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People get angry; dogs get mad.
Taliyah had been angry before. Anger seemed to be a natural step forward for her, past her typical annoyance with other people. She could take that anger and play it off, use it to her advantage as motivation and fuel. She could project it onto others and make them slip up. Anger was not an emotion for Taliyah, it was a tool.
But tonight as Taliyah limped up the hill littered with foliage and struggled to climb a high branch, drenched in freezing water and disoriented from the heavy current and her injuries, she wasn’t angry.
Tonight, Taliyah was mad.
Mad was the type of animalistic rage that couldn’t be compared to anything else. Mad made her want to break in immediately, to boldly walk in and slit their throats in a gorey mess. Mad made her want to emulate Wren’s tactless slaughterhouse method for once and take out her bloody revenge in an instant, with no remorse and no regard for any manner of caution.
But she knew deep down that victory in that manner would only satisfy her for so long, so short and fleeting that she’d still be angry even after the Lindholm house was freshly cleared.
She wiped stinging moisture from her face, a mixture of sweat and river water dripping into her eyes. The Stalker crouched low on the tree branch, staring intently at the Lindholm house and mulling over the obvious first obstacle. No mask; that meant no witnesses.
Fine by her.
But then, no knife either. That second obstacle proved to be a bit more of a trip-up. How could she do it? Wait until late in the night and swipe a kitchen knife? No, no. She’d studied this house and this family for a while now; one of the Lindholm boys was an insomniac, frustrating and highly inconvenient. The garage then? Every move made there would amplify noise five times as much and it was unlikely she’d find anything outside of blunt and noisy objects; high risk for very little reward.
That became the dilemma for a while, why she spent so long simply staring at the house.
Until she caught sight of something that peaked her interest and helped to solve her problem. Upstairs, third window on the right. Sarah’s room. The loner was staggering into her room, bandaged and heavily bruised. Taliyah grinned to herself. Maybe Sarah had won, but oh how she’d paid for it. She could see that black eye and crooked nose from all the way out here.
In the middle of her self congratulating, something caught Taliyah’s eye. A flash of red suddenly placed on a desk nearby. She had to squint, but even from here she could make out the handle of the karambit, her weapon of choice for the eternity she’d spent in the Mist. She’d know it anywhere.
A wide, devious grin spread across her face.
Tonight, there was going to be a massacre.
—----------------------------------
Sarah had never liked being stared at. Even in high school, all those days of harsh stares and scornful glares. At least in the mist everyone had been too busy worrying about saving their own skin to be looking at her too hard. But this, unfortunately, wasn't the mist, and the eyes staring at her now somehow stung more than the ones back in highschool.
She hadn’t thought it was possible, but her dad … he somehow looked more worn than she remembered. It was beyond his now grayed hair and slouched gate; his eyes were sunken and he seemed to stare directly through her, as if she were still just a face on a missing-persons poster.
Her brothers were no better, hardly recognizable with their fully grown facial features, facial hair. Mikey stared at her expressionless, probably too shocked to process. Eric sat on the couch behind him, giving her a look that was more irritation than awe. She looked between her now much older brothers and her father.
She didn’t know what she’d expected. It wasn’t like her brothers had come rushing to find her on the days she didn’t come home after school or stayed out overnight. Sure her dad would chew her out for not telling him where she was going, but he never really bothered to ask where she’d been. So, of course she wasn’t shocked now when he was looking her up and down, a slightly unreadable expression on his face, but not at all worried.
“What happened to you?” he asked dryly. Half of her face felt like it was swelling and she was certain Taliyah had broken her nose – not to mention that she was still a teenager in her family of apparently full grown men – and that’s all he had to say? What happened to you? She narrowed her eyes slightly. “I got hit and run over by a train,” she muttered sardonically, turning and climbing up the stairs. “You didn't answer your phone,” her dad called after her.
She stared at him blankly. Did he really think she was just being a bratty runaway? Were the scars and bruises not enough to give him at least a little pause? “Yeah sorry, I’ll dig myself out of the grave quicker next time,” she huffed, starting the climb again.
“Where were you?”
She froze again, turning back and looking at her brother. Eric stared back at her with a bored expression. She narrowed her eyes at him. “The past … apparently.”
Where were her hugs? Where was the ‘ We missed you, we were so worried!’ sobbing she’d been expecting. Had she been expecting it, really? Or had she known all along … had they ever really changed?
“Your room’s still upstairs,” her father said quietly. “Same way you left it.” With that he turned and walked into the kitchen, and Sarah was back to the way she’d been the majority of her life, invisible. She trekked the rest of the way up the stairs resigned to her return to the background, nearly colliding head first with Vic. Her third brother froze staring with confusion for a moment, as if he were trying to determine whether or not he was dreaming. Sarah looked back at him, feeling more awkward than anything else. She expected another shrug or for him to walk right past her, but her time in the Mist had clearly affected her memory. He pulled her into a tight hug, already breaking down before she managed a word.
