2 Dark Night

The next couple of days were so normal that she no longer doubted that the severed heads had been nothing but a dream, although she couldn't help checking the news for decapitations. There were only the usual automobile accidents and the like. If anything, violent crimes had decreased lately, according to her sources.

The wind blew a flurry of brightly colored autumn leaves past her as she neatly stepped over the crack in the pavement. The muscles in her thighs stretched with the longer step. A familiar pull, in a familiar pattern. A comfortingly normal day.

A thin man of average stature strode purposefully down the walk toward her. As he got close, he reached up and touched his plain brown cap in greeting. His hands had the calluses and lines of someone who did manual labor.

She opened her mouth to return his greeting, but no sound came out, as her voice failed her. Instead she just nodded, and kept walking. After she'd traveled a distance, she tried clearing her throat, and then said aloud, "Maybe I need to talk more often?" The words sounded ordinary, and she shrugged and went on.

When she got home, her cat greeted her at the door, with his back turned to her in utter indifference.

"You can't fool me," she told him with amusement. "I know that you just ran over here."

She was sure that he'd just been sitting in the sun on the window ledge. She hung up her jacket and walked over to touch that spot, and there was a definite warmer place there, with traces of his fur for added veracity.

"Meow," he complained.

She walked back to him, and bent to stroke his head and rub his chin. He rewarded her with his usual rumbling purr, and twined around her ankles when she straightened.

She refilled his food dish before starting to prepare her own supper. Her grandmother's disapproving tone echoed in her memory with the complaint that people in this age didn't make time to enjoy their food. "It takes time to make it, so you should take your time eating it," she had scolded her granddaughter.

Maybe it was silly, but now that her grandmother was gone, she spent more time on her food. She made sure that she was eating something good, and took the time to really taste it more often than before.

As she was carrying her dish to her little table, she glanced outside. Across the street the wind blew up a flurry of leaves around the person making his way along the pavement. The slightly plump man reached up and pulled his bright red cap down tighter, and hugged the grocery bag he was carrying tighter against his chest.

She set the dish down and seated herself in front of it, before the doubt assailed her. A moment later she was at the window again, but the figure of the man was already gone. She stood there for an uneasy minute before returning to her seat.

She assured herself that it was nothing. Just her imagination acting up because she was still shaken up by that horrible dream. That man had definitely been plumper than the one she'd passed earlier in the day. And his blood red cap might have shared a similar shape, but was obviously different than the dull brown one the polite passerby had worn.

It wasn't uncommon to see people who shared a similar posture or unobtrusive clothing style.

--

When she crawled into her bed early that night, she told herself that she wasn't hiding. Her cat seemed displeased by this change in routine, but after walking up and down her body a couple of times he gave up and settled himself behind her knees where he usually slept.

She read the next page of her novel three times before finally concentrating on it enough to turn the page. She almost screamed when the lights went out with a soft pop, but after a moment she gathered enough rationality to look for lights outside of her place.

She couldn't see anything from her bed, but the wind was loud. There were clattering noises and soft wails in the distance. Her cat stood up and asked, "Meow?"

He jumped off the bed, and ignored her coaxing noises, as she tried to get him to return. He looked back at her when she sat up, but didn't move in her direction.

For a moment, she couldn't force herself to swing her legs over the edge of the bed. Ridiculous childhood fears of the "something" that lurked beneath ran shivers down her spine. Her cat's eyes reflected more light than she could see in the room, and narrowed for a moment.

He seemed disgusted with her cowardice as he turned away and trotted over to the window. He leapt up onto the sill neatly, despite his bulk, and gazed out into the darkness.

Seeing him moving around so nonchalantly, somehow melted the icy fear that paralyzed her legs, and she swung them over the edge of the bed to touch the floor. The floor was a little cool against her feet, but nothing snatched at her ankles, and she stood and darted over to the window where her cat kept watch.

The whole neighborhood was dark. Not even the streetlights, that were supposed to be running on a different line than the residential power, were lit. The wind that had been strong earlier was fierce now. Next to the window the faint shrieks were louder, and there were moans and groans added into the wind's symphony. Leaves blew and branches clattered as miscellaneous trash bounced down the street like a pack of little dogs chasing an invisible car.

The tension in her shoulders eased, and she relaxed. It was just a storm. An unusually strong storm, but no doubt the high winds had taken out some vital power junction somewhere. She stood behind her cat, watching the wind shake the world, until he stood up and oozed back to the floor like a comforting liquid shadow.

He made his way back to the bed, and glanced at her as if to say, "Well? It's not getting any warmer by itself?"

She walked back to her bed at a normal pace, and burrowed beneath her covers. His comforting bulk arranged itself in his familiar place once more. She lay there listening to the storm in the darkness for a long time.

She had just dozed off when the horrible shriek and clattering of nails on glass jolted her fully awake again. Her eyes flew to the window, where bony white hands clawed at the glass.

"Branches," she said firmly aloud, as though naming them would fix their shape into place in the fabric of the world. And perhaps it did, because the white shapes in the darkness became less regular to her eyes as she stared, and looked more like twigs.

The white wood rattled fiercely against the glass, and then another gust shook it free of whatever held it there, and it was gone.

"Meow?" asked her cat, from somewhere in the darkness, and a moment later his comforting weight landed against her side, and he walked up and breathed in her face.

For once, she didn't hold his breath laced with catfood against him, and leaned into him while ruffling her fingers through the soft fur around his ears. He curled up against her chest and purred as she said aloud, in the same firm tone she'd used to name the branches, "It's just a storm."