Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  One.

  He panted there, exhausted. Fifteen more. Three times five. My age on the night of my first hickey.

  He raised his good leg and stepped down.

  Two.

  The only even prime. The surgical floor at the hospital. He remained upright, safe from the stairs’ games.

  Moving another step down, he thought, Three.

  The first odd prime. The number of pins in my leg. The grade I barely passed, the year my teacher kept me during recess to explain how Daddy’s heart had attacked and killed him.

  Dallas gulped some much-needed oxygen into his lungs, and took another step down. Then another. Three more.

  Safe on the landing.

  “I’m halfway,” he told the stairs. Leaning on the windowsill, he celebrated the milestone while the sun beamed through the cracked window. He could still smell the neighbour’s curry from above, now mixed with hints of lemony-fresh laundry soap from below.

  Eight more.

  Two times four. Two cubed. The number of strangers who donated their blood for me.

  He limped toward the crest’s precipice, clutching the railing. “You’re good. Do it. Now!” Before he chickened out, he descended the entire flight of eight steps without stopping.

  Gasping for breath, from pride more than effort, or maybe fear, he stood in the vestibule, eyeing the mailboxes. His mother had the only key. Forget the mail, Becky’s in imminent danger.

  He pushed the main door and faced the outside world. Fresh air. Smoggy air, in reality. Despite the exhaust fumes, he took a deep breath and held it for a long while.

  Becky lingered in the booth. She turned her back on Dallas when she saw him staring at her, and covered her broken face with her hand. He limped to his booth and fumbled in his pocket, pretending to search for a coin. When the door opened, he looked up at her, and said, “Miss, I—”

  Without making eye contact, or saying so much as a quick, “Hi,” she dashed across the street, slipping between a streetcar and a cube van, disappearing into the Quick-Stop Variety Store.

  Dallas held the door to his booth with his right hand and his cane with his left. His moment with Becky had been nothing more than a microsecond of awkward failure. Standing, exposed and defenseless on the street corner, he ducked into his booth for protection, picked up the receiver, and returned it to the hook. Noticing Bob’s disgusting snot on the plastic wall, Dallas pulled a tissue from his pocket and tried to wipe the mess away. The flimsy thing only spread the goo into a bigger glob. With his thoughts on Becky, Dallas turned to leave his booth, and froze, standing face-to-face with Dope-Dealer-Bob.

  “Are you going make a call, or what, dick-bag?”

  “I, uh. . . .” He gripped his cane and started out of the booth, staring at his feet, mumbling, “Forgot the number.”

  Bob shoved past and closed the door.

  Dallas waited outside, listening.

  “Tomorrow’s no good. I don’t have . . . fuck. I’ll call you back.” Bob hung up and stepped out of the phone booth, looking past Dallas as though a mangled freak could actually be invisible.

  Dallas turned to follow Bob’s sightline. Becky stood frozen outside the variety store, staring at Bob.

  “Get over here, bitch!”

  She waited for a gap in the traffic and then hurried across the street, head down. She mustn’t have seen the looming minivan. Its grill grazed her shoe and she stumbled to the ground next to them, safe but startled.

  “Beat it, cripple.” Bob shoved Dallas hard, sending him sprawling to the pavement.

  “I yeeded shome. . . .” She reached into her bag and brought out a box of feminine protection products.

  Bob slapped her across the cheek. Blood poured down her messed up chin. “Put it away. I hate girl-shit.” Bob-the-Drug-Dealer was, in reality, Doug-the-Husband. One and the same. A wife beater and a criminal. The bastard used the booth for his office. Doug grabbed Becky by the arm. “Come on.”

  Still sprawled on the ground, Dallas crawled toward his cane. You’re not dragging her away, he thought. Not this time. Not ever.

  A silver Buick with tinted windows pulled over to the curb beside the quarrelling couple. The power window, on the passenger side, hummed down revealing a woman driver alone in the car. The plump woman’s gray hair matched her wrinkled face, the creases so deep she looked as though she’d been carved out of clay. “Gwen!” she shouted from the car.

  So that’s Becky’s real name.

  “Get in the car.” Her mother sounded firm and frightened.

