Secrets.

Chapter 2.

I am awake. I don't want to be awake. Why, then, am I awake? There is something. Something bothering me. A pounding. On my door. Somebody at the door. I crack an eye open. Still dark out. I call out loud, “What?!” In a tone that suggests that answering at all is punishable by death.

“Kyle, wake your a*s up. We have a serious problem.”

I know that voice. That is a voice belonging to one of the single most irritating people I have ever called friend in my life. Don't get me wrong, I like her. I do. She is one of my favorite people. But to her a “serious problem” is usually accompanied by a lot of crying and a bucket of ice cream. Snuffling out an explanation of why she was willing to give whoever just one last chance, in spite of, well, whatever. While I try to maintain a degree of sympathy for such things my willingness to deal with it when I have already had an incredibly demeaning day of begging for the shittiest jobs imaginable is a little on the “low to no” side, if you catch my drift.

“Sleeping. Tired. Make an appointment with my secretary.” I say, loud enough to be heard through the door and hopefully not loud enough to be heard downstairs.

“You don't have a secretary.”

“I will someday. Have patience.”

“Get the hell up and let me in or I will remove this door and haul you bodily out of bed by pieces you don't want me yanking on.”

I mumble random obscenities but I get up. My door is two pieces of quarter inch steel plate with a few two by fours holding them apart and three dead bolts welded into it. If I pissed her off bad enough it would be a b***h to get it replaced.

I open the door and she brushes past me on her way to my fridge. I almost lose my balance, but doors that weigh around a hundred and fifty pounds make great stabilizers. She is rummaging through my fridge before I even get the door shut again and by the time I turn around she has cracked open one of my beers and has pulled down half of it. I take the moment while she is tossing back the other half, holding up a finger to stall conversation, and once again admire this creature that has invaded my home under threat of severe property damage and a solid thumping.

I am a big guy. Six foot even and around two hundred and fifty pounds, enough of it muscle to keep me looking good and enough of it fat to show that I eat crap when I can't get anything better. This woman makes me look like a sickly ten year old. Twenty three years old, with the face of an angel. A cute, freckled angel. Seven foot three inches tall and well proportioned. She has a gymnast's muscle on a frame that is just too damn big to be anything but menacing in a dark alley. Brown hair to the middle of her back tied up in a ponytail, and wearing form fitting leather pants. She had on a leather jacket that I knew on the back said “BROADZILLA” in big green letters arching across her shoulders, with what looked like a set of sharks jaws embroidered underneath it. The jacket isn't zipped up and her shirt is bright pink with the word “SECURITY” stenciled on it in black, the word a little deformed as the shirt is easily two sizes too small and stretched across a pair of tits that have started more than one drunken brawl. She must have come here from work.

She makes a living as a bouncer at places that I won't go unless she is working.

When she is done with the first she opens the fridge, gets out two more, hands me one, and then steps across my tiny apartment to flop onto the couch sideways, head against the pillow that I use when I am watching TV and one foot resting on the far arm while the other plants itself on my floor. I sit on the recliner and yank the lever. Waiting for her to say something.

She opens the second beer and has a sip, then turns her head to see me laying back with my eyes mostly shut and the beer she handed me sitting on the end table unopened.

“Are you going back to sleep?”
Damn it.
“Of course not Tiff. What is the emergency today?”
“Dennis is missing.”
Dennis.  Dennis...  .
“Refresh my memory, which one was Dennis?”
She looks at me, a dangerous slant to her eyes that I completely ignore.
“Dennis was the guy I met down at miniature golf a few months ago when I took my sister.”

I look at her mostly blankly. I am trying, without much success, to not smile at the mental image of her trying to putt with something barely two and a half feet long. She tries again.

“You met him at the bar a couple of weeks ago. He was playing pool.”
I try to look hopeful, but I fail.
“He is the redhead.”
“Oh, right, the one with the... Nope, that guy was blond. I got nothing. Sorry. What about him again? He is missing?”
She is still looking at me with a bit of disgust and says:

“Yeah. He is missing. We got into a big fight over nothing last night and then he turned up gone today. I wouldn't even think much of it except he didn't make it to work today either, and when I tried to call him when I got off he wasn't answering the phone.”
I look at her. “So, you naturally thought I needed to be informed of this situation why? I didn't even know the man's damn name until you just told me.”

She looks a little hurt.
“I was hoping you would go with me when I look for him.”
I look at her and I open my mouth and close it twice, then I say “Sure.” and neither one of us looks too close at all the things we don't want to say.

