Signs of Portents

by Lou Paduano

  Tonight, however, he hated the shadows more.

  Every corner he passed, every alleyway, was a threat. Shadows surrounded him, each step betraying his need for stealth. Water splashed under his heels, soaking his pants further. Still he pressed forward. His movements were slow, his feet sluggish and heavy. Sweat mixed with the raindrops. How far had he come since it started? He wondered but was afraid to look at the path he had traveled, afraid of the darkness that surrounded him on all sides. It was still coming for him. He could feel its breath on the back of his neck, could hear its eerie laughter over the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He needed help and was in the worst place to find it.

  The warehouse district was not known for being a hotspot of activity during the daylight hours. Most of the structures surrounding the small residential complexes near the rail yards had long since been shut down or abandoned. Some were reconditioned for office space, but none operated at night. Few people did in Portents; it was an unspoken instinctual rule of the city.

  “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath, then again for the pain that cut right through his abdomen. He reached into his pocket and found his cell phone. The damn cell phone. The reason he had been out in the first place. She was waiting for his call. Anything for a girl, he always said. He was looking to help her with a case, but found something else instead. Now he needed the help. Glaring down at the cracked screen, the rain pelting against it, he knew that help was not coming.

  Something shattered the silence behind him and his heart stopped in his chest. He ducked into a nearby alley, whirling back toward the empty street. Was it him? Could it even be called a him? A large metal garbage can rolled along the sidewalk across the street, its displaced lid flopping along the pavement. The sound echoed down the large street but no one was near.

  “Rats,” he muttered. “Giant damn rats. Has to be.” His left hand slipped from his abdomen for the first time since he started running. Instinctively he reached out to the nearby brick wall to brace his weatherworn body. He took the moment, letting his breathing slow and his heart calm from the pace. His head fell low, spit mixing with the rain running down the length of his chin. It flowed into the puddles beneath him. Puddles that were not clear, running deep and dark in swirls and spreading outward.

  Blood.

  His eyes shot to his left hand to see the same dark red substance dripping from his fingertips and down the brick wall.

  His blood.

  A streak of lightning cut the sky above, shining a thin light from the heavens so Vladimir could see the damage sustained. His attacker was quick but effective. Five thick gashes spread across his chest and abdomen, covered in the thick red blood that he then trailed along the ground down the city streets for anyone to follow. He hoped anyone meant that a Good Samaritan would rescue him from his plight and take him somewhere safe and warm. Maybe it would be a red-haired vixen with a penchant for bleeding men, wearing something slightly revealing and speaking with an accent. Nothing too exotic. Maybe Irish. Of course, Vladimir knew better. His version of anyone following meant the beast tracking his every movement.

  The garbage can clatter finally faded yet something still did not feel right to Vladimir. The shadows shifted across the street, deepening in darkness. As another bolt cut the sky, he swore he saw something swing back farther to go unseen. The bleeding man stepped deeper into the alley, leaving behind the large block letters that painted along the side of the building a single word. A name.

  Evans.

  At the far end of the alley, there was a large fire escape. Vladimir clutched tight to his wounds, hoping the rainwater would help keep them somewhat clean long enough for him to find cover for the night. Hope was elusive but it kept his feet from slipping along the pavement. It kept his hands from falling off the steep ladder of the fire escape while he climbed. It kept him sane.

  At the first level of the fire escape was a large window, shattered like so many others that lined the streets. Broken glass lay within the thick frame and he was careful not to add any more wounds to his battered body. He felt weightless for a moment, his body hovering in the open air before he slammed against the wood flooring. Vladimir saw a wide, open space. A cavernous room stretched hundreds of feet. He had no idea what was once present in the room and the shattered glass had removed any foul odors that were once trapped within the building. Spiders were the prime residents of the warehouse from what Vladimir noted, trying to find his footing once more. He made his way slowly, each step echoing loudly against the floor.

  Across the room a single staircase led to a row of second floor offices. Vladimir’s eyes flitted back toward the broken window every time the lightning split the darkness, waiting for a chance to see his attacker, praying it would never come.

  Nothing.

  The uneasy feeling remained, even as he climbed the metal staircase. It creaked and moaned so loudly on the first step that Vladimir thought the whole structure might collapse. The second step was the same. Taking a deep breath, the young man calmed his shaking body. He lifted his foot slowly and let it slide along the next step. He ran his free hand along the rail and, using his upper body, lifted up his tired frame until his left foot joined his right. There were no loud crashes this time. Vladimir breathed deeply, staring up at the dozen steps ahead, and pushed onward.

  The largest office appeared to be the one farthest from the stairs. It was the perfect place to find cover for the night. The stairs alone would give enough warning; if not, the echoes reported each movement throughout the long-forgotten building. The office itself held all of its original furniture, unlike the main floor below. Dust-covered filing cabinets lined the right wall with a large desk pushed in front of them and out of the way. Across the room from the door, a row of shattered windows and broken shades stretched along the office. Vladimir closed the door behind him and entered the space, breathing easier.

