The Lola Chronicles (Book 1): A Night Without Stars

by Jillian Eaton

  “Travis Robert Henderson, you get out here THIS MINUTE!” I yelled after him. “DO YOU HEAR ME?”

  Giant Man laughed and winked one blue eye at me. “He is gone now, little girl.”

  I didn’t like the way he said ‘gone’. It wasn’t a ‘gone to the store and he’ll be right back’ kind of gone. It was a ‘he has moved to a different country and you’ll never see him again’ kind of gone. I took a wary step backwards. Giant Man’s eyes narrowed. It was a faint movement, almost imperceptible and hard to see given that every time I stared in his eyes I felt like someone was bashing me in the head with a baseball bat. I retreated another step. His upper lip curled.

  “You do not want to come in the house with your companion?”

  I noticed his grin was a little more forced now. He almost looked… confused. As if he couldn’t understand why I had not followed Travis through the doorway. “You come out here,” I challenged, spreading my arms wide, more confidant now that there was some distance between us. Giant Man may have been huge, but I doubted he was that fast. “You want me? Come and get me.”

  He didn’t like that. One booted foot stepped across the threshold. I braced myself, ready to run, but with a hiss of pain he snatched his foot back. Tiny curls of smoke swirled up from the leather toe.

  “What the hell…” I breathed, staring at his boot. He snapped his teeth like a feral dog. Something glinted in his mouth. Something bright. Something sharp. Something I never would have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  Silver. He had fangs of silver.

  I recoiled with a panicked shriek of alarm and landed hard on my butt. “TRAVIS!” I cried desperately as I scrambled to my feet, knocking garden gnomes over left and right. “TRAVIS, GET OUT HERE!” My heart was pounding like a drum inside my chest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Didn’t want to believe it.

  Grinning lewdly, Giant Man ran his tongue across his top lip in a provocative gesture that made me want to gag. “Best run along home now, little girl. The others will be waiting.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded. I almost said ‘what’ are you, but I stopped myself just in time. Take it easy, Lola. He’s just a freak with fake teeth. Get a grip. This isn’t a horror movie.

  “I have gone by many names. I have been many things. Come inside,” he coaxed, his voice softly cajoling. “Come inside and I will tell you everything you want to know.”

  I actually took a step forward before I stopped myself. Part of me wanted to go to him. Part of me wanted to walk right into the house and the let the door close behind me. That was his power, I realized with a shudder. To create action with a mere suggestion. To coerce with an idea. That was why Travis had gone so willingly into the house. In his mind, there had not been a choice. Was it hypnotism? Mind control? Something else entirely? I didn’t really want to stick around and find out, but I couldn’t leave without Travis. I wouldn’t leave without Travis.

  “I’m calling the police. I’m calling the police and they’re going to come and arrest you.” I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. Looking bored, Giant Man slouched against the side of the door frame and, lifting his right hand, began to slowly lick his fingers one by one from knuckle to nail.

  “Hello?” I said when I heard the click of someone answering my call. “I need to report a – um – a kidnapping! At – uh – 233 Turner Street. There is a man here and I think he’s dangerous and he–”

  The laughter cut me off. It cackled through the phone, raising every hair on the back of my neck. A woman’s laugh, high pitched and cruel. When the laughter stopped she whispered one word before the line went dead.

  Run.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Cowardly Lola

  I ran.

  I left my best friend behind and I ran for my life, not stopping until I reached my apartment complex. Gasping, shuddering, retching up long strings of saliva, I doubled over and clutched my knees.

  The ugly, six-story brick building I’d called home for the past eighteen months loomed over me. One of the potted plants sitting next to the entrance had been knocked over, spilling soil everywhere. No one had bothered to pick it up. I wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t a doorman or a concierge, just an old keypad that didn’t work and a thick metal door my key always got stuck in. As long as the electricity and the plumbing worked, no one complained. The type of people who lived in Green Lane weren’t the sort to bitch over a spilled plant. Chances were, no one had even noticed.

  Not realizing I’d tracked dirt into the lobby until I was halfway across, I wiped my sneakers off on the dull beige carpet before heading upstairs. My dad and I lived on the third floor in one of the smaller units, not that there were any that could be considered big. I heard shouting as I climbed the steps – there was an elevator, but no one, including me, was stupid enough to use it – but instead of being alarming the raised voices, one male and one female, were reassuring.

  Tara Yates in 2B and her dirt bag baby daddy were fighting again. It was annoying as hell, but it was normal and right now I wanted normal. After watching Travis walk into a stranger’s house like he was under some sort of trance and having the 9-1-1 operator tell me to run, I needed normal.

  The familiar acrid scent of cigarettes and cat piss followed me down the hall as I reached the third floor. I opened to door to our cramped, four room apartment to find my dad sprawled on the sofa with the television on mute. Relief that he was where he should have been was quickly followed by a familiar surge of disgust. When had coming home to find my dad all put passed out on the sofa become routine?

  We greeted each other like we always did: he with a grunt of acknowledgement that I was still alive, me with sullen teenage silence.

