The Undead Heart
(#1 in the Blood Thirst Series)
By
Stephanie Jackson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Jackson
S.O.S. Publishing © 2012
For my niece, Bev, for whom I wrote this book series for.
For my Dad, Sandy Rogers, who turned me into a book worm.
For my brother, Shane.
My eternal love to Rita Jackson for giving me my Richard (I know, “No refunds, No returns!”).
All my thanks and love to Becky Goppert, my best friend and editor, I couldn’t have done this without you!
And for all my kids: Charley, Tommy, Harley, Potter, Bruce, Wes and Darian. I love you all!
Chapter One
Rebecca Stockdale was seventeen years old, and today was her High School graduation. She was only at the graduation ceremony because her sister Bev had insisted on it. She didn’t want to be there, but took a deep steadying breath as she grudgingly filed out onto the stage and took her seat among the rest of her graduating class.
When she looked out into the audience she was stunned to see what she had come to think of as ‘The Man’ sitting in the second row. She had not seen ‘The Man’ since she was twelve years old.
***
Beck (as Bev called her) had always been an unusual child. She’d always been pretty, with long red hair and bright green eyes. Unfortunately, she had also always been an abnormal child. She’d been born with the ability to see ghosts, and had occasional dreams of the future.
She’d also been born with a slight electrical problem. If her emotions were running high, or she was upset about something, she was prone to blow out light bulbs and appliances in her home. Her parents had removed all of the carpet from the home when she was three years old to cut down on the level of static electricity.
She’d gotten her first real beating from her father when she was only five years old. They had gone to a family reunion, and she’d told her aunt that she’d had a dream that she was going to die soon. When her aunt had died a week later, her father had beaten her, screaming that it was all her fault. For years afterwards she’d believed that she’d actually killed her aunt.
When she was seven, she’d told her second grade teacher during class that her house was going to burn down. When it had burned to the ground a few days later, all the kids either became afraid of her, or made fun of her. The few friends that she had had wouldn’t speak to her anymore after that. Over the years it had only gotten worse. All the kids called her a witch or a freak, among other things. Even her own parents hated her.
In public they pretended to love her, but she knew the truth. She had also been born with the ability to sense or ‘read’ people’s emotions. Bev called her a human lie detector. Bev had grown to hate their parents for the way they treated Beck. Charles and Lisa Stockdale were cruel parents who only cared about how things looked to other people. Outside the home, they acted like normal parents. But inside the home, they were quick with a punch or an insult. They never hit Bev, but Bev hated them anyway.
Beck knew that her abnormalities embarrassed her parents. She also knew that they wished she had never been born…or that she was dead. They had never come right out and said it, but she knew that it was how they felt. Several times she very nearly obliged them.
When she was seven years old, they had gone to see the 4th of July fireworks at the river in her home town of Clarksville, TN. No one had been paying attention to her, and she had wandered to close to the edge of the dock they were standing on. Her feet had left the dock, and she was going over the edge when an arm grabbed her around the waist.
She hadn’t known how to swim at the time and probably would have drowned if ‘The Man’ hadn’t saved her. She had already started to cry when he set her back on her feet. He’d squatted and turned her towards him.
“Shh. It’s alright. You’re safe now,” he’d said. She could feel love, affection, and relief coming from him, but didn’t know why.
“Beck, come on, the fireworks are about to start,” Bev called to her.
She only turned her head for a second to look at Bev, but when she looked back ‘The Man’ was gone. She looked around but didn’t see him anywhere.
“Where’d the man go?”
“What man?” Bev said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
Even though Bev was only ten at the time, she was far more maternal than their mother ever was. She would have told her about almost falling in the water, but the fireworks had started. She was only seven years old, and by the time the fireworks had ended the incident had slipped her mind.
She was nine years old when she saw ‘The Man’ again. Bev had started Junior High that year, and so wasn’t able to walk her to school anymore. She had been crossing the street that day, by herself, two blocks down from the crosswalk on Crossland Ave. She knew if she crossed the street at the crosswalk with the rest of the kids, they would call her names and make fun of her the rest of the way to school.
She had been thinking about a test she was supposed to have that day and hadn’t looked up before she stepped out into the road. She heard a horn blare and looked up in time to see a car skidding down the street at her. She wanted to jump back onto the sidewalk, but she couldn’t make her body move. Right as the car was about to hit her, someone grabbed her arm and slung her out of the road. She looked up and saw ‘The Man’ standing beside her, holding on to her arm.
“Are you alright?”
She tried to answer him, but could only manage to nod her head.
“You must be more careful, Little One,” he said. “Calm down, close your eyes and take a deep breath.”
