Morning found him checking out of a cheap hostel in a foul part of town, ghost-eyed and gaunt. It was the sort of place where no one asked questions and people that were as pale as him usually had half a pound of drugs under their coat.

  Dave looked up at the sky warily, expecting to see plasma ribbons or… whatever… but the overcast sky looked oddly normal. Rune had set. At least he didn’t have to look at that. That big, weird, creepy moon followed a path similar to old Luna’s… it would rise again near sunset. Dave had wondered many times in the past few months whether his condition was somehow tied to the cursed alien satellite that had appeared in Earth’s skies ten years ago. Ever since it had arrived, nothing had been the same on Earth… and yet life had continued.

  He turned his collar up as he stepped back out onto the cracked sidewalk, back into a cold, miserable rain. It was a bleak day, the light sullen, and sky a uniform gray which hung so low it absorbed the top of the downtown buildings. And it was cold. It always seemed to be cold in San Francisco, no matter what time of year it was.

  At least, in the daylight, the sounds of the City were human sounds. Cars and sirens and voices, the rumbling of a mortal world going about its business. He walked, not really having anywhere to go, thinking he might find some bus stations closer to the city center. Because of the attack the night before he knew it was time to move on, to leave this wretched city behind and find a few minutes of freedom in a new place.

  They always caught up to him if he stayed anywhere too long, and once the first scout had found him it wouldn’t be long before he’d be swamped with the things… dark shadows like human shapes running down the street after him, possessed humans attacking him for no reason, the kind of shit that happens in horror movies.

  And nobody would believe him if he told them.

  He sighed and thought of Uncle Ron. His uncle — granduncle actually — had been the last of Dave’s family left alive after the natural and other disasters which had wracked the planet at the appearance of Rune. Everyone on the planet had lost someone, the loss of life had been horrendous. Dave had stayed with Uncle Ron until he went to college, but leukemia had finally claimed the funny, eccentric old man six months ago. Now he had no one. A whole lot of people on earth these days had no one.

  Because of that the people who were left had become a lot friendlier. Kinder. Humans now stuck together more. Dave was almost out of money again, but with a little humanity restored to the species there was always a way to make a few bucks for someone who had no pride left. Pity still existed in most places, and a stranger could beg for a meal or an afternoon worth of work. Plus there were ways to travel that didn’t take money… if he could make himself look harmless enough.

  Harmless… that was getting harder to do every week. He used to look like a wholesome University boy, but now his clothes were getting ratty and dirty, his sleepless nights leaving him wasted. Hunger was beginning to stretch his skin tight and reveal his bone structure. A few more weeks of this and he’d look no different than any other ghoulish, trembling junkie begging change to finance his next fix. Then the pity and the friendly rides would dry up like fog under a hot summer sun.

  He stopped under the shelter of a graffiti-scrawled overpass. It smelled like wet concrete, tar, and piss. The cars roared past unheeding, ignored, a river of steel. Digging a depleted pack of cigarettes out of his pocket he hung one shakily on his lip. Across the street, on the far bank of the overpass, a bum was passed out rolled in an old sleeping bag. David couldn’t see much of him, but when the man shifted the beetle-black shape of something grotesque wrapped around the back of his head came into view. It had half a dozen whip-thin, insect-like arms wrapped around his skull, and the glitter of eyes on its back looked straight toward David.

  He gasped, immediately thinking of his gun, but the bum slept on. Only the Thing attached to him seemed aware of their observer.

  Goddamn… his condition was getting worse if he could see them in the daylight. Much, much worse.

  “Parasite,” David muttered, and lifted his zippo to light his cigarette.

  Taking a deep draw of smoke, David returned to the rain and continued up the street, unable to stay near the Thing and it’s pathetic host. He felt like shit; another restless few hours of near-sleep had done little to nothing to revive him, and the Dog from the night before was still fresh in his mind. It was only the second body they’d taken… but if they were getting this bold, what would be next? Who would they possess? An armed gang member? A body with a gun?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  He knew the fight would soon be over. They were getting braver and he was getting worn down. Sooner or later they’d catch him and he wouldn’t have the reflexes or the clarity of mind to get himself out of it. Sooner or later… well, he’d worry about that when the time came.

  Why actual demons were after him was a puzzle he’d stopped even wondering about anymore. He didn’t have time or energy to wonder. He just had to fight to survive.

  He smoked listlessly, watching people scoot nervously out of his way, fully aware of the glances they sent toward him. It would take some work for him to look respectable again. A laundromat, a shave, a shower… and hopefully a real night’s sleep. Or two. Or three.

