Giving Answer

An Amelia City Story

Author’s Note: The following tale first appeared in “In Amelia We Do Not Trust”, a short story collection written by yours truly and published by Untreed Reads in 2014. Small grammatical adjustments and spelling errors have since been accounted for in the interim.

Giving Answer

          Cliff laid back on the bed and let out a huge sigh. He'd been out of Ravenwood Manor for two weeks, and had finally given in to the all-too-human urge for physical relations. The semi-conscious prostitute laying next to him now hadn't been able to genuinely enjoy her couplings in a long time; tonight was a rare exception.

          "I have to say, mister, and I'm not playing you, I'm glad you picked me up," she said, sitting up and lighting a cigarette. Cliff, 32 and of average physique, shook his head and laughed.

          "Well, everybody's gotta eat, I suppose." He rubbed his stubbly chin and looked over at her. The woman was surprisingly pretty for a veteran of the trade, and she was giving him a look of something close to anger. "What?"

          "I mean it," she said, stubbing out her smoke in the ashtray by her bed. "Matter of fact," she said, sliding on top of him and positioning herself just so. Cliff gasped in pleasant surprise. "This one's on the house."

          Twenty minutes later he was back out on Ellington Avenue on Amelia City's west side. His car was parked up the street at a little bar called Shooter's. He hadn't bothered with drinks when he pulled in an hour and a half earlier. Cliff had been very familiar with Amelia City's underworld operations, and he knew where and when to find the pros in the Big Spooky. He'd dealt coke to at least half of them over the last seven years.

          Cliff's unpleasant career experienced a seven-month break when he was committed to the psych ward. The previous December, just a few days before Christmas, Cliff had been making the rounds downtown, slinging his wares to the few souls brave or desperate enough to be on the streets. At around seven o'clock, the streets suddenly emptied, and not a single person was on the streets.

          After turning a corner from Hope Street to Ivy Street, his car, a 2008 Chevy Cavalier, inexplicably died in the middle of the street. There was no warning at all, no lights came on, no strange noises. One moment, he'd been accelerating, and the next moment, the car just came to a complete halt.

          Cliff tried several times to turn the engine over, but nothing happened when he turned the key. He threw his hands up and gripped the wheel in frustration. A moment before he could grip the key to try one more time, a coughing sound belted out from under the steering column, and the key shot out of the igniton and through the passenger side window like a bullet.

          The breaking glass echoed in the still evening air. Cliff bolted out of the car, stepping back from it like it was a wild animal. When nothing else happened after a minute, he walked around to the other side of the car and up onto the sidewalk in search of his keys.

          The snowfall had been steady for a month, but Cliff's keyring, festooned with little chain-attached baubles, stuck out even while half-buried in the chilly white. He bent down to the snow pile they were in to fetch them, and while turning around to go back and try his car one more time, he heard an explosion in the distance.

          He looked south, but a rolling fog creeping through obscured his vision beyond seventy yards or so. Looking north, he noticed the same phenomenon, which sent tendrils of dread snaking around his chest and throat.

          A huge, vague shape moved in the fog north of him. Moving out of sheer instinct, Cliff scurried over to the car, but rather than getting in, he crawled underneath it. The vehicle already sat low to the road, and piles of slush and meltwater soaked through his clothes before he was even fully situated, but he refused to move.

          The shape drew closer, and Cliff tucked his shiny keys into a coat pocket. He then went utterly still, trying to not even gasp for breath. As the shape came forth and became fully visible, he thanked God that he'd stopped fifteen minutes ago at a convenience store to take a piss.

          The shape was an enormous German Shepherd, possibly five or six feet tall from paw to shoulder. On each side of its spine, two huge, leathery purple bat wings flapped idly. Instead of a fluffy tail trailing out behind it, an enormous black and gray scorpion's stinger waggled back and forth through the air, green ichor dripping from the tip.

