by Max Parrott
"No, that's okay. I know you don't have a car. Just text me your address. I can be over at... seven o'clock?"
"Sounds great," Jasmine said, smiling.
Unlike with Charles, she was not worried what Alicia would think of the place she lived in. So she texted the address over and headed out of the building.
***
Seven o'clock came and went, but Jasmine didn't notice. She was too busy cutting up cheese and meat, getting a tray of snacks ready. It was 7:15 when there was finally a knock at the door.
"I'll get it!" Luffy called, running to the door. "Wait, no, I can't. Jasmine, help!"
"Hold your horses," she called, washing and drying her hands, then hurrying out to the living room to open the door.
Alicia was there, considerably dressed down when compared to her usual attire. The leather shoes, khakis and buttoned-down shirt had been replaced by run down sneakers, loose shorts, and a t-shirt that must have been at least ten years old.
The two girls shared a bubbly greeting. Alicia stepped inside and Jasmine shut the door.
"So, this is the place," Alicia said, looking around.
"Yeah," Jasmine replied, biting her lip.
"It's nice on the inside," Alicia replied. "I like what you've done with it."
Jasmine laughed. "You mean all the posters on the wall? They were cheap and they covered up the nail holes from all the previous tenants. Are you thirsty, or anything?"
Luffy watched proudly as Jasmine played host. They ate and drank and laughed, sharing gossip about school.
"I heard that Professor Hawke has a secret lover," Alicia said at one point, her eyes going wide.
"Him?" Jasmine asked. "Well, I guess I can see it. If you said Professor Keller, I never would have believed you. Who'd you hear it from?"
"Just around," said Alicia, shrugging. "Apparently he forgot to turn off his phone and his texts were still up. Someone saw something a little racy."
"Like what?" Jasmine asked.
"I dunno, just something kind of juicy or something."
Jasmine made a face. "Juicy?"
Alicia grabbed a pillow off the end of the couch and threw it at her. "Fine, then! You tell the next story!"
It went on like that for close to two hours. Eventually the talk began to circle around the concept of boys. By making an insinuation about her and Charles, Jasmine was able to get quite a rise out of Alicia. But other than that, the other woman seemed guarded and quiet about the subject. Like she was hiding something, keeping something close.
And it was around that time when she began to be distracted by something on her phone. It kept buzzing, and she would keep lifting it off the cushion and typing out something with incredible speed, using her thumbs more efficiently than some people used their entire hands on a keyboard. With each successive message she sent, Alicia seemed to get more agitated, until she seemed to be positively fuming.
"Are you OK?" Jasmine asked. The question she really wanted to ask was Who are you talking to? But that was just her inquisitive nature acting up.
"It's my sister," Alicia said with a groan. "She's such a..."
She left the next word unsaid, but Jasmine was pretty sure what it would have been.
Another message came in, buzzing Alicia's phone. This time when she read it she made a loud grunt of anger and tossed it down. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she tossed her head back, hiding her emotions.
"Alicia," Jasmine said.
"It's OK," the other woman said quietly.
"Is there something I can do?"
"No. Unless you can convince that witch to help me out!"
Jasmine shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "What do you need help with?"
Alicia sighed, sitting forward and grabbing her phone. "Nothing. I guess I should probably go. You don't want me around when I'm like this."
"It's fine," Jasmine said. "We're friends."
But Alicia insisted on leaving. It seemed no amount of coaxing would make her stay, and so Jasmine sat back and watched Alicia gather her things.
"Thanks for everything," Alicia said, sniffling and wiping her eye. "Maybe we can do it again some time."
"Are you sure you have to go?" Jasmine asked as a last-ditch effort.
Alicia nodded. She quickly looked at her phone, either checking the time or seeing if there were any new messages. Then she was gone. The sounds of her footsteps came for a moment, echoing down the stairs, than the soft rumble of her car engine, the crunch of wheels on the dusty drive, and that was it.
"It was nice having her," Luffy said, glancing sadly at the door. "She smelled good."
"Creepy," Jasmine said.
"What? I'm a dog." He came to join her on the couch, curling up beside her leg. "I wonder what that was about, her leaving so suddenly?"
Jasmine shrugged. She had no idea. And she wasn't going to pry into it... unless she had to.
***
To Jasmine's mind, no more heinous device had ever been invented than the alarm clock. Perhaps the nuclear bomb was close, but at least that had fallen out of popular use. Alarm clocks, however, had continued their reign of terror in bedrooms across the world, rousing people from their perfect rest, with their wonderful dreams not yet completed.
When her own alarm went off at 4.45 a.m., Jasmine sat up fast with a chill traveling down her spine. For once she was glad for being woken; the shrill klaxon issuing from her phone had rescued her from a horrifying nightmare.
She had been alone in cold, nighttime waters somewhere off the coast near Blackwood Cove. Sometimes she could see the buildings she knew so well, twisted by the lens of the dream. She would glimpse them through parting waves of mist that quickly crashed back together again, stranded in the murk.
And she was not alone. Every now and then as she swam, she felt something cold and slimy against her ankles. At first she hoped it was only a bit of seaweed or kelp. But the further she swam, and the more she felt it, the more it seemed like limp, dead fingers trying to pull her down.
