(Publishing first chapter early for @the-rum-thief: happy birthday!)
People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down –The Doors, “People Are Strange”
The pupil-black sky is thick with the scent of rain. In this part of the city, those few buildings still open to the public cocoon themselves in light. The streets stretch their shadows across themselves. People avoid the darkening streets with the same instinct as birds flying south in the season of death. Those who don’t know better may see a police car zipping down the street, lights flashing and siren screaming, and feel comfort. This feeling is a lie. There are things that dwell in the shadows of the city, things it is best to pretend to ignore.
Nichelle twists the key. The door locks with a satisfying click. She peeks up at the overcast sky, soothed by the soft moonlight seeping through the clouds. She needs all the help she could get to ease her nerves at this time of year. Devil’s Night is making a fierce comeback. It’s not a time to caught out alone on the streets. She can’t wait to get home. The sickos who torch buildings on Devil’s Night steer clear of her loft. People who were around back then say the place is haunted. Nichelle was barely a toddler at the time, but her mom told her stories about some guy–Edward? Eric–who came back from the dead and killed the bastards who raped and killed his girlfriend then shot him and tossed him out a window. Twinkie tells her all the time that she’s a brave woman for living there.
“Not brave, just cheap,” she quips back.
Speaking of Twinkie…
Nichelle fishes her phone from her pocket and hits speed dial. While the phone rings, Nichelle glances at the billboard for the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. It shows the silhouette of the gunslinger with his back turned and facing a wide, bleach-white desert. Below, the letters read:
The epic adventure of all time
Stephen King’s The Dark Tower
Book I: The Gunslinger
COMING SOON
Twinkie’s thick, bleary voice croaks hello.
“Hey, Twinkie. I’m closing up right now,” she says. Twinkie quickly wakes up from her nap. They talk about nothing as Nichelle counts her till, puts items back where they belong, and cleans up. This is their system for making sure one of them doesn’t go missing without the other knowing about it. Besides, talking to Twinkie makes closing go by more quickly.
“Another day, another dollar for Thirfty Stylez,” she says, “All I gotta do now is get–shit!”
“Nicki? Nicki! What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong is six-foot-six, white, and has long, black hair. What’s wrong is wearing ill-fitting clothes from the men’s casual section. The part of her mind that only wants to make babies notes that he’s an attractive male specimen. The other part of her mind, the part wired for self-preservation, screams DANGER!
She screams and yells, “TWINKIE CALL THE COPS! SOMEBODY IN HERE!”
She bolts toward the back door with all she’s got. She’s three strides in when arms like iron wrap around her and pull her close. Everything feels suddenly slower. The phone slips from her hand, falls to the floor, and comes apart. Just when she needs to be completely focused on the moment, her mind drifts, to a horrid, rancid place where she is surrounded by grunts and growls, teeth and claws sink into her flesh, and many hands grope in the dark. Something inside her snaps, and all her mental energies direct themselves into one singular thought: Get this motherfucker off me. She turns into a blur of kicking, scratching, biting, and shouting.
When she comes back to herself, she is pinned to the ground beneath him, and the detached observer part of her remarks that this would be nice under different circumstances. Every part of her is exhausted. Her limbs feel like lead, so she can’t move. Her lungs are on fire, so she can’t scream. She feels the tears coming, and she feels so weak, but what else is there to do but weep? There’s nothing she can do about what’s coming next. She just hopes it will be over soon.
Then a voice comes to her as though from inside her brain that says, do not be afraid; I will not harm you.
She gives him a really good look. The first thing she notices are his eyes. They are a kind of gray she has never seen before. They have a metallic sheen that made them shimmer like
(mithril)
silver. Within their depths, are many years of happiness and sorrow, but that cannot be because he looks too young to have such an old soul. Then his brows draw together, and his lips purse. There’s something so familiar about that expression on his face. It makes her want to laugh, though only God knows why. His scent reminds her of old, leather-bound books, fast-flowing rivers, and fresh mountain air. It’s a smell she wants to wrap herself in to sit by warm fires on cold nights.
The cops burst through the back door, guns drawn.
“Freeze, asshole!” shouts one of them. They advance on the two of them, and the stranger does something she does not expect. He slowly gets off her and places himself between her and the cops’ line of fire.
“Hands in the air, scumbag! I said get your goddamn hands in the air!”
They cuff the stranger none too gently. It’s raining hard when they take him to the police car, and they all get drenched. As if in retribution for this mishap, they slam the stranger on the hood of the car and pat him down without even trying not to bruise him. Nichelle feels herself nodding to a question one of the cops asks her about making a statement at the station. The rain plasters the stranger’s hair and clothes to his body, and she almost faints when she sees the stranger’s pointed ears. The stranger is shoved in the back seat of the car, and the police drive away.
