Chapter 7

Caleb looked at her skeptically.

She stared at him intently for a moment before looking down at her coffee cup.  “That may have been a bit melodramatic.  I haven’t done this in a long time.”

“This?”

“Show someone the truth; the way things really are.”  She took a sip of her coffee, “Look, if you want to forget everything you saw tonight, I don’t blame you.  You could probably leave town and never return; try to convince yourself this was all some big hallucination or joke and hope it doesn't stick with you like bad mexican food.”  Her words came out wry, her mascara-rimmed eyes going distant for a moment.  “But it didn’t work for me.”

Caleb liked the idea of forgetting—but knew he never would.  Something would always have him looking over his shoulder for that thing to come calling.  He knew he’d forever find himself suspicious of people who seemed a bit off and wondering what he didn’t know about the real world.  One of the reasons he had first been interested in history and eventually pursued a career there was because it helped fill in the gaps for him.  Knowing what had happened in the world gave one a sense of connectedness and closure on many of the questions in life.  Maybe that was why this had terrified him so much; he was discovering he knew very little, after all.  All of the closure and connectedness he thought he had gained had suddenly become raw, gaping wounds and crippling solitude.  Living the rest of his life that way just wasn’t an option.

“It won’t work for me, either.  I’m just too curious, I guess.  Sort of what got me in this mess to begin with.” 

“Tell me about that.  How did you get on Bane’s bad list?  He’s usually more of calculated killer than he is a random psychopath.”

Caleb related the story of how his night had gone from stumbling into Tiffany and that whole mess to having a few too many drinks and deciding to walk home, which led him to his encounter with Bane and the oriental man. He intentionally left out the bits about his strange hallucinations for now.  “He did say something about me having seen too much.  I guess when you’re a zombie you don’t need people telling the police about you.”

The woman shook her head.  “He was probably more worried about the genuine risk of being arrested for murder.  I mean, if someone came telling you about zombie cannibals—would you believe them?”  She gave a half-crooked smirk and sipped her coffee, peering teasingly over the rim of her mug at him.

He chuckled, “I would now.” 

She smiled as if he had told some inside joke between the two of them then peered down into her cup.  “Rough day for you, then.  First the girlfriend, then you find out that things that go bump in the night do a lot worse when you catch them going bump.  Speaking of which, you said the man just 'melted' after he was killed?”

Caleb nodded, “Yeah.  The dead one, not the other one who looked just like him.”

She nodded, “Well I doubt you were hallucinating.  Not everyone is what they seem.”

“I’m beginning to see that.”

“And you’re probably also beginning to see that a lot of the things you assumed were fairytales are anything but.  Don’t feel dumb.  People have convinced themselves that science is the be all and end all of everything that exists." She scoffed a bit, sitting back in her booth, looking the picture of the worldly cynic.  "Almost like they’ve forgotten that there are things you can’t measure or prove, even though nobody questions the reality of them.”

“Like what?  Are you talking about God?”

She shook her head, “No, he’s questioned plenty.  I mean things like love, compassion, déjà vu, the human spirit.  Nobody questions those things, but science has very little to say about them.” She paused, sipping her coffee.   “There are other things that not everybody experiences…but are just as real, never mind that science can’t prove they exist.” 

A few hours ago, Caleb knew he would have been skeptical of where this was going.  But now everything she was saying made sense.  “So then…are people just…like that?  I mean...just born different or powerful or...”  He trailed off, not sure how to describe it without sounding like some cheesy horror film or a comic book.

“Some yes.  Others train very hard to achieve magical or psychic powers.  Some even use science as their path to 'being like that'.  Throughout history, people who could do these things were labeled gods or devils or lunatics, so no one’s ever really studied it too much.  But enough has been done in secret places that things have been discovered.  Some good…others like Bane.”

