by A. E. Rought
Alex’s house is ridiculously big, easily three of our old Victorians on Seventh Street. Windows and fieldstone walls make up most of the ground floor. Narrow white siding and arched windows cover the top floors, and hold up the many gables of the forest green roof. Very pretty, but in an Alex-on-first-day kind of way, designed to attract and shun attention at the same time.
Bark scratches off some of the pink coating from my cast as I inch across the top of the fence on a large branch. Do I really want to do this? How can I walk away now? My gut hurts with the amount of wrong on this side of the fence, and Alex is in it somewhere. Denying my instincts to run back the way I came, I drop to the ground and slink into the shadows of the pine a few yards from the fence.
A pale yellow glow seeps through the downstairs windows, on the side of the house closest to me. A tall shadow passes between the lights and the glass before moving deeper into the room.
Alex, I think.
My heart pounds, a sweet wanting kind of ache, even though my stomach tightens and threatens to roll with nerves. I edge along the fence toward the driveway. Maybe to look a little less like a creeper who climbs fences, I’m not sure, but I feel better with gravel beneath my shoes than damp grass.
The driveway meanders between trees, and on the first bend I hear movement off to the side. I pause, casting my gaze in all directions. A little late to think about it now, but what if they have guard dogs? My gut clenches, and a sweaty chill rides my spine. I don’t have an exit strategy…what am I going to do if I need to leave in a hurry? The rustles sound too haphazard, and I don’t see any guard dog charging in to rip me to shreds.
Pushing against the sense of wrong fouling the air, I walk on. Then, the source of the rustling noise wanders into view.
My jaw falls. Daylight outside, a possible storm brewing, and a young deer shambling along the grassy patch beside the gravel? Whitetail bed down during the day, and rarely get this close to humans. A doe, by the lack of antlers, with an injured front leg by the way she’s limping.
Dread flushes in a sickly sour wash through me. Deer catch diseases and this animal isn’t acting normal. No flight instinct, no fear of humans. I can’t stay here, waiting for her to disappear. Walking softly to not startle her, I draw even with her wandering gait.
Then my stomach rolls into a knot and punches up into my throat.
The doe’s ears flick, turning in my direction. Wrong! my instincts scream, wrong! A thick, mineral tang scent wafts in front of her. At this angle, the wrong I felt blares in silent accusation from her chest. Her rib cage is a ruin of stitched flesh and open wounds. A scum of milky film covers her eyes and a hole cuts through her ear, like someone shot at her and missed.
“Oh my God,” I gasp.
Denial shrieks in me. Recognition clamps me in a fist of misery. She was dead! That doe died in my arms less than a month ago. Alex and I had tried to rescue her from death in the culvert at Meinert State Park, only to have her fade from life on the way to his car. He said he was going to take care of her…
How can she be here, wandering the Franks’ estate?
Those filmy eyes find mine, and a shot of horror rips through me. Everything in me recoils, sneakers kicking up stones as I backpeddle on the gravel drive. She lets out a pitiful bleat. Her wreck of a front leg has been pieced back together with metal rods and screws. The hardware flashes back the weak daylight while she staggers toward me crying like a baby for its mother.
I want to run. I want to scream. Shock locks my jaws, and a tree trunk cuts off my escape.
Trapped, and choking on my heart, I hold out a hand between me and the undead thing shambling to me. Click-clack-click rises from her hooves on the crushed stone. The bleats weaken with each cry, and a yellow fluid leaks from the open wounds on her chest. Her nose touches my hand. Cold, slimy, trembling when she tries to cry and nothing comes out.
I don’t realize I’m crying until moisture slides over the corner of my mouth.
“Shhh,” I tell her.
Do the dead hear? She must. She can limp and wail. Shudders rack her body, and her legs give out. The doe crumples to the ground, muzzle at my feet, eyes open and watching me through the white haze.
Gravel crunches beneath my feet when I back away, hand still held out. Please stay down, I think. Please.
