Jessica lived in Wellington. On the west side of New Avalon but still very close to Midtown, it was posh and expensive. Really posh and really expensive. It wasn't all huge houses like out west in the hills, but these were the penthouses, the ritzy condos, the high powered businessperson bungalows that required vast sums of money and recommendations just to get a look at a prospective apartment.
I didn't know anybody who could even think of living in Wellington. Neither Mikkel nor I could ever hope of affording a place in Wellington for as long as we lived. I paid far too much for a shitty little apartment down in Five Spokes, and even that's an indulgence I regret some months. Mikkel was a little more sensible and only lived a few blocks out of Egan in Chinatown where the rents are cheap and the landlords not so predatory, where the crime is a little less and the tenants not so desperate[8].
If Jessica lived in Wellington, she had a very good job or was heir to some high powered money. As I saw the building, I was a little nervous but I also smiled knowing we'd probably get paid well for any work we did for her. This building was fancy. It was so fancy that it even had a doorman - a doorman that was around to keep people like us out.
Mikkel and I are probably not what you might call "respectable". We both have very visible tattoos and piercings. Mikkel has long hair, while mine is a shorter and a little more punk. He's a part time garbage man and my favorite hobby was singing in a now-defunct go-nowhere punk band. We're good people, but if we had a dollar for each time a rich person whispered "trash" after seeing us, we could afford to live in their neighborhoods.
So no matter the social good we do by getting bloodthirsty creatures off the streets and out of the sewers, the mere sight of us makes a doorman bristle and sends an all hands on deck signal through all of his neurons. It doesn't matter that he's just a service worker and might live in as crappy a neighborhood as us. He knows that it's his job to protect his building against the likes of us. Failure to do so would admit weakness against his snobbish masters.
Because of that, it felt really good to walk up to him with complete confidence. He had already shuffled in front of us to stop our stroll through the lobby, and I could tell he was scanning the floor to see if we were tracking muck on the polished marble[9].
"I'm sorry, but you can't come in here," he said. He was an older guy with white hair. He had kind of a jowly face and a handle brush white mustache. They had stuck him in a blue uniform that actually had those yellow military shoulder pads - epaulettes, I think? He looked like he was the live-action stand-in for Captain Crunch.
"Sure we can," said Mikkel with a smile.
"We're here to see Jessica Ingstrom," I said and then paused. "We are expected," I said with relish.
Mikkel and I smiled at each other. We enjoyed the opportunity to, for just moment, rise above our station. The doorman paused. His mind must have been burdened with a flurry of DOES NOT COMPUTE messages. He looked us up and down again, noting just how far from classy we were. Mikkel alone looked like he was ready to dive in the dumpster out back and find some good rich people garbage. I don't think he had even showered today. Having made myself semi-presentable for a day of work, I almost felt classy standing next to my brother. The doorman grabbed the phone from his desk and punched some numbers. He made sure to keep his body in our way to prevent us from passing the desk and entering his domain. He looked us up and down with distaste as the phone rang.
"Ah, yes, Miss Ingstrom," he said. "I have two... uh... gentlemen here who claim that you know them. What? Yes, but... But they are... Yes, okay." He put the phone back down, feeling defeated, as if his entire world had turned upside down. His shoulders now slumped, he turned his body sideways to let us pass. "Yes, well. You can go upstairs. Fifteenth floor. Do not stop on any other floors. I can track the elevator. I'll be watching you."
"Watch us?" Mikkel leaned over the doorman's desk and saw a bank of monitors. "Holy shit, he totally can! They must have like the whole building wired up!" He looked to the doorman. "This is awesome. You've totally watched some of the hot tenants in the shower, haven't you?"
"Certainly not!" spluttered the doorman, though his face was going red. "Their privacy is extremely important!"
"Oh come on, dude," said Mikkel. "We've all worked for the Man. It's okay. To all of them, you're a model employee. But we're not the Man. We're like you, the workers, the servers, the invisible hands that clean their homes and serve their food. We're the ones they piss on so they can live large. We get your struggle, man. You can level with us. Admit it. You've caught a few good views of titties on this thing. There's no shame in that. I mean I would, if I worked here. Hey - are you guys hiring for any positions? I would love to spy on some rich people!"
