Pouring Shadows (Chapter 2)

The tiny figure was hunched in a corner, gripping her left arm painfully. Her eyes were red due to fatigue and her breathing was rapid. Sweat traced down the side of her forehead. The girl was in a small square shaped room with metal bars that started from one end of the wall to the other; just like in a prison cell. There was nowhere she could run to now. Her lips were dry.

‘Water…’ she whispered in a shaky voice.

The glass on the table in front of her began to tremble slightly. The girl narrowed her eyes, taking in deeper breaths which made it seem like she was having an asthma attack. She tried to focus her eyes on the glass of water but her vision was blurry. The glass kept revolving around repeatedly. She clutched her left arm tighter, digging her nails just around the area where the golden shards rested.

The shards glowed slightly. She clenched her teeth as needles of pain shot up her arm followed by a strong burning sensation. The girl glanced up at the glass and in the blink of an eye, it shattered, water spilling onto bare floor. The tiny splinters were noticeable in the dim orange light that shone from the bulb on the wall behind her.

There was a shuffling noise from somewhere at the end of the hallway outside the room, which later turned into footsteps as the person approached. The girl collapsed onto the floor out of exhaustion, before anyone even reached it.

*******************************************

It had taken me a whole hour, under the bright, hot rays of the sun, to fix the broken staircase from earlier. It was mid-day, when my shadow was at its full potential, that I started the work. People passed by underneath the metal stairs; some ignored me while some smiled and waved. I waved back.

‘Hey, Dixon! Nice job up there, keep at it!’ A man called out. It was Samuel, the guy who hired me.

It was a good thing I wore a protective metal mask because in return for his smile, I was actually glaring at him for always making me do the hard work.

‘Sure,’ I muttered under my breath.

My shadow grabbed another one of the metal rods and bent it so that it was in its original position. I kept my hands on it the entire time so that it seemed like I was the one moving it. I lowered my head; soldering gun gripped in my hand, and started fixing it. The flames hit the metal which then merged with the rod slowly. Something glinted through it.

I thought it was just the reflection of the sun and carried on. No more than two seconds had passed that a golden light tore through the flames. My gun stopped working all of a sudden. I tapped it on my hand, pressing onto the button once, twice, nothing happened. I quickly took off my mask and peered at the golden glimmering object lying on the metal rod, exactly at the spot where I’d merged it.

I reached for it with my gloves and picked up the tiny shard. It seemed to be unaffected by the heat of the flames as it shone brighter when brought into the sunlight.

‘This… I’ve seen it before…’ I trailed off, feeling someone’s shadow on by back.

I stood up, wiping the dust off my black jacket and tucked the little shard into one of its pockets. I was about to turn around when someone slapped my back hard and I staggered forward two steps before turning around with an angry frown on my face.

‘Heya Dix!’

My frown vanished at the sight of a familiar face and was replaced by surprise.

‘Meryl, what’re you doing here?’ was what stumbled out of my mouth without my consult.

‘This is the route to my flat, you know,’ she said and chuckled. ‘Gosh, what’re you doing?’

Meryl glanced down at the gun in my gloved hand and then peeked behind at the metal rods I’d been fixing for so long. I stepped to one side to let her pass, yet she stood there.

‘They pressured you into doing another task for them.’ She made a face, burrows creasing.

Meryl had brown eyes, a round face with a heap of light-brown silky hair that was always tied to one side in a ponytail. She was only few centimeters shorter than me and at times I thought she was still growing taller.

‘Yeah, well they’re paying me.’

‘They’re not paying enough. How can you even live with such little income?’

She peered into my eyes worriedly. She clearly had no clue about the night duties I managed to earn plenty from; nobody did. They just knew that they had a night guardian but no one had ever seen his face to know that it was actually me. They weren’t supposed to know. That was how it had been.

Even a childhood friend like Meryl had been kept in the dark about it.

‘That’s just life, girl, accept it,’ I said.

She took one tender look at me. ‘Stay safe,’ she murmured and walked past. At times it seemed like she knew my secret and could see right through my disguise as an ordinary worker, while at other times, she wouldn’t have a clue about it. I couldn’t blame her for being like that for the two of us grew up playing together. She must’ve realized at some point in my life, after the sudden disappearance of my parents, that something was different about me.

It was somewhere at that time that I had begun to realize that my shadow would at times deform into shapes that only clicked my mind for a second. Not long after that, I was secretly invited to join the night force as a night guardian. I had to complete a special training for it, of course, before I was able to actually perform my duties.

I remember falling asleep during class and Meryl would nudge me with an elbow when the teacher was about to look. I had started to sleep a lot during the day since night was the time for duties. At times while exercising in the park, which was also part of my training but out of Meryl’s knowledge, she would bring me snacks to keep me from overdoing it. I would sit on the bench with a towel around my neck, gulping down every ounce of juice in the bottle. Then when I was done, she would press me into drinking another one.