Caleb leaned back and blew out a long, exasperated breath.  He ran his hands up through his blonde hair, straining to take it all in.  “I feel like I’m going insane.  I mean…how can I even do anything normal anymore?  I can’t go back to work on Monday…”

“Why not?” she said, interrupting him with the look you give someone who was overanalyzing things or making them worse than they were.  “Just because you’ve seen the truth of things doesn’t mean all of those things are going to come looking for you.  It’s not like you’re the only one to figure this out.”  She shrugged, refilling her cup, “The smart ones keep quiet and adapt.  The dumb ones tell everyone and get nice white jackets so they can hug themselves.”

Her attempt at humor lost on him, he slumped in the booth and stared off into nothing.  What was left anyways?  Tiffany was gone.  None of his friends would believe him if he told them what he’d found.  He’d be alone, staring at the world like a madman who saw the truth nobody else saw.  And how far removed was that from just being a madman?  His eyes looked up to see the girl watching him.  Was that concern in her eyes?

“I uh…I never did catch your name.” he said as she stared, the concern growing as she looked at him.  Maybe she cared.  Maybe he wasn’t alone, yet.

“It’s Kay.”

“Well Kay, nice t…”

“C’mon, we have to go.  He found us.”

Caleb turned in fright the entire conversation up to this point fleeing to some corner of his mind, allowing more room for full-fledged fear.  The restaurant was empty of customers save himself and Kay.  He peered at the wall-sized windows but saw nothing in the poorly lit parking lot except a couple cars under one flickering street light.

“I don’t see him.”  He said, his voice a whisper.

“Why are you whispering?”  Kay asked, but just shook her head rather than wait for a response, “He’s in the dark, hiding, and I don’t think he’s seen us…but it won’t be long, and two witnesses are easy enough to deal with, we have to go.”

Caleb nodded as Kay slid from her booth in a crouch and slipped towards the kitchen.  He followed, mimicking her crouch, the waitress oblivious to them as they slipped into the kitchen.  The cook looked at them oddly, but said nothing as they moved towards the back of the restaurant and exited out the back door into a dark alleyway behind the little strip mall.  The alleyway had a strip of gravelly dirt pretending to be a road running through it.   A line of waist high chain-link fences sat in various states of disrepair directly opposite the graffiti coated back of the mall, broken up only once by a tall brick wall.  The fences set up an ineffective border between the alley and some run-down homes, this not being the most expensive neighborhood in Vegas.

Kay quickly covered the ground across the dirt road alleyway, grabbing the top of the nearest fence as if to hop it until a shape shot from behind a leaning shed in the yard.  It bolted at her, growling and barking as she hopped back, startled.  The dog slammed against the fence, snapping and barking into the relatively quiet Vegas night.  Cursing at it, she motioned and the two moved down the alleyway at a fast walk, passing the tall brick wall and coming to another chain link fence—this one more urn down than the first.  The strip mall ended here, and they could see just a sliver of parking lot as she looked into the darkened backyard.

“No dogs, here.  C’mon.”

She put her hands on the fence again, leaping over in one smooth motion that had Caleb admiring the way she looked even more.  She looked back at him for a moment and he caught himself before she could realize he was staring…hopefully.  He grasped the fence and vaulted over, following her into the patch of moonless dark that the solitary tree here afforded. 

They moved through the dark yard and through a gate that hung open and half-broken into the front yard and a side street that Caleb didn’t recognize.  Caleb opened his mouth to ask if Kay knew where they were but froze as a loud bang sounded behind them; like a door being thrown open.  Someone was rambling quickly in Spanish at the top of their lungs until the words crumpled into a scream.

Kay’s face went grim, “C’mon…hurry!” She said in a low whisper, breaking into a trot.  Caleb didn’t need to be asked twice.  If that thing had somehow found their trail, it wouldn’t be far behind.  He increased his pace, moving next to Kay and trying hard not to outdistance her as they came to a small convenience store on the next corner.  Faded pink bricks and a neon sign that it seemed the owner had forgotten to turn on seemed too vibrant to Caleb.  The walls of the building bulged and warped.  He stopped running, blinking as his vision warbled and he stumbled into the wall. 

“Caleb?  What’s wrong?” Her voice echoed as the world flexed, twisted and spun away.

