Dragonflywriting

Random Gothic Story

It was nightfall.
The two girls stood on the stairs of a church, waiting. One shivered in the rising wind – cold as death’s breath.
“Shh,” warned the other.
The first girl stopped shivering - -she hadn’t realized that she’d been.
There was a sound upon the wind, low and keening.
“Wait.” The second girl whispered.
“Tomboko…” began the first girl.
Tomboko just repeated “Wait.” She pulled out a crossbow, and inched towards the doors. “Don’t move, Yue.”
Yue stood still, but she took a pair of nunchucks from her belt and held them ready. Tomboko approached the door quickly, and with a decisive movement, kicked the door open.
A swarm of black birds flew out. Yue hit a few of them with her nunchucks, and they fell to the ground.
“Oops.”
Tomboko gave her a disapproving look, but said nothing. She moved slowly inside. The carrion crows circled around, then settled upon the roof and nearby trees. They were silent and patient. Someone would die that night, and then they would feed.
Tomboko quickly scanned the area. “It’s not in here,” she whispered, “Come in.”
Yue did so. The door closed softly behind them, and they adjusted their eyes to the dark.
The church felt like a tomb – stuffy and cold, with a stale musty smell. The two girls found they laboured for breath. There seemed to be no oxygen, no air. Still they moved forward. Another smell mingled with the first, a metallic, tangy, somehow sickening scent.
Yue discovered the source of this when she slipped. Tomboko caught her friend’s arm and helped her to regain her balance.
As one, they looked down. Yue recoiled, but Tomboko crouched down to see it closer.
“Whatever lost all this blood,” she said, “I think its still alive. It’s fresh. And spattered, like it was wounded and struggling."
“Wonderful.” shivered Yue.
Tomboko said nothing, but followed the trail of blood, crossbow held in front of her. Yue followed warily.
“What kind of blood is it?” she asked quietly, “Human?”
“I doubt it.” Answered Tomboko, surveying a large, clawed, bloody footprint. She shivered, “I hate these jobs.”
“So do I.” agreed Yue, “Why do we do it?”
Tomboko grunted incoherently, and walked toward a semi-open door. “There’s something in here,” She whispered, “but I can’t see it properly.”
Yue came up behind her and entered the room. A large, hairy mass lay huddled in a dark corner, shaking uncontrollably. Yue walked up to it and prodded it gently with her foot. “It’s having a seizure or something.” She said disgustedly, “What is it?”
“Be careful.” Said Tomboko.
Yue remembered the clawed footprint and stepped back.
A pair of feverish moon-coloured eyes shot open and glowed with an oddly flickering light. “Khhhh.” It gasped.
Yue took another step back. Tomboko leveled her crossbow at the creature.
“G-get… aaaa…w-waaay…” the creature snarled.
“Are you dangerous?” asked Tomboko.
“N-nooo…. Sh-shath…”
“What?’ Yue demanded.
The creature released a hissing wail and shuddered violently.
“She means to say,” said a voice from behind them, “‘Shathar.’”
Yue and Tomboko spun. The voice was low and female, but all they could make out was a deeper shadow in the darkness.
“And what is that?” said Tomboko, in a voice much braver than she felt, “A new brand of cereal?”
The presence hissed slightly, but said in a controlled voice, "I am Shathar, and you should wish that you had never heard it.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” Said Tomboko “I’m already wishing it. But since you were so kind as to disclose it to us, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Except get rid of you, of course.” added Yue.
“Khhh…” the voice came from the monster on the floor, “N-n-noo, you… c-cant… p-please……”
“Why” said Yue, “Why not?”
But the monster gave a sharp intake of breath, let it out slowly and lay dead.
“Tsk tsk.” said Shathar, “Pity. She was a good slave.” A pale hand with a large, black ring on its middle finger swept out from the darkness.
The dead monster on the floor wavered and seemed to shrink. In a few seconds it had been replaced by a young girl, with long black hair falling across her lifeless face. She was curled up on her side, and quite obviously, dead.
Yue gasped, and Tomboko’s crossbow shot up, aimed at the shadow in the darkness.
"Put your toy down, girl," laughed Shathar.
"I won't take orders from a breakfast cereal," returned Tomboko.
Shathar moved forward a bit. "Come now," she said, voice soft and condensending. "Let us talk peacably. I believe that we can both profit from this."
"This?" Tomboko hissed. "What, this sick little set-up you have here?"
"What IS this sick little set-up, anyway?" wondered Yue.
"Don't come any closer," Tomboko ordered.
