Dancing in Darkness: The Damned

by Kassandra Alvarado

After dinner, she pulled him aside.

  “Hey, I heard from a very unreliable source that you’d liked a certain cursed Victorian locket from the archives.” Eve pressed a hard object wrapped in tissue paper into his hand.

  Daniel unwrapped it carefully, unable to keep the grin from his face. Highly polished silver formed a smiling moon face consuming pearls fed to it by a delicately etched mouse. Tiny hinges opened into a circular cradle perfect for a picture.

  “You must’ve moved heaven and earth to have one made.” He whispered, fingers closing over the gift.

  She smiled warmer, “I have my ways.”

  Then, his brow furrowed. “How’d you know-?”

  “Hmm?”

  “My...,” birthday.

  Eve’s smile dipped, she looked past him. “You said once that your birthday always fell on tragedy. My father’s funeral was on this day twenty years ago.”

  “I-I’m sorry for asking. Edward Pemberton, right?”

  “Yes, he died when I was very little.”

  “Did we know each other? What you said - ”

  Eve’s brow creased but she was smiling in a sad way. “You’re hopeless. You really are.”

  “No, tell me...it seems I’ve lived my life in a fog. I want to remember things.” He turned back to her standing by the library window. I want to remember you. But, couldn’t say those words. She was looking at him strangely as though pity warred with some other undefined emotion.

  “We met at my father’s funeral.”

  “But, I don’t -”

  Remember.

  “Your parents, the Javans, had died in a car accident the week before. You were close to my age, a small boy in a sailor suit with a scowl on his face.”

  Daniel wanted to remember, his desire was so strong he could see the funeral swag and the people and the scent of funeral flowers, mums.

  “You were crying behind the drapes.”

  “My uncle was there,” he said slowly. “That’s funny, really funny, I feel like I’m starting to remember.” His free hand sought the black cross hidden in the folds of his shirt. “This cross -”

  “-was my father’s.”

  He looked at her, realization dawning. “You gave it to me. Why didn’t you tell me that we’d met before?”

  “I was hoping you’d remember on your own.” Eve shook her head slightly. “I guess it was silly of me to pursue a single day’s friendship. I kept thinking about you for a long time. Oddly enough,” she admitted with a slight flush to her cheeks. “I think I recognized you in the police station. Somehow, I knew.”

  “Kind of like destiny?” The clichéd line tumbled from his lips and he wished he’d taken speech as an elective. “Sorry, that sounds so stupid. I mean you and me..., what’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, sounding a little troubled. “I don’t think I understand it myself, but it’s kind of like a wait and see...we never know what the future holds.”

  Yes..the future.

  Daniel looked at the woman standing a few feet away with new eyes.

  “Thanks, you know, for finally getting it through my thick skull.”

  She chuckled, “Quinn’s got a thicker skull than you, I suspect.”

  “Hmm, I don’t know about that.”

  Eve laughed, patting his arm when she went by, “I have to get back to work. Don’t knock yourself out with too much reading. We haven’t even tested you out in the field yet.”

  “Think I’m looking forward to it.” He hurled after her, grinning. If that meant spending more time together...he shook his head at his thoughts. They were speculative, eager. For once, he was beginning to look forward to the morning of each day. One night’s ending opened up an intriguing number of possibilities rather than staid loneliness.

  Daniel went back to the lounge in a lighter mood. Quinn was in his usual place, sprawled across the sofa, intently reading a set of plastine documents. They hardly exchanged looks as Daniel dropped back into the curved settee, pulling the Macbook onto his lap. Outside, the winter wind howled, flurries of white flakes spiraled onto the heads of the city proper. Daniel submitted his final term paper and returned to the saved web page of medicinal herbs.

  The ‘chief’ had been pushing for digitizing the company’s collection of magical paraphernalia for years. So far, he’d been relatively unsuccessful. Daniel took a few notes on the uses of organic styptic pomades forgetting momentarily his desire for punishment. It wasn’t all right that he was let off scot-free, but then as Morris had suggested, there was always repaying one wrong with a lifetime of good.

