Death is a Girl

Chapter 32 - Intermission - Unseen Monsters

Trisha Roy was in a somber mood as she stood in her late father’s office, staring down at the sea of lights across the cityscape below. She should have been at home in bed, she had to be up early for the funeral tomorrow, but sleeping was impossible. It was not just her father’s passing that weighed on her mind, nor the position as head of the company that she was so suddenly thrust into, but rather the snakes lurking in the grass.

She was no stranger to the treacherous politics that came with corporate culture. Her father had warned her of the cutthroat nature of their world, where there were few true friends. The best you could do in this world is be sure your “friends” were well paid, happy with their position, and knew that replacing you would be too much hassle with too little gain. That’s just how it was. However, until now, she had only observed it from the sidelines.

Not even two days after her father’s death, this office felt like a battlefield. In fact, the snakes didn’t even wait that long. Anyone with his legacy and the company’s best interest at heart would have done a little cleanup before police arrived. That is, the cocaine in his drawer. It would have been a simple matter to dispose of, but that didn’t happen. In fact, Trisha suspected it was rather purposely put under the police’s radar. It was in a locked drawer, after all, so how did they find it in the first place?

Frustrated, she slammed her fist on the window sill. Her father had JUST died. The snakes were not even giving them time to grieve.

Feeling sick, she walked back to his desk and sat down. Technically, this was her desk now, but she could not yet see it that way. The thought of filling her father’s shoes weighed heavily on her, but all she wanted to do was grieve. She wished she could have some time, just one week, to process everything and then work on battle plans.

A sound made her jump. It was her phone ringing. It was nearly midnight, so she wondered who could be calling. It was her brother, Jason.

“Trish!” he yelled as soon as she pressed the answer button. “Are you seeing this shit!?”

Not even a, ‘Hey, how are you hanging in there?’ huh?

She opened her laptop. “There is a whole mountain of shit, so which particular pile are you referring to?”

“The way the media is talking about us! They are making us sound like we’re spoiled rich kids, and Dad was some kind of incompetent drug addict. All they are talking about is the fucking cocaine in his desk! And they keep bringing up my DUI and the fact I went through rehab.” She heard something slam. “My fucking arrest photo is plastered all over the news—that was eight fucking years ago!”

His words were slightly slurred, so she had to ask, “Have you been drinking?”

“Oh fuck you, Trish.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He exhaled, and she got the sense of him pacing as she Google-searched her father’s name and scrolled through some of the headlines. She already knew what she would find, and it confirmed exactly what Jason was complaining about.

“We need to sue their asses,” Jason finally concluded. “This is slander.”

“What you need to do, is sober up and get some sleep so you don’t show up at the funeral hungover tomorrow.” She closed her laptop. “Jason, listen to me, there is one way we deal with this. We ignore the media attention, keep our shit together, and continue with business as usual. For me, that means picking up where Dad left off and dodging whatever bullshit they are going to try to throw at us. For you, that means not looking or sounding like an unhinged junkie.”

“I’ve been clean for five years.”

She ignored his words and kept going. “Messing with our public image is just the beginning but hardly the most important, so ignore it. Focus on what we can control right now: the company and our reputations within the circles that matter. This noise will die down eventually, but what we do in the coming weeks will shape our future.” She heard a sniffling from the other end, and then a sob. “Oh god, are you crying?”

“Why’d this happen, Trish? He was fine a couple of days ago!”

She exhaled, staring at the family photo on her dad’s desk. She was only 13 in the photo, Jason 9. “I know… it sucks. We’ll get through it, though. Just leave this side of things to me. They’re playing dirty because they know they can’t win legally. Just hold it together. Falling apart won’t help us right now. Dad’s always watched out for us; now we owe it to him to be the rocks and continue what he started.”

“Trish… he had a heart attack after… a-after I was arguing with him. W-what if—”

“Jason, stop that. This isn’t your fault. He spent all day yelling at people, he had a stressful job. You can’t put that on yourself because you were having a feud with him. It’s ridiculous. So don’t even go there.”

