Monstrous (Blood of Cain Book 1)

by J. L. Murray

“At the Starlight Motel,” I said, my eyes drifting toward the on-ramp to the highway that was just over a fence and a patch of grass. A large semi-truck sped by on the highway, its jake brakes renting the air with a steady thud-thud-thud. They told me I couldn’t have you,” I said, disgusted at the heaviness in my voice. Why was I telling him this? It was too personal.

  “What do you mean?”

  “God, Dekker, don’t make me do this.”

  “Was that why you left the way you did?” he said, a need in his voice.

  “I figured you wouldn’t even remember me,” I said. “You’d had a lot to drink.”

  “So did you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it doesn’t affect me as strongly anymore. I have to drink a lot to get drunk. And fast.”

  “That explains why you weren’t on the floor of that nasty bar,” he said, a shadow of a smile playing on his lips.

  “'You can’t keep him, Frankie.' That’s what they said. They tell me where to go, that’s how it works. They tell me where to go, and I work out the rest. They said I had to leave. I wanted to stay. I...I wanted to stay, Dekker. That’s all.”

  “You weren’t playing me that night?”

  “You’re surprised?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I mean, I’m pretty good at reading people. You could have stolen someone else’s car, you know. Someone else’s wallet.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself everyone is just another piece of shit. But I looked at you. I shouldn’t have looked at you, but I did. I even said I was sorry. I just wanted to stay. More than anything, I just wanted to stay.”

  “Frankie, it’s okay.”

  “No, now you have to hear. You wanted to know. I’m not...how I seem.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t feel things sometimes and it scares me. I hurt people and the only reason I cry is because I like the killing. More and more, I’m starting to like it. Do you know what that’s like?”

  He took my hand in his. “I know what that’s like.”

  “This life isn’t mine. Not anymore. And the wraiths are at least partly right. I’m a sinner and a thief and a whore. And I can’t keep you. You shouldn’t have come after me, you shouldn’t have stayed. I was fine. Before you came, I was fucking great.”

  “Is that true?”

  “No.” I laughed dryly. “No. But it was something I was used to. Now you’re here...”

  “Frankie, it’s going to take a lot more than a bunch of bullshit wraiths to get rid of me.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why are you here? Why are you really here?”

  “Because,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m like you, I think. I think we’re the same. And maybe if we’re together, it’ll be better. Almost like a life.”

  “There’s still hope for you,” I said. “You might still beat those murders. Or at least get a deal.”

  “No. Do you know how many women Jimmy Wayne Frasier killed?”

  “Seventeen,” I said without thinking.

  “It would have been a lot more, before the cops caught up with him. You took some goddamn evil out of the world. One piece of shit put down, dozens of women lived. We're doing something really good here. Frankie, I don’t think these wraiths are on your side.”

  “They’re all I know,” I said. “It’s always been them, ever since I died.”

  “Maybe it’s time you started questioning them. What’s the last thing they told you?”

  I thought of my sister, scarred, her voice full of venom and hate. I touched my throat where she’d grabbed me.

  “They told me to go to the lake,” I said. “And they told me I needed to stay away from you.”

  “You’re not very good at following orders.”

  “That was the only rule,” I said. “At the crossroads. Follow orders.”

  “And you’re still here,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Do you ever think that maybe you’re not here because of them?”

  “I don’t really give myself a lot of time to think about it.”

  “So they want you to stay away from me, and they want you to sacrifice yourself to this...thing in the lake.”

  I shrugged.

  “So what are you going to do, Frankie?”

  “I’m going to get some sleep first,” I said. “Then I’m going to eat a square meal. After that?” I sighed. “Probably I’ll just punch this piece of shit monster in the throat with her own foot.”

  “That sounds colorful.”

  “I’m a colorful girl.”

  chapter thirteen

  I

  didn’t ask Dekker how he paid for the room, but I waited outside, having committed a crime in the lobby just days before. He came out, jingling a key on a plastic tag. The room smelled like a million cigarettes had been smoked there, and I could see nicotine drops dried on the yellowing wallpaper. But the bed was soft enough, and the blankets were clean.

