Tell Me a Story

Published February 1988

First printing December 1987

First Australian Paperback Edition June 1988

ISBN 0 373 16235 9

Copyright © 1988 by Dallas Schulze. All rights reserved.

Philippine copyright 1987.

Australian copyright 1987.

New Zealand copyright 1987.

T
he pile of newspapers was moving. Flynn peered at it carefully to make sure. Yes, it was definitely moving. This seemed odd when he thought about it. Everything else was rather foggy at the moment, but he was positive that newspapers did not move on their own.

Therefore, there must be something moving them. This piece of brilliant reasoning burst into his alcohol-soaked mind with the force of a lightning bolt. He nodded slowly, pleased with himself. And to think that he'd taken a cab because he thought he was too drunk to drive home. This proved how wrong he had been.

He slumped against the wall that held him upright and considered the problem. If the papers were not moving themselves, which he had decided was the case, he should know why they were moving. After all, this was his alley; he ought to know what was happening in it.

His eyes narrowed. Was it his alley? Now there was a point for him to bring up with the lawyers. Since the family owned the building, did that mean they owned the alley, too? That question ought to keep them busy for at least ten minutes. They might as well do something to earn the retainers they were paid.

The newspapers stirred again, drawing his wandering attention. He wet one long finger and held it up waveringly. Wind. That could be the cause. He was proud of this brilliant thought and rather irritated when he could feel no breeze on his damp finger.

When his gaze returned to the papers there was a definite frown drawing his black brows together. The papers shifted more violently this time and Flynn's frown deepened into a scowl. That was an arm. Thin and pale and amazingly fragile against the dark macadam, but still, it was definitely an arm.

Now he was going to have to investigate. No question about it. Whether it was technically his alley or not, he felt a proprietary interest in it. He couldn't just walk off and leave it in the possession of these animated and possibly dangerous papers.

Actually, he wasn't sure he could walk at all, he admitted with a flash of honesty. But that was neither here nor there. The point was—and he seemed to be having some difficulty in sticking to the point—it was his civic duty to find out exactly what was going on. What if this was the first wave of an invading force from another planet? This could be an alien pod looking for some innocent human to take over their body.

It didn't occur to Flynn that he was the only human within striking range of the potential pod; nor did he think that the alley behind a luxury apartment building in Los Angeles seemed an odd starting point for an interplanetary invasion. At five o'clock in the morning, after drinking all night, anything seemed not only possible but logical.

The ground showed a disconcerting tendency to tilt when he moved away from the wall but, filled with pixilated patriotism, Flynn managed to cross the space between himself and the suspicious papers. With some vague thought of protecting his back, he leaned against the concrete wall next to his target and slid bonelessly down it until he sat on the pavement.

His landing was not quite as clean as it could have been. The lump under his right thigh jerked alarmingly and the papers cascaded in all directions. This startling activity was accompanied by a muffled shriek of pain that settled into a high, childish voice.

"Hey! Get off my foot, you big ox." The foot in question was yanked out from under him.

Flynn found himself gazing into a small heart-shaped face, fine sandy brows drawn together in a fierce scowl. He smiled at the face in a friendly way. "Sorry about your foot."

The two studied each other in the gray predawn light that oozed between the high walls of the alley. Flynn's gaze was clear and alert. Only someone who knew him well would have seen the faint glaze that dulled the vivid blue of his eyes.

"Are you a pod?" His tone was interested, but not particularly concerned. "And if you're a pod, are you male or female, or doesn't it matter?"

The scowl on the little face returned in triplicate. "I'm not a pod. I'm a girl."

"Are you sure?" Flynn was vaguely disappointed. He'd been looking forward to telling his father that aliens had landed and they'd chosen McCallister property as their landing site. The old man would have had an apoplectic fit at their effrontery.

"Course I'm sure. There's no such thing as pods. That was only in a movie. If you're too drunk to know that you must be really drunk."