Jason sighed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, we’re in this together. Now, get some sleep. Alright? Big day tomorrow.”

After saying goodbye, she hung up the phone and practically collapsed into the chair. The exhaustion was finally settling in, and she figured she should take her own advice and get some sleep soon.

It was so strange to think this very desk was where her father had died. He barely made it to the call button in his last moments, falling over the desk as the heart attack seized him, and he did not even finish a single word. There had been an investigation on whether it was foul play, but there were no marks on his body, and the autopsy turned up nothing. There had been some kind of religious activist who’d snuck up to the top floor and into his office earlier that day, but that had nothing to do with this. Security cameras had been checked after the fact, but again, turned up nothing.

A voice suddenly spoke from a dark corner of the office. “Burning the midnight oil, are we?”

Trish jumped, her eyes searching for the speaker until settling on a silhouette. The shape of a man detached itself from the shadows, stepping out of them and into the center of the room as if the darkness had manifested him.

“Who are you!?” she shouted, reaching for the call button. The night crew of security guards would still be in the building.

“Oh, I’m your new best friend,” the man said, stepping further into the light. He wore a trench coat and a hat, which left most of his face shrouded in shadow. “You see, I have proof your father’s death wasn’t a simple heart attack.”

“Excuse me?” Trish said, her finger stopping its progress to the call button, now just hovering over it.

His hands came out of his pockets in a placating gesture; open palms showing he didn’t have anything. “You have access to the security footage. Correct?”

“Everything's been analyzed already. Nothing showed up.”

“That's only because they didn’t know what to look for. Pull up the security tapes from the hour around your father’s death.”

“Why should I?” Trish countered. “You still haven’t explained who you are or what you’re doing here.”

Instead of explaining himself, he chuckled softly. “You can turn me away if you like. But wouldn’t you rather hear me out first? Wouldn’t you rather see what I have to show you?”

Trish narrowed her eyes at him. She wished she could at least see his face. If she could see the shadow-man’s face, she’d at least be able to get rid of this Unnerving Feeling that something wasn’t quite right about him.

Yet, curiosity got the better of her. He said he had proof her father was murdered. How could she not at least see what this proof was first?

As if sensing her thoughts, the man said, “May I step around the desk and look at the laptop with you?”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to look confident. Her heart was beating fast… In Fear? She couldn’t put her finger on it, outside the obvious strangeness of this man, but it was the kind of uneasiness you feel if you see a wild animal at night, not even a large one, maybe a possum or raccoon staring at you in the darkness and making threatening noises. It sent a shiver down her spine.

“I’m coming closer, Ms. Roy,” he finally said when she gave no answer and stepped around the desk until he was next to her. He placed his hand on the keyboard and pulled up the security folders, only stopping when a login screen was prompted. “Password?”

She carefully reached forward and typed it, then stepped back to keep some distance from him. As she watched him sift through the videos, she revisited her attempt to place what was so uniquely disturbing about this man.

Her mind went back to when she was 13 years old, and her father had taken her and Jason on a camping trip. She was bored through most of it but diligently took in what her father showed them about fishing, snares, setting up a tent, and everything else that came along with it. It felt so pointless, but it seemed important to him, and she always tried her best to impress her father.

But, it was the nights she now thought about. Particularly, the fact she was female and using the bathroom in the woods wasn’t as simple as it was for men, which was a problem she didn’t bother explaining and just dealt with. But when she left the tent to relieve herself, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, that something hideous was hiding behind the blanket of darkness that surrounded her. Whatever it was, she imagined it manifesting from within the vague silhouettes and coming toward her.

That was the uneasiness this man had given her when he appeared here in the office. He had stepped out of the shadows, hadn’t he? It was exactly what she had once anticipated from those unseen monsters of long ago.

“Here we are," he said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Watch closely.”