Twinkie is at the station when Nichelle gets there. She greets her with a hug and nods when Twinkie asks if she’s alright.
“I’ma be right here while they take your statement, a’ight?” asks Twinkie. Nichelle nods.
“You gonna be OK,” she says. She gives Nichelle another hug and takes her place on the bench next to all the other people waiting for their loved ones.
Nichelle sits at the desk where the cops said Officer Ramirez will take her statement. With nothing else to do, she scans his desk as she waits. There’s a computer, a stress ball, and several pictures of a girl ranging infant to toddler to small child. When Ramirez shows up, Nichelle is surprised by how unassuming he looks. He’s just a regular-looking guy with graying hair and a mustache that’s about twenty-five years out of date.
It takes them a while to get her statement. What happened is easy enough to communicate, but Ramirez has to write it all down then ask follow up questions that say the exact same thing.
“Is that your daughter?” asks Nichelle.
Ramirez grins as he scrawls Nichelle’s statement on the form.
“Yeah, mi angelita,” he says.
“How old is she?”
“She, uh, would’ve been grown up by now.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
An hour later, and Ramirez still hasn’t gotten back yet. Nichelle desperately misses her phone. She’s tempted to use Ramirez’s computer and hop online, but that might be some sort of crime. She glances at Twinkie, who does have her phone, and feels a twinge of envy. Just as she was considering reading the phone book just to have something to do, Ramirez comes back with a baffled look on his face.
“Alright, Miss Washington,” he says, “The good news is if you want to press charges, your chances of a conviction are really good. The bad news is we can’t prove who he is or where the hell he comes from.”
“What?”
“There’s nothing in our system that identifies who he is or where he lives. No driver’s license, no visa, no passport, no fingerprints, no prior arrests or convictions, nothing. And he may or may not understand English.”
“How does that happen?” asks Nichelle.
“You’d be surprised, Miss Washington. Do you wish to proceed with pressing charges?”
Nichelle thinks about it. Does she want to send the stranger to jail? It happened so fast, and it doesn’t add up to robbery or sexual assault. Or maybe her mind played a trick and fooled her into thinking there was more to what the stranger did.
“I need to think about it,” she says. Ramirez nods.
“Will you get back to us tomorrow whatever you decide?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says. Ramirez opens the desk drawer and plucks a card from a scattered mess of rubber bands, ink pens, paper clips, and other office supplies. She thanks Ramirez, finds Twinkie, and leaves.
The ride home is blessedly quiet. She wants to tell Twinkie about the things she saw and heard and felt when the stranger was at the store, things that make her think that the stranger was not there to hurt her, but she can’t find the words to describe it.
“You need me to stay?” asks Twinkie. Nichelle shakes her head and thanks her. After making sure, again, that she doesn’t need company tonight, Twinkie bids her goodnight and goes home.
A long, hot shower washes away the tension built up over tonight. Smelling fresh and slightly damp, Nichelle slips into bed and pulls the blanket to her chin. She is out like a light before she takes ten breaths. She dreams of flying above a steep valley where a river flows wild.
As Nichelle falls asleep, someone else awakens from dreams of fire and death. It always starts the same: the star of Ëarendil falls from the sky and lands somewhere eastward. A flaming eye turns toward it and smolders with hate. The air is filled with screams. Charred bodies pile high as mountains. A blighted landscape crawls with the dregs of humanity. They worship at an altar made of severed limbs, bowing to the Spider God.
When the sleeper awakens, the horror of the dream still clings to his mind. Tien’s tiny hand strokes his face.
“Bad dream again?” she asks. She snuggles close to him, but he finds small comfort in her warmth and softness.
“I need to go,” he says in her native tongue.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. East, I think.”
“Why?”
“If I were to guess, I need to find something. Or someone.”
“When you be back?” asks Tien.
“I shouldn’t be longer than a few days.”
“OK,” yawns Tien. “Be good.”
He kisses her on the top of her head. Tien’s hair is slowly but surely changing from black to gray (and, if she is lucky, to white). He will miss moments like this after–now is not the time to worry about the future. He pulls his luggage from the closet as quietly as possible. It’s harder for Tien to get back to sleep after she’s been awakened, and nowadays she needs more rest. He puts the luggage in the trunk and returns to the house for a quick security check, a habit he picked up when they lived in Oakland for a time. Assured of the safety of their home, Thranduil leaves the house, gets into the car, and drives into the night. The clock reads 12:19 AM as he pulls onto the highway and heads due east.
