Eric threw himself out of the path of the truck as it collided with the monster. Whatever the thing was, it disintegrated on impact. A crude, black substance splashed up over the hood and onto the windshield, as if the thing had been nothing but an impossibly elaborate balloon animal filled with used motor oil.
The truck skidded to a stop and Eric rose shakily to his feet.
Now that the terrible incident was over, he realized that he recognized the truck. The aged F150 was as familiar to him as the man who emerged from the driver’s side door and hurried to his side.
“Are you okay?”
Eric stood gasping for breath. His heart was still racing and he felt as if he had to make a conscious effort to remain on his feet, but he nodded. “Nice timing.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Karen called. Said you were up to weirdness again.”
Of course. On the surface, Karen always seemed to be calm and unfazed, but inside, she was deathly afraid for him. She’d never been comfortable expressing herself, especially when it came to admitting she was afraid. She just made her jokes and carried on like nothing ever bothered her. But she never hesitated to call in favors. This time, she’d called his big brother, Paul, to look after him for her.
Eric squinted up at him in the brilliant sunshine. Paul was awkwardly tall, standing a good seven inches over him. He also possessed quite a few more inches around his midsection and was a surprisingly hairy man, with long, disheveled hair, a bushy beard and a considerable amount of hair covering his exposed arms and bristling out of his work shirt where he’d left the top two buttons undone. Eric was happy to have been blessed with an entirely different combination of genes. “How the hell did you find me?”
“She said you were somewhere by the hospital.”
Eric nodded and looked over at the urgent care entrance again. He had told her he was snooping around near the hospital when he talked to her last.
“I drove around until I found your car parked out here, but I didn’t see you anywhere. So I just sat and waited.”
“And then you saw me come out of the building.” It made perfect sense. His silver PT Cruiser wasn’t hard to miss, especially parked all by itself like it was. But the timing was still uncanny. A few more seconds and he would’ve been done for.
But Paul frowned at him, confused. “What building?”
Eric looked up at him again. “What?”
“What building?”
He turned and gestured at the abandoned building beside which he’d parked, but it was no longer there. The PT Cruiser stood alone in the vast parking lot. “The hell…?”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s gone…” Eric felt as if the world were spinning out of control around him. What was going on, indeed?
“What’s gone?”
“You didn’t see where I came from?”
“No. All I could find was your car. I’ve been sitting here watching for you for a while. I was starting to think you’d left it behind like you did last year when you went on that crazy walk you took. Then I just…looked up…and you were there, running across the parking lot with that thing loping after you. What the hell was that?”
“Well at least you saw that, I guess.”
“It just exploded when I hit it. Like it was made of oil or something… Then even that stuff disappeared.”
It was true. Paul’s truck was not only undamaged by the impact, it wasn’t even dirty. The crude, black fluid had vanished almost as soon as it struck the windshield. Not a trace of it remained.
That creature… It reminded him of other creatures he’d encountered, creatures an unlikely man of God once called “golems.” Those beasts were relentless hunters, pursuing their prey to the ends of the earth if necessary, but had uncannily short attention spans. Breaking their focus with a large enough distraction would send them back where they came, like a reset button. But none of the golems he encountered ever looked like this thing. In fact, they’d never looked much like anything. They lacked conceivable shape, as if they defied reality. This thing looked more like a creature of some sort, with definite, biological features, although not like anything he’d ever seen before.
Paul’s cell phone rang and he fished it from his pocket. “Hello? What? Oh… Hi…” He gave Eric a bewildered look as he listened. “Sure, hold on.” He took the phone from his ear and pressed a button. “It’s Isabelle.”
“Isabelle?”
Paul held the phone out between them and Isabelle’s voice rose from the speakers: “Hi, guys.”
“Hi,” said Eric. “What’s up? Why did you call him instead of me?”
“Paul actually knows how to use his phone, so he can do things like put me on speaker.”
Eric nodded. “Fair enough. Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“Yeah,” said Paul. “What was that thing I hit?”
“No idea. But it was obviously real if even Paul could see it.”
Paul nodded. “Looked real to me.”
Eric ran a hand through his hair. It was certainly comforting to have someone validate some of the insane things he’d seen. It helped to know he wasn’t entirely nuts.
“And that building was real, too,” continued Isabelle. “I’m sure of it. I could feel something about that place.”
“But where did it go?” asked Eric. “How does a whole building just vanish without a trace?”
“I still don’t know, but I do think it had something to do with that apartment. Those two places felt very similar.”
“Well,” said Eric, “they did both disappear into thin air.”
“Besides that, I mean.”