Sarah raised her arms tentatively, lightly patting Vic on the back in the only comforting gesture she could think of. Vic was the only member of the family who actually saw Sarah, who treated her like family . She theorized that it had to do with Vic being an outcast in the Lindholm house too, ever since he’d transitioned. He and Sarah looked out for each other; they had to, no one else would. Of course then he’d be devastated when his baby sister – his only compassionate sibling – went missing.
“You left me,” he said quietly after a moment, his voice muffled from being buried in Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah almost snarked back but then remembered who she was talking to. “I know,” she replied softly. “I’m sorry.” Vic pulled back, looking at her beaten face. “Who did this to you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “They’re gone.”
Vic didn’t ask for a specification on what ‘gone’ meant or who ‘they’ were, just shook his head and pulled her back into a hug. “Was dad …”
“About the same as always,” Sarah finished the incomplete thought, looking at the ground. “Honestly I’d be fine going to bed pretending this never happened.”
Vic nodded slowly, clearly still stunned. “You … uh … want some ice or something for your face?”
Sarah laughed. “Yeah, thanks.” Vic smiled, turning and practically jogging down the steps while Sarah turned back into her old room. Her dad wasn’t lying; it really was the same. All of her old band posters, her notebooks and binders from classes she’d been taking, even her old radio, all coated in a thick layer of dust that stood as a testament to their missing owner. She pulled off her jacket, cautious of the bruises lining her arms, and fished out the bundle she’d stuffed in her pocket. The blade was still wrapped securely, the curved handle the only evidence of what she was holding onto. She’d find a proper place for it tomorrow, she decided, placing it on her dresser and dropping into her bed, kicking off her shoes as best as she could manage in her state.
—---------------------------------
A loud thump resounded from the hall outside Sarah’s room, throwing her awake. She winced as her bruised ribs protested the sudden movement, and she would have liked to lay back down and pretend it was nothing, but something was playing in her mind again and again. Taliyah’s words: Sleep with both eyes open.
That was not a threat, it was a promise, and that thump made Sarah fear the Stalker had come to make good on that promise. Slowly, she pulled herself from the bed. She nearly missed the evidence of her fears; her window was cracked open.
And the knife was gone.
Her blood ran cold and she moved towards the doorway, her heart leaping into her throat as a pair of still legs poked into her vision.
Vic.
She rushed into the hallway instantly, her brother choking on his own blood. Stab wounds lined his torso, and he was struggling to breathe, even after Sarah turned him on his side. “Vic,” Sarah called through tears, trying to be conscious of her volume. She was in the house, and Sarah didn’t know just how close the Stalker was lurking. Vic coughed out a mouthful of blood, before slowly and groggily looking at his sister. “Sarah? What … what happened?”
“Don’t move, I’m going to call the police.”
“Sarah?”
“Yes?”
Vic blinked slowly before lifting his arm. Sarah shrank away with a small shriek as something cold hit her cheek. Vic held a bag of ice up to her head. “For your face,” he said with a weak smile. Sarah sat in shock for a moment, slowly taking the bag from Vic’s hand and holding his cold hand in hers. She could already see him starting to fade away. “Stay with me, Victor!”
“It’s going to be alright, Sarah.”
A crash sounded off downstairs, and she could hear her father yelling, but she couldn’t tear herself away from her brother. She waited for another word, for a goodbye or something, but he just smiled at her. And then slowly but surely, his eyes shut and the smile relaxed into a blank look. “Victor,” Sarah hissed quietly, staring at her stilled brother through tear-filled eyes. “Victor!” she called again, shaking him with no response.
Another crash from downstairs and a shout from her father again, this one calling her name.
With gritted teeth, she let go of Vic’s hand, rushing down the stairs.
“Get down!”
Her brother’s voice pulled her into combat mode instantly and she ducked just as a fist swung past where her head would have been and collided with something hard . She turned as a figure standing behind her collapsed to the ground with the collision, groaning. Sarah barely had time to register the curved knife in her hands before Taliyah was back on her feet, blood seeping down from her forehead.
She hissed in pain, leaping past Sarah and colliding with Mikey in a fury of fists and metal. Her brother screamed in pain as the knife slashed into his arms as they held a defensive position over his vital organs. Eric ran in out of nowhere, grabbing Taliyah and trying to push her to the ground. Sarah’s father – who had been writhing on the ground up until that point, staggered to his feet, grabbing a kitchen knife. “Hey!” he shouted just as Taliyah threw off Eric into a cabinet. Taliyah grinned, tossing her knife to the other hand and wiping blood from her face as she approached in a fighter’s stance. Sarah was frozen for half a second more before she realized her father had no idea what he was up against. He stood no chance against the killer, trained by years of a cat and mouse game.
