The neighborhood wound around on itself like that image of a snake swallowing its tail goth chicks wear on necklaces. I jogged a block to a residential neighborhood and caught sight of a canal I remembered from the train. I took a quick look around to make sure no one was paying me much attention, and then I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up, grateful the day was chilly enough that I did not look out of place. I strolled quickly back between two aging tenements, passed through a moderately full parking lot, and then a rather depressing play area, garnering a few curious stares from the more attendant mothers, but nothing untoward. The rear fence was chain link, and leaned so far over I was afraid it would tip under my weight. I climbed it anyway, trying to make that look like a natural thing to do.
Does that even make sense?
I walked along the deserted concrete bank of the canal until I was as sure as I could be that no one was following. If they were still tailing me successfully after my efforts thus far, then they played this game so well that it was hopeless for me to try to outwit them. I waited a few more minutes in an overgrown bus enclosure out of an excess of caution, then hopped another fence at random and made my way back to the station, approaching from the opposite side.
The parking lot between me and the station appeared to be filled with nothing more ominous than parked cars. I watched it as long as I could stand to, then took a deep breath like I was jumping into cold water and started my walk to the station, trying not to move too fast.
Nothing draws suspicion like quick movement. Human eyes are designed to track that very thing.
I took an old film canister from my pocket and pried it open, then pulled on a pair of latex gloves from inside. I bought a new ticket from the machine downstairs with cash and made my way up the stairs to the elevated station.
It was pure chance, really. It could have gone any number of ways.
The way it went, however, the woman in the mirror glasses stood opposite me on the platform, facing the wrong way, intent on the conversation she was having through her earpiece. Careful not to disturb her in the light crowd or enter her peripheral vision, I edged cautiously forward, making a quick note of the cameras.
“…no. Waste of time. The whole thing was probably a mistake. This description is too vague. Any tall guy in this city could fit the profile. Yeah, I know… I’m sorry. I am just frustrated because I spent the day running in circles…”
I had already heard everything that I needed. We had not been identified. I could even turn this into a chance to kick dirt over our trail. If I played my cards right and a few key elements lined up, like…
The crowd.
The cameras.
The arrival of the train.
The end of her conversation.
“I have to go. My train is here. I will talk to you when I get back.”
The deafening bellow of the train’s horn stirred the crowd, who hurried to the edge of the platform. I couldn’t be this lucky, could I? I took one nervous step forward, then another. The woman in the sunglasses closed her phone and tucked it inside her purse as the noise of the train swelled. The crowd parted as if I followed an invisible path which opened for me and then disappeared behind me. No one gave me a second look. The woman glanced at the oncoming train, the headlamp of the train reflecting in her mirrored glasses, then picked an entrance marked in blue paint on the cement platform. She stepped to the yellow safety line and the crowd pressed behind her, eager to board. I moved forward until I was right behind her, hovering near her backside like a creep. She shifted, maybe uncomfortable because of my proximity. I closed my eyes so I would not have to remember what happened next.
The approach of the train was deafening, but her scream was perfectly audible nonetheless. As was the moment it cut off. Everyone was too busy watching the calamity to notice me. The crowd reeled back in instinctive horror and then pressed close in sickeningly avid curiosity. Nobody saw me walk away along with mothers hustling children from the scene and oblivious elderly folks hobbling to their destinations. I kept my head down so the cameras got nothing but the hood of my sweatshirt, which would not make it home with me, cold as it was.
I had to stop in the parking lot for a moment to slow my racing heart. My hands trembled and my stomach threatened to rebel.
What had happened? Were we safe now?
The woman’s death would be hushed up, I knew that much from experience. No official investigation, no official identification. Before the coroner realized what it was they had, someone would come to collect what was left of the body. Agents died in the field all the time. They were disposable: no fingerprints, dental records, or DNA on file. If she died accidentally, or was the victim of a sicko or lust murderer, the Institute would never know otherwise from the parts of her peeled off the train’s wheels. I had stayed out of view of the cameras, I was certain of that.
They would write it off, I figured, I hoped. If they found out at all. If the woman wasn’t buried in a potter’s field as a Jane Doe by a lazy pathologist. We were clear; clear of the threat, clear of any repercussions.
I hate to admit it, but it bothered me nonetheless. At the last moment, the woman in the sunglasses, the look in her face.
What had she seen in my eyes?
