Nightwalker Chapter 2

"Is this thing even street legal?" Lev asked as he looked at his friend with much reluctance.

A wide grin crept over Reggie's face. "Not really, but I know a guy that knows a guy that knows how to game the system," he replied, which did little to calm Lev's reservations. The vehicle parked before Lev in all its 'glory', as Reggie had triumphantly exclaimed, was a two-tone van with both tones of colour belonging to the family of brown. The van sported an amplitude of dents, scratches, and poorly matched splotches of brown spray paint to cover areas that had at one point lost most of their colour.

"I take it you know the bumper is missing?" Lev asked as he leaned sideways to look at the front of the vehicle.

Reggie unlocked the driver's door and sucked his teeth before replying, "Yeah, lost that in a bet, still working on winning it back." Lev snickered and tried to open the passenger door, but it was still locked. He watched as Reggie leaned over and slapped the panel of the passenger door next to the lock, which looked to be a golf tee jammed into the hole. Much to Lev's surprise, this worked, and the golf tee popped out of the hole just enough for him to open the door and climb in.

As Reggie performed an almost ritualistic set of actions to get his van to start, Lev looked around at the interior in front of him; faded wood panels lined every possible section of the van's dashboard, and some of these panels looked to be procured from a hardware store. Lev slowly glanced back over his shoulder and saw the van also doubled as a camper, a feature Reggie used quite often, by the dishevelled mess behind them.

"Uh, Reggie," Lev muttered.

Reggie finished his starting ritual, and the motor sputtered to life. "Yeah?" Reggie replied as he got the vehicle to lurch forward and begin on their journey.

"Do you live in your van? Are you Homeless?" Lev asked with much reluctance.

Reggie laughed and shook his head. "Naw, dude, I got a place in that building back there, sometimes it's just easier to sleep in my van rather than run the gauntlet past my neighbours. It gets like the night of the living dead up in there sometimes, if you know what I mean." Lev looked at Reggie in mild disbelief and simply nodded his head. Truthfully, he had no idea what Reggie meant.

By all accounts, it should have taken at most half an hour. Yet the van was still rumbling through back streets and literal alleyways forty-five minutes later. "Only downside to this beauty is... I need to avoid main streets as the police are pretty quick to stop her if they spot her." Reggie had said, which had only strengthened Lev's scepticism. Eventually, though, the streets began to look familiar, and it was somewhat confounding to Lev with how little the places they were passing through had changed in the ten years he had been away. Some of the buildings they passed by were decaying, brutalist, mid-rise apartment buildings. Then others were once lovingly restored gothic architecture, which were now also showing signs of decline.

"Y'know, one of these days..." Reggie said, which broke Lev from his nostalgia overload. Lev looked and saw Reggie pointing skywards. "I'm gonna help myself to one of those gargoyles. I mean, who's gonna miss one of those bad boys way up there?" Reggie exclaimed like he was talking about picking a flower or some other mundane object.

Unsure exactly of what to say to such a statement, Lev responded with a simple "Well, when I get my life sorted, maybe I'll help you get one of those gargoyles."

Reggie chuckled, "Hell yeah, you will."

Lev was snapped from his thoughts when Reggie pulled the van over, still some ways off from their destination. "Huh, what's going on?" Lev asked as he looked in the rear-view mirror, expecting to see a police car behind them.

"I've been thinking... If it is like robots or something, then they might have one or two there still, so I kinda don't want them to ID my ride." Reggie explained, while Lev found this reasoning silly, he was not opposed to stretching his legs after this so far unnecessarily long journey.

Lev and Reggie walked through street after street in the cold post-midnight dark, with hardly a sound elsewhere, it seemed as if the world was frozen around them. Lev thought of the many nights spent wishing the world outside those prison walls could have been frozen in time until he was able to find Jessica again.

Reggie cleared his throat and glanced at Lev. “So, what’s the address of your place? Feels like we have been walking forever,” he asked wearily.

“Not too far now, nineteen Crescent Avenue,” Lev responded. If it hadn't been for the street light, Lev wouldn’t have noticed the surprise on Reggie's face. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked curiously.

Reggie rubbed his cold hands together and looked into the distance in front of them. “Man, that place has been abandoned for years! People say that the house has been haunted since a man who lived there paid to have his girlfriend kidnapped. I never realised it was YOU the stories were about!” Reggie explained.

Lev put his hand to his head and sighed with a pained expression on his face. “Great, now I’m a part of a ghost story parents tell their kids so they avoid messing around with my house,” he remarked.

Reggie shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not so bad, the place will be in the same condition, except for the grass being super overgrown now.” He said, trying to shed some hope on the situation.

“You seem sure of that. How do you know it’s been untouched for the most part?” Lev asked, puzzled by Reggie’s statement.

Reggie laughed and scratched the back of his head. “Well, a while ago I had some friends that lived a couple of streets away from there, so I’d pass through that street all the time, your place always gave me the creeps…. I mean, I didn’t know that was your place at the time, of course!” Reggie said, not wanting to sound rude.

Lev smiled faintly. “That’s alright, I get what you mean,” he replied.

