“How long have you lived here?” The eternal movement of the city nightlife against the large windowpane that contrasted Jamie’s outline made him appear motionless. Businessmen and shoppers racing down the sidewalk were blurred together in the falling snow and rising vehicle exhaust. “I mean in your apartment.”
“Uh, well, I’ve been working at the warehouse for about four years now. But I moved in a couple years before. So, maybe six. Why?” The overhanging light centered above the table strained to reach his face as he leaned upon the table in his chair. Fingers clasped together, eyes red-rimmed, he studied my face. His brow a deep wrinkle.
“Do you,” He shifted in his chair and broke eye contact to search the space behind me. “Do you have much crime in your area? Not here specifically. I mean, like, around your neighborhood?”
“Not really. Sometimes sketchy people hang around, but nothing serious if you avoid them. To be honest, my area of the city just doesn’t have many people at all. At least, not as many as it used to. So, not much of anything happens around there.”
“What kind of sketchy people?” He leaned in closer. I shrank back from him.
“You know, just young guys who had a bit too much to drink. Stuff like that. You know, teenagers looking for an empty street to have some fun. Nothing really criminal, I guess. Why?” Jamie looked away and began fiddling with the zipper on his fleece. “Are you worried about running into some sort of danger, or something? Man, we’re fine. Like I said, nothing much happens on my street. Most of the buildings might as well be empty.”
He took in a chest full of air and rubbed both palms against his eyes. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t sleep that great last night.” I glanced up from the plate. In the December air of the restaurant, the sweat had to have been clammy on his upper lip. As a child moments before confession, his eyes contemplated the options, then lifted to mine. “I need to tell you something. Last night,” A quick glance around the restaurant and beyond the window, then he leaned closer. The heat of his breath crossed the short distance between us. “A dream I had. I mean, it didn’t feel like one. But it had to be.”
“Jamie,” His volume had grown, and I reenacted his glance around the dining area. “You had a bad dream?” He nodded and relaxed his shoulders. “Then, let’s just go with that. Just tell me what happened.”
“We were watching TV on the couch. You know when you’re never sure if you’re actually sleeping? When you shut your eyes for just a moment, then things in the room change before you open them, and you realize hours have passed? Well, when I blinked and the TV had been turned off, I knew that had happened. You had already gone to bed. The apartment had to have been below freezing because the heat hadn’t kicked on, and I’d drifted off without getting a blanket first. That’s not what woke me up, though. I heard her.”
“Her?” He ran his fingers back and forth across his lips.
“I heard a lady’s voice shouting from below on the street. I couldn’t make out the words, but from the way her voice echoed past the window, I knew she was down the street, the opposite direction that we come and go. I got up to look. Thought it must have just been some drunk making their way home, ya know.”
“When I got to the window, I saw a man, across the street, sprinting in the opposite direction from her voice. I only caught a glimpse of him. He went out of the street light but didn’t show up in the next. Maybe he stopped and waited in the darkness, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see him.”
“The lady let out a scream that made my heart nearly explode. I could just see her if I strained my neck enough. Through the frost on the edge of the window, her figure came running up the sidewalk in the same direction as the man, limping on her left side. ‘Mike!’ That’s what she kept calling out, over and over. I glanced down the other way to see no one else on the street. When I looked back,” Jamie shut his eyes and took a deep breath from his nose.
“Jamie, just tell me what you saw.” I had leaned in with him.
“Something crawled after her.” His voice had gone to a whisper. “I saw it much further down the street, only just coming into the window’s frame. Its naked skin kept glistening in the streetlights from some sort of moisture. Even though it moved on all fours, it still stood up to the height of the car roofs. The snout snarled, like some sort of rabbit dog, drooling down the sidewalk. It gained on her.”
“When she had made it under the streetlight directly across from me, she cried out for Mike again.” He opened his eyes to me. “So much blood. In her hair, her clothes. She kept pressing one hand against her abdomen, but it wouldn’t stop spilling out. The other hung to her wrist by a sliver of skin. She just sobbed and begged for Mike.” Jamie’s eyes began to glisten and swell. “I wanted to do something. I wanted to open the window and scream down to her. To let her know she could come hide with me. That safety could be just a few yards away. But I didn’t. I knew it would come here too.
“There is an alleyway between the two apartment buildings across from yours. You know the one?” I nodded, not for a second taking my eyes away from my friend. “Where I stood, it didn’t look like it led out anywhere, but she went anyway, blood trailing behind her. “That’s when it stepped into the light,” Jamie’s jaw trembled. “The eyes. They were crusted over with some thick black substance that still had areas leaking down its face. This thing must have been blind. It sniffed at the ground in front of the alley and lapped up the blood. Its whole body started to convulse, then it lifted its head to the sky. The jaws were open, but it made no noise.”
“Then what? What did it do then?” The dryness of my throat rasped my words.
“I don’t know.” Jamie blinked, coming out of the trance of memory. “I don’t remember anything else. I woke up on the couch.” I leaned back in my chair, releasing the grip I unknowingly had upon my thighs.
“Jesus Christ, man.” Laughing, I rubbed my face. “Thank God I didn’t have that dream. So, that’s what’s been bothering you this whole time?” The sting of regret at how dismissive the tone framed my words registered too late.
