How Dark The World: A Shadows May Fall Story

April 1918

Robbie used to love how earthy the rain made everything smell, especially in the spring when trees began to sprout their canopies and the brown grass yielded to green. Even when it chilled him he liked being outside when the sky opened up, he remained cheerful even as he splashed in puddles crossing streets and the rain ran in a stream over the brim of his hat.

The rain had brought him nothing but pain since his leg had been broken. He felt it as pins and needles in his bones, intensifying where the break had happened, and the ache would spread throughout his lower half and up his spine, and he'd have little inclination to do anything but throw a blanket over himself and grit his teeth through the agony.

The last few days had been terrible. It had rained almost constantly, from pin-sharp downpours to deceivingly fine mist that left a body soaked. He'd felt wretched. He sat in a chair by a window that was opened a crack, blanket wrapped around himself, smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking cup after cup of tea. He'd read seven books and gotten into the habit of napping in the mid-afternoon. He hadn't been out of his slippers in days and his barely-brushed hair was in need of a trim. He felt eighty-years-old.

When the rain stops, I'll find her, he told himself for the umpteenth time as he shook off the sleep from his snooze.

It ate at him that he had to talk himself into it these days. All through the winter, he had been fanatical about finding out where Dorothy had gone. Waiting for the break in his leg to mend and the frustrating exercise of learning to walk with that damned cane, he'd barely been able to sleep through the night -- thoughts of getting out into the broken city to try and find out where her trail picked up kept him awake into the wee hours and dragged out him out of sleep in an instant panic. He'd filled a notebook with plans. Most were just thoughts he needed to get out of his head. He'd written down everything he could remember about her, scouring his memory for each little detail, names, and locations mentioned in passing that now seemed monumentally important, such as where her family had come from and where she had grown up and Charlie's friends and haunts.

Now, he made excuses. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't bring himself to get back out there in the face of a hopeless quest.

His mother's musical laughter rose up from below and rubbed his nerves raw. He avoided her as much as he could. The same could be said for Helena and everyone else. A few friends had visited to have a look at him and he hadn't been able to tolerate then for more than a half an hour before becoming ornery. He didn't want to be around people, and those who lived under this roof made him want to climb the walls.

The laughter subsided, but when the music began his temper arced.

Madame Butterfly. It was always Madame Butterfly with his mother. She adored that record, and that he couldn't leave the house to escape it made him feel like a trapped cougar.

He gritted his teeth and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until they hurt.

She can't have ventured far. She and Charlie were as poor as church mice, but his hope for a quick end to his search had been quashed when he'd first ventured out to the last place he knew she had been: the house on Duncan Street where her step-mother had stayed after the explosion. It was a short street and he'd been able to knock on every door before he'd had to rest.

"I'm sorry, I don't know the woman's name, but she lost her husband and left here with a young woman and a boy," he'd said to each person who answered. No one had any information for him, save to say that some of the neighbours had been renting the houses and had left after Christmas.