          Cliff was certain the unreal monstrosity before his eyes would charge his spot, flip the car over, and proceed to slaughter him. But it only padded up to the car and stuck its head into the open driver's side. Cliff's face was only a foot away from its front paws, which ended in claws sharp enough to gouge the ice-covered blacktop. He could hear it sniffing overhead, inside of the car, seeking him.

          A second explosion to the south, and the beast took off running toward the sound. Cliff remained right where he was, and minutes later, a horde of unspeakable, nightmarish creatures pelted past through the mist, snarling and snapping hungrily at the air.

          Cliff had blacked out when they were past, and woke up in the psychiatric hospital. Police had discovered his car in the middle of the road in the wee hours the following morning, and him underneath it, gibbering uncontrollably.

          His stay at the hospital may only have been a few weeks, but in his confusion and terror, he'd punched one of the cops trying to extricate him from beneath the car. He was amazed, actually, to not awaken in prison; he'd had enough crank in the car to be put away for a long time.

          Yet the cops had found none, even after saying they searched it. Unlike the cops in New York City, where he hailed from, the Amelia City police had never caught onto him, and thus released his vehicle to him with no further questions when he got out. 

          The money stash hidden behind the old tape deck façade financed his return to everyday life. He picked up a part-time job at Kopet Mall on the north side of the city, working at Sprint (which, it turned out, he had a real knack for), and let plenty of his upright citizen neighbors and acquaintances know how much his brother Daryl was helping, sending him money.

          There was no brother Daryl, of course, just three sisters. Their father had taught him to peddle drugs; their mother had taught the girls to peddle ass. Ah, family.

          Much of the time he didn't spend working at the mall or selling dope, Cliff now spent reading. He had never been a great student, flunking out in tenth grade, but he possessed intelligence and cunning in good store. The reading he'd thrown himself into? The occult, the paranormal, and Amelia City and its suburbs' strange, dark history.

          Cliff Moran started the car, eyeballing a pair of patrons coming out of Shooter's, assessing the odds that they would be buyers. He quickly wrote them off and took the car out of the lot at a crawl. It was time to head home. There he would do a little more research, picking up where he left off that morning. 

          According to the book he was currently reading, an academic work by Dr. Yuri Ketrov of Michigan State University, Amelia County was hands-down the most paranormally active region in the country, possibly the world. He was the head of the small Paranormal Studies department at the university, and from what Cliff had read about the man online, he was one of the few respected men left in a rapidly dwindling field of research.

          Ketrov approached his studies from the angle of a skeptic, which helped him maintain some measure of credibility in the realm of psychology. He had debunked a number of purported hauntings, some very popular and well-known in the para community, including a couple of Gettysburg legends. As such, some parts of the para community actually saw him as the enemy.

          Cliff rode along the darkened streets, thinking about Ketrov's book. In the last chapter he'd read, Ketrov compiled a number of interviews and studies of urban legends from the area in order to construct what he called 'The Amelia Hierarchy'. The summary the doctor had put together wasn't too complicated, but the specifics fascinated Cliff.

          In Amelia County, the doctor wrote, the order of importance and danger of the paranormal entities present started with basic ghosts, then haunts, and spectres. These terms were already familiar to Cliff when he read through the chapter. But Ketrov then added two more types of creatures, wraiths and 'named strangers', to the hierarchy. He posited that all of these creatures in Amelia served under a powerful entity, possibly a demon, whose mark could be seen throughout the region. Its mark was a set of four blue claws, joined at their rounded tops by a single black line.

          When Cliff had read that last night and seen a photo of said symbol painted on an apartment building, he'd frozen for a minute. He had indeed seen that mark since moving to Amelia City from New York, in half a dozen places. But what really troubled him was that he'd seen the mark in New York City as well.

          It had been painted on the side of a house in the Bronx where nineteen people had been murdered one night at a rave. He'd been invited to that shindig himself, but had spent the afternoon getting drunk, so much so that he didn't trust himself to try going anywhere. He'd overheard in the days that followed that someone had painted the symbol there only after the murders.