In the oasis of light that is Precinct 13, the night drags at a snail’s pace. Perps are brought in, processed, and sent home or tossed in lockup. It’s all business as usual, but a twitchiness settles on the precinct as it always does a few days away from Devil’s Night.
Ramirez checks his watch for the twelfth time in as many minutes. It’s nineteen after midnight. He still has six hours to go before his shift is over, and it’s already kicking his ass. He rubs his eyes and checks his watch again. Twelve twenty-one. At one o’clock, he’s drinking a Red Bull.
He should be thinking about Devil’s Night, but John Doe is all he can focus on. There’s something odd about him, something that broadcasts that John Doe’s…not from around here. Who is he? Where’s he from? What was he doing at a place called Thrifty Stylez? Why does he have no clothes of his own (the ones he wore when arrested were shoplifted) and no personal possessions?
Ramirez hasn’t had a chance to speak to him yet, but he passes by lockup from time to time. John Doe always sits on the bench with the posture of someone who spent their formative years in finishing school. From what the other officers say, he never speaks, but he complies with instructions and doesn’t try any shit with the other people in lockup. Stranger than that, no one in lockup tries any shit with him. Not even that crazy Church guy who’s always trying to burn up the LGBT center says a peep to him, not even a casual, “Fuck off, faggot” despite John Doe’s “unmanly” long hair.
Whatever. Maybe John Doe’s just charismatic. But there have been charismatic people in lockup, and none of them had the air of quiet authority that John Doe has. It reminds Ramirez of Captain Johnson from his days in the Navy. He wore his rank like a glove and had a way of bringing out the best in people, including Ramirez himself.
Blake says he reminds him of his dad.
“Your dad ran off when you were four,” says Ramirez.
“Yeah, but still. It’s like how my dad should’ve been.”
Ramirez can understand that. John Doe seems like someone to listen to and learn from. Maybe the others in lockup sense that about him too.
“Is she pressing charges?” asks Blake.
“Who?”
“The girl he attacked last night.”
“Haven’t heard from her.”
That’s odd but not unheard of. Plenty of women in her situation are too distraught and out of it to think straight, and most are too scared to press charges. But Miss Washington was lucid, and she was adamant about John Doe not raping her. Or maybe he didn’t get the chance. No matter how elegant he seems, John Doe did attack a woman last night. For all Ramirez knows, he’s some rich prick who wears business suits by day and goes around butt naked and assaults women at night. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.
If he doesn’t hear from Miss Washington by his next shift, he’s calling her first no matter how late it is.
Thranduil speeds through California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska at a steady seventy miles per hour. He doesn’t pay attention to the changing landscapes or the gentle progression of night to day. He only stops to refuel the car and use the bathroom. He eats nothing but energy bars, a far tastier option than lembas ever was, though he barely tastes the dried fruits and nuts. His eyes are fixed on the road, the steering pulled northeastward by that same magnetic pull that draws salmon to breed in the place of their birth.
It is dawn when that instinct drives him into Indiana, and full day when Indiana becomes Michigan. When he sees the road sign with the word Detroit in bold white letters, there is a powerful sense that Detroit is where he needs to be.
“So whatchu gonna do about talk, dark, and rapey?” asks Twinkie.
“Ummm, yeah, about that…I don’t think I’m gonna press charges,” says Nichelle. She braces herself for–
“WHAT?!”
“Twinkie, listen–”
“Oh, hell no, you ain’t gon’ let that raping bastard go. They need to lock his ass up and throw away the key.”
“I don’t think he was trying to hurt me.”
“What he put his hands on you for then?”
Nichelle sighs. This is why she almost let the phone keep ringing when Twinkie called. Twinkie has her mind set on some stranger in a ski mask jumping out of the shadows and trying to rape her, and nothing will convince her otherwise.
“He better be glad he ain’t do that shit to me,” says Twinkie, “I’d be over there at the jail whupping his ass right now.”
“Twinkie, shut up! Shut up and listen.”
“What.”
“I know how it sounds, but…something in my gut tells me he wasn’t trying to hurt me.”
Twinkie finally shuts up. There’s a long pause before she says, “So whatchu gonna do?”
“I dunno. I need answers.”
“From him?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“I dunno. I think I’ll be OK.”
“A’ight. But if you change your mind–”
“I’ma call right away. Thanks,” says Nichelle, eyes warming and watering at how loyal and supportive Twinkie is right now, especially after the way people acted last time. No, she can’t think about that right now.
