An explosion of wind, a sudden return to reality as the air parted with a crack to allow him to occupy a space that had previously been empty. Mitch crumpled to the ground, exhausted, as the spell released him from its grasp, his clothes scattering about him on the grass. The cool wet grass suddenly beneath his cheek, the feel of the book crushed beneath his bare ribs, the footsteps he had heard approaching his hiding place. Simeon! Mitch jerked himself over onto his feet, legs bent and tensed for an immediate explosion of energy, in any direction away from where he was now.
The silence hit him. He looked about, and visibly slumped with relief, here, at least he was safe for the moment. He had arrived where he hoped. The University grounds were usually vacant at night, patrolled only by the aged and amiable single security guard, Serge. Serge was used to finding students on the grounds at night, even though such access was technically prohibited by campus by-law, it seemed that there was an affinity between young student couples of all types and the quiet, shadowy grounds of the nighttime Campus. Here he'd see few people, and even fewer who might wish to concern themselves with him, probably assuming him to be an alcohol-abuse recovering student wandering from one dorm to another on his way home. Mitch hauled himself to his feet and, after pausing briefly to gather his bearings, gathered up his strewn clothing and proceeded to dress before setting off at an inconspicuous stroll through the Campus, book-satchel clutched tight under his arm.
The neighbourhood surrounding the University was an old one. The University had been founded some one hundred and twenty years ago, and the surrounding suburb had once begun as an extension of the University grounds. The urban sprawl had slowly encroached upon and eaten into once the lush gardens and walks that had been home to many erudite discussions and debates. Now the Campus sustained a few Fine Arts Faculties, the occasional amphitheatre breaking up the monotony of the concrete-slab buildings, the original architecture clustered around a central hub, and surrounded on all sides by the newcomer grotesqueries. Still, some of the original charm remained, some gothic-inspired arches and vaults remained around the Theology Faculty, and the Humanities buildings retained their inspired sculptures and plazas. These tended to be unlit at night, the original campus being lit only by now redundant torches and lanterns, and it was towards these shadowy alcoves that Mitch now made his way. The lights fell behind him, the more frequented zones receded as the welcoming cool darkness of familiar buildings rose to enshroud him. He breathed slightly easier as he returned to the shadow, the bright, although sparse, lights of the more populous regions having made him slightly edgy. Not an unexpected reaction given his recent predicament, he thought.
The book-satchel dragged at his shoulder, its weight becoming more and more odious as he walked, the still-sore shoulder on which it hung beginning to complain more and more loudly with each step. Despite the dramatically accelerated rate at which he had healed, the body still demanded its due dose of sympathy for the hurt so recently inflicted. Mitch changed direction towards a nearby garden ledge and gingerly took a seat on its edge, dropping the satchel to the ground between his feet as he massaged his shoulders.
"Some great mystic I make!" he thought as his fingers explored the tender sections of his shoulder and back, why did it hurt so much?
"I can't even effect my own escape from an unguarded ward without ... Ow!" he found a particularly sensitive spot, right on the back of his shoulder-blade, something he didn't think he'd injured. At the same time, he felt a slight tightening across his chest, as if something was impairing the movement of the muscles there. He looked down at his shirt, running his fingers over the centre of his chest, where the tightness seemed focussed. The familiar shallowness of his chest pushed back from beneath his hastily buttoned shirt, no big muscles for him , he was a book-worm, a cabalist, choosing to exercise his mind rather than his base muscles. Still, his chest pained him reminiscent of the time he'd fallen from his aunt's shed rooftop as a child, that fond memory overwhelmed by the tension of his current situation, but he remembered well the ache of his bones after that vertiginous fall. Likewise, his shoulder ached, and felt strangely restricted. A point to ponder for another day, he decided. Standing, he threw his bag across his back and continued on his nonchalant trek through the uninhabited campus to the streets surrounding. Not truly sure of where he would go, where he might be welcomed and perhaps even, dare he think it, safe, his thoughts flowed towards what he would do from here.
He'd had almost no chance to read the book after the events leading up to his hospitalisation, and what he really wanted to know was who this "Simeon" character was, why he wanted the book, and what had really happened back at the bookstore prior to his frenetic escape from what had, at the time, been an unwelcome voyage into bizarre realms of fantasy.