When she’d done what he said, she opened her eyes and he was gone. She’d stood there on the sidewalk for several minutes in shock. She knew it had been the same man that had saved her from falling in the river, she just didn’t know who he was. She knew that she wasn’t going to tell anyone about him though, not even Bev. She felt like he was her secret.
She knew that whoever he was, he cared about her and didn’t mean her any harm. She’d had to run the rest of the way to school so she wouldn’t be late.
Then on her twelfth birthday, her Grandma Cora had given her a bicycle. She had never ridden a bicycle before, and didn’t know how. Her parents had said that they were too busy to teach her, and that she was going to have to figure out how to ride it on her own. She knew that busy was what they said when they didn’t want to be around her. When it came to her, they were always busy.
She knew Bev would’ve taught her how to ride, but she wasn’t home. Bev had started playing the flute in the school marching band and had been at a football game that night. So after dinner she had taken the new bike out to give it a try, thinking ‘How hard could it be?’ She got on the bike and started peddling. She made it a sum total of one block down the street before she found out ‘how hard it could be’.
She was going too fast, and squeezed the hand brake too hard, causing the bike to flip over and slam her hard on her back onto the concrete sidewalk. The impact had knocked the wind out of her, and she had not yet gotten her breath back when ‘The Man’ had lifted the bicycle off of her.
“Little One!” he said in a panicked voice.
She still couldn’t take a breath, and she felt as if she was going to die. He ran his hands up her legs, over her ribs, and up her neck. When he lifted her slightly off the ground to run his hands down her back, her breath came back in a giant whoosh.
“Can’t breathe”, she gasped, waving her hands above her ches
t.
“Look at me.” he said. She forced her eyes up to his. “Do what I do.”
Taking her hand and placing it on his chest, he started taking slow deep breaths. She copied him, taking deep breaths and holding them for a few seconds before releasing them. She could feel his cool skin through his shirt, which she later thought was strange since it was the middle of July and had been at least 100 degrees outside.
“Better?” he asked when she was breathing more normally.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at his face. “You missed me this time.”
“I noticed that,” he said with a deep laugh, and helped her to her feet. “I was unaware that this was going to happen. How do you feel?”
“Fine, I guess. My bike isn’t so good, though,” she said pointing at her bent front wheel. “I’m going to get whipped for that, for sure.”
“Your parents shouldn’t hit you.”
She’d felt too comfortable with him and had said more than she had meant to say.
“It’s okay.” she said quickly. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me,” he said quietly. He turned her bike right side up and handed it back to her. “Take your bike home and don’t tell your parents about it until tomorrow. You have suffered enough pain for one day.”
“Okay. Thank you for helping me,” she said.
“You are most welcome,” he said, smiling at her.
He’d had an accent like ones she had heard before on television, and she’d really liked it. She had only walked a couple of steps towards her house before turning back to ask him his name, but he was already gone. She took her bike home and hid it in the shed.
When she’d gotten up the next morning, she had found her bike in the backyard. It had a brand new wheel on the front. She would not see ‘The Man’ again until her high school graduation.
***
Looking at him in the audience now, she knew that something was wrong. Looking back to when ‘The Man’ had saved her from falling into the river, she would have guessed him to be about 27 years old, and she had been seven. When he had saved her from being ran over, she’d been ten and still too young to notice his age. It wasn’t until she was twelve years old and had crashed her bike, that she had noticed how nice looking he was.
He had been roughly 6’5” with muscles perfectly proportioned for his body frame. He had light red hair that he wore in a ponytail down the back of his neck and green eyes so light that they were almost yellow. She had noticed how old he looked then, but hadn’t really thought much about it. Now it was ten years since the first time she had seen him and he hadn’t aged a single day. No, that couldn’t be possible. She looked at him again now.
He had almond shaped eyes, perfect cheek bones, and very pale skin. He was a beautiful man. And he was a man who had obviously not yet reached thirty years of age. If she was right about his age, then he should be around forty years old, and he definitely was not.
She looked away from him and tried to think of something else. She thought about graduating today. She was graduating at the top of her class, and had had no problem getting accepted to the college of her choice. Her parents were to ‘busy’ to come to her graduation, but Bev was there, and she was more stoked about Beck graduating than Beck was herself.
In four short months, she would be heading to Duke University to study Parapsychology. She had always been curious to find out why she was like she was. She was hoping that at Duke, she would finally find some answers. She wasn’t expecting to have all of her questions answered, but at least some. Like why she was seeing a ghost right now.
She had seen this ghost her whole life. Every few months he would appear, hang around for a bit, and then vanish again. He was average height with short dark hair, blue eyes, a muscled body, and a mischievous smile. He nearly always had a smile.
He was standing in the back of the audience now, waving at her. She wiggled her fingers at him, acknowledging that she saw him, and he smiled again. He was not the only ghost she had ever seen, but he was the only one she had seen on a regular basis. She had never minded seeing ghosts. They had never scared her like they did most people.
