The vibrating phone sounded like a tiny jackhammer skipping across the kitchen table, UNKNOWN, flashing on the screen. He wondered if it was his sister masking her number so he would pick up. She had called him five times since he texted her, “Had a minor crash. Dog in the road. Nothing serious. Can’t make dinner tonight. Sorry.” He shuttered at the thought of his sister’s reaction to the truth. What would she say if she knew he swerved into a tree on purpose?

He finally snatched the phone from the table. “Hello?”

Silence. After a moment, he punched the end button. There was probably a broken telemarketing software application on the other end of the connection. He slapped the phone onto the dining room table and took the few steps needed to reach the living room and collapse into the threadbare recliner. He swung around and looked back to the cramped kitchen with its small counter, folding table, single rickety chair, and iron-framed floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the glass of the large windows, across the street, stood an abandoned building. He focused on its shadowy outline. It wasn’t the safest part of the city, but the antique charm of the apartment building called to him when he first rented it.

He enjoyed the irony of the left-over signage, advertising it as an exclusive place to live in the 1920s. Developers built it during a boom in the area, just before the Great Depression brought construction to an abrupt halt in late 1929. It was easy for him to look beyond the chipped paint on the tin ceiling tiles, the cracked marble floors, and faded red brick walls. He imagined the people who once called this space home. They filled the drafty rooms with forgotten lives and forgotten conversations. When he sat quietly, he could see them. Not in a sepia tone throwback from a television show but living full lives in vivid hues. Blue dresses, brown suits, checkered floors, and white walls with intricate red patterns. Children laughed and cried, mothers cooked and ironed, and fathers came and went back and forth to the office. But they were all dead now, and he should be too. He shook the last thought from his mind. It was his voice though, not the demon. Maybe Millae had been right. Maybe Jode was gone.

Jack pried himself out of the recliner and moved to the large windows, tapping the glass with his finger as he gazed down at the Kansas City street below. The soft yellow glow of streetlights lit crumbling buildings and cracked sidewalks. He leaned his head against the window’s old iron frame and a blue strand of static electricity arced out to his forehead. He ignored it and let his mind wander. He thought about Millae and the Isle of Song and the old man and the cemetery. It was fading like a dream, but he could still remember what she said. Find the girl or he would go mad. It wasn’t like he was sane before. But how could it be real? Surely, it was a dream brought on by head trauma. The voice would return. Was it really Jode’s voice?

Movement in the shadows of the abandoned building across the street caught his attention. He scanned the darkness. When nothing jumped out at him, he relaxed his gaze and let his forehead rest against the glass once more. The dream seemed so real. He wanted to believe it. But when he woke, there had been no cemetery. Just an ordinary hill. No life tree in sight, no headstones, or Isle of Song. Maybe he died for a moment, laying in that grass, and his panicked mind conjured a story to stay alive.

Luckily, his bike started when he lifted it from the grass. It was battered and dented, but it got him home. The day slipped away after that. He emailed his office explaining the wreck, blaming it on a dog in the road, and then texted his sister. He thought about going to the hospital, but he seemed physically fine and the thought of the VA Medical Center waiting room made him cringe.

Another shift in the shadows caught his eye, and his mind snapped into focus. Something was about to happen, he could feel it, he usually could. He stepped away from the window and flipped off the light. His heart picked up an extra beat as he scanned the building across the street. After seeing nothing, he moved his eyes to the sidewalk below to find a tall man in a wide-brimmed hat and long tan coat. He stood beneath a streetlamp, bathed in a pool of yellow light, which held the surrounding shadows at bay.

The man raised his face to the second-story window and looked straight at Jack. Clouded gray eyes pulled him into a long tunnel, his apartment whirling around him. The strange man leaned casually against the lamppost in the center of the vortex. Jack drifted closer until he was floating an inch away from the gray eyes. No pupils, no white, just gray. Far away, back in his body, he felt his hands shaking against the window’s glass and something like a series of static electric shocks stinging his fingers.

Pressure built behind his eyes and a growl formed in his throat. He glared into the eyes just inches from his face and pushed back against the window with his body two stories above. Red lightning snaked across the stranger’s blank eyes and spilled out over his face. In response, strands of white and blue energy arced from Jack’s body in the window above, streaming down into the man. As lightning collided with him, Jack snapped back into his senses and found that he could move once again. He fell to the floor, chest heaving, and pressed his back to the wall, just below the windowsill.

“Easy,” he whispered, trying to still his trembling hands. “Keep your head.”

He glanced down at the street, but the stranger had disappeared. He pulled the string on the blinds, letting them slam to the bottom of the sill, and darted to the front door to make sure the deadbolt was in place. Two steps later, he threw himself into the recliner and planted his heels, pushing it back to the wall. He thought about the handgun he pawned along with all his knives. He longed for the weapon’s metallic touch and reassuring weight. He gripped the soft armrests of the chair, trying to watch the entire room at once.

The demon did not whisper to him. Usually, when he came up against intense situations, the voice whispered violence into his mind. The only way to keep it at bay and not lose control was to whisper back. This time, though, the voice did not come. Maybe the dream was real? After long moments of silence, he struggled to keep his eyes open and his limbs became heavy. It felt like he just finished a ten-mile ruck march.