I saw it again. Somehow, I knew that I would. I winced and turned away from this truth of intuition; a part of me allowed myself to forget, to pretend I was living a normal life, getting on as any man would, in a sleepy world with little to be expected but the ordinary. Another part of me, one deep inside by the very fringed edges of my being, waited for what it knew must finally come, grasping at me from the unknowable void behind the veil of forgetfulness.

My memory wanes somewhere around the age of ten. The life I had led till then was restricted to gleaming fragments of recollection, mere moments crystalized in my heart. The nostalgic ache feeling underlying a certain color of the evening sky; the trees around my childhood home and the hum of the cicadas nesting there for one strange summer; the garlicky scent of my mother’s cooking, the arrangement of my few precious toy figures on the shelf over the foot of my bed. Seeing that thing for the first time was also a fragment of memory, a chip of obsidian glass lodged deep into my subconscious like a splinter encased in scar tissue. An anomaly of the few decent memories left to me as I entered the latter stages of my life, that I allowed to sink to the lower depths.

Although others can't see it, there is a restless vigilance that vibrates just underneath the surface of my stoicism and quiet courtesy. I feel at the very least somewhat nervous, at all times. Nothing has ever happened to me to warrant such anxiety. I am a man of good stature, and a strong physique. I am fairly healthy, unafraid of conflict with any man, or beast—I’ve rescued a child or two from the maws of a rabid dog in my time. I am a former soldier and officer of the night guard, and carry a revolver on my person at all times on the clock. I can seem a grim man, and I am methodical, and timely, to a fault. I should, by all merits, be as filled with a sense of sturdiness and security as any man has any right to feel.

But this is simply not so.

I was recently summoned by my superiors for duty to the rearmost portions of the old annex of the Flagg street courthouse, for a month-long night stint. That part of the courthouse had been out of commission for years, but only lately returned into use with the rest, as an influx of middle-class gentrifiers from the west have increased the need for administrative work on the back end of the city’s overtaxed systems of justice. This rear court entrance, scarcely used but for the few overnight clerks who have been filing away for a recent high-profile murder case, is my charge for one day more. But I am not sure I am up to the task.

The entrance that I am tasked to guard is somewhat hidden, tucked away into the space between two half-circle outcroppings of the courthouse administrative wing. They are the bases of two semi-towers, standing ominously over the adjacent expanse of no less imposing industrial properties that are responsible for the production and storage of the city’s steel. Between the steelworks and the courthouse, a narrow street stretches out into the beginning of the impoverished eastern outskirts of the city, where the newcomers never dare to go. Not unless they are looking for something, or someone, of a very particular variety.

This street, called Orchard street, is where I spend most of my time; pacing, from under one flickering oil lamp sconce on the western outcropping, to another lamp on the eastern. It is a distance of ten or more yards, along Orchard. From eight in the evening, until four in the morning I walk, back and forth from one sconce to the other, resting underneath each for twenty minutes or so. I keep four cigarettes in a tin, and smoke one about every two hours. I take what I can only call my lunch at midnight. I eat right there on the steps, as I prefer the cool openness of the outside, to the stagnant, vacuum silence of the warm air in the control booth just inside the vestibule,

Until recently, the job has been uneventful. At approximately ten at night, two clerks leave the building for the day. One, a large, overly serious man with a bald head and a loud step, regards me with a nod and a grunt as he leaves. Soon after, a smaller, more nervous fellow exits; preoccupied with his bags, newspapers, cane, hat, and various other possessions, he leaves without acknowledging my presence. Once, when I went to help him retrieve a chainless pocket watch that slipped out of his jacket pocket and rolled to the tip of my shoe, he nearly leapt three feet into the air, as if he hadn’t expected to see a person on the earth aside from himself.

“Excuse me sir,” he mumbled. He did not thank me, but scurried off after taking his watch from my hand.

Both men make a right after exiting the building. Towards Flagg street, towards the light. There they summon a coach or go walking, perhaps, to their middle class apartments nearby. That part of the city is safe. Patrolmen are near enough, or so I have seen on occasion, as I make my long walk home, after being relieved at the end of my shift. Though it is still the middle of the night, the gas lamps are kindled all the way, and the earliest risers of the city begin to prepare their own workdays. Even as my post is replaced at four in the morning, I can sense the spirit of the dawn on a fellow officer, Clyde, who rattles me with his buoyant energy.

“Goodmorning, friend!” He says grinning wildly, shaking my hand with a firm, calloused grip. He immediately takes out a cigarette and begins to smoke, still grinning somehow, and I take that moment to leave. He always seems a bit disappointed.

