It was unusually bright out for it being midnight in the early November. Apart from all of the early-birds who have had all of their Christmas lights up since the day after Halloween, the sky just seemed to be alive with starlight and a high, bright moon. The kind of moon that looks full, but you know it won't be for another few days. A light rain had began to fall on the town of Portland and Natalia knew that pretty soon it would turn into a phenomenal downpour, so she tightened the straps on her petticoat and kept on walking down the street. The unusual brightness was outweighed by the eerie silence that had seemed to fall upon the usually bustling town. Portland's night life was about as diverse as any Vegas street you could walk down, but these people knew how to keep it quiet, because no one expects extraordinary things to happen quietly, no one except Natalia.
For the past seven months she has been working at a free clinic in the downtown area, usually working with kids who decided that living at home was too rough for one reason or another, so they ended up on the street. Most people just turn up their nose and shoo them away, but that was not Natalia's way. The clinic was a small building, she's actually pretty sure it used to be a brothel before it was more than likely raided, cleaned and thrown on the market for super cheap and Doctors Wilkie and Townsend had decided to buy the run-down building and turn it into something good and Natalia was the only Registered Nurse that said she would help. It wasn't without a lot of thought, though. She was giving up a cozy salary to go and make sure that these kids had a safe place to go and get treatment, of any kind. They never turned someone away.
Natalia tried very hard not to get too overly-attached to the people that would come in and out of the office, but her huge heart constantly got the better of her, despite her brain fighting for the opposite. But there was this one boy, a young man by the age of 20 who had just lost his grandfather to Alzheimer's disease and lung cancer a few weeks before he moved to Portland. His name was Zachary and he was a very sweet and gentle soul and his grandfather was the last person he had left in the world, except for his drunken abusive dad living in Oregon, so he ended up back here to where the problems began.
She treated him for a few weeks; he never had the chicken pox as a child and got them as an adult, not a week after he moved to Portland, so he grew very ill. She knew it was weird, but Natalia grew to look forward to the next time she got to see him, even though he was usually coming to check to make sure that he hadn't broken any bones after having his body brutally beaten by his monster of a father. Every time he would leave Natalia's office, she would weep. She felt as though she was falling in love with this man that she barely even knew. In fact, she didn't even know if he knew her name.
Then one day about a week ago, he just stopped coming in. Even if he didn't come inside the building, Natalia would see him a few times a day walking to and from multiple dead-end jobs he was working to support his piece of garbage father, but she failed to even catch a glimpse of him en route. At first she played it off in her head, she figured he must just walk by when she isn't near her office window. Then she got optimistic and thought that perhaps things had gotten better between Zachary and his father and he didn't have the need to come by the clinic anymore. As the days kept going by, she started to become frantically worried. So after work this night exactly a week since she has seen him, she decides to walk the streets of Portland in the middle of a freezing cold December night.
The rain started to fall heavier, leaving freezing streak marks down her pale pink cheeks. Her bright green eyes were squeezed practically closed to keep from freezing her eye lashes.
"Damn, I knew I should have stopped to get my gloves at my car," she swore to herself under her breath. Natalia had left her car at the clinic parking lot, knowing that she would have better luck tracking down her mystery man on foot, for she never saw him in a car, always on foot. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to let down her curly dark, cherry brown hair in hopes to keep her ears a little more warm. With a freezing hand she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the little slip of paper where she had his address written down. She knows she shouldn't have, but she pulled it off of his medical records. Natalia just had to know if this poor man was okay, her heart needed to know.
As she approached the dead end of the street she looked around confused.
"There are no houses here? There aren't even any apartment complexes. It's just all forest," she spoke aloud to no one. But Natalia was determined to find Zachary, if she had to look until her feet bled, she was going to find him and bring him somewhere safe, for now she had a deep feeling of dread in her stomach. Her eyes scanned the tree line, hoping maybe to see a house off in the distance, but nothing. She was about to turn around and look back up the street, thinking maybe she had missed it when she heard a sound coming from behind the dead end sign that was definitely footsteps. Her blood froze in her veins and she darted quickly behind a tree and clasped her frozen hand to her mouth to keep her quick, heavy breathing from being heard. The echoing increased as she heard whoever it was round a corner. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to accidentally make any sort of sound or movement.
The footsteps grew louder and sloppier as they hit the pavement and Natalia knew there were very close to her. She slowly and silently crept around the tree so whoever it was, she was behind them. At first she couldn't see anything, for the sounds of footsteps had grown silent. The whole Earth seemed to be holding its breath along with her as her eyes widened, trying to make out where the sound was coming from. Maybe Zachary does live back here, but where? She slipped out of her shoes so she could make as less noise as possible as she began to climb the bolder that separated the dead end from the rest of the trail. The rain was falling in fat, freezing drops as she stumbled in the darkness, trying to find her footing.
"So much for the moon being bright," she muttered as she massaged her bruised knee. Natalia stood up, brushed the dirt and leaves from her scrubs and pressed on. The whole time she walked, she made sure she didn't leave the tree line as not to be seen. She was starting to regret leaving her shoes behind, but she knew this made her much stealthier. All of the sudden, Natalia is being stopped dead in her tracts and she almost lets out a scream before she realizes that a huge thorn bush had taken a hold of her scrub pants and sliced a whole from hip to ankle. She swore under her breath and just ripped them off. The hike was making her so warm, just her shirt and her petticoat were keeping her warm and besides, she always wore a pair of yoga shorts underneath her scrubs, she couldn't imagine working without them.
Natalia walked on for what seemed like hours when finally, in the distance she thought she could make out the faint glow of a fire. The excitement grew inside of her and she pressed on, knowing that this must be where the illusive Zachary called home. She hiked for about another half mile, crossing over fallen redwood trees and boulders the size of VW bugs. She had lost sight of the light, but she followed the burning smell of red oak. Natalia could see a clearing just up a head where she could make out multiple tents, some large and some that might fit a child in it. She shook her head in disbelief.
