Run the Day

by Davis, Matthew C.

  "Well? Does Grannok still haunt the Bastille?" Swift asked, turning the car onto one of the streets that led downtown.

  The Bastille was located in the civic square, by the old courthouse and an ice cream parlor. There was an antique carousel ringed with fantastical creatures nearby, and right across the street was an old abandoned theater. The library was spitting distance away, too. Most of the buildings in the downtown area were around a hundred years old, or older, and they had a lot of stories to tell.

  "Not entirely sure. I've never seen Grannok, but the building practically hums with activity from the Other Side." I said as we pulled into the parking lot beside the Bastille.

  In this part of town were a lot of old growth trees, towering things, and they kept the red brick building in almost perpetual shade. Though the place had gone through numerous renovations and owners, the Bastille still looked like a prison. There were towers at each corner, and the iron bars on all the windows. These days the place saw business as Hanford's trendiest nightclub.

  I snagged my bag and Swift and I got out of the car. We walked around the building to the front, passing by a cluster of city landscapers maintaining the grounds around the square. By the grand stone water fountain not far away a pack of old men sat at a picnic table, drinking from bottles in brown bags and playing checkers.

  It was all stupendously normal.

  To the casual observer, life as usual, another quiet day. We walked up the steps of the Bastille and approached two massive oaken doors studded with iron rivets, and I glanced up at the unlit neon sign proclaiming the building's newest name.

  "Nightside? Serious?" I pounded on the door with a balled fist.

  "I think they're closed, Thomas." Swift said from behind me.

  "There's always someone here, even if there's not."

  Swift was about to say something but I held up a hand for silence, just as one of the heavy doors swung open of its own accord. Inside everything was dark except where slashes of light cut through the iron bars on the windows, and revealed the main floor of the club. A great empty space, apparently a dance floor, it had an area with high-top tables and a bar off to one side, and a large stage on the other. In the back, by the restrooms, was an unmarked door tucked into the corner.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Swift asked as we walked inside.

  "It means what it means," I said over my shoulder and began making my way across the room to the back.

  We had made it about half way across when the front door shut itself with a thud that echoed through the room. I cringed a little, and looked back to see Swift standing at the ready, hands raised up and curled into tight fists.

  "Calm down, the caretaker knows me. We're probably safer in here than we are outside." I told Swift and continued walking.

  "That's comforting. Who's the caretaker?" Swift asked.

  "What," I said and approached the unmarked door and clasped the handle. It opened up to a short dark hallway and I flipped the light switches on the nearby wall.

  "Who's the caretaker?" Swift asked again.

  "I heard you the first time. What is the caretaker, not who. What," I said and passed by the first two doors in the hallway when the overhead lights came on. At the back were two flights of stairs opposing each other, one leading up and the other leading down. I, of course, took the one leading down.

  "Why is it every time I work with you, I get recurring migraines?" Swift asked as we descended the stairs.

  "Because your puny mind can't handle all of the awesome," I said. I kept my hand on the wall as we went down, "It's just the nature of the beast."

  The humming in the back of my skull that had started when we walked into the Bastille got a little more insistent when we got to the bottom of the steps. I spotted the dangling cord to the lights and pulled it, illuminating what looked alarmingly like a prison cellblock, because that's exactly what it used to be, row after row of cramped cells and sturdy black iron bars. They were all being used as wine cellars and storage now, crammed with racks of bottles and boxes.

  "I can still kick your ass," Swift said and stepped off the stairs and into the cellblock, "So which one's Grannok's?"

  "But you never would, would you? You're my very own guardian angel," I said and pointed down at the end of the row, where the lights didn't quite reach gave way to shadows.

  I took a breath, switching between spectrums, and the room changed.

  I could see luminous white vapor rising out of the cells and coalescing into the spectral shapes of men and women. Hazy individuals, they floated listlessly around. Not even proper ghosts, they were harmless, and they dispersed when I walked through them. It tingled when I did, and I caught hints of memories that weren't mine. I saw someone crying in a courtroom, a bright afternoon in spring on horseback, the blank look on my wife's face as I held her underwater.