          No weapon had ever been found, no arrests made, and Cliff now knew why. Monsters, the real kind that go bump in the night, don't leave a lot of forensics to go off of. 

          Cliff pulled into the parking lot of his building and killed the engine. He collected his thoughts, then the stash he kept under his seat, setting it into the lining of his jacket. A quick spritz of his body spray gave him a more pleasant aroma than that of paid sex and sweat, and he headed inside.

          The front foyer of the apartment building was arranged like a lounge or commons room. Entry into the building itself required a key given only to residents, and as Cliff entered, he coughed and snorted at the cloying scent of spoiled eggs that hung about the foyer. Looking around quickly, he could not identify the source of the stench. He used a small brass key to get into his mailbox, then headed back to the elevator.

          Home was an 800-square-foot one bedroom filing drawer in a building whose only tip of the hat to modern comfort was the foyer arrangement and a dishwasher and fridge in each apartment. His unit, up on the fourth floor, had been caked in dust upon his return. Though his electricity and cable had been shut off when he was released from Ravenwood, his rent had been paid for a full year when he signed the lease. Two months yet remained to put together the next year's lease, and he already had most of the cost.

          Cliff's living room was long and narrow, furnished with a sofa, a recliner and an entertainment center worth just over three hundred dollars. Sleek and sophisticated, composed of cherry wood and metal rails mounted on the back, it held a large LCD television on a fully-ranged swivel, a top-of-the-line Blu Ray player, an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and shelves lined with games and movies.

          Being a dealer in Amelia City proved easier than in New York City for two reasons. First, Amelia's police department was both undermanned and underfunded. Secondly, he could buy from distributers up in Minneapolis cheap, and they never came south to check on him or negotiate. They all seemed to respect (or fear, he wasn't sure) that he could ply his trade in Amelia City. 

          He walked over to the far end of the living room, where stood his real pride and joy. Lining the wall were three tall legal bookcases, complete with glass-fronted doors over the shelves that slid up into place over the books within. The left and right cases were filled with graphic novels, and the center one, which he was now opening the top shelf of, was split into two sets of two shelves. The bottom two shelves held law texts and penal code manuals. The top two held books on the occult and paranormal.

          He took Ketrov's book out and closed the case. After setting the book on his coffee table, Cliff ducked into the bedroom and got changed into a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a Misfits tee shirt. He ran a hand over his closely shaved head as he walked through to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a quick turkey sandwich. A bag of chips to supplement for his appetite, and he was almost ready.

          Clifford Moran was not the average coke dealer. Firstly, he'd never raised a hand to harm anybody, not since knocking his father's teeth in at the age of sixteen. Secondly, he owned no firearms whatsoever. Cliff's philosophy was that if someone tried to edge him out of his territory, he'd simply provide anonymous information to the police and let them handle the rival slinger. Thirdly, and possibly the most notable difference, while Cliff enjoyed the finer things, he never overindulged.

          The apartment he lived in and his modest collection of possessions was proof enough for the casual observer that he made a living, but that was that. The extravagance of his bookshelves he explained away to law-abiding friends as inherited, and the entertainment center and game collection as carefully rationed splurges indulged in maybe twice a year. 

          On the surface, Cliff Moran was an upstanding Joe Everyman.

          He sat down on the couch and pulled the coffee table closer, laying out so he could reach over and grab his food or Pepsi when he wanted it and read comfortably. Head and shoulders propped on two throw pillows, he felt wonderfully at ease.

          He turned to the dogeared page he was on, and began reading. Soon he drifted off to sleep, as he often did, until the wee hours of the morning.

**

          When Cliff woke up, taking the book off his chest and setting it on the table without looking over, he felt a strange pressure settled in his chest. He coughed a couple of times to clear his throat, and though the pressure eased a little, a hint remained.

          He sat up, swinging his feet over the front of the couch onto the floor. Cliff's eyes naturally swerved to the television, which was on. On screen, a creature with a red, lumpy-wrinkled face, tusks jutting up from its lower jaw, stared out at him. It sat behind a metal table in what appeared to be an interrogation room, and soon another man walked across the screen.

