Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3)

by JL Bryan

  After a few minutes, Seth's father returned. “Iris, come with me,” he said in a low voice.

  “What about me?” Seth asked.

  “Just wait here,” his dad told him.

  “But I want to see Carter!”

  “I said wait.” Seth led his mother away, and an officer escorted them through a door, away from the front area and out of sight.

  Seth glanced at the strange old man beside him, but the old man didn't seem aware of Seth, or of anything much that was happening around him.

  Seth trembled, wondering what his parents were doing, and what Carter looked like after the accident. He thought about the bird he'd healed, about four years ago, and how Carter had told him to keep it secret.

  Seth felt his hands growing hot. He could do it again, he realized. Maybe he could heal up Carter and bring him back. Then everyone would know about Seth's secret, but who cared? He had to bring Carter back, or it would be his own fault that his brother was dead.

  Seth jumped to his feet. Nobody told him to sit back down, so he walked toward the door through which his parents had left the room.

  “Hey, kid,” the cop at the front desk said. “You can't go back there.”

  “But my brother's back there. I have to help him,” Seth said.

  “Sit down and wait for your parents. Now.”

  Seth hesitated a moment—you were supposed to do whatever the police told you, but this cop wouldn't understand what Seth could do. Seth charged through the door.

  “Hey!” the cop shouted after him.

  Seth ran down a corridor, ignoring the desk cop's shouts. He hurried past a group of cops who were talking in low voices, and one scowled at him.

  He reached an intersection with another corridor and hesitated. Fortunately, signs were posted here. One of them said “MORGUE” with an arrow pointing to Seth's left. He gulped. The morgue sounded like a scary place, full of dead people and maybe zombies and other monsters that might grab at him. But that was where he would find his parents and his brother.

  Seth moved down the hall, which was dark from so many overhead lights being burned out. Those that remained were flickering, creating an unsettling strobe effect as he ran towards the big double doors labeled MORGUE.

  Seth pushed a door open and ran inside, holding his breath—he expected to be surrounded by dead bodies immediately, corpses piled up to the ceiling and staring at him with cold, sightless eyes. And maybe their heads would turn toward him, and their hands would reach for him, like the undead in those horror movies on cable that Seth wasn't allowed to watch, but sometimes did anyway.

  The first room was just an office, though, with filing cabinets and two desks. A heavyset black woman dressed like a nurse sat at one desk.

  “Excuse me?” she asked. “What are you doing here, kid?”

  “I gotta find my parents.” Seth looked around the room. Only one door led out of the room, besides the one he'd just stepped through. That had to be where everybody was.

  “You don't want to go in there,” the lady said. “Why don't you sit right down—” She gestured toward the empty chair at the other desk, but Seth blew right past her and shoved the next door open.

  “Damn it, kid!” the lady shouted after him.

  The next room was large and freezing cold, like a big cave, with a stainless steel autopsy table right in front of him. Rows of metal cabinets stood against the back wall. One of these cabinets was open, the drawer inside fully extended, and it held a body covered in a white sheet.

  A morgue attendant in scrubs stood on one side of it, holding up a corner of the sheet. A suntanned man with a mustache and tie was beside the morgue attendant, gauging Seth's parents, who stood on the other side of the drawer, looking down at what the attendant had unveiled from under the sheet.

  Both of Seth's parents were as pale as ghosts, and Seth's father seemed to slump, as if life and strength were draining from him. Seth's mother stared without moving.

  “That's him.” Seth's dad nodded.

  The morgue attendant tried to cover the body again, but Seth's mom stopped him with her hand. She didn't say anything, just kept staring.

  Seth ran toward them, and as he passed the mustached man in the coat and tie, he finally saw his brother laid out on the cold drawer. His eyes were shut, and a crust of blood had dried in his nostrils and at the corner of his mouth. His left side seemed shrunken, as if it had collapsed.