Walking backward, keeping my eye on the doe I hurry my paces, and round the bend. Once she’s out of my line of sight, my stomach loosens, sinks and sends a gush of bile up my throat. I can’t stop it, my jaw muscles burn, and I drop to my knees and throw up everything but my memories at the side of the drive.
How in the hell do the dead walk?
It’s not natural. Death is the barrier we can’t cross.
My empty stomach squeezes again, but nothing comes up. The trees watch in disinterest as I sit back on my heels and swipe a sleeve over my forehead. Every panted breath draws in the smell of my vomit and the ever-present stink of something other. Across the field, near one of the small outer buildings sits a rack of garbage cans, rattling in the sticks underneath is another creature. What other horrors can this estate hold?
Rising on legs feeling rubbery, I try to ignore my impulse to stare, to investigate the accident and make sure it isn’t me.
The drive arches toward the building, and when I draw closer I see a rake and a shovel leaned against the siding. Beneath the trash cans, whatever is in the sticks, scrabbles to the surface of the refuse. An ordinary raccoon. Another nocturnal animal out in the daylight on a populated estate? Disbelief seems absurd after what I’ve seen. Then it swings its mangled head toward me and I know the Franks’ Estate has only begun to reveal its sins.
Half of the raccoon’s head is compressed burger meat and shattered bone. The jaw hangs broken, sharp yellow teeth dangling. Something like a hiss issues from what’s left of its mouth.
A yelp of shock bursts from my lips, and I give in to my instinct to run.
Up a grassy incline, and that impulse puts me in close proximity to the manor house. Stink hits me in waves, sourcing like a flood from a dog lying at the foot of the porch steps. The coat is a chaos of mange rot and matted fur, both eyes are open, one of them opaque and fixed, the other burst into a slop of tissue and jelly in its socket. Hand over my mouth to keep in the screams, I try to sneak past the sightless dog.
Its muzzle lifts, the cracked nose twitching, before the head swings toward me. I’m close enough to hear the air rattling in her throat and lungs, and read the name tag: Pam.
“Stay,” I whisper. “Stay, Pam.”
Rotted zombie dog Pam doesn’t stay. Her body rises in a trembling motion, then the joints in her legs give way and she drops to the grass again.
This isn’t real, I tell myself. This can’t be real.
I was willing to believe maybe Alex was haunted by Daniel’s ghost. But this? This?
The undead wander the Franks’ estate like it’s a game preserve in Hell. My mind runs in the same screaming loops: How is this possible? Why here? Who did this to them?
Then shouting snaps me back into a self-preservation mode and I flatten to the fieldstone wall.
“What did you do, Dad?”
Alex? Shouting at his father? Oh God, the last man on earth I ever wanted to see again.
“I did what was necessary to bring you back.” Such a calm, unaffected voice.
Bring him back from what? What are they arguing about?
My ridiculous urge to delve deeper into the black hidden behind the gates wins. I drop to the level of the rotted dog, jaws locked against my gagging, and crawl along the wall toward the windows emitting light. Movement at the windows stops me short of the yellow puddle on the grass. I arch my neck till I can see Alex. The sight of him jumpstarts my heart. He’s dressed different in his house—no hiding in hoods and sleeves. His snug, short-sleeved shirt shows muscles I’d run my fingers over, and displays the white scars marking his skin. A wild light snaps in his eyes. His skin is vibrant, like he’s just home
from vacation.
“Necessary?” Alex flings his arms wide. He locks gazes with his father. “There are punishments for what you’ve done.”
“No one can touch me.” The arrogance on his father’s face sets my jaw on edge. Whatever’s going on, he fully believes he was in the right. “After all I’ve given you, you should be thanking me, not whining.”
“Thanking you for making me a monster?” Alex shouts. “You should’ve let me die!”
“Let you die?” His father’s voice is ice to Alex’s righteous fire. He crosses his arms. “I will never let you die. You are my son!”
“What about Daniel?” Alex stands nose to nose with his father. “He was someone’s son. He had friends. He had a girlfriend.”
“Inconsequential,” his father scoffs, stepping behind the desk. “He had the proper blood type. He was the ideal match for a tissue donor.”