  He slipped out of his soaked shirt and wrung out the blood and rain on the wooden floorboards beneath him. The movement was agony for him but it needed to be done. He then took the shirt and wrapped it tightly around his abdomen, tying the sleeves into a knot. He screamed, feeling blood along his lips. The pain caused his knees to give way and his body fell with a loud crash. The agony continued for a long moment, a small smear of fresh blood filling the shirt. Still, Vladimir Luchik found the will to smile at having made it to safety.

  The sentiment was fleeting.

  It came along the cool, early summer wind. The smell of ashes and death. The smell of something old. Vladimir’s eyes shot open, scanning the room while still tracking the scent. Shadows surrounded him. Shadows that did not seem so ominous moments earlier. In the darkness of the left-hand wall near the corner of the office, he saw them. Saw them and knew there was no more running in the cards for him. He saw two specks of light and knew the end had come for him. They were small and round, one of deep crimson and the other of sky blue.

  Eyes.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” Vladimir called to the two mismatched lights surrounded by shadows. His voice carried out to the main floor of the building and echoed. “I can feel you. I can smell the death on you.”

  His knees shook as he struggled to rise once more. Defiantly, he shouted into the darkness. “You’re there, aren’t you?”

  Lightning crashed outside, the thin light revealing a form in the shadows. The shadow answered Vladimir softly.

  “Yes.”

  The bleeding man rubbed his temple. He tried to focus through the pain in his gut and the throbbing in his head. He looked around the room and saw everything clearly for the first time. There were fresh scuffmarks along the floor from where the desk had been initially positioned. They were smeared, however, by something else. Something, Vlad realized, surrounding him on all sides in red.

  Blood red.

  “You led me here,” Vlad said to the darkness. He finally understood the merry chase he had been a part of was simply leading to this moment. His last moment. �
�You wanted this place.”

  “Yes.”

  His moment arrived. It came in the silence caught between them. It came without pomp and pageantry or the three-ring circus Vlad imagined pounding in every thought he carried. Vladimir Luchik saw his moment before him in the eyes of the creature that had hunted him all evening. He thought of his phone and the call he never had the chance to make. He thought of the woman at the other end of that call and of the strange grey stone she carried with her at all times, and how he would never see her again. He thought of missed opportunities and false hopes in a life never truly lived. Not the way it should have been. He thought of all of that in the shortest of seconds before screaming and charging at his attacker with every ounce of strength that remained within his tired, battered frame. He screamed the only question he wanted answered before the end.

  “Who are you?”

  He entered the shadows, his hands reaching into the dark for his assailant. They came back empty. The two eyes glowed deeper in the dark. With a single swipe and a bloodcurdling cry that echoed through the empty streets of the warehouse district on the east end of the city, Vladimir Luchik said no more.

  “I am the end,” answered the shadow that stood over his lifeless body. “And the beginning.”

  Chapter Two

  The apartment was packed months ago. The furniture sold, the mattress tossed. Every book, dish, and utensil boxed up and labeled. Life had vacated the second floor apartment in the Kings Lane district of Portents years earlier, the remnants of which waited until the lease finally inched toward expiration. Greg Loren stood among the wreckage of the life he once lived, the floorboards creaking under his shifting weight. He stared obsessively into the mirror that hung above the fireplace in the living room he once shared with his wife.

  Who are you? It was a question he asked daily to the unshaven face. He used to clean up every day he could. It was ritual. It was important. For his life. For his job. For Beth. However, after she died, the rituals slipped away. Everything slipped away. Through the dark blond hair covering his chin and cheeks, Loren saw lines he had never seen previously. More lines than there used to be when he looked through old photo albums with Beth and laughed at the stupid poses they created for each one. The lines were deeper, thicker even. They belonged to an older man, not one shy of thirty-six.

  Dirty blond hair hung low over his ears. Thin, brown eyes continued to stare blankly in the mirror, waiting for the answers to appear magically. Loren leaned heavily on the mantle of the fireplace, his shoulders slumped from the weight. Even through the dust covering the mirror he saw he needed to clean up and change. The riddled-with-holes Superman shirt hung well below his neckline and a few chest hairs joined the mix with his growing beard. It all added up to one thing in his mind.

  It was time to leave.

  The boxes surrounded him on all sides. Mementos of Beth and the life they had shared. Most were better left forgotten and were labeled for the garbage. Others—the dishes and utensils they used for meals on the couch and Monk marathons when they found they were afforded a weekend by their city jobs—were all headed to Goodwill for a loving family. He did not need them. He did not want them.

  Some were labeled to make the trip with him. Books she had kept close to her—some for pleasure that still carried the scent of her soap in the pages, some for work as a local historian that contained her handwritten notes in the margins. They were her version of a diary and he refused to let them go. Those boxes and the few of his own possessions that failed to make the original trip east were the only items headed to his new home.

  Chicago.

