The day had rushed by, and now Lisa was standing in her room, making the final preparations for this... date? Was it a date? She had never really had such a thing whilst she had known Julian, not really. They were... friends. Nonetheless, she was making an effort. A hint of perfume, even some black eye-liner, despite the fact she normally despised make-up.
There was a knock at the door. Lisa pulled her boots from under the bed and started lacing them up. "Come in."
"Lisa..." Marge pushed the door open and stood in the narrow gap there. "You know I don't like you going out so late, especially at this time of year."
"Oh mom, I'm only going-"
"To the woods, with Julian." Marge folded her arms and cocked her head to one side. She wasn't frowning, but then she wasn't exactly smiling either, which frustrated Lisa.
"Ohhhh how did you know!"
"I know because I'm your mother."
"I suppose you're going to try and stop me," Lisa huffed. She started lacing her other boot, wishing she hadn't spoken so sharply.
"No, I'm not. It's obvious you've made up your mind about this... just..."
"Just what?"
"Be careful. Please."
"Oh mom..." Lisa stood up and gave Marge a quick hug. "I'll be fine, I promise."
"Of course you will dear," sighed Marge. "Lord knows, dressed up like that you'll probably scare off most advances..."
"Gee, thanks." They both stood, contemplating the floor for a moment. Lisa wondered if perhaps she was abandoning something tonight, some small part of her security...
"Oh, look at the time!" Lisa pulled her coat on. "Gotta go mom, bye."
She pushed past Marge and ran from the house. It was a long distance to the school, much further than it seemed on the bus, and she was worn out by the time she got to the Lyceum... she sat on the steps, panting quietly. In the distance, a clock started its slow chime towards nine.
She waited for about twenty minutes in the shadow of the Lyceum porch, watching the long grass billow in the breeze, and listening to the late-night sounds, crickets chirruping in the middle-distance, trees sighing. Perhaps I've been stood up, she thought sadly, which is just my luck really...
Lisa didn't really know what caught her attention. Something, perhaps some fleeting shadow passed across vision, or a noise behind her... she tensed, turned, ready to fight...
"Julian! You scared me..."
"Eh, it's a livin... ready to go?" He held out a pale-skinned hand. As Lisa took it, she felt a strange lightness pass over her, and then all she wanted was to follow Julian wherever he went.
They walked, she didn't know how long for, in the dark between the ancient trees of the Springfield forests. It must have been for a long time though, because even the crickets were silent now, the only sound a distant, solitary owl calling out of the night. There was a mansion, darkened windows cold, uninviting. But the door was bright, and someone stood there, welcoming them.
Lisa felt as if she were surfacing through some thick, sludgy quagmire... she blinked.
"Where am I?"
"The mansion," said Julian, adding with a smile "You were half asleep all the way."
"That would explain a few things," Lisa replied uncertainly as they climbed the steps. Okay... what time is it?"
"About five minutes to midnight," said a cultured voice from the doorway. "Good evening, young Lisa. My name is Vlad."
"Vlad? If you don't mind me saying so, it sounds a bit clichéd to me..."
"Oh but of course, it isn't my real name," Vlad said, leaning forward with a conspiratorial grin to whisper in her ear. "My real name is Stanley, but don't tell anyone. Vlad seems so much more..."
"Romantic?"
"Of course!" Vlad replied, straightening up. "And now, would you care to enter our humble abode?"
The older man stood aside, beckoning them to enter the mansion and closing the door behind them with a loud squeal that made Lisa jump. She looked around slowly, attempting to get over her fright. They were standing in a long, wide hall, festooned with panelling and old pictures from which the faces of the past gaze impassively down. Stairs led up into the gloom of the second floor and numerous doors showed the way through the house.
"So Julian, this is to be our new member." Vlad was appraising her in the bright light, looking up and down, walking around. "Interesting... good physique, well toned... yes, excellent. Do you like ghost stories Lisa?"
"Who doesn't?" she replied.
"Oh, you'd be surprised..." he muttered with a distant stare. Lisa thought he looked almost sad... "Dear child, perhaps you should join us in the drawing room."
