by CK Dawn
My screaming surprised him, and he stopped his advance.
He looked over my shoulder to gauge whether or not someone was coming to save me. When he decided that no one was coming, he raised the knife again.
Aware of the immediate danger and that the man in black was probably going to stab me to death, I screamed again and turned to run. I was deeper into the alley than I had realized.
But I wasn’t fast enough, and he grabbed me by my ponytail.
I swore when I fell onto the ground that it would be the last time I was going to be too lazy to fix my hair. I was frozen in place with my eyes clenched tightly closed waiting for the first thrust of the knife.
He was saying something in a language I couldn’t understand and then suddenly stopped.
Bravely I opened my eyes and found my suit wearing attacker looking up at the entrance of the alley.
“Really, Jonah?” a somewhat familiar voice questioned, “she knows nothing, she thinks she’s crazy.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Jonah my would be murderer said, “I’ll take care of her and then you once and for all.”
Relieved that I wasn’t alone I gained some courage and used Jonah’s position knelt over me to my advantage. I brought one of my slender legs up and kicked him where it hurts a man the most. As soon as he let out an audible grunt I rolled over and stood as fast as I could. Surprise consumed me again as I discovered Liam at the end of the alley holding a broken piece of board from one of the many broken pallets lying around the alley.
He didn’t even acknowledge me as he strode past me in pursuit of Jonah.
I turned to see Liam knock Jonah in the head with the board much like a baseball player hits a fastball. An ugly crunch sounded through the alley and couldn’t help but to physically cringe at what I saw and heard.
Going down faster than I thought he would, Jonah hit the ground sprawling out holding onto his now bloody and mangled face. His hair style that was straight out of the 1950s did not move a centimeter. He was mumbling incoherently in the same tongue he had been reciting when he had been about to stab me with his knife.
I would never be able to unsee the mess that his face had become. Without hesitation or showing emotion Liam picked up the same knife that would have caused my untimely end. He seemed to methodically examine it and started saying something in the same language Jonah seemed to be fond of as he raised the knife over Jonah.
“No, no, no,” Jonah pleaded with him, “we can work something out. Let me get rid of the girl and I will let you go.”
Liam ignored his pleas as he glanced down the entrance of the alley for any onlookers and said one last thing I couldn’t understand as he plunged the knife into Jonah’s chest.
I swallowed surprised that the boy who just a little while before was animatedly talking to Dr. Griffin and sat and listened to a strange girl tell a bizarre story would kill a man so callously.
His face was straight without a single emotion showing almost as menacing as the man who he had just tried to kill me.
“He was no man,” he said causing me to break my staring contest with the dead body.
“What?” I asked dumbly.
He looked thoughtful for a moment and opened his mouth to speak but before he could say something Jonah’s body started to slightly tremble. My eyes fixated on the body as it took on a glow that grew more intense as several seconds passed and it grew too blinding causing me to close my eyes. Finally, there was a low whooshing sound and the distinctive clinking sound of metal hitting concrete.
Positive the light was gone I opened my eyes and the body of Jonah was gone the only thing left was the ornate white handled knife that was previously in his chest.
“Great,” Liam muttered as he knelt to pick the knife up from the unblemished concrete that I was sure should have some blood splatters. Liam acted as if I weren’t there and placed the knife in a backpack I just noticed he had taken off of his back. He then placed the black backpack with patches representing different bands and social causes back on his back as if it didn’t contain a murder weapon.
I just stared at him expectantly waiting for an explanation, hoping that I wouldn’t meet the same fate as the recently deceased and now magically vanishing Jonah.
He sighed, and finally turned to look at me.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked setting all pretenses aside.
Three
“What the hell just happened?” I repeated the question again my voice rising.
Liam who just stared silently at me with a frown on his face as if he was trying to decide what to say.
“Well?” I prompted my voice softer than before.
“Nothing happened?” he said blankly face void of all emotion, “you just need to leave now and never come back,” he said and turned to look back down the alley.
“What? Are you crazy?” I asked. Clearly one of us was crazy and it wasn’t me.
“No,” he said plainly.
“Really?” I groaned in frustration. He had turned into a brick wall and wasn't going to tell me anything.
“Go home,” he said again and turned to leave the alley.
“Wait,” I said and again like earlier in the coffee shop he gave a wave over his shoulder. Not wanting to let him get away I gathered up my fallen belongings and started to follow him as he turned right out onto the sidewalk. I made it out of the alley just in time to see him speed off into traffic on a motorcycle of some kind.
“Dammit,” I shouted earning looks from nearby pedestrians because I would not be catching up to him.
Feeling dejected I looked down the street and found Dr. Griffin nowhere in sight and her car now gone. With my hope gone that I would find out who Jonah was or why he tried to kill me, I walked to the parking garage that contained my car.
I drove listlessly around my town in the suburbs while I tried to wrap my mind around everything.
