Out of the Shadows: Book One of the Velieri Uprising

by Tessa Van Wade

  Ian removes his hand from the back of my chair with a shake of his head as he stares at the other guy. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know. He looks a bit familiar,” my voice lilts.

  “You know that guy?” The jealous Ian is always just beneath the surface. “Fine. We may as well just invite him over.” Ian challenges the man across the room with a stare.

  I quickly jump to my feet and bang my knee on the table. “Ouch,” I say as I grab for my purse, but accidentally knock it to the ground sending bits everywhere. The man in the blue sweater jumps to his feet with concern while Ian does nothing but look at me like I’m crazy.

  “You’re leaving?” Amanda asks, as she helps me collect my things.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m tired.” When everything’s gathered, I stand. “I’ll see you later. Have a good weekend.”

  “Go ahead . . . like you always do. Run away,” Ian growls.

  Randy and Amanda try to break the tension with good-byes, but Ian stubbornly remains seated, until he looks at me, “You’re coming with me tomorrow night, right?”

  I can’t help but angrily grin at Amanda with an I-told-you-so kind of stare, so she reaches out and slaps the back of his head.

  “What?” he asks.

  Without answering, I hightail it out of there so fast that the thick crowd and small hallways bruise my shoulders. Even though the cold night air has never felt so good, my jacket and scarf aren’t going to battle the freeze during the quiet walk to my apartment. I don’t need BART since my apartment is less than a mile away from the restaurant, however, tonight is especially chilly. Ian used to keep me warm on our walks. Tonight, all I can think about is my single, hippy mother who spent most of her life wearing tie-dye and appreciating the Haight-Ashbury District. She gave me the name Willow thinking I would be a statuesque, twiggy type like her, but I must have taken after an unknown sperm donor with stocky legs. When I reach the crosswalk, I think about how she taught me to love, but respect the city. When I was young, she always held my hand when crossing the busy streets. “Don’t ever walk home alone—and don’t take rides through California in a yellow van with some guys named DJ and Harry,” she would laugh at the joke I didn’t understand.

  Well, tonight the sidewalks seem especially daunting. Unfolding the crumpled paper with my mother’s face, she seems to be reprimanding me for walking home alone, all to avoid Ian.

  Not many cars are out along the back streets, but as one drives by, I hear the crackle and crunch of the tires on the road, then it goes quiet again. Several streetlamps flicker on and off and it takes effort to avoid the dark spots. Why is it so freaking quiet? I accidentally catch my toe on the edge of the sidewalk and nearly face-plant but manage to recover my balance. It wouldn’t be the first time, and most likely, not even close to the last, since I tend to be grossly uncoordinated.

  I precariously look over my shoulder, but there’s no one. Humming under my breath helps my nerves as my shoes tap the sidewalk, making a one-two beat. There seems to be nothing ahead but a whispering wind as it slides through the buildings. I wrap my arms so tight they become a strait jacket. Somebody yells just around the corner, making me jump, but when passing the alley, an angry man gets into his car and drives away while a woman screams at him from her third story window.

  Just a few yards ahead, a skittish cat crosses the street, taking one or two suspicious glances at me. I am pretty sure that we share the same consternations while walking home and he could most likely get to his destination faster.

  “This is stupid,” I whisper to comfort myself. Yet, in the back of my head, my mother’s words reverberate. To her, she intended for these words to comfort me, but instead I feared them. She believed in something I didn’t.

  “There are people who watch you,” she said when I was small. “I don’t know why . . . they always have. I see them every day. Don’t worry, I think Grandpa sent them here to watch over you. They’re your angels.”

  When her words scared me, she would shake her head and smile. “They’re okay . . . just watching you, that’s all.” Last year, just before her death, she said it again. “Angels have watched you all your life. I see them. They’ll protect you when I’m gone.”

  Ian reminds me often that my mother was slightly crazy. My psychologist once said it was a deep response to trauma as a child. However, neither answer helps.

  Minutes before my mom took her last breath, she looked at me in between her gasps and said, “Let them take care of you and stay away from the others that want to hurt you.”

  Tonight, her voice is loud along these quiet and lonely streets, as I notice the dangerous man behind me.

  It’s only ten steps before he dives at me and ten steps before my knees hit the hard cement sidewalk when his heavy body clashes with mine. The skin along my hands peel back as they slide forward. I don’t recognize the screams escaping from my mouth, “No!” Yet this doesn’t slow him down. Instead, he crushes my chin against the cement sending searing pain through my jaw, but it is the loud crack that makes my stomach roll.

  His large hands rip at my shoulder and twist me to my back. My scalp screams as he uses my hair to pound my head into the sidewalk. “Please!” I cry again.

  My sight wains. Panic sets in as I grasp at anything in the darkness.

  Blood covers me as my lungs crush from his weight. Something silver sits tightly in his fist forcing me to take notice. I throw my hands up for protection as he swings at my head. Slice after slice, he tries desperately to tame my flailing arms.

  Then, a shadow appears like an angel in the night. Standing above him is a dark figure so large that it alone is terrifying, and it rips my attacker from me. He flies back with surprising force and hits the wall ten feet away. The grotesque sound of bones breaking against the brick is a relief.