          Though there was no volume, Cliff could see shortly that it was some kind of Law and Order rip-off. He couldn't remember turning the television on, but the remote had been under him when he fell asleep, apparently wedged between two cushions. He shook his head. "Lucky I didn't mess up my back," he muttered.

          He stretched, yawning, and got up to make himself some fresh coffee. A check of his cell phone showed him it was just after four in the morning, and that he had three text messages. All three turned out to be requests for 'an order of your homemade popcorn', code his regulars used to put in for some coke. He replied to two of them that he could swing by in a few hours, and told the last one he'd offer a discount in exchange for some of her 'cookies'. One needn't think too hard on that bit of coded language.

          Cliff waited until there was enough coffee in the pot to stick his cup right underneath to catch the last bit, enough to top him off. When he was putting in the sugar and creamer, all three customers texted back that they were cool with his response. He'd been hoping Tiffany, the last one, would eventually cave to his suggested discount trade.

          "When it rains, it pours," he said, striding out into his living room. He looked over at the television, and now the red-faced ogre and the suit-wearing man, his head out of view off camera, were facing out of the television at him. "What the hell?"

          Assuming someone off shot was talking to these characters, Cliff hit the volume up button on the remote, only to find the volume had already been at 20 out of 50. What was more, the ogre and suit were angled directly at him, as though he were the focus of their attention.

          "A trifle unsettling, isn't it," the ogre rumbled, its tusked mouth moving. Cliff had assumed it was a mask of some kind, but apparently he was wrong. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as the suited detective on screen stepped out of view to the left, while the ogre rose from its seat and stepped off shot to the right. From his bedroom, to his right, Cliff heard something thump around, followed by what he assumed was his closet door crashing open.

          Frozen in terror, Cliff listened closely, picking up the faint sound of ragged breathing coming from his bedroom. Cautiously, he began to walk backwards towards the apartment's front door, snatching up his keys from the tray he kept by the entryway into the living room.

          From where he now stood, he could see the bedroom door at a slight angle. It rocked on its frame with a thump, then flew apart in shards as a lumbering crimson ogre crashed through. Cliff let out a holler and bolted out of his apartment, fleeing down the stairwell in his shorts and Misfits shirt, keys rattling as he picked through them for his ignition key.

          He slammed into the side of his car, scrambled inside, rammed the key home. Jittering and muttering to himself "This isn't happening," over and over again like a defensive mantra, he peeled out of the parking lot and onto the streets.

          He could only think of one place to go until he felt safe returning home, and without hesitation, he guided himself through the city's less savory neighborhoods until he arrived.

**

          Cliff sat on Tiffany's love seat and smoked his third cigarette since arriving twenty minutes ago. She sat on the floor in front of him, hunched over her glass coffee table, snorting a line through a rolled-up dollar bill. He'd had the presence of mind to bring the hidden stash he had tucked up in his front passenger side wheel well. He wasn't entirely sure she would have let him in otherwise.

          She flipped her bleach blonde hair out of her face as she brought her head up and turned to face him. A radiant smile lit her features. Tiffany was a pretty girl, what Cliff would have referred to as 'office hot' were he in a better state of mind. Her most dazzling feature, to him, was her bright blue eyes. Large and expressive, they reminded him of characters in anime.

          "Are you sure you don't want any," she asked, indicating the last line on the table with a tip of her head. "You seem tense."

          "I don't use the stuff," he said, which was the truth. "I'll take a beer if you've got any."

          "Fridge is stocked, help yourself," she said with a chuckle, returning to the last of her lines. Cliff headed into the small, canary yellow kitchen and ducked his head into the fridge, grabbing a Budweiser Select. When he came back to the living room, Tiffany was laying flat on the carpet between the loveseat and the coffee table. "This stuff is really good, Cliff. What is it?"

          "China White," he replied.

          "No shit?"

          "Nah, no shittin'. I only offer quality. Say, thanks for letting me stop by. You gotta work today?"

