In a faint and inconstant breeze, waves stir through the grass and weeds in the vacant lot. At this lonely hour, in this strange place, a boy can easily imagine that monsters swim ceaselessly through the moon-silvered sea of weeds that shimmers out there beyond the battered and broken wooden fence.

The alley in which he crouches is also a forbidding realm at night and perhaps in daylight as well. Fear has been his companion for the past hour, as he’s traveled twisting trails through the aged belly of the city, so far into its moldering embrace that he has only occasionally glimpsed the night sky.

Predators on the overhead freeway might be stalking him, leaping gracefully from support to support silent and merciless as the cold stars beneath which they prowl. Or perhaps without warning, a hideous tunneling something, all teeth and appetite, will explode out of the piles of garbage around his feet, biting him in half or swallowing him whole.

A vivid imagination has always been his refuge. Tonight it is his curse.

Before him, past this fence, the weed and grass choked lot waits. Waits. Too bright under the fat moon. Deceptively peaceful. He suspects this is a killing ground. He doubts he will reach the far side alive.
Sheltering against a graffiti covered dumpster; he wishes desperately that his mother were with him. But she will never be at his side again in this life. An hour ago he witnessed her murder.

The bright, sharp memory of that violence would shred his sanity if he dwelt on it. For the sake of survival, he must forget, at least for now, that particular terror, that unbearable loss.

Huddled in the hostile night, he hears himself making miserable sounds. His mother always told him that he was a brave boy; but no brave boy surrenders this easily to his misery.

Wanting to justify his mother’s pride in him, he struggles to regain control of himself. Later, if he lives, he’ll have a lifetime for anguish, loss, and loneliness. Gradually he finds strength not in the memory of her murder, not in the thirst for vengeance or justice, but in the memory of her love, her toughness, her steely resolution. His sobbing subsides. Silence. The darkness of the streets. The empty lot waiting under the moon.

From the tops of the encircling buildings, a menacing whisper sifts down through the artificial canyon. Maybe it’s nothing more than a breeze that’s found an open door in the attic of his fears. In truth, he has less to fear from the normal denizens that inhabit this area than from his mother killer. He has no doubt that he still pursues him. He should have caught him long ago. This territory has to be known to him. Perhaps his mother’s spirit watches over him. Even if she’s here, in the night unseen at his side, he can’t rely on her. He has no guardian but himself, no hope other than his wits and courage.

Into the lot now, without further delay, risking dangers unknown but surely countless. A ripe grassy scent overlay the subtle smell of urban decay. The earth is soft, and the sparse grass is easily trampled. When he pauses to look back, even the pale moonlamp is bright enough to reveal the route he followed. He has no choice but to forge on. If ever he could convince himself that he was in a dream, it’s now. That this landscape seems strange because it exists only in his mind, that regardless of how long or how fast he runs, he’ll never arrive at a destination, but will race perpetually through alternating stretches of moon-dazzled empty lots and bristling blind-dark alleys.

In fact he has no idea where he’s going. He’s not familiar with this city. Civilization might lie within his reach, but more likely than not he’s plunging deeper into a vast urban wilderness.

In his peripheral vision, he repeatedly glimpses movement; ghostly shadow stalkers flanking him, mocking his trials. Each time he looks more directly, he sees only signs, a power pole, or the detritus that collects back of the shabby businesses that frequent this area. These phantom out runners frighten him, and breath by ragged breath, he becomes increasingly convinced that he won’t live to see the next block.

At the mere thought of survival, guilt churns a bitter butter in his blood. He has no right to live when everyone else perished. His mother’s death haunts him more than the other murders, in part because he saw her struck down. He heard the screams of the others, but by the time he found them they were dead, and their steaming remains were so grisly that he could not make an emotional connection between the loved ones and those hideous cadavers. Amongst the carnage, and holding the soon to be lifeless body of his mother was him. No nightmare, however twisted, could have prepared him for the sight of the killer. What foul soul could have called forth the creature he saw, features that seemed to merge with the shadows that capered and danced around him.

And he saw the eyes, yes he did, and they saw him. He had little choice but to look into those mirrors of the void. To see his own reflection and the death that he knew would follow. “Run boy, I’ll be along presently” Was all he said.

Now from moonlight into darkling urban backstreets once more, the lot behind him. The tangled maze of alley and street ahead. Against all odds, he’s still alive. But he’s only ten years old, without family and friends, alone, afraid, and lost.