  An abyss begins to swallow me. The wheeze and gurgle of my filling chest makes me drown. Convulsions overtake me just before everything fades.

  I am so cold my teeth chatter.

  My arm swings from side to side like a metronome as someone’s watch ticks by my ear—his forearm under my neck. It doesn’t take long to understand that someone is carrying me. From the rise and fall of his chest, and the jarring bumps, I know he is moving fast. I try to retreat into a fetal position for relief, but the holes in my stomach envelop me in pain when they are squeezed. My swelling eyelids mask my sight and a bubbling bloody gurgle chokes me.

  “Keep breathing,” the man whispers with urgency.

  He lifts my ravaged body higher onto his chest when I sink too low. Blood continues to pour down my face and into my mouth. Even my tongue feels like it has run up and down a cheese grater. Something blocks my breath and the roots of panic burrow through my lungs.

  “Help,” I wheeze.

  He begins to run. “Help me!” he yells.

  “In the ER!” someone answers. “Need a gurney?”

  “No time!”

  There is a whoosh of sliding doors opening and then closing. The more my body shakes, the tighter he holds me. The smell of bleach or disinfectant burns my nostrils and I’m surprised when my skin grows colder than before. His shoes slap the hard tile.

  “Stay with me, Remy,” he begs.

  That isn’t my name.

  After a moment, noises seem to be everywhere—phones, people, babies, coughing. He turns left to right. “Can someone help me?” He is aggressive and every bit of his body strains.

  “Sir, what can you tell me?” A woman is close.

  “She was stabbed.”

  “Place her here!” she calls out. “What’s her name? Sir?”

  He doesn’t answer, as he lays me down and begins to pull away, but my fingertips grasp his blue sweater.

  “Don’t,” my voice is barely audible.

  His hand wraps gently around mine as he whispers, “You’ll be fine now.”

  Stay with me, is all that I want to say, but am unable.

  So many hands begin to pry and claw a
t me as if in a lion’s den and he leans closer. “Live,” he whispers just before all goes black.

  As far back as my memory allows, dreams of a white-haired man with slightly jaundiced gray eyes and curled arthritic fingers haunt me.

  Even still, on many nights he emerges from hidden places, slithering from shadows as I sleep. No matter the dream or how whimsical it begins, it is as though he can be everywhere—his energy devouring the light.

  I asked my mom about him, once, wondering if it is someone from our family or past. She looked at me with a fearful expression after my description, “Have you ever seen him in real life or only in dreams?”

  “Dreams,” I answered.

  After a moment, her ivory face calmed and she nodded, “I’ve seen him, too.”

  “In dreams?” I asked.

  Yet she didn’t answer.

  It has been a while since he has shown up and this time, we are alone in a dark room as I search for the exit—never knowing when he will be there. From behind a thin black door, his gnarled, twisted fingers reach out for me—

  Suddenly my eyes burst open. A dream . . . it is only a dream. Yet someone needs to tell my racing heart.

  Where am I? My eyes swivel about the sterile white room. Machines occupy every corner, beeps sound by the minute, and sunlight sprays straight lines from the blinds onto the opposite wall. There is a small rumble behind me where I find Ian snoring in the leather chair. For the first time in months, I am happy to see him.

  “Hey,” I whisper. My growl precludes a deep scratchy throat.

  It takes a moment for Ian to realize what he has just heard but when he does, he jumps to my side. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I need water,” I admit.

  “That’s a good sign. I’ll be right back.”

  While he’s gone, I notice a card standing upright on the table beside my bed. A large dragon with four heads is drawn on the front, which is DeSean’s most favorite thing to illustrate. I try to reach out with my left hand and grasp the card, but my arm and fingers won’t obey. Even with perfect concentration, nothing moves. Yet my right hand is easily able to open the folded card. Twenty-five students have written their names; some with large fancy writing and a few as though they don’t care.

  Suddenly, hospital staff rushes into my room. Their chatter and instant chaos make me uncomfortable, yet after they check every part of me and the beeping machines, there is an awkward silence. Everyone watches as I desperately try to move my left hand without success.

  A doctor notices as he enters the room. “Your ulnar nerve was damaged, which has paralyzed everything below your elbow.” He waits a moment, then continues, “I’m Dr. Richards.”

  No matter how much my brain tells my hand, nothing happens. “When will it heal?” I ask.

  He releases a small sigh. “Willow, do you remember anything?” Just as he asks this, two cops enter the room followed by a man and a woman wearing suits.

  I stay quiet searching for any memory. Until little green stitches on my forearm catch my eye. Instantly, the attack flashes in my mind and my eyes shut tight to keep it out, yet this doesn’t work because it plays on the back of my eyelids.

  “How long have I been here?” I whisper.

  The doctor clears his throat. “You were brought to the emergency room two days ago with extensive wounds. They were beyond anything that we could help and . . .” It takes him a moment, maybe calculating the most efficient explanation, “You died on the table. Your heart stopped. There was nothing else to do but walk away.” Even though this doctor’s eyes are kind, the amount of people in the room begins to feel claustrophobic and the sting under my lashes is a sign to stay quiet or cry, so I say nothing. The doctor continues, “After a few minutes . . . your heart started again. On its own.”

