Dancing In Darkness: Prelude
By
Kassandra Alvarado
Copyright 2014
Cover Art designed by author with thanks to the ever-beautiful Miranda Hedman https://mirish.deviantart.com/
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur: The world desires to be deceived; therefore it is
- Petronius
Chapter One Beginning
The scent of Mimosa...it isn’t overpowering, but --
The window was thrown open on the third floor of a dilapidated apartment complex. The night air was cold, brisk over the face of the sleepless. The words of a poet came to the restless mind deprived of its sundry rest:
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
A work of Shelley’s, waxing on The Sensitive Plant. The scent tickled the nostrils of the sleepless, it bade him leave the electric comfort of a heating blanket and seek out its source. It was not difficult to discern with the tickle of a faint breeze stirring the dingy white curtains across the room. The scent came from there. Laconic, he arose to throw the sash open wider. There was a ruckus below. The sound startled him. A trash can filled to the brim flipped over, spilling its contents across the narrow cement-lined alleyway. He peered closer, searching out the cause, expecting a hungry dog.
Then, for some reason, he reached for the camcorder on the dresser beside the window. Switching on night vision, he held it still, aiming downward. Through the lens view, something moved - ran - Jesus, it was fast! - The half-bent human shape raced to the end of the complex alley, stopping short of the wooden fence. Something else moved after it, slow, deliberate with long strides.
He craned his head out as far as possible, sticking his arm out with the camcorder. Three stories below, the figure -- a woman of indeterminate age clothed entirely in black, slowed. Distantly, through the noise of traffic, her steps rang harsh, final. Zac twisted around, aiming the shaking lens from the back wall fence to the woman, back and forth. The thing had ceased its scrambling. On all fours, it dropped to the ground, head tilted low, back swaying like an obscene spider.
The woman took something from her shoulder; the thing recognized her intent, scuttling forward on hands and knees. He nearly dropped the camcorder in fright, heart in his throat. It was like something out of a horror movie. Zac’s thoughts were jumbled. Was this real? Was he really watching this unfold?!
Reality warred with sensory perception. He wanted to doubt the scene unfolding below, he wanted to shut his eyes and crawl back into bed -- but something made him stay frozen by the transom, craning his neck out the window.
A small burst of fitful light below expounded a sound not unlike that of a shotgun blast. “Jesus!” He yelped, slamming the back of his head against the upraised pane. Curiosity prevailed and he kept watching, watching as the thing tottered upright on two legs instead of four. The dark shock of hair stood on end, an inhuman wail issued from the gaping maw, then the twisted form collapsed into greasy folds of skin.
The woman withdrew her weapon, stepping back sharply from the burst of inky blackness pouring from the shell of the human being. Like some living thing, it gathered into itself, a noisome cloud of pollution, spiriting away faster than the eye could follow. The woman seemed vaguely perturbed something had gotten away, though he was never certain if it was a sound he made or simple intuition which led her to look up to the third window on the third story of the apartment building.
“Oh, God! I just witnessed a murder!” Zac muttered to himself, pulling back inside. He whacked his head again on the low crossbeam, stumbling back into the darkness of his room. Clasping the camcorder to his rapidly beating heart, he pondered all he had seen. Partly fear from discovery, part sheer nerves wracked his state of mind with dread.
In the distance, a car engine roared to life. The sudden sound shook him from reverie, thoughts of retribution by unknown assailants. Zachary Quinn had been born with an overactive paranoia that fueled his daydreams, manifested in slightly neurotic tendencies and bursts of mania. He could not know that the woman had looked up at the sound of a cat meowing from the fire escape. She had disregarded the sleeping and possibly sleepless inmates of the rundown Greenwich Village complex as gnats swarming a greater being that of the city of New York, the heart of the metropolis.
When he dared approach the window again, the woman had disappeared along with the remnants of flesh, leaving only a trace of Mimosa. Zac briefly considered calling the police, though even that seemed a waste of time. Even a brief jaunt into the cold, crisp night air resulted in nothing but him furtively peering into the shadows, jumping at the slightest sounds. Returning upstairs, he reviewed the footage recorded by the camcorder to convince himself of what he’d seen.