“Over here!” Sarah shouted, surprising herself with the power in her voice. Taliyah’s head whipped around in an instant and a smile filled her face. “It’s me you’re after,” Sarah taunted. Taliyah sprinted in an instant, reaching Sarah far faster than the loner was prepared for. The blade came down on her quickly, interrupted by her arms in a block. She took a free moment to kick at one of Taliyah’s knees and the Stalker let out a shout of pain.
That’s right. Sarah had injured her leg in their previous fight.
Taliyah was still fast, even with teh injured leg, and countered back in an instant, throwing an elbow into Sarah’s face. The loner’s head was thrown back and she staggered away as the Stalker limped towards her. She crouched slightly, prepared to leap at Sarah again when two burly bodies collided with her. Mikey and Eric laid into her instantly, beating on her with their bare fists. Taliyah screamed in anger, but took the beating as much as she could manage, long enough to get a good opening to slash Eric’s stomach open. He backed away screaming as his innards began to spill out. Mikey screamed his brother’s name, and his turned head gave Taliyah all the opportunity she needed to get behind him and slash his throat open. He dropped to the ground instantly and Sarah screamed.
Taliyah was back on her feet headed for Sarah yet again. “Let’s finish this,” she taunted, wiping Lindholm blood from her knife. An arm was thrown around her neck that instant, and Sarah’s father tightened his grip on Taliyah’s windpipe as he shouted at Sarah. “Run!”
And Sarah did run, all the way to the dining room, where she grabbed a chair and ran back to the kitchen. She was met with the sight of Taliyah stabbing her knife into his gut, and then into his neck. Sarah screamed, swinging the chair at Taliyah. The Stalker only had enough time to look up and see her approaching fate before the wood collided with her face. Sarah didn’t have the strength to lift the chair over her head again, and even if she did, the Stalker was unconscious. Sarah looked around the bloodied kitchen, her family splayed out on the ground, unmoving. Mikey had already called the police earlier, while Sarah was fighting off Taliyah, and though the best thing she knew would be to stay here and keep her eyes on Taliyah, all Sarah could think to do in that hazy moment of confusion was run.
—---------------------------------
“Lindholm?” Her voice was groggy and her eyes still glazed over from sleep. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey, Vera,” Sarah tried to manage a smile, but it came out crooked and tired. “I … came to see you.”
Sera narrowed her eyes. “It’s three in the morning. Why not just call?”
“I don’t have a phone … well not a working one anyways. I had to look your folks up in the phonebook.”
“Phone book … they still make those?” Sera looked behind her, out on the dark, empty street. “You walked here?”
Did she? Well, she must have and it must have taken a while, but she couldn’t recall the journey if she tried. Sera didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “What happened, you look like a zombie-” Sarah stared at the ground at this. She felt like one too, but the energy she’d put into light-hearted humor waned immediately. She’d never been good at keeping up a social front.
“Serena!” came a shout from further in the house, “ Who is it?”
“Just … a friend from school, ma!” Sera shouted back before turning back to Sarah. “Sorry, dude. Come on in.”
Sarah obediently shambled in slowly, looking around the dark house as best she could and making out the shapes of furniture. Sera flipped on of the light switches and Sarah shut her eyes, wincing at the aching her head was doing. A loud gasp came from her side and she turned back to Sera. “Lindholm, what happened!? Who did this to you?!”
She looked down at a blossom of blood blooming from the stab wound in her side; just one of many injuries Sera was certainly looking at now in the light. “Taliyah.”
“Wh- … the Stalker?”
Sarah nodded slowly, dropping into one of the chairs around an old wooden table. “We got dropped off in the same place. We fought, and I ended up throwing her into the river. She came back for me … for my family.”
There was quiet for a moment and Sera blinked at her before beginning to open her mouth. “Where-”
“My family’s dead.”
The words were numb, so trivial sounding that she could have been speaking about rain. She couldn’t force any emotion behind it, she couldn’t feel anything besides her nerves crying out in pain, but even that seemed dull and faded. She pictured her dad and her brothers, splayed out on the ground, reaching their hands up shakily towards her, silently crying for help. When she snapped back to the here and now, Sera was crouched down in front of her, staring at the ground blankly processing.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said quietly, digging her nails – broken in the desperate struggle for her life – into her palm. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Sera met her gaze. “You … you’re sorry?” She shook her head slowly, then after a moment, “Where’s Taliyah?”
Sarah shrugged. “We heard sirens. She ran off before the police could get there.” She thought silently for a moment. “Actually, they’re probably looking for me too.”