Paul looked out over the empty parking lot. “I’m not sure about the Main Street shops, but I’m positive I’ve never seen a building here. The hospital’s looked just like this since they remodeled it and added the east wing back in the early nineties. Even before that, there was no building over here that I was ever aware of.”
Eric stared at his PT Cruiser. When he parked it, it was right in front of that building. Now it was just sitting there all alone. He recalled moving the vehicle there after he noticed the building… He hadn’t seen it at first…almost as if it simply appeared while he wasn’t looking. But how did a building appear out of nowhere? And how was it that he was the only one who saw it while it was here?
“So what should we do now?” asked Paul.
It was a good question. Eric wasn’t sure.
“Do you remember any more locations from the map?” asked Isabelle.
“I don’t. All I remember is this one, the place on Hosler and whatever was supposed to be on Milwaukee Street.”
“Maybe you should go back to Milwaukee,” she suggested.
“There wasn’t anything there.”
“There wasn’t anything here until there was.”
Eric shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“It does?” asked Paul.
No. It didn’t. But he understood what she meant. When he first drove around over here, there was nothing. Then, suddenly, he found it. But what was he even looking for?
“Don’t these first three locations have something in common?” pressed Isabelle.
Eric considered it. Immediately, he knew that she was right. The apartment. The lot on Hosler. The asylum. “They’re all deserted.”
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
Paul glanced around again. There was still no building here, deserted or otherwise.
“A deserted location on or near Milwaukee Street…” pondered Eric. “It’s a start.” He looked up at Paul. “You want to drive, or should I?”
“I’ll drive.”
The Spice Girls began singing from Karen’s phone again. Swearing, Eric stuffed his hand into his pocket and wrestled it free, unable to miss the smirk on his brother’s face. “It’s Karen’s phone,” he said.
“Why do you have Karen’s phone?”
“I lost mine.”
“Again?”
“I dropped it at the last place I was nosing around. I didn’t have a chance to go back for it.”
“You need to be more careful with your phones.”
“I don’t lose that many phones!”
Paul shrugged.
Eric looked down at the screen and paused, letting the Spice Girls play on.
“Who is it?”
Eric looked up at him, confused.
“Who is it?” he asked again.
“It’s me.”
This didn’t make sense. “What do you mean it’s you?”
Eric held it up for him to see. The number displayed on the screen was his. The call was coming from his cell phone. The one he left in the weeds under the apple tree on Holser Avenue.
Paul looked from the phone to Eric. “Well, what do you suppose you want?”
Turning the phone around again, Eric opened the line and silenced the Spice Girls. Then he held it up to his ear. “Hello?”
“So you’re the one,” said an unfamiliar voice in his ear.
“What?”
“I’ve dreamt about you.”
Eric gave Paul a bewildered look. “Okay… Who is this?”
But the mysterious caller didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “You’re almost out of time.”
Eric recalled the mysterious note left on his windshield. Did whoever left that note also retrieve his phone? “Out of time for what?”
“Death is coming.”
Eric felt a shiver creep up his spine at the sound of these words. “What?”
“Dead before sunset.”
“You sent me that note…”
“Turn back the clock and spiral down…”
“What?” This was definitely one of the stranger conversations he’d ever had.
“Who is it?” asked Paul.
Eric shook his head. It was nobody he knew. It was a man and he sounded very old. But beyond that, all he could hear was nonsense.
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen what?”
But the conversation was over. The mysterious caller with Eric’s phone disconnected the call.
“Okay, that was messed up!” exclaimed Isabelle.
“What’s going on?” insisted Paul. “Who was it? What did they say?”
Again, Eric shook his head. “Some old man. Didn’t make any sense.” He dialed the number for his phone and held it to his ear again. It rang, but no one answered. He wasn’t surprised.
“Where did you lose your phone?”
“An abandoned lot on Hosler Avenue.”
Paul tried hard to recall Hosler Avenue. It looked like it required a lot of brain power, because it scrunched up his face almost comically. “I don’t remember any empty lots on Hosler.”
“It’s pretty inconspicuous,” replied Eric. “I ran into some trouble over there. Had to leave fast.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Strange black creatures,” volunteered Isabelle. “And a crazy old lady with a wicked manicure. She sliced up Eric’s back before he could get away.”
Paul looked at Eric. “No shit?”
“It’s been a weird day.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Come on,” he said, stuffing Karen’s phone back into his pocket again. It was probably nothing. Maybe some drunk stumbled across his phone and picked this number at random from its directory. “Let’s go have another look around Milwaukee Street. I’ll catch you up on the way.”