(2006) Pale Immortal

by Anne Frasier

  She could have sworn he was nearby.

  When she didn't find him in her apartment, she dashed down the stairs to the morgue, to the autopsy suite and the coolers.

  She felt compelled to open the two empty drawers, then the one containing the remains of Richard Manchester. She stared at the hollow pits where eyes had once been. As she watched, the mummified face changed. It grew flesh until the apparition before her was no longer a mummy, but Evan Stroud.

  Chapter 32

  Standing on the small overlook, Evan occasionally spotted headlights in the distance. Whenever that happened he stepped behind the trunk of a tree and waited until they were gone. The night air, the cold rain, the smell of the earth, all reminded him that he was alive.

  He needed to be reminded of that. He always needed to be reminded of that.

  He stayed until the rain slowed to a drizzle. He stayed until frogs began to croak in a nearby marsh, and fog began to roll in. Morning would be coming soon.

  He flipped up the wet, limp collar of his coat and strode back down the hill, retracing his path through the tunnel and along the railroad tracks. Instead of taking another slope to Main Street, he kept to the tracks, following them through the heart of town to where the bluff resurfaced and houses clung to the steep hillside.

  It was easy to spot the morgue, with its turret rising from the landscape. He imagined Rachel asleep and warm. He recalled the time he'd spent in her bed, enveloped by her scent.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled. He could smell her now. Like sage and lavender.

  He walked toward the turret and the hill and the light. A steep set of broken cement steps, darkened by years of mildew, led straight up from what had once been a riverbed. He didn't have any trouble seeing in the dark, and he took the steps as they turned left and right, then left again, always moving up. He was hardly out of breath when he reached the curved street that led to the house on the bluff.

  He crossed and ducked under the heavier shadow of the morgue. With a key he'd found in Rachel's kitchen, he unlocked the delivery door and slipped inside.

  He heard a movement and turned to see Rachel standing barefoot in the long hallway, wearing a T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. The dim overhead lights cast the room in a retro-green, Ektachrome haze. One hand on the wall, one to her throat, she hung back. "Evan?" Her voice was tremulous. "Is that you?" She shot out of the shadows, running to him. She grabbed his arm, then let out a shudder of relief.

  "What's wrong?"

  She immediately looked flustered, and he could see her attempt to pull herself together. "I thought maybe you'd been arrested." She pressed a hand to her mouth and turned away.

  He touched her lightly on the shoulder and she swung back around.

  The fog seemed to have followed him inside. The dim lights had a haze around them. His heart thrummed in the strange way it had taken to doing lately.

  He was relieved to see she was acting more like Rachel now, but there was something else going on here, something he didn't understand.

  "Where did you go?"

  "I had to talk to Isobel."

  "Isobel?"

  "She hasn't heard from Graham. I really thought she would have heard from him." If he's still alive, were the words not spoken.

  "You were gone a long time."

  He read the concern in her face, the worry.

  The suspicion.

  "What did you do? Where did you go?"

  Where did you go?

  Where had he been? Before Isobel? He didn't know.... He couldn't remember. "To the park. To the river."

  Rachel went to the shower room adjacent to the autopsy suite and grabbed a couple of towels. Once she was out of his sight, she kept up a mental dialog, telling herself to calm down.

  Her head was full of thoughts of Victoria and the Pale Immortal. Of Isobel and Graham. Of Evan and someone else—a stranger. When she returned, Evan was in the same spot.

  "You need to get out of those wet clothes."

  "I'm okay."

  "You're soaked."

  Peripherally, everything faded. Her chest felt tight, and she couldn't look away. The room seemed to narrow and darken and blur—until he was all she saw. Her eyelids fluttered, closed partially, and she inhaled, smelling tea and musty books and the scent of outdoors. Rain and a kind of peaty, boggy soil. He was so beautiful with his dark, mussed hair, his pale skin that sunlight hadn't damaged, lips that hadn't faded. He was perfect.