She’d never seen a ghost covered in blood, or burned. Her theory for that was that she saw ghosts the way that they remembered themselves. If they did remember themselves bloody, burned, or sick, they didn’t project themselves that way to her. To her, they looked like anyone else.
She had also never had a ghost speak to her, and she had never tried to speak to them. She liked it that way. She had been made fun of enough without walking around talking to invisible people.
She looked through the audience until she found Bev. It had been Bev that had forced her to come to graduation. Bev is three years older than her, and a pre-law student at Austin Peay State University. Since Austin Peay was in Clarksville where they lived, so it wasn’t hard for Bev to be at the graduation today.
She’d always thought Bev was beautiful. She was only 5’5” compared to Beck’s 5’8”. She had a perfect body and gorgeous hair. She had the same shade of red hair as Beck, but she could do so much more with it. She had pleaded with Bev not to make her go to graduation, but Bev would hear none of it.
“It’s the only high school graduation you’re going to get, and you are going. Now get dressed,” Bev said.
Once she was dressed, she could no longer put off leaving. She trudged out of the house behind Bev feeling as if she was heading to the gallows. Bev had held her hand for the whole drive to the school trying to reassure her that there was nothing to worry about.
“It’s going to be easy. One quick walk, take the diploma, throw the cap, and you’re out of there,” Bev had said.
That was easy for her to say. Bev had always been popular in high school, while Beck still didn’t have a single friend. That was partially her own fault. As she had gotten older, she had never gone out of her way to make friends. Being around people made her nervous, and she didn’t like to be touched.
She didn’t mind being able to read peoples moods and emotions, but when someone touched her there was a transfer, and for a few seconds she actually felt the way they felt, and she didn’t care for that at all. She didn’t mind Bev touching her but that was about it. Except for ‘The Man’, of course, she had never minded him touching her, either.
She looked at him again and found him staring at her. The look he was giving her made her skin tingle; in some places more than others.
Who was this man to make her feel this way? What was he doing there anyway? Did he know someone here that was graduating? She looked around at the other students to see if she could guess which one he knew.
She jumped a little when she saw Alex Whitman sitting six seats down from her. She had only had sex once in her life. It had been with Alex Whitman, and it had been against her will.
***
She’d been sixteen years old, and Alex was supposed to have been her first date. She hadn’t really known him, and was shocked when he had walked up to her in the hallway at school.
“Hey, you’re Rebecca Stockdale, right?” he’d asked.
“Um, yeah, that’s me,” she said.
“Hi, I’m Alex.”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” she’d said shyly.
Everyone knew who Alex Whitman was. He’d been the star of the school wrestling team, and one of the most popular boys in school.
“I was just wondering if you wanted to go out with me Friday night?” he’d asked. “Maybe see a movie or something?”
“Really?” she asked in shock. She had never been asked out on a date before.
“Yeah, really,” he had said, smiling at her.
“Um, yeah sure. I’d love to go.”
“Great!” he said. Don’t you live in the big white house on Cumber St.?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, surprised that he had known where she lived.
“Good. So I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock on Friday then?”
�
��Okay,” she’d said, and still in shock, watched him as he walked away down the hall.
After school, she had driven straight to Bev’s dorm and banged on her door.
“I have a date with Alex Whitman!” she’d shouted when Bev had opened the door. Bev screamed and started jumping up and down.
“With who?” Bev asked excitedly.
“Alex Whitman.”
“Isn’t that the wrestler? The cute one with the blonde hair?”
“Yeah, that’s him. We have a date Friday night.”
“I didn’t even know you knew him.”
“I don’t. He just came up to me today and asked me out.”
“Where is he taking you?”
“To a movie, I think.”
“Your first date!” Bev had squealed. “We have to celebrate! Let’s go shopping!”
In Bev’s opinion, everything should be celebrated by shopping and she’d bought her a new skirt outfit for her date.
She almost hadn’t expected Alex to show up. She’d never been on a date before and didn’t know how she was supposed to act. Was she supposed to hold his hand? Let him kiss her goodnight if he wanted to? She was waiting nervously on the porch when he pulled up.
He took her to see The Mummy, and had tried to hold her hand during the movie, but she kept pulling away from him. She could feel that he was attracted to her. She could also feel that he was tense and jumpy, but there was another emotion that she couldn’t identify. She hadn’t liked it, and when the movie was over, she’d just wanted to go home.
“That was a good movie,” he said when they were back in his car.
“Yeah, it was. Thank you for taking me,” she had said politely.
“There is somewhere else I want to take you,” he said pulling out of the parking lot.
The Undead Heart (#1 in the Blood Thirst Series) Page 1