1 Fall

Every single night once all the lights have been put out, she would sneak out of the house through her bedroom window, climb down the eucalyptus tree, and run away as far and fast as she could. She trusted her feet to take her wherever they wanted to, and usually she ended up in the same moonlit road known as Shadow Street.

She stopped running when she found the first lamppost marking the beginning of the street. There was a battered sign bearing the words Shadow St., dangling helplessly from a crooked pole. The street had sidewalks made of brick and lampposts emitting dim light. The pavement was smooth, only a few cracks from here to there, and was littered with fallen leaves from the nearby acacia trees. She sighed and wrapped her arms around her. For thirteen years, four thousand seven hundred forty-five nights, she has walked on this street which she has considered as her sanctuary. This was the only place that felt more home than home.

Shadow Street has been abandoned for nearly a century, and was a place where seers, necromancers, and astronomers dwelled. As she passed by, there was a bookstore with aged books and dusty shelves, a fortune-seeking place with tattered faded curtains, and an astronomy lab with an ancient huge telescope poking from its dome-like ceiling. There were several shops and homes that were old-fashioned, forgotten and deserted.

Little did the teenager know that there was someone observing her from the shadows.

She peered through a dusty, crust-lined window that displayed glass bottles of ninety-or-so old liquid and shriveled animal organs. They could have been used for potion making or medical treatments. She gasped in surprise, her eyes growing wider, when she spotted what must've been eyeballs of some amphibian squished into a small bottle, staring at her listlessly.

She moved on from the ingredients shop and sat down on a bench flooded with streetlight. This was the only part of the street that was fully lit, because there was the only working lamppost standing over it. She contemplated the dim expanse before her, listening to the soft rustle of leaves and the creaking of windows swaying with the wind. Shadows danced before her in the pavement, maybe a bird or a bat. She smiled in the dark even though she knew no one could see her.

But he did. He's been watching her come every night for thirteen years. He was curious of her regular appearance, walking down the street like this place wasn't something to fear. Surely adults from the village uptown told their children that Shadow Street was haunted? Maybe this girl was different.

When he saw her smiling, he tried to imitate her. The sides of his mouth twitched, but he could never get it to curl upwards in the same way the girl did it. So instead he just watched her sitting silently as the stars twinkled above them.