Part One - The Leap of Faith Leads...

My name is David Keely…a long time ago I took a leap of faith. I was a psychotherapist and a man who was in what some would consider the wrong place at the right time. I consider it a combination of fate and, well, bad timing on my part. If you’re reading this, then take note of what you read. These chronicles may be the only record that will ever exist concerning the truth.  The truth begins a long time ago, at Holy Messengers Institute for the Clinically Insane.

 

November 15^th, 2009

I walk down this hallway every night at about this time. I hear the patients in their cells; some are trying to hurt themselves in the padded rooms and some talk calmly to themselves as they are actually speaking to another person, some even go so far as to reply to an unheard response. I see the patients in the lower security glass rooms as they watch me pass; hoping that today is their day to go home. I always regret their sad faces when I have to say no. It’s like telling a child that they can’t see their parents yet, except some of these children are dangerous. I remember this as I look at some of their charts…anything from rapes at the command of god to ‘the devil told me I should kill myself and my family’. Some of the worse cases scare me, the ones who sit in their rooms waiting for me to let my guard down because they want nothing more than to see my blood on their hands…the ones who show the emotion of a serial killer who did it because he liked it and nothing more.

My most prominent case has been occupying my mind for some time now; the case of Cameron Pealie, a boy who was institutionalized when he was just 11 years old. He is sixteen now and he still believes that shadows live breathe and travel like we do…and that they killed his sister who went missing. I heard the police talking the night they brought him in at his parent’s request, something to the effect of ‘she must have run away’ and that the father was suspected of rape and domestic violence. If that was true I could more than pity the boy. No wonder he couldn’t believe his sister had just left him there.

I looked at the guard on the other side of the division and nodded as he let me through. The familiar sound of my footsteps on the linoleum floor seemed distorted somehow and screams filtered down the hall from the one room I’d never heard them from. Cameron’s scream was threaded with terror and I rushed to his cell with two orderlies behind me. The guard beat us there and yanked the door open just as I got there. A smoky mist billowed out and Cameron fell into my arms and I lowered him gently to the floor; the poor boy was shaking worse than a crack addict on a bad trip.  With the guards help and we got him onto a bed in the trauma ward. There was no blood so he didn’t need a hospital. I thanked who ever that he hadn’t been hurt. We managed to get him hooked up so we could check his vitals and everything seemed to slow and go silent when I saw what the monitor had to show. Cameron Pealie was already dead…his heart wasn’t beating and his respiration wasn’t showing anymore. The on-call doctor checked manually before pronouncing him dead.

I stalked out of the room, I had never lost a patient to suicide and now I had lost one to homicide. I knew somehow that he had been scared to death in the most literal sense I had ever seen. I requested that the guard reply the security tape so I could see what had happened in Cam’s room. All I could see was smoke coming out of nowhere, static and Cam cowering in terror in the corner farthest from the smoke and closest to the door. I thought I had seen a shape in the smoke while watching the video and determined that someone must have done this to the boy.

I sent the orderly to go check the room; I’ve never been an idiot. There was no way that boy could cause that smoke with no matches and no way could he have the bruises he did in the places he did by his own hand. I looked at the screen with the current surveillance camera footage and watched as the orderly entered the room to check it. I watched in a combination of awe and silent horror as the same smoke from before materialized in the room between the orderly and the door. I watched as something inside the smoke loped towards the poor man who was screaming, unheard to me since the camera had no audio. Then, before my eyes could quite comprehend what they were seeing, it was gone…orderly, smoke and all. Some part of my subconscious was telling my heart something because it beat wildly in my chest.

I knew without a doubt that something had scared Cameron to death and that it was likely the same thing that made the orderly disappear…and I wanted to find out what.

As I made my way down to the room, I noticed the dreadful silence that hung thick in the air. The patients were all tense in their cells and the orderlies and the nurses spoke in hushed voices about having seen things in other areas of the building. The lights above me seemed to grow dimmer as I neared the hallway and I realized momentarily that it wasn’t my imagination or an illusion. The lights did get dimmer and the ones inside the hallway with Cameron’s room were out. I shivered slightly; in all my years as the lead here at holy Messengers, I had never experienced anything like this.