Flynn gave up the pleasing image of his father telling the aliens to get off his property and looked apologetic. "Plastered, I'm afraid. But then I didn't expect to be called on to decide matters of national importance. Are you sure you're not a pod?"

"Course I'm sure."

He sighed. "That's a relief. I'd really rather not have the fate of the world in my hands right now. If you're not a pod, what are you doing under that pile of papers?"

"I was trying to sleep," she told him with heavy sarcasm.

His brows rose. "Sleeping? Why were you sleeping under those papers? Wouldn't a bed be more comfortable?"

"Course it would, but I don't have a bed." The statement was flat, leavened with a touch of scorn.

Flynn's brows shot up until they almost met the heavy fall of black hair that drifted onto his forehead.

"No bed at all?" he asked. She shook her head and he echoed the gesture. "It doesn't seem fair. I have more beds than I know what to do with and you don't have one at all." He sat pondering the inequities of this for so long that the child leaned forward to see if he was still awake.

She jumped when he spoke suddenly. "Tell you what, you can use one of my beds. Help me up and we'll go to my 'partment and find you a bed. Bound to be a spare or two lying around the place."

He struggled to his feet, leaning one hand on his companion's shoulder once he achieved his goal. He frowned down at her. "You're not very big, are you?"

She drew herself up straighter, almost unbalancing him as she did so. "My mom says that being tall isn't important. Short people can move mountains, too."

He nodded, impressed by the profundity of this remark. "Very true. Come to think of it, I'm six-two and I've never moved a mountain. Just goes to prove that being tall isn't everything."

"Just a minute, mister." The piping voice interrupted his forward move, and he turned to look down at her, weaving slightly with checked momentum. "Are there any strings attached to this?"

He gave the question some consideration. "I don't think so. What kind of strings did you have in mind?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, but my mom always said that men don't make offers without strings."

"You know, the more I hear, the more I think your mother is a singularly intelligent woman."

She frowned a bit. "Well, I don't know about that, but she's real smart."

She guided his erratic footsteps across the alley and stopped in front of the door he indicated. He fumbled with the knob for a moment and then remembered it was locked. After a lengthy search for his keys, which turned up in the pocket of his gray slacks, his companion took the key ring from him and tried each key until she hit the right one.

The door closed behind them with an expansive whoosh of air. Flynn blinked rapidly in the sudden glare of light, though the short corridor was actually very softly lit. A bank of four elevators lined one wall.

With a great deal of concentration, he managed to punch out a short combination of numbers that opened the doors on the elevator. The two of them entered the thickly carpeted cubical and the doors swished shut. Flynn grabbed for the nearest wall as the floor surged upward, leaving his stomach somewhere beneath them.

"Are you okay, mister?" He closed his eyes in exquisite agony as the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, revealing a wide foyer and two beautifully carved wooden doors on either side.

A small hand tugged on his pant leg. "Are you gonna be sick, mister?"

He opened his eyes and looked down into her concerned little face. "I am never sick," he announced firmly, the words directed at least as much to his churning stomach as to the child.

Using her shoulder as a brace, he steered her out of the elevator and then stopped, trying to remember why he was here. A small voice recalled him to the task at hand.

"Which door, mister?"

Flynn turned slowly and then pointed to the door on the left, with a gesture worthy of Lady Macbeth. He shook his head with equal drama and then had to wait a moment for it to stop spinning.

"Don't go near that door. A dragon lives there."

"There's no such thing as dragons." The pragmatic statement did nothing to further the atmosphere Flynn had thought he was creating. He pulled his gaze from the door and looked down at his companion, his chin setting stubbornly.

"I live here and I happen to know that there is a dragon living there. We meet occasionally in the elevator. She has red hair and cold green eyes and she can freeze your bones with one look."

"A dragon wouldn't fit in a elevator."

"She's a very small dragon. Besides, I thought you said that there couldn't be a dragon because they didn't exist."