“That’s all he was to you? Pieces and parts? He was a person! A thinking, feeling person!”
“Rubbish,” his dad says. “Unsubstantiated metaphysical hokum. He was vessels, tissues, and brain matter that I needed to bring you back. Nothing more.”
The relentless unrepentance in his father’s voice only angers Alex more. “What about the consequences, Dad? Did you think about those? Did this end justify your means?”
“There were bound to be complications from such an extensive procedure.”
“Complications?” Alex roars. He bangs his chest, above his heart. “You call having a dead guy’s memories and emotions a complication?”
“The formula was meant to preserve viability.” His dad steps away, arranges things on the desktop beside him. “I didn’t have enough subjects to test it on.”
My chest tightens. I didn’t think I could feel more horror, but this place reveals layer after layer.
“What did you do?” Alex repeats, voice as icy as his father’s and thick with threat.
“The details are unimportant, and will only hamper the healing process.”
“It’s not the physical I’m worried about!” Alex strides to the phone on the desk, and grabs it from the base. “There has to be someone to tell. Someone who wants to know what happened to their son.”
“Fine.” His father sniffs, smoothes back his hair, and then yanks open a file cabinet. He reaches in, chooses a file and tosses it on the desk between him and his son. He drops into the chair, and props his feet on the desk. “Since you’re so keen to know the miracle I worked to bring you back to life... It’s all in there. Charts, blood types, formulas.”
A look of doubt clouds Alex’s face. He pulls the fat manilla folder to him, breath dies in my throat while I watch his face. He pages through his father’s documents, scanning some, reading snippets of others. His expression shifts from denial to anger, depression to a sick acceptance.
“So, you had him drugged.” Alex shakes the folder at his father. “Had him pushed off the deck. Took what made him Daniel and shoved it in me. And you didn’t think there wouldn’t be any side affects?”
Shock and pure horror slam into my chest like a freight train.
My boyfriend, the person I loved most in the world, was murdered for his ‘donated to science’ organs. And then Alex’s father gutted him and used his parts to revive Alex? Oh my God. The guy I loved, murdered, in order to make the guy I’ve come to love live again.
“I bargained,” his father says. “And my son lives. Perhaps the taint of memories and emotions left in the flesh will fade. The studies are hypothetical at best,” he starts to ramble, the nauseating sound of his voice rolling in my head. “Theories suggest there is a soul, and it can reside in the flesh. I must admit, with the brain matter, and him not entirely dead when I took it, concerned me…”
The words ‘not entirely dead’ finally break me out of the paralysis of emotional shock. Murdered. Gutted. Repurposed. Revived. Tainted. It’s not just Daniel’s ghost in Alex, it’s parts of Daniel in Alex. A strangled sob breaks free of my chest.
The argument dies inside the house. My shattered heart jolts to terrified life. If he had Daniel murdered for his organs, what will he do to me?
Blind terror feeds my limbs, and I hurtle through the theme park of undead monsters, scramble over the fence and am on the road before I hear a garage door open. Black Oak Lane rises to the intersection with Bent Pine Drive. Chest heaving, I skid down the far side of Bent Pine, huddle in the dune grass and clap both hands over my mouth to keep from sobbing and giving away my location.
Tears bleed over my hands, my chest burns with heaving sobs. If I had something in my stomach, I would puke it.
That man had my boyfriend killed to farm his body and revive his son.
Then clarity strikes.
Daniel didn’t fall. He was pushed.
Everything I believed was a lie.
And so is my relationship with Alex.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The gates of the Franks’ estate open with a squeal of metal. Dirt rushes at me as I drop, long grasses whack me. Above, the Suburban growls out of the property. It stops at the intersection, the idling engine feet away and sounding irritated, ready to run me down.
Cowering in the shadow of the slope, I follow the instinct to hide. They had to see me. Doctor Franks has to know it was me, and what I overheard. Breaking my hand means nothing in comparison to him drugging Daniel and using his organs to rebuild his own son. What will he do to me? He’s already broken the laws of man and nature.