As with everything he’d ever shot, the video was dark, crackling. The actions were slow, replayed through fifteen frames per second. At the halfway mark, he gasped at the tiny face of the victim barely seen to the naked eye but plainly visible to the camera eye. It was the face of a man whom had been missing for three months. Zac had passed the Missing flyer every day on his route to and from the complex parking lot.
Some guy out jogging never returned to his hot wife and three adorable kids from a first marriage - or so the news reported before the cable had been cut. The one thing he remembered most was the reward offered for any information regarding the guy’s whereabouts or condition. Zac switched off the feed, hurrying to the hotplate where the kettle boiled for coffee. Pouring himself a strong cup, he grimaced at the heat and bitterness washing over his unshaven mug.
He barely allowed himself to dream, maybe...just maybe this was the breakthrough he’d been looking for. Freelancing after college, he’d pulled a lot of shit out of his ass. Articles on subjects he hardly knew heads or tails of: Women’s Health. Menopause. South Beach Diets. The last article he’d written for Journal Today, an online newsletter showcasing science and health breakthroughs, had been about Java, not the kind that came in a cup, but Java applet the software that ran on thousands of computers. Sometimes without people knowing.
They said he’d done a lot better on Menopause. ‘Stick to what you don’t know, kid.’ Ran the last email he’d gotten from a faceless boss on the computer. ‘People like the allure of mystery, of things that shouldn’t exist.’
‘So, I should write about Bigfoot?’ He’d replied, confused. So far, no reply. But, that had gotten Zac thinking. If he could write a story about some mysterious agency that prowled the shadows hunting down mythological creatures - he grinned to himself. Now, why did that sound familiar...Things like that might get National Enquirer front page specials and a job as their undercover reporter...but those were distant dreams punctured by the sound of his stomach rumbling. Only Dr. Who in the corner bubbled enthusiastically.
“You like that, don’t you, buddy?” Sometime later, he tapped the remaining potato chip crumbs into the glass fish bowl while a fat beady-eyed goldfish swam in circles chasing the crumbs. When that was done, he put on a baseball cap, tucked his camcorder with a fresh tape under his arm and headed out the back way, avoiding an eventual confrontation with the landlady.
Out on the streets, he felt freer. The city was a melting pot of life visible through every camera lens, mirrored windows of upscale shops. Bodegas, brownstones and attractive shops lined the streets with cars parked bumper to bumper on busy streets. He captured scenes of life - people crossing the street - death, a hearse taunted by indolent young boys.
He spent money he couldn’t afford on a fanciful concoction of berry-laced frozen yogurt, consuming it from a park bench beneath denuded trees. Nannies pushed strollers while mothers with iPhones in hand, eyed him warily. Zac ignored their strange looks, he used to get that a lot in high-school, sometimes at college frat parties. Phillip had always been the more studious, though the first to abandon the idea of becoming a lawyer. Phillip had listened to his recounts of the girls in skimpy clothes, the beer spilled on the dorm carpets, ...every other little thing those jocks whom got in his face used to say...
Zac finished slurping the cold drink, making loud smack-smack noises from air sucked through an empty straw. He felt the stares more now, suddenly wishing he’d thought to buy a bag of chips. Lost in his thoughts over food, he missed the woman’s entrance. Tardily, beneath someone’s cold stare, he came back into his surroundings, noticing a woman unlike all the others. Flaxen-haired, petite to a fault, she wore the garb of an office worker. Zac noticed her because she’d been staring...not jeering, but different somehow.
His more male instinct remarked - she was entrancing like a princess of a storybook. Never quite real framed in the smog-laden city backdrop. She walked beneath the spreading canopy of fall leaves, her step that of a lioness, long, slow, inclined to pauses for an equally unnerving stare.