That is the routine I have come to understand. Well enough for me, as I am one to be lost in thought, and the shift left me alone with mine. It has been a comfort to me, this routine, for the few weeks I have had it. Almost meditative, without the need for interacting with others or the omnipresence of the bustle and noise of the daylight hours. I thought I might enjoy staying on this particular shift a little longer, if they asked me.

It was a few nights ago that I saw something strange, for the first time.

Sometime after the clerks went home for the night, there was a deep chill, and I took to walking towards the eastern tower. I thought of going a bit further, and swinging back, to warm myself with some movement. I lit a cigarette, and passed underneath the light of the sconce. Beyond this it becomes dark, as the courthouse tapers into the easternmost offices and then into an overgrown courtyard surrounded by tall iron gates. Neither the court side, nor the steelworks are lit, and my shadow began to stretch into the abyss of Orchard street.

The steelworks are flanked by deep alleys, filled with large bins of scrap iron, crumbling cargo containers, and doors that seem to have been closed for decades. There are narrow loading docks, portals of pure blackness, filled with the stench of urine and oil.

From the gills of this monstrosity of industrial architecture, I saw a shape come forth; a man’s shape, and it brought itself close enough to touch me in a silent dash in the darkness.

I froze. It was as if I had been shocked by cold lightning. The cigarette was still on my lips, hanging with my mouth agape, as my hands were stuck frozen to my sides. The smoke rose and burned my eyes, obscuring my vision. For a moment, I braced myself for some violence, whether a gunshot, or a fierce stab at my gut, from the silhouette swaying before me. This was my end.

“Oy,” the shadow moaned. “I want one of those…”

It was a man, just an old man.

A vagrant, covered in soiled clothing and reeking of urine, with oil-smudged bags under his eyes. His pallid, blotchy skin was visible for the moments he swayed from the shadow that I cast, and into the failing light of the courthouse. I immediately returned to my senses, though my heart thumped in my chest like a massive war drum.

I took the cigarette out of my mouth, my hand trembling.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“That,” he whined, and pointed a sooty finger at my cigarette. “I’ll take that one, sir, I don’t mind, you’re a healthy one. I’d die for a smoke.” His voice was weak, raw and thin, as if his throat had been sore for all his life.

A slow sense of relief washed over me. I gave him my cigarette, not thinking to pull a fresh one for him from my tin. For a moment, I felt gratitude for the old man’s presence.

“Oh God,” he said. “You’re an angel. My God, this is brilliant. Off with me now, huh? Bless you, lad.”

“Take care, sir”. My heart began to return to its proper place in my chest, and I mindlessly removed another smoke from my tin, returning to the western sconce for the rest of my shift.

I reflected on this moment. Why had the man frightened me so? I am a guard, my very purpose on this shift is to be vigilant of circumstances such as the one I just experienced, and explicitly in the very area where it happened. I am armed, and trained, and paid well enough for the task. I felt a cold curtain of shame enclose me.

With no cigarettes left, I spent the rest of my shift troubled. When Clyde came with his toothy goodmorning, I tipped my hat and made my solemn way home.

I normally sleep from about five in the morning, until noon. But that night, it took quite some time for me to doze, which is a rarity for me. Memories of my childhood rose up from the depths of my subconscious, and filled me with rumination that prevented my mind from relaxing. Even a cup of chamomile tea was little help. I kept a candle on, and watched the gentle light thrown upon the wall dance, hoping it would lull me to sleep.

I remembered nights where I lay in bed as a child, as early as eight in the evening, having trouble sleeping then, too. My mother, who began to change just before my adolescence, would send me to my room early, if we ate supper without my father.

On the nights my father was home, my mother was kept busy catering to his needs. After dinner, he would often smoke a pipe, and read the day's paper while listening to a record we had purchased during the holiday. My mother boiled some tea for him, and gently tried to persuade him to have some with her, though he rarely did. I would take his cup, as it began to cool, and my mother did not seem to notice. It was chamomile tea, with the addition of some milk and sugar.

My father was more interested in whiskey, as he had always been; during his smoke, he would have one, two, three, and more glasses while playing this record, from start to finish, and perhaps once more. My father would become increasingly vocal about the issues he read in the paper, barking out proclamations about how better the city would fare with this or that mayor, or this one or another police commissioner. He was himself an ironworker, employed in the westernmost iron factory block, molding screws, bolts, and other industrial necessities. He often lamented the leadership of the ironworker union, and would slam his glass down as he relived the election he lost for president, too far in my childhood to remember.

“I don’t have the temperament,” he hissed underneath his breath. My mother lamented with him, with a look on her face of trepidation, as during these times my father might lash out for any perceived doubt about his capabilities or character around this matter. The family would, almost on a nightly basis, agree that he was perfectly capable of the position, and that the ironworkers would collectively be in a much better state had he not been so unfairly excluded from consideration. And, by extension, we as a family, would be in a much better position then we were currently. All of it fell upon the incredible mistake made in excluding him from a position he was destined to take.