As I stood just outside the inky blackness of the hallway I came to realize that my fear didn’t came from the fact that Cameron Pealie may have been lying…it came from the possibility that he may have been right all along. Which meant that whatever had taken his sister was now here in this facility. My stomach dropped under the weight of my heart as it sank and my legs agreed fully with it that I shouldn’t go into the darkened hall. But go I did…right into the shadows.

It was like passing through a thin membrane of cold water, like going deep enough to feel the shocking difference in temperature in a very deep lake and being able to keep going. The air was icy and thick and I could no longer see the lit hallway behind me. It was as if I had walked right into a deep dark abyss and would never be able to find my out. I felt something brush my leg gently and saw the pale, ghostlike form of the orderly a few feet ahead of me in the darkness. I would say that it was like he was illuminated from the inside so that I could see him, but that was not the case. It was as if I wasn’t even seeing the poor man with my eyes and instead perceived him in an entirely different way. I almost touched him but he turned around just as I reached my hand out blindly and grabbed me with a strength he had never had before. I screamed but realized with a sudden pit of venomous fear that I had made no sound at all. I tried my hardest to get away, even going so far as to try throwing him away by using his weight as a fulcrum, but to no avail. He had me and I was helpless as he pulled me in what I thought was the direction of the room. 

The air grew heavier as I was dragged along and I felt as though I might just suffocate. I decided to put my hand out to try and feel the walls to ‘see’ where he was taking me and released a silent gasp as I felt the molding of a doorway. The darkness peeled away and I found myself in a blood soaked bedroom. The room was lit by a single rotary light that was decorated with all sorts of stars and planets to match the wallpaper…a child’s room then. The shadows here twisted in ways that were impossible with the lamps rotation and a hand twitched from underneath the bed and came forward slowly. A young red-haired girl followed the hand from beneath the bed and stood slowly as if in great pain. She looked at me with eyes the color of seaweed and seemed to be crying, her mascara trailing in thick rivers down her cheeks. Her skin was marred with black lines running in odd patterns on her arms and up to her neck. Below her midriff shirt I could see more of those lines and I followed them down to see her legs almost completely consumed by them. A closer inspection made me gag; what I had mistaken to be lines were her veins and some were exposed, dragging the floor as she moved toward me.  And she wore no mascara; her eyes were leaking what I now knew to be blood, the dark rivulets clearly red as she got closer. I stepped back and stopped myself, if this was Cameron’s missing sister, however mutilated she looked she was obviously still alive enough to move. Something was using her as a puppet, merely moving the strings…I followed the trail of one of her veins and found that it led to the far wall on the other side of the bed. There was a very large crevasse there, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and made a hole wide enough for a man to slip through. The opening was threaded with more of blackened veins as if it belonged to a gruesome spider. 

Somehow I knew…there were no spiders there, and no reason that I shouldn’t drag the girl with me into the hole. I was here for a reason and the reason obviously hadn’t killed me so there must be something it wanted me to see. I dodged around the girl and cut the ‘line’, catching her as she fell and towing her with me toward the hole. I hesitated momentarily, feeling forward with my foot and finding no hold. No way to go but down, it was better for me to see what I could while I could right?

Wrong. I stepped forward and was pitched headfirst into what felt like a river. I could no longer see but I felt the girl in my arms. Good news, at least I wasn’t alone. I held her tightly to my chest as we were dragged by some unseen current, the torrent was unbelievably strong and it was a struggle to maintain my grip but I did. Auroras flashed and danced before my eyes and I felt the girl in my stir in a moment of wakefulness just as we were pitched back into the room from before.

The room was tidy and clean and a boy lay down on the bed. Cameron Pealie looked at the door as his sister, the red haired girl in my arms, came through the door. Time seemed to go faster and slowed back down at the point where I was stepping forward. The boy looked at me and his eyes widened in horror as he dropped the glass of milk. The shadows in the room rose and rushed the girl as I rushed to save her. Maybe I could stop all this. The boy watched as I failed and his sister disappeared under the shadows, blood pooling as her screams fell silent.

The girl didn’t let me hold her anymore. She sank to the floor in front of the image of her brother and began to weep, her sobs audible now and ghostly faint. She looked transparent now to me and her head whipped around to face me. Silent conviction flooded her features as she faded out of the room. Leaving me to watch as the next few days played out. Cameron Pealie screamed every time he was in his room alone…and his gaze was always fixed on me. His mother would comfort and his father would yell until finally I was confronted with an image I knew very well; Cameron Pealie, a sixteen year old boy, sitting in a glass cell at Holy Messengers. And there I was, evaluating him and trying to tell him he didn’t have to hide anymore. But he had been right the whole time. The vision whipped away from me and the darkness closed in again.