"No! Absolutely not!" said the doorman. "We are not hiring! Not you, not ever!"
"Well, okay, your loss," said Mikkel. "But I would totally rock a camera console like this. I would be the fucking Owl with this thing! Nothing would escape my view!"
"Get out of here!" said the doorman. "I will not listen to you cast dispersions on my work or my tenants!"
"Geez, you try to bond with a dude by telling him his job rocks and try talkin' about titties, and he just yells," said Mikkel to me with a smile. "Well, onward, my brother! Let us depart for the fifteenth floor."
I love my brother, but he can be kind of an ass. Though I admit, I'm probably the bigger ass. He's an ass out of a sense of fun when everything is good. I'm more of an ass when the chips are down and I'm stressed the fuck out. I think that makes him a better person than me.
We got into the elevator and punched the button for fifteen. Mikkel and I took positions in the back corners, leaning against the railing and looking at ourselves in the mirrored walls. Mikkel began fixing his hair.
"What do you think?" he said. "Pushed back to show off my face or covering my face, all mysterious?"
"When did you become so vain?"
"Hey, maybe this Jessica is a hot chick," he said.
"First off, we know almost nothing about Jessica," I said. "In this building she could be a white haired granny who was the widow of a CEO. Second... don't you have a girlfriend?"
"Jillian?" he said. "She's fine for now, I guess. I'm not sure if she's the right one. She's no..." He trailed off. I knew the name he was going to say. Carly. He still wasn't over her.
As the elevator doors were closing, a man came running for the elevator asking us to hold it. Mikkel shot out one of his long arms and kept the doors from closing. The guy, a middle aged businessman in a suit, stepped into the elevator and began to say thank you, but he stopped and widened his eyes as he saw us. He knew he was already too far into this social situation to turn around and leave the elevator, but it was obvious he took one look at us and had no desire to share an elevator with us, much less stand between us. He grunted like he was clearing his throat, turned around, pressed the button for 20, and then nervously stood there as the doors closed and the elevator took off.
Once the doors closed I could hear the muzak that was playing in the elevator. A minimalistic soft piano rendition of Elton John's "Can You Feel The Love Tonight?" Looking over at the nervously standing guy, we totally could feel the love.
When the doors opened for the fifteenth floor, Mikkel and I swept past the guy. He tensed as we passed, then I heard him sigh as the doors closed behind us. Mikkel and I looked at each other and laughed. It's not like we were even heavily armed.
But we were armed. While we couldn't bring bigger weapons, we had backpacks. Not camping packs, but regular school kid backpacks. Of course mine was black, covered with logos of punk bands and it jangled when I walked. Mikkel had a Nightmare Before Christmas backpack he loved that he kept full of flares and knives. I had my machete and a trusty lead pipe in mine, in addition to notebooks and other various useful things. The doorman was so offended by our very presence and the idea that we were allowed that he never bothered to check our bags. I'm sure even with Jessica's invite, he would not have let us in
the building with all that.
I didn't think there was going to be a problem in Jessica's apartment, but we were paranoid. We were tricked once before, and that was all it took to be paranoid forever. We had received an email under a pretense of needing help. We went in unarmed and it was a trap. A revenant wanted us out of the way. We made it out, but barely. I was bedridden for three days and I feel like I nearly died. Mikkel was pretty damn scraped up too. Since then we meet new clients armed, especially if they're picking the location.
Real quick: Revenants are basically what you might think of as vampires. But we don't like calling them vampires because there are too many preconceived notions about them to muddy the waters. We wanted a new term so people didn't get the wrong idea. They are not sparkling anemics but nor are they lustful dominators. They don't even bite with two fangs - the telltale bite of a revenant is more like a lamprey. I don't know if they are actually undead, but revenants have a fierce intelligence, a highly evolved sense of paranoia, and lightning reflexes. Unlike the fictional vampire, I've never known revenants to be sexual except as a trick. They have calculating minds and sometimes their plans are a very long con taking place over months or years. We have a particular hatred for revenants that is tempered with respect for their lethality. It was a revenant that killed our mother, but I'm not ready to talk about that yet.