It was crazy how she was always there for me when I needed someone, yet I could never return that favor. I picked up my safety mask and the soldering gun and walked back through the metal door, into the building. It was brightly lit by tube-lights that were fixed up on the walls. I walked through the pale white corridor, passing doors at every few steps. The stairs were at the far end, I headed down.

‘You mean there could be more incidents like these?’ I heard a lady say to a man, who was presumably her husband.

‘You better believe it. Don’t let the kids outside after 6. Don’t send them on errands alone either. Send Jonathan with them. He’s always roaming around the streets doing nothing. He should make himself useful by escorting his little cousins to the square,’ the man spoke in a rough voice.

I shook my head partly in disbelief and part amusement, continuing my stroll across the street. Jonathan lived three flats away from the one I had been fixing. It was another one of the dreary looking, grey painted buildings; paint that was falling apart at places. I looked up, a hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun’s rays. Even from several floors down, I could detect his windowsill that was dented from the corner.

Nobody would have guessed that the dent was actually formed when Jonathan had been slammed onto the window by a former enemy. The enemy was under the supervision of the night force but the dent was never fixed.

I entered the building and went straight towards one of the empty elevators across the lobby. Barely anyone looked up from their work. The guests were comfortably seated on the couches in the middle, busy with their conversations. The assistant manager smiled at me from his desk where a family stood, getting reservations into one of the apartments of the building. The parents were busy signing some papers while the twin girls, possibly four years old, looked up at me.

I smiled awkwardly and entered the elevator, pressing the floor number. The doors closed. When they opened again, I almost bumped into a guy my age who had been about to walk into the lift. We looked up at each other.

‘Jon. I was just coming to visit–’

‘Didn’t you receive the call? We’re all being gathered at the night-force institute,’ Jonathan replied urgently, without even letting me finish.

‘But… your equipment. The gun and the safety mask.’

I held up the two contents in front of him, stepping out of the elevator. It took him two minutes to run back to his apartment to put the stuff inside and then come back to join me near the elevator. The two of us stepped inside together, pressing the ground floor button. Jon kept his finger pressed onto it while taking out the pass of the night force and inserting it into a thin, horizontal space. The light on the ground floor button suddenly changed from yellow to green.

I watched him take back the card. Jonathan was an inch taller than me, a skinny fellow but a strong fighter. His copper hair was combed neatly, parted to one side but it never stayed at one place. The hair was quite smooth and kept falling onto his eyes every often. When he turned his head to look at me, his brown eyes were grave.

‘What’s with that look?’ I asked.

‘Did you not notice what happened to the walls of those flats last night? Even with us owls on the watch all the time…’

He shook his head, more hair falling onto his eyes.

‘You think they’re calling us to reproach us for our carelessness?’ I asked, for the fear in Jon’s eyes was evident.

‘That’s gotta be it. I mean, why else would we be called?’

‘By we, you mean…’

Jonathan exhaled loudly. ‘Only the ones who were on duty last night are called. We made a mistake, we’ll face the consequences.’

He looked tired. I could tell he hadn’t slept properly after getting back from his duties. The two of us exited the elevator into the institute that was located underground. Only members with the card could come and go whenever they pleased.

****

‘There is one thing we night guards make sure of, besides keeping an eye out for trouble, it’s that we get the right amount of sleep during the day… which, clearly some of you haven’t been getting,’ the coach spoke, eyeing Jonathan who had opened a big mouth to yawn.

I nudged him with an elbow and he quickly straightened his face. We were standing in a line, all facing the coach who paced back and forth in front of us. There was a long, black table with empty chairs for us to sit. It was a rectangular room, white painted walls and a whiteboard occupying the wall at one end.

‘Do sit down now. We have much to discuss about last night’s events. If not all, some of you might have witnessed something. I would like each of you to share your accounts with me.’

There were about seventeen of us. I took my seat next to Jonathan. The coach stood at one end of the table, right in front of the whiteboard, his usual place. He wore a sleeveless, blue jacket with a full-sleeved grey shirt underneath. Grey strands of hair were visible through the hump of dark hair on his head.

‘Alright.’ He put his hands on the table. ‘We’ll start with you, Edward.’

All eyes turned to Edward as he stood up to speak. The chair screeched back.

‘I was up all night, watching from the roofs of the higher buildings. If there was to be any disturbance, it could only be detected by the ones with the lower shift. I couldn’t have possibly spotted anything so close to the ground from such height.’ He sat back down, sinking into the chair.

‘You have a point. How many of you were on the lower shifts?’

