The Birth of Bane (30 page)

It wasn’t as
though I felt an overbearing presence or felt anything threatening,
but there was something about the place that kept my head jutting
from place to place, my eyes flitting from one object to the next.
And, it wasn’t as though the odds and ends within the alley were
abnormal or even foreign for that matter. It was a certain
characteristic, a particular aspect about them that made me uneasy.
They appeared normal, but something primal, something stretching
back into my genetic past told me otherwise. In here, something
creeped, something...

I trotted along
the ghastly trail, trying to figure out what it was precisely. What
was so unusual about this place and everything in it? Why was I so
unsettled?

Maybe, because
it appeared out of nowhere
. Ever
think about that?

Then, without
fading or showing signs of diminishing, I came to the end of the
stream of Lenny’s blood. Within the length of a linear foot, it was
there and then it wasn’t. It didn’t stop as if cut off nor did it
drain away. It seemed to have ended, as if at that exact point my
one-time father had simply bled-out.

I stopped,
glancing around. Nothing had changed. I was still surrounded by the
seemingly unending buildings, twin, sentinel-like walls peering
down at me through two or three score nearby windows. They were
like huge, rectangular eyes gazing at me, watching my every move,
scrutinizing my intentions as if they hadn’t decided if I was a
friend or a foe.

I frowned in
consternation, a drip of fear tingling down my spine. I looked back
the way I’d come. Far off, I could see the doorway back into the
basement of my house. It appeared no different than any of the
other times I had walked into the earthen passage to the root
cellar and had peered back, only the distance was much greater this
time. But, the door was still open. The bizarre indigo afterglow of
the alley illuminated the first ten feet of the chamber beyond. I
could easily see the things we had stored within. Nothing seemed
out of the ordinary.

I inspected the
blood trail again, but found no new clues. The sanguine fluid
ended. Lenny’s life had finished seeping out. It was
spent.

A set of double
doors to my right caught my attention. They were the first set I’d
given more than a cursory glance since I’d been within the alley.
There was a sign hastily written and secured to the painted wood
with masking tape, most of it had come loose, but what remained in
place held the sign. It was scrawled in marker as if the writer had
scribed the words in a hurry. The words written there were the odd,
especially given the situation.

“
Don’t go in
before 6:45 in the morning.

Don’t leave open
after closing,

And definitely
no later than 10:30 at night.”

I felt my head
turn slightly to the side of its’ own volition. It wasn’t just the
way the sign had been made or how it was hung. The way it was
transcribed was just as difficult to explain. It didn’t seem as
though an adult had scrawled those words there. It was written the
way Eli might’ve written, not using abbreviations of any sort.
There was no “am” or “pm” at the end of the specified times.
Someone older would’ve been satisfied with merely that. Someone
older wouldn’t have spent the time to spell out the time of day.
And, that was just the tip of the iceberg… Why was it there in the
first place?

What time is
it?
I asked myself. Then, I
recalled I’d been awakened in the dead of night. That meant I was
standing before it during “do not enter” block of time outlined
upon the sign.
But what if Lenny
had been dragged inside?

So what?
L
eave his ass there!

The earlier
conundrum had resurfaced once more. Was my reject of a father worth
it? Was he worth any risk on my part?

I probably
would’ve stayed rooted in place, forever at odds with myself, if
the sign hadn’t fallen to the ground. I stared at it as it cascaded
downward, falling slower than it should’ve, like a feather upon the
breeze until it landed upon the ground, soaking through in some
areas, where moisture had puddled underneath it.

Wasn’t it too
cold for liquid to act in that manner?

My eyes found
what had been stenciled onto the doors themselves, professionally
done, as one would expect to find in any warehouse. “Clothing
Storage”, it said upon the left side door.

I brow furled
even further. I must’ve looked like Winston Churchill standing
there, hands at my sides, my face wrinkled to the point of
disfiguration.
What is this
place?
I gazed at the door
knobs. They were normal. There wasn’t a locking mechanism on either
door.

So, why had
someone put the warning there in first place? Why shouldn’t I go
inside during the night time hours? And, if there was something
dangerous within, why wasn’t it locked, or chained, or
something?

Where was I?
What was this place?!?

I could feel my
frustration rising. Everywhere I looked, everything I inspected
became all the more surreal, unusual. Yet again, I peered about,
seeing the over-sized trash bins, industrial-sized, made of thick
steel. I saw the empty juice cartons, the broken bottles, the
squeezed soda cans, the crates – all sorts - some broken, some
whole. There were scraps of discarded metal, smashed-up car
bumpers, old-style trash cans scorched from within as if, long-ago,
someone had tried to warm themselves by lighting a fire their
middles. There were old magazines and newspapers strewn every which
way, plastered to the ground, stuck fast upon the lower portions of
the walls. And…

…
There were no
footprints!

I spun around as
if wound-up, my orbs questing, finding without problem a lone set
of tread-less tracks, my tracks. Where there should’ve been two,
there was only one.
If someone
had pulled Lenny into this place, where was the evidence of it?
Where had the other set gone? There was mine. Where
was…?

I’d had enough.
I needed answers. Everywhere I looked, every second I spent down
here, there were only more questions. I needed answers,
now!

I turned back
toward the doors, walked briskly toward them. I placed my hand upon
the door knob of the right side door, twisted. It came open as if
the mechanism had been recently oiled. There was no resistance or
screeching protest of any sort. I threw it wide and found myself
gazing before a truly massive pile of clothing set directly in the
middle of an equally humongous room.