On nights like those, I was my mother’s assistant, her ally in keeping a farce for my father that made our home one of comfort and celebration of him. I did not have a bedtime on nights like this. We were both on duty.

But he wasn’t often home.

When my father did not join us for dinner, our dinner was agonizingly slow, and silent. My mother would pace like a caged animal in the kitchen after we were done, cleaning this thing, rearranging those, and more than once reviewing the inventory of our icebox. There would be no tea, and I did not bother to ask.

“Oh, I should have picked up some olive oil,” she would say. “I should have swiped another bar of butter, if I knew how much I needed tonight for this.” No words from me were a comfort to my mother, and I of course refrained from sharing any news from school or asking any questions about anything that I had on my mind. She could not handle that.

I was sent to bed early on nights like that. My mother simply had no room for me in the state she was in. My father, whose day ended at six, may stay out late enough for me to miss him before I went to sleep.

If I was awake when he returned, I would crouch by my door, listening. I heard my mother’s restrained supplications, furtive disappointment, or this difficult to grasp, flitting suspicion about his whereabouts. There was little I could gather about what he had done, but I know he drank much more outside of our home at night than he did inside of it. This was the reason for my mother’s mood. Why I was required to end my day earlier than I had wanted.

At times I was shocked out of my sleep by my father's shouting. Only a word or two, but they were thunderclaps of rage at my mother’s questioning and morose demeanor. Other nights, I would hear the slam of a cabinet, or a glass crashing into the kitchen sink, or worse. I knew what it meant, and I knew what had led to it, and so I went back to sleep. If my mother had pushed me outside of that realm, on those nights, I was thankful for it. My mother’s distracted neurosis was by far preferable to my father’s rage.

The next worknight, I loaded my tin with eight cigarettes. I could smoke one an hour, more than I had smoked in some time, but the urge was on me. I intended also to keep one for the old man, had I chanced upon him again. I almost looked forward to it; there was something warming in the way he thanked me, and took a half smoked cigarette so graciously that I felt that I ought to offer him a whole smoke. Perhaps we would make a custom of it. It could be that I was the first person who regarded him with humanity in some time. I thought that, if I saw him again, I would ask his name. I laughed at the thought.

I did see him again that night. But the circumstances were so much more disturbing than the night before.

Sometime long after my midnight lunch, I was making my rounds between the sconces, thinking of a particular wind-up robotic automaton made of tin that was gifted to me one birthday in my childhood. I simply could not remember what came of it, and regretted, of all my young positions, not having it any longer. There was something about it so clever, mechanically, so mystical in its little decorative ornamentations to my childish curiosity, that I wondered what I would feel laying eyes upon it again. I wondered also, what possessed me to get rid of it, and wracked my brain to recall its last moments.

My father had given it to me; it was one of the only moments I can remember him displaying any tenderness towards me, or perhaps, noticing me at all.

With the thought of this little metallic blue android of my past conjured up distinctly into the forefront of my memory, I marched from the eastern to the western sconces, and the time went fluidly by. But my reverie was shattered by an inhuman cry coming from the shadows of the steel works.

This time, though my heart was set to thumping through my chest again, I put my cigarette out and set a hand on my pistol, ready to draw. There was another shrill cry, muffled some and yet echoing, as if issuing forth from the depths of the steel works. Though this was outside the boundaries of my jurisdiction, the thought of the old vagrant man called me forward to investigate. Was he being hurt? And my whom? I felt that I would redeem myself for the cowardice of the night before, by being his rescuer.

In one of the narrow alleys of the steelworks, I found a door. As I placed my hand upon it, and set to pull, I realized it had been imperceptibly ajar. Another noise, a ghastly moan, issued forth from somewhere behind it, and I tore it open quickly. Darkness. I ignited one of the thick wooden matches I carried with me, and the little flame revealed a set of iron-grate stairs leading immediately down into the bowels of the factory.

“Who cries out?” I called, my voice filled with a fierce, deep tone that surprised and reassured me. There was no answer. Before the light of the match reached halfway to my fingertips, I mindlessly dashed down the metal stairs, circling a full floor down into the abysmal depths, listening for the voice. “Hello? Hello!”

The voice responded.

“No, no. Come no closer!” I could not tell if the voice belonged to the old man, as the panicked shrieking was nowhere near any normal tone or volume, and I had only heard him speak for a moment or two the night before. But I thought that, whoever it was that suffered so must be in need of help, and I had already stepped into this darkness ready to take action. I would see it to the end.