I awoke with the orderlies surrounding me in the now lit hallway in front of Cameron Pealie’s room. They asked all the questions I knew they would but I didn’t answer them. All I could think of was what I had seen and I knew, as I looked behind me into the room and saw a shadow with gangly legs like the rest of them, that I could never tell them the truth. I had to lie or they would suffer the way Cameron had. I understood now that my future lay in retirement and then in some other field…I also knew that I could never come here again.

I left Holy Messengers the very next day and appointed a lovely and intelligent female doctor in my place as head of the institute. Mostly I wander the streets at night, still thinking of what I saw and trying to better understand it. I also scan the paper for disappearances and wonder if the shadows have anything to do with it.

As for the shadows: they’ve left me alone since that night at Holy Messengers. And I have never been tormented late at night by nightmares and never seen a glimpse of a humanoid creature with gangly legs.

 

December 22^nd, 2010

Snow falls down in the streets of Manhattan as I walk home. It’s only been a year since my experience at Holy Messengers. I used to work at the Institute; I also used to have a patient by the name of Cameron Pealie who claimed his sister had been killed by shadows. The police believed that the boy had been traumatized by Marisol Pealie’s disappearance because she had run away. I agreed, if only I had realized sooner that the boy had been right…well, I wouldn’t be moving to a city on the other side of the nation and I wouldn’t be seeing all of these things in the shadows. I know now that not all missing children and adults are runaways; they were dead in most cases. I had seen the corpses just before they were dragged off into whatever…dimension these creatures come from. I can’t just go off and tell the world that the myths live and breathe around us or that they are eaten by things that the myths refuse to mention for fear of bringing down wrath. Cameron had tried that and he wound up in Holy Messengers and then dead. The story of that night still makes monthly appearances in the paranormal magazines that pose their views on the events…and they will never know how right they are sometimes.

Looking up at the cloudy sky I can see each flake as it falls to the earth, I can see the carolers on the streets in front of major department stores and the strings of silver bells that hang like telephone wires between each light pole on either side of the street. The winter winds make each bell jingle softly as a reminder to the city that Christmas is only three days away. I know that in a day or two that husbands and wives will be performing in the Christmas race. My house is more like a manor on the beach and it’s a small distance from the chaos of the city.

I close the door behind me and lock up the house before turning on the stereo. I decided to take a break from watching for missing persons reports and listen to Christmas music. Mannheim Steamroller’s ‘Carol of the Bells’ weaves through my house, emptying it of all the stress and worry about what I may have gotten myself into. For five months I’ve been searching the world for a prime place to gather information and encounter new creatures that may have originated in the same place as those shadows and I found it; a rainforest on the outskirts of the city of Seattle. Not many people like going into it during the day so the chances of them entering at night are close to none.

Sometimes I wonder if I have gone insane myself and that I secretly want to die by the tentacle or claws of some other nightmarish creature. I curl up on the bed and let the music lull me to sleep as I run that thought through my head again.

I’ve never been an idiot; when I wake up to a silence that I never fell asleep to, I know that something is wrong. I jumped out of bed and grabbed the nearest thing to me in fear that it was a burglar. I crept out into the hallway, baseball bat in hand, and made my way to the living room. A deafening crash polluted the air and I heard a mewling hiss from the direction of the kitchen. I froze momentarily before leaning forward to see into the living room and jumped when a growl seeped into the air. I made my way slowly to peep into the kitchen and almost gagged; it looked like a leopard, it looked like a gecko, but it wasn’t both and I knew it. The smell of the thing was staggering, putrid meat and burnt noodles. If you’ve ever smelled either, the combination almost killed me in itself. And it was inside my microwave…I moved quietly to close the door before turning the appliance on. The creature inside spat at the door and hissed as the glass plate rotated slowly for even coverage.