She had the attitude of royalty, that one. It wasn’t until browsing the racks of a newsstand on the route home, that he realized she’d taken his picture - but that in itself was an innocent thing. Though, doubt wondered why? He certainly wasn’t handsome nor endowed with qualities that most women found desirable. Zac wasn’t vain enough to believe his fantasies would come true. Even so, he smiled at the cute girl working the newsstand register, blatantly ignoring her mutter of ‘creep.’
He whistled on his way home, though nothing eventful happened, found a quarter stuck in the groove of the doorstep. He felt luckier then, reaching his apartment ahead of the gathering darkness. Inside, he fumbled with the light switch, cursed and kicked his way to the hotplate, setting up the pot for reheated coffee. Then, once poured, sat down to peruse the Classifieds.
On page six, he circled a couple of hits. One from a local nightclub sounded promising. They mentioned flexible pay, night hours, more or less asking for burly men to apply. Before the warped, wavy mirror mounted on the wall beside the futon; he raised the edge of his shirt critically studying the mass of flab elongated by the spotty quality of the glass. He’d bought the mirror cheap from Phillip’s sister Alicia, whom ran a tourist trap in New Jersey.
“Burly...huh.” Around 5’7” he wasn’t sure where height fell with weight. Dropping the T-shirt with a shake of his head, he plunked down on the musty-smelling sheets, pulling a tattered canvas sack over to his left hip from there procuring an Umbrella Corporation laptop from the inner sleeve. Back then, he’d been the only kid in school to think the Resident Evil series was cool, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But, damn RE1 had given him some great memories on Ethan’s old Playstation...
Zachary paused on the Google Doodle page, he hadn’t been able to think of Ethan without pain. It was a strange feeling, when he’d turned ten years old, he believed he’d never forget that day. Well, it hadn’t faded exactly, but like a missing tooth, the hole was still raw, painful when probed.
He typed in monsters, shooting an almost furtive, guilty glance to the framed photo of two boys, one older, taller, monkey-wrenching the arm of a smaller boy with glasses. They were nearly identical by face and the same shock of jet black hair that crowned their heads. Brothers. “I’m trying,” he muttered to that face frozen in a moment he remembered like it was yesterday. “I’ll make you proud, Ethan.” One day.
Monsters brought up urls of AMC’s monster-fest, monster the job builder and monster energy drinks. Nonplussed, he surfed to the next page, Top Ten Most Dangerous River Monsters...he skimmed over the Discovery channel special onto a nytimes article about rubber-suited monsters on the way out.
“Doesn’t anyone believe in old-fashioned one-eyed wobblies anymore?” He muttered to himself, disgustedly clicking on Wikipedia’s disambiguation of the term. There were other references for monster of course, congenital defects in man and animal, origins of the Latin term monstrum as something aberrant, against the natural order of things.
‘Monere’ the root of monstrum, meant a warning among other things. A warning against what? He wondered, surfing down the lengthy piece. There were Hollywood’s interpretation of monsters, the misguided Frankenstein monster of Mary Shelley’s creation, the Mummy, the Wolfman...no, no, no. Dropping that, he hopped onto a forum three pages off the main search page, delving into supposed sightings of cryptids or sciences term for monsters. El Chupacabra from Mexican lore and others whom he had heard vaguely of.
In the midst of note takings and chuckles over excited people’s accounts of these monsters, his eye fell upon an ad for a book situated to the right of the page, advertised from some security breach in his firewall allowing the browser to spy on his browsing history. Zachary readily forgave the browser, his lips forming the name of the book. “Blackwood’s Monster Bible...for the sum of $6,000.66 smackeroos, damn! That’s a helluva lot of money.”
He clicked on ‘look inside this book’ only to come up with a blank page where the listing had been. The page said it had been pulled from the seller’s marketplace for undisclosed reasons. Disappointed, Zachary hopped onto Google Books, searching by title, then by author, remembering vaguely the name R -something Schwarz. But, where did the Blackwood connection come from? His brow furrowed as he tried to figure it out.
