Excerpt: stories from a dark alley

excerpt from "Teeth of a Dragon"

Taking one of the oil lamps in hand, Hanley took the stairs three at a time and looked around the upstairs. There were four small bedrooms. Oddly, as lived in as the ground floor had looked, the upstairs looked untouched. Oh sure, each bedroom was carefully decorated, each bed beautifully made and covered in wildly colorful quilts. Pictures hung on the walls, and the one closet he looked in had children's clothes hanging neatly inside on wooden hangers. But the air in each had an old musty quality, as if it hadn't been stirred in awhile. It didn't smell bad or of death, exactly, just old, ancient, almost the way Hanley imagined an old Egyptian tomb might smell. There was a weight to those rooms that made him profoundly uncomfortable, and yet, he found himself drawn to them, peeking in each one more than once, as if expecting a change or a sudden jolt as a hidden little boy jumped out from behind a bed and yelled. "Boo!"

The noise and talking below told him the squad was still working. Hammering had started. Deliberate and precise, as someone sealed up the windows below with wood slats or boards, whatever they'd found.

Hanley let himself be drawn to the middle room, the smallest room. A small bed with a quilt in every shade of green imaginable. Four tiny pillows in white pillow cases with embroidered flowers on them were arranged by the plain wooden headboard. This room had no framed pictures on the wall, only a small tapestry hung from nails. Hanley stepped forward to take a look at it, ducking his head to fit through the doorway. It showed a castle, with what looked like serfs tilling the soil in the foreground. Only when he held the light closer, he saw that the ground they were working wasn't ground at all... but a field of men. Their mouths gaped open, their arms bent up at weird angles, looking from a distance like corn stocks, but from up close, Hanley could see the details... and wished he hadn't. But whether the serfs were destroying the dead men with their farm tools, or planting them under the earth, he couldn't tell. He looked around the room, almost desperately, as if he could find the owners of this house. Surely to keep something like this on the wall meant they knew about the dead.

"Lieutenant!" Kirby's voice shouted for him from downstairs over the sound of hammers and furniture and wood being slammed and dragged. "Lieutenant!"

Coming! he tried to call back, but he spun back towards the door and his voice died in his throat.

In the corner of the room, on the far side of the door, a girl was staring at him. She was about eleven or twelve he guessed, sitting absolutely still on a painted wooden chair. Long, dark curly hair framed her face, and her eyes were deep brown. She wore a brightly colored dress.

"Hello," Hanley said softly.

She said nothing, just watched him. When he stepped closer, her eyes shifted to follow him.

"I don't mean you any harm," he said, trying to keep his voice soothing and gentle. "Are your parents around? Brothers? Sisters?"

When she still didn't stir or act frightened, he moved closer. "You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?" he asked, quietly. He knelt before her which brought his head even with hers. Carefully, still not wanting to alarm her, he reached out and touched her hand--

--and let out a surprised yelp, nearly dropping the oil lamp as he recoiled from her. Her skin was cold and dead and hard as an old marble stone.