Shathar, who had been creeping forward, paused. "Such a silly little girl." Her hand moved in a flash of white.
Tomboko shot her. Shathar stumbled back a few steps and inhaled sharply, but then straightened.
"Run," whispered Tomboko, and she and Yue fled the room.
"Parsnip!" they heard Shathar call hoarsely from behind them, "Choal! Get them!"
"But I was sleeeping - " a voice replied.
By then Yue and Tomboko had burst out of the church doors. Several crows darted in before the doors crashed shut, the rest milling above the girls' heads in restless circles.
The two ran hard. Far off in the distance, the church doors opened and closed again.

"I hit her!" screamed Tomboko, "I swear I did, I heard it hit!"
"I know." said Yue. "I heard it too." she shivered, "What was that thing?"
Tomboko shook her head and stood. The rusty old couch made some protesting noises, and she kicked it. Like everything else in the small apartment, it was ancient, and there were springs sticking out at every concievable place.
She walked to the phone, dodging rusty sickles, old books on mythology and a hole in the floor, and pushed a blood-stained curtain aside to get to the phone.
"I'm phoning Zi." she said simply.
Zi was a vampire. Vampires were usually not someone you phoned, but, for a vampire, Zi was suprisingly normal. This may have had something to do with the fact that Yue, with Tomboko's help, had, a few years back, discovered a cure for Zi's particular type of infection. Zi was a were-vampire, which meant that she had, as a child, been bitten by a vampire wolf. This gave her certain... strange characteristics, along with the ability to turn into a large, black wolf, on command.
By mixing the were-wolf cure with certain blood-supplements, Yue had been able to create a sort of cure for Zi. If she took it, upon sunrise, she would turn into a normal human, until nightfall, when she turned back to her normal form, of a wolf-like human, with ears, and a tail. Not acceptable job-interview guise. But still. Zi was grateful, and she was always around when a job got a little wierder than normal. And this certainly classified as that.
"Hello?" came a staticky reply. Wherever Zi was at the moment, her cellphone obviously didn't have good reception. Probably in the basement of a swimming pool or something, thought Tomboko. That seemed creepy enough.
"Hi, Zi. It's Tomboko."
"Tomboko? Haven't heard from you in a while."
"Yeah, well, Yue and I have been busy."
"That right? What with?"
"Oh, just the usual stuff. Ghosts, demons, couple vampires (evil ones), a sewage monster..." she shuddered.
"Sounds like fun." Tomboko could almost see Zi's fanged smile.
"Yeah, it was loads. I'll never wear my favorite boots again."
"Oh.." said Zi in what sounded suspiciously like a dog whimper.
"Yeah." said Tomboko, "Anyway, we ran into something... odd today."
"Odd?" said Zi, still amusedly, "Odder than normal you mean?"
"Much." agreed Tomboko, "What do you know about were-wolves, controled with magic-"
There was a click. Yue had picked up the other line.
"Hi, Zi." she said simply.
"Heya Yue." answered Zi, "Magic?" she continued, "Like the werewolf was being controled as a werewolf. Or do you mean it was turned into a werewolf. By magic."
"We think the second." said Yue.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Zi.
"What?" said Tomboko, "What is it?"
"Shathar." hissed Zi.
"You know her?" asked Yue. "How?"
"What do you need me to do?" inquired Zi. Tomboko and Yue could hear her pacing the room (if she was indeed in a room).
"Just come down to our place," Tomboko said. "The landlord's not here. We'll order pizza."
There was a pause. "And honey-garlic wings?"
"Oh, definately," assured Yue.
"And your landlord's not there?"
"He's on a fishing trip. So he says," explained Tomboko. They all hated Mr. Tryn, the landlord, but for some reason Zi more than even Yue and Tomboko, who had to see him all of the time. And seeing him was no treat - he was one of those grey old men who insisted upon wearing his hair long despite his bald crown. Yue had a disturbingly convincing theory that Mr. Tryn was in fact a denizen of hell.
"All right. Be right there." There was a beep and then the dial tone. Tomboko and Yue knew she was probably running in her unaturally fast, silent way towards their apartment at that very moment.
Tomboko dialed the number for the nearby pizza place, which had the unique name of Bob's Pizza. They were Bob's best customers, and he had no problem sending his teenage son to deliver their orders at odd hours of the night. He even managed to get ahold of some odder items for them on occasions when it wasn't safe for them to leave the apartment. They'd had to pay him back for a silver cross (now a metal puddle near the table), lots of honey-garlic pepperoni (Zi's favorite), a large box of salt, and three lead chests (now stacked up with Yue's ancient computer on top).
