The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1, Page 2

CHAPTER 2

  Undershadows

  I was released from the hospital two days later.

  Rhode was waiting at the entrance and ran to me as soon as she saw me. She guided Alem and me to the street where Ezekiel waited next to a car.

  I didn’t want to seem too paranoid but I couldn’t help inspect the street.

  “Are you fully recovered?” asked Ezekiel as we were about to leave.

  I nodded.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Soon,” assured Rhode as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  And then things began to appear ominous. A few meters from the car, stood a man in a dark blue suit and sunglasses covering his gaze. Although I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew he was watching us, stealthily and discretely.

  Another man, dressed identical to the other, stood at the park exit and was watching us as well. He pressed his ear with his finger and appeared to say something, as if talking on an invisible cellphone.

  I held Alem tightly against my chest, trying to hide him from the outside, but I knew it was pointless. They knew and had found us. They were following us, watching us.

  “What’s the best way to your home? Through Vestals Street?”

  I answered the question with a short yes and masked the panic I was feeling. The last thing I wanted was to alarm Rhode and Ezekiel.

  My friends in the front continued talking, unaware of the danger, but I wasn’t listening.

  I looked through the rear window. In the car behind us was another young couple, and a cautious old man was driving the car behind them, but a few cars back came a dark blue truck with gray windows.

  I tried to take a deep breath. I didn’t know whether I was going crazy or whether it was all in my head, but I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing.

  We arrived at my house, and Ezekiel stopped the car in front of the gate. I said goodbye, and he left with Rhode, who naïvely promised we would all have dinner that weekend.

  I hurried them away and looked around. My heart was in my throat.

  At the end of the street were the same two suited men.

  I nearly ran to the front door with Alem. Shaking, I pressed my finger onto the fingerprint reader, and the gates opened.

  After my husband’s death, the security in the house had been strengthened by the best security company in the country, Gates of Faith, and mine was probably one of the safest houses in Carmel.

  Holding Alem tightly, I scanned the small garden. Everything appeared normal. Lord and Christian were chained, but I unleashed them. Afterward, I deactivated the alarms and entered the house.

  It was just as I had left it.

  In the backyard, I circled the swimming pool and inspected the rear gate and a little door hidden by bindweed in the green wall that surrounded the terrain. Both entrances were locked, and their readers were functioning properly.

  Knowing that we were safe, I thought I could rest for a while. Well, given the circumstances, there wasn’t much else I could do.

  I spent the day going from window to window, ensuring that everything was normal in the garden. But I kept catching glimpses of the suited men behind the green wall.

  I wasn’t delusional, but unfortunately that meant the worst had happened. Those men would take my son at the first chance they got. Running was futile, and so was hiding.

  “We’re gonna have to lock ourselves in, Alem,” I told him while I was bathing him. “And hope they can’t get in.” I wrapped him in a towel and went back to the window.

  I didn’t realize immediately the stupidity of that plan. I didn’t think about Sunday masses, about doctor appointments, Alem’s school, or the fact that he wouldn’t always be a baby.

  When curfew started, I peeked through the windows to see whether the bells had scared them away. Not even they would want to risk their lives that way. No one could walk the streets during curfew, no one could leave the house, not even for a short moment, except for the Night Brigade and a few emergency services.

  But I knew that even though they were temporarily gone, something else might have come in their place. After a few moments, in a half-lighted area, I saw a half-hidden figure completely covered in a black cloak and hooded. I couldn’t see its face but I knew it was looking at me inside the house through the window.

  I closed the curtains frantically and stepped away. It was an undershadow, as Umbra called them.

  I was ten years old the first time I saw one. It was my brother’s fault of course.

  We had found Mr. Brisk, a strange middle-aged neighbor who was always the target of our pranks. He was cleaning the fountain in the center of St. Matthew’s Square.

  We were constantly annoying him. We’d spread dog feces under his car’s door handles, move the sprinkles in his garden, and spend the whole afternoon ringing his doorbell only to hide when he showed up, red and shaking furiously.

  With his feet bare on the slippery rim of the fountain, Mr. Brisk was cleaning the statue of a long-haired man in a wide tunic, with a raised hand, over which seven stars floated.

  My brother and his friends dared me to get closer and touch Mr. Brisk’s soles and make him slip.

  Without realizing that this prank could very well end in Mr. Brisk breaking his neck, I accepted the challenge and went on with a rapidly beating heart.

  As soon as I got close, he looked at me sideways and asked me from the top of the fountain, “What the heck do you want? Do something, and this time I’ll kill you, you little brat.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trying to distract him. My voice was trembling from excitement.

  He was cleaning the raised hand of the statue with a wet cloth, removing the moss that had accumulated on the stars. When he looked back at the statue, I went to touch his feet, now giggling like a real brat.

  He got a fright and stumbled but kept his balance.

  I didn’t give up, and encouraged by the success of only a few tickles, returned to poking his feet until Mr. Brisk shouted and jumped. He lost his balance and fell into the middle of the fountain.

  I ran to my brother and his friends, who guffawed. But I became worried because the fall looked brutal and Mr. Brisk, sitting on the ground with his head lowered, seemed to be crying.

  Hating myself for having done something so reckless, I slowly walked over to Mr. Brisk, blushing, to apologize. I leaned over the rim to see what he was doing sitting with his back turned to me, but my eyes were attracted to the bottom of the fountain, to something that was shining underwater between the upturned stones, as if it had been well hidden until then.

  Drawn in gleaming gold, the size of a crown, was a symbol I had never seen before: