Chapter 4 - Spiraling

Enveloped in darkness, the old woman rocked in her rocking chair, the tired wood creaking under her shifting weight. Through her matted grey hair, her piercing eyes gazed deliberately at a small flickering black and white monitor screen which silently depicted the external view of her cinder-block apartment, changing angles twice as often as the withering figure blinked. In her lap lay the decaying remains of a large, dead rat which she nervously stroked.

"They're coming again," she told the rat. "Coming to murder me! Coming to dispatch us all!" A droplet of rusty water crawled out of a crack in an aging pipe that ran along the edge of a steel beam high above the tired oak floor. It lazily detached itself from the pipe and descended. Accelerating as it fell, it crashed into the wood, spreading outward and depositing filth and rust as it dispersed.

A subtle draft swept through the room disturbing a stack of yellowing newspaper clippings on the rickety sewing table adjacent the old woman's chair sending them flapping and clattering to the floor, the racket temporarily obscuring the droning pipe organ music playing from an ancient radio. Acrid dust billowed up from the heap of papers on the floor and swirled in the draft.

"Oh great ruler of the heavens," she prayed, "destroy my enemies! Cast them to the edges of the universe! Destroy! Oh! Oh, destroy!"

Something in the monitor caught her attention: a dark shadow slowly extended itself into view. One of those damn kids!

Crazy Doris leaped up from her chair, sending her rat tumbling to the floor. Taking no notice, she hobbled as quickly as she could to her front door. "Damn it," she screamed, "damn those kids! Destroy!"

She grasped the handle of a massive knife switch that was screwed into a bare stud near the door. Its tangled cotton-insulated wires quivered at the disturbance. "You won't get me, you hear?? Hear me? No!"

The old woman began flipping the switch back and forth, turning her porch light on and off rapidly. "Go away," she screamed, "go away and leave me alone!" Showers of sparks sprayed from the contacts of the switch as she continued.

A speck of dust blown out the door and upward would have seen a flashing porch light near the bottom-right side of an inverted-"u"-shaped complex of simple apartments. Outside the apartment with the flashing light, two small children played under the the watchful eye of a sodium vapor lamp, casting long shadows into the view of outdoor cameras. Further up the right side of the U, behind the fortress-like concrete walls, a pair of young men lay on a worn-out rug in a smoke-filled room before an aging television, its front panel and glass chipped and its cabinet broken, exposing bits of circuitry.

A young man wearing torn blue jeans and a military surplus t-shirt had recently succumbed to the negative effects of smoke inhalation and coughed uncontrollably.

"Cut it out, Marsh!" The other, known to his friends only as "Frost" struck Marsh teasingly on his back and gestured to the screen. "He's about to start jabbering in tongues again!"

On the screen an Asian man who appeared to be in his 50's wore a black leather suit accented by a silver chain from which was suspended a sparkling crystal. Every few moments the image distorted into digital artifacts and the sound screeched.

"Damn that bitch," Marsh began after getting his coughing fit under control, "every time she starts in with that porch light it screws up my set. I wonder what it is this time. Kitten outside her window maybe?" He thought for a moment and spat out, "bitch. I should go take a dump on her porch some day or something... see what she does then!"

Between interruptions, the figure on the television spoke as he glared wide-eyed and passionate, "praise the holy name of... and destroy the enemies...destroy all those who would...power here on earth and...you can be a part of...dollars to destroy those filthy..."

"I dunno, man. I think they call her 'Crazy Doris' for a reason. She could really be psycho. Might come out and kill you if you did."

"Do you think she might?" Marsh actually looked worried.

Christo paced his room with his mobile phone pressed to his ear. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. "Come on, answer!" He kicked the baseboard just enough to punctuate his sentence with a light thud. Four rings.

"Hello?" An female voice answered, her tone carrying an air of authority and conviction even with a simple word of greeting.

"Oh thank heavens you're..."

The voice interrupted him. "I can't make it to the phone now. Leave your name and number at the tone."

Can't or won't? Christo waited and at the tone he spoke.

"Hello, love. I'm..." He gazed out from the center of the U across the complex as he paused. "I'm afraid." He hung up. If she had a soul at all, she would surely call him back now.

A frantic mother jerked open a pantry door, momentarily distracted by a flashing light directly across from her kitchen. "Marcus! Where are you?" Marcus was her adopted son, a boy of 5, who up until a short time ago had been sitting on the couch where she could see him from the kitchen. The last time she looked up, he was gone, and thus began a frantic search of the apartment.

"Marcus!! Mother is very concerned about you!" Maybe he's just hiding. Must be. She hadn't heard the door. Of course, the TV was up pretty loud. But he would have said something if he was going out, wouldn't he? Surely he would. Why is that infernal woman flashing her porch light again?

"Marcus!!!"