"Oooh, classy."
Lisa followed them into another, darker room, a room surrounded at the edges by numerous pale, black-clothed figures. They were sitting, or standing, Lisa counted probably twelve people and all of them were staring straight at her. She reached out for Julian's hand.
"Jules, this is..."
"Lisa. I have a small confession to make," he said.
"What?"
"That ritual I told you about? I've already... already been through it. Last night, in fact."
"You lied to me? Julian, I thought... what's going on?" Lisa tried to pull her hand away from his, but he gripped harder. "Julian that hurts!"
"I'm sorry Lisa," he said suddenly, letting her go. "I... I don't know what came over me."
"Please, Lisa, sit down." Vlad motioned to a chair near the centre of the room, somewhat offset, and then ushered Lisa towards it. "Lisa, I trust you know why you are here now."
"I thought I was here to see Julian joining your club." Lisa was still standing by the chair. She saw something blaze up in Vlad's eyes, saw him turn toward Julian with something that sounded like a growl, primal and fierce and utterly terrifying. I have to have imagined that...
"You didn't tell her?" Vlad demanded. "Why?"
"You think she would have come if I told her?"
"Impudence!" Vlad swung a hand against Julian's head, knocking him sideways. "We always tell them! But..."
He looked back at Lisa, the anger fading from his eyes as quickly as it had appeared
"In this case, I think we can make an exception. Lisa. Please, do not be alarmed at my treatment of your friend, he still has a long way to travel up our... " a thin smile. "Hierarchy? When I learned of you from Julian, it was generally accepted that we should initiate you into our little fellowship. You are, to put it mildly, a very intricate young lady, very intelligent."
"You don't just tell ghost stories here, do you?" The suspicion in Lisa's voice was obvious.
"No, we do not just tell ghost stories. They are for the benefit of our fringe membership, but the core..." he motioned around the room. "The people you see here, are more, shall we say, actively involved?"
"Do you do community work, home help? Things like that?"
"In a manner of speaking, I suppose..." Vlad shrugged his shoulders and carried on. "Anyway, it is our wish that you would join us, Lisa. We need new membership. Will you join us?"
He pursed his lips, waiting for an answer. Lisa sat down slowly, thinking about it. What harm could there be? Sitting in a dark room while they try to scare me, it's not like I've been in that situation before... She looked at the row of faces around the room. None had spoken yet, they just stared at her. In fact they were following her every move, their eyes locked on to her in some bizarre staring contest. That might be the only truly scary thing in the room...
"I... suppose it wouldn't hurt to try," she said eventually, slowly. Vlad smiled again, although there seemed to be a change in his eyes that Lisa couldn't quite interpret.
"Very well," he said. "We shall begin."
The lights went out, although Lisa couldn't recall anyone moving toward the switch. Clever, she thought, with a brave smile. Some kind of computer control in charge of the lights, perhaps? If that was the best they could do...
What was that? A strange, animalistic noise emitted from the darkness behind her. It was joined by several others, all around Lisa's position. Grunts, groans... some kind of growling... and then she could feel them drawing closer, the things... Lisa felt something brush against her arm.
"Okay I... I'm think I've passed now guys. Guys?" Lisa reached out into the darkness, touched something... a face. "Julian?"
The face pulled away from her. "I'm right here Lisa."
Lisa turned her head sharply, saw the vague outline of someone standing over her, almost human...
"What-" but before she could continue, they grabbed her. Lisa felt them tugging at her arms, her legs. She was thrown on to something hard; a table? Spidery fingers wrapped around her limbs, holding her against the cold, unyielding stone, trapping her.
"Julian!" A flash of white, a sharp needling pain in her neck, her arms, legs, and then it felt as if the life were being sucked from her. She fell into some kind of dream-world, spinning through the darkness, screaming... mom!
She was scared of the dark, she remembered now. Even if she thought, knew she wasn't before, she remembered that she was. And she was scared of what lay through the door of her mind, through the dreams, in the darkest recesses of her unconscious. They lurked there... and now they came flooding out toward her, through the mists, taunting, jeering, destroying her.