  “Lap of luxury,” I mumbled as my head sank into the soft pillows. Dekker peered out through the heavy curtains before coming back. I cracked one eye and saw him at the end of the bed, staring at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, his voice soft. He sat on the corner of the bed and proceeded to unlace my boots.

  “I don’t need a mother,” I mumbled.

  “Your friend made me promise to take care of you, Mourning,” he said, pulling one of my boots off. I heard it thud as he dropped it on the floor. “I never break a promise.”

  “You're a boy scout,” I said as he pulled off the other boot. I let my eye shut as I couldn’t keep it open any longer. Dekker pulled the blankets out from under me and suddenly I was warm. I felt strong arms wrap around me, his hard body tight up against mine. My mind was too heavy to think, and I let myself lean against him.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Frankie.”

  But I was too far gone to respond. For once the wraiths didn’t wake me. For once, they let me have this.

  I slept.

  I opened my eyes blearily and saw a pale, watery light coming from a crack in the curtains. Morning. I’d slept through an entire afternoon and a night. I disentangled myself from Dekker’s arms and slipped out from under the blankets, the cool air sending goosebumps up my arms and legs. I slipped into the bathroom, not bothering with the light in my rush to relieve myself.

  I blinked the film away from my eyes as I sat there, wiping away the sand that accumulated as I slept. Slept. I hadn’t slept that long in one sitting since I…

  Since I died.

  I washed my hands, drying them on a towel that smelled of chemicals. Sighing, I turned on the light, still groggy from sleep. I was going to need coffee. It almost felt like I was more tired having slept than if I’d just powered through. I sleepily let my eyes slide to the front, realizing my mistake too late.

  There was no time to scream.

  Hands, blue and shining like the mirror itself, cold as glass as they wrapped around my throat, the arms reaching out from behind the mirror. The face staring back at me with hate in her eyes was my own, great horns rising from my head like a great stag, reaching so high I couldn’t see the tops through the mirror. The hands squeezed harder and I grasped the wrists, clawing at them in desperation, but it was like trying to sink your fingernails into glass, they just slid off.

  The face pushed its way into the mirror, blue and bloodless and filled with malice. Its mouth opened in a silent scream as the surface of the mirror moved and bubbled, the face pushing, pushing, trying to force its way through, all the while the hands around my throat slowly squeezing. Crystals of ice spread across the glass and I felt the skin around the hands grow frigid. Panic seized me as my feet left the ground, my toes skimming the cold tile, trying to touch something real. I kicked the cabinet under the sink and I felt the cheap wood crack, the thunk of the door falling to the floor as the hinges snapped.
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br />   Just as quickly as it started, the hands were no longer around my throat and I fell to the ground, hitting my head hard on the edge of the bathtub. There was a loud cracking noise, Dekker’s back to me as I regained focus, forcefully shoving a blanket around the mirror. He turned, breathing hard, his eyes wide and filled with fear. He knelt down, pulling me to him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he was panting. “Frankie, I didn’t think. I was so tired, I should have remembered. The mirrors, the fucking mirrors.”

  I was sucking air in, my throat raw and tender, my lungs burning.

  “It’s okay,” I heard myself rasp, grasping the bathtub behind me for balance, but Dekker was grasping me harder and I had no choice but to let him pull me into a rough embrace.

  “Jesus Christ, how does this end? Frankie? How do we beat this? How?”

  I realized he was crying.

  After an uneasy shower, leaving the bathroom door open to ease Dekker’s mind, I was looking at my dirty shirt when Dekker came out from his own shower.

  “It’s early,” he said, “but I can run to the gift shop across the street and get you a few things.” He gave a nervous half-smile. “If you want.”

  “You’d better be careful, Dekker,” I said. “People are going to start thinking you like me.”

