Chapter four is being split between two episodes since there are four scenes. This is the first part of it. If you’d like to sign up for the podcast, click here: 
I’ll be getting closer to a regular schedule soon, our mending is going well, as are most of the other projects. I’d like you to check out a relatively new one, The End of the World Times, the Journal of a (hopefully) Alternate Future. You should enjoy it. We have 4 writers currently uploading material and two more coming on-line soon.
Also want to let you know about The Compulsive Writer’s Support Group. This is my podcast about writing, and I’m going to start covering writing The Hidden on it with the next episode. What this will amount to is a kind of director’s commentary that you would listen to if you had the DVD of the movie of this storyline, but I don’t play them both at once here because that would be confusing. I’ll discuss the decisions behind the storyline, some of the secrets, backstory, and some of the things that went on around writing this book. I have an odd habit of things that I write coming true in very odd ways, and that will be a running theme with the podcast analysis.
But for now, Chapter 4a
The sun dripped down the distant skyline, its reflection oozed down the buildings, and passed through the pollution to color everything the shade of rotten blood. The air hung still, infectiously humid, stagnant. This was the joy of Chicago summers, hot, humid, and sticky. The day was feeling longer and longer for Tobias, the result of too much time spent wandering in the open.
Times like these that the streets made the streets their most hostile; Tobias didn’t know who was watching, or what situation might arise to ensnare him. The police knew his face from numerous run-ins and the street had eyes and teeth of its own. It could spot a person in distress from blocks away, and swallow him whole in a second. A rival gang member on an incursion could take you out without the courtesy of letting you see who’d done the killing, a hit and run driver could be thirsty for a victim, a beggar might pull a knife. Any of these events were not just possible, but likely if you showed a hint of weakness at the wrong moment.
The worst thing running around in his head, though, was a single image: the shop keeper, growing pale, groaning, falling over, turning blue, his skin sinking in, turning transparent, skin cracking open, and then it flashed out, his mind couldn’t take it anymore, and he found he’d walked another block without noticing anything. Over and over for blocks it happened, and it didn’t get any less jarring through repetition.
But of all the things that could kill, stop or otherwise harm him, his biggest fear was facing up to his brother Wesley. The streets may have been dangerous, but his brother was his best protection. His fear was that word spread like an outbreak on the street. He needed to call Wesley, come in, face up to it, save as much face as possible.
He flipped open his cell phone. Nothing happened. He tried opening and closing it again, detaching the battery, blowing on the contacts, as if that ever did anything, and then reattached it. Nothing. He shook it. Still nothing. The battery was dead. This struck him as odd. His battery had never died so quickly, and it had been fully charged when he left the house. It didn’t matter, facts was facts, he needed to find a payphone.
When survival is key, it’s best to look at your assets and threats, evaluate each for its own merits, take inventory, make decisions, always keep moving. He had allies, shaky and tentative alliances, everyone that spent time as a plaything of the streets had to have some, and the more you had the less chance the streets would eat you. But those alliances all had prices, and he owed more favors than he’d given. He didn’t have much more room on his street credit card. He couldn’t count on everyone in his gang. They’d without a doubt protect him, but most were out for their own advancement, and they would use this to their advantage if they could find an angle.
Some of the allies had told him the cops came around asking with urgency, just a routine matter, the usual line. But they were detectives, not the beat cops. Detectives never came around on routine matters, you never saw them in the bad neighborhoods like the beat cops. The beat cops knew where Blooddog territory ended and Lunatic Species territory began, who was in power and who wasn’t. Beat cops were Tobias’s main problem. They knew Tobias was out there, and they all knew their beats.
He hadn’t returned home since this morning, and he hoped his mother was too drunk to care about anything when he got back. If he malingered long enough, she would have reached the bottom of her bottle, and dropped it by her side on the way to an alcoholic slumber, a cancerous liver, and a terribly painful end. She wouldn’t come out looking for him.
He decided in the end that it was best to keep it in the family, regardless of how much grief Wesley would give him. It was time that he stopped avoiding the issue, and faced it with some amount of dignity. He convinced himself that this was the way he would grow into an adult, a leader, to face up to his mistakes.
He thought these were his biggest problems. He coughed twice, he felt a constriction in his lungs like he had asthma. He kept telling his mother he should get checked for it. His chest felt constricted, his throat felt like it was closing in. His asthma was picking a bad time to come back, but he figured the stress wasn’t helping it any.
The demon perched on his shoulder. When riding something like this, it limited its effect as best it could. It was unnecessary energy expense. All around it, the demon sensed food, but it all moved too quickly to be easy prey.
Tobias found a payphone outside of a gas station, picked it up and deposited his quarters. One of his first lessons was to always use a payphone for business so there was no evidence in the telephone records of who called who. Payphones were getting scarcer these days, finding one that hadn’t been vandalized beyond usefulness was even harder. He picked up, deposited change, and dialed.
The phone picked up on the first ring to the sound of a hard and cautious voice.
“Yeah,” Wesley said.
“Wesley. I’m in trouble,” Tobias was suddenly pleading. He didn’t expect to be suddenly broken practically to tears. He thought he’d be able to maintain his composure. Some adult he turned out to be.
“Tobias? I heard the cops are out for you. What’ve you done this time?”
“I didn’t do a thing. I got caught up in somethin’. Don’ even know what. But, the cops is looking for me.” He turned around quickly, keeping an eye out for cars or cops.
“What’s the problem? Did you get into a fight?”
“No, It jus’ happened. I didn’t do nothing.”
“Uh-uh. Ain’t buying it. Where’s my gun?”
“I ditched it. Had to.”
“You ditched it? I just got you that gun. Shit, that was a good gun, too.”
