...danger...."
He said it quietly, as if he meant it only for Sara's ears, but the sound carried to her in the still night air. Despite herself, she had come to a stop as his words reached her, then jolted by what he said, Sara burst forward again, hurrying as quickly as she could to the relative safety of her shoddy hotel.
She remembered the strange look he had given her earlier that day. A look of manic zeal in an otherwise handsome face. And now, here he was again, miles across town.
This is not a coincidence.
She hurried down the shadowy street and entered the relative safety of the seedy hotel.
With a sigh of relief, Sara skirted past the front desk. A cigarette burned in an ashtray, but no one was seated on the worn leather chair. As far as she was concerned, that was just fine. The proprietor was a greasy haired, leering fiend, who took more than his fair share of time staring after Sara as she walked away. Further, rent was due and money was more than tight for her just then.
Creaking steps did their best to betray her as she went upstairs, but in a lucky turn of events, the front desk remained unattended until Sara passed out of sight of it and on up to the next floor.
The door to her room did its best to not be outdone by the creaking steps, but once shut, silence reigned.
She fumbled for the light switch and as she did, Sara’s foot brushed against something lying on the stained linoleum floor.
The light stuttered into being, threatening to pass into the next life before taking hold one last time. And on the floor lay a brown paper wrapped packet.
She stooped to pick it up and as her hand touched the wrapping...
Who ties things with string these days?
...she felt a chill and gooseflesh prickled along her arms. The door had been locked. There was no sign of anyone forcing their way in.
The packet did not weigh much and as she undid what appeared to be butcher’s twine, Sara saw that it contained two envelopes, one blank on its exterior, the other with a handwritten “Sara Renardine” scrawled in a looping, old fashioned sort of script.
She opened the one with her name.
Dearest Sara,
It is with great pleasure this evening that I have learned contact has been made.
Bravo...well done.
As agreed upon, please find enclosed your first advance payment.
This sum shall be followed by other, similar payments as you continue in your assignment.
For the moment, however, there is nothing more for you to do.
I am certain the subject will initiate the next phase on his own and you have but to follow along.
And, dear girl, do remember...you are to acquiesce to his every desire. His every desire. Without exception, or I shall know of it and whereupon our contract will be immediately and irrevocably severed.
In such a case, and in accordance with the aforementioned contract, I wish to remind you that all previous payments will revert as debt owed to me and in one manner or another, you will pay...and dearly. I promise you.
With My Most Distinguished Salutations,
The Journeyman
The other envelope was densely packed with fifty dollar bills. One hundred portraits of Ulysses S. Grant stared back at her as she fanned them out.
But, the color seemed strangely faded. Sara bent closer before jumping back in surprise.
Each and every one was stamped with the year 1929. Gooseflesh tingled down her arms once more as she slipped the bills back into the envelope.
Suddenly, she felt dirty and went to wash her hands in the small sink in the corner of the room, but first she placed the envelope of cash in the mini fridge on the floor; not just on a shelf, but in the tiny freezer. If she could have, she would have preferred burying it somewhere outside instead. Somehow she felt that would have been more appropriate.
Hands freshly washed in scalding hot water, Sara came back to the letter and that was when she finally noticed.
The writing was in the same looping script as on the exterior of its envelope. Not by ballpoint pen, but rather something like a calligrapher’s pen.
She had no difficulty, in fact, imagining a fluffy white plume penning the scrawling words upon the paper.
But, the worst, the very worst of all was the color of the ink. Not black, nor deep indigo blue.
It was of a rusty brown color and in places where it had dripped down and been only perfunctorily blotted, it remained slightly wet.
And blood red....
~~~
A lone man crossed the threshold from one kind of darkness to another.
There was no sound other than the quiet chirping of crickets and the rustling of other tiny beasts that roam the night.
He slipped through thick leaves, humid with the night’s air. Deep greenery surrounded him on all sides. Trees of various essences, some even tropical, stood all around him and gave silent witness as he lifted his face skyward.
The moon hid herself behind the clouds, refusing the man and his desire to see her, to feel her gentle light upon him while his own private forest sheltered him from the harsh reality of his existence.
The rich odors of plant growth so dense that it could have dated to antediluvian times wafted in the calm night air and allowed nothing of the city below to penetrate.
For the man stood upon a great glass encrusted tower that rose like a spike toward the heavens and the overgrown garden surrounding him had been birthed by the hands of man. The last three floors of the skyscraper were devoted to a space open to the sky and the riot of leaves and wild growth had begun as blueprints upon paper.
But the wilderness cares not for men, nor their orderly plans. In time the natural world had imposed itself in the most unlikely of places and that the tower top held the apparent chaos of nature itself while so many floors below, the world of modern finance and industry believed itself an indomitable and orderly master; well, the irony of it was to the man’s greatest pleasure.
With a groan, he shrugged off his simple white shirt and his massive form glistened in the darkness.
As thickly muscled as the most devout bodybuilder, he shrugged his shoulders, rolling them, loosening them while his skin rippled with their movement.
And across the skin of his torso, black patterns criss crossed in every direction. Spirals of strange symbols interlaced along his ribs to an intaglio of darkness emblazoned over his entire body.
To the untrained eye, he would have appeared to be tattooed in an intricate tribal style. To a very rare few, a handful of learned occultists hidden away in obscure corners of the world, he would have appeared to be a living book.
For the symbols comprised ancient runes meant for one thing--a forgotten language destined to bridge the gap between the realms of the living and of the dead.
His skin rippled again, although this time it was not of his doing. Rather, it was the symbols themselves that shifted and seethed across his body.