*
The air by the salt marsh always held the scent of darkness and dying things. At times the smell of decaying plant life was as thick as a bush-hogged field of thistles and briars. However, the night I found myself restlessly stalking the grounds surrounding the mansion, a westerly breeze was gently rubbing its belly against the dark land, bringing with it clean inland air. Breathing in air so fresh nearly left me intoxicated. Normally I didn’t mind the smell of the mash so much. I liked the briny bite that came with it, but on that night, the swampy surroundings left me feeling claustrophobic and hemmed in.
I wanted to climb out of my skin.
Whether the atmosphere was an extension of my mood, or the ponderous weight pressing around me was a foreshadowing of bad things to come I did not yet know. And this was part of my problem. From the first moment I arrived in the Playground, I knew that trouble and doom were no longer matters of If. Here, When was always a stone cold certainty.
So why did I feel the need to leave the safe walls surrounding me? I found comfort inside the manor. Things made sense there. I mean, on the one hand the place may have housed things like ghosts and hybrid alien technology, but on the other, walls still went upright, floors were still made of tile, and waking across the carpet still gave me static electricity. I needed every snippet of normalcy I could find. And yet . . .
I needed to walk, and I didn’t care if that meant leaving the safe confines of my sanctuary. I was suffocating. So I slipped through the halls, allowing myself to get lost in the labyrinthine complex until I finally found an exit door that took me to the far end of the estate.
Where I now stood alone in the night.
Where it was always half past twelve and only getting later.
I saw one of the security guards checking the monitor stations. He looked up at me and recognized who I was. “You’re the new guy, right?”
I nodded my head. “Just trying to get used to things.”
The guard stopped what he was doing and looked at me, giving me his full attention. He turned out to be older than I thought, though I could tell he was in good shape by the way he moved. Wrinkles ran across his face like a map of Las Angeles after a big earthquake. They were the kinds of lines that spoke of many years and experience, the kind that came from countless personal earthquakes. He had salt-and-pepper hair and a grizzled face that made him look like he could be Anyone’s Uncle.
“I’m Jack,” I said.
“I’m Steve,” the guard said with a friendly smile. “I’ve seen plenty of people come through here wearing the same look that you have.”
I gave a humorless laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
Steve grinned. “Boy, you look so shell-shocked I can almost hear artillery popping off around you. Tell me something. Is it true you came from a place where none of this—” and here he waved a hand around indicating that he had only the vaguest notion that life outside of the Playground was possible—“exists?”
I nodded my head. “Sir, the place I come from has make-believe stories about things like vampires, aliens, ghosts, and werewolves, but they’re all just pretend.”
Steve’s face crinkled in delight. Like I had just told him a pretend story. “Well, I want a ticket to where you’re from!” He fell into a bout of rib-splitting laughter.
“After coming face-to-face with harpies and prowlers, I wish I could, too,” I mumbled.
Steve looked at me sympathetically. “You picked the right place to come, son. Mr. Hyde’s estate is one of the safest places in the Playground you can be.”
“No harpies or predators?”
Steve laughed again. “There’s things Mr. H. allows on premises, but they won’t bother you as long as you’re cleared to be here.”
“What if somebody isn’t?”
Steve’s answer was simple. “If ‘somebody’ isn’t, they won’t have a body for long.”
“So a walk around the estate won’t get me killed?”
Steve shook his head. “Stay on the walking trail and you’ll be fine,” he said.
“And by ‘fine’ you mean I won’t be eaten, possessed, or flayed alive, right?”
Steve’s chest shook as he continued laughing. “Track’s fine, Jack.”
“You’re sure?”
“Used to walk it all the time.”
“I bet Hansel and Gretel did too.”
“We don’t allow any witches around kids.”
“Ah hah! But you said this place was safe. What if you’re not a kid?”
“We bake the witches in their own gingerbread houses if they misbehave.”
I frowned at this. “But won’t it be too late once they’ve already misbehaved?”
“That’s what all the security is for.”
“Security’s made to be broken.”
“We break them first.”
“And if I go on a walk, nothing’s going to bother me? We’re going to have words if something tries to eat me.”
Steve raised a hand. “I solemnly swear you won’t be eaten; but if you’re really that afraid, I can give you some hot sauce or syrup of ipecac to cover yourself with.”
This did nothing for my frown. “Oh ha ha.”
Steve favored me like a parent humoring a tiresome child. “Would you like me to walk with you?”
I closed my mouth and actually considered it for a moment. “I’ve got it,” I finally said. I didn’t want anyone else spoiling my perfectly rotten mood.
“The walking path makes a three mile loop around the back part of the estate,” Steve said. His tone was reassuring. Maybe it would be okay to walk the trail. “You’ll find emergency phones every quarter of a mile. Every half-mile, you’ll find little shelters equipped with toilets and water fountains.”
I didn’t think I’d be having that kind of emergency, but after seeing some of the things I had already run up against, I couldn’t rule out a sudden bladder malfunction. “Good to know,” I said.
“You get in trouble, just look for the blue lights on top of the emergency phone stations. You won’t be able to miss them.”
“How long’s it take for help to arrive?”
“No time at all, Jack.”
“You sure?” I wanted to avoid any trouble tonight. I had already exceeded my lifetime quota.
Steve looked at me, and his eyes crinkled as he grinned. “We’re always around,” he said. As he spoke, his body slowly grew indistinct and transparent. “You just call if you need us.” The last two words came out of thin air as Steve’s body faded away altogether.
Son of a bitch.