  Perfect and diseased.

  She could feel his energy, his soul.

  Does he feel the same thing? Or was it all coming from her?

  You're scaring me.

  But was it fear? Really? Or was it something ineffable masquerading as fear?

  He was reading her mind. He could see she wanted this. Now. Here.

  His eyes were so strange, going from a light brown on the outside of the iris to dark near the pupil. She'd never noticed that before. And his lashes—they weren't extremely long, but they were black, which created a faint outline.

  He's different. Evan, yet not Evan.

  She felt his fingers gripping her arms. She felt him pulling her to him. Just as suddenly his mouth pressed to hers, cold and wet, gradually warming, softening. She touched his hair; she urged him closer. His jaw rubbed against her cheek; his skin smelled like a damp, warm night.

  From far away thunder rumbled, rattling metal autopsy instruments in a nearby drawer. A ceiling light flickered. On the other side of the block-glass windows, the world grew dark and still.

  The storm was returning.

  Time and mortality didn't exist.

  Don't stop touching me.

  Without removing his lips from hers, he reached between them and tugged down her elastic pants and panties in a few simple movements. She heard the sound of a belt buckle, then his zipper.

  He swooped over her, pressing her to the wall, his saturated clothes cold against her hot skin.

  "Hurry," she whispered against his face, afraid that he would suddenly stop, suddenly realize what was happening. Don't think, she telepathed to him. Don't think.

  And then he was inside her.

  She felt a sweet, cramping tug that ran through her center all the way to her chest.

  He was stealing her soul.

  For a long, long moment, the only movement was their chests rising and falling, the air filled with ragged breathing.

  "Rachel." It was a statement, but also a question.

  She felt herself slipping, and a tremor ran through him.

  She reached up and grabbed a water pipe above her head.

  "Let go. Come closer."

  She looked at him. His pupils were dilated. He seemed like someone else. Like a person she'd caught glimpses of in the glass, only to turn and see no one there.

  He's not real. He's another figment of your imagination.

  "You aren't close enough," he said breathlessly.

  She let go.

  They tumbled to the cement floor. He ran his hand over her body, touching her everywhere, shoving up her T-shirt. And then he let out a groan and was moving in her and against her so hard that she slid away and he pulled her back. He stroked her deep, all the while holding her, murmuring words she couldn't distinguish, that didn't matter anyway.

  He pressed his mouth to the pulse in her neck, his lips pausing there, lingering while his hands framed her hips and lifted her to him, while her fingers dug into his shoulders.

  "Don't run away."

  "I'm right here."

  "Don't run away."

  She didn't know what he meant. She didn't care.

  "You and I are linked," he said. "You know that, don't you? We've always been linked."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  "You have to let go."

  "I did."

  "Really let go."

  He was right. She didn't know how she knew that, but she did.

  He wants your soul.

  He rolled to his back, taking his we
ight off her, his long coat falling open. "It's up to you."

  She sat upright and closed her eyes, her breathing shallow, her hands pressed to his stomach hidden below layers of cloth.

  She wanted to get closer, wanted skin-to-skin.

  That won't be enough.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him.

  Let go.

  She shook her head.

  He smiled a little, but she could see the pulse beating rapidly in his neck. She could feel his skin trembling. Her hearing seemed to fade and become hollow. As she stared, a tightness coiled inside her and moved upward, as if an invisible finger stroked from the point where they were joined all the way to her throat.

  She heard a strange, odd noise, and realized it came from her.

  This is madness.

  This isn't real. Just like Victoria isn't real.

  I'm still in bed. I'm dreaming.

  She felt drunk and stoned and on the verge of passing out. Like she'd been inhaling belladonna, or drinking some strange brew.

  This wouldn't be enough. This would make her want more. This taste of him.

  Evan's smile faded and his eyes darkened.

  He rolled her to her back, his black coat covering them both. He clutched her, his face buried in her neck until he shuddered to finally collapse in her arms, sweating and shaking and spent.