I produced another match, and waited to descend another floor before I lit it with the former. At the bottom, the space opened immediately to an enormous storage chamber, filled with massive wooden crates, each taller than a man, stacked atop one another other nearly to the distant ceiling. The smell of mold, dust, oil and steel clogged my nostrils. I stood perplexed, wondering how far into this vast, stifling cavern of industry the man sought to go. I moved forward surrounded by darkness.

“Old man?” I called. My voice sounded thin, stuck in the air. It was as if the heavy stillness of the industrial storage facility sapped the life from it just as it escaped my lips. I thought for a moment of the vacuum of space, and how this buried mausoleum of wood and concrete must compare. I thought again of the tin robot, turning round and round in the dark…

Another cry. This time, closer. I had walked many dozen yards, through the aisles of the tall storage boxes, and by this time my match had sputtered out.

“Sir,” I said. I fumbled for my smokes. “I have a cigarette for you, sir. Please. Come out.”

As I nervously searched my pocket for a smoke and another match, I realized I could still see. There was an ambient, deep blue tint to my surroundings, and I could make out the spaces between the giant crates, and even the pattern of the steel ceiling. What the light was, I could not know. But it was better than using the match to guide me; the sharpness of the little flame provided harsh light for the few feet about me, but cast the rest of my surroundings into an impenetrable blackness. I then had the thought that, if there were anything here, that little light would have revealed me to whatever awaited inside.

From the space between two rows of crates, I heard a noise and blanched in fear.

“Sir?”

Without thought, and the fear thumping up my neck and into my eardrums and throat, I continued forward to where the sound originated. I wanted my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

I found my matches and cigarette tin.

“Please,” the voice said. “Kill me quickly.”

“Sir?”

“Go on with it!!” the thing shrieked. I quickly pulled out my matches, lit one, and stepped briskly forward to bathe the source of the voice in the light of the flame.

Cowering in this narrow space, against the oil stained concrete wall, was the old man. He was wearing nothing but a pair of worn night shorts, and a sleeveless shirt that sagged from his boney frame. He was arched in the back, embracing himself, averting his eyes from my light and chittering to himself pitifully. He massaged his shoulders with those same, sooty fingers that I recognized.

“Man,” I said. I lit two cigarettes simultaneously, with hands steadier than i expected, and began smoking one. Like the night before, I was relieved to see him. I was not sure what I expected to find, and my bravery was only a mindless desperation to erase my cowardice from the night before. What would I have done had I found someone else here, not cowering, but enraged or out of his mind, intent on harming me?

“You scared me to death. Please, take this. It’s me.”

Slowly, the old man turned over his gaze to me, recognizing the familiar sound and smell of our shared vice. I kept the match lit, and brought it close enough to my fave to singe my mustache.

“It’s me, Sir.”

As if seeing the image of a saint, the old man lurched forward with tears in his eyes. He babbled to me gratefully and giggled, between madness and joy, hardly able to lay his stiff hands on the cigarette. I put it in his mouth for him, and lit it.

Together we laughed for a moment without words, and enjoyed the habit. With a hand on his shoulder, I escorted him from the bowels of this musty, neglected place. We emerged from the alley, and I put my jacket around his shoulders.

As I walked him back to my post, I asked him his name.

He thought for a moment. It was as if he had forgotten.

“Arthur,” he said. His exhausted smile, baring a half a mouthful of teeth in terrible shape, was strained. He raised an arm and pointed down Orchard street. “I grew up on the east side. I came to keep you safe. Someone’s got to make a sacrifice.”

“I see,” I said, not understanding. “I’m-”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Where have you been?!” I heard Clyde holler. “You weren’t at your post, I thought perhaps you’d quit. The tramp! I told you to be off from around here!”

I was shocked for a moment. Had so much time passed? How was it that I had been down in that darkness for so long? It seemed impossible. But here Clyde was, and directing his ire towards the poor old fellow. He was as haughty in his impatience as he was in his joviality. Both of them annoyed me.

“I’m sorry, Clyde, the man needed a hand.”

“That’s not your job. You’re supposed to be at your post. You understand that the rear entrance need’s watch non-stop. If the clerks are disturbed for this case by any of those eastside gang affiliates, our precinct will be on us, you and I.”

“I understand,” I replied evenly. He wasn’t wrong. But the old man…

“I’m sorry, it was because of me, I got myself lost.”

“And you,” Clyde said stepping forward. “I told you not to loiter around near the courthouse, didn’t I? I almost cracked you one some nights ago, slinking up to me before dawn. I have a mind to crack you now.”

“I-”

“Wait,” I said. “There’s no need to go threatening him. He’s already apologized.”

“He’s wearing your jacket, man! What is the matter with you?” Clyde barked at me.