Light.
She swam unknowing through the voices toward the tunnel of brightness, saw someone beckoning... then she was dragged away, back to the darkness.
Am I dead? It was the only thought she had, and she clung to it. A voice, it was calling out a name. She remembered that it was her name... so she moved toward the voice.
Falling upwards isn't as bad as falling down, but it still isn't fun. She shot through another light, and surfaced with a loud scream.
Marge burst through the bedroom door just as Lisa opened her eyes. She sat up, whimpered slightly and felt for the wounds she knew should be all over her... nothing. Not even a scratch. Sweat drenched her bed and her nightclothes, pooling in the hollows where sh56e had lain. She looked up at her mother.
"Lisa? What happened?"
"I..."
"Aww did you have a nightmare honey?" Marge sat down on the end of the bed. "You stayed out pretty late last night, that might have set something off."
"I was... what time is it?"
"Quarter to twelve."
"What?!? I'm late for school!" Lisa leapt from the bed and started gathering up her clothes. Marge just watched impassively. "Mom, help me or something!"
"Lisa..."
"I can't miss school!"
"Lisa!" Marge reached out and put a gentle hand on Lisa's shoulder. "It's Saturday."
"It is? I..." she fell on to the bed with an inane giggle. "I could have sworn it was Friday."
"Late nights do that to you. What were you doing last night anyway?"
Lisa sat up again, a slight frown resting on her brow.
"That's the strangest thing. I don't remember much of what happened..."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"I guess so. How did I get home anyway?"
"Oh, that friend of yours brought you back just after midnight. You were fast asleep. It was so cute..."
"Mom, I am not cute!"
"Whatever you say dear. Come on, lunch will be ready soon. You'd better get dressed." Almost exactly on cue, the rising smell of beef stew wafted through the door from the kitchen. Marge perked up her nose. "I'd better get downstairs and look after that. Shouldn't be long now."
Marge stood, and was gone, leaving Lisa alone in her room again. She started to get dressed, stopping once or twice to scratch an annoying itch on her neck.
She wore her usual garb, sans boots and coat; who needed a coat indoors? She picked up the brooch Julian had given her... and something, some fragment of a conversation slipped into her memory...
... changes will take time to assert. She will return to us soon enough.
But what if she doesn't?
She won't have a choice.
Lisa set the brooch down, wondering what the fragmentary sentences meant. Were they talking about her? Who was doing the talking? She suspected... that man...
... and then the overpowering scent of lunch reached her again. Must be a strong stew, she reasoned, licking her lips.
September 2 2006Blood, everywhere. She stumbled and slipped through pools of it, brushed her hands against great streaks of the stuff on walls, furniture, on everything. It drenched every inch of her clothes, stuck to her skin like crimson glue, matted her hair. And the screams... her sister wailing, her mother crying out in the dark somewhere, her brother screaming as the demon took his soul and always the blood running through everything, through the distorted images of her home and the knocking, knocking...
It was the persistent knocking again that eventually woke Lisa from the nightmare. She groggily pushed herself from the bed and staggered across the book-strewn floor of her bedroom, into her apartment and then the door. Who... ?
She remembered most of the conversation from last night. Mark, that puppy look in his eyes, asking her out on a date. A date with... but she couldn't bring herself to use that word. If only he knew.
Her hand resting on the doorknob, she realised with a pang of fear that she was hungry. Not just hungry in the normal human sense though... it was the Hunger, a feeling she hadn't had for months, that she had staved off as most people would ignore a rumbling stomach. It was a little like fasting... but she couldn't see him when she was like that, could she? And then there was another knock at the door.
"Just a second!" Lisa tried to ignore the saliva building up in her mouth, ran to the kitchen and yanked the door off the fridge. There, on a shelf in the door, were seven red vials. Without hesitating she took one, smashed the top and downed it in a single swallow.
Sated, she returned to her bedroom and dressed herself, before moving once again to the door, this time opening it. Mark was standing on the other side, holding a bunch of roses. Big, red roses...
