I shuffled the cards with the deliberate precision that comes from years of handling them, my fingers navigating their worn edges as if reading braille. The apartment pressed in around me, the shadows gathering in corners like old friends come to witness another reading.
My bed creaked beneath me as I shifted, the sound amplified in the hollow quiet of my apartment. Outside, the city hummed—a distant, muted symphony of car horns and footsteps that never quite reached me here, in my small sanctuary of half-light and secrets.
I laid out the first card. The Hanged Man stared back at me, his serene face betraying none of the discomfort his position should have caused. Suspended by one foot, seeing the world from a different angle. Sacrifice. Perspective. Waiting. Being stuck in a situation, living through it on repeat. I touched the card’s surface, feeling the years of handling that had softened its once-sharp edges.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I whispered, my voice disappearing into the muted darkness.
The second card: The Page of Pentacles, reversed. The young figure seemed to slide off the card, unstable in its upside-down state. A warning about financial loss, perhaps. Gambling. Risk without reward. Nothing new. Or was it?
The Moon came next, rising over troubled waters, its face both illuminating and obscuring. Illusion. Deception. Things hidden in shadows. This card always left me uneasy, with its promise that nothing was as it seemed. The Moon had never revealed its secrets to me, not fully. It remained the most frustrating card in my deck, the one that seemed to mock my abilities rather than enhance them.
“More than meets the eye,” I murmured, tracing the card’s silver border. “As if I needed reminding.”
The final card made my blood run cold: The Devil. Bondage. Addiction. Materialism. The chains that bind us to our darkest impulses. His eyes seemed to follow me as I pulled back, a shiver tracing an icy path down my spine.
The candles around my room flickered in a sudden draft, their flames bending like supplicants before an unseen force. The familiar smell of sandalwood incense wound its way through the air, mingling with the musty scent of old books piled high on every surface. My collection—tomes on divination, ancient texts on dream interpretation, journals filled with scribbled visions and their eventual manifestations. The scent anchored me, reminded me that I’d been here before, on the precipice of something I couldn’t yet understand.
I touched each card again, trying to piece together their message. This wasn’t the random chance of shuffled cardstock; this was a message being pushed through the veil.
My fingers trembled slightly as they hovered over the reversed Page of Pentacles. Gambling. Risk. Financial foolishness. Did the Page represent Mark, or was there another person involved?
The candle nearest to me guttered, then strengthened, its flame stretching tall as if reaching for something just beyond my perception. The smoke from the incense no longer curled lazily toward the ceiling but moved with purpose, forming shapes that dissolved before I could decipher them.
Something was coming. A vision.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, preparing myself. The visions were never gentle. They came like thieves, taking control of my senses, leaving me disoriented and drained. I’d learned to surrender to them, to let them wash over me rather than fight their pull. Fighting only made it worse—like struggling in quicksand, it only pulled you down faster.
The cards slipped from my hands, scattering across the bedspread. I barely noticed. Already, the room was beginning to dissolve around me, the familiar contours of my apartment giving way to something else, something not yet formed. The air thickened, pressing against my skin like a physical weight.
“Not just fate,” I whispered, my voice sounding distant to my own ears, “but a message.”
The chill that had been teasing at my spine suddenly plunged deeper, spreading through my body like ice water through veins. My breath caught, held, released in a shuddering gasp. This was always the worst part—the moment just before I fell into the vision, when I was still aware enough to be afraid but too far gone to pull back.
The incense and old book smell intensified, a final tether to reality before I slipped away completely. I clutched at it mentally, using it as an anchor as the vision began to overtake my senses. The cards lay forgotten, their message delivered, their purpose served. They had been the key that unlocked the door, but what waited on the other side was beyond their simple symbolism.
My last coherent thought was of The Moon card, its enigmatic face watching as I slipped beyond its reach, into a world where its warnings made perfect, terrible sense.
Then the room dissolved completely, and I was gone.