  “Stay away from the mirror,” he said, putting on his jeans.

  “It’s covered up,” I said. “What danger could it possible pose?”

  “Frankie...”

  “Fine, I’ll stay away from the mirror. Happy?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you want a pink cowboy hat?”

  “That’s not even a real question,” I said. “Everyone wants a pink cowboy hat.”

  After Dekker was gone, I wriggled into my own jeans and crusty top, scrubbing at them both with a vigorous damp washcloth, eyeing the blanket over the mirror as I ran the rag under the bathroom faucet. The blanket moved just a bit, as though from a soft wind. I sat down on the bed and laced up my boots.

  Dekker had a good heart, and he was just trying to help, but I had something to do. The lake couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t even want to think about how many people died just because I needed to take a little nap in a soft bed. Cursing myself for my selfishness, I shrugged on my leather jacket, finding a hair tie in the pocket and pulling my hair back into what I knew was an extremely messy ponytail. But it was all I could do without mirrors. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around, telling myself it was to see if I’d forgotten anything. But deep down, I knew better. I was stalling.

  And for what? Some guy I barely knew? But when I thought of Dekker, it wasn’t the way I thought about strangers. I could practically feel the contours of his face when I brought him to mind, the heat of his lips, the rough scratch of his face. I shook my head and grabbed the keys from the dresser, right next to the television.

  Frankie Mourning.

  I froze. The voice was inside my head, like the wraiths, but I knew it wasn’t them. Fingers of darkness wrapped inside my mind as the voice came again, scratching against the inside of my skull and making me cry out.

  Frankie, where do you think you’re going?

  I stumbled back, catching myself on the end of the bed. I saw motion from the corner of my eye and gasped when I saw where the voice was coming from.

  You’re mine, Frankie. Or I should say, I am you.

  The reflection in the television was me, saying the words, reaching out from within the dark glass. Small, but getting bigger, as if someone walking quickly from a distance. My own face, hissing words and pain into my head. I grasped the white sheet behind me and pulled, untucking it from the bed, and throwing it over the TV all in one motion. Breathing out, relieved, I realized I was grinding my teeth. I opened my mouth, trying to relax my jaw. I couldn’t live like this.

  There was tapping noise at the window. Like a dozen ravens, pecking at the glass.

  “You’re not going to live at all,” I heard myself say, gasping when I realized the words had come from my own mouth.

  “Get out of my head,” I said, tears springing to my eyes as the fingers began to scratch, once again, inside my skull. I screamed, but it was cut short when I felt a heaviness in my throat.

  The tapping continued. Tap tap tap. I could hear them cawing outside the window. Did they somehow know what was happening?

  “You can’t scream, Frankie,” I felt myself say. The words coming from my own mouth, but not my own. Someone else’s words in my mouth. I watched the sheet over the television, blowing out as the blanket in the bathroom had done, just barely a breeze, but I felt it this time. Hot and dry and smelling of dust.

  I kicked at the television with the heel of my boot, twice, three times, until I felt the plastic on the back of the enormous television snap, and the glass moved as my foot came down the fourth time. I was panting, my throat still sore from being attacked earlier, the blood pumping fast inside of me. I held my face in my hands, unable to shake the feeling of fingers grasping inside my head. I grabbed the car keys from the floor and staggered to the door, stopping in front of the bathroom doorway.

  Someone stood there. Standing in the bathroom, panting. I stared into the room. There were no windows, just a light and a vent, motel room basics. I reached for the doorknob that would take me into the hallway. I could run across the street and find Dekker. Or I could just jump in the car and make my way to the lake. I could jump in and this would all be over. I could stop it.

  Light was shining into the bathroom from the mirror, the blanket fallen onto the sink, the glass a shattered bulls eye where Dekker had apparently punched it when he found me, dying. It cast a ghostly light on the figure standing there. I tried to open to the door, move toward the exit, but I couldn’t. I stood, frozen, my hand on the doorknob. I tried to force my hand to turn the knob. All I had to do was turn the knob and step out. All I had to do was move, dammit! But I just stood there, my feet like stones, my body rigid as I watched the figure in the bathroom.