  I shook off the thoughts, and pressed on. When we got close to the last cell I noticed something seeping across the floor, red and slick.

  Blood. A lot of blood.

  Things aren't supposed to bleed that much. I rushed over to the cell door and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what waited inside.

  "God damn it."

  I'd found Hack.

  He lay curled up on the floor of the cell, trying to hold his insides from spilling out of the great gash that split his belly open. He looked terrible, and much smaller than I remembered. The Hack I knew was a giant, he vibrated with power, the poor creature before me was a shriveled up husk of a man. From the countless wrinkles to the patches of liver spots and ropey veins standing up beneath tissue-paper skin, he looked ancient.

  "We were too late." I knelt beside the broken man, lifting a hand to wipe away the blood that stained his face and matted down his beard, when his hand shot up and wrapped around my wrist like a vice, grinding bones together. I gasped and heard Swift cry out behind me. Hack yanked me down and pressed his face up against mine, his eyes wide open and bloodshot, pupils swallowing up all the color, and his voice wheezed out in a dry rattle.

  "Not too late."

  Chapter Four

  "He's alive?" Swift exclaimed.

  I was about to answer when Hack went limp, releasing his grip on my wrist and falling slack in my arms. His breath came in slow, shallow rasps and his skin was sickly pale. I looked down at the gaping wound in his abdomen where he still had one arm clutching at his own intestines, and that's when I noticed the wound itself. With my vision shifted I could see the edges of the wound flickering and moving, sparkling faintly with curious energies, so I leaned in for a closer look. The flesh was growing back, slowly but surely, trying to pull itself together. It was like watching a fractal in slow motion, expanding, replicating. I hadn't even noticed when the blood stopped flowing.

  "Yeah, barely though, but he's fighting. We have to get him out of here; whatever attacked him might still be hanging around," I said and pulled my jacket off, maneuvering Hack's limp body enough to get it wrapped around his midsection in a half-assed bandage, "Give me a hand, he's heavier than he looks."

  I got my arms under Hack's shoulders and started lifting when Swift moved around to help. I caught a glimpse of him in the Other spectrum and froze up, almost dropping Hack. His body was a solid humanoid shape of perfect white with frail looking elongated limbs; he was a being of pure light. Searing luminescence spread out from his back, looking like a pair of massive wings. Something in my brain popped and I gasped; it was all I could do to snap my vision back across spectrums.

  "We have to move." Swift said, staring at me gravely from the other side of Hack, looking again like he was supposed to.

  I nodded and took a quick second to compose myself, and we each put an arm under Hack's shoulders and lifted him from the ground. We made our way slowly, careful not to slip in the puddle of blood, and began making our way to the stairwell. I kept sneaking glances over at Swift; still trying to process what the hell I saw. I've seen a lot of truly bizarre, terrifying, beautiful, and do
wnright confusing things since I awoke to my talents and the wider world. But looking at Swift in his true form was roughly the equivalent of staring directly at the sun through a magnifying glass. Someday I was really going to have to ask him about that.

  "Just let me carry him, it'll be easier." Swift said.

  I let go and Swift slung Hack's body up to cradle him in his arms like he was no more than a child. With a shrug I turned and started heading back to the stairs. We had made it about halfway up, when there came a huge sound from above that stopped us in our tracks. It sounded like something had torn through part of the building, a thunderous booming and shattering, followed by a painfully familiar metallic squeal.

  "Bugbrain!" I said and resumed moving, quickening my pace up the steps, Swift's boots thudding along behind me.

  I tore through the door to the stairwell and down the short hallway, slamming straight through the door to the main floor. On the other side awaited a pretty damn impressive sight. Trudging its way across the dance floor was a towering golem, its body constructed from pieces of the building itself. It was vaguely humanoid, in that it had two arms and two legs, but made of bricks and mortar, wood and pipe, jagged shards of broken glass. The floor and a piece of the wall near the stage were gone, just gone, material to fuel the creation.

