There was a knocking at the door. Marcus Knight, of Knight Astrology Ltd., froze in his seat. The sound brought back a pale memory. It still stirred the same sensations in him. That quickening of the heart, slight pulse in his temple, what he had just done… The thick light that slid clean as a dagger through the heavy curtains betrayed that night was coming soon. That's when it happened — in the dark. How many sleepless nights had there been since?

It came again. The sharp knock knock, followed by that voice from the other side... “Excuse me, sir?”

Knight relaxed. “Come in, Mr Knox,” he called.

He watched as the secretary entered the room. He was dressed in a short coat of some maroon fabric, and seemed on edge as he so often did these days. The shrunken posture that made him seem smaller than he really was. That slight hurry, as though prepared to take flight at the merest sound. And the way he seemed to always be resisting an urge to glance back over his shoulder… 

“Good afternoon, sir,” Knox said. He bowed his head slightly as he spoke, though not in reverence. 

Marcus Knight peered up from his work, drafts of horoscopes scattered across his desk. It was a huge desk at the raised end of a long room. Knight was sat at it in a chair of throne-like proportions. “Well, out with it,” he snapped.

Knox hesitated. His master’s rough ways puzzled him sometimes. It hadn’t always been like this — but everything had changed when Knight’s predecessor had died in mysterious circumstances and, after some minor rebranding, the company had fallen to him. “It has been reported, sir,” Knox said, “that Mr Derby has gone away.”

Knight stared at him.

“A business trip,” Knox continued.

Knight’s head tilted to one side.

“To England,” Knox added, trying to avoid that stare, that cold, reptile stare.

Knight smiled. It was somehow worse. “Gone — to England?” Knight repeated slowly, tongue curling round the inside of his mouth. And somehow the way the fading light glinted off his teeth made Knox think of knives.

“That’s what I said, sir.” The secretary answered out of sheer nervousness. Anything to avoid that stare. Avoid — or at the very least, appease it.

Knight’s smile widened. “Then my desires shall be acted upon,” he said quietly. Knox pretended not to hear. “Thank you, Mr Knox,” Knight continued. “Wait there one moment.” He placed a sheet of paper tidily on his desk, and began to write on it in cold ink. The nib scratched across the page, etching the thin, snakish scrawls. Then the letter was neatly folded, transferred to an envelope, and sealed inside.

“Deliver that to Black,” Marcus Knight said. Knox nodded, and waded his way through the muted carpet to the desk. He quickly snatched the letter out of Knight's hand, and turned hurriedly to leave.

As Knox reached the door, he heard his master speak again. Knight had returned to bending over the horoscopes the entire world would read. Knox noted that sometimes, despite making them up, Knight’s life seemed to hang on every word. “These are sweet bodements, Mr Knox,” the voice said. “The stars are right for me to take action.”

Knox closed the door softly yet firmly behind him, and paused outside to breathe again. He knew of Black, but didn’t know exactly what he did — only that he was something of an agent to Knight, and executed some of the more delicate tasks pertaining to the business. Knox didn’t much like him, though he wouldn’t dare say so in his presence. There was something in his manner that was even colder than that of Knight’s. It seemed he could not only read your thoughts, but predict the next. 

And he lived up to his name. The clothes he wore — those sharply trimmed clothes, the dark glasses, all contrasting so vividly with the pale skin… So smooth and neat in his attire, almost as if he were a rook or raven. He did share that quiet corvid assurance of superiority. Just something in his manner, some sense that he deemed everyone else as little more than fascinating specimens in some giant laboratory. Definitely not someone you wanted to meet on a dark night.

Not even on a bright day.

⸻

“And just why, exactly, has he chosen now to leave?”

The voice was undeniably angry. 

Jake turned in the doorway of the apartment. The only light came from a small lamp in the corner of the room, and a bright bulb from further down the hallway beyond the door. The interplay gave his tall form a strange sense of being half between this world and the next. “You must be patient,” he said. “Now, I have to go — I've got a train to catch.”

“Be patient? Be patient? Why? He wasn’t!” Vanessa Derby snapped, pushing her dark hair out of her face. “Why did he choose now of all times to leave? One child to look after, another on the way, a household to manage, and all that nasty business of Mr Knight's. Why is he leaving me behind to face it by myself? If he really loved me, he would have stayed.”

Jake flinched in the doorway. “Your husband has his reasons. He’s doing it—”

“Because it’s the best thing to be done?” Vanessa interrupted. “Because somebody has to do it, and to hell with my feelings? He doesn’t love me,” she finished, and turned to face the window that looked out to the night.

Jake sighed inwardly. He’d been a friend of her husband’s for years, before he’d even known her. This was an argument they’d had so many times before — although admittedly never quite so forcefully as now… 

“Look,” he said, stepping back into the room. “Your husband does care for you. He’s hoping that in going away you’ll be safer.”

Vanessa was silent.

Jake continued. “He wants—”

“Is he coming back?” Vanessa asked as she turned back from the window, face and eyes misted red. “Well? Is he coming back?”

Jake didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

“I can’t cope with this,” Vanessa went on. “I can’t cope with him upping and leaving me every month. You know I can’t. Not right now.”

Jake paused. He never knew how to act in these sorts of situations. He opened his mouth to speak, and was interrupted by a chime in the distance. One… two… three… four… Twelve o’clock. Midnight.

