The City High Review

The coach jolted to a halt. The body of the man seated in the back was bumped forward, toward the wall in front of him. His eyes remained shut, making him appear to be deep in thought, or possibly sleeping.

“This is your stop!” the coachman yelled back as he wrangled his skittish horses. Without a word, the man undid the latch and pushed open the carriage door. 

Droplets poured down onto the cobblestones of the street creating a vast delta that flowed further down the alleyway. The coachman eyed his passenger as he pulled his peculiar luggage out of his seats. A large brown suitcase was followed by an empty birdcage. The cage hung down at the man’s legs, being soaked by the city’s tears as they rolled down the black stone rooftops.

“My payment, Mr… uh, Greyson?” the coachman asked. Despite this question, his eyes were transfixed on the empty cage. He couldn’t help but think it was strange how the rain seemed to be interrupted before reaching the cage’s base.

“Of course,” replied Mr. Greyson, seemingly breaking out of his trance, “Though I’d prefer if you just used Valentine.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” the coachman said while counting the green, copper coins that Valentine had given him. “Valentine, Valentine,” he muttered under his breath while retreating to the coach.

As the horses trotted away, Val stepped into cover under the rooftops and found the building he was looking for. Dim light came from the inside, winding around the shades covering the large front window. Valentine went through his keys until he found the correct one for the door. He couldn’t keep his brain focused on what he was doing, for his mind was racing.

The door opened with a series of creaks in an almost rhythmic fashion. The small lobby was only lit by a single candle, sitting behind a desk on the left side of the room. On top of the desk, there was a mountain of hair, crashed into the pages of an open book. On the left, lay a pair of reading glasses neatly folded between the woman and a two piece telephone, mounted on the wall.

Val slammed the door, muting the sounds of rain coming from outside and waking the woman behind the counter. She lifted her head to reveal tired eyes and a light smirk hiding behind her hair. Her smirk quickly evolved into a forced scowl.

“You’re back late,” croaked the woman’s scratchy throat.

“I’m sorry, Elena, but you know my watch can’t be trusted,” said Val with an ever widening grin, “And this little guy was less cooperative than I had hoped.” He gestured to the empty cage in his hands. “Did anyone else call today?” he tacked on to the other end of his statement.

Elena begrudgingly accepted his explanation and replied, “Of course not, Val. If you’re so curious about that all the time, then why don’t you try manning the phone for a change?”

“I’m just a little too busy right now, sorry. In fact, I have a bit of a project that I think you might be interested in.” Val’s eyes always glowed as he discussed his work.

“You can show me tomorrow,” said Elena, letting out a long yawn and peeling open the pages of her novel. “Now go and get to work so the two of us can get to sleep.”

“I’ll be only a moment,” said Val as he scooted his suitcase of tools and his cage into the next room over.

Elena walked around the lobby and relit a couple of the candles and drew the shades on the windows, all without removing her gaze from her book. It was all routine. Val rarely spent much time at their storefront and so when he was gone she had to find ways to fight back boredom. However, it was the nights when he came in after finishing cases, that Elena dreaded. And so she paced around the room, trying to keep her mind on the characters in her book.

Elena heard a crackle of electricity being unleashed in the next room through the thin walls followed by a horrific screech. The sound was like a symphony playing their instruments out of tune or a piano being ruthlessly smashed. Elena held her ears and shrank to the ground, leaning her head against the wall. The shriek continued, coming to variable crescendos until petering off to a soft drone, still muffled by the walls. 

Eventually, the rain overtook the noises from the other room, only an ear-piercing ringing was left in Elena’s head, though she couldn’t decipher whether or not it was real or just her imagination. She stood up from the floor before moving to gather her coat, wiping sweat from her brow.

Suddenly a new sound broke through the consistent downpour of rain. The small bell on the telephone buzzed creating a delightful jingle that only made Elena feel more uneasy. She tentatively snuck over to the phone, not wishing to create a sound that would overtake the light ringing of the bell. She quickly nabbed the receiver off the wall, and stuck her head in front of the microphone.

“Hello, this is the Greyson Office of Psychic Solutions. I am Elena Greyson, how may I help you?” she said trying to hide the nervousness in her voice.

“Excuse me, madam, I am a representative of the Ministry of Psychic Phenomenon. We have reason to believe that your company has been doing illegal research in the lower district,” a man said with a condescending tone, “Can I speak to your boss?”

“You may voice all your concerns to me, thank you. I assure you I can handle them,” Elena growled back, scraping her nails against the desk.