“It’s cold,” I offered flatly. He was beginning to raise my own ire.

“That’s his problem, isn’t it?”

The old man slowly took off my jacket, with a defeated smile. He handed it to me, and I handed him another cigarette and my matches.

“Go get some rest, Arthur. And stay away from the courthouse.”

Arthur took my gifts thankfully and bowed, touching his forehead to my knuckles.

“Thank you, lad. God watch over you.”

“Saints, man. I don’t know what is the matter with you…”

I walked from Clyde without a word, especially exhausted. Had I not been so ready to get home, I would have traded a few more stiff words with Clyde. The cheerful attitude he displays during our brief meetings seem now even more of a farce, as underneath was a compassionless heart. I would rather he shared his true face from the first.

At home, I slept a dark, dream filled sleep - and I remembered something I had forgotten long ago.

There were three dreams, all interrupted by a sudden awakening that found me sweating and breathless.

In the first dream, I was in the narrow, patchy yard that was available to my family in our first apartment. I was digging holes, wasting away a weekend afternoon, knowing that inside, my mother and father were at it. I remember having a few of my old toys out there with me, playing a game I called friends and war. It was a game that started with some of my toys beginning as friends, and after a disagreement, sides were chosen, and two factions battled each other until one was victorious. The little holes I dug were graves for those that had fallen.

“The robot is dead,” I said, for the soldier that was stuck taking a knee, with his rifle aimed towards the enemy. “We have to bury him.”

“Wait,” I said, for the train conductor, who was always the most level-headed of any faction he reluctantly became a part of. “He’s not from this planet. What if he wants to go home?”

“It doesn’t matter what he wants,” the soldier replied. “He’s dead now.”

I put the robot inside of the holes.

I heard my mother call to me from the flimsy door of the apartment leading out into the yard. In her eyes was terror.

“What’s the matter mother?” I asked, taking on her feelings without knowing what it was we were afraid of.

“Dig a big hole, and put yourself in it,” she demanded quietly. At once, I understood that my mother wanted me to hide. In instances where my mother spoke in sharp, hushed tones, it was imperative that I did as she commanded. In the dream, it made sense to me. I nodded to her, and went over to my toys, to begin digging a hole large enough for myself.

As I dug, I threw some of the dirt into the hole of the robot.

“We’ll both hide,” I thought to myself.

My own hole of dirt was much more expansive than it seemed from the outside. Within it, the entrance was far overhead, and the light of the sun was merely a circle too far now for me to reach.

Silhouetted before the light of the sky, a head and shoulders appeared, and called my name. The voice that called was malicious and malevolent. I knew that this was who my mother intended me to hide from.

When I awoke, I walked to the toilet. The two cups of chamomile I drank before bed were ready to make an exit.

I was sure that I had buried the poor tin robot in that yard. I wondered if any children lived in that apartment now, and if they had gone digging like I had. They would have discovered an ancient, rotted relic, raising it up out of the ground like a mysterious fossil, wondering where it had come from. The thought filled me with some comfort.

The second dream was a dream about Arthur. In this dream, I had followed him home after our meeting in the factory, because he was naked, and was ashamed to make the walk alone. Arthur went into an apartment somewhere in the slums of the eastern district closest to the industrial facilities of the easternmost western district. It seemed that the apartment itself was like a small storage place, long abandoned, and I wondered if Arthur was merely taking shelter in various storage rooms from night to night.

I peered through a window of his apartment, hoping to see him. Inside the apartment were merely more storage crates. Arthur skulked, looking into corners and around the crates, with an expression of blank fear. He looked even older than I remembered him, a mere husk of a man, all bones and sinew. He found a space between two crates, and tucked himself within, facing outward. He saw me peering in at him through the window.

I knocked on the glass.

“I’m lost!”

His shriek woke me. I regretted not asking Arthur more questions. Why was he wandering the factory? Was he without a home? Where was his family? Was he hungry? I could have put him up for the night at my place; I have a simple apartment now, with nothing at all to steal aside from what is in my pantry and closet. I could help him acquire some help from the city, whether it be at the shelter for older citizens, or with the local parish to secure food and clothing. Before I returned to sleep, I thought I’d find out more about Arthur, on the next shift where I happened to see him. I wanted to help him. I decided upon it.

My final dream was more of a memory, repressed after all this. It was something that had happened to me in the cloudy era of my single digit years. I was holding my tin robot, walking slowly as if entranced to the living room, where I saw the door open to the cold night.

“Mother?” It seemed no one was there.

I called for her again, knowing well that one or both of my parents had been pulled outside by some urgency. I reluctantly followed, dread numbing my every step.

