The Dragon King and I (3 page)

Despite the question mark at the end of it, it was obviously an order.

I didn’t even hesitate. Lying to her was almost second nature now.

“Of course.”

* * * *

Friday came all too quickly. In the back of my mind I’d been hoping that something would come up and that the visit to Madam Clara would be cancelled without any extra effort on my part. Unfortunately, Rachel was scary determined to go through with the whole thing, and I realized that I’d need to take some sort of preemptive measure once my own resolve crumbled. By ‘preemptive’ I mean that when Rachel knocked on my door Friday morning I hid beneath my favorite blanket and pretended like I didn’t hear her.

It was a good thing that I was now a self-proclaimed recluse since I probably wouldn’t have been safe walking down the streets if the vicious names she called me before finally giving up were any indication of her current temperament.

I sort of felt like a kid who’d gotten out of going to school and I spent the rest of the day smugly satisfied with myself. My satisfaction only lasted until night fell. Then things changed. I was making a sandwich when it started. I’d dropped a slice of tomato on the kitchen floor and was debating using it anyway when there was a knock on my door. Thinking it was Rachel, I sprinted into the living room and turned off the television. Common sense dictated that she wouldn’t buy the whole ‘not home’ charade but I’d been raised with the age-old belief that if you were real quiet and held very still, scary things would go away.

Rachel, when angry, was nothing if not scary.

There was a pregnant pause after the television died down and then it came again. Then there was a third knock. A fourth. If someone had just been banging on my door, that would have inspired its own brand of uncertainty. But this wasn’t like that. It wasn’t…normal. It was steady, like a heartbeat. Over and over again, never speeding up or slowing down. For a full minute the only sound echoing through my apartment was that rhythmic thump, thump, thump, and my own pulse began to race as the realization dawned that it wasn’t Rachel outside my door.

The panic started out small, like a worm. Wriggling down my spine and settling its uncomfortable weight in my gut. The sensation didn’t ease when the knocking abruptly stopped, it simply became more pronounced. I found myself shivering as I huddled there on my couch. Some wild sense of self-preservation had me sliding off of the couch and onto the floor behind it, where I then crouched and peeked around the bulky width of the furniture. Then, like a gunshot, the knocking started up again. Fierce and angry and I had to smother an instinctive scream with my hand. The knocking was replaced by scratching, and then the scratching was replaced with words.

I couldn’t make them out through the door. Whoever was speaking was making no effort to raise his voice loud enough to be heard. He was almost whispering. Crooning even. It was enough to drag me from the admitted non-safety of the couch’s shadow. I crawled across the floor for no other reason than that I was too terrified to gain my feet, and when I was close enough I pressed my ear against the old wood that marked the entrance to my loft. It took a bit of concentration, but when I finally made out the words that were being repeated over and over in the otherwise empty hallway, my blood ran cold and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying.

“Where are you? I know you’re here. I can smell you. I caught your stink on the other woman a few days ago. She led me to you. You should be here. You should be here. Where are you?”
and on it went. I was shaking hard enough that I was half convinced that I was making the door tremble, and I would have moved away from it just to be safe, except that the solid presence of it was the only thing keeping me from curling up into a ball on the floor and screaming. They were sniffing me out now. If I wouldn’t come to them, they would simply hunt me down. Like an animal.

All too quickly for my peace of mind, the constant murmuring on the other side of the door ceased. Then I heard a strange snuffling sound. My brow furrowed and I pressed my ear tighter against the door, trying to make out what it was. A shadow eclipsed the light seeping through the crack from the hallway and that sound I’d been trying to place became long and drawn out.

‘
He can smell me.’

The insight was enough to send me flying back from the door with a whimper I couldn’t control. The man on the other side howled as I crab-walked deeper and deeper into my home, and when next the pounding came it was done with such violence that even clasping my hands over my ears couldn’t drown it out.

“I know you’re there.” He screamed at me. I heard doors down the hall open as my neighbors moved to investigate. “I know you’re there, bitch.” He snarled, as if these words were for my ears alone. “I can smell you.” He giggled. “And I’m not the only one.”

Funny, how well his words now traveled across the intervening distance.

I recognized the soothing tenor of Mr. Jenkins from 4A as he tried to talk the stranger down. The words outside my door were back to being unintelligible. But whatever Mr. Jenkins said obviously had no effect because the next thing I knew people were screaming and there was a dull thud against my door, too heavy to be a fist this time, followed by silence.

Blessed silence.

* * * *

They say the man ripped him apart. I never saw the body. The police quarantined the hallway until they gathered what evidence they needed and had a team come in to clean up the blood splatter where poor Mr. Jenkins had been thrown and eviscerated against my front door.

Witnesses say that the man who attacked him had yellow eyes. That he was exceptionally strong. Crazed. They also say that they never saw a weapon on him.

“It was like…he just swung his arm and all of a sudden poor Marty’s insides were all over the place.” Mrs. Pearson sniffed and wiped the gathering tears away with a spare tissue she pulled from her purse. There was a sitting area on my balcony and Mrs. Pearson’s was adjacent to mine. We’d bonded over our mutual interest of spying on bystanders at night and the day after Mr. Jenkins, Mrs. Pearson and I had once again found ourselves sharing each other’s company.

I leaned over my railing and patted her frail hand in sympathy and she shook her head at the disgrace of it all.