She swam and she swam, screaming for help. The more she tried to reach shore, the more it seemed to recede, so that she was always at the same distance. She would swim for what felt like an hour, and when the mists parted she would see the shore just as far as it had been before.
She screamed for Luffy, but for once he wasn't there for her. She screamed for her mom and dad and she even screamed for Sheriff Lustbader and Marlon Gale.
But no one came.
Finally she began to grow tired. Her bones froze in the cold water and her joints seized up like they were made of rusty metal. Her strength failed, and she sank under the water for the first time...
And Jack Torres was waiting for her, half his skin sloughed off, his bones showing through. He grinned, welcoming her into death.
And thankfully that was when she woke, the breath catching in her throat. Luffy was already up, standing by the bed and wagging his tail. She reached over to turn off her alarm and gave him a few pets as she lay back down.
But before her head could hit the pillow, Luffy was shoving his own head under the back of her neck.
"No you don't!" he said. "You told me to make sure you got out of bed when your alarm went off. No more sleeping!"
"I couldn't fall asleep now," she said, grimacing as she shoved his head out of the way with her elbow. "I just need to lie here for a minute."
"Another vision?" Luffy asked.
"Just a dream," she replied. Because if that had been a vision...
Of course, it wasn't. In a few moments reality began to bleed back in, along with the early morning grogginess. There was nothing to be afraid of. Not yet, anyway. It was just her and Luffy in a quiet apartment, basking in the wonders of air conditioning.
She forced herself to get up at 4:47. Shuffling into the bathroom, she swallowed down a glassful of cold water and then splashed a little on her face. After brushing her teeth, she was just about good to go.
All she had to do now was get he
r running clothes on. A pair of comfortable socks, some shorts, and a tank top would do it. She could have dressed warmer, but she wanted to soak in as much of the cool air as she could before it went away. The short heat wave had passed and now they were back in the territory of the upper fifties, with rain in the forecast for three of the next five days. She would start the run cold, but by the end she would be sweating.
"Ready to go?" she asked as she shoved a couple of water bottles into her pack.
"Just about," Luffy said, wagging his tail. "But I may need to take care of some business before we start running. You know, drop some weight."
"Please say no more," Jasmine replied with a smile, pulling open her junk drawer to grab a bag.
***
They set out at an easy pace, taking the wide gravel shoulder of the main road for the first quarter mile. There wasn't much of a breeze; the chilly air hung heavy around them, charged with moisture and ozone. It had rained the night before. The grass and the trees to either side of the road were laden with droplets that continued to filter down with the softest of noises.
Only one car passed them before they turned off onto the footpath that would bring them the rest of the way. Soon they seemed to be lost in the forest, running down a tunnel that had been bored out of it. A few birds were just starting their dawn chorus, though the sun was still behind the horizon. Jasmine breathed in the forest air, smiling, thrilled by it all. She never felt freer than she was out here traveling solely under her own strength. On her own two feet, she felt like anything was possible. That she could go anywhere and be there in no time at all.
Occasionally they spotted a wisp of mist crawling across the path. They always seemed to dissipate before Jasmine and Luffy could reach them. Though they did not cling quite so heavily to the ground as the sea fog of home, they were nevertheless a welcome reminder of Blackwood Cove.
Other than a few faint reflections on her nightmare, death was the farthest thing from Jasmine's mind. She was focused entirely on life, on possibilities... she began to plan out her whole future during that run, dreaming as bravely and boldly as she used to as a child. She was aware that most of these ideas wouldn't stick, but it made her giddy to come up with them. She imagined herself crushing every course ahead of her at Wildwood, of being top of every class. She imagined landing her first job in the publishing world before she even graduated, and moving up the ranks with preternatural speed. She was a true savant, a genius of the trade. With her eye for quality, she could sniff out the greatest new stories and the most lasting new voices. She would publish the first works of authors who would go on to win major literary prizes and change the world...
Before she knew it, her GPS watch was chiming the fifth mile. She looked down and saw the time in which she had completed it; 7:15. Her fastest time yet. No wonder she found herself completely out of breath, her legs burning. Luffy was looking at her like she had gone insane, panting like a maniac.
"Sorry," she said. "I'll slow it down a bit."
"Hey, don't be sorry," Luffy replied. "Run as fast as you want. I can keep up."
He went against his own words by crying uncle less than half a mile later. Jasmine slowed to a cool down speed, jogging lightly through the curves in the trail that immediately preceded her arrival at Wildwood College.
The sun was just starting to make itself known, pushing the blue of predawn out of the sky and replacing it in waves of violet and red and orange. She could just see the orb of the sun through the trees to the east, masked enough by the foliage that it did not sting her eyes. She stared at it, entranced, until she tripped over the concrete block at the head of a parking space.
Looking around, she saw only three cars parked here. One was the Dean's. She didn't recognize it by sight, but it was parked in the assigned spot. The other two cars she didn't recognize, but she figured they must belong to administrative workers. She didn't think anyone else would be here so early.
They walked up the dewy grass toward the flank of the building. Jasmine took off her shoes and socks and let her tired feet luxuriate in the soft ground.