What really happened to Jonah? I had asked myself the same question a hundred times.
During my drive, I ignored the countless calls and texts from Arianna. I sent a single message to Jack saying that I would be late and he simply replied that he was staying at the home of Emily, his girlfriend in the city that night.
When I finally made it home, I was exhausted and glad to have the house to myself.
I walked slowly up to the stairs to the safety of my bedroom.
As I pulled my hair down from the ponytail that almost got me killed. I hoped that a hot shower would wash away the dirt and grime from the alley.
“Did he really kill that man?” I asked myself in the mirror as I wiped some dirt off of my face while I waited for the shower to get hot.
Was it some kind of magic trick? I asked myself, hoping that it was all some weird joke that was being played one me. Somehow I doubted it.
As soon as I was out of the shower I laid in bed not sure if I would be able to sleep, but I was going to try before I resorted to the bottles of sleeping pills on my bedside table. I needed to erase all of the evening’s events from my mind so I closed my eyes and hoped that it was all just one of my crazy dreams.
“Mary, why are you staring at him?” Laura, my best friend, asked catching my attention.
“What?” I asked pretending to be confused about the look of disgust on her face. I knew I had gotten caught staring at Perry Jones.
“Staring at Perry,” she said crinkling her nose as if something smelled, “I would stay away from him,” she stuck her nose high in the air,
“Reverend White’s wife told my mom that he was a bastard and that his mother is a prostitute.”
“Really,” I said doubtfully trying to drown out the booming noise of the cafeteria around me.
She tore off a piece of her roll and stuffed it in her mouth, “mmm, hmmm.”
I just looked at her doubtfully, she and her mom always believed town gossip even while the truth stared them in the face.
“So, it must be true,” she said after she had swallowed the food i
n her mouth.
I just nodded, just to acknowledge that I heard her, “well,” I told her standing from my seat, “I need to go speak to Ms. Davenport about my English paper.”
“You take your grades too seriously,” she frowned at me waving a finger around in front of me, “you’re going to marry rich one day so just focus on that and forget about silly stuff like school and writing papers.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed at her ignorance, “I’ll talk to you later,” and I walked away and emptied my food tray as I exited the cafeteria.
After leaving the cafeteria, I walked to the nearest exit to go outside. Laura’s words were frustrating. What did she really know about anything? She didn’t know Perry. And she really had no idea what my future goals were. I vented in my head as I walked around the side of the school building. Besides sometimes I really thought we were only friends because our mothers were friends. And it was expected, just like it had been expected when they were our age. I briefly wondered if my mom could even tolerate her mother.
Probably not. I concluded.
It was probably why my mother always brought out the cheap wine when she was around.
“What are you doing lurking around here?” A familiar male voice startled me out of my thoughts.
I turned around and smiled when I gazed upon his handsome smirking face, “who me?” I asked feigning innocence, “I’m not lurking at all,” I finished placing a hand on his chest, “I’m looking for you.”
He smiled his mischievous blue eyes sparkling in the midday sunlight, “and what would Miss Laura and the other goody goods say about that?”
“I don’t really care what they have to say,” I replied. I really didn’t, they knew nothing about Perry or his life.
“You might one day,” he muttered and I shook my head and stood on my tiptoes to erase his thought and planted my lips on his.
We kissed softly at first growing more intense as his strong body pressed me into the rough wall of the school. I knew it would leave scratch marks on my back through my clothes, but I didn’t care because he was there with me.
People like Laura or her minister’s wife knew nothing about his life other than misplaced assumptions. They would all know the truth after graduation. We were leaving town together for college and never coming back.
When the bell rang dismissing lunch, we pulled away from our make out session with sighs of displeasure as we caught our breath.
“I hate that our time is so limited,” I muttered with his arms still around me as he held me close.
“Me too,” he agreed. I smiled contently as we parted ways with promises to sneak out together that night.
I made it to my next class just in time, when I sat in my seat Laura was giving me a questioning look. “Where have you been?” she hissed.
I shrugged. “Just walking around school,” I said.
“Right,” she said. I began to wonder if my feeble excuse about my whereabouts were still working on her.
Mrs. Smith started to give her lecture when the door to the classroom burst open. We all turned our attention to the door because outbursts were not very common at our quiet school. Miss. James, the school secretary, was at the door trying to catch her breath.
We waited for a moment before she looked straight at me.
I knew something wasn’t right.
“Mary,” she said, “you are needed to the office there is an emergency.”
I rose to follow, but she stopped me.
“Bring your belongings.”
Laura gave me both a concerned and curious look as I put my things back into my satchel and tried to catch up with the briskly walking secretary.
“What’s going on?” I asked her as we walked into the office.
She gave me a sympathetic look, “go into the office, they need you there.”