  Good, that was a strange word.

  “Is what the BPS does, good?” He asked suddenly of the other occupant in the room. Quinn had risen sometime before and was restlessly moving around. “Huh? What?”

  “The BPS.” Daniel clarified, suddenly intent. “Is this right?”

  “You mean what they - we do?” Quinn stammered slightly on including themselves as a part of a greater whole. “I - I don’t know...I guess I never gave much thought to wrong or right.”

  Oh.

  He was confused as well.

  “But,” Quinn spread his hands out, palms upward. “Maybe it’s in the eye of the beholder. You have to choose for yourself what’s wrong and right for your own soul.”

  My soul?

  Daniel nodded; he hadn’t expected philosophy from a computer technician. But, it made sense. I have to choose what’s right. Quinn stared at him for a few minutes like he was trying to figure something out. “Oh, hey, I’m leaving now anyway.”

  He had the slight notion that whatever the other saw, he was pleased with.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  He received a backward hand wave from the door and then Quinn was gone for the night. Daniel worked for a while longer, occasionally smiling to himself, remembering something the other had said or done. When he became tired, he set aside the computer and gathered up the travel kit from the magazine stand. The building’s silence was broken only by the sound of his own footsteps crossing the empty corridors beneath the muted lighting.

  Around eleven pm, things wound down and the ‘chief’ headed home. Most of the lights were turned off by a controller switch while others were run on automatic, turning on whenever the doors were opened. Daniel heard the water running in the ladies restroom next door to the men’s. Other than the occasional late night pulled by Eve, the only other occupant of the upper floors was a pale woman with vaguely Alsatian features. He and the woman had never conversed, but he had the strong suspicion she was afraid of him.

  Why?

  Something the ‘chief’ said?

  Some other reason he wasn’t sure he wanted to know? Deciding to disregard the sound, he went through the door into the bright flood of fluorescent light. The row of mirrors looked the same as always, on perverse instinct he went to the pedestal with the replacement. The sheet of glass reflected the face he knew. The face he had always known.

  The sounds had faded.

  He started for the landing.

  The door creaked open behind him.

  Daniel turned slowly; the secretary stood there on the threshold. “Hey, are you alright? You don’t look so well.” The woman’s skin was colorless, like soured milk. He had the feeling he’d surprised her upon exit. “Hey - ” she swayed and he lunged forward to grab her. “Hey! Hold on, I’ve got -” Inches from grasping her narrow shoulders, the woman released an inhuman snarl. Thick welts of pain erupted where her nails raked his skin. Before he could react, she had fled to the upper floors, more animal than human.

  “What’s up with her?” Daniel muttered aloud, slowly covering the inch long scratches on his upper arm. They stung something fierce at first, then gradually the pain faded. He glanced at them, peeling his fingers away from the toned bicep exposed by the short T-shirt sleeve. The long reddened streaks disappeared, the flesh knitting seamless. Experimental, he brushed his fingertips over the area; nothin
g.

  Somehow it was familiar, like something forgotten. Unbidden, an image took flight in his mind of a summer’s day. An orange ball bounced across crisp green grass, grass that tickled bare feet as the child ran across the low ruts of the dirt driveway. He remembered a large blur of dark blue moving fast, pain exploding in senses that were too young to define the cause and then people screaming.

  “Dad.” Daniel murmured, blinking the image away.

  One of his dads had run him over with the family sedan. They’d carried him in the house, laid him in thick arms fragrant with Plumeria. “Cậu bé của tôi! Cậu bé của tôi!” They sobbed in Vietnamese. He remembered opening his eyes and asking them what was wrong. Daniel’s jaw tightened, reflexively he wrapped his arms around his torso with the memory. The screaming had begun anew.

  No longer in the mood for research, he went back to the lounge, throwing himself on Quinn’s couch. With its larger size, he was able to kick off his shoes and tuck his legs in, propping his folded arms beneath his head, Daniel stared up moodily at the ceiling.

  “Oni.”

  Someone chanted in his head.

  Over and over.

  He knew the word for devil in seven different tongues.