I backed away as it reeled back and smashed its ugly head into the door of the microwave before biting into it and ripping it off. I stared in shock as it shook the door in its mouth before tossing it aside to look at me drooling. I stepped back and readied the bat. The creature leaped at me and missed, hitting the cabinet behind me and digging its claws into the expensive dark wood to get its footing for the next attempt. I was ready when it was; the bat broke on its head and sent it spiraling into the trash can. The lid clamped down on the silver container and I heard a hissing growl from inside before the can blew apart in a shower of garbage and aluminum.

The feline stood before me; its entire body shook in fury and its eyes blazed a deep orange as it hefted the refrigerator with its tail and hurled it at me. I ducked just in time to see that the animal had only hurled the fridge as a distraction as it rushed at me right behind it. It came fast and low and it was all I could to throw myself at the counter to avoid being torn apart.

The cat whipped around and came again; I looked behind me and then at the cat before ducking. The creature flew above me and out the window to the beach. I looked out the window and met its eyes. It body shook furiously and it padded off into the night looking back once as if to say ‘I’ll be back’.

I surveyed the damage the next morning and shook my head. The entire kitchen would need remodeling; the linoleum was ruined, the cabinets were shattered and the fridge lay in the living room on the couch.

 

 

August 1st, 2010

I was leaving New York; the boxes were the only thing that made my beachside home look like someone had lived there. It took me a while but it was well worth the move; the delay had come from patching up the ruined kitchen after a feline that resembled a reptile more than anything else had torn it apart. I tried to forget that it had almost torn me apart with as well. Everything was packed away and the movers were coming to get my things shortly.

A little over a year ago I quit my job at Holy Messengers after an incident with one of my patients. I found out that he wasn't crazy and, more importantly, he had been right. Ever since then I've been stumbling across things like the creature that was responsible for my delay in the move.

I walked outside onto the balcony and looked at the ocean. The chances of me getting a view like this were slim on such short notice. Of course I could commission a company to construct a beachside house and I would, I loved it that much. Someone honked the horn around the front of the house. I walked around and let the movers in, told them the address of the storage place in Seattle and made my way into the city to hail a taxi to the airport.

JFK International airport was bustling and loud. It was a fight to get to my gate and a struggle to get through the couch section to get to first class. I took the window seat and leaned my head back after fastening my seatbelt. The stewardess did her safety spiel in the background as I slowly fell asleep. I slept through the flight and didn’t wake up until the pilot tapped me on the shoulder so I could get off the plane and he could go home. I hailed a taxi outside of SEATAC airport and gave the cabby the address of the apartment I would stay in for the next year until my beachside house was finished. On the way, I imagined what it would look like overall. I had given them specific instructions for the layout but it was up to them what to furnish it with on this one so I thought of what they might do for the windows and the floors.

I woke up when the cabby yelled at me to get out and pay him. Looks like Seattle cabbies could work in New York. I got out and handed him the cash before looking up at 2801 Western Avenue in Belltown. Olympus Apartments was a beautiful place and the Studio apartment on the 2^nd floor was spacious with a view of the skyline like no other; I loved it. My furniture posed a moderate problem but complied with my demands after a little bit of pushing and pulling. I wound up with the couch facing the window and the TV with the chair in the corner. The bedroom was large enough for my wardrobe, bed and nightstand with room to spare. And the kitchen accommodated all the utensils and appliances perfectly.

The exhaustion of the move set in with the jetlag to keep it company and I threw myself on the bed to sleep. At least it tried to throw myself, it was more like I fell onto the bed but I didn’t quite care about the difference. I set my alarm for 7 a.m. and resumed the nap I started on the flight.

The alarm blared in my ear with a loud, annoying buzz and I slammed my hand on the off button to shut it up. I got dressed and made my way down to the lobby and to the restaurant for breakfast before going to see the place where my beachside home would be when it was finished next year. The taxi I hailed was the same from before, something that never happens in large cities, and the cabby was still irritable. I told the cabby where to and relaxed until we arrived. After paying him I walked out to look at the view. The Pacific Ocean gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight and the waves crashed against the shore; it was breathtaking.

I stayed there a while and sat down in the sand. Before I knew I had watched the day pass by and night was falling quickly. The summer twilight gave the ocean violet and red hues and the birds in the rainforest could still be heard. I looked back at the city; the lights gave a halo above the trees and I could partially see the Space Needle peeking over the treetops. I had never seen such beauty; nature and civilization coexisting in a way that New York and LA had never done.