Clearly, it was
a warehouse of some sort or at least it was big enough to be
construed as such. I walked in, noticing the overall dampness of
the alley and its’ persistent smell had permeated within the
confines of the vaulted chamber as well. I stopped ten yards from
the jumble mass of cloth. I was amazed that it towered over me by
more than fifty feet! It had to be a square acre of garments, at
least. I had never seen such a conglomeration of apparel before. In
fact, I had never
heard
of a place housing such an amount. Not
even the Society of Saint Vincent Du-Paul had stores of
accouterments on this scale. I was stunned. I was gazing upon every
sort of garment
ever
sewn together. Pants from every era,
shirts from the same, coats, jackets, vests, dresses, tank-tops,
tube-tops, tights, shorts, miniskirts, and more and more, wherever
my eyes fell. I couldn’t believe it.

“
Good God, why
would all of this be here?” I heard myself ask aloud, to no one in
particular. My mouth and throat had moved with the thoughts in my
head.

I walked toward
the edge of the gigantic pile, stepping from side to side as I
went. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I wanted to go much closer.
After all, there had been a sign out front warning all-comers not
to come in during a specific time frame, a string of hours I was
within at the moment. What if there was something hiding under all
the clothes?

Like what, a
clothes-
hoarding dragon? Come
one, Jer, get it together!

I smiled
crookedly. Maybe I was sort of over-doing things. But, who could
blame me? This place was outlandish. It was making me think
abnormally. Bending at the waist, I reached down to grab a handful
of the nearest garments. Surprisingly, they were dry. When I
brought them closer, they were odorless as well. I had expected
them to be dank, decrepit with mold and mildew, but they weren’t.
They appeared no different than I would expect from something
hanging in a closet for a long period of time. They might smell
dusty, but beyond that, they were no worse for the wear. This
seemed wrong. The rest of the room was damp, even the air was
moist. Why were the clothes dry?

I looked around,
dropping the two shirts and thin windbreaker I had picked
up.

“
Leonard, you in
there?” I asked for no reason in particular, a smile more like my
own etching my lips.

The room did not
answer.

Shrugging, I
stepped deeper amongst the clothing, stooping lower, feeling with
both hands, trying to understand through touch. Everything, all of
it – the jeans, the socks, the underwear, the wife-beaters, the
push-up bras, the scarves, the gloves, the tunic-like tops, the
bell-bottoms, the hip-huggers, the running shorts, the camisoles,
the trench coats, the ascots, the long johns, the slacks, the
blouses, the tuxedo shirts, the sweat pants – every single article
of clothing I touched was the same. There wasn’t a drop of
moisture, not a speck of decay, only the impression I could glean
was they were old. They’d been here for a long time.

I waded deeper
into the pile, high-stepping, bringing my knees nearer to my chest
in order to negotiate the ever-thickening amount of cloth
underfoot. The further I went, the harder it became to walk without
the use of my hands to steady myself. The amount of compression
beneath my slippers was increasing dramatically. The garments
continually shifted and bunched as my weight altered from
above.

For some reason
I cannot readily describe to you, I kept on. I continued to search
the pile. I would step and grab, toss handfuls aside, dig down a
few feet until I had to move on or risk sinking deeper into the
morass of fabrics and buttons and zippers. I would crab-walk aside,
wary of the depression I’d created, knowing if I wasn’t careful I
could be up to my knees, maybe my thighs, in clothing. I would
skirt the edge, turn, then grab more, throw it in another
direction, then part the way with my fingers, gaze down deeper.
Always, I would find even more, whether it was cotton or rayon or
wool or cashmere there would always be more below.

I continued for
twenty minutes maybe until I began to sweat in my pajamas. I wiped
at my brow with a forearm, leaving a trail behind sweat on my
sleeve, wondering why I was so frenetic. I gauged the situation,
realizing I was a good seventy yards into the pile. I twisted at my
beltline, amazed that I hadn’t even made it to the outskirts of the
outskirts of this monumental mound. The sheer amount of human
coverings was overwhelming.

“
He’s not here,” I said aloud.
Even if he is, I will never find him.
My shoulders slumped. I ran a hand through my stubbly
hair.
You have only checked one
room, Jeremiah. There are hundreds, possible thousands, out there
in the alley.

Something
shifted. The moment the word “alley” crossed my mind, the pile of
clothing moved. Not all of it, but a sizable portion
nearby.

I side-stepped,
hands thrust outward for balance, fingers splayed, should I fall I
could grab onto something quick. Despite the chill, I was still
sweating, but ignored the perspiration beading above my brow. My
breathing was hoarse, felt harsh in my lungs.
Had I overdone it?
My pulse was in my ears.

Another movement
came, jerkier than the first, but from a different area
below
the surface of the pile.

I squared my
body to it, crouching lower, walking away, poised upon the balls of
my feet. It was something an athlete did when on guard, whether on
the court or on the field – get up on your toes, be
ready.

I felt my
eyebrows rise when something long, sinuous seemed to stretched,
then settle ten of feet below my position. Whatever it was, it was
bigger than me, and longer by more than a dozen feet.

Though I hadn’t
seen anything, not a single feature, I decided it was time to
leave. Unheeding, I began to stride down the slope made of cloth,
my feet plunging to the ankle, but I didn’t care any longer. I
wasn’t being careful. I wasn’t methodically searching anymore. I
wanted to leave. I was doing so in a hurry.

I stumbled
forth, my movements faster with each second. I used my hands to
gain additional purchase, clasping at wad after wad of clothing.
Each was like a handhold, giving me a net gain in leverage. It was
like pushing off something solid while swimming, each hold gave me
a slight burst of velocity before it bled away and I had to find
another. And, I did. Over and over, I stepped, sank, grabbed,
pulled, repeating the process. I could see the solid concrete of
the warehouse floor wasn’t more than twenty feet away. I was making
good progress, swimming through an ocean of apparel.