  For a moment, I contemplate the pain of multiple places on my body.

  The doctor interrupts my thoughts, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I shouldn’t be alive.”

  There is silence for a moment, until the man in a suit comes forward. “Willow, I’m Detective Nance. We need to ask you a few questions.” He eagerly walks to the bed and places a picture in front of me.

  My veins instantly turn to ice when my attacker’s lifeless eyes stare at me from the shiny mugshot. Suddenly the desperation to get out of my body is overwhelming and I push the picture away, my hand visibly shaking.

  “Can we give her a moment?” Dr. Richards asks.

  “It’s really important that we get information from her as soon as possible.” The detective pushes the photo closer.

  Dr. Richards stands up and places his body between me and everyone else in the room. “Well, you’re going to have to wait.”

  Detective Nance tries to peer around the doctor’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to find the man who did this?”

  I have never felt a panic attack, but my mother had shown me plenty of them—her lip sweating, her skin losing color, as she begged me to save her. In one moment, my empathy grows for her as my heart pounds. “He’s still alive?”

  “Leave . . . now,” the doctor warns the detective.

  “What makes you think he wouldn’t be alive, Willow?” The detective does not relent.

  “He killed him,” I try to convince myself.

  “Who killed who?” The detective is intrigued.

  Finally, Dr. Richards physically forces the authorities out. “I said give her room.” Then he looks at the nursing staff, “Everyone out.” Ian stands by the window with his arms crossed, until the doctor looks at him with a raised eyebrow, “You too.”

  “What?” Ian laughs.

  As though the doctor knows our history, his face stays serious, “Give her a moment.”

  Ian looks at me, but it is quite possible that Ian has something to do with my anxiety and so I nod. With a growl he leaves the room. When the doctor begins to leave, I call his name. “Dr. Richards. Can you stay?” I nearly whisper.

  “Are you sure?” His compassion nearly makes what is left of my strength disappear.

  I nod.

  He carefully sits in the chair beside the bed.

  “You must have daughters?” I ask.

  He hesitates for a moment before answering. “I used to. One. But she passed.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “How did I get here?” A flash of memory comes back to me. Where is the man who brought me in? I look into Dr. Richards’s blue eyes. He is quite a bit older with salt and pepper hair. There is something protective about the way he looks at me. “Did you see him?”

  “Who?” he asks.

  “The man who brought me here?”

  Again, he is careful about what he says. “I did. He waited for a while,” he explains, “but when I went out to find him, he was gone.”

  “Did you get his name?”

  “Arek.”

  “Arek,” I whisper. Would it be enough to memorize his name? “He saved my life.”

  “I know,” he smiles. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get more information for you.”

  I lift the hospital gown from my arm revealing bandages all over my skin. There are wounds everywhere, surrounded by bruises and dried blood. My body is wrecked.

  “It will all heal,” Dr. Richards assures me.

  The next morning, the hot water sprays from the overhead nozzle of the shower. The flow turns red by the time it splashes onto the white tile under my feet and swirls down the drain. My skin puckers when I turn up the heat to nearly scalding level. I’ve always loved the severity of intensely hot water and even more so now, perhaps with the idea that it strips me free of what happened. I take in one deep breath, feel it spread my lungs like balloons, my rib cage expanding, then loudly breathe out. Steam fills the room, fogging up every glass wall and mirror.

  I have been awake most of the night and finally climbed out of bed before dawn—the last time I felt this exhausted was in college. Although hospitals are meant for healing, it’s apparent that the
y aren’t meant for sleep. Every hour a nurse opens the squeaky door, an alarm bell sounds, or they turn on the lights.

  So even standing here in the warm bathroom, the lights remain off—tempting me to go back to sleep. In the darkness, the water burns my skin but I don’t care.

  My good hand roams my slippery stomach and feels the glue left from bandages, however, for the first time in days there is an absence of pain. I push a bit harder but still it feels okay. When I blindly fumble for the white soap, it slips from my fingertips and out of pure reflex my left hand catches it. I freeze.

  “What?” I whisper.

  For a moment I just let the slippery soap sit comfortably cupped in my palm. Then slowly, after putting the soap down, I methodically make a fist, in and out. Without trouble my long fingers open and close as though nothing has ever happened to my ulnar nerve.

  Thank God.

  After drying off, I stand in front of the long mirror in my room and flip on the light switch. My skin is still shiny, but the bruises that had—just the day before—covered my body are now gone. Where the bandages had collected blood from stitches, there is nothing left but red lines and sutures that are now unnecessary. On my wrist, I search for a thirty-year-old scar from a fall in the yard when I was a child. That scar is bigger than any of the others from the attack. There is no red line and no bruising under my arm, where my ulnar nerve was sliced. It is as though they stitched uncut, untouched skin, yet the cut had been there the day before.

  Minutes later, Dr. Richards’s voice is on the other end of the phone. “Willow, are you okay?”

  “Can you come soon?” I just don’t know how to explain.

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Richards knocks before entering. He is in scrubs but looks refreshed.