I forced my hands to stop shaking by staring at them. I took deep breaths of the cold night air. Then I walked fourteen blocks back downtown to be certain no one was following. My feet hurt like hell by the time I found a cab back across town in the wrong direction, so that I could take a bus all the way back to Kadath, and finish the lonely walk to the Estates.
***
My intention was to keep an eye out on the trip home, but that turned out to be unrealistic. The minute I got on the bus my adrenaline dumped and I barely woke up in time to make my stop. I was both groggy and grumpy on my walk back from the train station thanks to the unplanned nap. That is probably why I did not notice the girl on top of the street lamp until I was practically underneath her.
“Well, hello, Sumire,” I said, shading my eyes to cope with the glare.
Sumire peered down, clutching at the metal post atop the lamp with both hands. She shrieked when she recognized me.
“Preston! Don’t look!”
I didn’t follow for a moment, but then I realized that she was attempting to smooth her skirt against her legs. She gave up rather quickly when it became apparent that her attempts to preserve her modesty were going to get her killed.
“I can’t see anything, it’s too bright,” I lied. “Sumire, are you alright up there?”
“Well, yes, but…”
Sumire sounded doubtful, so I set my package carefully down on the sidewalk.
“But what?”
“Well, I’m not in any danger, because I am invulnerable. But I am also sort of, well, afraid of heights…”
I found myself looking at the deserted street and scratching my head. Literally.
“Sumire, you just told me you were invulnerable.”
“I am! That doesn’t mean I like falling, okay? I still get scared.”
Add that to the list of things about this girl, the Estates, this whole damn city that did not make the slightest bit of sense to me.
“Uh, Sumire… how did you get up there in the first place? Why climb up there if you are so afraid of heights?”
“I didn’t climb, I jumped. I was chasing… something. On the rooftops. I don't care for heights, but it isn’t that bad when I have a solid building beneath me. Anyway, it dropped down and started hopping from one streetlight to another, and I was kinda caught up, so I followed. For a little while. Until I looked down.”
The nearest streetlight to the one Sumire was on was half a block away. Twenty yards, at least. I am not good with numbers. Well outside of the realm of possibility for a jump, anyway.
“Wait. What were you chasing?”
“Could we talk about this later, please? I am a little freaked out at the moment.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Are you
going to climb down, or what?”
Sumire made a face as if I had suggested pulling teeth.
“I can’t.”
Suspicions confirmed, I spread my legs shoulder-width apart, and held my arms out in front of me, emulating a basket.
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. “Go ahead.”
“And what?”
“And jump. What do you think? I can’t climb up there and carry you down…”
A long, thoughtful pause. That didn’t hurt my feelings.
“Preston?”
“Yes, Sumire?”
“You are – you are actually going to catch me, right?”
An astute question. Sumire was a surprisingly good judge of character, assuming I have any character at all. Fortunately, I had an answer ready. It was even the truth.
“You don’t have to trust me, Sumire,” I said, smiling what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “April likes you, and she would be sad if something happened to you. That’s all you need to know when it comes to me.”
Sumire hesitated a moment longer and I started to feel stupid, standing in front of a streetlight with my arms out as if I expected something to fall from the sky. Crazy people do stuff like that, and I don’t like doing things that crazy people do. It can become a habit.
Sumire must have decided to trust me around then, because all of a sudden, the light was blotted out. I figured out later that was Sumire falling toward me. She had to tell me about her knee hitting my forehead later, when I regained consciousness, lying on the sidewalk with my head in her lap.
The headache was terrible, but I had woken in worse places.
“Oh, good! You finally woke up. I thought maybe I killed you…”
Sumire appeared genuinely concerned, as if killing me would truly upset her. What a nice girl, I thought woozily.
“No such luck,” I said, rubbing my forehead ruefully. “What the hell happened?”
Sumire recounted the incident for me, looking rather abashed, though what she had to be embarrassed about I have no idea. Of course, that could have been brain damage, judging from the sorry state of my head.
“You must be pretty tough,” Sumire pointed out. “That was a serious impact. And people that I hit… don’t usually get up so quickly.”
Ah, right. The invulnerability thing. I had almost forgotten. Sumire did seem largely unscathed from a fifteen-foot fall, I will give her credit for that. Even her knee was only a bit red from our collision. Not exactly what I would call indisputable evidence, but it was something to think about.
Sumire’s perfect thighs shifted gently beneath my head, warm through her skirt on the back of my neck.
“Preston? Can I ask you something?”
