“Of course,” Dave said and got down to tearing the phone into pieces with a pair of thin screwdrivers. His motions were methodical, precise.
“Hey, I have to get back to my office. Mind if I leave my daughter here with you? She can tell you how she likes the phone or not,” my dad said, one foot already out the door.
“I will defend her with my life,” Dave said and brought his fist over his heart.
What. A. Nerd.
I smiled, brought a chair and sat next to him.
Very close.
Dave opened the phone, examining it with some instruments. His gaze fell on me and went back into his work a thousand times per minute.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“We’ll see. Can’t see anything malfunctioning really.”
“It just stopped.”
“Yeah, it might be due to a manufacturing error in those early prototypes. We’ll sort it out before the major release. So tell me, did you play around with it? Did you like it?”
“Sure, its handy. My friend used most of the new features, she really liked it.” I took on an innocent tone of voice. “Sometimes,” I said and paused to drag his attention towards me, “Sometimes I can hear this buzzing in my ear, and like some sort of pressure on my eardrums.”
“Aha. Well, it’s not supposed to do that,” Dave said, and I studied his features. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or just horny. I wouldn’t pass any detective exam anytime soon. “It must be a prototype issue, I’ll send a memo.”
“Ugh huh. And the camera sometimes gets these smudgy glowy parts.”
“Smudgy glowy parts,” Dave repeated, deep in thought. He had pieced the phone back together and was pressing the power button. It started up just fine.
“Here, let me show you,” I said, grabbing the phone and putting my face next to his, propping the phone high for a selfie.
Click.
I half-hesitated, and then brought the phone closer for both of us to see the picture. I had taken a pose like all the other social-media selfie ladies out there, and he had just smiled and presented his good cheek to the camera. We kinda looked good together, to be honest.
And to my right, a hazy face. A smudgy glowy part.
My heart skipped a beat and I checked my watch. “See, here, it’s smudgy,” I said.
Dave cleared his throat and grabbed the phone from me, turning it off. “Yeah. Well, it might be from the prototype. Nevermind that,” he said and presented me with another. “Here, take this instead.”
I took it. I checked my watch again and stood up, losing my balance and falling over him. Dave propped me up and smiled at me.
“Thank you. I better go say hello to my dad and head back to school,” I said.
“School is important. Lemme know when you are done with school-” he cleared his throat. “-Lemme know if there’s any more problems,” he corrected.
I smiled and said, “Will do.”
Then I walked as fast as possible out of there, smiling innocently to security, trying not raise suspicions and not to stare at the countdown on my watch.
I was fidgeting with the security card in my pocket that I had swiped from Dave. Teenager or not, I wasn’t an idiot. I wouldn’t endanger my dad and his work for some crazy conspiracy nut who wanted to break in, no matter how spot on he seemed to be about most of this stuff. Family comes first. Prodromos had gotten in contact with me because she needed something from me, not because she was my friend. People on a crusade tend to get others in trouble. If I was gonna help get to the bottom of this, my father would not be involved. Besides, my dad was in the Marketing Department. His card accessing the R&D department late at night would raise suspicions, whereas a card from the R&D itself doing another sleepless night just before a major product launch would make more sense.
My phone chimed and I got a message from Prodromos. It read, “I’m going to the house of God, He will protect me. I suggest you do the same.”
Purple time
I barely turned around the corner of the building when she appeared out the wall. Her nails passed right next to my face and I ducked to avoid her. I ran through the parking lot, hoping not to see anyone there. She came beside me, around the cars, her face puzzled, as if deciding on a car sale.
I looked around and saw the tip of a church. It was too far away but I ran towards it anyway. Along the way was a small park, women with little children having a stroll. I ran between them, narrowly avoiding one little boy with a bicycle. The Erinyes came behind me and stopped.
I stopped too.
My face was contorted in fear. A few of the mothers were watching me puzzled. The little boy was getting on his bike’s seat again and preparing to move away.
I bit my lip.
Getawaygetawaygetaway.
The boy was taking forever. The Erinyes leaned down to its level but her eyes were drilling deep into mine.
Her hand moved over the boy’s head, and her purple hair moved in a wave and engulfed it.
I lost my breath.
Like a wave crashing on the shore, her hair pulled in the boy and it was gone.
I screamed. Let him go! He’ll drown. Let him go!
The mothers moved in, one to protect her son from me, the other to pull her own back away. They were moving through thick water, too slow to do anything. Too slow.
The boy’s head managed to get out of the drowning hair for a second and I gasped in hope.
Then he was gone again.
Just like my little brother.
Chapter 37
“I didn’t know Prodromos was a woman,” Deppy said, her high-pitched voice echoing in the church.
“I assumed it was a man at first, when I told you about his messages,” I said, sitting on the pews. My face was in a perfect bulldog impersonation, cheeks dripping on the sides.
“What do we do?” Billy said, rubbing the back of his head, towering over the body.
We were in a large church at another part of the city. Prodromos, her body, was lying under the cross in the middle section of the church. Her face was pale, contorted into a horrid mask of fear.
She was dead.