"Flowers?" She took them from his hands, held one to her nose. "They're beautiful..."
"You might want to put them in water. The only way I could afford them was to buy an out of date batch." Mark shuffled slightly. "So uh... shall we go?"
"Let me just get my coat." Lisa, still holding the roses, retreated into the gloom of her apartment, returning a moment later with a black leather ankle-length coat.
"Oh very nice Lisa, very gothic. Looks like the one Keanu Reeves wore in Matrix Two..."
"It does? I didn't see that film."
"Pity, it was good. Oh well, my car is downstairs." Mark held out his arm to Lisa and she took it. "Ooh, you're cold..."
"I know."
They travelled down by the stairs, Lisa claiming the lift wasn't too reliable these days. In reality she didn't want to be in such an enclosed space with Mark, not while she was still feeling a faint pang in the pit of her stomach. There was still the car to negotiate...
Outside was cold. Not especially such, since it was only September, but enough to make them both shiver at the chill. Light rain drizzled over the street, drifting underneath the yellow streetlamps in a bright cone of mist. They walked the short distance to Mark's car, a pale blue Ford Orion with a dent in the left wing.
He opened the door for her, then climbed into the driver's seat. Inside the car was warm and dry, smelling of worn leather, air freshener and stale cigarettes, almost masking the other, deeper, more pungent aroma. Lisa cracked her window open as they pulled away from the sidewalk, out into the quiet back streets of the city.
"Mind if I smoke?" Mark asked, holding up a box of Springfield Cammels, something few people had even heard of outside Lisa's home state.
"Don't mind me." She relaxed as the tobacco drowned out every other sensation. "I couldn't help noticing your brand."
"Oh, yeah... my cousin sends them out to me. Picked it up while I was working in- holy... Moron!" Mark made an obscene gesture at the swerving driver opposite them, the other car jumping the lights with a squeal of tires, sending a fine spray into the air.
"I used to live there," Lisa said, emotionless.
"Really? What city?"
"Springfield. At one point I thought I might end up staying there my whole life..."
"Small town blues eh? Well, if it's any consolation, you sound native."
"I pick up accents easily."
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Mark puffing contentedly on his cigarette, Lisa trying not to absorb too much tar. Not that it mattered, but she still held on to the health-conscious attitude instilled in her by her mother.
The streets were unusually quiet, even Broadway. There was a strict curfew in force for probably half the population of the city now, which meant they couldn't enjoy life as much as they used to. Lisa, being a government employee, was exempt from the curfew, and felt guilty for being so. But it did have its advantages...
"Where are we going?" she asked, as Mark seemed to be pulling up to the side again. "You can't actually be considering taking me to that 'palace', can you?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"It looks so expensive..." Lisa gazed out at the huge length of glass, covering almost half a block. The restaurant was thronged by people. "This is one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city, how are we supposed to get in?"
"Well, there's the catch, you see. Government employees can get in places most people can't." Mark stepped out of the car. Lisa, annoyed, didn't wait for him to open her door, instead popping it open herself and chasing him out.
"Yes but that only applies to people like the mayor."
"Yup. In this case, being related to the owner has it's benefits too..."
Lisa stopped to think about that. Related to the owner? He was just full of surprises, and she told him so.
"Relax, this is the last one. Probably."
"I suppose this is where you got that fizz from as well," she said as they linked arms. "Sounds kinda cheapskate to me."
"You kiddin me? I paid for that entirely myself! I meant it when I said I wouldn't be eating for a week. All I have is rice crackers and cheese at home, and not much cheese at that. Speaking of money, how can you afford to eat out all the time? You're hardly rolling in it..."
"I know a place." Lisa hoped he wouldn't press too hard.
"Oh yeah, where?"
"You wouldn't like it. It's... ethnic."
"I love foreign food. Hey, Paulo!"
"Marco, my friend!" The doorman gently moved a couple aside for Mark and Lisa to enter. "You have a lady friend tonight ah? Good! I always said you needed company!"
"Jeez, would you keep it down bub? I'm trying to show the lady a good time here."