She looked up from the ground and found Sera’s eyes narrowed at her, searching for something. “Sarah,” the skater said quietly, using her first name for the first time since she answered the door. They’d only ever called each other by their last names to prevent confusion in the Mist; it was a sacred thing between the two of them, an act of true importance when one used the other’s first name. “Your family … you … aren’t sad?” Sarah stared at her blankly. “Sad?”
Of course she was sad. Her family had changed. Her dad had proven he cared for his only daughter when he took the knife to the gut for her; when he held Taliyah as long as he could so Sarah could get away before the Stalker stuck a knife in his throat. And her brothers, Mikey and Eric who had shoved her away and pretended they didn’t even know her at times became the most fierce guardians she’d ever seen, fighting to the death, sacrificing themselves … to save her? And Vic … Vic had promised her everything would be alright – just before all hell broke loose … just before he shut his eyes.
So yes of course she was sad, but that’s all it was. She could be sad, but Sarah Lindholm didn’t cry; Sarah Lindhom never –
There was a tickle as something flew down her cheek. Then another, and another. She wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving it wet and a bit snotty. Sera’s eyes widened as a sob broke from Sarah’s throat. There were arms tightening around her in an instant, squeezing her and comforting her. “ What do I do?” Sarah pleaded, leaning into Sera as years of trauma and pain in the Mist, now punctuated with grief from tonight’s massacre came flowing out of her eyes.
Sera remained silent, though clearly searching for an answer as angry footsteps began echoing down the hall. “Serena, what the devil are you–”
A person Sarah could only presume to be Sera’s mother halted at the threshold, staring at Sarah with wide eyes and a gaping mouth for a moment before hurrying forward. “Dear girl, what happened to you?!”
“Call an ambulance, ma. She was attacked.” Sera’s mother was frozen for a bit before jumping into action, heading back to her room, presumably for a phone. They stayed that way for a while; Sarah trying to stop the endless wave of tears and Sera at her side, holding her through it. When blue lights began to flash through the blinds, the skater never moved. “No one else is leaving you tonight,” she said quietly, squeezing Sarah’s hand.
—----------------------------------
This … this is why she preferred the stealth method.
Back in the Mist she was invincible. She was the hunter and they were the prey. There were always the rare instances when one of the mice would fight back, maybe shoot a bullet at her, but there she had been literally set on fire and kept moving on as if nothing had happened.
This wasn’t the Mist, however. Here she was vulnerable and here, the mice fought back often.
Maybe someone like Wren could take a chair to the head like it was nothing, but it didn’t sit quite so easily with Taliyah. Blood trailed from the back of her skull down her neck, and it was getting hard to keep track of where she was going. She couldn’t walk in a straight line; it was as if every tilt and turn of her head had the world tilting and turning with it. Eventually she came to a place, a parking lot of some store or gas station or something with lights. She couldn’t go forward anymore, instead reaching her hands down and slowly lowering herself to the ground and curling up into a ball. Her head throbbed and she was tired. All it would take was a few moments to get herself together.
The feeling of something landing on her arm, jolted her awake. The sky was just beginning to lighten with the dawn and the sky seemed to be pulsing with color; the dull grey-blue would suddenly flash with brighter saturation in a blinding method. Two fuzzy shapes stood over here, wavering back and forth in her vision. “Excuse me, ma’am. Is that yours?”
“Mine?” she looked down at the object now resting on her arm, picking it up and squinting. A bunny-mask, once white but now faded and stained with blood and sediment from the river stared back at her. She returned the smile it gave her, tracing the eye-slits with a finger. “My mask,” she said quietly with a grin.
“Yes, I thought so.” The shapes leaned down to her in unison, causing her to realize that it was not two people, but one, simply split by her concussive vision. “Taliyah Metah, you’re under the arrest for the murder of Shane, Michael, Eric, and Victor Lindholm, as well as the attempted murder of Sarah Lindholm.”
Her eyes widened. “Attempted … attempted?!”
The officer caught on to her shock and just about laughed in her face. “She reached the hospital two hours ago. Sorry to tell you she’s in stable condition.”
No. She couldn’t possibly be alive. Taliyah … had failed?
She was grabbed by her arms and hoisted to her feet, another officer coming to cuff her. She frisked her, quickly finding the knife with gloved hands and holding it up to the other officer before placing it in a plastic bag. “Our murder weapon, I’d presume.”
There was movement and noise, EMT’s checking her head injury and suddenly she was being taken to the hospital instead of the station, while still under heavy surveillance from a nearby officer.
And all the while, all she could think was ‘the attempted murder of Sarah Lindholm.’
She missed. She failed. The Stalker never failed.
For the second time that night, Taliyah found herself mad , and as she was handcuffed to the gurney, she took in a deep breath and let out a gut wrenching scream.