“Well, my dear, the ministry sees fit to do an inspection of your office. We simply wish to make sure that there are no neo-scientific, psychic or otherwise unexplained natural forces being used without our permission,” he said, “Me and one of my associates will come by tomorrow morning. I expect it to be an interesting day.”

The phone abruptly hung up before Elena could get out another word. She slammed the receiver down onto the desk, cursing under her breath, and sprinted to the door to Val’s study. It was locked, so she started slamming her fists against the door, calling out to get Valentine’s attention.

“Get out here! Somebody called!” Elena said in a coaxing tone. No answer.
“Just open the god damned door this instant!”

This was far too important for Val to be ignoring her like this. Elena hurried behind the front desk searching for the spare keyring, in its drawers. She cleaned through the rubbish but to no avail. 

Val also had the extra keyring locked inside his precious study, didn’t he, Elena thought. She was fuming. This was not the night for him to pull this bullshit.

Elena could only think of one more good option to force the door open, and she didn’t like it. She would have to tap into her psychic power, and grab the keys from their hanger in Val’s study. Elena kept her mind on the call she had just received. Her frustration would give her the strength to lift the keys, at least far enough to reach under the door.

She crouched down in front of the door, pressing her ear up against it. It was silent, apart from the rain beating down on large windows Elena pictured inside. She closed her eyes and envisioned the room in her mind, specifically the entryway. She started with the rough oak planks that covered the floor, with their splinters reaching out of the ends. Elena’s mind wandered to the short little bench on the right side of the door, featuring a dull green cushion embedded in the seat.

A spike of pain pierced Elena’s mind. There must be something sitting on the bench that she hadn’t imagined. She forced herself to ignore the bench, and to explore upward, through her memory, and across the peeling wallpaper. She knew there was a hook protruding from the wall where there must have been a ring of keys hanging off. Elena strained her mind, tugging at the keys she knew must have been there. And so she heard it, through the door. The faint jingling of keys.

Elena thought about the call she had just answered and Val’s childish behavior, and her rage, once again, surged. The key ring scraped over the lip of the hook as Elena’s frustration forced it upward. The keys landed against the hardwood floor, close enough for Elena to fish them out from under the door with the end of an ink pen.

Elena let out a deep breath. Using telekinesis like that, even for something as light as keys, had put great strain on her tired mind and body. One must let their emotions flare up in order to exert influence on the world around them, and this process often left Elena out of service for some time.

She pulled herself up using the handle of the door. Her vision became disorienting as she stood. She leaned against the hinges as she undid the lock and pushed the door open to reveal what lay within. A stack of files lay on top of the bench to her right, in a disorganized fashion, and the top one lay open with a man’s photo on top.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing, Val?” Elena gasped as she took in the room, “we have an emergency. The Ministry of…”

Elena froze mid sentence as she took in the scene before her. 

Chains hung from the rafters, holding up numerous, small metal cages around the edges of the room. Within each of the cages were grotesque creatures made of a seemingly random combination of eyes and elongated limbs protruding from a slick, stretched, pale gray skin, formally known as parasites. All of them pressed their sickly yellow eyes between the bars of their cages, looking down at Elena. She had only ever seen them dead before that point, but Val had only told her that they fed on the stress and emotions of humans, though they could only be seen by those who were attuned to psychic power.

In the center of the room there was a large metal table, within the dim light coming through the tall open windows. Beside it was an expensive generator, that was attached to a pair of thin metal rods attached at a point. On top of the table, the cage Val had brought in that night stood in the center. Within the cage was another parasite. This specimen sported one large, squinted eye, with a thin black pupil. It had five limbs, most of which had a disproportionate amount of joints making its appearance alien and all capped with four fingered hands. Two insect-like wings of a different pigment protruded from its back, piercing through holes in its taught skin allowing a view into the creature’s insides. Between the wings one more arm, sharing the same pigment as the wings, stretched out with an open, seven fingered hand. Its form was rounded out with a wide open maw, full of innumerable, razor sharp teeth.

This creature seemed dead, or at least immobilized, as it didn’t move in the quick violent movement that the others shared. Rather, it sat still as a statue, with its central, seven fingered hand reaching straight up toward the ceiling. Beside its cage multiple bottles had been placed, many of which were open, filling the room with the pungent smell of acid.

