Chapter 1
"Every
single time I feel the burn I try to throw it away,
A fast fix for the brokenness of everyday."
-Screams of the Undead, by Demon Hunter
Alcohol had helped Jennifer Griffin to forget most of the last five years. All that she knew was that when she was eighteen, she'd left home to go to college, and had promptly flunked out. Too embarrassed to tell her parents what had happened, she just kept living in her apartment, telling them that she was still in school. Some amount of time after that (cheap liquor had blurred exactly how long) she had become unable to continue playing rent, and so had lost her apartment, too. Selling off some of her possessions which were no longer of any use to her (such as a television), she earned just enough money to develop an alcohol problem. Now, the only possessions she had were a sun-faded yellow tank top, an equally faded set of jeans, a handheld radio, a crusty teddy bear, a small cup to take handouts in, and a grocery store shopping basket to carry it in.
Jennifer Griffin honestly had no idea where she was or how she'd got there. It sure wasn't the city that she'd been in the morning before. Of course, she'd probably followed a drinking-binge to the city she was now in, as she often did. Her head was pounding and the side of her neck stung like someone had driven a two-bladed knife into it during that time that she couldn't remember. She often ended up like that, or with a bunch of slash marks all over her body. This had led her to the conclusion that she was quite a rowdy person when she got drunk, and this was a very true conclusion.
"God, I wonder what all I've got this time," she mumbled, staring down at her hands. She noticed a gold band on her left ring finger. After inspecting the ring, she straightened her spine out against the back-side of the bus stop where she'd been sitting, apparently the thing was made of 18 karat gold. "I wonder who I married last night," she chuckled. This was the third such wedding ring to appear on her hand since she'd lost her apartment. It didn't much trouble her that these rings had been appearing, considering that they always sold for a decent amount. She went to put the ring in her pocket, but felt that there was a piece of paper folded up in there. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and had barely begun to read it before she tossed it on the ground.
"Jennifer, dear, I love you, why do you keep selling my wedding ring?" the paper said. The words on the paper didn't bother her quite so much as the way they were written. It was her handwriting, but it was far too steady for her to have written it while she had been drinking.
Jennifer picked up her shopping basket and began to walk away from the paper. She went slowly at first, but eventually broke out into a run. She couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for whoever it was that she apparently kept marrying and blacking out about, but it was a good way to get free beer.
After a few minutes of paranoid running, Jennifer came to the conclusion that she liked the strange city that she'd woken up in this morning. It looked a lot better than the town that she'd been in the night before, for one there weren't bars on absolutely every window. On top of that, people didn't look like they afraid to be out on the streets. This sort of safety reminded her of hometown. As a matter of fact, the only way she could really tell that she hadn't gone home was the fact that the streets weren't named after presidents and colleges.
"Maybe I'll stay here," she muttered to herself. "It's so much like home that it's almost like I've been here before. Heh, I feel like I could run across Mr. Irondale whenever I turn a corner, out for his morning jog, just like I always used to at home..." by this time, she had slowed down from a run to a casual stroll. Of course, she was paying more attention to her memories of her hometown than she was to the road in front of her, which is why she didn't notice the man that she walked into.
"Terribly sorry," the man said upon impact, sounding as though he'd been paying as little attention to the road as Jennifer had been, "I don't think I know you... are you new around here?"
"Yeah," Jennifer answered, being just shocked back to reality herself, "um... I'm Jennifer Griffin," with that, she extended a slightly grimy hand that hadn't been washed lately except in a drainage ditch three days before.
"I'm Samuel Gardner," the man with black hair and five-o-clock shadow at seven in the morning answered, shaking Jennifer's hand, "I preach over at St. Maximilian's Church. Try stopping by sometime."
"Maybe I will," Jennifer responded, putting her hand back in her pocket, "but I'm not sure I'll be here until Sunday, I don't even know if it is Sunday."
"It's Friday. Listen, if you ever need a place to crash for a few days, I'm sure I could arrange something. There are a couple backrooms in St. Maximilian's that haven't been used in a few years, I'm sure that I could get a few people from the parish to help me renovate one of them."
"That'd be nice, thanks."
"Yeah, well, I guess I'll see you later if you decide to show on Sunday." With that, the dark-haired man, Samuel Gardner, walked away, leaving Jennifer Griffin once more alone with her thoughts.
He reminds me a lot of Mr. Irondale, she thought, maybe saying it aloud, she wasn't really sure which, looks a little bit like him talks in that same weird way, he even walks the same way, a slight limp on his left leg. Wow, this place really is just like home, I wonder what other surprises await me here.
Jennifer heard a car's horn screeching at her before she realized that she'd been walking across a street. The black limousine with tinted windows rushing by her seemed more than a little out of place. And, she noted, it seemed to be in a strange bit of a hurry, almost as if it were part of some sort of conspiracy.
And what's next? She thought, little green men? Or maybe Bigfoot? Really, it's just a little strange, not like there's some sort of secret government cover-up. I always have been good at making monsters of old furniture... She reached into the shopping basket and pulled the handheld radio out of it. She flipped the switch and hoped that the batteries were still working.
"...another body today," the man's voice on the local news said, "making this the thirteenth in a bizarre series of murders in which the victims have had their throats torn out, and several other bloody wounds on the body usually. This time, the victim was found with a strange spiked symbol carved into his chest. Police now suspect some sort of cult involvement.
"In possibly related news, the fifth victim of a vicious dog attack was found this morning after being missing for three days. All of the animal mauling victims have been found in the woods outside of the city. Last contact from the police states that they suspect a link between these events, that maybe the cult is using attack dogs to guard their territory."
"My, my," Jennifer muttered to herself, turning the radio off and putting it back in the grocery basket. "It looks like my stay here might be more interesting than I thought." Jennifer saw a park in the distance and began to walk toward it. Along the way, a furry movement pressed against one of her legs alerted Jennifer to a large, mangy looking dog prowling around at her feet.
"What's your name?" she asked the dog, kneeling down beside it. She didn't really expect anything more than the bark that it gave her, but judging her earlier conversation with herself about government conspiracies and little green men, she was hoping for something more. Looking at the thing's neck, she noticed that it didn't have a nametag. "Well, run along now," she sighed, shooing the dog off.
Once she got to the park, Jennifer collapsed on the first bench she could find. While she couldn't remember what had happened the night before, it had sure worn her out. As her eyelids slid shut, Jennifer saw the mangy dog running into the park and up to the bench that she was lying on. She would have seen more, but the blackness of sleep soon claimed her.