It helped that they gave big tips.
Zi arrived soon. She gave her special knock and Yue opened the door.
"It won't stop following me," Zi said in a harried tone.
Yue glanced down to see Mr. Tryn's creepy nephew. With his dark hair, pale skin, and habit of saying disturbing things, he could star in a horror film.
"Um," Yue began, "hello. Aren't you going fishing?"
With an unerving smile, Ethan handed her a peice of paper. Scrawled upon it was: I can't take Ethan with me so you'd better take good care of him. One week free of rent. Mess up, you're kicked out. - Mr. Tryn, Esq.
"Esquire," murmured Tomboko, reading over Yue's shoulder. "That's new. What's it mean, exactlty?"
"I dunno." Yue lowered the note and looked at Ethan. "You're staying with us?"
"Yes," said Ethan, "like your vampire friend here."
Zi's eyes narrowed.
"Who did you say this kid was?" she asked in a dangerous voice.
"A pain in the--" began Yue.
"The landlord's nephew." said Tomboko hurriedly.
Zi hissed, "Well, he creeps me out." she said and sat down on the old couch, making it give off a strange noise. With a small glance at Ethan, she lowered her hood, revealing large, velvety black wolf ears. She had dark, shoulder-length hair, and medium brown skin. "So whats the plan?" She said, looking at Tomboko.
"No idea." began Tomboko, "We were hoping you could fill us in-"
"What do you know about Shathar?" finished Yue.
"Not alot." said Zi, "Only that she's been around for a lot longer than is normal, and she was somewhat involved with the werewolf that converted me."
"Involved?" said Yue with a disgusted look on her face.
The doorbell rang, and Zi threw her hood up.
"It's alright." said Tomboko, "Just the pizza."
The went to the door and opened it. "Hi, Carl." She said to the tall, somewhat lanky teenager in the doorway, "Come in."
Yue looked at Carl quickly and then grabbed a book on ancient excorcisms and started reading it upside down. Carl looked at her for a minute and then shoved a few knives off of a nearby table and put the pizzas down.
"Sit." commanded Tomboko and pushed him into an old, green chair, "This is Zi. And this is Ethan." Ethan nodded, and Zi dove for the honey garlic.
"Garlic." said Carl, glancing at Zi, "I thought vampires hated garlic."
Zi spat out a chicken wing and looked at Carl. "So?" she said, "Whats your point?"
"Um..." said Carl, "No point. Just wondering."
Zi gave him a long look. "Huh."
"What?"
"Your hair's a weird color."
"No, it's not!" protested Yue from behind the book, which she had finally turned the right way. (Carl's hair actually was an odd, reddish black colour, but Yue, who's hair was still half blonde and half brown from a recent hair-dye gone awry, couldn't really see anything wrong with that.)
"What do you need?" asked Carl, ignoring them both. He pulled a notebook and pen from his pizza delivery bag, flipped past several strange drawings and a diagram of a naked woman, which might have been considered pretty normal for a teenage boy except that the woman had fur, claws, and several weapons alongside with notes on their use against her. "Ready," he said, sitting with his pen poised above a blank page.
"Okay," said Zi, "The most important thing is a relative of her's. Somebody related to Shathar."
Carl blinked and wrote it down.
"Hmm. And a stake, I think," Zi smiled. "Nice long, narrow one. To stab her with. Repeatedly."
"Okay." Carl wrote that down as well. "Anything else?"
"Yes, another order of honey-garlic wings."
Tomboko made a strange sound. "Um, limited funds here."
Carl stood up. "Don't worry, I'll throw the wings in for free." He paused. "It might take a while to find a relative of... Sheridan?"
"Shathar," corrected Tomboko. "Evil woman, immune to crossbow bolts, has some sort of power over werewolves. That's all we know, really."
"She's old, too," added Zi. "But aren't they all?"
Carl headed for the door. "Well, I'll see what I can do with that. If she's been around a while, other people must have heard of her, right? I'll ask around."
For some reason, Carl was good at finding information, although he always refused to tell them who his sources were. Tomboko thought it was his dead mom, and Yue believed that he just charmed it out of people, or maybe used hypnosis.
"Her hair is blonde," somebody said. Everyone turned and looked down at Ethan, who was eating a slice of pizza.
"What?" asked Yue.
"Shathar has blonde hair," he repeated patiently. "She dyes it to cover the grey."
"How do you know this?" asked Carl.
