As he walked toward the tower, he was aware that he and Ares were being watched. The sound of work around him had stopped and the dull hum of voices and conversation quieted. The eerie silence that had settled over the outskirts of this shape shifter city rushed in and blanketed the inner city just as completely as if there were no souls around at all.
William’s mouth had gone dry and for the first time in a long time, he was nervous. He glanced around him. He saw that werewolves had gathered out in the street and were watching him walk toward the tower in silence. There weren’t very many, but they looked proud and strong, every one of them. He saw a red werewolf standing next to a building corner. He saw another one, only this one was a deep, rich, brown nodding to him, or maybe it was nodding to Ares, he couldn’t be sure.
He reached the building and looked up. He noticed for the first time that the only lights that shone into the street from the various windows of the tower were on the sixth floor. He studied the dark doorway that gaped open in front of him. There was no door. He was aware that he hadn’t seen a door since he came into this place.
Ares stood behind him, a few steps distance. He was waiting for William to enter the building. Aren’t you coming too? He couldn’t really worry about that now. He glanced behind him and the massive werewolf nodded his head once with a look in his eyes that might have been mistaken for sympathy. William took a deep breath and, letting it out through his nose, he walked into the foreboding void that was the tower in front of him.
And now he was here, in an almost perfect darkness with no idea of what to do, or what was expected of him inside this tower. He didn’t know what he was looking for and his search took up long minutes. What was he doing here? How was he supposed to get to that light on the sixth floor? Was this all just a test? He couldn’t be sure of anything.
There is nothing here. How am I supposed to get up to the sixth floor if I can’t even get out of the first floor? He turned back toward the open doorway and pressed his back against the cool stone of the wall. The light that streamed into the perfect darkness from the doorway looked so inviting. It was the only thing that disturbed his surroundings.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. He smelled dust and age. There was no hint of decay, not like what he had smelled on the outskirts of the city. Here there was no mold, no stale sweat. There was the slight twinge of blood though. He wondered what that could mean. He inhaled again. A slight whiff of wind cut through the blood and age of this room. It had been so slight that he couldn’t feel it, but he could smell the difference in the air.
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He stood up and walking forward, following the clean scent of moving air off to his right. He walked, probing with his feet. His eyes were useless in the perfect black but he allowed his nose to paint the room for him. He could imagine the room in his mind. If it was a block like the outside suggested, and if his feet hadn’t missed anything the room began to form in his imagination. The cubic room was bare of any furniture but there was a portal in the ceiling that allowed that wind to pass through the barren space and escape back out into the city.
How would one get up to the portal?
The question rang out in his mind like a foghorn. He would worry about that when and if he came up to the wall. His feet kicked up against the wall. He reached out and felt the hard smooth stone of the wall that he had kicked. There was no ladder, no steps, no nothing except the clear air passing down around him from the open portal above him. He pressed up against the wall and lowered his head between his outstretched arms. He closed his eyes against the perfect void that surrounded him. His eyes were useless here anyway.
He remembered being locked in a closet. He had wondered into the space as a young child no more than three years old. He had closed the door behind him to hide from his mom. After a few minutes the dark began to scare him, and he decided that his mom wasn’t as scary as that darkness. When he reached up to turn the doorknob it wouldn’t turn. His clumsy little fingers grasped and scratched at the knob and the door, but it wouldn’t open. He hit the door several times but no one came for him. He had begun to cry. The dark seemed to be alive and was laughing at him. He was terrified and he shut his eyes tight against it. He cried louder and still no one came for him.
The louder he cried the more the darkness laughed at him. Eventually, he stopped crying. The darkness would laugh at him whether he cried or not. He was only three, but he would not let anybody laugh at him. He turned away from the door and remained silent listening to the darkness. The dark room had stopped laughing and he walked slowly forward into the dark with his hands out in front of him groping his way forward.
His hands felt against clothes, and he buried himself in the hanging fabric. He sat down with his back against the wall and the clean clothes brushed up against his skin. He felt the warmth of his mom in those clothes, and he felt the rough strength of his father in the jacket that was rubbing against his face and shoulder.
For them he would be strong. He wouldn’t let his mom find him in the closet crying like a baby. He wasn’t a baby. He was three and half and he was going to act like it. He stayed there for a long time. He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew he awoke in his bed.