  "What is that thing supposed to be?" Swift came around alongside me and asked.

  "That would be the caretaker."

  I peeked at the Other Side just as Bugbrain screeched and launched himself out from the shadows, a pair of comically undersized wings buzzing madly on his back, head lopsided now with only one bulbous eye. His proboscis was spraying acid spit everywhere, leaving sizzling holes wherever it landed. Some of the stuff hit the caretaker but it didn't slow down a bit; instead, it swung a club-like arm straight at Bugbrain and sent him flying through the air to crash into the bar. A closer look at the caretaker revealed the hazy, vaporous forms of the memory ghosts, surrounding it like a nimbus. I spared a hasty glance at Swift.

  "We should probably vacate the premises, they're making a lot of -" I stopped when a sudden shriek cut through the room, and looked over to the front doors where it came from.

  Standing just inside the doorway was a woman pushing a cart loaded down with mops, brooms, rags, bottles, and other assorted cleaning implements. She looked to be on the further side of middle-aged, had brown skin and dark hair pulled tightly into a severe bun, and harsh features with large black almond shaped eyes. She was wearing a pair of drab coveralls over a sturdily built frame, a nametag over her left breast read, 'Rosa.'

  She was also screaming. Loudly.

  That's when Bugbrain pulled himself out of the wreckage of the bar and saw her. He saw his chance and took it, making a break for the cleaning lady and the door beyond her. The poor lady probably thought she was about to get tackled by an insane geriatric. The caretaker swung its body around and moved to go after Bugbrain but was just too slow. Things were about to get really messy in a second if someone didn't do something, and Swift was still busy holding Hack's limp body. I scrabbled in my bag for something and grasped the first thing I found, a piece of chalk as big as my finger, and yanked it out. I reached inside of myself for that little spark of the greater force, pulling on the energy that filled the Bastille, feeling it coursing through me like the echo of a roaring wave, and I threw the chalk at Bugbrain as hard as I could, releasing the energy along with it.

  The chalk tore out of my hand like a comet, moving so fast it burst into blue flames and left a rippling tail of light behind it. The tiny ball of fire ripped straight through Bugbrain and buried itself in the brick wall behind him. He hit the ground and slid right up to the cleaning lady's feet, a smoldering hole punched through his chest. The lady stared down at Bugbrain's still twitching, smoking body, her eyes wide with shock and mouth working like a landed fish, but no more screams came out. The little display left me feeling empty; my head was spinning and I sagged up against a conveniently placed wall

  Blowing through that much energy all at one time drained me. That's why we have handy things like formulas and rituals, tools and other crazy magical paraphernalia, things to amplify and focus energy. A mage's ability comes from his connection to the universal force that moves all things, some people call it magic, some people call it God. But to take too deeply from it without something to focus it through, or wreak blatant distortion on reality, can quite literally burn you out. And pulling a flashy stunt that manipulated reality as much as what I just did took a lot of energy.

  "That sir, was cool," Swift said.

  "No, it was damn stupid." I pushed myself off the wall, moving shakily.

  The caretaker made a groaning noise, pieces of it began flying off, moving to their original places and soon the room began looking more normal. Even the bar that Bugbrain had crashed through began putting itself back together. I looked over at where Rosa the cleaning lady still stood, and saw she had started shaking. She was looking straight at me.

  "We really have to get out of here." I said and hurried over to the door.

  On the ground beside Rosa, Bugbrain's body had begun curling in on itself. After a second the whole thing collapsed into a heap of black dust. I stomped through it and up to Rosa. She was still staring at me, watching every movement, her lip trembling.

  "All right, lady. Rosa. You have to come with us, it's not safe here. Okay?" I tried to sound comforting, but it must not have worked too well because she took a swing at me, "Hey!"