  One of the few upsides about having a dad who didn’t give a shit was that, well, he didn’t give a shit. He also didn’t notice things, like the fact that I was sticky with sweat and covered in dirt from when I’d fallen during my mad sprint through the darkness.

  I closed the door behind me. Locked it, just in case. My eyes adjusted quickly to the dim lighting, allowing me to see that the apartment was an absolute mess.

  No big surprise there.

  Cartons of takeout food sat on every available flat surface. The tan carpet was coated in a layer of grime no vacuum cleaner known to man could remove. The chair next to the dilapidated sofa my dad had picked up for free on the side of the road was stacked three feet high with old car magazines and empty beer cans.

  Usually coming home to such a disgusting mess would have turned my stomach, but since my stomach was already flipped inside out I didn’t even pause to yell at my dad for not using a coaster for his beer before I sprinted past him and into the kitchen.

  It was worse in here. The linoleum counters were barely visible beneath random piles of crap. The sink was full. Something white and slimy was congealing on the stove. I ignored it. I ignored everything except for the phone hanging up next to the wheezing refrigerator. Yanking the black receiver off the wall I dialed Travis’ home number and closed my eyes.

  About three blocks away from the Livingston’s house – and whatever the hell that thing was inside it – I’d tried to call Travis, only to discover I’d dropped my phone somewhere along the way. I should have gone back and looked for it. Hell, I should have gone back for Travis. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t because I was a coward, and I was afraid – no, I was terrified – of what would have happened if I had stayed one second longer.

  The desire to go inside that house… It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It had pulled at me from the inside out, and I knew if I hadn’t left when I did I wouldn’t have been able to leave at all.

  The phone rang once. Twice. Three times—

  “Hello?”

  I clutched the receiver to my ear so hard the back of my earring dug painfully into my skull. “Travis?” I said incredulously. “Is that… Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Who else would it be?”

  I was rar
ely at a loss of words, but for once I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “But you… At the house… That guy… How did… What happened?”

  A long pause, and then: “What are you talking about, Lola?”

  I bobbled the receiver. Almost dropped it. “Are you serious right now?” I hissed, darting a glance out into the living room to see if my dad was listening. He wasn’t. “You went into the house, Travis! You stupid moron. How could you do that? Who was that guy? What did he do? What did you do? How did you get out?” One question stacked on top of the next as I struggled to make sense of Travis’ calm, detached tone.

  Why wasn’t he doing the weird, breathy whine he always did when he was really upset? Why wasn’t he freaking out? Why was he pretending like nothing had happened?

  On the other end of the line Travis laughed. He laughed. And this time I really did drop the phone. I picked it up in time to hear him say, “…was Mr. Livingston. He saw what we were doing in the car and he was just playing a prank on us. No big deal, Lola.”

  “No big deal?” I sputtered. “NO BIG DEAL? Travis, that man was not—”

  “Could you keep it down?” Dad yelled. “I’m trying to watch Jeopardy!” He bumped the volume on the TV up a few notches. Cupping the receiver, I lowered my voice and turned away from the living room.

  “Travis, I don’t think that was Mr. Livingston.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW!”

  “Lola…” Dad’s tone held an unmistakable warning. He took Jeopardy! very seriously, even though he was always too drunk to get the questions right.

  I gritted my teeth. “Something was wrong with him, Travis. Did you see inside his mouth? He had fangs or… something. And his eyes were weird.”

  “Fangs? Come on, Lola. I think the adrenaline from trying to steal the car got to your head. He was messing with us. That’s all.”

  “But we heard that scream—”

  “That was all part of the prank. Listen, I should get going to bed. It’s late, and we have SAT prep in the morning, remember?”

  A prank? Was that really all it had been? Somehow I didn’t think so. “Travis, listen to me,” I whispered urgently. “When I tried to call 9-1-1 this woman picked up the phone and she sounded crazy and she said something really weird and… Travis? Travis, are you there?”

  He was gone.

  For the first time since we’d become best friends in the second grade when I stole his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, prompting him to burst into tears and me to give him the noogie of all noogies, Travis had hung up on me.

  I walked back into the living room in a daze. My head still throbbed, and my right leg ached. Glancing down, I saw I’d ripped a hole in my (sort of) brand new jeans and scraped up my knee.

  Great.

  “Dad, can I talk to you for a second?”

  He didn’t even look up. “Can it wait until the commercial?”

  I perched on the edge of the chair overflowing with magazines and waited. Some woman was trying for the double jeopardy, but time was running out.

  “Do you have an answer?” Alex asked.

  “No,” the woman said sheepishly.

  “What are the Rocky Mountains.”

  “Dumbass,” Dad said. It didn’t escape my notice that he hadn’t attempted to answer the question either. Turning the volume down to a dull roar, he set his beer aside, sat up on an elbow, and squinted across the room at me. “What’s up?”

  A year or so before my mom left him, Dad was a regular guy. He only drank when he was watching football. He didn’t call random women dumbasses on TV. He shaved more than once a week. He even – although it was hard for me to imagine it now – went to a blue collar job from nine to five Monday through Friday and brought home enough money to afford actual groceries instead of the dollar menu at McDonald's.

  Then the economy did whatever the hell it did, Dad was laid off work, and everything went to shit.

