Fic: The Family Business - Chapter 1

[rusakko]

“I think Grandma wants us to pick up where she left off. Saving people, hunting things. The family business.”

Lalli Hotakainen thought he had left hunting monsters and ghosts behind him for good. But after their grandmother’s death, his cousin shows up, asking for Lalli’s help to fulfil her last wish. Although they do not know it, an old enemy is also hot on their heels…

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Chapter 1: The Intruder

”Onni, take Lalli and Tuuri outside as fast as you can!” Grandma pushes them towards the stairs, shouting over the crackling of the fire. “Go!”

Lalli tries to reach for her, but Onni grabs his hand and drags him away through the smoke.

“What about mom and dad?” he hears Tuuri gasp out. “And Lalli’s mom and dad?”

“Grandma will get them, now hurry!” Onni replies, coughing.

Outside, the fire truck is already pulling up and they are quickly jostled off into the back of an ambulance by paramedics. Someone tries to wrap Lalli in a blanket; he manages to squirm loose and starts to run back towards the house, but Onni grabs him again just when the windows explode outward in a mass of flames.

“It’s going to be all right”, Tuuri tells him, bravely, as the firefighters get their hose working and start blasting water at the flames.

But at that moment, Grandma emerges from the house, half dragged and half carried by a firefighter, who is shaking his head at his colleagues, and Onni bursts into tears, and Lalli knows that things will never be all right again.

Lalli wakes with a start, still tasting the smoke in his mouth, and hits his head on the bottom of the bed above him. It’s been three weeks since Grandma’s funeral, and the old nightmare from more than ten years ago has been back to haunt him every night. Or day, really, since Lalli’s lifestyle is mostly nocturnal.

But it’s not the nightmare that has woken him. He can hear noise from the kitchen, footsteps and slammed cupboard doors. A burglar? Or something worse?

Lalli soundlessly crawls out from under the bed, grabbing the knife that he always keeps beside him, just in case. He creeps to the door, waits for a heartbeat and then crashes it open, leaping out with the knife ready to stab any unwelcome visitor.

And skids to a halt as he sees his short, chubby cousin, who is holding an empty box of cookies.

“Do you ever eat anything else than rye bread and these?” Tuuri asks him, waving the box. “And put the knife away, it’s just me.”

“What are you doing here?” Lalli demands.

“Making sure that you’re alive. You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“You could have e-mailed me.”

“You don’t answer your e-mails either.”

She’s right, but that doesn’t make Lalli any happier. “I’m alive. Now leave me alone”, he hisses.

Tuuri sighs. “All right, I did have another reason for coming.” She grabs her shoulder bag from the floor, brushing stray breadcrumbs and hair off it. “You could clean your kitchen a bit more often, you know.”

Lalli watches her intently as she digs around in the bag. Maybe she’s brought cookies? No, of course she hasn’t. That would’ve been too much to hope for. It’s just a stupid old leather-bound –

“That’s Grandma’s journal”, Lalli says quietly. Why has Tuuri brought that here?

“It arrived in the mail two days after she died”, his cousin says, her voice trembling a little at the last word. “She must have known something was coming for her and sent it to me.”

“Why?” Lalli asks. “Was there a message for you?”

“No, it’s just full of notes on… you know, hunting stuff. Monsters, ghosts, evil spirits, witches. And then there’s this.” She hands him a newspaper clipping.

Another hiker drowned in Nuuksio National Park, the headline says. Lalli skims the article. Apparently, seven hikers have drowned in the same lake during the last five years, always around Midsummer. That’s weird, but he doesn’t want to admit it to Tuuri. Doesn’t want to hear what she’s going to say.

She says it anyway.

“I think Grandma wants us to pick up where she left off. Saving people, hunting things. The family business.”

“No.” Lalli says it without hesitating. They had agreed to leave it behind, all three of them. Grandma had accepted it too, wanted them to live normal lives. Or at least as normal as was possible for three cousins who had lost their parents and been brought up by a hunter obsessed with catching the monster that killed them. The nightmares are bad enough already, he doesn’t want to give them any more fuel. “Don’t you have your university studies to focus on, anyway?”

“It’s the summer holiday, stupid,” Tuuri replies. “And I resigned from my job after Grandma died. I just couldn’t face work, and anyway, she actually left us some money. So I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I don’t. I have a job.”

“Playing poker on the internet isn’t a job.”

“It pays pretty well.”

“So you could afford to take a few days off and help me.”

Lalli hates arguing with Tuuri. She always has an answer to everything. But he isn’t ready to give in yet.

“Ask Onni.”

“I did. Where did you think I got your spare key, anyway? But you know what he’s like, he just tried to persuade me not to do it. I suspect he hasn’t left his apartment since the funeral. You should see the warding signs he’s painted everywhere, he’s completely paranoid. And he’s a useless hunter anyway, even though he’s good at all the theoretical stuff.”

She’s right again. You can’t trust someone to have your back if they’re prone to bursting into tears at the slightest sign of danger. Lalli decides to change track.

“This drowning thing, what’s so strange about it? It’s Midsummer, people get drunk. Then they drown.”

“If you’d read it properly, you’d know that none of them were drunk. And they were found with their clothes and backpacks, but there are no cliffs or anything around the lake, so they can’t have fallen in. Besides, the water is shallow close to the shore, you need to wade in deeper to actually be able to drown. Or be dragged by something.”

“Suicide?” Lalli suggests desperately. He feels that he is being dragged into something he wants no part of. Tuuri just gives him a pitying look.

“Come on, Lalli. It’s a Näkki, and you know it.”

Of course it is. But it isn’t his problem.

“Look, I know you don’t think it’s your problem, and I promise I won’t ask you to do anything like this again. Just help me this one time, please. I need to do this, for Grandma. It seems to have been her dying wish.”

Lalli scrunches his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to do this. He just wants to crawl back under the bed and go to sleep. But Tuuri is sad, he can see it on her face and hear it in her voice. He doesn’t want her to be sad.

“Fine”, he says. And immediately regrets it.