“You’re a good friend,” she says, swallowing hard to keep from crying.
“Be good to yourself today, OK?” says Twinkie. They say their goodbyes and hang up.
Ramirez’s phone brings him out of a dream about being pinched to pieces by giant mutant lobsters. He is surprised that his hand has all its fingers when he fumbles for it. The screen shows that Blake is calling. Seriously, does that kid ever sleep?
“Sarge?” says Blake.
“Yeah.”
“You said to call if somebody asked about John Doe.”
“Mm-hm. Who was it?”
“The girl who called it in. Miss…Washington?”
“What she say?” he croaks, wincing at the sunlight streaking through the curtains of his room.
“She’s not pressing charges. Not yet anyway.”
“You gotta be kidding me. Did you tell her that a conviction was likely if she testified?”
“Yeah, I did.”
Ramirez wills himself out of bed and shuffles into the kitchen like some sort of zombie in underwear as Blake explains something about Miss Washington wanting to try to talk to John Doe because she needs closure or something.
He digs a bowl from the cupboard and dumps cereal in it. He pours the last of the milk on top and hurls the carton toward the trash can and rolls his eyes as it bounces off the rim.
“We can’t keep him forever, Sarge,” says Blake, “We’re gonna need the room for Devil’s Night, and that’s only a couple of days from now.”
“Fine. If she’s not pressing charges, we can’t hold him. She can talk to him if she wants.”
Ramirez spoons the cereal into his mouth. It tastes like sawdust without a ton of sugar to give it flavor. He adds milk and sugar to his mental grocery list. He finishes the cereal then trudges back to the bed and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Nichelle never wants to see the inside of another police station as long as she lives. Every element of it–the drab decor, the hard wooden benches, waiting, the bureaucracy, the repetitive questions–seem designed to break the will any individual who lives under the illusion that the police are there to serve and protect.
When it’s finally her turn, she recognizes the cute young cop from before. What’s his name again? She glances at the name tag under his badge. Right, it was Blake. Blake leads her into a hallway where the questioning rooms are. The tight corridor seems to press in against her, awakening the claustrophobia that slumbered for years in her subconscious. But Blake is with her, and if someone is with her, she will not suffocate and die.
“What’s your first name?” she asks. She breathes easier now.
“William,” says Blake.
“William Blake. Like the poet?”
“Not many people guess that.”
“Where’s Ramirez?” she asks.
“It’s his day off. Mine’s tomorrow, in case you were wondering,” he says, flashing her a cheeky smile. She smiles back. It’s not everyday that she gets asked out.
“He’s in this room over here,” says Blake, pointing at a closed door further down the hall. As she approaches, she catches sight of the stranger. In the bright, ugly light of the interrogation room, he doesn’t seem threatening at all. Though he sits with a kind of poise she’s only seen on Golden Age film stars, he looks completely lost. If what Ramirez said about him not speaking English is true, he probably has no idea what the hell is going on. He must be so disoriented and confused by everything around him. She feels sorry for him.
“You have about ten minutes before someone else needs to use this room,” says Blake. “I’ll be right here just in case.”
She thanks Blake and enters the room. The stranger turns to her, and his face seems to light up at the sight of her. If only everyone were so excited to see her. She pulls the seat away from the table and sits down across from him. It’s hard to return his gaze. Those silver eyes are too steady, too intense, to bear. If she looks into them too long, she may burst into flame like an ant beneath a microscope.
“I, uh, have some things I want to ask you. Things I need to understand about that night you came.”
Nichelle feels a gentle presence caress her mind. The stranger speaks, and she lets her ears savor the deep, rich voice that sounds the way dark chocolate tastes. To her ears, the words make no sense, but her mind understands clearly. There is some nagging suspicion that she should freak out about this, but a deeper part of her says there is nothing to fear.
“Whatever you wish to ask, I shall answer to the best of my ability,” he says.
The questions spill out of her mouth like water. Who are you? What were you doing in the store? Why did you grab me? Have we met before? Why do I feel like I know you? How do you have pointy ears? Who are you?
“My name is Elrond Halfelven. I do not know how I came to be in this place. Restraining you was the result of an unfortunate lack of judgment on my part. I had only intended to prevent any harm to you if you had taken leave of your senses and unwittingly put yourself in peril. I would have wished to explain further, but the authorities came and shackled me.”
At the sound of his name, that deep recognition struck her again. Nichelle flips the name over and over in her mind like a coin. Elrond Halfelven…Elrond Halfelven…Elrond…Elrond…
“I got it! Lord of the Rings! He’s the guy with the, um, with the house. He patched Frodo up and there was a council and a big argument about what to do with the ring.”