Outside, there was a scream, down the street, that belonged to my mother. I saw her running from the apartment, becoming smaller and smaller, as she called out to who I believed was my father. Only one nearby gaslamp lit the immediate area, some steps ahead of me on the pavement. I walked from the open door, into the darkness, and slowly sought the refuge of the light under the gaslamp.

Before I could get there, something appeared under that light that froze me in my tracks.

It was a figure. The figure.

I felt my body become imprisoned in a web of fright. I was injected with a coldness that I could feel in my sleeping body, and in that moment I knew I was dreaming of something that had happened to me. I felt plucked from my current consciousness, right out of my current physical form, into a time and place that belonged very much to me. One so terrible that I had buried it, hoping never to see it again.

I stood stock still, a few yards from my apartment door, but a few yards from the gaslamp, in the darkness between. Looming before me, less than five long steps between myself and the gaslamp, the figure put all of its attention upon me. I could feel its curiosity, its indecent examination of my being, from my physical form, to the contents of my thought. I felt its awareness slip into my heart as it pumped pure terror through me, and in its grip, I was as helpless as a rat inside the coils a constrictor snake.

It was a being made of pure, absorbing darkness. I could see no texture, no clothing, no skin. Though it had arms I could not decipher its hands; though it had legs I could not bring myself to see if they reached the floor. I could only look, transfixed, at what I perceived to be the area within the head-like shape over its shoulders, searching for any shred of humanity. I searched for its eyes, or mouth, anything that told me that this thing was something with which I could communicate.

But my very soul told me that it was not; what I was witnessing before me was an entity beyond the confines of my understanding of the world. And it had witnessed me, too.

“MOTHER!” my own screaming awakened me.

I could not, and would not, return to sleep. I rose from my bed and showered, putting everything I had dreamt away. I shaved, and tidied up my place. I concentrated all of my thought on the possibility of seeing Arthur again, and what I may do to help him. I decided that the last two nights of peculiar events must have dug up some of the more unsettling business of my early years, and left them floating about in my subconscious. Perhaps the strange night schedule was not optimal for me. I considered the idea that it would be best for me to allow this shift to play itself out, and that I may return to the solace of daytime working hours, where I would be obligated into the company of some of my workmates. I would work when the sun was out, amidst the bustle and life of the day I had avoided for some weeks.

I did not see Arthur the next night, or the night after. Some few days passed, and I wondered if the incident with Clyde had put him off from returning to the factory near Flagg street.

For the first time, I spoke to Clyde as he came to relieve me.

“Oy, Clyde. Anymore of that old tramp?” I asked.

Clyde laughed. “No, your little pet’s been away. I’m glad for it. He should stay where his lot often congregates. There are numerous homeless shelters for men of his age and condition over in the east.”

“I see,” I said. Though I worried for Arthur, it was a relief that Clyde had been given no more opportunities to abuse him.

“You’re a strange fellow. Always brooding. But listen, the trial is coming to an end, and the post is nearly finished. I heard the lieutenant boasting of a new call from the mayor’s office, in need of a half dozen men to post near the square of the municipal buildings. There are a string of shops nearby, and the college. It’s a posh post, with a good office and a pleasant walkabout. I heard him say he’d offer it first to the two Orchard street boys. That’s you and me.”

It sounded well enough to me. I’d take it. I warmed to the idea of working with Clyde. He was indeed a rough mannered man, hardly thinking before he said a word. But it seems that he is not by nature malicious. Only hot tempered and a little pushy.

“Well,” I said. “I’d certainly take it if they offered. We’ll see.”

“We’ll see indeed. Don’t look so excited, you old stoic. And don’t get us canned before the time either.”

“I certainly will not,” I said, allowing myself to laugh.

I thought that, perhaps, it was not in my destiny to rescue old Arthur.

Days passed, and I thought about a tea shop near the mayor’s square. I filled my nights with the imaginings of my new post, and what I may discover with it.

Then, last night, it happened.

An hour or so after my lunch, I stood underneath the easternmost sconce, having my smoke. I had begun to let my mind wander again.

I had been deep inside of a reverie about the idea of a partner, a wife. I wondered why I had gone so long without entertaining the idea that I could be someone’s husband. I too, could be a father. I asked myself, what type of father would I be? Would I be overly serious? Would I be gentle, would I be a model of good nature and good habits? I thought of my own toys, the ones lined up on the shelf near the bed, and knew that at the very least, my child would have good toys. Soldiers, cars, trains, wooden swords for the both of us; papers for drawing, games, prizes won from the visiting carnaval, anything that excited them. The idea excited me, too. I could look for another little robot, and tell my child the story of how I buried mine in our old yard. I thought about looking up at my wife, as my child and I played together with these treasures, to see how she looked at us. I wanted to know what that kind of face may look like. I don’t ever remember my mother wearing an expression like the one I wanted to see. What would she look like, this mother of my-

A distant scream. For a moment, I thought it was only an echo of my dreams nearly a week before. I hardly reacted at first, but I took another cigarette from the tin and lit it. Since I started this post, I have worked my way up to smoke a dozen cigarettes a day.

