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Cole had found one, and he had seen him before. Such luck in finding one so soon almost led him to forget why he was looking in the first place. Were it not for the near exit, a strong yet admittedly unready Cole would have had to do battle right there in the darkened theater. He imagined ashen tears pouring down the isles, rending the busy hands and glaring eyes of patrons unlucky enough to be caught in the path, drained of life on an impulse, blackened and blowing away before surprise could take root in their faces. He enjoyed that sight, but did not like the one accompanying it: Cole, having painted himself into a corner, beading sweat and cursing his carelessness while straining to keep the foul words on their correct path as they exited his lips. The man was a cop, and he now remembered him investigating a previous hobby of his. No, impulsiveness must be suppressed for now. This one might well prove to be fun.

-

He jolted awake. In his quickly withering dream, cold lips were pressed to his cheek. He felt the spot with his hands and found it clammy with sweat. No iced-lipstick marked his skin, even though he still felt the cold touch in his memory. He looked around and saw only darkness. The black blankets nailed up over the windows shut out the street lamp directly outside his window completely. He closed his eyes and tried to grab the thin tendrils of sleep evaporating behind him.

It was no use, he was awake, and his dream had left him.

-

Death was coming and Susan Harris knew it. She shrieked at the windows passing her by and the ground scaling in size. It was then that a sudden realization dawned in her. A curtain pulled back on the world and she saw the gears and pulleys of her mind. An overwhelming sense of urgency bathed her; she could not know why this window had opened, but she knew that it would soon close again. She saw that her current freefall was not an accident but a sadistic game played by one who dealt in behind-the-curtain antics. She followed the trail of subtle control and suggestion to a desolate space filled with shrewd steam and empty carcasses. She saw the twisted visage of what called himself a Man hiding in a cloak of shadow yet easily burned out by her powerful spectre. She read his face and saw that she was just one project in a well-aged hobby. Her freed spirit yearned for revenge as it swirled out across the landscape in final complete freedom. Revenge for a life turned bad, an open field soiled with burning rubber and medical waste. Something in her took aim at the small hidden man.

Then she hit the pavement.

-

His phantom love had turned to obsession. Every streetwalker and waitress bore Susan’s features. She was on magazine covers, newscasts, passersby, and secretaries. He started to believe she may still be alive somewhere, hiding out from whatever mischievous plot crescendoed with her supposed land-dive. She was not really dead but biding her time in safety, holed up in a locked room which only one lock could open. A lock which he somehow felt he owned.

He still held to routine, but it was different now because he was thinking in his mental back room. His mind had awakened with the saxophone and refused to stop. Too frenetic for slumber, he would sit up after the torturous dreams rouse him and draw imaginary constellations in the matte black of his bedroom until the two patches that used to be windows warmed to dull gray. Theories, Fantasies, scenarios, all manner of mental exercise plagued him now, held him over the ledge and fell with her, somehow survived with her, danced with her, made love to her. It was beyond infatuation now, and it had to mean something.

-

Cole could feel him coming. Huddled away in his work room, he mumbled a slow incantation; guttural slurs amidst harsh, sharp-sounding fragments of speech that no man should comprehend crawled from his jagged tongue and tight lips. Cole was preparing a trick of protection that Friedrich had taught him. It was a powerful trickery, and sapped the already barren area around him. The gray-black walls creaked as the words slithered around Cole’s head, sucking from the world for strength. Cole’s mind finally expanded beyond his drained walls, outside the inconspicuous tenement building, and lapped at the energy from the street. Although Cole could not see or hear the man who stopped suddenly at the corner in full cardiac arrest, he nonetheless felt his strength as the warm flow immersed him and his head went light. The spell came off and he felt the world waver around him, layers of deceit shimmered between him and his surroundings. The Sighted would be coming soon indeed, and Cole was now nearly ready.

-

The shadow of a silent lightning bolt lashed out in front of his car and he screeched to a halt. He could see the burnt trail flash out across the street and end at the feet of a heavy man in his forties. There should have been a whip-crack and sliding crash of thunder, but he could hear nothing. No one else seemed to notice the ashen line on the pavement either, or the man who was now clutching his chest.

He pulled his car over and got out. The heavy man was on his back now, not moving. He checked for breath, found silence, then looked to the bleak scrawl on the earth. Kneeling over, he felt the invisible black tentacle. It was sooty, and came off in great smudges on his fingertips. He looked back at the man and found his body shriveled, emaciated like that of a long-dried corpse. Darkening skin pulled taut across the man’s skeleton, layers of fat now gone. He noticed the traffic had now left, and no pedestrians scurried along either side of the road. Two blocks down, life continued as normal: taxis swerving and traffic lights changing. Here, he was alone.

He stood and followed the trail of stain to the tenement building, a structure he wouldn’t spare a second glance at otherwise. The building spoke of arcane foulness to him, of things best aborted before birth or mercifully destroyed not too long after. Light did not reflect from this place, as if whatever beast had inked over this patch of road had also covered the entire building long ago.

He closed his eyes and saw Susan.

He tread across the street, feeling release on the horizon.

-

Cole felt him on the street, walking slowly with caution. The man looked strong, but dim. He gave himself away with every footstep and slow glance around. It’s almost a pity, Cole thought, there’s talent but no training. He looked so promising too.





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©2002 Brian Miller