Two Truths and a Liar

XIX • The beast

Leon

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45.

The number of missed calls from my family.

12.

The number of books I'd torn from the library shelves and scratch marks I'd counted on my body.

18.

The amount of bodies found on the streets, the same day I'd woken up covered in blood, and the number of days I'd been lost, hiding in the streets from police and my parents and anyone looking for me. Afraid of being found. Afraid of myself. Afraid of what I had done.

I knew what I was. I'd talked to strangers on the street, men stumbling out of bars, diviners in heaps on the sides of the road holding signs and jars and an ability to tell you, just by looking into their sunken eyes that they held a glimpse into the galaxies of the future and could peek into your past and the present you couldn't see just by tracing their knarled fingers across your palm. I'd searched books. Searched free newspapers in rusted bins and sopping wet on the side of the road. I'd set up cameras and I'd seen it with my very eyes.

The beast.

I was running from myself. I was the killer. The beast had attacked me so long ago and I had become it, feeling it bury itself deeper and deeper into the caverns of my heart until the light of the full moon let it escape, ripping apart my flesh and breaking free into the world of the waking. I'd hurt people, many people.

But I couldn't hurt him.

I didn't fear much but myself, running from people when they came near me. They could hurt me, but if they broke my body or damaged my mind I would thank them. Anything if they could hurt the beast. I didn't fear them. I didn't fear anything.

But I feared the eyes of Harley D'arco.

Please, I begged him, standing in shivering, shaking silence. Don't come near me. Don't look at me like that.

"Leon?"

He was fragile, balanced in a state of surprise with the world spinning behind him but he stood still among it. His eyes like bullets. Presence like a curse.

"What are you doing here?"

Harley was nearing me. My heart was in my head, pounding, pounding. Sending shockwaves into my soul. His black hair slicked violently back, contrasting, pale hands reaching towards me. Any closer and he could stop me. My hands fumbled for the door, the door I'd come through just moments before in my panic. It was the night it would happen, where the full moon would make her presence known over Deadwood and coax the beast from me. The church was big, and running from nightfall I had thought I would find some protection there, maybe even a place to lock myself until morning came.

I didn't expect to see this.

I shoved open the door, letting the cold air outside hit us both, a moment of distraction before I ran from him.

A shout behind me pierced the cold evening air, but I didn't slow or stop or turn around to explain. There was no time.

The soles of my shoes pounded against the earth, scattering the rocks in the side yards and the dirt of the church lawn. The ground was quaking- or maybe it was all in my head, my madness taking over. I dodged a lampost, and dashed across the street. Cars coming in every direction, racing by with a deafening roar just as I was out of the way. It stalled him for a bit, but not long enough. I reached the other side and kept running, tripping, skidding, but not falling.