"Of course of course, my apologies friend." Paulo patted Mark on the back and let them through the door, turning back to the throng outside. "Hey, hey! What do I say about climbing the ropes ah? Get off before I call shotgun wielding thugs on you!"
"Paulo," Mark said once they were inside.
"You're not some kind of Mafia guy are you?"
"What, like the godfather? Nah... school friends, that's all."
An usher appeared and led them to a table near the window, closely followed by a second usher with a menu and wine list.
"Would madam care to order a starter?" he droned in a curious mix of Italian and English accents. "Perhaps a drink?"
Lisa looked at Mark, who was pouring over the wine list. "I..."
"Two glasses of the house red," Mark said momentarily. "And we'll skip the starters. I'll take a medium steak, extra mushrooms, double salad pepper and some of those fancy parsley things you do and... Lisa?"
"Steak. Very rare steak. In fact I'll have two, no salad, no side orders... and a celery stick too please."
"Excellent choice madam." The usher collected up their menus and was gone, to be replaced almost immediately by a waiter with their drinks. Mark took a sip of his wine once the waiter was gone and fixed Lisa with a penetrating stare.
"Your records have you down as a vegetarian."
"I am. Technically..." she felt herself blushing under his gaze. "What are you doing looking at my records anyway? I thought they were supposed to be private."
"They are. Technically." He smirked. "So..."
"It's a condition I have. I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay..." Mark took another taste of his wine. "So what brought you too New York? I know it can't be the pay..."
Lisa dipped her finger into her glass, watching it disappear beneath the shiny vermilion surface of the liquid. She drew it out again and let the wine drip from her finger... "Personal issues."
"Oh let me guess, you don't want to talk about it."
"Good guess."
"Whether or not you want to talk about it, I'm going to wheedle it out of you anyway. Boyfriend trouble?"
"Why the hell should you care?" God, he's so annoying...
"I'll take that as a maybe." Mark winced at the withering glare Lisa gave him. "Okay okay, I'll stop..."
They both drank, both stared at each other in silent annoyance. Eventually it was Lisa that broke the rapidly forming ice.
"How do you know the owner of this place?"
"Eh, he's my uncle. When my Dad moved to Japan for some reason of his own I ended up living with my Uncle and his family, which meant I had to adapt to having six sisters from being an only child. I guess he thought I would go into the business after him, and I think he gives me these free meals in some foolish attempt to bring me back into the fold."
"Doesn't he ever threaten to stop? Considering you don't seem all that interested in this."
"Nooo... he never has. I think it's become such a tradition he almost can't bear the thought of giving up the chance I might change my mind."
"Sounds pretty sad."
"Yeah, well in the end it'll have to be one of his kids that takes over. He would have preferred a son to do it, but he don't have any choice, so... y'know."
"Yeah. 'Tradition.'" Lisa swirled her glass, simply for something to do. "How long is our meal supposed to be?"
"Should be here by now actually... oh right on the button." Mark pointed over Lisa's shoulder toward the kitchen, where a small team of groupies seemed to be following the waiter with his trolley. They had instruments. "Oh no, Paulo... he got the band in! I knew he would."
Mark stood up and wandered through the tables, retrieving his wallet as he neared the musicians. They seemed to haggle for a moment, and then Mark pointed them to another table, handing the violinist a couple of bills as he did so. He returned just as the waiter was laying out his plate.
"I trust everything is to your satisfaction sir?"
"Oh, perfectly. Thanks Juan."
The waiter, Juan, smiled slightly and laid out Lisa's plate with a flourish. "Madam. Please consider a complimentary trip to the salad bar if you are still hungry after eating. The tomatoes are quite succulent today..."
"Thanks..." Lisa waited until Mark sat down. She attacked the first steak with some ferocity, giving the man opposite just a little scare.
"Woah, you hungry or something?"
"Oh yeah," Lisa said with her mouth full. She sucked harshly at the meat and sighed. "I just... mmmm this is delicious... I just haven't eaten much in a while. Small meals."
"You're telling me..."