Jessica's floor was fancy enough that it had carpet in the hallways straight off the elevator. It would never do in my apartment building, since I'd have stained it with blood on many occasions, but I'm guessing bloodstains are not a problem for white collar people[10]. Jessica's hallway was white, the fixtures and crown molding fancy and completely superfluous. Each person's apartment number was displayed in Avalon brass, so you knew this place was high class.
Mikkel was about to knock on the door, but paused halfway into the movement. "Holy shit, they have doorbells!" He laughed and leaned on the doorbell. We both marveled at the ding dong sound we had heard almost exclusively on television. Poor kids from a bad inner city neighborhood, remember? Doorbells were a strangely exotic device.
Jessica opened the door a few moments later. In this case, Mikkel was right. This wasn't an old granny, a wizened widow, or even a forties milf with a high powered job. She was actually young and cute. I turned to Mikkel with a confused expression, he just smirked and raised his eyebrow.
"Hello, I'm Szandor and this is Mikkel," I said. "We're the Nowak brothers."
"Yes, I've been expecting you," she said. "Come in."
I honestly expected her to have been put off by our appearance. Yeah, people see our website, but seeing us in person is different. Especially in Wellington, I expected to see a twinge of disgust in her eyes, her lip involuntarily curling up, frown lines appearing around her mouth. But there was none of that.
Instead, she wore the expression of a tired and haunted woman. Her eyes were puffy from her tears, no makeup noticeable on her face. I felt tired just looking at her eyes. If I had any doubts she needed help, they were gone. She looked older than her time. She must have been near our ages, maybe a few years older, putting her in the mid to late twenties. But stress had put some lines on her face and a darkness around her eyes. Her dark brown shoulder length hair fell limply. She wore a pair of wrinkled sweatpants and an old T-shirt from Avalon U.
We followed her in and Mikkel shut the door behind us. Despite the rich side of town, her apartment wasn't that different than what I was used to. She might have been paid much more than us, but she was still a twenty-something. So it was like our own apartments, just gigantic, with good furniture, a huge kitchen, no punk band posters, no cigarette stains in the carpet, and a weekly maid service. On second thought, it was completely different than what I was used to. I wished I lived here.
"Do you guys want a drink or something?" She was trying to be polite, but there was an exhaustion to her voice that made me cringe.
"Awesome! Can I have a beer?" said Mikkel.
"Sure," she said and walked over to the refrigerator.
"Dude!" I hissed to Mikkel.
"What?" he whispered back. "I'm not wasting a chance for rich person beer."
I sighed. "I'd like a beer too," I said meekly.
The beer was some from craft brewery in the Avalon hills called Westland Brass Brew Lager. I had never heard of it before. The container was fancy, but honestly, it didn't taste that different than much cheaper beer.
I put the beer down on the coffee table I was trying not to put my boots on, making sure to use a coaster. I've always been unclear which beverages need coasters or not. My own coffee table is too beaten up for coasters to matter.
"Jessica, you asked us here because you have a problem. We've both read your email," I said, knowing it was a lie, because Mikkel refused to read it and just wanted a summary. "But why don't you tell us about it from the beginning."
"I believe that something is trying to kill me," she said. "I don't know what it is, but at this point I'm convinced it's not human."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Starting a few days ago, I've had the feeling that someone was following me," she said. "I didn't ever see anyone, but I just had a feeling, and if you're a woman in this town, you go with that feeling. Every so often I'd pass an alleyway or a dark storefront and I would feel like I was being watched. One day I was about to take the stairs down to the subway. For some reason lights were flickering badly, so it was darker down there than usual. I thought it was just another maintenance issue, but I paused at the top of the stairs. Then I heard it. It was a hissing whisper. Something down there said my name." She paused. "I took the bus home that day. I wasn't going underground. I was paranoid and I had an intuition of something bad. But I knew enough that it was only a feeling at that point."
