He knew that there would be no mom or dad carrying him from this place though. He had learned on that day that there was always a way out of the darkness, he just had to find it. This is a city of werewolves. He thought back to the city and the architecture of this place. There had been ramps that had been built into the buildings along the way here. Those ramps could be for wolves to get to the upper structures of the city. Could it be possible that there was a similar ramp leading up to the portal he was standing under?
He turned back toward the open doorway and walked toward the light. He walked along the wall away from the doorway, rubbing his hands against the smooth stone wall.
He walked several steps away from the doorway and his hands felt the sharp edge of something. He probed the surface of the wall and he discovered that there was at least a ten-to-twelve-inch lip that had been carved into the stone. It was his ramp. Using both of his hands he felt out to his side, and he discovered where the ramp met the floor. Pressing his back up against the wall, he moved up the ramp.
Reaching the top of the ramp he stepped up into the next room. The second room, one story higher up on the six-story tall tower, was just as dark as the first one and he wondered if there was a second portal in the ceiling that he was supposed to find. A slam met his ears, shattering the silence that had surrounded him since he came into the building. He instinctively turned around and as soon as he did the room erupted in a deafening roar. He pressed his hands to his ears but the sound was so loud it cut through the flesh of his hands like they weren’t there at all.
He couldn’t concentrate.
All he could hear was the cacophonous noise that threatened to drive his sanity into oblivion. He couldn’t think. There was nothing but the noise. He fell to his knees as the noise passed through his brain driving him mad. He stared toward the floor. He began to hear through the noise and there were voices. Voices he had heard before. The voice of the old grey was there.
“William.”
The voices whispered through the maelstrom of sounds that buffeted his conciseness.
“William, William”
The voices just kept whispering his name over and over again. He didn’t know what they wanted. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He yelled back out at the voices and the noise that was driving him deaf. He pressed his hands against his ears harder, but the noise passed through them with no more difficulty than a moment ago. His yells did nothing to drown out the noise and the voices were still whispering to him, laughing at him.
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He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t think. He pressed his hands against the side of his face just wanting the terrible noise to end. Somehow, he knew that it would never end. He felt a warm sticky feeling on his hands. He knew that his ears were bleeding. He was going to die here. He could not stop the noise or protect himself from it. It would eat at his sanity and his brain and he would die.
He was twelve years old. He was standing at his bus stop waiting to be taken to school. He was a little shy and a little undersized for his age. Most of the other boys his age were taller and bigger than he was. He didn’t say much and tried to stay out of everyone’s way. He went to school and came home. He helped his parents cook dinner and work around the house. He had a group of friends that he hung out with but only on the weekends and then only when he had finished his chores and helping his dad around the house. Sometimes, depending on the project, he didn’t leave home at all. That was ok. He liked helping his dad. And he didn’t mind that he wasn’t the most popular kid in school.
On this day he was standing on the sidewalk, shivering in the cold of winter. The ground was still covered with a fine layer of frost that painted the nearby suburban yards white. He used to think it was snow, but he knew better now. The bitter cold bit at his face and neck. The harsh wind cut through his clothes as if he was naked. He huddled down deeper into his jacket trying to stay warm.
A car drove by. It was going really slow and he watched as one of the windows was rolled down. The head and shoulders of Robert Jenkins popped out. Robert Jenkins was a blonde haired, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered asshole that took any opportunity to impugn everyone else.
He had a girlfriend, Sally Ronstadt, and that apparently gave him the right to walk around their school like he owned the place and take whatever he wanted. He would push other kids over for no reason. He was well built and that made him invincible. The teachers thought he was an angel and his girlfriend worshipped the ground he walked on.
Robert learned out of his older brothers’ car and yelled “If you’re so cold maybe you should buy some new clothes. Oh, wait you can’t cuz you’re mom’s a crack whore on welfare!” The car immediately sped up and Robert ducked back in through the window.
He stood there on the sidewalk. The temperature hadn’t changed. It was still just as cold as it had been a moment ago but for some reason, he wasn’t cold anymore. He stood up straight and did not allow his body to try and hide from the cold. He didn’t flex his muscles; he didn’t concentrate on the hatred he felt for that asshole, Robert Jenkins. He just didn’t allow the cold to touch him. He fought against it and his body stopped shivering.
He came to know years later that the difference between people from the north and people from more southern warmer climates is how they deal with their environments. People from North Dakota don’t complain about the cold because they have been living in it their whole lives. They didn’t have any choice but to deal with it. Just like people living in New Mexico didn’t complain about the heat because they had to deal with it. Someone from Florida could deal with the snow and cold of New Hampshire, most just choose not to. They hide behind some bogus excuse of ‘my blood is too thin to handle the cold’ and they complain endlessly about how cold they are. The forces of the environment can be ignored and faced but only if you choose to.