Drifting

Chapter 7

They hadn't spoken for a few blocks. In the whistling blizzard, the silence stretched a thousand miles. Lara's thoughts swirled like the snowflakes that dazzled her eyes in the dim streetlights, dancing in and out and away in a maddening, hypnotic tempest. Jesse was psychic. They had run from the police. Someone had attacked Christine, and now other women as well, tying them up outside in the elements. They'd been able to save one. But if this man – if he was a man at all, because if psychics existed then so did demons, probably, or vampires – was out in the blizzard stalking his victims, where was Christine? Was she tied to a tree in the park, freezing to death, as they walked blindly towards her apartment, where she likely no longer was? And for that matter, what the hell was she doing out here with a slightly unhinged medium with no phone, no way to call for help?

She settled into this fugue of unknowing, tempered terror, numb now to questions, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Brushing snow from the edge of her hood, she glanced at Jesse. His lips stood out, starkly blue-purple against his pale, stubbled flesh. She took him by the elbow and ducked him out of the wind next to an ATM. "You don't look good," she called over the gale.

"I'm fine," he said.

"We need to rest a few more minutes. God, I wish there was somewhere open where we could warm up, even if it was just for a minute."

Jesse glanced at the skyline, and then took her gloved hand in his own. "I know a place. Come on."

They zig-zagged over between buildings, coming out on a square. At one end of the square stretched a huge housing complex, hideous and modern, with rows and rows of black windows. Here and there a candle flickered pathetically behind the glass.

"My friend used to live in this building," Jesse explained as they waded closer to the cement entrance through the snow. "It's really long. We can walk through it and come out the other side. At least it'll be a little warmer and it'll dump us out where we want to go. It's not far now to Christine's place."

The safety-glassed front doors were locked tight, and there was a keycard entrance system. "Dial someone?"

"No," Lara said. "There's no power. I think I saw a side door, though."

They descended the steps again, slipping and sliding, and moved down the side of the building to a stairwell entrance. The small stoop's snow was packed down with booted footprints, and cigarette butts littered the pristine whiteness. The smokers in the building still had to get their fix, no matter the weather. The snow was so thick that opening and closing the door several times had coated the underside of it, making it impossible to fit back in the frame. Jesse pulled it free easily and they slipped into the dingy stairwell, their feet leaving more tracks on the already bedraggled maroon carpet.

They climbed the first set of steps, planning, Lara thought, to walk the length of the building through the first floor hallway. But the heavy metal door was locked from the other side.

"I don't want to go back out there," Lara moaned, rubbing her hands together.

Jesse nodded, blowing into his cupped fists. Then his gaunt face brightened. "Let's try the basement. I think there's storage down there."

They descended another level and came to a much smaller wooden door with a diamond of safety glass cut through the center. Peering through revealed only darkness. Jesse tried the wiggly brass doorknob. It was locked, but with a gentle jerk and jiggle, it opened with a dissatisfied groan. Powder-blackness greeted them.