“Yeah, of course it fucking has.” My face flushed.
“Sorry, man.” I broke eye contact and focused beyond the window. From my periphery I noticed Jamie cradle his head into both palms. “Look, if it puts you at ease, I know for a fact it’s just a dream.” He ran both sets of fingers through his long hair, took a breath, then lifted his head. “When I got off the sofa to go to bed, I saw you were asleep already. So, I went to the dryer and got you a blanket.” I raised my hands in revelation. He shook his head.
“So?”
“So, if I did that, then how did you wake up without it?” Jamie’s eyes registered shock.
“Are you two still here?” Arnold, the namesake of the restaurant, pushed through the kitchen doors, wiping his hands on an already filthy rag. “I’m locking the doors. Go on, go home.” Grabbing my work sack, the two of us exited to the outside world of the city and caught the last bus to my neighborhood. Jamie spent the ride chewing at his nails and occasionally nodding to himself. The green and red lights strung along the buildings fizzled away as the bus left the city center. Getting off at our stop, millions of white particles fluttered from the sky, and by the time we had turned onto my street, our shoulders were heavy with snow.
Yellow street lamps replaced the cheery holiday lights. Rusty, dented cars parked along the street were caked in a white blanket. Tall, dark buildings created an oppressive wall on either side. The sounds of honking horns and sirens could be heard from some far more populated district of the city. The only local sounds were the crunching of our steps and the occasional chunk of snow falling from a roof.
When I had ascended the steps to my building and began fishing through my pocket for the keys, I noticed Jamie had not followed me up, instead standing at the edge of the sidewalk gazing across the road, through the haze, at the alleyway. I had lived here all this time and only really now took a moment to look at the thing. No more than an arm's stretch wide, it stood directly across from my building. None of the lights were able to breach its darkness.
“You coming?”
“You gotta flashlight?”
“What?” He looked over his shoulder.
“Goddamn it.” It took me a few minutes to find the only flashlight I had, stuffed into the back of one of the kitchen drawers. Taking it with us across the street, I shone the ray of light into the narrow gap. Trash sprawled along the concrete path, and a few items of mildewed clothes piled to one side. All of these things were gathering a light dusting of white powder, which had found its way between the buildings.
Jamie reached out his open hand, and I slapped the flashlight into his palm. Making his way down the alley, he inspected every object the beam came across. Taking a deep breath of the freezing night air, I began looking around the entrance area. Of course it had just been a dream. We had all been the victim of a nightmare or two in our lives. Some were far more real than others, sure. However, I was here.
Kicking my foot back and forth to clear my view of the concrete beneath revealed no bloodstains. Repeating this search method as far as the street light reached still gave no markings. Down to the end of the street where Jamie claimed the woman had come from, multistory buildings stretched out before an entrance that led to a road running perpendicular to mine. On the other side of that road, a culvert marked the city’s end. Only ever seeing it a couple of times, I had a vague image in my head. Even as I strained my eyes, nothing took shape in the darkness beyond the snowfall.
A hand grasped my shoulder. Nothing we couldn’t already see from the alley entrance had revealed itself under the flashlight’s revelations to Jamie. The lack of bloodstains, which he inspected for himself, concluded our investigation. He sat quietly in the living room, watching TV and drinking the remaining beers from my fridge. Attempts to make conversation or joking about the show we watched received only the socially required chuckles and agreements. Jamie only stayed two more days.
A few weeks later, I found myself on the bus home from work. An elderly man, two seats ahead of me, finished reading his paper and flipped it back to the front page. Before the vigor of the bus vibrated my body to sleep, a headline caught my eye. “Shocking Decline of Homeless Population.”
At three AM, the bus driver pulled me from my sleep to inform me that my journey would continue on foot. While the air remained frosty, it had relented its constant snowfall for the past two days. The evening shift loomed over my future as I jogged through the city. Not a soul passed me one way or the other. Two hours of cutting night air had its way with me before I reached the steps of my building, making my fingers pained and shaky enough to fumble my keys just as they were fished from my pocket. They jingled down every gray step until reaching the sidewalk. “Shit.”
The clacking of footsteps directly echoed through the empty street. A man shuffled out of the alley. Hundreds of wrinkles cracked across his leathery face. Other than the wear and tear, not a single piece of his outfit matched with the other. Muttering to himself only just above a whisper, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He either hadn’t seen me or didn’t care and began shuffling in the direction of the culvert. I collected my keys and began to turn but stopped and looked back at him. A name that had just shot back into my mind.
“Mike?” The shuffling stopped, and he turned to me. His face was now out of the street light, enveloped by the shadows. My heart pounded.
“I know you?”
“No. No, you don’t.”
“I didn’t know people still lived around here.” He sniffed. “You seen a woman around here? Looks like me.” He pulled at the fringes of his clothes in reference. I shook my head. He emitted a grumble, then patted down his coat as one would do when looking for something. “I don’t understand. She was just behind me.”
“Sorry. I haven’t seen anyone.” He ceased his searching and stuffed both hands into his coat pockets.
“Got any change?”
“No.” The answer came out dry, without even taking a moment to pretend to look through my empty pockets. Grumbling once more, he turned and walked on, towards the end of the street.
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