The stranger, or Elrond, as he calls himself, looks shocked when she says this. Now knowing who he is (or thinks he is), she does see the resemblance to the actor who played him–what’s his name? He was in The Matrix and that movie with the drag queens. Not an exact match, but close enough that they can be mistaken for cousins. This explains why she recognized him.
“How did you come to know of such matters? These things are not common knowledge among Men.”
“Everybody knows about that. Those movies made a shit ton of money.”
“Movies?”
Now Nichelle is shocked because even the Amish have heard of movies. Her mind scrambles to make sense of what he’s saying and what she’s witnessed and experienced.
There are three possibilities, her said the cold, logical part of her mind, he’s lying, he’s mistaken, or he’s telling the truth.
He can’t be lying. It’s too elaborate a setup for fraud or pulling a prank. He can be mistaken, but even if he’s completely deluded, there should be proof of who he really is. So that leaves: he’s telling the truth. It can’t be true. There are no Elves or Dwarves or Hobbits in this world.
“I understand you are doubtful,” he says, “Were I in your position, I would doubt me too. I cannot offer you any evidence of my identity that would satisfy close scrutiny. I can only beg your forbearance in this matter in the hopes that all will be revealed in the fullness of time.”
Nichelle thinks until Blake taps on the door to let her know her time is up.
“Did you get the answers you were looking for?”
“Some, but now there’s even more questions,” she says.
“Where’d you learn that language he was speaking?”
“English?”
Blake shakes his head. “Whatever that was, it ain’t English.”
Muted sunlight seeps through the slate gray clouds of the city’s perpetually overcast sky and oozes into the loft Nichelle calls home. For the thousandth time that day, Nichelle kicks herself for being so stupid. It’s bad enough that she didn’t press charges, but bringing home the mysterious assailant, Elrond Halfelven or not, is the icing on the Nichelle Is A Dumbass cake.
“Just, um, make yourself comfortable,” she says. Elrond carefully inches inside. The second he lays eyes on the huge, round window, he drops to his knees and starts gasping for air. Nichelle scrambles to help him up, but waves his arm. She is relieved when he recovers and stands.
“You OK?”
“This was a place of torment,” he says, “and death. There is suffering in the floor and in the walls. What happened here?”
“The short version: a guy and his girlfriend were murdered here.”
“And you choose to live here?”
“Well, haunted houses are cheap, and this one is the only place in the city that’s truly safe on Devil’s Night.”
“Devil’s Night?”
Nichelle rubs her aching foot. “Yeah, it’s when all the criminals come out to play: smash windows, set fires, beat people up, that sort of thing.”
Elrond looks quizzically at her. “Why do the authorities permit this?”
“What can they do?” she says, kicking off her shoes and tossing them in the general direction of the shoe rack. “There’s more criminals than cops, and they have more firepower.”
Elrond arcs a brow at the pile of shoes next to the rack. Immediately embarrassed, she puts the shoes she tossed into their proper place on the rack. Elrond watches her with a focus that would be unnerving from anyone else but makes her feel comforted and protected. He takes off his own shoes, a pair of flip flops she bought at the Goodwill around the corner from the police station, and places them on the rack like they are rare and precious artifacts and not flimsy, mass-produced plastic things made in Taiwan. Then again, they don’t have plastic where he’s from, so maybe flip flops would be worth more.
“My lady,” he says, averting his eyes to his long, flexing toes, “is there a place where it is permissible for one to bathe?”
“Oh, uh, sure. The bathroom’s right over here.”
She leads him the bathroom and shows him how to work the sink, the toilet, and the shower. She points out where she keeps the soap, shampoo, washcloths, and towels.
“I should get you something clean to wear,” she says. “I don’t think I have anything that can fit you except maybe a bathrobe.”
“Whatever you may spare is greatly appreciated,” he says, and he stares at her again in that deep way. Her face suddenly feels very warm.
“I, um, I gotta go pick up something to eat. You have a taste for something specific?”
Time seems to slow as he shakes his head. As he blinks, she notices that his eyelashes are long, dark, and delicate. She almost wants to reach up and touch them, but time returns to its normal pace before she gathers the courage to do it.
“Right. I, er, I should go.”
“Yes, my lady,” he says. “Safe journey.”
She is struck by that deep sense of familiarity again as he gently places his hand next to his heart and extends it outward, dipping his head down and raising it up as he does so. She gives him a little wave then leaves.