  “Carter!” Seth said, making his parents jump. He grabbed Carter's cold, stiff hand in both of his, squeezed his eyes closed, and concentrated. He felt the strange heat build in his palms.

  “Seth, what are you doing here?” his mother gasped. Seth's father just gave him an odd look, as if deeply worried about something. It would be years before Seth knew enough about his great-grandfather to understand what might have passed through his father's mind at that moment.

  “Come on, Carter...” Seth whispered. He imagined the bird with the healed wing springing from his hand. He felt the heat grow more and more intense in his hands—but it didn't flow anywhere.

  “Seth, you shouldn't be here,” his mother whispered. His father put his hand on Seth's shoulder to nudge him away from Carter's body, but Seth gripped Carter's hand even tighter.

  “I can fix him,” Seth said. “You don't understand. If I just try...if I just...” Seth opened his eyes and looked at Carter's face. One of Carter's eyelids slowly pulled open, revealing a slice of green iris. Seth felt some hope and pushed harder, trying to imagine the healing heat rolling out of him, deep into Carter, repairing everything that was broken...

  But nothing happened. The heat didn't move into Carter's frigid body. Seth's hands felt like they were on fire, but Carter was beyond his ability to heal.

  “Seth!” his father snapped. “That's enough.” And he pulled Seth away from Carter.

  “No!” Seth screamed. “Just give me another chance, I know I can fix him, I know it...”

  Seth's father led him away while he screamed and struggled. Seth's mother followed, tears streaming down her face, rubbing her forehead as if the situation were just too much to process.

  “Please,” Seth whispered to his dad. “I can bring him back to life.”

  His dad cut him a sharp look. “Why do you say that, Seth?”

  “Because I can...” Seth's voice trailed off. His father's dark blue eyes scrutinized him, looking at Seth like he was some strange alien who had replaced his son.

  “Have you ever brought the dead back to life before?” Seth's dad asked.

  “No, but...” Seth wasn't sure how to begin to explain about the bird with the broken wing. All his thoughts were jumbled, and he felt pain at Carter's death and a sense of failure that he couldn't save his brother. How could he put all of that into words?”

  “Jonathan,” Seth's mother whispered. “Why on Earth would you ask him such a thing?”

  Seth's father's jaw worked, tensing and relaxing under his cheek as if his teeth were grinding together.

  “We have to take care of this paperwork,” Seth's dad finally said as they left the morgue. “Then find a place to sleep.”

  “I don't think I'll ever sleep again,” Seth's mother said.

  Seth looked back as the door to the morgue swung closed behind them. Carter hadn't moved, and he would never move again.

  The funeral in Fallen Oak drew a huge crowd, made up of locals as well as far-flung relatives and business associates of the Barrett family. Dr. Goodling led the service at Fallen Oak Baptist Church, though Carter would naturally be buried in the family cemetery on the Barrett's land outside town.

  “It is always difficult when the Lord takes one so young,” Dr. Goodling said. “It is a struggle to find the words to express the profound grief, the loss of promise and hope...a struggle to remember that God has a greater plan, and no man knows the place nor the hour...”

  Seth sat in the front pew, staring at his polished black shoes. He knew he bore some of the responsibility for his
brother's death, because if he'd only gotten to Carter faster, he could have healed him. His fists clenched and unclenched all the way through “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Amazing Grace.”

  As they left the church, a strikingly pretty blond girl in a prim black dress rushed up to Seth. It took him a moment to recognize the preacher's daughter, Ashleigh, since Seth's family rarely attended church. Her eyes were huge and gray and wet with tears.

  “Oh, Seth, I feel so bad for you,” Ashleigh said. Though they'd rarely spoken, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I can't imagine what it must be like,” she whispered in his ear.

  Seth felt a weird, warm glow fill him, as if the girl's touch had filled him with a deep sense of love. He broke down and began to cry, and he hugged her back.

  “Ashleigh, don't pester that boy,” said Mrs. Goodling, the preacher's wife, who had caught up with her daughter. She took Ashleigh's hand and reeled her back from Seth.