Mark seemed too intrigued to eat his own meal. He watched Lisa as she worked through the first steak, which was so rare the blood was literally dripping on to the plate. Eventually he got bored and started on his own meal. "For a vegetarian you seem to like meat a lot."
"Condition," Lisa mumbled, then swallowed. "I guess I've gotten used to the taste again."
"What made you become one in the first place? It must have been something... interesting, to say the least."
"Oh it was when I went to a petting zoo when I was eight. I couldn't really think about eating those cute little animals..." she sliced another large chunk off the steak and held it up on her fork. "I mean... I do it now simply because I have absolutely no other choice, but I wouldn't want to."
"How did your parents react?"
"Oh..." Hm, well the topic had to come up eventually. "My mom was okay, but my dad... he was kinda nuts. I don't think he ever accepted it."
"Hmm... do you still talk to them?"
"No..."
"Maybe you should. It might help-"
"They're dead. My whole family is dead." She put her fork down and folded her hands together across the place. "Okay, you wanted to know why I moved out here? Well it's because I lost my entire family in one night, because I had to give up my entire life and all this through the actions of one man."
Mark stopped mid-chew and let his jaw hang slack, his fork half-way between his mouth and the plate beneath him. He swallowed, and took another rather larger swig of his drink.
"So you're out here to..."
"Find him, yes."
I wont ask what you're going to do after that."
"Good choice." Well Lisa my girl, you've told him. He probably has six months to live, tops...
Mark didn't seem too agitated at what he was hearing. In fact, after the initial shock of the revelation, he seemed, to Lisa, to be acting more normal then ever. At least, he was still eating... She didn't want to eat any more herself. She felt sick, remembering why she was here...
Mark said something, but she didn't hear him first time.
"I said, what exactly happened? To your family, I mean."
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"Lisa-"
"I really don't!" She punched the table. "Look, just drop it. Please. I might already have put your life in danger just by telling you this much."
"Right, now you're just being melodramatic."
As if I wasn't before... Lisa sighed and rubbed her temples. "Look, Mark, you're a nice guy. Really... and I have to admit I like you, but I... I..."
"Lisa." Mark smiled and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "You're tired, let me take you home."
"I'm not tired, I only just got up for crying out loud."
"Let me take you home anyway." His hand didn't move. "Don't make me insist, because I'm not very assertive in that kind of situation, and I just end up making a fool of myself."
Lisa didn't move, nor did she try to remove his hand. What harm could it do? She thought... and then the slow realisation about what had happened the last time she had that thought... Oh but that was different.
Wasn't it?
They drove back to her apartment in silence, along the unnaturally quiet streets, through the haze of the rain. It always rained these days, something to do with the climate apparently... the new theory was global cooling, something that had last held sway back in the seventies... apparently they were heading for a new ice-age. It didn't matter much to Lisa though; she didn't plan on living out the next year, if she could help it, let alone living out the next thousand...
As they turned into her street Mark pulled up short and stopped near the corner, jerking Lisa awake although she didn't realise she had been sleeping. Mark stubbed out the cigarette he'd been smoking and switched off the lights.
"What's the matter?" Lisa narrowed her eyes when Mark put a finger to his lips. He pointed down the street to her apartment building. There was a van outside.
"I don't get it," she whispered. "What's so important about a van?"
"Check out the guy standing outside." Lisa looked at him.
"I don't..."
"He has a gun. You can see it bulging under his jacket... and look up at your apartment."
Lisa looked up a little and saw a light shining through her curtains. A shadowy figure moved across the window, from the direction toward the kitchen and her books. "Ah..."
"I think the police should look in on this, don't you?"
"No!" She blinked under his startled eyes. "I mean... they won't get here. We should just-"
"You stay here." Mark ran off into an alley just down the road.
Like hell, Lisa thought, and got out of the car. She found him in seconds crouching at the corner of another alley.
"What the hell are you doing here Lisa?"
"The same thing you're doing. Trying to get close enough to see who they are and what they're after."
"You..." He scratched his face, cocking his head slightly to look up at her.
"That is what you're doing, isn't it?"
"Well... yeah, I guess."