There are good reasons why she and I get along as well as we do. First, we share a secret. We are both aware of the other side. The shadow lands, echo world, whatever you want to call it. She has had trouble with things from there before and can actually visit herself, although she doesn't generally choose to do so unless she has no options. Second, we have helped each other out of some fairly sticky situations before. Often enough in fact that trying to figure out who owes who seems kinda silly at this point. But the third and biggest reason is that I am probably the only guy she spends any significant amount of time with that isn't, when it comes to the crunch, intimidated by her. Most guys are scared of her before they find out she is easily twice as strong as they are and has belt rankings in three schools of martial arts, plus specific training in two others I know of that are obscure enough that they don't bother with belt rankings. I have seen her hanging out with the “guys” and every time one flinches when she gets a little hyper I can see the pain that hits her face. Girls are even worse. At best she is treated as some kind of oddity that is probably retarded and in need of a loving mentor to teach her how to be a girl, and at worst they look at her like she is a freak of nature that should be in a zoo or a kennel, preferably in another state. I get the impression that a lot of the attitude and look she packs around now are mostly an attempt to meet people's expectations so the way people treat her doesn't hurt as much. It is easier to be treated like you are strange if that is what you are working towards.

I take a quick shower and throw on some clothes. Blue sweat pants and a t-shirt covered by a jean vest. Since we are probably going to end up bar hopping while she drinks herself into oblivion from yet another guy that ran from her screaming into the night, I decide to leave the gun home. I do snag a roll of nickels and dump it in the vest pocket in case I need to smack some idiot though.

When we leave the apartment I check my watch. Just before midnight. She must have gotten off work early. She starts walking towards her Harley and I grab her arm and flip her around to look at my ancient green station wagon. She rolls her eyes but gets in with just a minimal protest of “I am not getting drunk tonight, what's the deal?”
I start the car and as I back up out of the slot I ask: “Where to first?”
“Lets head down to “Instant Replay,” that is his favorite spot to go when things are getting to him.”
I stop the car in the lot and turn to look at her. “Not to be rude Tiff, but if he IS there, wouldn't that mean he wasn't interested in being found?”
She gives me a look that basically means “Drive the damn car.” and I start us moving again. There is just no possible way for tonight to end well.

Instant Replay is a little sports bar that sits nestled between an ice cream parlor and a pawn shop. By the time we get there it is around twelve forty and things have started to slow down significantly, the bulk of their patrons having moved on to either home or more serious drinking when the games were over and the main coolness of the bar, a massive projector showing sports events against the far wall, became a conduit for one of the forty thousand MTV clones. There is a stir when we walk in, not so much for me but for Tiff, in all her amazon glory and combat boots that push her towards the seven and a half foot mark, ducking to get into the door. She steps in, keeping a wary eye on the ceiling fans, and walks up to the bar. I follow. Not much else I can do. She asks the barkeep if she has seen Dennis, and gets a shrug and a head bob followed by the words “He was in last night but left early. Only reason I even remember is because he forgot his ID and debit card he was using to hold the tab open. If you see him let him know to stop by and pick'em up will ya?”

As we walk out I turn to her and ask: “He must have been pretty upset to forget his ID and whatnot, what happened last night?”
She is silent until we get in the car and then as I am getting it started she motions North, apparently the direction I should be driving, and says very quiet: “I don't know.”
I look at her. She is blushing to the roots of her hair and staring straight ahead without blinking.
“Tiff, I love you like a sister. Honest I do. But you are, without a doubt, the shittiest liar I have ever met in my life. Now fess up and tell me what the hell is going on or I am going home.”
She crawls in her own skin for a second, seeming to shrink in on herself. Then she says “I told him.”

I wait a second for the rest. I know the rest, but I want to hear her say it. When she doesn't continue and still won't look at me, I say:

“Told him what? Told him it was his turn to sleep in the wet spot? That he had a little dick? Toss me a bone here.”
She glares at me and says through clenched teeth “I told him about the other place, about you, and about some of the things we had done. Happy?”

“Nope.” I snarl out of the corner of my mouth. “Now why in the hell would you go and do a damn fool thing like that?”
She holds her hands over her face and says “Because I thought he could take it. And I am so tired of hiding all the things we do. It doesn't seem fair that I should have to keep things like this from somebody that I love.”

I count to ten. If I don't I am liable to say something she won't like and I don't have health insurance at the moment.

By the time I open my mouth to talk she is looking at me with the resigned look of somebody that is going to put up with a lashing they are not sure they earned, but can come up with no defense against.