The guy was a ghost.
Trouble, it turned out, waited about forty-five minutes to find me. It gave me until I got halfway down the first leg of the trail. I moved quickly among the shadows cast by the principality’s two scowling moons. They leered at me high overhead with mirthless grins. I shuddered, because I didn’t want to know the punch line of their jokes. Sometimes inside humor is best left inside, right?
Dark stripes crisscrossed the trail like prison bars where the late autumn branches, leafless and bare as skeletons, interrupted the boney light of the nighttime sky. The woods on both sides of the trail held the darkness stingily. Thin saplings grew in clumps with the pale color of naked bodies stacked together in the closet of a serial killer’s darkest dreams. Darkness choked the empty spaces between.
I pulled my coat around me against the cold air. My screamer rested snuggly in its holster beneath the crook of my left arm. My nerves were on fire. My head spun. I realized that my mind and my body were still trying to catch up with the trauma of waking up in this dystopian nightmarescape. Angie’s sudden turn in personality still singed th
e burnt ends of my heart, highlighting the fact that I wasn’t coping too well with anything happening to me. Once again, I shoved these troubled thoughts out of my mind. I forced myself to focus on the wonderful medley of autumn scents peppering the air.
Around me trees rustled in the gentle coastal breeze. Small branches popped occasionally. Small animals moved among the brush here and there. Everywhere, the forest gave itself up in little noises and disturbances sounding in the dark.
I moved the fingers of my right hand lightly across the screamer’s grip. This simple motion brought me some comfort. Little by little my angsty nerves unknotted.
These were just nighttime forest sounds.
Besides, Steve seemed like a decent enough ghost, and hadn’t the poltergeists at Walmart done their best to protect me? I knew that if I was going to be here for a while I was going to have to adapt to life in the Playground. Hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of people apparently lived here without these constant fears.
Another twig snapped in the gloom. My eye twitched involuntarily. I would have felt better if Ange had been there with me. But I was alone. My hand grasped the screamer so firmly its rough surface dug into my skin. I breathed out after holding my breath for a moment, willing the stress away.
It helped a little.
Besides, in one of my pockets rested a bottle of mild sedatives.
They helped a lot.
Maybe even better than knowing I had a high-powered energy pistol beneath my coat. So I tried to loosen up a bit more while conscious part of my mind wandered among the mildewed furniture stacked in my brain. Why had I allowed myself to develop feelings for someone as confused as Ange? I certainly seemed to be paying for it now. Was the fact that I felt some kind of bond with her fate’s idea of cosmic joke?
Another twig snapped in the night. The crack made me stop. This time it was loud. Really sharp.
SNAP!
I twisted to my right so rapidly I felt dizzy. The woods pressed their dark face at me. Something out of sight shuffled amid thick leaves. “Hello!” I called out, working hard to keep my voice pleasant and amiable. I told myself maybe it was a troop of doxies that lived on premises deeper within the forest.
Whoever was shadowing me continued moving in my direction. A branch swished as someone moved through the tree boughs. I heard them bending forward and swishing back together. Whoever—whatever—it was must have been as big as a man or woman. Doxies were too small to be knocking limbs about like that.
“Hi there,” I called out again. “I hear you moving in the trees.” My voice trembled slightly. I hoped it went unnoticed. I stood in a slanting shaft of moonbeams. My breath ghosted away from my face.
“Hello?” I said again.
This got no reply. I felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck, and I backed away. My eyes darted around for any sign of the blue lights shining from the emergency stations dotting the walking path. None were close.
Damn it, Angie.
God only knew what was in these woods.
The footsteps finally stopped. My visitor stood as still as the shadows falling across my body. I stood and waited. It stood and waited. The alarmed part of my imagination—which accounted for all of it—had already decided that I was facing a something, not someone. When the thing in the woods took several more steps in the dry leaves, I made out the contours of a humanoid shape, but my observer was either darkly dressed or as black as the stygian pitch of hell itself.
I couldn’t see any details.
“You can come out and talk!” I barked. “Really!” This last word made me grimace. It sounded too much like a plea.
I moved back, and I finally caught a glimpse of the thing watching me. I saw right away that its outline differed from a human’s. The thing held a hunter’s crouch. Cold fear suddenly wheedled through my guts and worked its way into the rest of my body. When the creature’s head bent forward far enough to catch the moonlight, its eyes flared to life, and they shone with an animal’s golden reflection. The irises narrowed onto slits. I withdrew my weapon and held it up for the thing to see.
“I’m armed,” I growled. I knew I couldn’t let any more weakness slip into my voice. Predators liked that kind of thing. And the dark shape looked all too ready to spring.
After an uncomfortably long wait, a rough voice rasped from the shadows. “You should not be here. Something will eat you.” Within those words I heard a deeply inhuman chuckling.
“I don’t think I’d taste too good.” I didn’t either. I heard fear made meat taste gamey.
More chuckling issued from the darkness. “You are in my way, human.”
Damn it. Steve said I would be safe. I should have known better. It wasn’t like I had chosen to take a walk in a well-lit neighborhood or anything.
I moved the muzzle of my gun around, allowing it to drift in the thing’s general direction. I swallowed stiffly. “Right. Your area. Got it. I’m leaving. Just keep to where you are and I’ll be on my way.”
The dark creature’s pupils narrowed into thin, metallic slits. I heard the crepitus of claws biting into wood. “Run.” Its command rippled with fury. “Run, now.”
To Be Continued in J. David Phillips’s
The Things That Stalked Me.
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