For several heartbeats, it seemed that I had just imagined whatever I heard earlier, as the only noise in the alley was my own thundering heart. But then, just before I turned to leave, the tiniest phantasm of a gasp rose up from deeper within the space.

  “. . . can . . . see . . . me?”

  That was a voice! That absolutely was without a doubt a voice! Was there something slightly unnatural about it? Yes. But if they were injured, maybe they couldn’t quite breathe right, or something was stopping them from speaking louder. Rushing forward, I waved my phone flashlight in wide arcs, trying to find where the call for help had come from.

  It wasn’t until I was more than halfway down the narrow space that I spotted it, or rather her.

  I froze in my tracks, wondering if I was about to see a dead body as a pair of feet in combat boots stuck out from the other side of the dumpster. I rounded it and gasped when my light landed on a woman lying in a pile of trash, blood spattered across her front and running down the shiny black plastic bags of garbage she was lying on.

  Oh my gosh!

  “Hey, I’m here! I’m here!” I sputtered, hurrying over to her side. I suppose it could have been some sort of trap, but I didn’t care. Someone was grievously injured and needed my help. “Don’t worry, I’m going to call for help!”

  But before I could hit the call button for 911, I’d already queued up, the woman reached out lightning fast and gripped my wrist. It was startling enough that I froze, giving her an uncertain look.

  Wait, is this a trap?

  “It’s useless,” she said in that strange voice of hers. It was like something between a sigh, a breath of wind, and a low guttural growling that wasn’t supposed to be heard by human ears. “You’re not supposed to see me.”

  “Not supposed to . . . what does that mean?” I suppose that I shouldn’t have put stock into a horribly wounded woman’s words. She was probably delirious from blood loss. Or perhaps whoever had attacked her had given her drugs. Maybe she’d been attacked because she was already inebriated. It was hard to say.

  “I’m sorry,” was all the woman said before her grip on my wrist tightened, and then, suddenly, I spontaneously combusted.

  Or at least, that was what it felt like.

  One moment, I was in the alley, trying to help a badly injured person, the next, it was like my entire body was consumed by the worst pain I’d ever experienced, and I’d had gallstones in middle school.

  Every cell in my body was overloaded with energy, crackling through me as if I’d stuck a fork in a socket. I wanted to scream, to cry, to huddle into a ball, but it was like I was locked in place.

  “St-st-st-” I stuttered, trying to get words out, but I couldn’t. I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I felt like—

  Wait, what was that?

  I didn’t know how I had the ability to comprehend anything through the haze of excruciating pain, but I swore I saw a flash of shadow move across my peripheral vision. Blurry. Barely perceivable.

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  And something in my mind told me that whatever it was meant to attack me.

  “Stop it!” I cried, twisting and shining my flashlight in the direction I thought the shape was coming from. “Get back! Get back! Humans are apex predators, and you will be sorry!”

  I knew I sounded like an absolute idiot, but I had also read that with some animals, making yourself as loud, big, and scary as possible could scare them off. They would think the whole thing wasn’t worth the trouble.

  It was insanity, I knew that, but my brain was so blitzed from my personal date with internal lightning that I was mostly running on instinct. But strangely enough, it did seem to give the . . . whatever it was pause.

  Emboldened, I finally managed to rip my wrist from the woman’s grasp—how was she so strong after losing so much blood?—and fought my way to my feet. I was definitely unsteady, and the floor of the alley seemed to sway this way and that, but I took a couple of steps forward, using my phone’s light as a weapon.

  “Go away! Awwwoooo! Roar and stuff! Go the frickity frack away! RAWR!” By the end, I was sputtering absolute drivel, but the shadow shrank further and further back until it shot off into the sky and disappeared from my sight.

  Had . . . had that really happened?

  I stood there, more than a bit confused, trying to figure out if maybe I’d fallen off my bike and hit my head, and I was just having all sorts of fun experiencing TBI-induced hallucinations in the middle of a random alley in the city. But after a moment, I realized the whole reason I was shadowboxing semi-invisible creatures and whirled back to the woman.

  Finally, I got a good look at her. I’d been so distracted by the blood, I hadn’t noticed anything else about her. The robes she was wearing were . . . strange? As someone who was pretty in love with fashion throughout the ages, I couldn’t quite pin it on one era.

  And her face . . . there was something sort of timeless about it. Not ageless, however, just something that was as impossible to pin down as her clothes. She had wrinkles, and her eyes were a cloudy sort of white, yet the way they looked at me made me think that she still could see just fine.

  “Did you see them? Were those things what hurt you?” I asked, rushing to her side. Maybe I was wrong, but it seemed like she had visibly aged since the first time I’d seen her.

  The woman started to slide from the trash heap, and I hurriedly grabbed her, her body settling into my arms.

  “You cannot trust anyone,” she rasped, her voice still that same strange, otherworldly sound. Honestly, even if everything around me was a dream, I was still pretty concerned that my mind was concocting such an insane situation. “Things have just begun.”

  “Things?” I questioned, wanting to reach for my phone again, but I couldn’t with the way I was holding her, and dropping her seemed pretty rude. “What—”

  I didn’t even finish my question because, to my great terror, her skin turned gray—actually gray—in a wave. I tried to scream, but my very breath was stolen from my lungs when cracks shot through her face like she was some sort of porcelain doll.

  I am really in a horror movie! I thought.

  That was the only explanation I could come up with as the cracks rapidly expanded until, without so much as a pause, the woman turned to ash and just . . . blew away.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” I cried, jumping to my feet while trying to desperately swat the dust off of me. I’d worn some strange things in my life for fun, but corpse powder wasn’t exactly one of them.

  Wait, was it in my mouth?

  IT WAS IN MY MOUTH!

  I’d had a really weird night already, but that was the final straw. It was like my brain locked up and refused to accept any more information. I stumbled back to my bike and took off as fast as I could.

  I didn’t think I’d ever peddled so fast, but at the same time, it was like I blinked, and suddenly, I was desperately trying to get into my apartment. I was wheezing, my stomach was roiling, and I was so deep into the flight part of fight-or -light mode, I was surprised I hadn’t somehow taken to the air.

  I got inside, but just barely, and I was pretty sure I damaged my bike as I did, but I didn’t care. All at once, dizziness was swamping in, making the ground go from just swaying to violently pitching from side to side.

  I’m gonna be sick.

  With the last vestiges of control that I had, I stumbled to my bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet. That was about as far as I got before everything spun, and the entire world winked out in a snap.