"I'm psychic," Ethan replied. "I know lots of things. I know what you were doing at 3:49 am yesterday, Carl. And no, the bloodstains won't come out. Just throw it out."
Carl blinked at him, then left without another word.
"Great." said Yue after a moment, "You scared him off."
Tomboko yawned and stretched, a bit like a cat. "I'm going to bed." she announced and began to crawl over the things on the floor to get to a matress that was leaning up against the wall.
Ethan stared at her for a few moments then said, "You're sleeping on that?" in a disgusted voice.
Tomboko started to loosten her long, brown braid, "Yes." she said, "Why?"
"Well..." said Ethan, "Its kind of gross."
"Yeah." said Tomboko, "So are werewolves. Ever seen one right after its killed? The blood kind of seeps out of the wound as they turn back into a human. Usually the skin around it gets all tight. Unless, of course, its been shot with a silver bullet. Then it turns this awful green colour and a couple of their limbs fall off."
"Eww..." said Ethan, but he looked intrigued, not the expression that Tomboko had been going for.
Zi cleared her throat noisily, "Um, excuse me, werewolf in the vicinity."
"Sorry." said Tomboko and flopped down on the matress with her trenchcoat as a blanket."
"Tomboko!" said Yue suddenly, emerging from her book, "You're going to roll on your--"
"Ow." said Tomboko.
"Knife.... again." finished Yue, "Never mind. Good night." and she lay down on the couch.
"Wait." said Ethan, "You're going to bed now? But its morning."
"Graveyard shift." said Yue sleepily.
"Yeah, I thought you were psychic." came Tomboko's voice from under the blood-stained sheet that she had pulled over her head.
"I'm not THAT pychic." growled Ethan, but they were both asleep already. He turned to Zi, "Are you going to bed too?"
"Nope." said Zi, "My ears go away in the morning, so I like to hang around at drug stores and scare people by growling at them. Wanna come?"
Ethan stared at her suspiciously, "What are you going to do to me?"
"Nothing..." Zi looked back at him, wide brown eyes shiny and innocent.
"Okay, I'll come," Ethan relented. "But cut the innocent act, wolf, it doesn't fool me one bit."
Zi laughed, "Really. That's funny, just a second ago you said you were coming with me."
"I still am. I don't know what you're up to, but don't even think of trying anything weird," Ethan glowered at her.
"Oh, don't worry shrimplet, you don't have nearly enough meat on you to make a good meal. Let's go," the werewolf yawned lazily as she left the room.
Ethan followed her, watching her closely despite her assurances that she wouldn't eat him. Just ahead of him, the werewolf halted for a second.
"What?" Ethan snapped at her.
"The change begins," she explained.
Then, her large, black ears blurred and dissolved into the ordinary, rounded human ears that would not betray her true nature to normal people. The teeth that she flashed at him when she turned to grin at him weren't pointed or protruding.
"Come on, kid. We've got some pepperoni sticks to buy," the wolf turned to continue her leisurely walk to the nearby drugstore.
Ethan decided it would be wise not to comment on her lack of wallet or money and jogged to catch up with her. He stayed a few paces behind her, not only did he not like being so near to a werewolf, but he found that it unnerved people more when he trailed in their wake rather than walk beside them. But apparently, it didn't bother the wolf at all. How disappointing.
Zi pushed the door to the store open, and the bells chimed to announce their arrival. She walked quite casually up to the counter and leaned against it.
"Pepperoni sticks, five of them, honey-garlic flavoured," she demanded of the cashier.
The cashier was a gothic guy dressed in black leather and covered in silver-studded piercings, tattoos and chains. His hair was dyed black, and his eye-makeup enlarged his eyes. He leaned toward her and asked, "What you got this time?"
Ethan only just managed not to flinch at the sight of what Zi drew out of her jacket pocket. Bones, a grisly, pale white, pierced and strung together, clacked against eachother when she dropped them on the counter. She grinned at the cashier.
"Cool," he said, not at all disturbed by the disgusting implications. "What kind?"
Zi smiled smugly, "Vampire."
"Okay," the guy handed her some pepperoni sticks. "Good doing business with you."
"Ew!" Ethan glared at her once they had left. "What the heck! Were those really vampire bones?"
"Yep, they were. Finger bones. There's one vampire who'll never try and kill me again," Zi didn't even glance at him.
"Where are we going?" Ethan asked, suddenly realizing that they weren't heading back to the house.
"A bar. I need to make a deal with someone before tonight, so pipe down and try not to look at anyone in the eye," the werewolf replied.

Mwahaha, this is the story that I make random people add to.

Piczo