The Umbral Gate, Part I

Author's Note: This text has been edited from when it was first posted to add necessary elements to make the ending more solid. I guess this is why I should only post finished works, but I really wanted to get parts of this story up for comment. And thank all of you who do leave comments. They do mean a lot to me.

Rex was a rookie and his name wasn’t really Rex, I just called him that. His actual name was Aden. Aden. What type of name is that? Anyway, he was my partner assigned to me as we worked construction security for Varek construction. His voice cackled over the radio, “Mr. Nolen? This is Aden, over.”

I grabbed the radio from my belt, “Call me Ross, Rex, what’s up? Over.”

“Well, sir, it looks like vandals broke in, spray painted all sorts of shit, uh, stuff all over one of the walls down here. I saw one of them head up some stairs. Please advise. Over.”

I ground me teeth a bit. “I’ll be right down. Stay put. Over and out.”

It didn’t take me long to leave the little trailer set up for security to get to Rex’s position. Sure enough, one wall had been tagged. “We’ll do a write up,” I said.

“A write up, shouldn’t we go after that guy?” Rex asked, antsy for his first real confrontation.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I walked back to the trailer following me like the dog I imagined him being when I decided his name should be Rex. We got back inside the trailer, I checked the closed circuit TV monitors for any activity and then told Rex to sit. I had to make a phone call and it wasn’t to the police or Varek, it was a special number given to me by the owner of the building. The voice mail picked up and all I had to say was, “The gate had been opened.”

I turned to Rex. “I’m going to tell you a story, told to me awhile ago by one of my partners.

“I’ve had a lot of partners in the six years I’ve worked for Paragon Security. You are like my thirteenth I think. Some of them were really unique. Like Jersey Joe. Did you ever hear about Jersey Joe?”

Aden indicated he hadn’t.

“Well, his name really wasn’t Jersey Joe, I just called him that because he had what I think was a New Jersey accent and drank a lot of coffee. I mean he drank it like it was brewed crack or something. He would go on long rants about his totally psychotic family. I swear to god most of the urban legends you hear originated with Jersey Joe’s family.

“His brother lost a leg while changing a tire because his brother used a crowbar lever to lift the car and a sandbag to hold it down. As he sat, one leg sprawled under the car he didn’t notice the sandbag slipping off the end of the crowbar. WHAM! The bag slipped off, the car came crashing down on his leg.” Rex grimaced as I slammed my hand down on the desk.

“See, the way Jersey Joe told it, his brother probably could have kept the leg if the ambulance had been called sooner, but the brother’s wife yelled at him for being a dumbass for a good thirty minutes. I guess each person handles stress differently.”

Rex nodded, still not understanding what I was talking about. That’s okay; I don’t like to get right to the point regarding things like this.

“Of all my partners, I enjoyed and feared working with Torrance the most. Torrance was kind of creepy because he always had a distant far away look about him like he was looking out over the horizon. I also doubt he bathed regularly and I am certain the security uniform was the only clothing he owned. Late into the shifts, he would tell the most spellbinding stories you can imagine. During all this time, even though his stories were way out there, I never doubted him for a moment. Torrance just wasn’t the kind of guy you openly doubted anyway. He had that odd intensity, what’s it called… gravitas about him that just made you believe what he was saying.

“The two of us starting working together at Crossgate Mall. Mall security was the best, just walk around and check doors to make sure they were locked. I loved it. It also provided ample opportunity to talk, though Torrance wasn’t talkative at first. I broke the silence by asking how he became a security guard. He looked at me like I asked if I could dig up his mother’s grave and use her ribcage as a sousaphone…”

“You mean xylophone,” Rex interrupted.

“Yeah, whatever, as a musical instrument. See, all types end up in this job. There are guys like you who get out of high school and are drifting until they fall into something better like marrying some girl who’d dad owns a business or something. Then there are guys like me who couldn’t afford college, took a job to help pay, end up getting some girl pregnant, get stuck in the job, get a divorce, have child support payments, and end up dead from alcohol poisoning at the age of 56. Then there are guys like Torrance who will never fit any sort of mold. His story was unique.” I had to stop a second and do a quick run through on all the monitors. If the kid saw someone go up the stairs, there was a chance I might be able to spot them on the monitors. Getting a visual would help me understand exactly what we were up against.

“Anyway, he told me I wouldn’t believe him if he told me. I shrugged. I didn’t believe Jersey Joe’s sister was stupid enough to mistake a rat for a Chihuahua but the picture he had proved me wrong. The point being there is a lot of stuff in this world that is hard to believe – hard to believe does not mean it isn’t true.

“Torrance had only said that as a warm up though because I didn’t have to press him to get him to start telling me. The way he picked through his words was like this was the first time he ever spoken about it.

“He told me he used to be a beat cop in the city. One of those policemen who walked instead of driving around in his patrol car. Paragon had a lot of cops, active cops, retired cops, and ‘other’ cops. The other cops were the biggest problems. They were usually bad cops given the option to leave with benefits or be fired. Cops protecting the brotherhood. These others always had something to prove. Always trying to be tougher, roughing up the people we have to chase away, that kind of thing.

“Torrance walked the area called Carfax Abbey.”

Rex stared blankly at me. Probably the same look I gave Torrance after hearing that.

“Yeah, I didn’t know what it was either. He said it was the section of the city where all the Goths hung out. There were clubs, coffee shops, new age bookstores, and that type of crap in a few blocks radius. In the novel Dracula, Carfax Abbey is the place in London Dracula buys.