  The shrieking of the ravens intensified. The tapping grew louder, more insistent.

  I knew what I was going to see, but I wanted to look away. I wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to shriek and cry and scratch at my skin, pull at my face until I was so disfigured she wouldn’t want me anymore.

  But I couldn’t even blink. All I could do was watch. I felt a tear brimming over and running down my cheek. She was going to take my body. She was going to pretend to be me, and I couldn’t even think about what would happen to Dekker. The tapping at the window stopped. The birds were silent.

  “Please, don’t do this,” I said between clenched teeth, my voice barely a hiss. “Let me go.”

  The figure took a step toward me, blinking in the gloomy, colorless light coming from the mirror. The shattered glass didn’t reflect the room anymore, it didn’t reflect the darkness of the motel bathroom, but another world. I saw mist rolling across the fractured mirror, every shard of glass reflecting blue fire, a burning house, a scene that had plagued my nightmares for a decade.

  No sound came from the scene in the mirror, but I knew my sister was screaming, and my mother was shrieking, and on the other side of the burning house I was kicking a gas can and walking away. I lit a cigarette as a raven landed on my shoulder. And to every outsider it looked like a sociopath had killed her own sister. But I also knew I shook for seventeen hours after it happened. I knew I held a gun to my own head twenty-four hours later. I knew the only thing that saved me was killing a child molester when he attacked me.

  And I knew I couldn’t go back.

  “You will go back.” I felt my own mouth form the words, and I knew I was already gone. “You’ll go back, and I’ll stay here, and you’ll never see him again. He’s mine now.”

  The figure stepped toward me, coming out of the bathroom. Blonde hair fell down its shoulders in halfhearted waves, just like my own, the ratty leather jacket just barely too small, the jeans dirty and too tight, the boots crusted with mud and the black p
eeling off in places. It was me. My own body was standing in front of me. And if I could have screamed, if there was any way to open my mouth and voice my terror, I would have. But as it was, I could only watch as the thing that looked like me stepped into the light.

  Two horns, like a full-grown stag, rose from her head, hitting the top of the doorway as she passed through. And she smiled.

  “I’m going to have to do something about these,” she said. The words came from her mouth instead of mine now. And as she said it, I could feel myself grow less substantial, less heavy, less real. I could feel myself becoming a ghost. And as the copy of me, the horned girl with my face, as she stepped toward me, she passed through. Like I wasn’t even there.

  I felt myself blink and then I was somewhere else. Looking out through shattered glass. Watching through a broken mirror. Then I did scream. I hollered and cried and beat at the glass.

  But I knew no one would hear. I was gone.

  I watched through the other side of the mirror as the girl with the horns went out the door. When she didn’t come back right away, I turned and took in my surroundings. I remembered what Becky said about the color, how she wanted to come back to the world, if only to see color again. I could see what she meant now.

  Everything had a blue, ghostly tinge. There were other colors, but they were drained, washed to the brink of being monochromatic. The fire was behind me, but I took a step and the ground fractured, the world changing. As if I were still looking at it through a broken looking glass.

  I turned back around to see the motel room, the image distorted. The world became foggy, and I felt as though I would float away with the mist, the meager room on the other side going out of focus. But just when it was about to disappear completely, I saw in the corner of the rectangle of vision in front of me, as if just out of frame in a movie, the shadow of a door opening and closing, a thin leg, a dirty boot, and everything became clear once again.

  My face appeared in front of me, flecks of blood dotting my cheeks, the great horns still rising up off my head.

  “Give me my body back, you freaky bitch!” I screamed, punching at the glass. But my hand went straight through. I saw my fist, encased in silver mirror as it just missed the reflection’s chin. She blinked at me.