  Eighteen months.

  That was all it had taken for my life to go from normal to… well, to this.

  Coming home everyday to a filthy apartment. Eating dinner out of a bag every night or, sometimes, not even eating at all. That was the real reason I was hungry all the time. Greasy cheeseburgers and fries weren’t exactly the most nutritious or filling of meals.

  It happened so gradually I didn’t notice what was going on until Mom walked out the door, plane ticket in hand, and never looked back. Dad really fell apart after that. He started calling out from his temp jobs so he could stay at home and polish off his six-pack from the night before. Then six quickly turned to twelve, twelve jumped to twenty-four, and soon he was either too drunk or too hungover to go to work at all.

  Somehow he qualified for unemployment – way to go, government – and we were scraping by, but I didn’t want to think about what would happen when his year of free money ran out.

  I know what you’re thinking. But Lola, why didn’t you clean the apartment? Why didn’t you make dinner? Why didn’t you get a part time job to earn extra money?

  To which I say: shut the hell up.

  After Mom walked out, I started cleaning the apartment. I bought the groceries. I took out the trash. I even tried to make dinner, even though nine times out of ten it was so bad we ended up ordering takeout anyways. As it turned out, trying to be a wife and a mother and a daughter and a teenager was a role I was sorely unprepared to fill. Because despite my awesome swagger and my cocky know-it-all attitude, I was still just a kid. A kid who could barely take care of herself, let alone a forty-two-year-old alcoholic.

  “What’d you want to talk about?” Dad slurred. “Homework or somethin’?”

  “It’s summer vacation,” I said flatly.

  That confused him for a second before he sat up a little straighter and said, “Yeah, but aren’t you takin’ one of those classes at the school?”

  “SAT Prep, but Dad that’s not what I wanted—”

  “How’s it going?”

  I stared at him, genuinely shocked. When was the last time he’d asked about anything even remotely related to school? When was the last time he’d asked me about anything? My mouth pinched into a scowl. Back when he was only drinking six or seven beers a night and still making a half-assed attempt to be some sort of father, that’s when.

  “It’s going okay…” I said slowly. “I mean, it’s kind of a pain, but there are only two more classes left.”

  Travis – surprise surprise – had been the one to talk me into signing up for the prep course. It ran the length of the summer, once a week every week for three hours. Tomorrow was our second to last session. Thank God.

  Dad took a swig of his beer, crumpled the can, and popped open another. His eyes were squinty and red, his facial muscles slack. Another beer or two and he would pass out on the sofa and sleep until noon the next day. Then he’d wake up, scrounge around for some food, and start drinking again before three.

  And so the Ferris wheel went round and round.

  “What’s that class supposed to do? Get you into a fancy college or somethin’?”

  “Or something.” The truth of it was I had no illusions of completing any sort of secondary education. For one thing, I didn’t have the money. For another, I didn’t have the money. Even the local community college was a pipe dream.

  I didn’t really know why I was bothering with the prep course. If I wasn’t going to go to college, what did it matter what I got on my SATs? But it gave me something to do, and I got to do it with Travis, so it wasn’t horrible.

  I opened my mouth, prepared to blurt out the night’s events in their entirety, but Jeopardy! came back on and Dad’s eyes went to the TV and I lost him. Just like that he was gone, more interested in a 50” screen than his own living, breathing daughter.

  “Travis and I stole a car,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Then we heard this crazy scream and when we went to check it out a really weird guy answered t
he door. He was huge. Like a giant.”

  Nothing.

  “He had fangs. Silver fangs. And he invited Travis into the house and the idiot went inside. The giant tried to get me inside too but I ran all the way back here. I called Travis’ house and he answered and he said it was all some sort of prank except I don’t think it was.”

  Nothing.

  And the Worst Parent of the Year Award goes to…wait for it…my dad!

  Jeopardy’s! final round theme music was playing. I glanced at the question.

  In 2013 Britain marked this show’s 50th Anniversary

  with a series of stamps featuring the eleven actors

  who have played the lead role.

  “Sherlock Holmes,” Dad mumbled.

  “What is Doctor Who.” I waited a beat. “Dumbass.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Serpent, A Shrink, and A Snob

  I didn’t sleep well.

  I’ve never been a big dreamer – I always figured my brain was so busy thinking up random shit during the day that it had to take a break at night – but let me tell you: last night I dreamed some crazy stuff.

  They say dreams are part of your subconscious. That every image and sound is drawn from something you’ve seen or something you’ve been thinking about.

  Giant Man was in my dream. No surprise there, since he was all I’d been able to think about. He stood on a grassy hill in front of a door. The door wasn’t connected to anything. It was just there, as if it’d been dropped from the sky and somehow landed standing up.

  “Want to come inside?” he asked me, all friendly like as though he was inviting me in for a cup of tea. I stood ten feet away, my feet planted firmly on the ground. A light breeze rippled through my hair, and I brushed a few loose strands away from my mouth with an impatient flick of my wrist. The sun was out, but it hung heavy in the sky and shadows were beginning to slide up the side of the hill.

  The air tasted stale.

  “What’s in there?” I asked, nodding towards the door.