- Algernon Blackwood - the famous British author of The Wendigo and The Willows.
- Blackwood’s Magazine - nineteenth century magazine on social commentary.
- Black-wood - a locational surname of Scottish origin...frustrated with nothing, he gave up after glancing at the clock, yelping aloud at the plastic paws of Felix the Cat. 3 am...how’d it get so late? Where had the time gone? He puzzled over it, briskly brushing his teeth at the sink. Blackwood and that book. A book which failed identification of publishing house, year, author and seemed to dwell in obscurity.
Chapter Two: Conspiracy
Grand-mère referred to the entity as the ‘Corporation,’ her mother referred to it as ‘your nuisance,’ she’d been glad to be rid of the responsibility. Evelyn liked to think of it as ‘the entity,’ a thing that neither walked nor spoke. Wrapped in tradition, the very name conjured in different minds a mythos of scandal, blood, murder, destruction and death.
The scandal, ah, always. Her New England relatives, the illustrious Pemberton and Cartier clans from the West, skirted that distasteful matter of her father’s death. Though, she was always welcome in their estates, her mother had yet to darken the door of one to whom she had been briefly allied through the sacred tie of marriage.
Evelyn had a few suitors, all eventually turned off by her dedication. Feed it, guard it, encourage its rise to the forefront of the world, but never for God’s sake, love it. That was the entity’s meaning to her. She could never love something that took everything from her to maintain. During the long years of her grand-mère and mother’s short reign, the entity had been neglected. Left to shadows and vague remembrances on the stock market. But, she was determined to change everything.
“Still here, Ms. Blackwood?” Called a world-weary voice belonging to a tall man barely filling out his form with the indulgence of age. He had a vaguely hawkish profile, strong jaw, thick dark hair threaded through with silver. Julian was a capable man, renowned for his prowess and trusted above all others in overall command of grand-mère’s team. But, those days were long gone. Now, he served as chief of external affairs, the gun had been hung up years ago.
“Take a look at this,” She said instead, enlarging the blurred photo on the screen before her. Always humoring, he walked around the large Art Deco piece, respectfully staying a step back from behind her chair. “Who is that?”
Julian questioned, glancing at the grainy shot of a heavy-set young man sprawled on a park bench. “A new charity case?”
“Hardly,” Evelyn replied drily, her palm rolling over mouse’s ball. She clicked off the picture to another in the set off the earpiece memory card. The picture that came up was of a paved alleyway in nighttime. Small grey trash cans lined one side, they were tipped, falling over the motion of a hunched over humanoid figure. “I think he saw me last night. That man...,” she said faintly. “He lives above the alleyway; he looked out his window. He could’ve seen everything.” She had trained the emotion from her voice, knowing very well the problems that could arise from a simple mistake. It was too early in the game for even the smallest blight to fall on her tarnished name.
Julian nodded slightly to her words. It did seem possible, even likely. “What’re you going to do about it?” He had some doubts himself this could be solved without resorting to discreet hostilities. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d enforced the coda against an ordinary civilian. With a passing glance, he glimpsed the faint quirk of amusement playing across her face.
“I don’t know.” She admitted softly, a faint smile encroached upon her frowning lips. “Maybe observe him for a while.”
***
By six pm Wednesday night, he had donned the best pair of black pants he had, pairing them with a long-sleeve aero-knit shirt. One of the jazz places was looking to hire security for weekends. The club had a seventy year history as a place for swinging big band jazz, a toss off of a few famous names and the place legendary in the hearts of residents. Fifteen steps descended from street level to the small corner where the club had sat since the mid-thirties. Designed in a peculiar triangular shape thought to enhance acoustics, the place stood out among its lesser crumbling fronted neighbors.
Zac laced up his best studded boots from his college days and headed out. Traffic on Greenwich Avenue prevented his timely arrival, though he waited the time allotted by a motley lot of potential candidates. He realized soon enough he didn’t fit into the category of the type of man they were looking for.