  Seth and Ashleigh continued looking at each other while Ashleigh's mother pulled her back into the church, and Seth's dad hurried him out to the car. Seth's heart was thumping. He would think of that moment, the painful mix of misery and love, the compassionate look in Ashleigh Goodling's eyes, many times over the following few years.

  At the family graveyard, where rows of monuments were enclosed by a high brick wall, Seth watched them bury Carter under the monument with his name inscribed on it. Seth's own grave marker stood beside it, a dark obelisk, with Seth's name and birth year already carved in place, waiting for his turn to die.

  At their house, people ate and drank and spoke in low voices. Seth was introduced to more distant relatives, including his great uncle on his mother's side, Senator Junius Mayfield of Tennessee, a man with a balding scalp and a face like a basset hound.

  As Seth walked away, he heard Junius whisper to his pretty young assistant: “I told Iris it was bad juju to get mixed up with Barrett family. You'd listen if I told you that, wouldn't you?”

  “Of course, sir,” the assistant answered, and she gave him a dazzling smile. “I always take your advice.”

  Seth made his way to the back yard, away from everyone. Beyond the peach orchard, on the far hilltop, he could see the brick walls and wrought-iron gates of the family's private graveyard. Carter was there now, and Seth's parents would follow him there, and Seth himself. And that would be the end of the story.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Years later, on the night of the Charleston riot, Seth searched for Jenny until the National Guard cleared the streets.

  The riot had erupted during the Southeastern Funk Fest, an outdoor music event by the water. Seth didn't know why the riot had started, but it had been huge, sudden, and violent.

  He'd completely lost Jenny in the chaos. It didn't help that she'd been running away from him, understandably angry at what she'd seen—Seth, with a strange naked blond girl on top of him. Seth didn't know what had come over him to make him hook up with that girl. It almost reminded him of Ashleigh's enchantment, the power to make people feel love, or at least intense attraction. But Ashleigh was dead, so she couldn't have been behind it.

  He narrowly avoided getting swept up into a paddy wagon with a group of teenage rioters, and finally made his way back to The Mandrake House hotel. Jenny would know to find him there, if she wanted to see him—although, considering what Jenny had last seen him doing, he doubted that she would be looking for him anyway.

  That girl was gone, thankfully, by the time Seth returned to the hotel. In his suite, he checked the sitting room, the bathroom, and both bedrooms. Nobody was there.

  He walked out onto the balcony to think. Below him, pulsing blue light filled the streets—local and state police, Homeland Security. An armored transport cruised very slowly down Battery, with National Guardsmen perched on the sides, looking for signs of trouble. The authorities had arrived and dispersed the rioters in an incredibly short amount of time, almost as if they'd been expecting something big and chaotic to happen.

  Seth wanted to call Jenny, but of course she didn't own a cell phone. He needed to call Darcy and find out why she hadn't made it back to their hotel room, but he couldn't find his Blackberry. He wondered where he'd left it. He'd been fairly drunk earlier, before the sight of Jenny's angry face sobered him up.

  He tried to retrace the steps that had led to him bringing the other girl—what was her name? Allegra?—back to his hotel room. He certainly hadn't intended to cheat on Jenny, despite the encouragement of Wooly and friends. His memories around the girl were fuzzy, as if suffused with a weird golden light, the way it had felt whenever Ashleigh touched him.

  It wasn't possible that Ashleigh was involved, though. Ashleigh was dead, and Seth was responsible for what he'd done, drunk or not.

  Seth felt completely drained—the crowd had crushed in around him, leeching his energy, which had gone to heal any number of kids who were bleeding or injured from the riot. He staggered to his bed, leaving the bedroom door open so he could hear if Darcy returned. He turned up the volume on the phone on his bedside table, in case either Jenny or Darcy decided to call.