A few of the candleholders were knocked over. The carpet was ruffled in the end. Other than that, it was peaceful.
We had located the church with the help of Deppy. I had no clue of half the things she had said, but she had managed to locate Prodromos and lead us to the church. Were we’d found her dead. Right after an Erinyes attack, and right after her message saying God will protect her.
If that ain’t a kick in the guts, I don’t know what is.
“Nothing,” I said. “You don’t do nothing.” I leaned close to her body, tiptoeing and with the edges of my fingers went into her pocket. I winced. A bit of vomit was coming out. Being near a dead body makes your primal fears ding-dong in high alert. I fished out her car keys and passed them to Billy. “You two get out of here, I call in the police anonymously.”
“Are you sure?” Billy asked, taking the car keys.
“Yeah, before someone sees us. Wait for me three blocks down,” I said, and went around the back to find the priest.
Chapter 38
“Where the hell are you guys?” I said on the phone, sweat dripping down my face, my hair a mess.
“I had a suspicion I was being followed,” Billy said and gave me new directions.
I sighed, leaned my head down and kept on walking in the summer heat.
I found the van and got in, putting the air-condition on ‘freeze me’. “Where’s your love interest,” I asked Billy who was in the driver’s seat. He stared at me with wide eyes and shook his head.
“What took you so long,” Deppy asked from the back of the van. I looked back through the hole in the van’s wall, and saw her on Prodromos’ computer, checking out her stuff.
“Look who fits right at home in the Scooby gang,” I said pointing at her. “I was giving a police statement, that’s what took so long.”
; “What?” Billy yelped and pulled my face towards him. “Why did you do that?”
“I put on my scared little girl act, which isn’t really that hard, cause I’m a girl, and kinda little, and scared right now, and I brought the priest to see the body.”
“I’m still waiting for the reasonable answer to my question,” Billy said seriously.
“I told the police that I saw two men running away. And I gave the description of the two guys that were following us downtown,” I said calmly.
“OK. That’s… Kinda clever,” my tall friend said, gears spinning in his head. “I doubt that her death will show up as anything other than natural causes, or a heart attack, but this will help take those guys off our back. If only they weren’t so inconspicuous…”
I mouthed silently, pointing at Deppy. “What’s she doing?”
“She’s going through Prodromos’ research.”
“I’m going through Prodromos’ research,” Deppy said with her squeaky voice, tapping away at the keyboard.
I squeezed myself through the hole and went to the back of the van. I caught a glimpse of Billy checking out my ass, but then he gathered himself into the perfect gentleman again and stared straight forward.
I sat on the floor of the van and compared notes with Deppy.
“Well, what Prodromos told you was true.” Deppy waved a hand around. “Not the churchy stuff, the rest of it. I can see many cases of the same thing all over the city, these Erinyes appearing in photos, people acting strangely, persecution syndrome, the works. It has reached a cult-status online, I mean, sheesh, there are hundreds of discussions online about Erinyes and what they are.” She pursed her lips. “It’s a classic case of creepypasta, I expect a movie coming out about them in less than a year.”
I slammed my fist on the side of the door and yelled at her, “And how does that help me?”
She stood shocked, staring at my face.
I kept banging my fist on the metal, annotating every sentence. “And. How. Does. That. Keep. Me. Alive.” I sat back down and held my hand to my chest. It was hurting.
She managed a few words, “I’m, ah. I just looked into it, I need more time…”
“I measure my life,” I snarled, spitting out the words, “in a-hundred-and-nine minute parts. I can’t sleep properly, everything hurts, nobody can see this thing chasing me, and now,” I gulped. “And now, the only person who seemed to know anything about it is dead. Dead because the stupid kariola thought God would save her, so she just sat there and let Erinyes take her.”
The back of the van opened and Billy stepped in, bowing down to fit in and closing it behind him. He put his hand on my shoulder.
I sagged and cried in his arms.
Deppy sat next to me and hugged me.
“I’m sorry,” I sniffed.
“It’s OK,” Deppy said. “We’ll figure it out.”
I let it all out for a few minutes. Deppy gave me a paper tissue from her purse and I blew my nose into it.
“I look like a mess,” I said, holding my phone in reverse camera mode to turn it into an expensive complicated mirror.
“You always look great,” Billy said, and then bit his tongue.
I got out the van, from the normal door this time and went around to the passenger seat. Billy sat on the wheel and asked, “So, where to?”
I checked my watch. “Take me where you first kissed me,” I said, and got a raised eyebrow from Deppy.
Purple time
She came out the concrete floor again, digging her way through. I was ready, I ran between the stacks of barrels and avoided her lunge.
As she followed, her nails scraped the barrels and threw out purple sparks. I knew that after, nothing would be there but if I’d let those sparks touch me I would hurt a lot.
I reached the end of the row and stopped, turning myself and standing on the spot.
Maybe I could just let her end this. Maybe that’s what it was, to end my life gasping for air, just like my little brother had died when we were little. When I was supposed to take care of him, when I was old enough to be left in charge of him. When I let him die in the flood.
