Marker of Faith

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

"You know we are always out there if you know where to look."

Startled by the young voice, John spun around to face her. A little girl gazed up at him, her tiny frame wrapped in a thick wool sweater incongruous with the summer heat.

They were outside, standing in an abandoned lot, the scene familiar and disorienting all at once. His puzzlement caused a small smile to curve the corner of the girl's mouth.

"Excuse me?" he murmured, his own voice sounding as thin and childlike as hers.

It was incompatible how she just stood there, the picture of innocence with that tiny smile and her hair stirring in the warm breeze, and the malevolence in the air. John caught a scent of cinnamon and flared his nostrils wide; an undercurrent of something not right hid in the smell, something spoiled and charnel clung to the child. She appeared about five years old, but her eyes.... The eyes were soulless.

The more he stared, the more her smile widened.

"Where are your parents?" John eyed the crumbling empty buildings that shimmered in and out of focus.

She shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here. This place was wrong, bad.

"Now is that what you really want to know?" she asked, giggling as she stepped back. It was dusk, but in the fading light her face had an ethereal glow. Suddenly dizzy, John leaned back against the small chain link fence that surrounded the grassy area of the vacant lot where he stood engaged in this surreality.

"I told the others that you would know." She raised one hand and pointed a delicate finger towards him as she spoke.

"And I think I was right, but not just yet all the way. Soon, very soon." She giggled again, putting her hand over her mouth with her fingers spread wide, not masking the evil sound.

"Know what?" He took a tentative step towards her. He heard distant screaming, and John looked over his shoulder towards the sound; it was definitely screaming. Someone was dying, dying horribly, and he reached for his gun, but grabbed at air. The little girl was listening to the far off screams with apparent delight.

"Know what?" he demanded again, beginning to panic.

"You'll find out. Remember, all you have to do is know where to look. Oh, and to listen for us. It's already begun."

She turned and started skipping towards a break in the fence between two buildings, laughing in a way that chilled him. As she reached the break, she turned to face him.

"By the way," she said. "We know all about you, too...you and your pathetic little friends. We are coming and there's nothing The Guardians can do to stop us this time."

As she said it, waves of dizziness hit and John's legs gave out beneath him. He flopped back against the fence, his body shaking and weak with fear, as writhing shadows pooled around her legs and inched towards him.

"You're making this too easy," she said petulantly, crossing her arms as her features muddled and twisted into an abomination. Feral eyes peeked from the skull of a beast, then her face transformed back to the guise of an innocent child.

"W-wh-who are you?"

"Ahhhh, come on. We're old acquaintances. I thought you'd like to see one of your failures this time." She gestured at her torso, seductively running her hands down her belly as blood stains soaked through the sweater. The little girl smeared the blood across her cheeks and into her hair. She tilted her head and it suddenly flopped at a sickening angle, balanced like a gruesome bobblehead on a broken neck.

"Remember now, John? She cried you know." The girl's voice modulated lower. "She made wishes in the tracks of her tears. She believed someone would save her, someone like you, John. But you failed. Just like you will fail again. This is a hint of what's coming."

The shadows were nearly upon him, and John struggled against the urge to run. The jagged edge of the link fence dug painfully into his back; all of this was too real.

"I don't know who or what you are!" he yelled.

The girl straightened her head and frowned at him briefly. Another wicked grin stretched her mouth into a grimace.

She hissed at him, "You'll remember soon enough!" The girl whirled around in a flurry and disappeared, taking the shadows with her.

Detective John Bergenson bolted up out of bed, his sweat-soaked sheet clinging in spots, and he put a shaking hand to his face. He turned on the small reading lamp on the nightstand next to him. It wobbled as he bumped the switch and the room filled with soft, jittery light that chased the dancing shadows away. John eyed the corners warily as he sat back down on his damp mattress, and glanced at his reflection in the mirror mounted on the closet door. His face was ash grey and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a terrified little boy, not the hardened man he'd grown into, an even six foot tall and lean body just starting the descent into middle age. He ran a clammy hand through his hair and leaned back against the headboard with a sigh.

"What a fucked up dream."

He had versions of this nightmare before, but as always the waking details were vague, with slippery edges that slid out of his mind as he reached for them. This time the dream was more intense; more vivid, more real. There was a little girl, she was familiar, and he furrowed his brow but could only recall the shadows.

The shadows....

He shuddered back to reality as his beeper went off.

It was the station, and another homicide beckoned.