After timidly returning to the bookshop, and silently withdrawing the book from it's hiding place within the store-room, hidden beneath a box in a simple wooden casket with simple graffiti-like symbols engraved on, he had returned to his own rooms to ponder it. Returned, that is, to find his dormitory room trashed by forces-unknown, his things strewn carelessly across the floor, and his bedding and mattress torn from the bed. It was obvious that whoever had violated his private room had been looking for something, and failed to find it. There was no other explanation for the brutal destruction of his things, as if attempting to find something hidden inside things that didn't even really have "insides" ... Like the goldfish, their bowl shattered on the ground and their bodies smeared thin, as if stomped into the carpet as a methodical act of malice. It had been immediately obvious that staying there was not well-advised, and pausing only long enough to determine that nothing whatsoever was salvageable, he had left, slinking back out into the night, suddenly bereft of home and comfort.
It was Maria to whom he had turned the night of the bookstore. Maria, the overweight, self-proclaimed expert on all things Macabre, she of the long flowing black dresses and red-dyed hair, mistress of Gothendom, or so she thought. He'd met her during one of her eclectic shopping runs through the local apocrypha suppliers, come to the bookstore to find some fictitious work on black magick (With a "K" she would insist) on the bookstore's shadowed shelves. They had immediately fallen to discussion of Myth and Mystery, until he'd realised she had absolutely no talent whatsoever, and no aptitude for what he considered "real study". Still, they had formed a tenuous friendship of sorts, and had even gone so far as to attempt a muddled date, which had ended in passionate kisses on her doorstep, with Mitch politely refusing to escort her upstairs for an Absinthe. He had thought of no-one less likely to be suspected of involvement in the bizarre events of the that night, although admittedly, he knew she would happily sell any one of her more than ample body parts for the smallest hint of the excitement he'd been "gifted" with.
He remembered her scandalised excitement when he had turned up, drenched with rain, and sweating with fear, on her doorstep. She'd thought it was oh-so erotic and had immediately ushered him inside, pushed him into a shower and attempted to undress him. He'd managed to rebuff her attempts at passion and had spilled some of the beans, explaining that he'd witnessed a murder, had his room trashed and needed somewhere to stay for just a few nights. He'd been forced by her ever-present curiosity to explain the Book's part in it, in some small detail, merely that the proprietor of the bookstore had undertaken a translation before it had turned nasty on him. Together, once he was dry, they'd opened the book and begun a general perusal of its contents. At first, neither had been able to even tell which way up the book should be held, but gradually, he'd begun to glean meaning from it's pages, through what talent he did not know, but what had started as a trickle of insight slowly grew to a great torrent of understanding as the book surrendered its manifold secrets to him. All he'd managed on those first few days, was to memorise a few choice pages and differentiate those phrases that seemed to specify chants from those paragraphs that described their use. He'd had to almost bodily shoulder Maria aside, but when she failed to find any meaning in the book's texts, she'd willingly wandered off, claiming all the time that the Book was a hoax, or some horrible joke, even claiming to doubt the veracity of his tale.
Despite her obvious doubts she provided him with the privacy he needed to begin a proper examination of the book and it's obscure contents, something he was too busy to properly thank her for as he delved deeper and deeper into the richness and mystery of the Book. In fact, the study of the Book took a rather unhealthy prominence in his life, supplanting all but the very basest of bodily needs. Maria had remained his steadfast friend, preventing him from loosing himself completely to the charm of the esoteric tome he had determined to master. He remembered the many poorly prepared "finger foods" he had unwittingly eaten while captivated with the Book, and recalled with fondness the ministrations he had tolerated from her during his first panicked night of flight. Yes, it was only to her that he could safely entrust himself for a rest on his frantic flight from the dire forces which hounded him. Mitch turned his footsteps towards her hallowed door, out from the campus grounds and into the surrounding suburbs until above his loomed the stark red-brick facade of Maria's home.
In a dank room, far from the Campus, far from the place where Mitch stood on Maria's doorstep, hidden deep within the secluded confines of The Assembly, lay a pair of silvery wings. The filthy table on which they lay detracted nothing from their beauty. In the still air, they still seemed to move, almost as if to mimic what might have been their natural movement, had they still been attached to their rightful owner. They were not, however, still attached to their rightful owner, they were pinned to the table by a network of thin wires, piano wires, that cut cruelly into the wings, making it seem as if they were forcibly restrained. And perhaps they were.
Beneath these cruel metallic bonds, the wings slowly writhed. Each individual feather seemed motivated by its own animating spirit, creeping and clawing futiley at the bonds, as if struggling to be free. Seen from a moderate distance, the wings shimmered with this slow motion, like a zephyr of wind stirred across their surface.
A single feather broke free, tearing itself from the flesh beneath, and then another. Clustering together they crept across the still bound wings and onto the table, where they lay as if exhausted by their struggle. Around the edge of the table, something stirred, some shadowy imitation of a flame flickered in the darkness, prowling like some immaterial guard dog about its cage.