  “It didn’t happen.” He muttered, his face screwing up. Denying it wouldn’t make it so but as long as no one knew, does that make it alright? As he always did every night, he pulled a small photo out of his jean pocket and looked for a long time at the young face. He’d found the photo loose in one of the cartons. The clipping had come from a magazine article on young heirs; her face was circled.

  Daniel turned the fragment over in his hands then remembered the locket.

  “Safe and sound.”

  The locket reached below his sternum, hidden by the T-shirt collar. Daniel patted the small lump twice, his eyes closing. On this night, the dream was worse. Men whom were not men but wore horned masks marched on the bodies of naked humans. Gender was indiscriminate in the suffering of the living. In the center of it, a dark angel raised a goatskin trumpet and blew three notes of shuddering horror upon it.

  And the face of the angel -

  His scream throttled his throat. The muffled sound of it startled him awake, blinking blearily in the spacious lounge. With his movements during sleep, the carton beside him on the cushion had been pushed off. Papers were scattered across the floor. Daniel sat up, rubbing his face with hands that shook.

  That face - he hadn’t imagined that face. His thoughts raced, confusion clouded reason. At long last, he glanced over the fallen papers. Lowering himself to the floor, he began gathering them up. They were old he saw at once. Fragile onion skin frayed on razor thin edges, tearing at folded seams. Yellowed newspaper articles crumpled beside polaroid photos of older images.

  One came to hand, a photo of a drawing from the 19th century taken during the Second Opium War.

  The starving child picked through gutter refuse while British sailors looked on.

  That child - he lifted another - a photo from the 1940s, taken in a Japanese-American concentration camp in Tule Lake, California. It fell from his nerveless fingers, spiraling to the floor.

  ***

  Evelyn’s head felt light, her heart soared. Her mask of reserve slipped and she found herself humming an old song that the fisherwomen of Jeju Island sang. Reno stopped by her office briefly to tell her he was leaving for the night. On the security cameras, she’d seen Quinn leave.

  “Japanese?” He inquired seemingly curious.

  “Hangul.”

  Reno looked slightly surprised, “it’s pretty, although I can’t understand the words. Where’d you learn it?”

  Her brow furrowed and she looked down at her hands. “I...I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember.”

  It bothered her even after he’d left. The lyrics and tone of the song were present but not the memory of the face who had sung them first. Evelyn tried to dismiss it and focus on outlining the next strategy she planned on presenting to the company bondholders at the next meeting, without much success- finally, she set her pen down, sighing. It was no use.

  She got up from her chair on the pretense of making another cup of sustaining coffee. The family had always been fluent in several languages, promoting the use of international ties to strengthen the image of stability before globalization had become en vogue.

  But, Hangul-?

  Restlessly, Evelyn walked the corridors of the office, pouring herself a stiff cup of cold black coffee from the old coffee pot in the conference room. Reflective, she glanced up at the plastered welt sealing the gap between the last floor and the thirty-ninth. “An Angel, huh?” She shook her head slightly. Reno had dropped speculations on what had entered the Tower, for days after the incident.

  He hadn’t been close to the truth as far as an archon went.

  Sighing again, Evelyn went back to her office. She’d left the computer on stasis, slumbering on the security feeds of various cameras installed around the building. Setting her cup down sloppily, she accidentally brushed against the trackmouse. The computer pinged, crackling back to life. Evelyn quickly moved to grab a handful of tissues from a nearby decorative box, soaking up the spill.

  Motion from one of the screen blocks caught her eye.

  It was Daniel standing before camera six, staring into the corner where it was mounted. A few blips created rolling static over his handsome face. Her motions stilled; she had the strangest feeling he knew she was there on the other side of the monitor. Then, she noticed the second figure watching on from a distance.

  “Who -”

  The Tower went suddenly black with power failure. In the dark, Evelyn exhaled, pulling her car keys from her pocket. With the aid of the attached penlight, she quickly gathered up her coat, strapping on a set of blessed knives. While she fumbled with the buckle around her upper thigh, she booted up a tablet computer running on battery power. From there, she accessed the company system controls, switching over to basic generator power.