If he can make one death look like an accident…
The pieces of my shattered heart beat, as undead as the doe Doctor Franks ruined. I wish it would stop and give me some relief. It’s all too horrible to believe. Daniel murdered. His body parts put into Alex. Alex adopting Daniel’s ways because, in a way, isn’t he also Daniel, now?
My brain refuses to bend and wrap around it.
Somehow, that madman pulled off the impossible.
After what seems like an eternity, the SUV turns the way I came and rolls down Bent Pine Drive. I lay in the dirt, chest aching, air whistling down my tight throat.
The clouds thicken above, darkening and seeming to sink toward me. Cars pass by until I lose count. All this time and no noise from the estate. I crawl back up the slope, and peer down Black Oak Drive. The gates remain closed, backed with black boards and locked to hide the horrors inside.
My heart hurts too badly to think clearly. I act on instinct, shambling through the neighborhood. Flashes of the sins Doctor Franks committed disturb my mind. Daniel. The deer. Alex. A horrid sadness cuts through me, tearing open a new gulf of misery. The loss of a love more intense than what I shared with Daniel carves me out.
How can Alex really love me, if he has so much of Daniel in him? Where does one guy stop and the other start?
And how can I love Alex knowing he’s alive because Daniel isn’t?
Of course his heart doesn’t beat for him. It isn’t his at all. It’s stolen.
Seventh Street looms like a balm on my soul. Home. Renfield. My parents. Then I see a big black vehicle creeping down my street, an evil gargoyle face behind the wheel and leering at my house. Branches tear at my hair when I dive into the bushes two houses down, and pray my camouflage will conceal me.
Alex’s father drives slowly down our street, face turned toward our house. He turns the corner, and then drives down the alley dividing our block. He stares at our house, our garage, then guns the engine, throwing stones from the tires when he roars away.
That monster of monsters knows where I live. What does he want here? My Mom for the lawsuit she never started? Me for owning the heart he put into his son? Or me for knowing he did it?
I wriggle free of the bushes and dash across the last two yards to home. The dove gray walls seem so flimsy with Alex’s father staring holes through them. I open the door, tuck inside and slam it shut behind me. Renfield pokes his head out from the kitchen where Mom keeps his food bowl. He watches me like I’ve lost my mind when I run th
rough the house and lock the back door, too. Then, I check the shadow box frame Dad made that hangs in the living room. The handgun is still there.
The cat follows me up the stairs, his mouth open as he smells the dirt and funk of the Franks’ property on me.
I strip down, shove my clothes into the hamper and then climb into the shower. No amount of hot water or scrubbing will wash away what I’ve seen, what I know.
Sometime after the hot water runs cold, Mom and Dad return home. The frigid water has left my skin feeling raw. Doctor Franks’ sins have dirtied my soul and I don’t know how to remove them. Shivering, I towel off and then pick clothes that never belonged to either guy.
Nerves on overdrive, I flinch when the garage door rattles. I mentally count steps to the gun from the bottom of the stairs while I creep to the first floor. If an intruder breaks in, I’ll still be able to reach the gun before they can grab me. The door opens, and I brace to run.
Mom enters first, her frumpy purse bumping the door knob when she comes in. Dad pushes in behind her, arms loaded with pizza boxes. Grateful for a bit of normalcy, I grab paper plates and napkins from the kitchen. But normalcy is a pipe dream. We sit down in our regular places, but nothing feels right anymore. How do I act, knowing what I know? Will my parents figure out something is really wrong?
I bite and chew mechanically, swallow, and try to respond to appropriate comments about the conference.
A knock echoes through the house, and I cringe.
“My goodness, Emma,” Mom says, “Are you all right?”
“If it’s Alex, please tell him I’m not here.”
“Emma Jane…”
“Please. I don’t want to talk to him.”
Dad balls up his napkin, pushes back his chair. The knock comes again, louder this time. I shift in my seat, ready to run for the stairs if it’s Alex, the gun if it’s his father. Dad opens the door, and a whiff of leather and lightning whisk through to my nose and spear through to my heart.