His new acquaintance shook her head, her small face twisted in an expression of adult exasperation.

"You're drunker'n a skunk."

Flynn frowned. "We have already established that point. I see no reason to belabor it."

He followed her lead to the other door and watched while she sorted through the key ring, trying each one in turn. He could have told her which key to use, but he was in no hurry. There was a pleasant buzzing sensation in his head. Sooner orTater, the alcohol was going to catch up with him and he was going to regret the night's debauchery, but for now, he had no objections to standing outside his door.

The quiet snick of the lock interrupted his thoughts, and he reached out to push the door open. They stepped onto thick, soft carpeting and the door clicked quietly shut behind them. Flynn walked a few feet before realizing that something was wrong. He stopped and thought about it for a moment. He couldn't see anything. That was the problem. He spun on one heel with more enthusiasm than sense and stumbled against a narrow table. There was a faint thud as the table rattled beneath his weight and something fell to the floor.

His groping hands cleared the table of the remainder of its contents as he felt his way along the length of it, searching for the wall. He had just succeeded in finding it and was preparing to start the arduous task of locating the light switch when brilliant light suddenly flooded the hall.

He turned more slowly this time, then leaned back on the table and studied his companion. She stood on the opposite side of the hall, her hand just dropping away from the switch. He gave her a smile that had been known to make little old ladies swoon with pleasure.

She was not impressed. Her eyes took in the destruction he had left behind, and when she looked up at him her small mouth was pursed in stern disapproval.

"You're drunker than a skunk." It was obvious that his condition disgusted her, and Flynn tried his smile again, adding just a bit of coaxing apology to it. His new mentor only scowled deeper. "Look what a mess you made."

He cast his eyes on the scattered bric-a-brac that lay on the thick carpet, and shuddered. "Good grief. It looks like a miniature massacre." Small soldiers lay in positions suggestive of death and destruction. He gasped and clutched his chest theatrically. "Oh, my God! He shot me! The short guy in the gray suit shot me."

She giggled. "They're all short and there's lots of them in gray suits."

"Well, obviously, one of them recognized me as a Yankee through and through." He poked one of the little figures with an expensively shod foot. "My father's chess set. Trust him to have a chess set based on the Civil War." There was an old bitterness in the words.

He cocked his head, listening to the mellow chimes of the grandfather clock that stood in the living room.

"Six o'clock. The whole night is gone." He threw off the brief melancholy that had seized him and lurched away from the wall. "Come on. We've got to be in bed by six-thirty."

"How come?" The words were brought out on a yawn as she followed his unsteady path. He stumbled down the two steps that led into the living room and almost sprawled onto the carpet. Some rapid and surprisingly graceful footwork kept him upright, and he turned to grin at her triumphantly.

"Fred Astaire, eat your heart out," he exclaimed expansively.

She studied him critically. "Fred Astaire did things deliberately. That was an accident. Besides, you're not wearing a fancy black coat.''

"How do you know he did things deliberately?" he asked mulishly. "I bet a lot of his best routines were accidents. And what's wrong with my clothes?"

He tilted his head to look down at himself. Gray slacks and a blue silk shirt that matched his eyes were topped by a suede jacket. He had thought the outfit looked fine when he'd put it on earlier in the evening.

His companion ignored his question and returned to a more important issue. "How come we've got to be in bed by six-thirty?"

He blinked at her as if trying to remember where he was and then gave a sudden gasp. "Six-thirty. Oh, my God! We've got to hurry." He reached out to grab her shoulder and steered a weaving path across the living room. He stopped in the hall and gave her an intent look, bending down to look her in the eye.

"If I'm still up at six-thirty, I turn into a vampire."

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

He nodded solemnly and straightened up, grabbing onto a convenient doorjamb when his head spun. "It's an old family curse," he said sadly. "Every morning at six-thirty, we all turn into vampires."