          "No, office is closed for a long weekend because of the new computers going in," she said, staring up at the ceiling dreamily. "I was thinking I might just order pizza at noon and sort of be lazy today. What about you?"

          "I'm gonna lay low until my neighbors stop fighting," he lied. "It sounded like fucking Armageddon in there."

          "Right on. So, did you want breakfast? I've got some energy now, I can fix us something." She sprang to her feet as if to demonstrate the invigorating effect the cocaine had on her. "Or did you maybe want to work on my discount," she asked coquettishly, pulling her shirt off over her head. Despite his still-present fear of what was going on at his apartment, Cliff felt his body respond to the sight of her bare breasts.

          "Discount, then breakfast," he said with a relaxed grin. 

**

          "No substitution for sex and eggs, my man," Roger said, handing Cliff a roll of twenty dollar bills. After having breakfast with Tiffany, a much more relaxed Cliff had headed over to Roger's house ten minutes away. They were in Roger's living room, the television blasting a repeat of The Jersey Shore. Roger's taste in furniture ran to the simple, a couple of metal folding chairs, a collapsible card table, and a rickety television stand he'd garbage-picked when he moved into the house.

          Not that Roger couldn't afford better. He always paid Cliff up front, in cash, and never complained when Cliff had to jack up the price on occasion. Roger taught Social Studies at Bell High School on the city's east side, but most of his money had recently gone into the purchase of the house and a new pickup truck.

          Cliff had come in and they'd exchanged pleasantries, then war stories as they called them. Roger had been sleeping with a French teacher for the last week, he'd told Cliff, giving him lurid details of a détente he'd had in the school's gymnasium with the woman. Cliff returned fire by telling him about Tiffany.

          "You're telling me, man," Cliff said. Roger took the baggie Cliff had brought in from the false dashboard panel of his car and set it in an urn sitting up on the mantle over a wide-mouthed fireplace. "So, I've been meaning to ask, who did you buy from while I was out of town?"

          "Well, I tried to get in touch with a couple of guys I'd heard of in East Perry, but it turned out they'd been murdered at the town junkyard almost a year ago," Roger said, scratching his stubbly neck. "Then I headed downtown and got hooked up by this weird guy who called himself Jago."

          "Sounds like something out of fuckin' Middle Earth."

          "I know. I only went to him a few times. Guy gave me the creeps. So I started buying from one of the seniors at Bell, kid named Lenny Tope."

          "Well, thanks for coming back around."

          "And thank you for being back. Listen, I know you don't use the stuff, so I'm just going to get ready for work. You can see yourself out?"

          "Aw, shit, it's already like, seven, isn't it?"

          "Yes, my first class is in forty minutes. I apologize."

          "Naw, it's okay, dude." Cliff shook Roger's hand, then headed out of the house. He was walking down the cement pathway from Roger's porch toward his car when he felt the strange pressure from before return, like a strong hand pushing on his chest. A heavy scent, as of hot onions, accompanied the sensation. He stopped and took several deep breaths, trying to shake the feeling.

          He looked up at his car, and saw that the interior was obscured by thick blue smoke. Panic stole into his heart. Was something on fire in the car? He rushed up to the vehicle and yanked the door open, the smoke billowing out around and past him. He hacked and waved it out of his face with his hand, until he could see the passenger seat.

          Sitting there in a pool of blood was Tiffany's severed head. Her mouth hung slack in a scream, the eyes rolled back. Cliff yelped and fell back on his ass, hands splayed out behind him to hold him upright. He could feel his lips pull back in a grimace, and his heart fairly double-timed as her eyes rolled forward and the mouth quirked up in a broad smile.

          "Hey, Cliff," she said in a bizarre, two-toned voice. "How much of a discount for a little head?" Demonic laughter bubbled up out of her mouth, the eyes rolling around wildly. Cliff screamed and crab-walked backward until he could turn over and sprint back up onto Roger's porch.

