White Crow’s Crossing is the cemetery. Go figure.
Why can’t it ever be, “Follow the message above the sink to the tulip gardens!” or “Read the mysterious note at the ice cream parlor!”
I like ice cream. Especially with sprinkles. I guess I must have said this out loud, because Sparrow sighed and said, “With chocolate sauce. You also like squirrels, but not in your ice cream. We know. You’ve told us about a thousand times.”
I can’t help it. I’m walking above holes in the dirt filled with thousands of rotting, decaying bodies. I have to talk about sugar and small mammals. What else am I supposed to do?
It was empty. Totally deserted. Just like in the movies.
Okay, well, it was empty after I screamed at everyone to leave.
I was trying to explain to a nice graveyard patron the advantages of black squirrels over white ones, but he was too busy sobbing over a headstone. He was all “blah-blah-blah-wife-was-brutally-slaughtered-by-terrorist-sect- blah blah blah this and ‘I-will-never-rest-until-I-have-sought-revenge-blah’ that.”
“MOOOVE!” I hollered at him. “GO ERECT A MEMORIAL CEREMONY SOMEWHERE ELSE! WE’RE BUSY FOOLISHLY WALKING INTO A TRAP WHERE WE WILL MOST LIKELY MEET OUR ULTIMATE DOOOOM!”
Cleverly, I added DUN-DUN-DUN-DUUUUN!! Music at the end.
“Well...this sounds like it will be horrible,” he said apprehensively as I shooed him out of my three-mile radius personal bubble.
“YOUR FATHER SAID THE SAME THING TO YOUR MUM WHEN YOU WERE BORN!”
It was just then that Dune gently pointed over to the creepy abandoned factory on the other side of the street. There was a question mark in blood on the side of the dumpster.
Great! So I had used up all of the breath in my lungs for nothing. I could have used it for something more useful and less totally pointless, like breathing in helium from a balloon and talking in a squeaky voice at passing strangers.
Speaking of which, I hadn’t had any weird out-of-worldly incidents. (Actually, the two subjects are not even remotely related) Except for last night, when I woke up in a cold sweat and started spitting blood out into the sink. Also, my eyes had changed color. And dimension.
“Hum ho,” Dune sang. “You know what this reeks like?”
“Sky’s feet?”
“I was going with ‘holy-crap-this-is-a-trap-we’re-all-going-to-die’! But I’m sure they both have death at the end of the rainbow.”
I think that’s a metaphor for when ‘everything is over’, because Sky’s feet sure as heck don’t look like rainbows.
The sky was dark and slatted, roiling with distant thunderheads. The gray had washed everything dull, even the pavement was pale, like bloodless skin. (Or vanilla ice cream!) Sparrow shivered as Dune yanked open one of the industrial doors.
It opened in garage-door style, the door winding up like parting teeth. A low, keening sound whistled as it slid, sallow mist spilling from the rust lining its throat. Dune coughed violently into his fist, stepping back before the fog blurred his figure.
The door ground to a halt, leaving the tunnel gaping hollowly into the mist.
We stared for a moment in respectful silence, a warm, damp draft brushing our skin unseen. It was like staring into the mouth of a beast.
“You’ve called Sky?”
“Uh-huh.”
He turned his head to look at me, slowly.
“Why are we doing this, again?”
I shrugged. “I - …we…can’t run forever, can we?”
“WHY DOESN’T ANYONE LISTEN TO MEEE!” Sparrow wailed in the background, interrupting our drama. “I say we all go home and watch TV.”
“Good point. We have HBO at the hotel.”
I ignored them both and pulled out a flashlight, flicking the switch.
Funnily enough, it isn’t a warehouse. It’s a factory. There’s even an underground river rumbling through the center.
Now I can add drowning to my list. Cheers.
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