  Swift was there, holding Hack against him; he brushed his hand across Rosa's cheek and she dropped. Like the air had gone out of her. I stared blankly down at her, then back up to Swift who was already making his way out the doors.

  I thought for a moment about just leaving her there, but who knows if Bugbrain had friends hanging around or not. The cops were bound to show up sooner or later, that scuffle had made a fair amount of noise, and cops ask questions. Rosa may not understand what she had seen, but word has a weird way of getting around, and someone might be able to piece something together. Not to mention she had seen me and Swift pretty clearly. The only sensible thing was to take her and figure out what to do about it later, so I tried lifting her and failed quite miserably. I was wasted from burning too much energy.

  "This is brilliant," I muttered and looked around, noticing Rosa's cleaning cart.

  In a pinch, it would do. I kicked all the cleaning utensils off it which left a decently sized flat space that I dragged Rosa on top of. She didn't fit too well; her arms were dangling over the side and her head was precariously close to a wheel, but she wasn't in any shape to complain.

  Grabbing the handles to the cart, I pushed her out the door and tried as best as I could to be inconspicuous as I rolled an unconscious woman along the sidewalk out to the parking lot. One of the old men by the water fountain gave me a curious look but said nothing, and we made it safely behind the building where I could already hear the rumble of Swift's car. We came around the corner and he got out so he could help me stuff Rosa into the backseat alongside Hack before we jumped in.

  Hack was already beginning to look better, oddly enough, some of the color returning to his skin. Rosa had fallen against him, and had even begun snoring softly. Somewhere nearby I could hear sirens, but they fast became a distant worry. We were a ways down the road when Swift finally spoke up.

  "So.... what's the plan with the lady?" Swift asked.

  "Worry about that when we get there. I'm more worried about how Bugbrain knew where Hack was, and what he knows that's so damned important," I said and kept watching the buildings and cars go by out the window. As much as I was worried about Hack, Rosa the cleaning lady was going to be a wrench in the gears. It's not like I could just erase her memory, and it would be wrong to kill her and dump the body.

  Very wrong. It didn't even bear thinking on.

  Much.

  Chapter Five

  We drove away from the Bastille in near-silence, save for Rosa the cleaning
lady in the back seat. She snored softly and mumbled in her sleep. A few times I glanced over at Swift as he drove but I could still see the bright being of light, so I'd look out the window to try and think but end up getting dizzy watching everything go by. I was going to be low for a while after the nonsense I pulled, as evidenced by the dull throbbing between my eyes. So far, today had been a complete train wreck. The questions kept stacking up, the big picture kept getting bigger, and the hits kept hitting harder.

  At the rate I was going, I'd be dead by sundown.

  As we pulled back up to my place I decided I wasn't going to leave until I had gotten my feet under me and figured out just what was going on, not to mention taken a handful of aspirin. I couldn't stand not having the answers, it made me feel weak. Knowledge really is power and right now I didn't have a damned clue.

  "Come on, we can put Hack up in my parent's old room," I told Swift after he killed the engine.

  He complied quietly and got Hack out of the car, hoisting the unconscious old man up into his arms as easily as before. I glanced over at Rosa, who had sunken down and sprawled out on the car seat when Swift moved Hack out. She looked peaceful. I was slightly jealous. I walked ahead of Swift to get the front door open and led the way up the stairs to the second floor, opening the door across the hall from mine.

  "Right in there, on the bed," I said to Swift as we entered.

  Light crept weakly into the room from behind heavy curtains on the windows, dust stirred that hadn't been disturbed in a very long time. The whole room was blanketed in white cloth, draped over the bed and furniture. In the half-light everything looked strange under the cloths, indistinct, shapes. I hadn't been in there since mom followed after dad. It made me feel uncomfortable. Swift laid Hack gently on the bed where he sunk into it with a quiet groan.

  "Can you get the cleaning lady? I'm going to check Hack." I looked sideways at Swift as I spoke, "We can stick her on the couch downstairs I guess. When'll she wake up from that voodoo you put her under?"