Page 8 - Chronicles of Darkness

“If this works, I am never going to try to solve a
mystery again as long as I live.” She took a deep breath
and shouted, “Hey, ugly!”
Mrs. Luz sped up, all pretense of human form giving
way to a rolling mass of mottled flesh. To her right, she
heard a slow whirr and a chunky metallic crash. With a
smile, she lined up a pitch; and hit Mrs. Luz right in the
center of the red, blistery mass where her face had been.
She scrambled through the hole they’d broken in the
door and flattened herself against the far side of the
compactor door, afraid to breathe. It was terribly dark.
Dawn had thrown her jacket over the red warning light,
and was standing in front of the open compactor door.
Mrs. Luz burst through the broken door, sending
splintery shards of wood everywhere, and saw Dawn,
fully illuminated by the hallway light and looking
convincingly terrified.
“Naughty rat. Did you think you could hide from me
in my own nest?”
She lunged, and Dawn leaped to the side, letting
momentum take its course. Mena slammed the
compactor door shut, and Dawn frantically set it in
motion. They huddled against each other and waited
until the screaming stopped. Neither of them could
work up the nerve to open the compactor and make
sure she was really dead.

AND AFTER THAT...

“Do… do you think she’s the only one?”
Late that night, they were crammed head to tail into
Dawn’s twin bed, reminding each other that it really
happened.
“What would you do if she wasn’t?”
Ximena swallowed hard. “Well, maybe we should look
for them. Maybe they’re not all mean and crazy like
Mrs. Luz. Maybe there are some nice ones who could,
like, use a friend or something.”
“Do you really think anything like her could actually
be friends with us?”
“Well maybe we should look anyway. We’ve already
fought one, right? That makes us practically qualified
to find – fight – monsters.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dawn paused, “But you can’t tell
anyone else. Especially not your little brother. He’s got
a big mouth, and you never know who might be a…
monster.”
The next week was weird. Once the court gag order
was lifted they could talk, a little, about what had
happened. The official word was that a homeless
woman had snuck into the basement and attacked
the girls while they were cleaning. They ran away,
and in her pursuit she hit her head so hard on the
concrete steps that it broke her nose and cheekbone,
accounting for the corpse’s unusually distorted and
swollen face. Unrelated, Mrs. Luz, the longest-lived
tenant of their building, died of heart failure.
She left no next of kin.