The room melted away like wax beneath a flame, colors running together, furniture dissolving into formless shapes. I’d learned long ago not to fight the transition—resistance only prolonged the nausea, the vertigo that accompanied the shift from one reality to another. Instead, I surrendered, let myself fall through the spaces between moments, between breaths. The vision claimed me completely, rebuilding the world around my consciousness with the casual cruelty of a child destroying and reconstructing a sand castle.
First came the sounds—the distant pattern of rain on concrete, the hollow echo of dripping water, the low moan of wind funneling through narrow spaces. Then smells—damp stone, rotting garbage, the metallic tang of rust and fear. My senses assembled the scene piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle completed by unseen hands.
I blinked, and the alley materialized around me. Brick walls rose on either side, their surfaces pocked and crumbling, centuries of grime embedded in every crevice. The ground beneath was slick with rain, black puddles reflecting fragments of neon light from somewhere beyond my field of vision. A sign flickered overhead—red, then blue, then darkness, then red again—casting sickly, shifting shadows that danced across the walls like malevolent spirits.
The rain fell in earnest now, cold drops striking my skin with painful clarity. This was the terrible gift of my visions—not mere observation but immersion. I felt everything, sensed everything, yet remained a ghost, unable to interact, to alter the course of events that unfolded before me.
A figure appeared at the far end of the alley, hesitant, shoulders hunched against the rain. Even through the gloom and distance, I knew him immediately. Mark. The recognition hit me like a physical blow, stealing my breath.
He moved cautiously down the alley, his features obscured by shadow, yet unmistakable to me. The familiar slope of his shoulders, the slight hitch in his step from an old rugby injury, the way he ran his hand nervously through his hair when he sensed trouble. And he sensed it now—I could tell from the tension in his frame, the way his head swiveled, scanning the darkness for whatever had driven him into this desolate place.
I tried to move toward him, but my feet remained fixed to the spot. This was the cruelty of visions—to witness without agency, to know without the power to act. I was nothing more than a camera lens, recording but never participating.
“Mark,” I whispered, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. No one ever heard me in these moments between realities.
A sound from the opposite end of the alley drew both our attentions. Mark froze, his posture stiffening, while I strained to see through the rain and darkness. Another figure emerged, this one moving with deliberate purpose, each step measured and confident. Unlike Mark, this man’s form seemed unstable, his edges shifting as if his very existence was in flux. One moment solid, the next transparent, like a faulty hologram. Only his intent remained consistent—the predatory grace of a hunter who has cornered his prey.
From somewhere beyond the alley came the sound of water—not the gentle patter of rain but the violent crash of waves against a shore. The incongruity of it struck me as Mark backed away from the approaching figure, his retreat halted by a chain-link fence I hadn’t noticed before. He was trapped.
“Why are we meeting here?” Mark’s voice bounced off the brick walls, thin with fear but trying to project confidence.
The figure didn’t respond, at least not in words I could hear. But Mark reacted as if he’d heard something, his face paling, visible even in the dim light.
The rain intensified, drumming against the dumpsters and fire escapes, creating a percussive backdrop to the confrontation. I felt each drop as if it struck my own skin, the chill seeping into my bones. The cobblestones beneath my feet seemed to shift and resettle, old stones carrying centuries of stories, now witnesses to whatever was about to unfold.
The figure advanced, and as he moved under the flickering neon, I caught a glimpse of his face—or what should have been his face. Instead of features, there was only a blur, as if someone had taken an eraser to the details. But the menace radiating from him needed no facial expression to communicate. It rolled off him in waves, a tangible force that pushed against me even in my incorporeal state.
Mark pressed his back against the chain-link fence, his hands gripping the metal behind him. In the flickering light, I saw what I’d missed before—the bruise blooming across his left cheekbone, the torn sleeve of his jacket, the wild desperation in his eyes.
My breath caught in my throat, though I had no real lungs in this state, no physical form that could react to fear. Yet fear gripped me nonetheless, squeezing my phantom heart with icy fingers. I knew what was coming before I saw it—the dull gleam of metal as the figure withdrew a gun.