  Funny to call it a new home when it was first for him. Born and raised Cubs fan. Home to his family and people he had not known as friends for a long time. Still, it felt good. It definitely was needed. There had been bright moments in the last three months since he departed Portents in the silence of the overnight train. A new job. A new apartment, thankfully keeping him from knocking on his sister’s door with his head low. Work even overlooked the mistakes of his past, giving him the fresh start he needed to drown out the memories of Portents. Not everything was going right but that could be said of most people. The reminders were there at the periphery. It had only been three months. Still, the change felt incomplete. The door to Portents remained open, holding him back. Now that the final weeks of the lease were drawing to a close, he hoped the door would slam shut behind him.

  He knew the likely culprit. It surrounded him on all sides but mostly it sat in the small duffel bag near the entrance to the apartment. He carried the file wherever he went. Beth’s killer was still out there. In four years, there had been no break in the case. Half of that time was spent making sure the case was not filed as a suicide for the circumstances she was found in that evening. The other half was spent doing things Loren wanted more than anything to forget ever happened. Lines were crossed in the dark and he was lost for a long time.

  That can never happen again, the stranger in the mirror reiterated back to the tired face of Greg Loren. It’s time to leave.

  Across the mantle, Loren’s cell phone started to vibrate loudly. His hand was quick to snatch the small device before it fell to the floor but he hesitated to answer after looking to the display. It was a number he was hoping not to hear from until he had passed the city limits near the old charred tree on Olcott’s Curve. He surrendered to the infernal vibrating device and hit the Talk button.

  “Heard you were in town,” the voice said immediately before Loren could greet the caller. Captain Alejo Ruiz’s voice was cut thin by the sound of the wind, but Loren heard the smile creeping into his words. “I could use your help.”

  “Wish I could, Captain,” Loren replied, watching the words flow from the lips in the mirror. “Pretty busy.”

  There was a slight pause on the line and Loren could hear metal clanging in the background before Ruiz returned to the call.

  “Staring at your face in the mirror, wearing that rag that hasn’t had the right to call itself a shirt in a decade? Definitely sound pretty busy to me.”

  Loren wheeled around. “Where the hell?”

  It took him only a moment before he realized. Loren made a beeline for the window at the far end of the kitchen. He opened it up, letting the evening traffic sounds of the city fill the apartment. Crouching on the fire escape that led down to the side alley of the apartment was a middle aged, cocoa-skinned Hispanic with a grin spread across his face.

  “I went to the trouble of climbing up here,” Ruiz said. He closed his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. “May as well let me in.”

  Chapter Three

  Ruiz paced around the apartment. Loren stepped back, close to the mantle in the living room, watching his friend and colleague knowingly. Ruiz was methodical, never speaking, simply taking in the apartment. The boxes. The lack of furniture. When he looked at Loren, it was a quick glance, not wanting him to see the concern in his eyes though it was difficult to avoid.

  Loren was studying his friend as well. Ruiz always wore the old dog look when he was deep in thought; it was not a new addition in his late forties. The graying hair, matted down on his head and slowly receding back and to the sides. Larger cheeks and a wider frame from a life of paperwork and politics in the captain’s arena. Now, though, he seemed worse for wear even after only three months apart. Hair that once held tight to a thin black nature had surrendered completely to gray. The smile that he once carried through the workplace, the one that said, “When the dinner bell rings I’m going home to the greatest family on Earth, so who gives a crap about all of you and all this bull” was now sullen. However, it was the bags under his eyes that Loren had never seen before. Thick dark circles that swallowed his eyes unless the light shined directly on his face.

  “No furniture?” Ruiz asked, lifting two books from the box closest to him. He put one back immediately but held tight to one of Beth’s favorite works, one she helped put together about the history of the city, somet
hing Loren always promised to look at but never had time for in all their years together. There is a level of understanding that comes from looking at the city from a different angle. The true angle and the true story of Portents. He remembered those words from the foreword she wrote but that was where his reading ended. He found it to be the truest testament to the city surrounding him, truer than even his wife could know, and one of the many reasons Portents needed to fade behind him like a bad memory, though the book was making the trip to Chicago so he could keep the promise he had made to his late wife. None of that mattered to the stoic Ruiz, who promptly put the book back where he found it.

  The act was not lost on Loren. He continued to watch the clever captain shift from box to box, slowly making his way to the front door of the apartment. He knew the question did not need answering. Ruiz put his cards out for him to see and Loren knew why. No matter how different their lives were—with Ruiz and his three daughters and a house in Venture Cove north of the city and Loren’s empty life in his empty apartment—they were too similar for their own good. They were cops and nothing would ever change that. Still, Loren played the game the way Ruiz intended, knowing it would be for the last time. Chicago was his future.

  “Sold all of the furniture to the thrift store down the block,” Loren answered. “You came all this way to—”

  “I could have helped,” Ruiz interrupted. He opened up another box, this one closer to the door of the apartment. More books. He quickly closed it without pawing through the contents. Loren saw the realization on his face. It was all of Beth’s things, not Loren’s. It did not faze him, did not give the game pause. Ruiz continued toward the boxes by the front door. “Pack, I mean. One thing Michelle lets me handle when it comes to the annual Ruiz family vacation. I am well known for my packing abilities.”