From Darkness It Comes

Searching for Stark

Madame Laveau disappears into the side room and Darrin takes Lisa's hand, slowly pulling her towards the front of the store. "Alright. Let's get going. We have a lot of ground to cover if we are going to find Mr. Stark before it's too late."

"Where are we even going to look?" Lisa says, walking along side of him and holding his hand a little tighter. " We have no idea where he was going. He could be anywhere."

"We can start at his shed tunnel thing. From there we just have to choose some pattern and keep looking."

"Yeah," She lets out a sigh. "Needle in a haystack."

He squeezes her hand and the two of them head out the door to the shop into the night air. The bell rings and is then muffled when the door swings shut again behind them. Together they disappear up the street and away from Twilight Forever.

Many minutes later they find themselves walking through the main eastern gates of the campus, hands still clenched together. Without missing a beat they walk towards the dorms and around the back, to the non-descript shed that leads to his underground home.

"Damn." Darin grunts, trying the locked door. "It's locked. If he's in there we have no way of finding out."

"So what should we do? Wait here or go look elsewhere?"

"I think we should assume he's not going to be doing whatever he wanted me to help with here. That means he is going to be elsewhere."

"Makes sense." She nods, but her face looks less pleased at the prospect.

"Yeah." He sighs softly. "Let's get going and start looking around."

Without another word they turn and start to make their way back around to the front of the dorm building. Through the thin gravel path in the darkness. Around them the shadows seem to close in, growing close and closer to them. Just as they are about to reach out and touch them, before reaching the open space of the quad ahead, a bright beam shoots down the path towards them and floods them light. The darkness pulls back with an almost audible hiss of pain.

From behind the source of the light they stand frozen in a deep voice calls out. "I knew you would come. Hurry, we have no time to waste."

Darrin puts his hand up to block the light and is if in response to this action the beam lowers to the ground between them and the form of Mr. Stark's unmistakable silhouette appears behind it. "Go where?"

"No time to explain." The old man turns and starts to walk out of the dark path, with the light now ahead of him. "Hurry. Come on. We must get there before it's too late to start tonight."

Darrin and Lisa look at each other and shrug with slightly worried expressions on their faces. They grip hands tightly again and hurry along behind him to get out to the dark path and closer to Mr. Stark.