  “Fuck you, old bitch.” Doug dragged Gwen away from the car.

  Gwen dug in her heels, but Doug outweighed and out-muscled her. Dallas willed her to fight harder, kick the guy, do all that she could to get away, but she seemed to have given up. She looked like a broken doll being punished by the mean kid at recess.

  As Doug hauled Gwen around the corner and into the quiet side street, her mom abandoned the Buick, leaving the door open and the engine running, to hurry after them. “Let her go. Right now!”

  Gwen sobbed.

  Dallas hobbled to his feet with the help of his cane. He couldn’t allow Gwen to move out of sight.

  The commotion caught the attention of a young woman smoking a cigarette on her front porch. She yelled, “Hey, leave her alone or I’ll call the cops.”

  Doug held up a hunting-style knife and yelled, “Mind your own fucking business, bitch.”

  The smoker stubbed out her cigarette and disappeared inside.

  Gwen’s mother yanked her daughter’s right arm, trying to wrench Gwen free. Doug held firm to the other arm.

  Dallas lurched toward the conflict. A car sped past him, up the side street, honked the horn at the tug-of-war, and kept moving. Once Doug took Gwen home to the privacy of their apartment, her man would teach her the worst kind of lesson, ensuring Gwen never ran away again. Ever.

  Doug kicked at Gwen’s mom, to force her to release her daughter’s arm. Gwen blocked him with her own body. The scene played out like a surreal crime drama.

  A streetcar stopped and three passengers disembarked. They each stared at their cell phones, earbuds stuck deep, oblivious to the volatile situation unfolding a few feet away. Assured that no one would stop him, Doug punched the old woman in the chest, sending her flying.

  “Awk,” mumbled Gwen.

  Close now, Dallas saw a spark in her eye, a flare he’d never seen before on his live-feed. Gwen pounded at Doug, her fists and shoes an explosion of fury, hitting more air than man, as though she’d stored every ache in a jar, and now smashed the glass and everything inside it deep into the source of her anguish.

  Dallas raised his cane with both hands, holding it like a hammer people used to ring-a-bell for a prize. With sweaty hands, he called up every ounce of frustration that he’d felt for Gwen, for her mother, but mostly for Doug. The cane arched, smashing into the back of Doug’s head.

  He dropped. Dallas made contact again, screaming, “Damn you!” with such ferocity that spit flew from his mouth. For this blow, he used all of his contempt for every stair that had distanced him from the outside world.

  Gwen and her mother stood motionless, watching. They stared at Dallas like a fiend and a champion, all stuffed into one crumpled package.

  He smiled weakly, holding the bloody cane behind his back, ashamed of his brutality. “You’re safe now B . . . Gwen. You should go with your mother.” He pointed his head toward Doug. “I think he’s done.” Across the street, the smoker stood on her porch again, clapping.

  “Ank ou.” Gwen reached out a hand to touch Dallas, changed her mind, and pulled it back.

  “Hurry,” said Dallas. “He won’t hurt you anymore.”

  The mom asked, “How do you know my daughter’s name?” The two women supported each other with a hug-hold.

  He shrugged. “You called her by name.”

  “What’s your name? No, on second thought, I think it’s best if we don’t know.” She guided her daught
er toward the open car. Gwen climbed into the passenger seat of the Buick.

  Dallas followed, waving goodbye. The car window hummed closed. He watched them disappear around the corner, and then returned to Doug, studying the man’s chest for movement. He lay still. Dallas wanted to say something profound, some hero-epitaph that would torment Doug on his way to hell, but he couldn’t put any meaningful words together.

  He looked over at the smoker. She shouted, “Beat it. Before the cops come. I didn’t see jack shit.”

  He grabbed the knob of his cane, his hand slipping on the blood. He thought about extracting a tissue from his pocket, but his hands had blood on them, too. He knelt down and wiped all of the mess onto Doug’s shirt. The red stain looked vivid and hyper-real against the stark white T-shirt. Blood red, not cherry red. Would Gwen, her mother, or the smoker snitch? Would the cops take one look at Gwen’s face and call it all justice?

