“Watch him,” says the woman. “I’ll kill the others.”

The man grunts. Then he says, “He’s closed the door.”

“He what?”

“Girl’s gone. He’s closed the door.”

The woman marches down the hallway and flings the door at the end wide. A bathroom. The lights are on in there and it’s clearly a bathroom. A bathroom. That’s the way I came in, though. I'm sure of it. Aren't I?

She turns and comes back, her face set as she approaches.

My breath won’t come, but I’m able to reach out, tug once on the woman’s skirt, and mouth the word, “Please.” I don’t know if I’m the reason she’s going to go murder the others but I have to try to stop her, slow her down, something. It’s the only thing I can think to do.

She squats down to look me in the eye. Many would find her pretty. Her face might be a bit too wide and square for beautiful, her lips too thin, but it’s the cold and unfeeling eyes that turn her into something ugly.

“Don’t touch me,” says the woman. “Ever.”

I raise my hand in apology and shake my head.

She smiles and if you’d have told me that a grin could make me nauseous before this, I’d have never believed you.

She reaches out with her hand, just short of touching my forehead, and draws something in the air with her thumb.

“There,” she says. She looks up at her accomplice. “We don’t have much time. I’ll—.”

But there’s a noise from the kitchen and I remember the movement I saw there before. I think someone else might be here.

There’s a huge noise and the tall man’s head whips backwards and he’s falling. He’s been shot.

Two more explosions, deafening inside the home, and the woman falls beside me, most of her head missing.

It’s all so sudden and what’s going to happen now and there’s people in the house in trouble. The room is getting darker.

No wait, it isn’t.

I concentrate for a moment. I can see just as much in the dim light as before. The place just seems like it’s getting darker like I’m feeling the loss of light rather than seeing it. I must be in shock.

A man is here, sitting on his haunches much like the woman he’s killed was doing a moment ago. He’s got a scraggly dark beard streaked here and there with gray and silver. He might be Italian or Middle Eastern. His eyes a big, brown, and alight with intelligence and concern. He looks at me and stares at my forehead. He must've put the gun away. I don't see it.

I manage a breath. I heave it into my lungs and it’s like I’ve forgotten how the whole mechanism works. The man in front of me smells of gunpowder.

The new guy says, “I’m sorry, I’m too late. Goddamn malocchio.” He speaks quietly in unaccented English, his voice a pleasant baritone.

I can only gasp. I want to tell him about the other people in the house. I shake my head and hold up a finger.

The man stands up. He squats back down. “You know,” he says. “I doubt it’ll work, but maybe….” He draws a figure in the air above my forehead, much like the woman had done, only he uses his forefinger and the pattern is more complex. “That probably won’t be any help at all, my friend, but it’s the best I can do,” he says. His tone is mild, like he’s much more satisfied now about the way things are turning out. He stands.

“Wait,” I manage to croak out.

“Can’t,” says the strange man. “Gotta go. I’m sorry about all this. Things are about to—. Well, never mind. You'll see.” He turns the corner back into the kitchen and he’s gone.

The room isn’t as dark as it was.

Wait. No, there are some lighter parts but the dark seems to be overpowering the light right now. Like it’s winning.

Then there’s more light.

From the big window in the living room. Headlights outside shining in. They’re angled down and bouncing. I can see them through the curtains. The street this house sits on is only part way up the hill. A car or something is coming down it. I can only see the lights which are dribbling up and down much too much. And getting larger. Much larger. And too fast.

I go to stand but it’s too late.

The car smashes through the wall, blowing through the drywall and the glass of the window, sending shards flashing past me. A soft shape angles out at me. The couch pushed by the car.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It scoops me up and I’m weightless, flying.

I flail around, trying to grab something. My hand finds metal behind me. I grasp it as I hurtle past. Something golden. It’s the chandelier.

I’ve caught it just right to sling me around and I feel my momentum redirected out in an arc, but then there’s a jerk. I’m pulling the fixture out of the wall as I rotate over the kitchen table, and I’m too scared to let go.

The point becomes moot as I pull the damn thing free and fall. I land on my feet somehow and manage to stay upright by taking a few steps backward.

The chandelier is still in my hands. I drop it with a crash onto the linoleum.

There’s too much light in the room.

Okay, no there isn’t. It just feels that way and the dark is gathering again, and I don’t know if I should see a shrink or an optometrist. Either way, I need a moment. I lean back against the wall.

Only there’s no wall.

It’s the open door to the basement and I’m falling through it, knowing I’ll be lucky if I don’t break my neck on the way down.

The stairs are carpeted, thank God, but the edges of each stair dig into me as I tumble down. I wait for the snap and the pain of something inside me breaking, but I wind up at the base, alive, with my ass halfway up the wall as I rest on my neck staring up at my crotch.

Noises from my right.

A family of five, bound, gagged, arranged on a sectional couch in a lovely finished basement. They’re staring at me, eyes wide, panicked, confused.

I roll over and wobble to my feet. Nothing seems broken. I feel okay and I’m breathing normally.