The waves behind me lapped at the sand and something tickled the back of neck causing the hairs to stand on end. Somehow I knew it wasn’t a friendly ocean breeze giving me the chill that slammed down my spine like an electric surge; it took everything I had to look behind me. The serpent before me had glittering blue eyes and golden scales, I had to catch my breath and get my senses back. Its forked tongue flicked out and touched my forehead lightly enough that I barely felt it. I remained frozen; regardless of how majestic this creature was, there was always the chance it could see me as food. I didn’t see the serpent’s tail slithering behind me until it wound around my body up to my shoulders. I couldn’t move an inch as the animal started out to sea with me in tow and I was helpless and we sank under the waves.

 The fading light from above filtered into the water in a prismatic curtain of light and I watched as we dove deeper and that light faded from sight. I ran out of breathe right after that and was forced to gasp for air; I was stunned when I found it. The serpents golden scales glowed and I could see the water being forced away from me for about 3 inches all around. I could clearly see the serpents glistening body undulate smoothly as it took me deeper and the glow showed me the cavern as we passed through the mouth of it. The walls were smooth and glittered with colors that suggested the presence of more than one precious gemstone.

The tunnel opened up into an enormous valley under the Pacific Ocean. I could see the faint glimmer of buildings under the fine sand of the sea floor and veins of gold laced the stone of the walls. The colors of all sorts of precious gems decorated specific areas of the valley. Above I could see the glow of some sort of crystal formation and no sign of the world above.

The serpent took me past many amazing sights as we neared the center of the valley. If what I had seen earlier was beautiful, if nature was beautiful, then this was impossible; the center of the valley cradled thousands of opalescent orbs and was guarded by dozens of golden, silver and crystal blue serpents. As I watched, one wound its body around an enormous ancient pillar and the pillar burst into bright light. The light faded slowly and I could see emerald veins carving their way into the stone. The serpent dug its tail into one of the veins and pulled it out the way a seamstress pulls thread. The tendril gleamed and glittered as the serpent laid it gently over the orbs. It repeated this until there was a sheer coating of emerald over all of them. I gasped when one of the orbs twitched, rocking its balance and realized with a start that these were all enormous and beautiful eggs.

The serpent that held me looked back at me and I realized it had never intended to hurt me or eat me. I felt a little guilty and more than a little sad as the beautiful creature towed me back to the beach and set me down on the sand. It wound around me with room to spare and glowed once more, drying my clothes before diving back down to its sanctuary in the valley below the sea.

The cabby was different this time and on the way back to my apartment I tried to take in all of what happened. I rode the elevator to the second floor and slumped onto the couch in front of the TV. I didn’t even bother to turn it on for a look at missing person reports; instead my gaze was drawn to the glow that was coming from the bedroom. I bolted up and into the room and almost tripped over the object that glowed softly on the floor…it was one of the serpent eggs. I picked it up gently and walked back out to the living room. The serpents blue eyes shone just outside my range of vision and I knew I had been gifted a remarkable thing: a piece of sanctuary.

 

 

October 31st, 2010

 

Two months ago I started to seek out what I had only before stumbled into and that’s why I’m here. The animal towering above me is part furry bear and part scaly croc with beautiful silver insect wings. I’m not what some would call short but I definitely wasn’t up to its knees. It hulked down in front of me to speak, its nose level with my collar bone as its enormous head dwarfed me.

“Why are you here, human? Why have you awakened Baruna?” The animal’s voice boomed and almost took me to the ground. Its glare almost leveled the ground around me as it snorted in irritation. I mustered what I could and spoke the truth in as blunt of words as I dared. I wasn’t about to be rude to something that could eat a Buick in one swift bite.

“I seek the truth of those like you and your origins. I wish to know what I have been blind to.” My voice seemed meek and mousy compared to its boomed echo that still resounded through the trees. It rose to full height which looked to be about 17 or 18 feet and crossed its scaly arms.

“A seeker…very well…my kind are few and the other breeds are either the same or violent and bloodthirsty. I do not know much of the bird clans or of the Kanais but I can tell you of myself. My kind bore the bear and the crocodile into your world. We dwindle in numbers and your people hunt us when they do know of us! Your people have such a disregard of any life but their own and destroy what is not like them because they cannot admit their fear of the dark! You say you are different…what have you to prove it?” Baruna looked at me expectantly and I had no answer. I felt ashamed and worse, disrespectful.