          He tried to open the door, but it was locked against him. Cliff pounded on it and called out Roger's name, then looked back-

          And everything was normal. His car sat there at the curb, door closed, no smoke inside, no dead woman's head laughing at him. The door creaked open and Roger stuck his head out. "For God's sake, what do you want, Cliff? I can't have people seeing you here!"

          Cliff turned his eyes back to Roger, and he just shook his head slightly, hands twitching at his sides. "Um, just wanted to know when you think you'll need more," he said quietly. 

          "I'll text you," Roger said gruffly, slamming the door shut. Cliff slowly revolved until he faced the car again, which sat there at the curb, nothing out of the ordinary about it. Nerves a-jangle, he approached, got in, and started it. The radio crackled for a moment before coming clear, still tuned to 107.4, the local classic rock station.

          Cliff drove slowly back to his building, dreading the whole way what he would find there. Before pulling into the parking lot, he checked for any signs of a police presence. He was still badly rattled, but normal sense of self-preservation was intact. Spotting nothing, he pulled in and snatched a spot right next to the concrete pad leading up into the building.

          Cliff walked into the foyer, peering around the room until his eyes fell on the mailboxes. The door on his box hung slightly open. Filled with trepidation, he could not bring himself to check on it right away. The pressure in his chest was loosening its grip, but he remained cautious as he took a steadying breath.

          Striding with purpose, he got to his mailbox and yanked it all the way open. The box itself was empty, however. Cliff let out a sigh and headed for the elevator, hitting the '4' before even turning around to face the doors. He rode in silence, keys in his hand in case he needed to bolt again for the car.

          The doors swooshed open, and he stepped out onto his floor. Walking down the hall, he felt the last of the pressure fall away, until at last he stood before his apartment door. He turned the knob and pushed, the door swinging open quietly on his front entryway. Nothing looked to be out of place.

          He stepped inside, the kitchen to his right, living room before him, and just looked around. Not a single change from when he'd left, no sign of damage. As he stepped to the end of the entryway, he looked right, and saw that his bedroom door, while partly open, was entirely intact.

          A second look around the living room showed him that all was not, however, as it had been. His copy of Dr. Ketrov's book was laid out on the narrow strip of floor between his couch and the coffee table, torn to shreds. If knowledge was power, something in this haunted city didn't want him to have any.

          Cliff quickly got changed into fresh clothes, threw on deodorant, brushed his teeth and grabbed a pack of smokes from the carton in his bedroom (which, he discovered, was undisturbed). He was going to take a trip today, down to the Haversham Mall. It wouldn't open for another couple of hours, but he would read one of his other many volumes on the occult in the car while he waited.

          Today, he determined, he was going to do a little shopping.

**

     Cliff sat in the parking lot of the mall, a book entitled 'Knowing the Unresting' open before him. The book pertained mostly to ghosts and haunted houses, but he found the material interesting nonetheless.

          The second page of the book issued a warning to the reader, stating that if they believed they had encountered an honest-to-God spirit or ghost, that they should immediately seek the aid of a clergyman of any faith. "Be they Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim, get the help of a holy man," the final line read. Cliff had scoffed when he read it.

          He was only interested in the fifth chapter of this book, titled 'Wraiths'. Aside from Ketrov's book, it was the only other instance in which he'd seen the term used. According to the contributors to 'Knowing the Unresting', wraiths were a rare form of spirit often confused with poltergeists. According to the book, the key difference between a wraith and a poltergeist was that the latter attached to and haunted specific people or places, whereas wraiths, generally remaining in one area, could freely roam wherever they chose.

          Cliff didn't like that idea.

          Two security guards, patrolling the exterior of the mall, came towards his car as he lit a cigarette. He spotted them walking toward him the moment they left the sidewalk fronting the structure, watching them out of the corner of his eye. They were a regular Mutt and Jeff, these two. Mutt, stout and solid with his sham policeman's mustache stayed about fifteen yards away while Jeff, tall and angular, came swinging around the front of the Cavalier casually.