“It wasn’t me,” I say and show them my empty hands. "I didn't hurt anybody and I've no part of this," I tell them.

They just look at me. Yeah, I guess they don’t much care about who did what. Besides, why would they take me at my word? They’re much more worried about what I’m going to do next.

I go to mom first. She’s a full-figured woman, her blonde hair in wavy curls. She’s crying. I take down her gag first, looping my fingers under the rag, and pulling it down over her chin, careful not to scratch her.

“Please,” she says. “Please.”

Like I’d said upstairs to the dead woman.

“Ma’am,” I say as I work on the zip ties around her wrists. “I’m here to help. Honest.” But the ties are dug into her flesh. Pulling on them isn’t doing any good. “The kidnappers are….” The kids look like they’re all younger than twelve. “Gone. It wasn’t me,” I say. “There was another guy. He’s gone too. Uh, in an entirely different way.”

I don’t see anything I can cut the ties with and maybe these folks aren’t ready for me to have anything sharp in my hands yet. I settle for pulling the gags from everybody.

By the time I do, I can hear sirens.

I know I should stay, but what the fuck am I going to tell them? Sure, I can maybe think something up but I’m a miserable liar. There’s a car crashed upstairs, the driver in God knows what condition, two dead bodies, shot, the man who did it left, leaving me, the guy who came in through the bathroom? There wasn’t even a window in there!

And why'd I pull down the light fixture? Huh?

I have no idea what’s going on. I have no idea what to say to the police. I don’t know what to do. I need some time to think, but I'm not going to get that if I stay.

I look at dad.

He’s looking at me.

I say, “I didn’t do any of this, sir. I…. There was another woman they had. I helped her. I…. I have to go.”

The man nods once. “Go then,” he says. There’s nothing accusatory in his tone, but I feel like shit anyhow. I should stay and help. I should. I know I should.

I don’t.

I run upstairs.

I hesitate in the kitchen. I really should check on the driver of the car, but I hear the creaking crunch of a messed-up car door opening and I see the dude stagger out. Drunk maybe?

Time to go anyway. There are the telltale blue and red flashing lights parading around on the walls.

The kitchen has a sliding glass door. I tug on it. Locked. I unlock it and open it. The deck is pale treated wood, unpainted. There are a few lounge chairs and a grill and stairs down into the backyard. I take them and I’m back in the park in moments.

I move along the asphalt walkway in a daze. What the Hell just happened to me? What did I do? Did I do the right thing?

I see a bench and go to it like it’s the only thing floating in an empty trackless sea and I’m at risk of drowning. It has a streetlight above it, shining down on it like a spotlight in a stage production. I try never to mix my metaphors but it felt like that, both at once.

I get to it and sit. With the adrenaline bleeding off, I fight the urge to lie down. I guess I can’t stay here for long. The police will be looking for a man of my description soon with their questions and I can’t blame them at all. I have questions myself.

Did I foil some kind of serial-killing kidnapping ring?

No, I had not. I witnessed the strange bearded fellow do that by gunning them down. The most I’d done was get that woman in the sweater out. Through the bathroom? There wasn't a bathroom there before. It was another living room, twin to the one that now had a car parked in it.

That house had two kitchens? Two living rooms?

I can still see it from where I am, a two-story colonial, bathed in blue and red swirling lights. It doesn’t look big enough. It doesn't make sense so I turn my brain in another direction.

The Beard told me something. Goddamn malocchio? What was that?

I can look it up on my phone if I can get the spelling right maybe.

My phone is back at the bar. Maybe someone’s turned it in by now to the lost and found or something.

And what the fuck is going on with my eyes? How can I see dark and light that isn’t there? It’s like my vision is mottled like I've got a thin cloth over my eyes in an inkblot pattern that I can see through, but there’s nothing external that can cause those... discolorations? And they’re only there when I look for them. I feel them and right now, for some reason, the dark seems to be winning.

The faint buzzing of the lamp above me grows a bit louder. The light flickers.

The ‘dark’ in my vision swirls stronger, spikes, and the lamp pops. Hot glass rains down, some of it getting behind the collar of my polo shirt and it’s in my hair.

I want to jump up and shake myself but it is glass, so I don’t. I take my time instead, even though it burns, and eventually, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it all out.

Huh. I really don't know what to make of that either, so I file it away and start off toward the bar.

I’m concentrating on those fake blots of darkness and lightness. They move and seem to wrestle with each other, the dark against the light and vice versa. I find I don’t like the dark bits much. They feel cold and dangerous somehow now that I'm paying attention. The light parts feel much more comfortable and right.

It's bizarre.

It’s not been that long since I was last walking here. Right over there is where they had to start carrying the woman. I check my watch. It’s a little past ten at night. I’m pretty sure I left the bar just before nine-thirty? And I’d spent most of that time following those assholes through the park.

I don’t have to be as careful this time and I’ve got my new friends, those splotches of light and darkness, to keep me occupied, so I’m in front of the two flights of stairs leading back up to the bar before I know it.

Only, when I get to the top, the bar isn’t there.