“I see you cannot explain your difference. My kind used to walk with men and hunt with them before the Separation began. We can withstand fire and make it ourselves and we taught humans how to make it. We taught them how to set traps and laws and how to mete out justice.

“But our kind retreated in the background and hid away when the humans began to grow ornery and paranoid. They started to hunt us for food and when we killed the hunting parties they sent, they called us demons and monsters and forced us away. They became arrogant and stubborn and prideful as their laws grew more respected.

“But when their laws started failing they had ceased to believe in our existence and we had no desire to prove it to those who had cast us away so freely. As your world corrodes and crumbles under the very laws and moral beliefs your people have established, we sit here and wait for the day when the human stupidity will cease and they remember who they owe their beginning to.

“There are some who have hope in humans…I would suppose that you are proof of that hope, Seeker. Continue now on your path and do not seek me again. I will not be here should you do so.” The reptilian bear turned around and loped away gracefully, its crocodilian tail sweeping the leaves away in its wake.

I was left in a stunned silence after the great animal disappeared. For some reason I felt anger towards my own people. I walked home to my studio apartment on the second floor of Olympus Apartments. I showered and turned out the lights before heading for bed. The bedroom was spacious as was the rest of the apartment and a soft glow came from the head of the bed where a small serpent slept on the pillow. The serpent had been an egg up until a week ago when it shattered its shell all over my living room couch. I’d had the egg on my lap when it twitched and then burst open with the force of a train wreck. I was still sore from it and rubbed the front of right leg as it ached again. Apparently I would be sore for a while longer as well.

The serpent sat up as I plopped down on the bed and curled up on my chest when I laid my head down. I looked at the small mass of silver scales with purple eyes and wondered how long it would take for it to reach size that was on par with its relatives. I don’t think I’d survive it sitting on my chest at that point. And I may also want to start considering a sturdier bed because getting it to sleep on the floor wasn’t happening. I found that out last weekend when it pushed me off the bed for my attempts and wouldn’t let me back on. I wound up sleeping on the couch.

I wondered if others had sought out Baruna the crocodilian bear for information or advice. It had called me a Seeker too; I wondered if there were other seekers looking for the same ones I did right now. The serpent on my chest tightened itself in its curled position and sighed softly. I smiled, there was no way I would ever forget any of this. The soft glow and the warmth of the little serpent’s body put me to sleep without me even realizing it.

 

 

January 6th, 2011

Two years ago I used to work at Holy messengers Institute for the Clinically Insane. I also found that some of the patients are there because they really did tell the truth…I wonder how many demons really did rip their friends apart. Either way, I had quit and now I travel, trying to find and understand the things that go bump in the night. I’ve had more run-ins with strange creatures; from tiny, acid-spewing insects to giant could-likely-eat-Buicks-whole winged crocodile bears.

I know it sounds crazy, but believe me. Tonight I was running from one of my findings as it tried to catch me and eat me alive. I had barely got a glimpse of a hairy body, many legs and sharp teeth before the drooling started followed by the running. I had learned a long time ago that you don’t go around screaming for help when being hunted or haunted by a figment of society’s imagination. Cameron Pealie had suffered the sour end of that rope and wound up in Holy Messengers. I barely made it to my street in time to get under the cover of street lights. Most things that live in the dead of the night like to stay away from the city and that’s why I live here in Seattle. It’s also the best place to do my midnight hunting, the rainforest the lays on the outskirts of the city are perfect for all sorts of monstrous beasts, partly because not many people like to go there in the day much less at night. I walked the rest of the way to my apartment and rode the elevator to the 2^nd floor, my stop and my sanctuary. In apartment 246 I locked the door behind me, plopped down on my couch and turned on the TV to catch a glimpse of any recent disappearances. There were none yet. 

I must have fallen asleep on the couch because I awoke with a kink in my neck and did my best to get to my bed before it became permanent, turning the lights on as I went. I don’t like the dark anymore; it’s too dangerous for me now. Just because I survived my encounter with Cameron Pealie’s shadows didn’t mean they weren’t waiting to kill me, whether they’ve left me alone or not. I slugged some of the whiskey I had on my nightstand table and fell into alcohol induced sleep. And they say Nyquil works the best.