The windows have long since been rusted shut. He couldn't have gotten out that way. Where could he be? What can I do if I don't find him?

Feeling ill to her stomach, she ran to the bathroom and leaned over the commode when she heard a faint sound.

"Marcus!"

It emanated from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. She flung it open and found Marcus, huddled in the cabinet with his eyes shut tight, his body in the fetal position, shaking.

"Marcus! What's wrong, Marcus?"

"Ho gang ah, " came his reply. Blue eyes snapped wide open, and he chanted endlessly, "ho gang ah... ho gang ah... ho gang ah..."

Christo's phone rang. Forty-five seconds. So she was there.

"Hello, love."

The voice at the other end was the same authoritative voice from the recorded message earlier, but now took on a more frantic tone and a hurried pace. "Christo. Listen to me. Are you listening to me?"

"I'm very worried, love. I'm so..." He began sobbing.

"Listen to me! Get a hold of yourself! Now!!"

He snorted, jerking back into reality.

"Damn, damn, damn!" Crazy Doris cursed her arthritic arms. Unable to continue turning her porch light on and off with the massive and heavy switch, she leaned against her door and slowly sunk to the floor, loosening her death grip on the handle only when she could no longer reach. "Damn! Damn damn damn! Get off my porch! Go away!" She struggled to catch her breath, exhausted from excitement and exertion.

A sodium vapor lamp a short distance down the walkway on the verge of failure flickered as if echoing her porch light. The wind outside strengthened, howling through the cracks in the doorway and stirring up a flurry of dust. The dust swirled, rising and falling in stop-motion, suspended momentarily in time by rays of flickering light from outside.

Frost's nose was pressed up against the cold glass window as he tried to catch any glimpse of what was unfolding at the other end of the steel walkway. The angle was much too sharp to see the source of the flashing light, but bits of trash caught in a vortex of wind in the courtyard below reflected back the light and cast eerie shadows on the tarmac before the flashing abruptly ceased. "She's stopped flashing her light," he reported in a slow monotone.

The preacher on the television was gone now, replaced by a bad science fiction B-movie, the Leech Woman. Over a brief pause in the howling wind one of the characters on the screen shouted, "You will never escape me, you are the one in my dreams of blood!"

"Shit! At least we knew what she was doing. She could be anywhere now!" He rushed to the window. "She could be on her way here right now! That crazy bitch! She wants to kill us!"

"Get out of there now, Christo! Do you hear me? Get out now!"

Marcus's blue eyes shone in contrast to his golden skin as he stared catatonic and wide-eyed into space. "Ho gang ah! Ho gang ah!"

His mother had managed to move him from inside the bathroom cabinet to the floor of the bathroom but couldn't muster the energy to move him any further. "What's wrong, Marucs?" She grasped his shoulders and gave him a gentle shake trying to get his attention. "Marcus? What is it?"

The boy paused for a moment, turned to look through his mother's head and screamed, "ho gang ah!!"

Christo tried to concentrate on a dark speck on the wall, but couldn't hold it in focus. Something was happening, he thought. I was doing something... The phone! He was having a phone conversation!

Fading back into reality, he heard the voice on the line again, "...now! Christo do you hear me??"

He paused for a moment, desperately trying to reattach to himself. "Spiraling!" He spoke the word as though it were a deadly poison that he had to cough up. "I'm..." he paused again. "Spiraling." This time he barely knew the word he planned to speak.

"YES, Christo. Your theory was obviously right. You have to leave NOW! It's only going to get worse! Concentrate, damn you!"

The wind grew stronger still, gusts slapping the walls. The vortex in the courtyard sucked in more trash and leaves, carrying them up, up, up to where chaos overcame organization, and they fell again only to be spun up once more.

Shadows danced in Doris's apartment as she crouched on the floor, staring in horror. They edged closer and closer from across the room, freezing in their tracks as the yellow-orange light flickered only to jump forward a moment later. The darkness overtook her rat.

Doris screamed.

"Stop it, Marcus! Stop it! Stop it!!" Marcus's mother covered her ears as the boy continued screaming, "ho gang ah! ho gang ah! HO GANG AH!!"

"I can't! I can't get out! Help me!" Christo crouched on the floor. "I can't! I can't go out there!" He slid back underneath his desk and backed up completely against the wall. "It's too much! I can't do it!"

"You have to do something! You know what could happen!"

"Holy crap, man! Look at that!" Marsh pointed at the massive vortex of rising and falling refuse.

She closed her eyes and, still holding her ears, turned around and around in the bathroom. "Stop it! Stop it!"

Something. Do something. Do anything to make it stop. What can make it stop?

Christo took a deep breath, leaned forward and flung his head back as hard as he could. He heard his skull crack against the plaster as he lost consciousness.

Outside the wind calmed as quickly as it had started, scattering trash across the courtyard and the world went to sleep.