  The lights flickered on; Evelyn left her office, hurrying to the elevator. She was thankful she’d had the foresight to run the platform on a separate power source. As the doors revolved shut, she swiped through page after page of security feeds. Nothing. Angrily, she slammed her hand against the tablet, then tucked it under her arm.

  The elevator left her off on the lounge level; Evelyn ran out into the larger room , the floor was covered in black feathers. She turned in circles, her lips working furiously. Where - where - was he? Paper crinkled beneath her heels, the rest spilled from the open crate. The archives, she thought dropping to a crouch, remembering her own order to have Quinn study the old case files.

  “File 302...,” She murmured, turning the label over in her hands. “Record of the hysteria that gripped children throughout the ages.” Her eyes skimmed the typewritten article that concerned itself with a boy in an Indonesian village. A boy with miraculous powers - they say he fell from the sky in a rain of black feathers. Her mouth tightened, she read on. He performed many wondrous miracles for the benefit of the native people, there were some who believed he was an angel sent to earth.

  Angel was underlined in a strong, masculine hand.

  Rumors of his fame spread and attracted the attention of Christian missionaries who underwent a grand pilgrimage to authenticate the child’s miracles. The paper was torn in half. She searched around for the rest, photographs passed under her fingertips. Taken from different eras, the subjects were not as dissimilar as first thought.

  The faces were different save for one. The one that she had found hiding under the white velvet bier cloth, the young boy with the sad brown eyes who had taught her the song about the sea. The photos were separated by over a hundred years yet the subject hadn’t aged a day.

  ***

  The phone rang from the bedside table. In the dark, the sleeper jolted awake, blindly reaching for the handset. “Hello?” Julian slurred into the mouthpiece. The soft female voi
ce replied, hushed. “Mr. Reno, there’s been an incident.”

  “When?” Like a dash of cold water over his senses, he sat up fully, flicking the bedside lamp on.

  “Twenty minutes ago. Miss Blackwood has taken her car. I have reason to believe she has gone in search of Mr. Hurain.”

  Julian breathed heavily, pressing his palm to his blurry eyes. “Alright, I understand. I’ll be there in a few.” He didn’t wait for her response before he hung up, dialing Ms. Blackwood’s cell. When she didn’t answer, he dialed Quinn. The rookie picked up after three rings, answering in a stretched out yawn.

  “H-Hell-lo-?”

  “Quinn,” Julian began pulling on his day slacks. He took a pair of trouser socks from the bedside drawer, sitting on the edge of the pale blue bedspread in order to pull them on. “Something’s happened at the Tower.”

  “Another incident-?”

  Julian noted the sudden alertness in the younger man’s tone and smiled slightly, approving. “I don’t have all the details yet. But, Ms. Blackwood didn’t answer her phone. Ms. Dupri called and said she’d left to search for Mr. Hurain.”

  “Hurain? I’m not surprised.” Quinn scoffed. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll head out and look for Ms. Blackwood.”

  No hesitation. Julian gathered up his jacket and car keys. “Perfect, stay on the line. I’m going to the office now.” I hope I’m wrong about that boy...she’s in grave danger if I’m not, he thought grimly.

  Chapter 15: The Unforgiving

  Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord.

  “Why did he do that?”

  The Angel touched Jacob’s hip and Jacob’s hip was displaced and the Angel said, ‘let me go for the day has broken.’

  “Why would an Angel do that?”

  And Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’

  A visiting Theologian had sat with a class of third graders in the Catholic private school and discussed the theme of wrestling with God - wrestling with angels. Zac could close his eyes and hear the aged voice of the man who had spent his years studying world religions. The truest form of the account of Jacob’s story in genesis, came from the Masoretic text. He who wrestles with God.

  “Jacob wrestled with the Angel,” Zac said slowly, watching the streetlight change to yellow. Blackwood had wrestled with whatever had invaded the Tower office. His helmet secured the mouthpiece hooked to his ear, connected to the company’s satellite signal. Reno sounded confused on the other side of the line. “What’re you talking about? We have to find Ms. Bl-”