Free In the Shadow of Angels by Donnie J Burgess

like an accident. Perhaps it would have if he had more time, but just then, he saw a light shine over the darkness that could only mean someone just opened a door above.
    Dr. Stephens ran back to his room and shut the door quietly.
    Through the peephole, Dr. Stephens watched a man run to Jezebel, look around frantically, then run away, only to reappear moments later. What happened next, he found particularly troubling: that man took her, his arm around her waist and her arm around his shoulder and led her toward the gate.
    Watching through the peephole he couldn’t tell that she wasn’t walking at all, but being dragged. He also couldn’t tell who it was leading her away. Watching through his peephole, all he could see was her leaving The Place. He was sure she was dead when he returned to his room, but now he doubted and he had a compulsion to leave, but quickly.
    He ran to the bed and started getting dressed. Pants, shirt, shoes, belt. Then he looked around for any other sign that he had been there. He found none. One quick run to the restroom to see if the scratch marks on his face were horribly noticeable and then he would be on his way. When he looked into the mirror, he scarcely saw any signs of where her nails found his face. Even if they had been there, he probably wouldn’t have seen them. For what he did see was far, far worse. His douche-y, dangling, gold, dollar sign earring was gone.
    He ran outside and searched frantically for it. He looked where he found her initially and all the way to where he left her. There was no sign of it. That could mean only one thing: it was with her. In her hand or on her clothing, it didn’t matter.
    That was a problem.
    While it may be true that no one ever saw or heard anything at The Place, it was also true that if you left evidence on the body, it most certainly would speak.

Chapter 6
    Another stripe whizzed past the car and with it the lights of The Place grew smaller and dimmer in Beth’s rearview mirror. It was so small now that it was a barely perceptible dot against the black reflection of the night. If she hadn’t known it was there, she could easily have mistaken it for a street light. It was so small, in fact, that she realized that in only a few more seconds, any trace of light would be gone - swallowed by a vast and empty darkness. This was the first thought she had other than away. The metaphor was too perfect to ignore.
    She was the light being swallowed by the darkness. Her light was bright before she pushed Jezebel over that handrail, but with every mile she put between them, that light faded. Soon, there would be nothing but blackness and from that, there would be no turning back. No escape.
    Jezebel was also that light. While Beth might not have thought her light was as pure, it was a light nonetheless. A light that she may well have extinguished when she pushed her over that railing. She was alive when Beth left here there, she saw that much in her eyes, but she couldn’t be sure how badly she was hurt. Surely, a fall like that would have done some major damage. Even though she landed flat on her back, her head must have bounced ferociously off that concrete. Broken back? Fractured skull? Worse? Beth couldn’t bear to think of the worse.
    She was many things, but she was no killer.
    She hammered her brake pedal to the floor and turned the wheel hard to the right. The rear of the car slid wildly in a clockwise motion when the force of the brakes met the force of the turn. The car spun around just over two and a half times and finally came to rest with the front tires on the pavement and the back in the soft gravel of the shoulder. She didn’t wait for the dust to settle before she hammered the gas to the floor -Heading this time toward the light.
    She couldn’t leave her like that. She had to get back to The Place.
     
    *****
     
    Dr. Stephens rushed to the gate of The Place to get to his car. He opened the gate when he saw one of his patients, Devin