He stumbled as his vision suddenly snapped back, along with sound.  Glancing up he saw Kay standing before him again, all dressed in her flowing black garments from the purple world.  Her eyes weren’t glowing, though, and nothing was purple except the glaring neon sign in the convenience store window.  Something tugged at his chest and he looked down to see…nothing.  The tug came again and he felt himself drift forward oddly, like being pulled on by invisible strings attached to his sternum.  He floated forward towards Kay, then through her, emerging from the other side.  Glancing backwards, he saw her face, complete with spotlight eyes and chiding smirk.  And over her shoulder he saw a lean figure, all arms and legs and toned muscle, with a mop of unruly blonde hair sitting above an unshaven face.  A long-sleeved black shirt and black boots covered his frame and his face was an exact mirror image of Caleb’s own.

Caleb looked down at his own body, wondering if the oriental man had found them—had done this to the man he saw dissipate into mist in the arms of Bane.  Maybe he wasn’t even oriental, but somehow stole bodies and sent their spirits floating away; like mist.

He panicked and tried to scream a warning to Kay, but found no voice, found no sensation at all save the tugging from his sternum, or where his sternum should have been.

The invisible string tugged him further until he had a clear view around the corner of the convenience store.  His eyes flickered to a spot of movement there.  A German shepherd the size of a horse sniffed at the ground intently, as if searching for something.  The tugging stopped and Caleb watched the dog as it perked its ears up and Caleb saw its eyes.  Red and seeming to almost boil in their sockets as the beast bared its fangs.  A glint of metal, low growls and bulging muscles rippled from underneath the shaggy fur.  Its eyes seemed intent on something around the corner.

Kay.

He tried harder to yell a warning as the beast crouched and lunged at the woman as she rounded the corner.  She opened her mouth as if to scream but Caleb could only hear the buzzing of the fluorescent light as it seemed to engulf every bit of sound.  The animal flew through the air, blurring as it closed on her.  It hit her, slamming her into the ground and Caleb realized it suddenly wasn’t the dog at all, but the monster Bane, his mouth bloody as he crushed her windpipe and ground her head into the pavement.  Her eyes dimmed and the buzzing grew until Caleb couldn’t focus and closed his eyes in pain.

The buzzing suddenly stopped and Caleb instead heard a voice.

“Caleb!  Caleb!  What’re you doing?”

He opened his eyes to see Kay standing before him.  Worry marred her face as he blinked away the buzzing that seemed to echo in his head.  He glanced up at the window to see the neon sign still turned off.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I…I don’t know…I just…”he stopped abruptly as something beyond the window clicked and the neon sign flickered to life, its buzz just a little too loud.

Caleb grabbed Kay, tugging her into the tiny space behind the convenience store that formed a sort of thin alleyway between the neighboring chain link fence.  She started to protest but he cut her off with a hard whisper, “Quick.  Can you hide us?”

“What?  What are…”

“Can you hide us?  I know you can’t do the…whatever you did earlier, but can you hide us…so Bane can’t find us?”

“Yes, but…”

“Do it!  Now!  Hurry!”

Kay looked at him skeptical, narrowing her eyes as if to figure out this enigma.  He was about to tell her to hurry again but her eyes burst into light, glowing bright like before.  Her hair began floating upwards, as if caught on some imaginary wind that flowed slow and thick as if immeresed in water.  Caleb watched the shadows from the back of the building and some nearby trashcans stretch towards them, moving like they do in those videos that show an entire day pass in a few seconds, sans the clouds flashing by.  The shadows leaned, covering the two of them until the world around them seemed to grow bright by comparison and suddenly they were engulfed; swallowed by shadows.

“Now,” she spoke, her voice hollow and empty with a strange echo to it.  “What exactly are we hiding from?”

Caleb opened his mouth to explain, but instead pointed behind her to the street.  “That.”  He said as Kay turned to see Bane emerge on all fours, sniffing the ground with canine movements as he examined the spot they had been standing moments before.  He seemed to catch a whiff of something then because he sniffed closer, nearly burying his nose to the ground before his head snapped sideways.

To stare directly at them.