A few hands went up. I was one of them. Jonathan was spared as he too had the higher shift, meaning he was assigned to watch from above. The ones assigned closer to the ground were only seven. They weren’t the only ones in the entire town, of course. They were just assigned to that particular area.

One by one each of them were asked. Almost all of them were in their early or mid twenties. None of them, however, had witnessed anything. One of them, a girl, who was almost my age, stood up. She looked small for someone who performed such heavy duties. It reminded me of the little girl I had encountered twice, last night and the morning.

‘I was out near the forest when I saw this little girl go inside it,’ she began.

I glanced up at her. Something about her, it just seemed familiar. It would seem strange to anyone that very few of us had ever actually met in person, except on main gatherings where dozens of guardians would make appearance, so it was hard to remember everyone by face. However, this girl… something just nagged me at the back of my head.

‘I was about to follow her when I spotted a herd of black Catters chase after her. They didn’t see me because I hid myself in the shadows of an alley. I couldn’t stop them on my own so I had to contact someone nearby…’

She stopped and looked at me. She had dark eyes that were shadowed by the thick red fringes over her forehead. The rest of her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.

‘The sensor in my cell phone could only detect one other night force card nearby. I contacted him immediately and asked him to save the little girl. I don’t even know your name…’

I noticed that everybody was looking at me now.

‘Dixon,’ I told her confidently.

It clicked my head only then that it was because we had talked on the phone last night that she seemed familiar to me. I had never actually seen her before at any gathering or even on duties otherwise I would have recognized her in an instant.

‘And what was your name, child?’ the coach asked in a softer tone than that which he used with the rest of us.

‘It’s Cheryl,’ she smiled timidly. She had the face of a child’s when she smiled. No wonder the coach was treating her like one.

‘You’re our newest member, and if I’m not wrong, the youngest, at the moment. How old are you again?’

‘I’m sixteen.’

The coach flashed a proud smile at her as if he was expecting her to fulfill her duties more proficiently than the rest. It was sort of unfair but we were cool with it. I could see that it wasn’t only the coach, everyone smiled welcomingly at her. A few women even greeted her and she nodded in return.

‘Back to the topic here, Dixon, your turn,’ the coach’s voice had an urgent tone to it once again.

I stood up, silently pushing my chair back.

‘After I received her call, I went inside, took care of those Catters and got the kid out of there.’

‘Did you ask that girl about why the creatures were chasing her?’ The coach raised an eyebrow and I shook my head, telling him about last night’s event how the girl had just suddenly disappeared from the living room.

‘Do you think it has something to do with those cracks and dents on the building walls?’ A woman asked when the coach did not respond to my story.

‘This is all too strange. Nothing can be deduced by what Dixon just told us. Of course, even he did not see the real culprit.’

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, sinking into my chair coolly, when something pricked my finger. I slipped my right hand out, noticing the tiny dot of blood on the index finger. I rummaged through the pocket to come out with the golden shard that I’d kept earlier. Looking at it triggered my memory and the morning events played themselves inside my head.

‘Wait! There’s something else I want to share…’

All eyes turned to me at once as I narrated my second meeting with the little girl, skipping the part where I’d mistook her for an enemy and had jumped out from behind the dumpster. They all listened intently. Cheryl looked like she was enjoying herself, listening to stories one by one.

I told them about something dark swooping past me so fast that I’d never managed to get a proper look at it. ‘And that’s when I heard her scream, after which some sort of light radiated from the turning. When I went to check what it was, the girl was gone. I don’t know what you will make of this coach because my mind’s clogged. I really have no clue.’

The coach looked at me for one long moment after which we were dismissed.

‘Now that was weird. The coach didn’t scold us for being lazy,’ Jonathan spoke once we were out of the room and heading for the elevator at the end of the hallway.

‘It’s weird that they’re making a great fuss out of it. Things like these happen all the time except that this time, nobody happened to be around to witness it. That doesn’t really give us any reason to gather like this. It’s like they know something and aren’t telling us.’

‘They can’t tell us something they don’t know,’ a girl spoke from behind me. It was more like a murmur as she passed by us.

‘What’re you talking about?’ Jonathan inquired.

Cheryl half turned to look at him. Her dark eyes scanned his face for a second.

‘Don’t you know? The same incident has occurred in other parts of the town as well. It’s a large town so I can understand if the news hasn’t reached you yet. Whoever’s doing this, the night force is trying its best to figure it out.’

Jonathan and I exchanged looks.

‘How do you know that?’Jon asked but Cheryl was looking at me now. She stared for a brief moment, just like the coach had. Her eyes searched mine for something only she was aware of, then she walked away without another word. Jonathan just stared back and forth at the two of us.

‘What was that all about?’ he asked. I shrugged as if I couldn’t care less.