Dark Rain by Tony Richards

comfortable place. An environment you can enjoy, and even take satisfaction from. We’d all have gone crazy a long time back, if that wasn’t the case.
    I’d just got ten back from Calder Street, over in East Meadow, Cass’s neighborhood. It had been an emergency call. Some would-be adept, nineteen years old, had gone berserk. And had – taking her cue from the ‘Circe’ myth in Homer – attempted to turn her cheating boyfriend into an actual pig. That may sound amusing, except for two things. She hadn’t succeeded the whole way – he was the right color, and made the right noises, but Old MacDonald wouldn’t have him on his farm. And you only had to see the flaring terror in his eyes to recognize that this was not a joke.
    In the end, Gaspar Vernon had agreed to come down from the Hill and fix the matter. I left him to it. I guess I might have been badly shaken up, if I had hailed from any other town. But a cop in the Landing deals with incidents like that the entire time.
    My shift wasn’t over for another couple of hours. But in those days, there was always a habit I had when anything unpleasant caused by magic happened. It put my mind at rest to drop by my own house and make sure that my family was safe.
    So there I was, cruising up through my own neighborhood of Northridge. There was nothing exceptional about the place, and that was how I liked it. Kids were playing on the sidewalk. They had balls and bikes and dogs. A postman was making his rounds. Old Ted Brampton already had the sprinklers on in his front yard, despite the fact that it was barely summer yet. Just row upon row of neat little houses, all of them well maintained. This was, and has always been, a respectable blue-collar neighborhood.
    I turned the corner onto Kenveigh Street. Pulled up in front of my own garage, then walked across and rang the bell. And, when I got no answer, used my latchkey. There was no one home, but that was not surprising on a day like this. They’d obviously gone out.
    I was writing them a note, to let them know I’d dropped by, when I heard a car backfire on the street. That drew me to the window. A fourteen year-old, rust covered Toyota had pulled up to the curb next to my squad car.
    I squinted at it hard. And couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.
    The thing had Nevada plates. Which couldn’t possibly be right. My face went stiff and my pulse bumped over.
    As I watched, a squat young man with shaggy hair got out. He went to the trunk and hefted a massive, battered suitcase into view. I think my mouth must have dropped open at that point. This was obviously someone who was planning to stay a while. Which was something that never happened here.
    No one ever came here, unless they absolutely had to. And when that was the case, they got out again just as quickly as they could. Certainly, we had no long-term visitors. It was all a part and parcel of the curse.
    For the past three centuries, Raine’s Landing hadn’t been part of the regular world because of it. And it should have been working on this fellow now. Every instinct in his body ought to have been screaming at him. Turn around! Get out!
    Instead of which … he was smiling. He actually looked pleased that he’d arrived.
    I finally unfroze, with difficulty. And went on outside, my original shock giving way to bemusement.
    Oh, he was staying, all right. He was struggling with the big case, sweating. But there was this fixed, determined expression on his wide, lumpy face. His head swung around when I stepped down from my porch. And then his eyes narrowed when he saw my uniform.
    That made me wonder straightaway if he had been in any trouble. He simply stood there, rather edgy looking, as I walked across.
    “Any problem, officer?”
    His voice was flat and nasal.
    I didn’t like the look of him from the outset. He was pinkly chubby, like an overly-large infant. Had to be in his late twenties. Stood about five six, and had let his dark hair grow out into