The Erinyes came closer, but slowed down, even in her dreamy movement, and looked me in the eyes. Hers were gleaming. It was as if she knew what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Guilt. Guilt over my brother’s death.
Guilt because I was too vain, staring at my reflection in the mirror, to see that he had gone out for his bicycle.
The Erinyes came to my face, a mere centimetre away, smiling. I kept my eyes open and gulped. Maybe I deserved this. Maybe I should experience getting choked to death, a fate, I presumed, similar to drowning in water.
The Erinyes hair spread out and leaned closer to envelop me. I couldn’t bare it, I shut my eyes. One second, two seconds. Three seconds, I bolted out of there, ran like the wind, ran like my life depended on it.
Chapter 39
“Well, this was interesting,” Deppy said deeply, in contrast to her normal cheerful tone.
“Trade ya any time,” I said.
“Nooo,” Deppy replied, expanding the ‘oo’ into a deep forced laugh.
“Okay Scooby gang, we have a van, we have a nerd, we don’t have a dog. What’s stopping us? Let’s plan this thing through,” I said in a coach tone of voice.
“You want to go through with Prodromos’ plan,” Billy said matter-of-factly.
I opened my palm towards Deppy. “Yes, as she said, everything Prodromos came up with is sound and factual. His own interpretation is the only thing that’s wobbly.”
“Well,” Deppy said showing us some schematics in the van’s monitors, “Here are the plans she wanted to use to get in. All she needed was an original access card to spoof the system, which we have now, and access to the R&D lab to download all the research data and internal emails. Hopefully, the answers lie there. They will require some digging afterwards.”
“Great,” I said slapping my hands. “What else do we need?”
“I’ll need to go in to get the data from the computer,” Deppy said hesitantly.
“No. I’m not putting you there, you’ve already done enough. I’ll go, you talk me through it,” I said firmly.
Deppy sighed with relief. “In that case, I’ll set up a USB drive to it all automatically. Should work fine.”
“Do that. Get it ready,” I said. “Billy, fill it up with gas, I’ll owe you. OK, we go in tonight. “I’ll need to show up at the police station for a follow up statement.” My head tilted down as I was reminded of the dead woman.
Billy frowned. “That was reckless Mahi. What if those policemen had kept you there for hours and your time was up? What would you do? Tell them, ‘Sorry officer, I gotta run a few laps around the building for a minute, cause I’m an Olympic athlete. Nevermind me looking like hell, running for my life from an unseen predator. It’s all good. Coming right up in two minutes, tops.’”
I squinted at him and put a finger on his chest. “Sarcasm is my domain, tall dark and nerdy. Besides, that was a good excuse you came up with, I might use that next time.”
He grunted.
I shushed him and looked at my watch, calculating intervals.
“We meet up at midnight at the park, OK? I’ll just be done with the latest attack, so we can skedaddle to Gerakas right away. Be on time,” I said firmly.
“Will you be OK till then,” Deppy asked worried.
“Shuuure,” I said so I could believe it myself. “Six measly attempts to choke me to death till then. I’ll be fine.”
Chapter 40
I slid the side-door of the van open and jumped inside.
My eyes jumped from Billy to Deppy and back again. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Nope,” Billy said at the same time as Deppy’s “No, it’s fine,” anxious laugh.
I was in no mood for their stupid skata. I had spent all day lying to my parents, making excuses, running off to the little forest, getting chased by that sadistic
Erinyes, going back, lying some more, resting for a few minutes, making more excuses, running again. It had taken its toll on me.
Physically, I was surprised to see that it was getting easier to handle as time went by. Emotionally, it was becoming too much to bear.
I stared at them both inside the dimly lit van, parked at the side of the little forest in the middle of the night. Billy was flushed and was trying to discreetly pull his pant leg in a hopeless attempt to hide his boner. Deppy was breathing heavily and her lips were shiny wet.
My eyes widened.
I threw my arms in the air. “Finally, you two!”
I went around to the passenger seat and put my seatbelt on, mumbling, “If I had a euro for every time I tried to get you two vlaka together, I’d be a gazillionaire.”
I looked back through the hole. They were just staring at me, speechless.
“We ain’t got all night! Come on, I’ll let you get back to it after we infiltrate a secure tech corporation.”
We parked in the back of Hermes Information Technology. Prodromos had already located a blind spot in the security cameras. To my surprise, Billy was straining and sweating over driving the big van but he was managing it. The traffic had been low, but it had been still there.
I wore dark loose clothes, but they attenuated my body lines nicely. Just cause you are a cat-burglar doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look good doing it.
Deppy gave me a headband with LEDs on it, and helped me put it on.
“What’s this? Doesn’t making me a beacon defeat the purpose of a stealthy approach?”
She made sure my hair was neat and the headband comfy, and then tested the lights. “Not in this day and age. These LEDs shine some visible light, but they are extremely bright in the infrared spectrum. It blinds the cameras, you are still there, but it’s like you have a flash constantly blowing the image over your head. Oh, here,” she said and turned on her phone’s camera on me. A superbright flare that was leaving blue vertical streaks was over my face, moving as I did. There was no way to see what I looked like.
Erinyes Page 7