“I have to go,” he said at last. “It’s getting late. I'll be back soon — I promise. And so will your husband.” He looked down, inhaled. “And I care. I really, really do,” he blurted, and turned through the door before she could respond.

“Now, just wait one minute—”

The door clicked shut. Vanessa stood there, seething. What was she to do now? But Jake was right — it was getting late. She felt her eyelids droop slightly, and a surge of drowsiness overtook her senses as suddenly the events of the last few hours and weeks caught up with her. The day was good, there were things to occupy her then. But at night… 

It would all be so much easier if it wasn’t for the nights… 

Her son would be in bed. Nurse would have seen to that. She supposed she, too, should go to bed. Cold, empty bed. 

Maybe she could stay up for a while longer. Reading, or knitting, or something. Or she could check her emails. Perhaps some message would have come from her husband, telling her that all was well. She knew it was a vain hope. But if she never looked, she would never know.

She wiped her face with a tissue, frustrated she had given way to that emotion, then switched the computer on and watched the dusty monitor flicker to life with that silent hum. After an eternity, she logged in and opened the messenger app.

That was strange. 

There was a message. 

It wasn’t from her husband. 

It wasn’t from anyone she knew.

Suddenly she was conscious of how dark the room was, and how oppressive the night was outside. She went to the window and peered through the slits in the venetian blind, horizontal bars of rain-bedabbled shadow streaking across her face.

There was a mist of drizzle, the shimmering sheets of moisture billowing back and forth. Far below she could see Jake leave the block of apartments and cross the road. Vanessa could almost hear his footsteps rebounding silently off the concrete. He made a lonely figure in the mist, little more than a walking shadow in the golden street-light. Then he was gone. Vanished into the haze. Not a soul out there.

She stood at the window a while. Then she gave in, went to the computer, and clicked open the email. As she scanned back and forth across the text, her eyes flared. Of all the damned cheek! Who was this unknown person telling her that she must leave her home? That some danger was approaching her? That she must go quickly, before it was too late? Hell!

But what if it was true? What if some danger did approach her and her household? No, it couldn’t be so. But her husband did have a business rival in the form of Marcus Knight. And if the rumours were to be believed…  

Footsteps on the stairs outside. She turned to face the door. Surely that was Jake returning. He must have forgotten something. He often did. Yes, that must be it. Jake. Yes. Who else could it be?

The footsteps approached. A silent clunk on the concrete stairs, changing in tone as they reached the lino landing. As Jake reached the landing. Yes, Jake. And now he approached down the hallway. Paused outside.

The door twisted open.

⸻ 

Half past twelve. The city was cloaked in a velvet shroud of drizzle. Golden shafts of street-light poured through the soft curtains of moisture that hung in the air. In the darkness beyond, reflections of the lamp-light glinted off the star-like swirls. Not large, heavy drops — rather, an all-enveloping softness. A moisture that was everything. Some settled on the coniferous thicket of the neighbouring park. Some became a gentle sheen on the concrete paving. And some remained in the air, that damp transparency that clouded everything. Jake walked among it. Hands wrapped in the pockets of his olive-green jacket. Grey scarf loosely wound around neck, jaw firmly set, head bowed down slightly to brace against the damp.

He had, as he walked, begun to feel more and more bitter towards himself, towards what he’d said in that heat. The absences were hard on her. Hell, they were hard on him! And now Derby's so-called business trips were becoming more and more frequent. Jake understood the need for them — of course he did — but still... 

Perhaps he had been too angry with her. He couldn’t change that now. What had happened couldn’t be undone. He’d bumped into someone near the bottom of the stairs as he stormed out. They were dressed in dark tailor-made clothing, and soft droplets of moisture had glinted off their shades as a thousand stars in a deep and black cosmos. Now that he thought about it, that was rather strange. He’d been too trapped in his own haze for it to register at the time.

The mist of drizzle, though soft, was persistent. It clung to his face. It dampened his short gingery-blonde hair. It creeped down the back of his neck. He blinked it out of his eyes. And still he walked. His smooth face was enveloped by a grim silence, and the street-light carved out his eyes as empty holes in a golden mask. 

Who wore sunglasses on a winter’s night? The person had walked with such assurance without any aid that Jake was certain they weren't blind. And he was sure he’d felt the stranger's piercing gaze on him as he passed, though he couldn't glimpse even the merest shadow of an eye through the glasses. Perhaps even then some suspicion had flashed its tail… 

Eventually he’d stopped himself, and turned back to the apartment. He needed to apologise, he knew that — but also needed to satisfy some horrible urge to ensure everything was okay. Safer, he'd said earlier. And after all, if he missed his train there’d be another one — the late service was a godsend! And so he'd gone back. And so he’d opened the door. And so he had seen… 

He’d left quickly. Fingerprints on the door shouldn’t matter — he went there often — but he had to get away. If the police heard he’d returned, surely they would think that he had been the wreaker of such carnage, that it was he who’d wrought such vile devastation. So he had to keep walking. The white light of the station loomed somewhere before him, a beacon in the distance. Had to keep walking. Keep walking. Had to tell Derby. Derby… 

 The rain settled. The damp veil consumed his form as he stepped onwards. And the mist swallowed all.