“No!” I screamed into the void. “Mark, run!”
But there was nowhere to run. The fence blocked one escape, the figure the other. Mark seemed to realize this too, his posture changing, resignation replacing fear, his shoulders dropping as if a great weight had settled on them.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
The sound of waves grew louder, incongruously close, as if the ocean itself had risen and now pressed against the alley walls. The noise surrounded us, disorienting in its intensity. The damp chill that had settled into my bones deepened, became a kind of numbing cold that threatened to freeze me from the inside out.
The figure raised the gun with mechanical precision. Mark closed his eyes.
The vision began to dissolve around me. No, not yet. I needed to see more, to understand who this man was and why he wanted to kill Mark. But the alley was already fading, the brick walls becoming transparent, the cobblestones beneath my feet losing their solidity.
“Mark!” I called one last time, desperate, reaching out with a hand that passed through his retreating form like smoke. “I’ll find you! I swear I’ll find you!”
The last thing I saw before the vision collapsed entirely was the neon sign overhead, finally clear enough to read: HARBOR LIGHTS BAR & GRILL, the ‘R’ in HARBOR flickering out to leave ”HARBOR“ glowing against the night sky. Then everything went black, and I was falling again, tumbling back toward my own reality, the echo of waves chasing me all the way home.
My eyes snapped open to the harsh reality of my apartment. The transition back was always worse than the going—like being yanked from deep water to dry land, my lungs burning, my skin too tight. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead, my cotton shirt to my back. The single lamp glared, accusing in its normalcy. I was back.
I sat up too quickly. The room tilted, then righted itself reluctantly. My tarot cards lay scattered across the bedspread where I’d dropped them, the Devil card staring up at me with knowing eyes. Bondage. Addiction. Chains of our own making. Mark’s chains.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the protest from muscles stiff with tension. My iPad lay on the cluttered nightstand, and I grabbed it with hands that trembled like autumn leaves. The screen lit up, bright enough to make me wince.
“The docks,” I muttered, remembering the figure’s words.
I opened the browser and typed “harbor maps city” with fingers that seemed to belong to someone else—clumsy, uncoordinated. The results loaded slowly, agonizingly so, as if the digital world itself resisted my urgency. I scrolled through images of waterfront property listings, tourist attractions, ferry schedules.
Then—there. A map of the harbor district. I tapped it, zoomed in. The layout spread before me, a spider’s web of piers and warehouses, loading docks and container yards. Somewhere in that maze, Mark was being led to his fate.
Harbor Lights Bar & Grill. The sign from my vision. I searched for it specifically, my breath caught in my throat. Nothing came up under that exact name. Had I seen something that didn’t exist? Or something that once existed but no longer did?
No. The vision had been too immediate, too present. I was missing something.
I switched to satellite view, scanning the coastline with desperate attention. The roads near the water formed familiar patterns—I’d seen them before, in the distant background of my vision. I zoomed in on the warehouse district, where abandoned buildings stood like forgotten sentinels at the edge of the city’s memory.
A photo caught my eye—a street view of a decrepit building with boarded windows and faded lettering above a rusted door. I zoomed in, squinting at the barely legible words: "Harborside Storage.” The ‘i’ and ‘d’ had long since fallen away, leaving “Harbors e Storage.” One more missing letter, and it would read “Harbors Storage”—or “Harbor Storage.”
My heart skipped. Could a decaying sign, viewed at night under flickering lights, appear to read “Harbor Lights”? Especially to eyes already clouded with fear and adrenaline?
I clicked on the location, bringing up more images. The alley alongside the building matched what I’d seen—the crumbling brick walls, the chain-link fence at one end, the narrow passage that could easily trap someone with nowhere to run.
“Found you,” I whispered, the triumph hollow given what awaited there.