  No matter what, I saved her. She’s free.

  And so am I.

  His stomach growled. He searched Doug’s pockets, relieved him of his cash, and headed across the street to buy a box of blueberry Pop-Tarts.

  WHAT HARM

  Amanda Sun

  Colin still remembered the night he was sold. Most four-year-olds would have questioned their father hitching the workhorse to the wagon under the moonlight, the stiff leather of the old harness creaking against the rusting buckles, the gelding stamping at the dirt path beneath his weary hooves. But Colin only pressed his hand against the horse’s lowered muzzle, velvet and warm beneath his chubby fingers. The gelding’s nostrils blew warm air against his cheek, the dark midnight world slipping away until it was just him and the smell of leather and horse hair and earth.

  Most four-year-olds would have questioned why their father lifted them gently into the back of the wagon, the starlight and moonlight spread in stripes of dim white across the wooden boards, encrusted with sharp ends of hay. They would have searched the doorway and windows for their mother, standing there with a tallow candle half-melted onto the bronze holder. They might reach their hands out to her on the other side of the bloated glass pane as her eyes turned away, glossy as stones and cold as the night air. They might have wondered as her breath puffed against the flickering light, as the window went dark and the wagon lurched forward. But Colin did not wonder, because Colin did not know to wonder. He thought only of the horse’s soft nose and the wagon wheels spinning, and he made not a sound, because Colin couldn’t speak.

  They rode in silence to the center of town, the hooves first thudding against the packed dirt as the farmland slowly passed, then clopping against the cobblestones, the world lit in the shadowed light of the lampposts that lined the abandoned town square. The earlier rain still glistened in tiny puddles that collected in the uneven stonework. Colin peered over the side of the wagon, watching the spokes of the nearest wheel as it whirred round and round. Not once did his father tell him he was leaning too far, that he might tip out the edge. Not once did Colin tug on the back of his father’s jacket, or ponder his hunched shoulders as he gripped the reins, slack against the flanks of the gelding that snorted into the stillness.

  The wagon jolted to a stop and the spokes stopped turning. Colin’s father sat for a moment, then climbed down the spokes. There was a small splash as his boot heel landed in one of the tiny puddles, and Colin watched the drops spray onto the cobblestones, glimmering like dark beads in the moonlight. His father’s warm hands pulled him from the cart, and the boy reached out for the horse’s velvet nose. The gelding reached his muzzle toward the boy and whinnied into the cold air, but Colin’s little hands couldn’t reach him. The two slipped farther from each other as the boy’s father carried him away to the curb by the stone bridge, to the quiet row of houses without a single candle in their windows.

  All was still and quiet. The only light came from the tavern, where the murmur of a tune drifted into the square from the crack underneath the wooden door. The thick glass windows filled with shadows and shapes—dancing and arguments and bartering while candlelight flickered around all of them; warmth and crowds and conversation. Colin hated crowded places. He would cry and moan and beat his fists with his eyes squeezed shut.

  His father left him on the curb of the damp stone bridge. He looked at him for a moment, his gaze distant and cold. Colin didn’t notice, though, for he never looked into his father’s eyes.

  “Stay here a while,” he told the boy. “I’ll be back.” And he turned to the tavern and closed the door behind him.

  The midnight air was cold against Colin’s thin coat. He sat as he was told, though he longed to return to the wagon and the waiting horse. He didn’t question why he’d been left on the bridge in the night. As the moon lowered in the sky, he didn’t question why his father didn’t return. He merely sat and stared at the wagon wheel, remembering the way it whirred like a top when the gelding pulled it forward.

  After two hours, when the chill had begun to shake Colin, his father burst from the wooden door, his face red and his eyes bloodshot. He seemed surprised, almost disappointed, to see Colin still sitting there. Colin did not run to him, or even look at him. He rocked back and forth, thinking of wagon wheels and velvet muzzles. His father looked from Colin to the wagon and back again, and he choked on a strange cough and blew his nose into the handkerchief he kept in the pocket of his dark green coat. Then he lifted the boy back into the spiky hay strewn across the wagon and slapped the reins against the horse’s sleek flank. The wagon jolted forward and Colin squealed with delight, because the spokes spun like pinwheels in the springtime air.