“Why would he do such a thing? What was so important that he was willing to kill such a sweet man like Marty Jenkins?”

To that I had no answer.

My neighbors were more help in the investigation than I was. They knew what the murderer looked like. All I could tell the police was that he knocked on my door and told me I stunk. Not really much to base a manhunt on. I waited a full 42 hours, before desperation finally kicked in. I gathered my things and set off in search of Madam Clara. If psychos were searching me out at home now, then there really wasn’t anywhere safe.

As Rachel had said; as much as I wanted to avoid going outside, Madam Clara might actually be able to help me. I wouldn’t know until I tried. Besides, if I waited much longer it may be too dangerous for me to step foot outside my front door let alone my apartment building. The curse was growing in leaps and bounds rather than stages and I didn’t know how much time I had before men like the one who killed Mr. Jenkins refused to let a little thing like breaking and entering keep them from me.

Moving at night had both its dangers and its benefits. The single pro that had outweighed all the cons was the simple fact that there were less people on the road at night. Also I’d woken up late. I suppose I could have called Rachel to accompany me on this little adventure but with the way things had been going lately I decided not to push her luck. Two dead men on my conscience were plenty; I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it if anything happened to Rachel.

Despite everything I’d been through over the years, I really loved living in the city. It was the premier thought in my mind as I hurried from my apartment building. On a Friday night the streets were usually crowded with partygoers and folks just getting off of work, but usually when I wandered around after nightfall the sidewalks and streets were nearly empty. I liked that part the best. An empty city was like an empty library or school, it made you feel as if the entire thing was built just for you and gave familiar landmarks an individualism that they usually lacked when surrounded by people.

One good thing about it being a Friday night? Once you walked past all the bars and clubs, everything else was virtually deserted. I lived in a semi-upscale area of town. Which meant that things bordered on that line between affordable and too expensive, and my neighborhood boasted its fair share of restaurants and bookstores and clothing boutiques. By the way, ‘boutique’ was simply a pretentious word that shopkeepers used so that they could up the price of their items by at least $20.00. I’m not sure if it was the same everywhere, but on my side of town where society matrons judged you not by the color of your skin but by the name-brand tag on your blue jeans? Most definitely.

Anyway, the most lovable part about my location was that because it catered to a younger crowd and tourists there were lots of unique little stores around. So it was no surprise when I arrived at the address on the medium’s business card after about twenty minutes.

It was a single story building built out of brick. It sat on a corner lot and the building itself was small enough in comparison to the size of the property that it could actually boast a yard. The grass and cheerful little flowers out front weren’t the only things preventing it from looking like a legitimate business.

The architect must have been enamored with storybook homes because it looked like he or she had plucked this one right out of a fairytale picture book. It even had a trellis arching over the walkway and decked out in roses that guests had to pass under in order to get to the front door.

It was creepy.

I wouldn’t say that I had a thing against flowers. I just had a thing against
unnecessary
flowers and I found myself wrinkling my nose in distaste as I made my way along the cobblestone path. When I caught sight of the gargoyle head doorknocker I was sorely tempted to roll my eyes, but there was something about the intelligence trapped in that liquid black gaze that stopped me.

Clearing my throat and trying not to look as guilty as I inexplicably felt, I rapped lightly on the door with my knuckles rather than touch the knocker. No response. In fact, crickets began chirping. As far as I knew there were no crickets in the city. I may have been wrong on that front but I decided to take the hint the universe was throwing my way and use the damn gargoyle. I knocked, once, twice, a third time and the knocker pulsed in my hand like live flesh.

I was still cringing and rubbing my hands along my jeans to try and erase the sensation when the door flew open.

“Can I help you?”

I stopped shuddering long enough to stare down at the gnome looking up at me. She had on blue tortoiseshell glasses and wore a pinstriped pantsuit with more grace than most office professionals. She glared at me over the tops of her glasses, and I was momentarily entranced by the color of her eyes. They were green and brown, striped and spotted like the pelt of a cat, both colors shining with individual luster. The sight should have disgusted me, but the complete opposite was true.

“What?” she snapped, her gravelly soprano jerking me back to the here and now. I shook my head to clear it and glanced uneasily into the dimly lit, wood paneled, hallway stretching out behind her.

“Are you—? I mean, do you—?” I looked at her doubtfully and tried again. “Madam Clara?”

“No.” She barked, and slammed the door in my face.

Rude bitch say ‘what’?

“The hell?” I whispered, more irritated than enchanted with the little woman now. This time I used the knocker without hesitation and the door whipped open before I got a chance to knock a second time.

She raised her brows at me and I noticed for the first time how craggy her entire face was. Not wrinkled so much as it moved as if her skin were made out of leather. When she realized that I was staring at her again she rolled her eyes and would have slammed the door a second time but I stuck my foot in the intervening space before it could close all the way.

It hurt like a beast, and it didn’t help any when she opened the door wider and slammed it into my foot with more vigor once she realized what I was about. Cursing, I wrapped my hand around the edge of the frame and squirmed half of my body inside of the house while my hostess tried her level best to slice me in half. Little feet digging into the floor and both hands planted against the door, the woman had her head down as she strained to keep me out of the building. Laughter would have been my first reaction to the sight, but what had happened the other night was still too fresh in my mind to allow for much levity.