Fifteen minutes later, Lev and Reggie arrived at the corner of Crescent Avenue. Once there, Lev stopped and took in a deep breath. “You sure you want to go there, man? It could be best to let sleeping dogs lie if you know what I mean.” Reggie asked as he watched Lev steady his emotions.

Lev exhaled, sending a plume of steam into the chill night air. “I’m sure. I can’t let Jessica go without knowing for sure what happened.” He replied calmly.

“All right, man, I’m right behind you,” Reggie answered.

The pair turned onto Crescent Avenue and began heading down towards Lev’s former home. “Damn, the place sure has changed,” Lev remarked as he looked around at the houses that all looked different from how he remembered them.

Reggie nodded. “Yeah, this neighbourhood is becoming quite the wealthy area. Your house acts as a sort of divide. Fancy houses on this side and normal kinda places on the other, your spooky old place in the middle.” Reggie laughed as he made a chopping motion with his hand. As the street numbers got lower and lower, Lev became increasingly anxious, thinking about what he might find inside his home.

“Here we are,” Reggie exclaimed as he stopped and turned to face their destination. Lev could hardly believe that he was looking at the same place he once called home. The overgrown lawn was at least waist high and had long ago engulfed the path to the front door. One of the front windows was broken, and its curtain hung outside, waving gently in the breeze.

“Wow, it's sad to see the place like this,” Lev exclaimed, with a sigh. He stepped forward and reached over the gate to open the latch on the other side.

“I’ll wait here while you look, if you need me, just shout,” Reggie said, knowing Lev may want to go through his belongings on his own. “I’ll keep watch…. For stuff.” He added with a Smile, Lev nodded and thanked him before beginning to work his way through the tangle of grass.

As Lev approached the front door, his pulse quickened, and images of Jessica flashed through his mind. Lev stood at the front door for a moment before taking a deep breath and ripping down the old crime scene tape that clung to the door frames like abandoned spider webs. The doorknob felt like ice in his hands and required a forceful nudge with his shoulder to get the door open.

Stepping into the hallway after all these years sent waves of mixed feelings washing over him. The house looked like it had been subject to a tornado, the way things were strewn over the floor. If it wasn’t for the thick smattering of dust on everything, he would have thought that the place had been ransacked recently. Lev walked silently through the passageway into the lounge, where the sliding door was agape and letting in the mild wind from outside, which fluttered through the curtains, making them dance eerily in the moonlight. Looking around for clues as to what happened to Jessica.

“Was it a robbery gone wrong?” He mused to himself as no other possibility came to his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, Lev saw something move in the shadows of the hallway leading to the main bedroom.

“Reggie?” Lev said aloud as he turned to try to catch a glimpse of whatever was there. Getting no response or sight of what had moved, he slowly snuck towards the hallway and looked down its gaping maw.

“Hello? Someone there?” He questioned nervously down the hallway, still to no answer. Under the closed door to his bedroom, Lev noticed a strange blue light emanating from within.

“What the hell is that?” He thought to himself. He gulped and slowly made his way down the hallway, being careful not to stand on the pictures and other belongings strewn over the floor. At the door, Lev hesitated before slowly pushing it open.

“Jessica?” Lev exclaimed as there in the centre of what was their bedroom stood Jessica, facing away from him and bathed in a pale blue light. She slowly looked over her shoulder at Lev with a look of sorrow on her face, “Jessica! It is you! But-but how, they said you had died?” Lev exclaimed, his heart fit to burst from his chest as waves of emotions washed over him.

Jessica’s eyes met his, but hers were now devoid of any recognition of him. “Who are you?” She asked nervously as she took a slight step back.

Lev’s heart sank at her words. “What? It’s me, Lev.” He replied, feeling as though he had just been sucker-punched.

“I don-…Lev?” Jessica muttered as her face showed a sign of recognition. But her face eventually turned into a cold stare, and she replied. “I don’t know you.” Her voice was void of emotion, and her words pierced Lev’s heart like deftly thrown daggers.

“Jessica, this is our house… This is our bedroom.” He pleaded as he took a couple of steps toward her.

To which she leapt backwards with a supernatural grace that made Lev stop in his tracks. “Don’t come near me!” she growled. Her eyes were akin to a wild beast as she stood on top of what was once their bed, her body tense and ready to fight or escape.

“Jessica, please. It’s me! We were together for eight years, you can’t have forgotten…us.” He pleaded to her, cautiously stepping toward her once more.

Jessica leapt backwards to the window that was wide open and looked at him with a look of sadness. “Lev... that was ten years ago. Forget about me,” she said, the sadness thick in her voice. Without waiting for a response, she deftly escaped through the window and was long gone by the time Lev got there to thrust his head out to search for her in the darkness.

“Jessica!” he shouted, a lump forming in the back of his throat.

“Lev!” Reggie’s voice cried out as the front door slammed open. “Lev? Are you alright!” he shouted as he stormed the living room looking for him.

“Down here,” Lev exclaimed loud enough for Reggie to hear. The beam of Reggie’s flashlight illuminated the bedroom doorway, and he sped inside.

“Are you alright? I saw something leap onto the neighbouring house's roof. God knows what it was,” He said as he put a hand on Lev’s shoulder.

“It was her…She was just standing right in front of me.”