“Like the one I couldn't see?” Gina replied, to which he nodded.
Tom carried on, looking more worried than Gina liked. She convinced him that all was okay, they were probably both tired, that's all it was. They carried on home, Tom still saying that he felt like someone was watching them, every now and then swearing blind that he could see another one of the figures standing motionless. This still concerned Gina as she couldn't see anything, she could only see the strange robotic quality of everyone they passed and said hello to. When asked to describe the figures, he said they resembled something like a gargoyle or gnome, but thin and twice the height, with flashes of what looked like blue veins. This day was getting stranger and stranger, the sooner they got back home the better, Gina felt. It took them another twenty minutes to get home, Tom was still being plagued by strange gangly gargoyle-esque figures, Gina trying to ignore the mechanically moving people. This was all in their heads; they had whipped each other up into a frenzy. Gina put her keys in the front door and unlocked it. With a deep breath and immense relief, they were both happy to be home. They went straight into the kitchen to pour themselves a glass of mineral water from the fridge, and then put on a pot of coffee.
“That was so weird Tom”
“Tell me about it” He said still confused, angry, and partly scared by the whole ordeal.
BRANDON’S HOUSE
It took Danny a while to convince Brandon of the previous day's events. It took Danny relaying what Brandon had been doing with his research to seal the deal, as he told him things he shouldn't have known. They had a few conversations that were practically identical to Danny, but all new and revealing to Brandon. They went over their theories again, but had to try and revise them in the wake of Brandon's memory being wiped and a second Saturday presenting itself to Danny. Their latest theory still revolved around Shadow people. Their best guess was that they weren't helping them as such; they were attached in part to the phenomena that entered their reality in that bar and tried to eat away at the fabric of their dimension. What was this creature? And where did it come from?
They had numerous ideas about that, all sounding as fanciful as the next. They decided that the shadow people must be leaking out of the same dimension, perhaps not assisting the formless-all-formed demon thing, but being pulled with it into their world, so they could be a symptom of the other creature's presence. If they see the shadow figures, they knew the other creature could be close or is going to be jumping into their reality very soon. All they needed to figure out was how todestroy this creature, or at least drive it back to where it came from. They had the signs for when it was going to appear, they just needed to discover how to make it disappear. They talked about this for a few hours over numerous cups of coffee, the caffeine spurring on their crazy theories, advancing them to the preposterous one they had finally settled on. Part of them deep inside laughed at the whole thing and questioned whether they were really discussing all this. They were taking at face value the existence of shadow beings, a monster that parachuted into their dimension and back out with victim’s aplenty, missing time, missing people, and a new day of the week being pushed in between Saturday and Sunday, from who knew where. These seemed like normal thoughts to them at this stage, but even so they decided to keep this to themselves.
They wanted to make sure their other friends were okay and tried to phone them, but when Danny attempted to find contact numbers for Mike, Jarrah, James, Emma, and Samir, their numbers were mysteriously missing from his phone. Brandon claimed he had never met any of them of course, which by now wasn't something Danny was surprised by. Brandon picked up his phone to look through his contacts too. Danny continued to flick through his phone and found Gina's number and dialled, the fact her number was still there was a positive sign, and the fact that it started to ring was too.
Chapter 5 – Reality Bites
GINA’S APARTMENT
Gina and Tom sat in the lounge. They switched on the television, hoping to wipe the morning’s events away with some trashy daytime TV, there was bound to be something to melt their brain cells on there. They were still unnerved by what had happened but decided the best thing to do was to just ignore it and push it back to the recesses of their mind. Gina's mobile started to ring and she saw it was Danny.
“Hi Danny”
“Hi Gina, how are you?”
“Oh, don't ask, it's been a stressful morning. How are you?” She asked back.
“I've been better to be honest, there's a lot going on. Are you free later for me and Brandon to pop round?”
“You and Brandon? Yeah, we're going to be in all day now. What's so important?”
Danny paused a moment, he knew what he had planned to say sounded completely nuts. Relaying it over the phone would probably not be the best idea, so he just told her that it was best to speak in person. They agreed to visit them a little later that afternoon, and they said their goodbyes. Just as Gina was saying goodbye, the home telephone rang again and Tom got up to answer it. He picked it up to be confronted by the same odd static sound Gina had heard that morning. It also reminded him of the strange sound emitted by the faceless woman. Suddenly, the static sound seemed to grab him and not let go.