  They rode up the hill far past the town, to a stronghold darker than the last swell of water that slicks over a man’s head as he drowns. Even the candles lit in the windows of that black stone fortress seemed to flicker with a dimmer light that drew shadows instead of expelling them. The horse tossed his head with each step, his mane spreading like the thick branches of the dark forest that closed in around them. He brayed low and wild as Colin’s father encouraged him toward the iron gate, where a woman waited in a long silver dress of moonlight, her brown hair curled around her shoulders like a cloak against the darkness.

  The wagon stopped, but Colin’s father did not reach for him. Instead he spoke to the woman. “Please,” he said. “He doesn’t speak, and he’s not right in the head, but he’s a hard worker and he’ll be useful.”

  “If he’s useful, take him home,” she said. But the father shook his head.

  “I’m a farmer,” he said. “The oats failed this year, and he’s no good to apprentice as a blacksmith. Don’t think me unkind. I struggle enough as it is without having another mouth to feed.”

  The branches of the dark trees pressed in around Colin, shadows gathering as the owls called to each other in the blackness of the night. The wheels had stopped, and the horse’s eyes grew large as the dark puddles from the town square. He tossed his head wildly, fighting against the harness to back the wagon down the steep path.

  Colin opened his mouth and began to moan, his cries getting louder as the horse began to rear up against the tightly locked wagon box.

  His father grabbed the horse by the noseband, pulling him to standing still again, and then reached for Colin, grabbing his wriggling body from the wagon as he moaned and beat the stifling dark air with his fists. He fought back the shadows, but his father only saw him swinging at nothing, and shushed his moans, not knowing that they kept away the demons that lurked in the bare branches of the trees.

  “He’s only startled by the horse,” his father said. “He won’t do this all the time.”

  He held Colin tightly to his chest as the boy struggled. The horse reared up again and Colin broke free, rushing to the gelding’s side. His moans stopped as he clung to the horse’s leg, as the horse whinnied and wrapped his neck around the boy. Sweat and foam dripped from the horse’s muzzle and trailed down Colin’s arms, warm and familiar. Their breathing slowed and calmed, but his father yanked him
away. “I’ve told you a thousand times,” he snapped. “He’ll trample you.”

  Colin whimpered. The gelding pawed quietly at the dirt.

  “Please,” his father begged again. “I can’t return to my wife with him. There’s no blacksmith for miles since the old one passed, and I’ve shod Lord Kiarak’s horses for two years. I can turn the heads and hearts of the town to his rule. I’ll refuse service to those who won’t bend to the iron of his will. Please. I’ve been faithful.”

  The lady in silver nodded after a moment, her dress glittering in a gasp of starlight. “What harm can be done?” she said. “We can put him to use in the vault.” She reached for a soft pouch tied around her waist and pressed two gold coins into Colin’s father’s hands.

  They did not notice how the horse had calmed from Colin’s touch, nor how he stretched out his muzzle now to blow hot breaths on the boy’s fingertips. They did not think of anything but the dark trade they made in the name of charity.

  The wheels spun wildly as his father raced the wagon down the steep hill and into the darkness of the night. The lady pressed her slim fingers against Colin’s shoulder, like tiny links of chain binding around his young frame. And though it was hard for Colin to concentrate, though it was hard for him to think outside of the pinwheel spokes and the horse’s terror and the curl of the black branches filled with demons, he knew at that moment that the gold had been carried home instead of him, and that he’d been sold into the service of Lord Kiarak of the midnight valley.

  It was, in fact, five more years before Colin beheld the warlord Kiarak, the one those in the vault called the Black Scourge of the countryside. He spreads like a plague, they murmured to each other. Those who dared to stand up to him were cut down like men fallen deathly ill. He took the countryside, then the village, then the kingdom beyond the mountains. His reach grew and festered, but all Colin knew was the vault below his dark fortress of stone. He swept the cells and stacked the candles, emptied the chamber pots and polished the chains, and when the prisoners begged and wept for the keys, Colin never met their eyes or understood their deep cries for mercy.