"If you turn out to be a cop or something I swear..." What? She couldn't threaten to kill him. If he was a cop and she did kill him, she'd have no chance of finding Julian. He didn't move like a cop, and he didn't smell like one either, and no self respecting fuzz would be seen dead in a car like that unless they were really deep under cover...
"You have a gun don't you?" she asked.
"Not now!" he whispered harshly. "All right, come on, but stay behind me."
Mark turned the corner and ran down the alley. Lisa followed him until they were within a stones throw of the apartment block's rear entrance. Mark crept up to the door and slowly pushed it aside. There was no one behind it. They both stepped through the door and into the dark hallway leading to the rear stairs.
"Your apartment is on the third floor right?"
"You've been here twice and you can't remember? Wait, never mind... yes it is."
He shuffled toward the stairs a little. "Okay, you wait here and... I'll just not bother talking at all shall I?"
Mark threw his hands up in frustration and ran after Lisa, who was already turning the corner at the top of the stairs.
Lisa found one of them just leaving her apartment. She ran forward, grabbed the guy and threw him back through the door; he as the last one to leave, and she slammed the door behind them. The man crawled to his knees and tried to stand. Lisa kicked him in the face, wincing. It wasn't fun.
"This is my apartment," she said firmly.
"Ah shit!" The man dragged himself up on the windowsill and tried to dodge out of Lisa's way. She grabbed him.
"Why are you here?" she asked, holding him by the nose.
"Shit!" he shouted again. "Let me go, please!"
"From the way you're acting I can tell you know what I am," she said with malice. "Now tell me before you know what."
"Ah! We were after a book, some kind of big book! I just work for this guy y'know, I don't do nothing bad I swear! Now please, let me go!"
"Did you find the book?"
"Enrico, he took it downstairs!"
Lisa dropped the man roughly and looked out of the window. The van was still there, the guard still standing outside. Another man emerged from the building beneath her, carrying the book under his arms. Lisa opened the window.
"Woah, Lisa?" Mark burst through the door, saw the man lying on the floor with a bloodied nose, saw Lisa standing by the open window. She looked back at him. "What-"
"RICO! RICO SHE'S COMING! SH-" the thief was silenced by a sharp kick from Lisa. She gave Mark one last glance, then stepped on to the windowsill and leapt out into the night.
It was only three floors. She broke her ankle, but that would heal. She broke the guard's neck at the same time, which was something she would have to live with for a while longer. Rico was already diving into the back of the van when she landed. The vehicle pulled away with a sharp squeal of tires and fan belt, leaving a whiff of grey smoke in the damp night air. The number plate was dirty, she noted with a sour grimace. Unreadable.
And the book was gone. Slowly, she turned and limped back into the apartment, leaving the body at the side of the road. Around here it would probably be collected by the garbage men before the police ever heard about it.
Mark confronted her when she reached her apartment again.
"Okay, you've got a lot of explaining to do, and I don't want any of that bull about some 'condition'."
"Whatever." Lisa sat down, working the last stiffness out of her ankle. The other thief was nowhere to be seen, and she assumed he had slipped out after her jump. "Aw hell I suppose it doesn't matter any more. They got the only clue I had to finding him anyway..."
"That book you were talking about?"
"Yeah. It's a list, sort of a membership directory for this big ol organisation."
"But I saw that guy carrying it. That thing was ancient!"
"Yup." She rubbed her arm. Might have broken that too... "You've heard the old cliché 'don't judge a book by its cover,' haven't you?"
"I guess... but that doesn't explain how that thing could be a phone list or whatever. Certainly not how you got hold of it."
Lisa sighed and leant back into the deep sofa. "Well I suppose I haven't been entirely honest about myself either."
"Well I figured you couldn't be telling the whole truth. I know it sounds trite, but no one does around here."
"Not even you?"
"I guess not," he said with a lopsided grin. "But you go first."
"Okay, to start with... I killed my family."
"Ah shit..." Mark sat down, the grin fading from his face. "Do I want to know the rest before I call the cops?"
"Do you want to go crazy wondering what it was?"
"I guess not..."
So she told him.