Remember the Stars Read Free

your sins.”
    “Sins? I committed no sins. I went to my birthday party and woke up in the gutter.”
    He let out an exasperated sigh. “You’ll remember eventually…probably. Until then, you might as well get comfortable.” He wound a tendril of her long, dark hair around his finger.
    His nearness unnerved her and she stepped away and grabbed for the front door, only to find it locked. Her fingers worked almost mechanically over the locks. She needed air before she passed out.
    His hands closed over hers.
    “Get your hands off of me, you…you monster!” She shrieked and pushed him backward.
    He stumbled on the carpeting but caught himself before he fell. “Go ahead and run you little bitch! See how far you get!”
    She frantically worked at the lock until it snapped open and the door flew open. The acrid smell of smoke and iron assaulted her senses, but her momentum carried her out the door and onto the sidewalk.
    Barefoot, she crossed the dark street and began making her way in the direction of the police station. If she remembered correctly, it was three blocks away. A chill rose on her skin as she tried to remain focused. She concentrated on taking one agonizing footstep in front of the other.
    When she crossed over the first street, she stopped to rest beneath a street light. Leaning up against the side of a brick house, she took notice of how eerily quiet her surroundings were. The only sound was her breathing. There simply was nothing, and no one. Was she truly alone? she wondered.
    She shook off the intrusive thought. Of course she wasn’t alone. Remy Moreland was real. Well, the late Remy Moreland was sort of real.  Maybe surreal was a better word.
    He had spun some tale of purgatory, of languishing between life and death. Then a thought struck her like a blow from above.
    What if he was telling the truth?
    She squeezed her eyes closed and tapped her temple with her fingertips. “Wake up, Leah, wake up!” But when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed in her dark, bleak surroundings.
    Stifling a sob, she trudged on towards the police station. But with each step, hope faded. She looked in the direction of the Moreland Funeral Home. Maybe she should turn back. Remy was the only breathing connection she had. No, she wasn’t going back. She had to find the police station in the off chance someone might be there.
    As she walked block to block, the futility of her situation set in. She was alone in a dark, abandoned mirror world of her old neighborhood, where she had grown up, and where she had once been happy.
    She arrived at the North Pointe Hospital where she had been born more than thirty years earlier. Now, it was nothing more than an abandoned shell, dark and foreboding. She continued on.
    Finally, just across the street sat the police station. It looked different. Where all of the other homes and businesses were closed up tight and dark, all of the windows here were broken out and the doors were wide open. A yellow light glowed within.
    Picking up her pace, she hurried across the street. She peered cautiously inside an open door. It looked like a burglary scene. A metal desk was ransacked; all of its drawers opened or pulled out, smashed, and emptied of its paperwork and office supplies. A telephone book was ripped into ribbons and scattered like confetti all around the office. A desk lamp had been thrown against the wall, leaving a huge dent; the remnants lay broken in pieces. A telephone sat on the desk, its receiver dangling from a knotted cord.
    Leah lifted the receiver and tapped at the buttons, but it was dead. She dropped the receiver and walked farther into the office. What caught her eye next was unusual. A flaky, rust-colored high velocity spray pattern covered one wall at about neck height. The same rust-colored flakes also covered the floor below in a drag pattern.
    She touched the stain with two fingers and rubbed the flaky substance between her fingertips. She looked between the stain