Finally, Elena’s eyes locked onto a figure, hovering inches above Valentine’s body, which was curled up with his knees tucked in toward his chin, and his arms holding his legs in position. The figure had an almost human silhouette, apart from two extra pairs of arms positioned above and below the primary set. The creature was short, no more than 4 feet tall and it leaned over Val with its six arms embedded in the floorboards to support its torso and disproportionately large “head.” The mass protruding from the creature’s many shoulders lacked any distinguishing features other than hundreds of tiny holes covering its surface. Its pale green skin wrapped tightly around its almost human bones. The beast held its “head” no more than an inch in front of Val’s face, as to cover his entire field of vision, though his eyes were held closed with all of his strength.

Elena held still, unable to fully process the scene playing out in front of her. The figure raised its head to stare at Elena, even without eyes. The stare seemed to blur her vision, and so she stepped backward, blinking repeatedly. The anger that had blazed in her mind had been washed away and replaced with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and the tremors of fear, reverberated through her exhausted form.

She looked up from her daze and the monsters all seemed to be gone. But she knew they were still there. Elena could hear them around her from the subtle noise of the parasites grasping their cages above her to the creeks of the floorboards as something moved across the room.

Elena ran for the door but before she could open it, the door slammed shut. The parasites shrieked, overlapping over themselves and the rattling of their cages into the climax of a terrible symphony. The simultaneous noises resonated through Elena’s mind and nerves making her body go stiff and her mind go blank. She collapsed in a heap against the door.

Val regained consciousness as flecks of water landed on his face. Rain poured in through the shattered glass of the window behind him. The oppressing drone of the rain hitting the roofs of the nearby buildings clouded his thoughts. Thin slices lashed across his fingers as Val pushed himself up from the pile of glass shards. His hair and suit had been soaked and the water had pooled up under him, combining with the glass, hair and droplets of blood to make a rather unsavory concoction.

Val looked around the room. The cages he had meticulously hung around the room had fallen to the floor and all of the parasites were nowhere to be found. All of them except the corpse that Val had left at his workplace. He reached inside his suit coat and retrieved his pocket watch. It appeared to be five o’clock, though he had learned not to trust clocks in his line of business. Val racked his mind but couldn’t remember what had happened to leave his study in such disarray. This was very troubling to him as memory loss at such a young age was rather commonplace among knowledgeable psychics, of which he was one of the most knowledgeable.

However, the thing he was most worried about was how Elena would react. He paced around the room, collecting the disheveled cages in a small trolley.

After I finish cleaning this up, I had better rush home. Elena is going to be very upset, Val thought, What should I say about this window? Maybe I can replace it before she notices.

As soon as Val finished this though, he noticed Elena’s body crumpled on the ground, with one arm extended toward the door.

Val’s demeanor shifted drastically and he dropped the cage in his hand with a loud clang and he ran to her side. He pulled her unconscious form into his lap, as he sat with his legs folded together. Her heart rate was low, and her breaths were soft.

Val sighed. Elena always hated it when Val read her mind. His psychic power vastly outweighed hers, but he had never been able to get into her head without her noticing. 

I’m only going to check the surface level, Val assured himself. I need to know what’s going on.

He parted the hair covering her forehead and whisked his hand over it, with his eyes gently closed. Val thought of his memories of Elena, from when they first met as children, to their time moving from neighborhood to neighborhood as teens, and finally to their creation of this company together. She was like a big sister to Valentine. He depended on Elena far more than she did him, and he knew it well.

Val imagined her figure standing in the yard in front of the Grey House when he had first arrived during their childhood. That day, the sun peeked through the dark clouds and billowing smoke, as she smiled at him through the crowd of children. Perhaps it was their attunement to psychic forces that let him notice her on that day, or perhaps any light shines bright when surrounded by thunderclouds.

With that, Elena’s memories entered Val’s own head. He reeled back from her in distress. Last night’s anguish pelted Val’s mind in an instant, and he severed their connection prematurely, causing him pain down from his head to his chest and down to the nerve endings in his fingers. Elena’s body shifted and a pained look came over her face. 

Val shook himself off, and lifted her into his arms, leaning back to retain his balance. He struggled to open the doors on his way out of the office, having to hold them open with his left shoulder. He left the building, into the rain, without as much as an umbrella, hurrying down the slick cobblestones. Val had never trusted veterans, especially war surgeons. They saw the worst of what humanity had to offer, and they never returned the same. However, Sir Thomas was the only person he knew that would be willing to help him, even during early morning hours.

In his rush, Val barely missed a fine, horse drawn carriage, as it moved down the alley toward their office.