  He passed the glass front of a small art gallery featuring the abstract paintings of some local talent. The images on the canvas, distorted and twisted, sent a chill through him and made him look away. He’d seen those exact same wrong, twisted forms before. The demons. He wondered if the artists that made that kind of ‘modern’ art ever knew where their inspiration came from. He wondered if any of these blind, normal people ever woke up at night and saw the things that were creeping across their bed, or circling the dark ceiling like bats planting nightmares like seeds in their heads.

  Most likely they never did. They didn’t believe in what they couldn’t see. Not that he could blame them, there was a time he hadn’t believed in anything supernatural either. The things he’d seen as a little boy he’d told himself was just his imagination. Shadows didn’t have eyes. Monsters didn’t live under the bed. There had been no dead man inhabiting the stairs to the attic. It was all just fantasy. Right?

  Of course there was always the possibility that he was simply bat-shit crazy.

  Goddamn Rune. He was sure it was the moon’s fault somehow.

  He lowered his cigarette, cupped under one hand to keep it dry, and gazed bleak-eyed up the street for some sign of a bus stop. Instead his eye caught on the bright flash and flicker of something entirely new. White fire, an impossible radiance, shifting and wavering up into the air above a knot of pedestrians.

  It wasn’t physical light; it was in that other realm only he could see. No one else seemed aware of it. The flame was both bright and yet not at all hurtful to his eyes, beautiful and completely unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It was so surprising it stopped him dead in his tracks and he stood dumbly, trying to spot what pedestrian it was coming from.

  The traffic signal changed and the flock of people began to trot out across the street. As they separated he saw the light attached, like a flaming white aura, to a single figure. A girl in a long brown leather coat with loose blond curls hanging down her back. A pretty girl. The kind that David usually would be too shy to look at straight in the eye.

  He had no idea what the light meant, but it wasn’t like the other invisible things he alone could see. Despite belonging to the invisible world, it seemed good, not evil. Strange. Until that moment he hadn’t even considered the fact that the invisible world could have good things. But he supposed it made sense… after all, there weren’t just demons but angels too, right? Didn’t the proven existence of evil also suggest there was good?

  Without a further thought David took off into his fastest jog, reaching the corner and dodging across the street after her. She was already nearly a hundred feet up the next block. He stopped running once he was on the same sidewalk that she was. Whoever she was, whatever she was, she moved with easy confidence and didn’t glance back.

  His first instinct was to catch up with her and ask her… ask her what? Why she was glowing? He took another anxious drag from his cigarette and then dropped the butt onto the ground to step on as he walked. Several pedestrians glared at him for littering.

  What else could he tell her? She’d just call him a crazy person. A dirty, scruffy, half-starved crazy man. Sure, he probably was crazy, but he definitely shouldn’t advertise the fact.

  Unwilling to approach her, and equally unwilling to leave the mystery of the white light behind, he just followed. She made her way down a few streets to a brick and concrete courtyard outside a large office building. There she sat down on the dry edge of a grassy planter just under the shelter of an overhang.

  David hung back finding a place to lurk on the opposite end of the court yard. There was a bench there, soaking wet, but he sat on it and let the rain drip through his hair. Fifty yards away the girl dug in her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  The sight of cigarettes surprised him; few people smoked anymore in this part of California, especially young pretty girls. And she was pretty; quite pretty. Her eyebrows were darker than her hair, sweeping high and delicate above thickly lashed eyes. Her dark gold hair was damp from the rain, but still remained in rich spiraling curls, hanging over her shoulder nearly to her lap. Idly he wondered why she didn’t use an umbrella.

  Exhaling a long breath of smoke she glanced up and her golden eyes fell square on him. Immediately David looked away.

  Stalker, he thought darkly to himself. You look like a druggie, and now you’re following strange women through the city. You’ve become a crazy fucker, Dave. Nervously he glanced back her way and saw she was ignoring him again and writing in a tiny notebook. At least it appeared that she hadn’t realized he was a stalker.

  David sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to watch the rain splash against the cement. He was losing it. Maybe he’d imagined the glow, it wasn’t there now. Now she was just a pretty girl in a long brown coat. Maybe he really was crazy. What was he going to do?

  He should find a bus and ride it as far as it went. He could sleep during the day, when he was moving, putting distance between himself and… and the Things. But he didn’t want to. For no understandable reason he just wanted to stay near that white light even if it hadn’t been real. It had been something that had felt for just a moment like hope.