"Why don't you just do that all the time?" Luffy asked, staring at her feet.
"Because someone thousands of years ago decided people needed shoes," she replied. "And now we're all cursed with soft feet."
Luffy gave her a contented look, as if to say makes sense to me.
Up ahead, parked just off the curb on the road leading up to the main building's circular drop-off point, she saw another vehicle. This was a white van emblazoned with the logo of a New Market cleaning company, an outfit called Symkowski and Sons. They must be just about finished with their nightly cleaning, she thought. Its presence at this hour went against the image that Wildwood had cultivated for itself. It was always clean, and simply that. Clean without having been cleaned, prim and proper out of sheer force of habit, not because they paid a bunch of hairy guys with mops who liked cheap beer and fast food to come in each night and wipe the place down. At least, that was the image Jasmine had in her head of the boys at Symkowski and Sons.
The clock tower began to chime in 6 a.m. just as Luffy and Jasmine were approaching the giant vestibule of the main building. Both of them looked up at the tower, watching the giant hands move.
"Does something look wrong up there to you?" Luffy asked.
Jasmine stopped, shading her eyes from the rising sun as she scanned the tower. "No. What are you looking at?"
"I dunno," said Luffy. "Just seems like there's something missing. Oh well."
As they started walking again, the front doors opened a little ways ahead of them. A short man with muscle-bound arms stepped out, carrying a broom and dustpan. He had the Symkowski and Sons logo on his shirt and, smiling, Jasmine realized he was quite hairy after all. The man gave her a greeting nod and turned left, walking around the side of the vestibule.
As Jasmine reached the door and grabbed the handle, she was stopped dead in her tracks by a sudden screaming.
She turned to look at Luffy. His hackles had raised, and she felt like hers had too. The hair on the back of her neck went up, and the hair on her arms, and all the rest of the fine hairs across her body.
The two of them ran around the vestibule, following in the footsteps of the cleaner. They found him standing twenty feet away, slowly backing away from someone who was lying there on the paving stones.
Jasmine stared. Deep down she knew this was going to come. As soon as the first vision hit her, she understood that this was her fate. For whatever reason, through whatever higher power or just through the random chaos of creation, she seemed destined to live around death forever.
"Now I know what was missing," Luffy grumbled, looking up at her. "The railing."
And he was right. At the very top of the clock tower, above the face of the clock itself, was a little look out platform. It was segmented up by heavy duty posts. The spaces between the posts were spanned by wrought iron railings. One of those segments was indeed missing from the top... and Jasmine saw it a second later, lying on the ground not far from the body.
Chapter 4
It occurred to Jasmine that this was already the second dead body she had seen, not counting the open casket funeral she had gone to as a teenager. The first had not shocked her as she expected it would, which at first made her assume she was tougher than she previously thought.
But the second body was a different story altogether, because it was someone she knew. The sight made her turn away, her stomach constricting and her eyes dancing with black speckles as she nearly fainted. She fell to one knee on the ground, panting in an effort to get her lungs working again. She stayed like that for a long time, hearing the cries and shouting around her only faintly.
"Call the police!"
"Call an ambulance!"
"Did you see anything? Did he fall?"
That last question struck as being monumentally dumb. Of course he fell. Of course that was what had killed him. She knew that part. She had alrea
dy figured that out during the brief glance she had taken at the body.
If not for the visions, she was content to let that stand as the chief explanation, indeed the only explanation, for how he had ended up there.
But as she squatted there and tried to sort out her thoughts, she wrestled with another fact she already knew. Oliver Bridges had not died of an accidental fall. The visions didn't mess around with accidents. He had been murdered. He had been pushed.
By who?
Jasmine finally looked up at the sound of crackling radios. Two officers had arrived and were corralling the crowd away from the body. One of them, a young man with a mustache and a nervous twinkle in his eye, bent over and laid a hand gently on her arm.
"Miss Moore?" he said. "You need to come with me now. Just a short ways away, OK?"
She nodded and went with him, her eyes wandering over his badge. Officer Barrett, New Market PD. She was glad he was here, though he looked almost as frightened as she felt. But even the fear was beginning to fade away. This was out of her hands. Other than those stubborn visions, she had nothing to do with any of this. She had already solved two murders in the past few months... she had no desire to make a career out of it.
"Just wait here for a few moments," Officer Barrett said. "We'll be right back with you."
Jasmine nodded, turning away and stroking Luffy's back as the police did whatever they were doing. Tracing the body, putting up a cordon, taking photos...
"I can't believe it," Luffy said. "I know we've been around enough of it lately, but death still doesn't make sense to me. You're living and breathing and having fun, and suddenly a second later... it's all over. Lights out. Goodnight forever. Just seems strange to me, I dunno. Maybe it's just because I'm a dog."
"It's not that," Jasmine said quietly. "Most humans have trouble wrapping their heads around the subject too."
"But not you, right?" Luffy asked.
"Sure," she said. "Not me."
It was a total lie, of course.
"But it's all fine, right?" Luffy said, flicking his tail against her. "We're going to find out who did it, and make sure it doesn't happen again."