Another scream, from far down on Orchard. What was this madness now? I was thrown into an immediate paradox of relief and anxiety; on one hand, I can assume that the sound was from Arthur. If it was indeed him, I would help him, as I promised myself. On the other hand, I wondered what it was that haunted him so. He came to keep me safe, or some such nonsense. It seemed to me that he was the one suffering from some illness, or a breakdown of his psychological state. Perhaps old Arthur was insane.

Then I thought of the murders. What kind of person commits acts of such savagery, and why? Was it the blackmarket gangsters in the eastern districts? Was it a man like Arthur? How is it that I have not thought of these things, during this post, walking into the darkness, away from the light?

I found myself walking down Orchard, despite this queue of thoughts parading in and out of my mind one after another. I placed one hand on my pistol, and another free to smoke.

Fifty yards, one hundred yards, down Orchard, and another scream, much closer.

“Arthur!” I called.

The beginning of the eastern districts was a desolate, disregarded scene from another world. There seemed to be no life here. No gas lamps, no apartment complexes. Only faceless, anonymous old structures of industry with no industry to have a purpose for. Stores, long closed. Lots with nothing in them but tall weeds, growing between severe cracks in the pavement. Under the moonlight, the entire scene was coated in a deep, dim blue.

“Arthur?”

Another hundred yards forward, and I found myself at the dead end of Orchard, where another empty street intersected. On either side, it seemed the street went on for eternity, into the unknown, into misty dreams. Before me was a tall, dilapidated shack of a structure, doorless and nearly collapsing, with a single, circular stained glass window over its entrance. It was partially shattered, but what remained seemed carefully and skillfully wrought. A flower, or else something as innocent. How do things come to this state of neglect? Why do we bring something into being, only to forget it?

I had wandered far from my post. I remembered Clyde, and his warning about it.

There was a stifled whimper, just a head, inside of the stained glass shop. As if guided by some other force, I stepped towards it with no regard to the feeling percolating inside the pit of my stomach.

“Arthur?”

The voice began to moan, and then increased its intensity. It became a slowly rising wail, one that I had not heard before, even in all the strange phenomenon of the last few weeks. It unnerved me to my core.

Suddenly, there was a flickering, and then a splash of ominous, pale purple light issuing from the inside of the stained glass building. I thought of fire, for a moment, but it was not the right color.

I heard more voices, a discordant choir, all rising in a wail that seemed similar to the first. Gooseflesh on the nape of my neck rose, and I felt a wave of coldness spread all over my limbs, starting from my chest. My concern for Arthur became outright panic, and I drew my pistol, and with steps like a child new to walking, I stumbled forward with an effort towards the sound.

Inside of a large, empty room, was an inferno of ghastly light. With my pistol raised, I scanned looking for the source, but as I got closer to what I believed was the focus of the lights, something ahead of me obstructed my view. A long, narrow column of darkness, like a black pillar, looming over the source of this wailing…

As in a dream, I moved in a semicircle, slowly angling off from this swathe of impenetrable blackness to witness the spectacle of the wailing, and the lights. Though I was quivering with the sensation of a deeply embodied terror, I moved as if on a track not of my own design. I was compelled to bear witness.

The lights, and the wailing, intensified as if aware of my presence.

At that moment, it was almost as if I was watching myself, instead of being. I was now the passenger of my body, at the whim of the pilot, who had set a course that I would have never chosen.

The whole terrifying scene came into view. The lights, the wailing. Arthur.

And the figure.

Within the violently undulating edges of the ghostly light, Arthur stood harshly bent, withering like a dying flower. Before him, this thing, the being from the depths of my forgotten childhood, towered, with one willowy limb extended down between them. The end of the nebulous limb was embedded into Arthur’s disfigured face. The hand was like the outermost appendage of a swaying tree of twisted shadow, a tributary of fingers spread like branches growing into Arthur’s misshapen skull. From Arthur’s ever widening mouth came that inhuman, skin-rending wail, though his voice was not the only one. There were others, suffering in such a way that I could scarcely keep my mind enough to witness, let alone comprehend. Where they were, I could not tell.

Arthur’s body, naked as he was in my dream, was like a burnt stalk of corn. He no longer resembled a living human, but seemed devoid of organs and even bones. His torso was nearly the width of a limb, and his limbs were shrinking tendrils, bending and twisting in ways that I can only describe as impossible. His face was an amorphous blob, glowing with a pale white tint, the only recognizable features of a face of any semblance in the enormous, colorless eyes, and enlarged mouth. Like a kite in an oak tree, Arthur’s whole being quivered lifelessly, ensnared by the sinuous hand of the terrible figure.