“You know how to pick your time. Ask away, Sumire.”
“Where did you and April come from?”
When I don’t want to answer a question, there are a few ways to deal with it. Yelling and getting defensive, in my experience, tends to make people even more curious. Nothing attracts attention like something to hide.
“The Institute,” I breathed, unwilling to say its full name. “It is… a medical research facility, I suppose. Not a hospital, though, or anything like that. The doctors there don’t help people get better. They practice preemptive medicine.”
Sumire paused in the act of stroking my hair back from my bruised forehead.
“Do you mean preventative?”
“No,” I said with conviction, remembering Crowley’s many heartfelt lectures. “They cause disease or induce psychosis and then attempt to cure it under controlled conditions. As far as the Institute is concerned, they are correcting a basic problem with medical research – doctors have to wait for people to get sick in order to try to cure them. The Institute cuts out the intermediary. They make people sick deliberately for research purposes.”
“You mean that April…”
I inclined my head, the most minimal nod possible.
“They made her that way,” I said, which was the best kind of lie, the kind that confuses truth and intent. “And they were making her worse.”
“Then, you were… Preston, are you like her?”
Sumire was lonely. It was written so plainly across her face at that moment that she would have been humiliated, had she known. She wanted badly to find someone, anyone else, who was the same as her. Special. Unique.
No wonder she liked April so much.
“I’m not,” I confessed. “I am just sick, Sumire.”
In the quiet that followed, our eyes met ambiguously. I was reluctant to be the first to look away, though I did not know what that meant. I decided to cheat.
“Hey… what was it you were chasing, again?”
Sumire blushed and stammered while I closed my eyes, sparing my aching head the further indignities of light. I was in no particular hurry to sit up, though I suspected that I could. Do not think poorly of me for taking advantage of her pity. Sumire was a pretty girl and her lap was comfortable.
“You won’t believe me.”
Sumire spoke with flat certainty.
“Probably not, but go ahead and tell me anyway.”
Her sigh was long and drawn out, as if she had already told this story many times, knew it would not be well received, and regretted the necessity. Alternatively, that ‘as if’ may not be necessary.
“A toad. A servant of the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep. A creature of the terrible Elder Gods.”
Okay.
I like to think I have the market cornered on enigmatic statements. Sumire wasn’t my equal, she was my better. The girl was either stark raving mad or a brilliant liar.
“Is that some sort of frog? An Egyptian frog?”
“Toads and frogs aren’t the same thing, dummy. No more than an alligator is the same as a crocodile, or a turtle is the same as a tortoise. I call them toads because they look that way. They are like… white blobs, I guess. They are hard to describe. They don’t have eyes or anything. But, their general shape is toad-like, and they hop around, so…”
My eyes snapped open, but the face above me was, as far as I could tell, sincere. I was astonished, something that I make a habit to avoid.
“I have no clue what you are talking about. What the hell were you chasing?”
Sumire gave me a look that would have been demure and aggrieved if she a little older and more confident. Instead, she looked like a girl with hurt feelings, aggrieved because she was not taken seriously.
“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me. I was chasing a toad, a moon beast, a servant of…”
“Hold it. A what-beast?”
Sumire hung her head.
“A moon beast.”
“You mean from the moon,” I said, pointing up at the big round thing in the sky.
She was quiet for a moment.
“Yes.”
“That moon, right?”
“Yes. The dark side. They have cities there, and farms. They take human slaves up there with them…”
“Okay. I’ll give you some credit – you have amazing delivery. You really sell it. You need to pick slightly more plausible stories, though. You had me going until you said ‘moon-beast’. Who even uses the word ‘beast’ to describe anything?”
Sumire appeared even more crestfallen.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I am telling the truth. They come from the moon in black-sailed ships to capture people, for slave labor and worse. I stop them when I can. That’s all there is to it.”
“Look,” I grumbled. “Do what you like. You don’t have to tell me why you were on that streetlight. Slaves on the moon, of all things…”
“You’re right – I don’t have to tell you anything,” Sumire agreed cheerfully, fussing over my wounded head. “Unless you want to get up, that is. You do seem to be feeling better.”
If there is an explanation for what happened next, then I do not know what it would be. We all have our own depths, and they are never truly plumbed, no matter w
hat we think. Something might have come over me. Maybe I was simply tired, from the day, from what had happened at the train station.
Or... it’s possible Sumire was right, and I was just lonely. I do not know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you the first thing about it.
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 8