At the last second my heart softens just a little and instead I just say: “Can we assume that you feel s****y about this particular lapse in judgment, will talk to me before you do anything this retarded again, and we can just move on to damage control?”
She gives me a kind of sigh and nods. Her lips quirking into a slight smile despite the tears running down her face, flashing in the streetlights we pass.

I spend a minute organizing my thoughts.
“Where does he live? He might have stopped by there either before or after the bar. Might be some clue to where he is, hell he might even just be there.”

“I already checked his place, and his car isn't there. I suppose he could have gotten drunk enough somewhere to walk home but I doubt it. He wasn't much of a drinker.”

“You might be surprised the things a guy could end up doing after being told his girlfriend thinks she is some kinda super hero. But that really isn't the issue. I am more interested in hitting redial on his phone, seeing if he has cleared the recent history log on his Internet browser, that kind of thing.”

“You want to know if he talked to anybody else about it.”
“Damn right I do. Think about some of the people he could end up talking to. Now where does he live?”
She tells me and I start heading that direction. Twenty five minutes later I pull up in front of a house in the suburbs. Cute little place, complete with a white picket fence and an automatic sprinkler that is making it's rounds.

“I don't suppose you have a key?”
“No.”
I nod.  “Keep an eye out, will you?”
“Are you gonna head over?”
I nod. “I have to. Never got around to learning how to pick a lock for real. Does he have a security system I should know about?”
“There is one, but I don't think I have ever seen him use it. I don't think it is hooked up.”
“OK. Give me a slow count to twenty and then go ahead and walk up to the house.”

I get out of the car and concentrate for a few seconds, the world slips away into black and when I look up again the house is still here, unchanged. The yard is here but the sprinkler is nowhere to be seen. The streetlights illuminate only the area directly beneath themselves and the moon and stars are gone. What ambient light there is seems to just be, with no point of origin to cast any shadows of it's own. The world just ends, with nothing visible at all around four blocks away. I walk up to the house and as I do I throw up my will, creating a massive suit of clockwork armor, ticking and tocking my way along until I am standing in front of the door a foot taller and wearing massive claws, crab-like pincers, at the ends of my arms with blades on the outer edge. Once there I extend my right arm towards the door and the claws flip back. A slender selection of tools extends slowly from the nook where the claws come together and without much ceremony I jam the assembly into the lock, concentrate for just a second, and turn the handle. The lock will never work again as the innards of it have just been shredded to get this done, but it does open. I step inside and leave the door open. Then I take a couple of large steps in and drop the armor, then a touch of concentration and I make it back to reality.

Well, there is no siren going off. That is usually a good sign when breaking and entering.

Tiff walks in behind me, ducking under the doorway.
We check the house real quick, just to make sure he isn't actually here, then I turn to her. “Treat it like a normal job. Check the garbages, fridge, phone, and bedside. I will take a peek at any other home electronics and check the house for anything spooky. If you see anything, let me know.”

I head into the den and start up the PC I find there while she helps herself to a can of beer from his fridge and starts pawing through the top layer of his garbage. He has a pretty basic computer. No security even on it that I can see. I spend a few minutes checking his history on his net browser, and find that he was home earlier today. Looks like he was looking into the kind of things I really didn't want him looking into. But I figured he would be. He got off his computer around seven o'clock this evening and I take a few notes into the things he had looked at in case I needed to check them out later from a less illegal location.

“Hey Tiff, I am gonna do a quick walk through on the downside, if you don't hear from me in ten minutes or so, come on in after me.”
The response comes back. “KK.”

The house looks remarkably clean on the other side. Not a lot of dust, no sign of decay or neglect. This guy takes good care of his stuff. Nothing else of note really, so after around eight minutes I come back through and look for Tiff.

I find her in the kitchen next to the phone listening to the voice messages and looking kinda grim.
“Nothing spooky around, although he has been here as recently as six or seven hours ago. Spent some time on the net checking your story, it looks like. Anything on your end?”
“Well, redial hit “Downtown Taxi” but that isn't the interesting news. About an hour before he made that call he got a message that told him to meet the caller at the Riverside Cafe downtown at eight o'clock to "get his answers.” Nothing particularly interesting in the garbages or the bedroom.”

The Riverside Cafe is a nice little diner right near the river that passes through the downtown area. They make a fine chicken fried steak, although my knowledge of the place beyond that becomes a little fragmented. I sure as hell never would have picked it as a place to discuss things with a stranger that could get you locked in a rubber room if the authorities found out.