"And that changed?" I said.
She nodded with a frown. "I had a friend named Tessa. She knew I was feeling freaked out and came over here. She was meeting her boyfriend at a club and wanted me to come along. I just couldn't go... so I told her no. I should have made her stay too. Instead I let her borrow some of my clothes, since she didn't have anything she wanted to wear." She took a deep breath and I saw that she was fighting off tears. She was losing the fight. "The police called me in the middle of the night to identify a body." She sobbed, but out of the corner of my vision, I saw Mikkel roll his eyes. "I had a cab pick me up at the door downstairs so I wouldn't have to go out. But when I got to the station... it was Tessa. She was... she was dead. But she wasn't stabbed or shot. The police didn't know what to think, but I saw it with my own eyes. She was... bitten. Eaten."
"What did the bites look like?" said Mikkel. "Were they big fangy bites, more like worm bites, or were they little small chomps, like she was gnawed to death by a hungry child?" Mikkel is the king of tact.
I punched him in the arm. "I'm sorry for your loss," I said. "But it would help us if you remember anything about those bite wounds. I know it's a painful memory."
She nodded, pressing a tissue to her eyes to mop up the tears. "They didn't look like animal bites. But... it wasn't just the bites that were so horrible. It looked like... like strips of her... were torn off her..."
Mikkel and I shared a look. Ghouls.
"Did the police say where the body was found?" I asked.
"They said in the alley behind the club... they think that Tessa and her boyfriend were pulled out of the club and murdered in the alley."
I looked at Mikkel again. This wasn't adding up.
"You said you thought you were being targeted?" asked Mikkel. "Why?"
"They were following me," she said. "And then Tessa was killed."
"But why connect the two things?" said Mikkel.
"Their death was tragic," I said, "but you yourself said you had no hard evidence that you were actually being followed."
"I guess I left out something important," she said. "Tessa and I were of similar build, that's why she borrowed my clothes. Her hair is somewhat similar... so she we
nt out wearing my clothes. She left my building. I think they thought she was me."
Mikkel and I were both silent. Maybe my jaw dropped. Maybe it was stupid of us to miss that angle. We're not detectives, we just kill monsters. I'm not sure if she meant to call us idiots, but I at least felt that way for a long moment.
It was Mikkel spoke first. "So yeah, maybe something is after you, but I think we're both a little stumped on what's after you."
"Why is that?" she said.
I nodded. "I agree with my brother. It's weird. So it sounds like Tessa was killed by a ghoul. I'd believe that would make the most sense, except it doesn't add up with some other things you said. So we feel like we're missing something."
"A ghoul?" she said. There was something in her face I couldn't identify.
"Ghouls are the denizens of the dark," said Mikkel. "Cannibalistic humanoid underground... uh... well anyway. Maybe cannibal is wrong. We're still not sure if they're actually human or used to be. But they eat bodies of the dead and sometimes live humans."
"They're known to sometimes eat the dead by tearing off strips of flesh," I said. "Which fits with your description of Tessa's body, so it would sound like a ghoul or pack of ghouls killed them. Except ghouls rarely come up from underground. Within the city limits, we've never seen them higher above ground than a sewer tunnel or the basement of an abandoned building. They don't prowl city alleys and they wouldn't pull two people out of a crowded club. The noise alone would be too much for them. Their hearing is better than ours. And then there's the other part..."
"Ghouls don't stalk people," said Mikkel. "They're like smart... well, smarter than an animal or a zombie, but they don't follow people. Ghouls pick targets of opportunity. Stalking is too much effort."
"I don't get what you're trying to say," said Jessica.
"Ghouls go for what's available," I said. "If you were wandering down in the sewers or in the old rail lines, I could see them being after you. But they're not going to follow you into this neighborhood and they're not going to pick you out of a crowd. That's where it's strange."
I Kill Monsters Page 3