Michael swallowed hard. “We are?”
“Come on.”
He had to disentangle from Fran’s arm. It actually took some gentle pressure; she had developed barnacle fingers when he wasn't looking.
“Be careful.” Her voice was a shaky whisper; her watery eyes were glued to his as if trying to memorize his face. As if she would never see him again.
His smile quivered weakly across his cheeks. “Nothing to it.”
“Come on, Mike!”
He took a look back as he followed Guy. Drake, Fran, and Rob all stared like abandoned children before the swinging door obliterated the sight.
Guy's long strides were catlike, a panther stalking down the hall. Even if it was all bravado, it still infected Michael as he half-jogged to catch up. “What’s in the locker room?”
“Listen, I didn’t want to say this in front of the others. You saw how they were. On the verge of falling apart.” He gave Michael a sidelong glance. “You're different, though.”
Michael wasn't sure if he should have felt proud or frightened. “What… what are you talking about? Look, if Greg was… murdered… the chances of the killer still being in the building are…”
His back slammed against the wall. It took a startled moment to realize Guy had seized him by the collar.
“Guy… what the hell? Are you crazy?”
“What do you think this is, a joke?” Something deranged flickered behind Guy’s dark, almost onyx eyes. Michael realized with a sinking feeling that Guy was insane. I've been working with a madman who only needed the slightest push to send him over the edge.
Guy spoke through tightly clenched teeth. “Don’t you get it? Greg is just one part of this. The ravens, Reese, this storm? Think, for Christ’s sake! This isn’t about some murderer. Wake up! It’s… its like…”
He paused as if at a loss for words, then slowly blinked and released his death grip on Michael’s collar. “Sorry about that. It’s just…”
“Just the stress. Yeah, I know.” Michael resisted the urge to rub his neck. Guy was stronger than he looked. Crazy people usually were.
“Come on, then.”
They crept down the stairs to the ground floor and cautiously rounded the corner to the restroom. Closed toilet stalls had never looked so ominous, even with the lights on. Michael was almost glad to see that Guy seemed as apprehensive, stooping to check under the doors before entering the locker room.
It quickly became claustrophobic as Michael waited on Guy. No one else bothered to lock their stuff up, but Guy was the exception to the norm on a lot of things. He looked back and realized that Guy was undressing.
“What… you brought me down here just to watch you change clothes?”
He turned his back. “You know, you’re about the only person who bothers to lock their locker. What do you have that’s so special?”
When he turned back around, the sight made his mouth go dry. “Are those… guns?” He realized his voice turned squeaky all of a sudden, but he was too shocked to care.
Guy had changed back into his street clothes: black cargo pants and a matching T-shirt. An antique-looking key medallion hung from his neck. He paused in the process of laying a modified pistol on the bench. It looked like a customized version of a sawed off shotgun. Beside it were twin snub-nose .38s.
He opened wooden box of ammo and removed a bullet, holding it to the light. The casing was partly transparent, revealing swirling matter inside. “I really hope that’s a rhetorical question.”
Michael stared. “What… what the hell? Why would you bring an entire arsenal of guns to work every day?”
Guy slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. “Never hurts to be ready.” He offered one of the pistols.
Michael held it gingerly, like a nickel-plated rattlesnake. “Ready for what?”
Guy looked up from his task of clipping a raven-engraved dagger to the back of his belt. The blade was almost as long as a machete. “Killing things.”
“Killing things? What…?”
Guy looked away, frowning. “It’s hard to explain. I’ve been… experiencing… something. Like… warnings in my head. In my dreams. I actually considered that I might be going crazy. This proves that I’m not.”
“What the hell kind of explanation is that? You’re saying your dreams tell you to carry guns around everywhere you go?”
“Well… yes and no.”
“Wha… what?”
Guy sighed. “It’s more than dreams. I think they’re… memories. Times past that I’ve lived. It’s hazy, so I’m not sure. But I remember the darkness. The evil. And I remember fighting it.”
He motioned to the pistol. “ Have you ever shot one of those?”
“What the… — no, I’ve never shot a gun in my life. Not everyone just carries them around all the time, Guy.”
He handed the pistol back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and frankly… I think you’re crazy. You need help. You bring me down here and pull out guns like it’s normal. Let me help you out with something: It’s not. We don’t need to shoot anyone. What we need is to find a way to contact somebody. A way to get out of here.”
Guy's eyes gleamed coldly as he snatched the pistol back. “I’m not crazy, Mike. In a few minutes you might wish that I were.”
He holstered the .38 and shouldered the shotgun. “Ok, let’s go.”
Atypical Visitations
The roar of the mill was almost mocking. It ran smoothly, uninterrupted in its concert of fine-tuned efficiency. Guy almost laughed out loud. No, it wasn’t the machines that needed attention. It was the people who broke down, victims of minds etched with the rust and wear of fear and trepidation.
Michael trailed behind like a lost child following a policeman. Guy had thought Mike to be different, but in the end he was like the others. Unable to function once removed from their comfort zone.
They crossed the ground floor where the detachers spun the flour, broke it down to finer particles. Silhouetted spouting crisscrossed the room like metallic webbing.
“Want me to turn the lights on?”
Guy shook his head. “It’ll give away our position.” He set the duffel bag down and peered through the narrow window in the doorway. Visibility was extinct; the rain fell so hard that he could barely see the stairwell two feet away. Anything could be out there, and they wouldn’t know it until it was on top of them.
He opened the door.
Heavy rain spattered them and water flooded across the door line into the mill. They were instantly soaked as they hesitantly stepped out of the protective confines of the mill like tottering children taking their first steps. The roar of the storm was almost deafening.
He held the shotgun ready. Rushing water streamed over the tops of their shoes as they quickly looked around. Nothing was visible except the deluge.
“Where are the cops?”
“Must have pulled out. Nothing they can do in the rain.”
Michael shuddered. It could have been from the cold downpour. “I don’t see how we can drive out of here. The streets have got to be completely flooded.”
A movement from the corner of Guy’s eye caused him to turn.
A disheveled raven was perched on the stair railing. It glistened from the water on its onyx feathers. The unblinking gaze was directed away from Guy, into the storm.
In the depths, something appeared to move.
“Mike.”
Indistinct shapes emerged slowly, taking form as silhouetted figures. Human figures, but… Guy squinted.