“I need a lawyer, bro.” Tobias was ashamed to admit it, but he knew he needed it.
Wesley sighed. It was one more time through this routine. “Shit. I’ll call Ellis. Come home. He’ll bring you in,” he said in disappointment, adding the obvious, “And keep out of sight.”
The laws that govern coincidence insist that as soon as things like this are said, a Newtonian equal and opposite force must come into play. This force happened to be a police car, which drove by mostly minding its own business. Tobias was well past the point of playing it cool, the stress of being out and pursued all day had burned out his patience for playacting. He panicked, cowered, turned, hid his face. It was instinct, but the wrong one, he immediately realized that his rash decision just nailed him. The police decided it was worth a second pass to investigate. They slowed down suddenly, put on their lights, and blew the siren once.
“Oh, no. No. Shit,” he said, but there was nowhere to go.
“Tobias, what is wrong?” Wesley yelled through the receiver, hoping to get a straight answer out
of a messed up little kid.
Tobias decided not to try to get away, but to make his continued failure quick and painless.
“I gotta go, bro. I’ll call you in a couple hours.”
Tobias hung up the phone and raised his hands as the police got out of the squad car. They were angry at him for making them get out of their air conditioning in the heat, and it showed, their faces immediately scowled, angry that they were forced out of comfort.
“This better be worth it,” one said to the other, wiping the beaded sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The other nodded his head in agreement. He pulled his shirt and vest away from his body to get some air.
The officers were quickly on him, asking him for identification. This however, was mere formality. They knew who they had, they’d seen him around many times, and had picked him up at least once before each. They read him his Miranda rights, put on the handcuffs and helped him into the back seat of their car.
The demon sniffed at the police officers. They smelled healthy and fit. They did not have the scent of the struggle for survival. The energy he’d expend in weakening and corrupting them would be greater than the benefit of feeding from them. He waited for easier prey.
The ride to the central processing station in Chicago was slow and shameful. Tobias thought everybody in his neighborhood saw him being driven in the back seat of the patrol car. It was nothing they hadn’t seen before, but it still hit him like this every time, probably his mother’s influence. His cough grew stronger, phlegmy, more violent on the way, got worse every block. He thought it might only be due to the stress, the rotten city air, the heavy Chicago humidity. He couldn’t do anything about the snot, it dripped onto his jeans and the plastic seat of the squad car. He shivered, and considered asking the cops to turn down the air conditioning. He knew they wouldn’t listen, but the shivering made him look nervous, and the nervousness made him look guilty, even though this was the first time he wasn’t.
He played the game. They led him in the front door of the station, and he dutifully followed, dragging his feet on the broken sidewalks only as much as was proper. There were formalities to every situation. When his feet hit the tiles of the polices station, he scuffed along again, to show a proper amount of indignation. It was all a matter of meeting expectations.
The police station was cooled mostly with ceiling fans. The air conditioners that teetered in the windows couldn’t hope to keep up with the number of bodies and the amount of activity in the front rooms, so Tobias was always uncomfortably in a draft. The wooden chairs they forced him to sit in while they did the initial processing were seemingly designed to automatically cause a knot in his back, as if he were leaning on a stone that jabbed only where it would irritate him the most. This made him more bitter and aggravated while the desk sergeant, a plumpish Hispanic woman in the dark side of her forties, searched out the proper forms for admission and processing. Tobias had plenty of time to brood while a pile of triplicate forms accumulated on the desk before her.
Next came the check-in gauntlet. Nami was contacted, and they booked Tobias Stinson on one count of attempted robbery at Nami’s direction. Despite the futility of the charges, it would be near midnight when the booking was complete, and they would be sufficient to hold Tobias until he could be questioned in the morning.
Tobias was pushed along to the fingerprinting station, a tall table with cards and ink pads. The officer here filled in another blank on the paperwork, and drew a card to take Tobias’ prints. Tobias had been through it before, and so when his hand was firmly clutched, his fingers dipped in ink and rolled on the pads, he kept his expression straight and clean, emotionless despite the offensively suspicious gaze in the officer’s eye.
The demon sniffed at the officer, but again held off feeding. He could bide his time. Somewhere near there was proper prey, ripe prey. The scent of corruption was in the air, the scent was close.
The fingerprints done, Tobias was escorted to the next station.
The backboard measured Tobias at five nine. He knew the poses. The flash went off, and he turned without being prompted. When they checked the image, they saw a minor smudge over Tobias’ shoulder. They assumed it was due to a fingerprint on the lens, but his image was unaffected, so it was acceptable.
The demon had never been so exhausted as it had been since it came through. It had never needed to feed so much, its desperation for food had become so tangible he could almost eat it, but it’s species didn’t metabolize desperation. Usually it found its prey after desperation had taken hold, done its work, brought the creature to the beginnings of decay.
Tobias was then escorted through the lockup, his personal items confiscated, cataloged, and bagged: One pair shoes, Nike Jordans size 10; one pair jeans, black; one belt, leather, black; one athletic jersey, Chicago White Sox; one gold bracelet; two gold necklaces, one wallet containing fifty-six dollars; eighty-three cents loose change. This was placed in a large bag, at which point he was issued an orange jumper, and canvas shoes that couldn’t be made into a weapon.
The file officer uncapped a sharpie and said, “Name?”
Tobias replied sullenly, “Tobias Stinson.”
“Name?” The demon replicated the syllables. It was still learning the ways and languages of this new world.
“Age?”
“17.”
“Age?” the demon asked, not knowing what it was asking. “Age?” it asked again, louder. Still no response. There was no recognition at all.
“Age!” it shouted. Still nothing.
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