          "Morning, sir," said Jeff, whose nametag identified him as Harris. 

          "Morning," Cliff replied, not bothering to look up from his book. He blew smoke right out the window into Harris's face. The security guard coughed and leaned away from the window, then pressed his face right back. 

          "Sir, we noticed you've been sitting here a while. Waiting for something?"

          "Yeah, Barnes and Noble," Cliff said, eyes still locked on the page in front of him. "Need to replace a book I loaned out." He finally set his current book in his lap and looked the guard in the face, allowing himself a grim smile. "I'm guessing you think I might be some degenerate out looking for jailbait that's skipping class to come shopping. I'd be more worried about the white panel van parked over by American Eagle if I were you. That's probably your pervert."

          The guard didn't even take the time to issue a rebuke to this sally, instead rushing back to his partner. The two then swiftly took off east, towards the American Eagle entrance from the exterior of the mall.

          Twenty minutes later, as the doors were unlocked, Cliff started towards the doors. He stole a glance east, and sure enough, he spotted Amelia City police officers taking a skeevy-looking fellow into custody. One of the security guards, standing by the back of the van, held up a roll of duct tape for the cops to see.

          "I'll be damned," Cliff muttered to himself before heading inside.

          Most drug dealers, if they're smart, avoid bumping into customers out in public places. If they do happen to see each other, the dealer usually tries to get the hell out of there before anything happens to attract attention. In Cliff's case, though, he had seen the customer and not been spotted himself.

          Ducking around the corner of one aisle of books, he landed in the religion section, dominated by different versions and studies of the King James Bible. He felt sick to his stomach for a moment; the client, a grizzly-looking mechanic who Cliff sold to on a semi-regular basis, had been standing in the New Age and Occult section with him, only six or so feet away. Thankfully for Cliff, the man was at that moment too busy grumbling at his daughter to notice his part-time coke dealer standing close by.

          As the mechanic and his kid walked away from the section towards the cashiers' counter, Cliff zipped back around to search for Ketrov's book. He spotted three copies on the bottom shelf, snatched one, and then milled about in the manga aisle.

          He was pretending to look at a manga, looking up every now and again to see if his customer and his kid had left yet, when he heard something like metal scraping on metal nearby. He looked around, saw nothing suspect. The strange pressure returned all at once, a strong vise-like squeezing in his chest.

          Cliff gasped, hunching over. This brought the manga into his view, and on the colorful cover of the book, he found himself looking at a darkened brick corridor. Something moved toward the cover deep in that darkness, something with at least two metal blade-like appendages, which scraped out into view on the book cover. Twin crimson lights glowed in the darkness, and the creature hidden in shadows hissed up at him.

          Cliff dropped the book to the floor. It landed cover-side down, but a second later the book shifted position as a long, thin blade pushed out of the artwork, into the world. Cliff stared, transfixed, as three more blades jutted out. The book scurried over to his foot, and one of the miniature blades rammed down into him. Cliff yelped and kicked the book away, hearing something whining like a scared dog from it.

          He looked down, saw that blood had welled up on top of his sneaker, felt it running warm and wet into his sock. He should have panicked; he should have fled to the counter and made his purchase hastily. He should have at least ducked down to avoid the curious stares of the handful of other customers who'd heard him cry out.

          Instead, Cliff Moran did something that nobody in that particular Barnes and Noble had ever seen anybody do- he ran to the counter, threw a pair of twenty-dollar bills at the clerk, and held the Ketrov book up at an angle for any security cameras to see. There might be hell to pay later for this stunt, but the book only cost twenty-four dollars. If anything, he should be contacted to get his change.

**

          According to Ketrov, at least twelve of the patients he'd interviewed at Ravenwood Manor in northern Amelia County had been the victims of wraiths, their sanity destroyed by close or repeated contact with the creatures. Wraiths, the doctor posited, came in various shapes and sizes, and each posed its own unique dangers. The survivors at Ravenwood, he theorized, had been lucky enough to meet with wraiths that posed little immediate danger.