I rolled from the bed to my feet in one fluid motion, crossing to the small desk crammed in the corner of my studio apartment. Papers cascaded to the floor as I cleared a space, grabbing a notebook and pen. My handwriting sprawled across the page, manic and barely legible even to myself:
HARBORSIDE STORAGE
ALLEY - EAST SIDE
CHAIN LINK FENCE
I tore the page out, placed it on my bed linens. Then another page, a rough sketch of the warehouse and surrounding alleys based on the satellite images. Another for the figure with the gun, though my hand shook so badly that his outline resembled nothing human.
The tarot cards called to me from the bed. I gathered them up, shuffling them back into the deck with the exception of the four that had started this nightmare: The Hanged Man, the reversed Page of Pentacles, The Moon, The Devil. These I arranged on the desk before me, a grim reminder of what had been set in motion.
The Moon stared up at me with its enigmatic face—illusion, deception, that which is hidden. But bodies of water fell under its domain as well. The harbor. The sound of waves. The Moon had been trying to tell me where, not just what.
The Hanged Man—Mark, suspended in his predicament, seeing the world from a different angle.
The reversed Page of Pentacles—gambling debts. The chains he’d forged himself, link by link.
And The Devil, tying it all together. Bondage. Addiction. The price of indulgence. The other man.
I returned to the iPad, searching property records for the warehouse. The building had been abandoned for years, foreclosed on by the bank when its previous owner went bankrupt. A perfect place for off-the-books business, for dealings that couldn’t bear the light of day.
I zoomed in further on the satellite image, studying the warehouse’s surroundings. A narrow road led to it, barely visible from the main street. Beyond it, the black expanse of the harbor waters, dotted with the ghosts of abandoned piers. The perfect place to disappear someone, to let the tides take evidence away.
I pulled up another image—a street view of the main road leading to the warehouse district. Something in the background caught my eye, a splash of neon color against the industrial gray. I zoomed in, my breath catching.
A bar sat at the corner where the main road met the harbor access road. Its sign glowed in the Google Street View image: “The Harbor Light Tavern.” Not “Harbor Lights Bar & Grill,” but close enough that my vision might have merged the two, conflated the warehouse with the nearby establishment.
The connections snapped into place like puzzle pieces finding their mates. The warehouse, the bar, the alley, the water—all within a tight radius, all part of the same nightmarish landscape where Mark found his end.
I studied the docks extending from behind the warehouse district. Most were in disrepair, their wooden planks rotted through in places, their pylons leaning at precarious angles. But one—the furthest from public access—appeared to have been maintained. Even in the satellite image, it looked different from the others, its wood darker, newer. Someone was using it.
The map of the harbor district stared back at me, a maze of possibilities, each path potentially leading to Marks body. My research had narrowed the search, but the harbor was still vast, its secrets well-guarded by time and neglect.
I inhaled deeply, the air heavy with incense and intention. “This is no random dream,” I whispered to the empty room, my voice steadier than I felt. “It’s a path.”
The words hung in the silence, a declaration that seemed to vibrate the very air. In that moment, I felt them—the presences that had guided me since childhood, hovering just beyond the veil of perception. My spirit guides, some called them. Guardian angels. Ghosts. The names hardly mattered. What mattered was their constancy, their silent witness to my life and struggles.
But tonight they were particularly silent, offering neither encouragement nor warning. I sensed them around me like heat shimmer on a summer road—visible only from the corner of the eye, gone when directly observed. Their reticence troubled me. Usually, in moments of decision, I felt their influence—a gentle nudge in one direction or another, a whisper of insight just below conscious thought.
“Not even a hint?” I asked the empty air. “Not even a sign?”
Nothing. Only the soft ticking of the clock, the distant hum of the refrigerator, the normal sounds of a night that pretended to be ordinary when it was anything but.
Perhaps their silence was the sign—a reminder that this choice was mine alone, that some paths must be walked without guidance. Or perhaps they had already given me all the guidance I needed in the vision itself, in the cards that had opened the door to it.
The shadows on the walls seemed to dance with the flickering candlelight, stretching and contracting like living things. I’d always found comfort in shadows—they hid the harsh edges of reality, softened the world’s cruel certainties. But tonight they seemed restless, impatient, as if urging me toward action rather than contemplation.
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