  He closed his eyes, trying not to imagine Jenny caught in the middle of the riot, with people pushing in around her. He didn't want to think about what the mob might have done to Jenny—or what she might have done to them, and how it would upset her if she infected anyone with the Jenny pox.

  The phone never rang.

  ***

  Seth awoke sticky-eyed and sick in the morning. He checked the other bedroom, where there was still no sign of Darcy, who was supposed to be there. The odd girl had made friends with Jenny after Ashleigh's death, and Seth had brought her to Charleston for college orientation this weekend, since they were both starting at College of Charleston in the fall. Darcy, like Jenny, had disappeared the previous night.

  He looked at the room phone. He didn't know Darcy's cell number by heart. He did know Jenny's home phone, but he didn't want to get her in trouble with her dad if she hadn't returned home yet. She already had enough reasons to be angry with Seth.

  He wandered downstairs to the hotel's dining room. Maintenance men were fixing broken windows from the riot, and the hotel's promised “Southern-style” hot breakfast was not being served. There was only some cold cereal and coffee available in the lobby.

  Seth helped himself to a huge bowl of Frosted Flakes and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He ate quickly and sloppily, drawing disapproving stares from more elderly hotel guests. Using his healing touch sucked out his energy, even burning away at his body mass if he didn't eat a gigantic pile of calories. It worked the same for Jenny.

  When he was satiated, he approached the front desk, where the hotel manager was on duty, a slender man with a pencil-thin mustache and a seersucker suit. He raised an eyebrow at Seth's disheveled appearance and the clumps of strawberry blond that stuck up from his head.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Hi,” Seth said. “Things got pretty crazy last night, huh?”

  “I believe we shall endure. We are fully insured.” The manager gestured at his computer. “If there is nothing further, I'm afraid we have a great deal of work to do this morning, cataloging the damage to our exterior.”

  “There was a girl who checked in with me, but she disappeared last night.”

  “How unfortunate.” The manager resumed tapping at his computer keyboard.

  “I was wondering if anybody's seen her.

  The man sighed. “May we assume she was blond, scantily clad and quite drunk? We did have to ask such a person to leave the premises.”

  “Um...no, that's a different girl,” Seth said. “The one I'm looking for has glasses and she's really, you know, pregnant.” Seth held a hand out in front of his stomach, not sure why he was demonstrating what the word meant. “So somebody might remember her. Her name's Darcy Metcalf?”

  The hotel manager raised his eyebrows—both of them this time, not just the one.

  “Metcalf,”
the manager said. “Am I to understand you were sharing her room on the fifth floor?”

  “Fifth? No, we're on the third. Seth Barrett?”

  The manager tapped at the keyboard. “Ah, yes, Mr. Barrett. This is a bit confusing, sir. We had to call the police for someone matching that name and description. She had a room on the fifth floor, which she reserved, we eventually discovered, using a stolen credit card.”

  “What? No, that's not right. We were on three, with my credit card, which isn't stolen.”

  “Hence the aforementioned confusion, sir. If she was staying with you, at your expense, why would she then rent a room on the fifth floor using a stolen credit card?”

  “Well, I don't fucking know, man,” Seth said, and the manager flinched a bit. “You must be confusing two different people.”

  “You propose that there were two women answering to the name Darcy Metcalf?” the manager asked. “Both of them pregnant?”

  “That doesn't make any sense, either,” Seth said.

  “I refer you once again to the aforementioned confusion, sir,” the manager said.

  “To be clear,” Seth said. “While Darcy was staying with me, she also rented a room on the fifth floor? With a stolen credit card? That doesn't sound like her at all.”

  “Perhaps I should not disclose this,” the manager said, “But it might be the case that the card in question was stolen from the lady's father.”

  “Then it wasn't all that stolen, was it?” Seth asked.

  “The father reported the card stolen, sir.”

  “Okay...then where's Darcy now?”

  “We handed her over to the police,” the manager said. “I presume you will find her in the city jail, in need of someone to post a bond.”