  They always take your soul. That's what he wants. That's what he needs.

  She opened her eyes to say something and saw a monogrammed scarf around his neck.

  It was a scarf she recognized, a scarf that belonged to Richard Manchester. The Pale Immortal.

  Chapter 33

  A fly landed on Graham's face.

  Without opening his eyes, he lifted a hand and tried to wave it away. It worked for a minute, but the fly came back.

  He could hear more flies gathering and buzzing in the distance. At first there were just a few, but they musta sent out their fly messengers to recruit more, because it was beginning to sound like some damn construction site, a wall of noise that was so loud and constant he sometimes became desensitized and stopped hearing it altogether. But when one of those filthy bloated fuckers landed on his face and tried to crawl up his nose, he would jerk awake and the buzz would start all over again.

  At one point he realized he must have a fever. He was sweating and shaking and dreaming weird dreams. When he opened his eyes, things were still weird and he was having trouble figuring out if anything was real.

  Underneath, a smell was forming. Like the buzzing it sometimes went away, even though he was sure it never really left. He just quit noticing it. But then he would turn his head or swoosh a fly, and the air would shift and the smell would waft over him.

  Like roadkill. Rotten and heavy and sweet and nauseating.

  In Arizona, animals hit on the road didn't last long. Vultures ate them. What was left dehydrated in the desert heat and sun. They didn't swell up and bloat and drip like they did around here.

  Don't open your eyes.

  Don't open your eyes and look at her.

  He drifted off—into oblivion, where he'd been spending a lot of time lately. He liked it there. Sometimes he would dream about Isobel, about sitting in the sun knitting. That was fun. He'd been happy then.

  "Graham."

  He ignored the voice and went back to thinking about Isobel.

  But it came again. An insistent whisper. "Graham. "

  It was a voice he'd learned to obey over the years. A voice he had to listen to or there would be shit to pay.

  "Open your eyes. Look at me. Listen to me."

  Graham opened his eyes.

  Just a crack.

  He thought he remembered blood running down his forehead, dripping into them. Yeah. That's what had happened. Somebody had smacked him in the head and knocked him out. Somebody had dragged him back to the church, back to the mattress and the chains and the lock.

  They didn't need the chains and lock. He couldn't move. He was one fucked-up dude. And anyway, it almost seemed right. Almost seemed like he belonged here. They should put one of those lame signs over the door with his name burned into the wood. He laughed just thinking about it.

  He heard a flutter outside; then a breeze gusted through the broken windows with no glass. Above his head, something creaked.

  He'd heard that sound before. He'd heard that sound a lot.

  Don't look.

  "Graham."

  Don't look.

  Out of the corner of his eye something fluttered. The fabric of his mother's dress.

  He turned his head—just a little. Then a little more—until he saw a hand dangling a few feet from the floor.

  The arm was swollen—like an Easter ham. The hand was triple the size it should be. Yellow juice dripped from the fingertips, leaving a puddle on the floor and a feast for the flies.

  Creak.

  "Graham."

  She moved. She turned slightly, gracefully. "You have to listen to me."

  Maybe she was alive. Maybe he'd just dreamed that other stuff.

  His eyes tracked up and he squinted through his lashes.

  A rope had been tied around her ankles. It was now buried deep into the folds of swollen flesh. They'd hung her upside down from the rafters, punctured a couple of arteries, and drained her blood.

  He wouldn't have known it was her. Her head was the size of a basketball. Except for the dress and hair, it could have been some fat guy. Some sumo wrestler.

  "You have to join them," she told him. "Otherwise they'll kill you. That's the only way to get out of here alive. You have to make them think you're one of them."

  She was right.

  Even though she was dead, she was right. Dead right.

  His leg didn't hurt anymore.

  "That's probably bad," she told him.

  Okay, now she was reading his mind.