He had two displays side by Side. One showed the hallway outside the office, and the other showed the nearby stairwell, which would mainly only be used as a fire escape.

As Trisha watched the screen, the shadow-man paused the video at a particular timestamp, just minutes before her father’s reported time of death. The hallway was empty. Her heart raced as she stared, expecting something to happen, but there was nothing.

Then, the shadow-man switched to the stairwell camera. “Now watch this,” he said, pressing play. The footage showed nothing unusual at first—just an empty stairwell. Then, suddenly, a blur moved across the frame at the bottom of the screen.

“What was that?” Trisha asked, squinting at the screen.

“That,” the shadow-man said, pausing the video and rewinding it slowly, “is something that is skilled at avoiding being seen. But if you watch closely…”

He placed his hand gently on her back and guided her to look closer. Trisha felt a chill run down her spine, both at his touch and what he was showing her. The shadow-man played the video again, and this time, the blur wasn’t a blur; it had a humanoid shape that didn’t quite register in her mind. She thought it must be a janitor or a member of the security team because of the black clothing, but she knew that wasn’t right so... “It’s…” she squinted her eyes, focusing. “It’s a girl.” As soon as she said that, the girl's form shifted, and it became clear. Yes, it was a girl with pale skin and white hair. She moved up to the office door and seemed to slide a key card.

“What the fuck. The video didn’t show the office door opening before!”

He released his hand from her back. She was now leaning in with her attention acutely focused on the screen as she rewound and watched again. “You altered the video!”

He chuckled. “You just watched it play twice, when could I have done that? The problem isn’t with the video it is with your eyes. There is a veil that hides beings like her from mortals, that is, unless they are guided into seeing past it.”

Trisha replayed the video, her eyes fixed on the girl, who was now completely clear. “This is impossible,” she murmured.

“Only if you choose to deny what you are seeing.”

“I have to inform the police.”

“I would advise against that.”

She watched further into the video. There were no cameras in her father’s office, but right about now, he would be pressing the call button as he took his last breaths. A moment later, the security team rushed down the hall.

“You’ll have to put your attention back on the stairwell, as they are using a different kind of magic now to avoid the guards—one that truly sets them outside of our realm.”

She switched to the staircase and saw the girl collapse onto the ground along with a black cat. She seemed to be talking to it. “What is she…” Trisha said under her breath.

“A reaper—a creature controlled by beings on a higher plane of existence who use her to control the flow of events here on earth. This girl was sent to assassinate your father to satisfy their whims.”

“Why are you showing me this?” As unbelievable as it all was, she was past being able to deny what her eyes were seeing.

“Because I do not agree with their so-called order. I wish to stand against them and strip them of their power, and I believe you can help me with that.” As he spoke those words he stepped around the desk and moved back to the shadowed corner he had emerged from.

“What are you talking about? Help you how?” she said, standing up and beginning to follow him.

He chuckled. “I’ll explain more later, when next we meet. For now, you have a funeral to prepare for, and you ought to take some time to grieve. Consider what I’ve shown you today, but keep it to yourself, and I’ll be in contact soon.”

Then, if she had any more doubts about the supernatural nature of what was happening, he did something that dispelled any remaining doubts. He lifted his hand, and the shadowed wall shifted, opening a circular fissure in the corner that seemed to be a window into another place entirely. This place had a cosmic sky, streaking with bands of purple, reds, and many colors in between—but dark—and in the vastness of it, she saw balls of fire floating in the sky. She gasped and stepped back, feeling dread creep into her heart, some natural part of her knowing she was glimpsing something that her mortal eyes should never see.

He stood before the portal, looked back at her once more, and smiled with long, grainy teeth. They seemed to be made of stone, and Trisha instantly thought of headstones at a graveyard—straight and uniform.

“Until next time, Trisha Roy.” Then, with a flourish as he brushed back his trench coat, he stepped through the portal and disappeared.