We go ahead and hit the chain and toe latch on the front door, leave through the back and come around so her boyfriends apartment can actually be locked up when we exit. Head back to the car and get in. We don't say a lot on the way there. Her because she is worried, me because I am just plain tired. By the time we make it to the cafe, it is approaching three o'clock in the morning and it has been closed for an hour. When we turn to walk away and I am opening my mouth to say that maybe we should go file an actual missing persons report or something I hear the squealing of tires and turn to see a large panel van bearing down on us at a good forty miles an hour. No time to yell a warning, I dive out of the way and wish I had brought my gun. The van rushes past where we were standing and plows into the back of a parked car. I look around and see that Tiff has scraped her pants up pretty good but is otherwise fine. The back doors to the van swing open and we see a couple of guys back there that are unconscious or dead, and one guy hopping out of the back that looks vaguely familiar. Tiff starts running toward him while he stands up straight but stops about fifteen feet from him when she sees his face. His face is a bloody mess, he looks like he has been beaten to death a few times with a baseball bat covered in metal spikes. Despite this, he smiles wide and then disappears.

I drop into Shadow immediately and see him again. Here it is easy to see his whole body has been brutalized, probably for hours. He is covered head to foot with blood, bruises and cuts, his clothing shredded and hanging off of him. His eyes are glowing a sickly green as though lit up from the inside and he moves toward me with an easy stride that is closing the distance fast.

I call forth my will and throw up my armor just before he reaches me, and so when he hits me I can hear his hand breaking as I fly backwards a good fifteen feet and plow into a street lamp head first.

I try to shake off the pain and get to my feet while he is walking towards me. I see Tiff make her appearance as she slips in behind the guy. Then she sees me getting to my feet and she looks a little shocked. As well she might. Here, I can kick her a*s. I yell to her: “Check the damn van, I don't think chuckles here is operating on all of his own steam anymore.”

She turns to run to the van and he spins on a heel to chase her down.

I stomp with one leg, driving it toe first into the ground a good foot, then reach back and grab the street light I just slammed into and jerk it forward with my new leverage hard enough to pull it out of the ground.  It goes crashing down on his shoulder sending him sprawling to the asphalt, his right arm at an odd angle and trying to get back to his feet without using the battered appendage.

While this is happening, Tiff has made it to the front of the van and when the door doesn't open she sticks a hand in a pocket and it comes out wearing a set of brass knuckles that must weigh a good five pounds. She smashes through the glass on the window like it wasn't even there and hauls out an old man that is flopping around like he is either dead or out of it already. She uses a thumb to pry open an eyelid and I can see the glow from where I am standing. Dennis has all but gotten himself up off the ground, his hips sitting funny as he tries to stumble forward.

Tiff looks at him, tears streaming down her face, and then slaps the old man against the side of the van and hauls back with a brass knuckled tap on his cranium that could plow a hole through about twelve two by fours, splattering his face and gray matter all over the side of the van. Her hand and arm are covered as well. The second she does it her friend disappears. She drops the old man and we both drop back to reality. We can see him lying on the ground, but we can also hear the sirens coming. I grab her by an arm and try to pull her away, saying: “There are paramedics on the way. He will either make it or he won't but us spending time being questioned about this won't help him and if you don't clean up before the cops arrive you are going to be lucky to see him for the next twenty to life even if he does make it.”

She looks very unhappy about it but does follow me and gets into the car. We are pulling out when the emergency services are probably about three blocks away.

The drive back to my apartment is quiet. She is crying and I am trying and failing to figure out what to say. When we get back to the apartment I give her the change of clothes she left here in case something like this happened. A counterpart to the duffel I keep at her place for the same reason. She gets in the shower and I go across the street to the store while she is getting cleaned up. By the time she is out of the shower, dressed, and composed enough to talk and so actually comes out I am already back at the apartment waiting with a bowl, spoon, and half gallon of rocky road sitting next to a beer on my coffee table. I am listening to the police scanner to see if there is anything going on that would indicate somebody saw us and knew who we were, and have taken my position in the recliner leaving her the sofa with a couple of extra blankets on it.

“Go ahead and crash here tonight. We will find out the score tomorrow and go see him, one way or another.”
She doesn't look up at first.  “Don't you have things to do tomorrow?”
She glances at me with a kinda dead look. Like she has just been through a bit to much and is thinking that shutting down might be easier than the alternative. I think ahead to tomorrow, which was going to be two job interviews and a lot of pounding the pavement if they didn't work out as the specter of next months rent and my own bare cupboards looms ever closer.

“Nope. Nothing important. I am yours for the next twenty four. Get some sleep if you can."
She mouths “thank you” at me while she pries open the ice cream box.

I don't get any sleep either. But the ice cream is pretty good.