          "Lucky my ass," Cliff said, reading this section minutes after getting back to his apartment. But he read onward all the same. Ketrov estimated that on average, there were around 100,000 ghosts in just the United States that could be interacted with. He estimated there were 25,000 hauntings at the same time, and put the number of specters or poltergeists up at around 10,000.

          'Of wraiths, however,' Ketrov continued in the book, 'there are only four or five hundred in the world at any one time. It is my firm belief that at least one third of that number is concentrated in and around the Midwest, mostly within Amelia County.'

          Cliff didn't care for the numbers Ketrov presented. He set the book aside and started eating his grilled cheese sandwich, trying not to look down at his foot. His foot, he thought, was a lie. When he'd first gotten home, he kicked his shoes off, discovering that the left sock looked normal. The flesh beneath had no puncture wound; the entire incident had been of his imagination's construction.

          Or so he believed, for the moment. Since his release from Ravenwood, Cliff had been holding on to a scrap of paper given him by Dr. Hank Keller, the psychiatrist who had been in charge of his case. Keller had instructed him to use it, and as soon as he could.

          It was a prescription for risperdal, an anti-psychotic. Cliff had folded the script and stuck it in his wallet, intending only to hang onto it as a reminder that he needed to think more carefully in the future when he felt himself on the verge of panic. He could ill afford to lose his calm again down the road and swing on a cop. They might come sniffing around his apartment, and unlike last time, they might find his stash.

          Crazies go to the hospital, drug dealers to prison. He had done all the right things, said what the doctors would want to hear before releasing him back out into the world. Cliff didn't think, then, that anything might be wrong with him.

          Nowadays, however, he wasn't so certain. The monstrosities he'd seen in December, the ogre in his apartment, the severed head in his car, and the critter that had stabbed his foot; was it possible that all of it had been in his head? Was he only making it worse for himself by indulging in all of this business of the paranormal?

          Cliff finished his sandwich and walked into the entryway of his apartment. He picked up his shoes, looking over them, and had his answer. It was small, barely visible, but the left shoe had a small puncture in it, crusted around the hole with dried blood. 

          "It really happened," he rasped.

          "Perhaps so, but who's going to believe you," said a silky, smooth male voice behind him, the sort one associated with con men or greasy lawyers. Cliff turned around and saw on his television a man with fiery red hair wearing a trim brown suit. Where the man's eyes should have been, tiny balls of flame roiled over a hawkish nose and thin-lipped smile. "Trust me, Mr. Moran, nobody likes to admit it, but even the most open-minded person would tell you you're out of your mind."

          Cliff walked slowly toward the television, shoes still held loosely in his right hand. "What are you," he asked. He recognized the suit. It had been on the man standing on screen with the ogre before it burst into his bedroom.

          "I am the stranger named Jago," the man said, sweeping his arm over his chest and taking a grand bow. Thick black smoke rolled up out of his sleeves, as though his arms burned beneath his suit jacket. 

          "What do you want from me," Cliff asked, dropping his shoes and stepping closer to the television.

          "This is not about what I want, Mr. Moran. This is about what the master wants. He sees in you, potential," the stranger said, the flames in his eye sockets spiraling out to emphasize this last word. 

          "What does that mean?"

          "Would you like to see for yourself?" The stranger named Jago extended his hand towards Cliff, his arm coming out of the television screen, which shimmered like a pool of water. Fascinated, Cliff reached out, and the stranger's hand clamped onto his own, not with hostile strength, but companionable invitation. "Come, Clifford Moran. Come see the truth of Amelia."

          And so Cliff stepped out of his apartment, out of his very life. He left behind everything- the cocaine, the easy money, the easier sex. He left behind his clients, his friends, his family. And he left before reading about the strangers, who Ketrov described as the most devious, dangerous creatures of the paranormal. Why were they so dangerous?

          Because they had all once been human. Cliff hadn't read that section of Ketrov's book, but he would learn firsthand soon enough.....

-Fin