The window above my bed whistled loudly as wind made its way through it. Ever since I had to use it as a fire escape it hasn’t been the same. I took that as my wakeup call and made my way to the shower. I did the morning routine including a shower and shambled into the kitchen to make some breakfast. The stove read 4 am but since it was an hour off, that meant it was 3 a.m., good time to check for disappearances.

 I flipped on the TV and watched as the faces of children, teenagers and adults were flashed across the screen along with the ‘Have You Seen These People’ number. In truth, I had seen two of them at least and it wasn’t pretty. My stomach had strengthened since seeing Marisol Pealie’s ghost two years ago and I hadn’t even known her name until just recently when I barely managed to recover some birth records on the internet.  I had still wanted to vomit at the sight of a dismembered police officer I had stumbled across last night in the furry creature’s domain and I knew now from those pictures that his name had been Jonathan James Guilliard.  He’d had a wife and a kid on the way and he was only 32 years old, only four years older than I am now. My stomach flopped again as I remembered what he had wound up as.

I got up, flipped the TV off and went to the window to look out at the Seattle city lights. Even from here I could see the Space Needle towering high above the rest of the city. The serpent slinked out from under my couch, a fairly tight squeeze for something beginning to reach a size dangerously close to a mastiff. It looked at me curiously, I could swear it actually shook its angular head at me, and twitched its wings to get airborne and land on the spot I left on the couch.

“Nice, you know I might have wanted to sit back down at some point.” The sarcasm in my voice remained outweighed only by the casual flick of the serpent’s tail. I can’t even catch a break from my own roommate. I sighed in mock annoyance and went back to my view of the skyline. As I watched something flew past the towering monument/restaurant, blocking the light it emitted momentarily.

“On second thought,” I said to the serpent on my couch. “You must be psychic somehow.” As collected as I may have sounded, my stomach was crushed under my heart as I pulled my coat on and rushed out the door. I tried not to lose sight of the flyer as I navigated the city on my motorcycle while still avoiding a wreck.

The thing flew out of the city and headed in the direction of the beachside cliffs, though from this distance it was almost impossible to tell. I followed it into the rainforest, the engine roaring proudly as if to scoff at ATVs everywhere. The path I took was rough and I thought I had lost the trial until it swooped down to separate me from the bike. I felt its teeth grab my leg at the same time its talons grabbed my neck in a surprisingly gentle fashion. It flew off with me over the Pacific at a speed that almost tore my skin off. Within a few minutes I saw the lights of what might be Japan and in a few more those lights were replaced by a view of the Indian Ocean. My carrier dove down at a steep decline straight towards the ocean and, as I watched, a rift of some sort opened up just above the watery surface in a majestic array of auroras and sparkling motes. I covered my face with my free arm as we flew through the rift.

It was just like entering the hallway two years ago. The icy frigidity enveloped me and threatened to crush me. I couldn’t see anything and I feared I never would until the darkness peeled away in a smoky mist and I saw the view below. It was beautiful; towering crystals protected the castle that was nestled gently in their midst. The castle itself shone the colors of precious gems and gleamed brightly in the light the crystals emitted, the darkness from before clung to the edge of the crystals light as if waiting for it to fade. My carrier flew low over the castle and dropped me just inside the walls. I looked around in awe as I walked forward. I had learned a time ago that when I survive something like that, there is a reason I did. I entered the magnificent fortress and gasped; the beautiful marble and stone of the structure reflected colors in swirling, prismatic patterns as the fire burned through reds and greens and blues too vivid to exist in my world.

“Good Evening” The voice was female, melodious and foreign at best. She pronounced the syllables in ways I never had as if she had only just learned English.

“I did just learn your language human. You are the one who encountered the shadows of the boy are you not?” Her question hung in the air, suspended by stunned silence and the echoing of it through the hallway.

“I am. If I may ask, why am I here?” My voice wasn’t as strong as I would have hoped but at least I didn’t squeak. I had noticed the razor sharp teeth decorating her smile and I didn’t want to do anything to trigger a predatory response.

“I hear you wish to understand more of the world you encountered through the boy and his shadows, you are here for me to show you. Follow me.” Her voice held something more than what she was saying in meaning and I followed her with a generous degree of caution. She led me down corridor after corridor and finally into a large room with mirrored walls that curved to the ceiling.