  He opened his mouth. His lips were cracked. "I have a fever," he told her. Was that his voice? That weird, raspy thing? "My head hurts."

  "You need water."

  "I need a doctor."

  "Remember when I used to sing to you?"

  "You never sang to me."

  "Sure I did."

  "What'd you sing?"

  "Bob Dylan."

  "I don't like Bob Dylan."

  "You never gave him a chance. You hated him because I liked him."

  "I don't like his voice. He sings through his nose."

  "It grows on you."

  "Sing somethin', then."

  She started humming, then singing. It was a song Graham recognized. "Girl of the North Country." After a moment he joined in.

  Travis and Craig paused outside the broken door of the old church.

  "Whew!" Travis shuddered and put a hand to his nose.

  Craig tipped an ear toward the door. "Who's he talkin' to?"

  Travis listened. "He's singing. I thought maybe he was dead, but he must be better."

  They squeezed through the opening one at a time, then stopped.

  "He ain't better."

  Graham was staring at the body that hung from the ceiling. He was smiling to it. Singing to it.

  "He's dying, isn't he?" Travis asked.

  Craig pulled out a digital camera. "We need to get a picture of him before he croaks."

  "Shh! Don't say that in front of him."

  "What? Croaks? He doesn't even know we're here. Look at him."

  "We better tell Alba he needs a doctor."

  "Are you worried about him?"

  "Kinda. Yeah. What's wrong with that? Graham's okay. He never squealed on us about the mummy."

  "Graham!" Craig snapped his fingers.

  Graham's head slowly came around. He somehow managed to prop himself up on one elbow. His forehead was bloody, one eye caked half shut. He gave them a little smile and a wave.

  Craig stepped closer and began snapping the camera. Once they had prints, Dan, the coroner's assistant, would deliver them to Stroud.

  Graham gave h
im a thumbs-up.

  "Don't do that," Travis said to Graham, trying to breathe through his mouth and not his nose. "You can't look happy, you dumb shit."

  "Jesus Christ," Craig said. "He's out of his fucking head." He stepped forward and raised his hand to slap Graham.

  "No, wait."

  Travis put himself directly in front of Graham so he could have his full attention. "Graham. Graham. Look here. Make this face." He let his mouth fall slack and tipped his head. Graham complied and Travis stepped away. "There. Take the shot. That's perfect." Craig fired off a few more rounds, then stuck the camera in his sweatshirt pocket.

  "Wait!" Graham shouted after them as they hurried to leave.

  "Can't stay," Travis said, thinking he might vomit.

  "Take me to your leader," Graham said in an exaggerated, drunken voice. "I need to talk to your leader."

  The guy was probably dying, but he was still being sarcastic. That was pretty fucking cool.

  "Our leader?" Craig asked.

  "Alba."

  "Why?"

  "I wanna become a Pale Immortal. Tell him that, 'kay? A Pale Immortal. I'm ready to take the pledge or drink the blood or whatever the hell you guys do. So tell him that, 'kay?"

  Craig looked at Travis and raised one eyebrow, then shrugged. "Sure. We'll pass that on."

  Graham fell back against the mattress, his eyes closed. Travis thought maybe he was dead, but then Graham muttered, "Cool."

  Graham had never felt so weird before, not even when he'd smoked pot. Floaty and out-of-body. He could no longer tell the difference between reality and the crazy stuff going on in his head. And it didn't matter. That was the great thing: Nothing mattered.

  Through a heavy-headed fog he thought he saw Alba float in and out of his field of vision. But maybe he was just dreaming the visitation.

  Chatting with him. Talking to him. Feeding him his bullshit like he did everybody. Because the guy was most definitely full of bullshit. Only nobody seemed to know it. Nobody seemed to see it.

  It was like one of those reality shows where the asshole always won. And not only did he win, but almost every fucking person rooted for him to win.

  Survival of the fittest. Graham had learned all about that in school. Didn't matter how nice or how fair or how right you were; you had to have survival skills.