Arthur, I called in my heart, too afraid to speak. But I pointed my pistol, as my muscles had decided to enact on my training, at the unearthly being.

I let off a shot that I could not hear. I let off one or two more, if my memory serves. The madness of that maelstrom of screaming and lights made all else seem as if it was outside of reality. The only real thing here was the nightmare.

I came to keep you safe.

“Arthur,” I witnessed myself say. It was as if someone else said it.

I tried, like I had in my childhood, to follow the line of the narrow body of the tall figure, into the space where a face should be. This time, I was struck so deeply by what I saw, that my pistol fell out of my hand, my cigarette fell out of my mouth, and after this, I remember no more.

In the empty darkness of the figure’s head, were two burning white orbs for eyes. It was if I was granted a view into deep space, had the stars been removed from all of the universe, save two. Two twin stars, each possessed by an evil so beyond my ability to conceptualize, that I felt my consciousness waver like a candle in a storm. In that moment, I remember that my mind, my spirit, my very being, was of so little import in this world that whether or not I died here, or what became of my story, mattered not even the slightest. And as I peered into this two-starred universe of incomprehensible malevolence, I realized that it too, was peering at me.

Like the first time I came across this horror, I felt naked down to my soul. No content of my heart or mind was safe from its probing presence, no part of me not bare to a gaze that went beyond mere sight. I was, once again, helpless before it, no greater than the child that I was in its inhuman eyes. I felt that my body and spirit would be torn in half, by this sudden otherworldly scrutiny. What was worse was the reality that laid itself before me as those two distance stars-for-eyes regarded my presence, an instant realization that it must have forced upon me despite my incapacitated state:

It had remembered me.

I awoke days later, to the furrowed brow of Clyde floating over my face, in a hospital room. He laughed, and shook my shoulders, and I remember a duo of nurses, and a doctor, ushering him out. There was much to do about me coming to my senses, as it had been two whole days. I was famished, and thirsty. And I shut the doors closed on what I had experienced.

Clyde returned with two heaping portions of mashed potatoes with gravy, from the hospital cafeteria, and a large jug of water.

“The saints, man. I knew you were a strange one. Eat up. When you leave here, we’ll go get a roast.”

As my medical examinations seemed relatively normal, I was released after a monitoring period of a few hours. It seemed there was nothing the doctor could identify as a problem, now that I had regained consciousness, but that I should return immediately if anything came up. I gave them my promise and my thanks, and left to see Clyde outside waiting for me.

Clyde told me that some language interpreter from the courthouse on Flagg had called the authorities to the eastern districts after witnessing lights that seemed like a fire erupting down Orchard street. A few vagrants in the area further corroborated this, and added that they could hear screaming. Upon reaching the source of the incident, fire responders found me passed out inside of a long abandoned toy shop, amidst flames that were bringing the entire place down. My pistol had been recovered next to me, and no others were recovered at the scene, dead or alive.

I remember no fire. But I dropped my cigarette, at that moment…

“You are a madman,” Clyde said. He thought that I had gone to rescue some more pet tramps, this time from a fire, even farther from my post than he found me the last time. I would not be removed from my duties, from what Clyde prophesied, but let off with a warning about abandoning duty; there was a response protocol, and if there was another such emergency, I would follow them, or else. Otherwise, I was considered a hero of sorts, as it was assumed that I was the first into action to rescue anyone trapped in the blaze down Orchard. I had saved lives, it was conjectured, and I am sure that in the retelling by Clyde and some of my other peers, the embellishments on my heroism would continue to grow.

As I began to come back to myself, I remembered Arthur.

“Arthur? You really knew him?” Clyde asked, mystified.

“I did,” I said, as we ate a beef roast and more potatoes together at a local precinct eatery. It was Clyde that did most of the eating. I was more in the mood for some good chamomile tea.

“He was not a bad man at all. He was a good man, in fact, if anyone got a chance to know him. But some of us become lost.”

In the following year, I would be introduced to Clyde’s sister, Clarice. Clyde eventually became my brother-in-law. Clarice is patient, and compassionate. She has helped me drop my habit of smoking, but I have taken to drinking many cups of tea a day. At night, when I have to use the toilet for the inevitable exit of my last cup of the day, I bring our cat, Ghost.

I have told Clarice about my thoughts of fatherhood, and some other things that I have never shared with anyone in my life, including my father, his heavy drinking, and an old man named Arthur that I knew once.

But there are some things that must remain buried, and forgotten.