Unquiet Dreams by Mark del Franco

Author:Mark del Franco
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror & Ghost Stories
Published: 2010-05-18T17:22:08.193000+00:00

Murdock crossed over Harbor and took the left. We were in the alley across the Avenue from the Unity alley. So far, it made sense. It was the direction I had sensed troll essence trailing away when Murdock and I checked out the back door of Unity. We crept down the narrow lane, large warehouses looming up on each side of us. Sunlight fell in complex patterns on the ground as it filtered through the network of fire escapes above. Old wooden pallets, an array of boxes and bags and tossed papers littered the gutters. At the end of the alley, a rusted car sat to the left.

“Go to the end and take a right,” Crystal said.

We made the turn onto a wider service road between more warehouses. Even though we were more exposed to the sky overhead, the light felt dimmer. We were starting to move into the Tangle.

“Go about three buildings down,” she said.

Murdock guided the car around piles of rubble, trash, and masonry discarded with no fear that anyone would object. The warehouses down here were no longer active, most of them burnt-out and boarded up. It had been a long time since city services ran garbage trucks. Murdock stopped the car. Crystal leaned forward and peered through the wind-shield, then out the side. She closed her eyes.

“Wait here and take the left when the alley appears.”

Murdock craned his neck to look up through the wind-shield. “There’s no alley turn here.”

“There will be,” said Crystal.

I scanned the buildings for the telltale signs of a spell, but there was so much ambient essence, nothing stood out. “The Tangle’s full of illusions, Murdock. People put them up all the time. Sometimes they forget them and leave them running,” I said.

We sat for twenty minutes. “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked. She nodded. “Yes, it’s about the right place. It didn’t take this long that night. Maybe it’s broken.”

A few minutes later I was about to suggest Crystal rethink the location when the brick wall to our left shimmered and vanished. Without a word, Murdock backed up and turned into the alley that had been hidden. Crystal led us through two more similar illusions and an odd series of turns around buildings that seemed to have been built in the middle of the road.

“We have to get out here and walk,” said Crystal. We were in a stretch of alley that managed to look dark even in the early afternoon.

“You want me to leave the car here?” Murdock said.

“It’s not like it’s a Rolls,” I muttered and let myself out. For such a trash heap, he worried about it an awful lot. Murdock and I walked a few feet behind Crystal as she made tentative steps forward. Ahead, old Jersey barriers lay in a heap like a very large game of pick-up-sticks. Crystal turned to her left and faced a gaping hole torn through the brick wall of a building. She seemed frozen in place.

“Where next, Crystal?” I asked when she didn’t move.

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