“Wait here and you shall receive more of what you have searched for.” Her voice took on a darker undertone and I felt something close around my neck. I whipped around and her smile was malevolent this time. Her hand grasped a chain that she threw at the floor, the end of it sinking into the stone as if it was water and it stuck there. There was a metal collar on my neck confirming what I should have recognized minutes ago; I was a prisoner, not a guest.

“You see, you know about our world and the creatures in it, I cannot let you stay in your world. And you will not be allowed to leave this room, though that is for your safety. There are others in this fortress and they will not have the same restraint I do.” Her smile was wicked and she sauntered toward me in a fashion I had only seen in movies.

“But perhaps I can make your stay a willing one?” Her voice held a lot more than I had initially thought. Her fingers sent shivers down my spine and I watched in a helplessly, blissful horror as she showed me exactly what she had meant.

She closed the door behind her as she left and within minutes I was feeling what she had meant. My body shook with the desire for more, it was like she was a drug and I had become and addict. Every day she would return and sate me and every night she would leave alone to writhe against one of the mirrors in anxious anticipation of the next morning. It was the worst kind of torture imaginable. It felt like weeks passed until some change occurred. Tonight was going to be different and the look in her eyes proved it.

“After some…severe deliberation amongst those on my counsel, I have decided to allow your freedom...”My heart pounded with excitement and dismay until I heard the unspoken area of thought for a condition.

“…but you must become like us, like me.” The weight of her words hit me like a freight train. I stayed silent as she came forward. She wasn’t giving an option, I was going to be like her or I was going to die. She grasped my neck in one hand and placed the other on my chest…no, into my chest. I felt her fingers spread, a tingling and almost painful motion, as she set off a bomb in my body. The blast spread through my veins like acid and I collapsed to the floor. Dimly I felt the removal of the collar and I felt familiar talons and teeth in that surprisingly gentle fashion.  I felt the landing and dimly perceived where we were; the outskirts of Seattle. All I could hear for a moment were her whispered words.

‘Did you receive what you wished?’

The sounds of the city impaled me on a level I had never experienced and I crawled towards it, enduring the pain to escape. I would never become like those creatures in the night. My apartment was a welcome sight to my dizzy eyes and I collapsed on the floor just as I turned away from locking the door. The little serpent slid out of the bedroom as if to try and help me as I crawled and scrabbled my way to the bathroom on a hunch to look in the mirror. My eyes hadn’t changed except for the color: green, how the hell would I explain a color change from brown to green? I was a bit surprised that my shock over it all had never came, but maybe I was just used to the unseen world I had been blind to before. If things are meant to happen a certain way, then I didn’t know what to do next.

My hands shook against the wall as I made my way slowly to the bedroom. I flicked on the light and fell out into the other room and hit the couch hard enough to make it creak. The woman stood before me in all her striking beauty.

“You wanted to learn and now you know. It may not have been exactly what you wished for, but it was meant to be. Of all people to have received the Pealie boy’s case and be taken by the shadows, did it not strike you that maybe there was more to the picture than you were seeing.” Her smile wasn’t wicked this time and her words weren’t laden with alternate meanings.

“I don’t understand…” Her voice slashed through mine.

“You will. Of things to come, you are the center piece. Fayte has grasped you, David Keely, and she will not let go so easily.” Her voice faded and she was gone, leaving me with a night of confused dreams filled with possibilities of her meaning and the faces of missing children that would never get home.

The next morning I awoke and nothing was as different as I thought it would be. There weren’t any people trying to cut me open to see what had changed, in fact no one noticed. The grey Seattle sky poured down rain as I walked from my bedroom to my bathroom.

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered if it looked the same no matter what the lighting was? As if it was some mysterious material. It’s so easy to wonder about something that reflects everything so clearly. Not for me…now I see that we are really surrounded by mirrors of shadow. They reflect everything except the truth back at us and as we live our lives in ignorance, it is far from bliss; we are merely blind. The little silver serpent looked at me questioningly and I smiled at it reassuringly.

I had never named the little creature for fear of getting too attached and then losing it to time. Something told me that was no longer a problem…so I named it.

“How does Koi sound?” The little serpent slithered up my arm and nuzzled the nape of my neck. I took that as a yes. Nowhere to go but forward when a leap of faith brings one to this conclusion; I had never been an idiot and I wasn’t going to start now.