My stomach started turning somersaults as I opened the door to the inside office. The actions of the secretary made me nervous and as the door opened my stomach dropped as I was greeted by the elderly principal and a young police officer.
“Yes, ma’am?” I asked the principal upon my entry.
“Please have a seat,” the officer guided me to a chair and I felt the contents of my stomach boiling up.
“What’s going on?”
He gave me a sympathetic look which made me uneasy.
“I’m sorry but there was an accident today.” He swallowed as if it were his first time to speak.
“Accident?”
“Your parents,” he started to say and I immediately started to hyperventilate and everything around me faded in and out. I caught bits and pieces of a collision, didn’t make it, dead on the scene. But I was frozen unable to breathe unable to act.
Gasping for breath, I opened my eyes. I rose from my bed and stumbled into the bathroom and quickly splashed water on my face. I was glad my brother had decided to stay in the city with his girlfriend that night. He would have definitely heard me wake up from that dream.
They were so real. Whatever happened in the dreams seemed to always affect me when woke up.
If only Liam had taken me seriously. Or maybe he did and didn’t want to admit it.
But really if he had, would there be anything that he could do? Probably not.
The next week when I had to go see Dr. Griffin again, I would definitely be on the lookout for him. Dr. Griffin would also be answering questions about my dreams, the man in the alley, and of course Liam. My gut told me that she would have all the answers that I needed.
I was sure of it.
With a glass of water in hand from the bathroom, I went back into my room and stared at the bottle of sleeping pills that seemed to be mocking me. It would be the only way that I wouldn’t have another dream that night.
And with that knowledge I opened the bottle, and swallowed one of the chalky bitter pills.
I didn’t want to dream anymore that night.
Four
At school the next day, Arianna scolded me for ignoring her calls and messages.
I told her that I just needed some time alone.
She understood. "I just worry about you," she said as we separated to go to our classes.
Relieved that we had different classes, I walked right into study hall and asked for a pass to go to the library.
"Here you go," Ms. Hall, the study hall teacher said as she handed me a library pass.
"Thanks, I really need to get this report done," I told her holding up my copy of 'Great Expectations.'
"Good luck, dear," she said waving me off.
In the library, the young assistant didn't even look up from reading the issue of Cosmo in front of her to take my pass. "Pass," she said and held her hand up.
I handed it to her and she just sat it down on the counter on top of a stack of other passes.
At the computer stations, I chose a seat away from a couple of other students who I believe were sophomores. After all it would look weird for me to be searching about disappearing people.
After I got logged on with my student ID and password, I opened up the newspaper database. Luckily it searched newspapers all over the world.
My first try was 'men disappearing out of thin air.'
The results were everywhere and after browsing five pages I didn't find anything useful.
"How about," I whispered to myself and searched for 'man who disappeared after being stabbed.'
"Jackpot," I whispered to myself, this time the first search got my attention.
It was about a woman who claimed to see her husband stab a man with a knife. The woman's ranting and raving got her put into an asylum. It would have made most people automatically think that the story was crazy. But the woman said that her husband had spoken in Latin before he had stabbed the man.
That is what caught my attention.
Briefly I wondered if I could find the woman, but she was put into the asylum fifty years ago. She had also committed suicide while in the place.
I
wondered if it really were people like Jonah trying to shut her up.
It seemed like Liam might be able to answer some of my questions. After all he did make a man disappear with a knife and by speaking Latin.
Or at least I guessed it was Latin. That’s what sounded like anyway.
I groaned. Liam.
I could feel my head starting to pound just thinking of him.
Aha, I thought and cleared the search bar. 'People who dreamed about people before they met them,' was my newest search.
The results varied, but I couldn't be sure if any of them actually were true.
There was a lady from Ohio who wrote a blog post about how she had dreamed of her husband before she met him. Another from London, who dreamed about a boyfriend before she met him, and then he disappeared. That one was interesting.
The one that really caught my attention was the eighty-year-old woman who said that when she was eighteen she would dream about her husband and how they had met through different lives.
She talked about dreams. Dreams of family members dying during different times, finding love and losing it. And finally of finding her love and growing old with him. It had happened to her in many different eras.
It was eerily similar to my own dreams. A lot of the lives I dreamed of dealt with the early death of parents and almost always losing the love of their lives.
The date on the story was only about a year old. The woman's name was Katherine Martin, so I decided to do a search for her.
On the first search, I discovered that eighty-one-year-old Katherine Martin had disappeared. Her family had been looking for months for her and said that she was in good health before.
Oddly enough she was reported missing shortly after she had written her story.
That poor woman.
There were other similar accounts but none that seemed as accurate as Mrs. Martin's, but plenty interesting.
Now if only I could figure out how to get in touch with Liam. Show him what I found and say hey buddy you can't lie to me.
I rubbed my hands over my face and groaned.
Ring, Ring. The bell sounded out signaling the end of the period.
