afraid of than curious about. The New York summer air was stifling, and the sun had only begun to dip behind the buildings in the west. I was still wearing my black pants and black t-shirt, along with my name tag for the ticket booth, which only amplified the heat. It made me dread going home.
Before my step-dad had moved in, Mom and I had a boxy air conditioning unit in every room, including the bathroom, which meant that we normally had five of them blasting all through the summer. But when my step-dad had moved in, he wouldn’t hear of it, pointing out the astronomical utility bill. So, he’d downsized us to only two units. One for the living room and one for their bedroom.
I’d been stuck with just a fan.
Just another one of my step-dad’s micro-aggressions toward me, his own special way of demonstrating just how much he wanted me out of that apartment and out of his hair.
Something crashed in the alley on the right side of the theatre, and my mind was jerked away from my troubled thoughts of home. A heavy thump followed, and then a screech. I frowned and shifted sideways to peer down the side of the building, but it was drowning in shadows. The cast usually exited the theatre through the door at the end of the alley, and the crew would cluster together there for smoke breaks. But they would always flick on the light to chase away the darkness.
“Hello?” I called out.
Silence answered. With a sigh, I shook my head. Maybe I was imagining things. Again.
As I turned away from the alley, another crash exploded in the silence. Heart hammering, I glanced around. There was no one else around on this side street. No other businesses lined the skinny sidewalks. All the doors were shut tight, leading up into apartments that were buzzing from the echo of air conditioning units chugging along in the stifling heat.
A soft whisper drifted to me. “Help.”
My heart squeezed tight, and I took a step closer to the alley. My boots brushed up against broken glass, likely from someone who had stumbled in here after a long night drinking in the city. The darkness that cloaked the alley seemed to pulse, and I swallowed hard. This seemed like a terrible idea. No one should go into dark alleys alone...But what if one of the cast members was hurt? What if someone had gone out to have a smoke, forgot to turn on the light, and had fallen after stumbling around in the dark?
“Hello?” I asked in a soft voice. “It’s Norah. Are you okay?”
From within the depths of the alley, a hulking shadowy form rose from the ground. My heart pulsed, throbbing painfully in my chest. Eyes widening, I shook my head and stepped back. The…whatever it was, it had eyes the color of blood and teeth that were razor sharp. Thick saliva pooled on the concrete. It looked kind of like a wolf with long mangy hair curling off its bulky frame, but it was much, much larger than any normal wolf. It stood three times taller than me, and its muscular body was twice as wide.
It was a monster. One that had begun to let out a low rumble of a growl, a sound that made every hair on my arms stand on end.
Suddenly, the night was no longer stifling. It was no longer hot. Chills had consumed my skin, making my entire body shake.
“Norah, help,” a strangled voice came from somewhere near the creature.
My heart shook in my chest, and I tore my gaze away from the wolf to stare at a small huddled shape on the ground by the wolf’s massive feet. All the blood rushed from my face as I tried to make sense of what I saw. Lars, one of the sound technicians, with his bellowing laugh and hipster beard, stared at me from across the alley. His cheeks and arms had been gouged, and blood rushed from the gaping wounds. One of his hands was missing.
I couldn’t breathe, and the stars that dotted my eyes made it next to impossible to see. Wildly, I glanced around the alley, desperate to find some kind of weapon that might work against this creature. A shovel. A two-by-four. A large concrete block that I could throw in its direction.
But there was nothing in the alley other than a few discarded cigarette butts and some styrofoam takeaway boxes from the Chinese place