Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3)

• Title Page
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  
• CHAPTER FORTY
  
• CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  

by J.L. Bryan

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Jeffrey L. Bryan

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Seth found the little bird in the manicured grass under one of the old, moss-heavy oaks in the front yard. It cocked its head as he approached, then spread its wings and attempted to fly away, but it couldn't get airborne because one wing was bent and crooked. It flailed and rolled through the grass, trying to escape him.

“It's okay, Bird,” Seth said. He dropped to his knees and crawled to the bird, thinking this would scare the little creature less than if he walked towards it at his full height. Seth paid no mind to the grass stains on the knees of his white Easter pants.

Seth studied the bird. It was blue, so, by Seth's logic, it must have been a bluebird. He wondered what had happened to the bird's wing, if an animal had attacked it or if it had just fallen and forgotten how to fly. Or maybe it never could fly. It looked very small, like a baby.

“What are you doing, Seth?” Carter ran out of the house and across the front yard toward Seth. “You have to hurry!” His approach startled the bird, which screeched and rolled around again, flapping its useless wing.

“Shh!” Seth said. “You're scaring him.”

“Don't shoosh me!” Carter said. He was ten years old, while Seth was only six, and Carter thought being older made him boss of everything. “Mom wants you to come in now, 'cause it's time for church.”

“I'm coming,” Seth said, but he didn't move from his hands and knees.

“What's that?” Carter stood beside Seth and looked at the bird with the flailing wing.

“He's hurt,” Seth said. “We have to help him.”

“We can't,” Carter told him. “If the mom bird smells a person on the baby, she won't take care of it anymore.”

“Doesn't look like she's taking care of him, anyway,” Seth said. “He's stranded.”

“We have to go.”

Seth heard his mother in the back yard, calling for him.

“We can't leave him here,” Seth said. “Something will eat him.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I can keep him in my room until he's better.” Seth reached for the bird, but it hopped back from him, opening its beak.

“Mom won't let you do that.”

“Are you gonna tell on me?” Seth asked.

“I don't have to. She's going to notice a bird, Seth.”

“Seth! Carter!” their mom called in the back yard. “Come here right this instant!”

“Let's go,” Carter said. “We're gonna get in trouble.”

“Wait.” Seth crawled toward the bird and slowly reached out with both hands.

“Leave it alone, Seth,” Carter said. “It's probably got germs.”

“He doesn't have germs!” Seth said.

“How would you know?”

“You don't know everything, Carter.”

“Seth!” their mom called again.

“I know you're gonna get grounded if you don't come on,” Carter said.

“Wait...” Seth crawled closer to the little bird, which seemed to be losing its energy. “Almost...” He scooped up the bird in both hands, taking care to avoid the broken wing, since it probably hurt. The bird bit him anyway, drawing drops of blood from Seth's thumb with its sharp beak.

“Told you it would bite, dummy,” Carter said.

“No, you didn't. And I don't care.” Seth stood up, holding the bird in both hands. Carter gaped at the grass smears on his pants.

“Oh, you're gonna get in trouble...” Carter said.

“Am not.” Seth looked at the tiny bird quivering in his hands. “I'll help you,” he whispered. “You can live on my dresser. That's like a tree.”

“Seth, you can't bring that bird...” Carter began, but Seth tuned him out.

Something was happening. Seth felt his hands grow hotter and hotter. The bird chirped and squirmed in his fingers, and now Seth could feel heat flowing out from his palms. He didn't understand what was happening.

Then the bird hopped to the edge of his left hand, extended both wings, and jumped. It fell for a moment, but it flapped furiously and straightened out its course, skimming over the grass. Then it climbed up through the air in a wide, slow spiral, to perch on a dark, thick limb overhead. It tweeted a few times, and Seth thought it sounded happy.

“Okay, we can go now,” Seth said. He turned to walk toward the car, but Carter caught him by one shoulder. Carter was staring up at the bird.

“Seth, what did you do?” Carter whispered.

“Nothing,” Seth said. “He's okay now. I'll tell Mom about it.”

“No!” Carter said. “You can't tell anyone.”

“How come?”

“Seth, that bird had a broken wing. When you touched it, the wing straightened out and healed up. I watched it happen.”

“So?”

“So that's...weird. Really weird, Seth. Nobody can do that.”

“I can!” Seth said.

“You have to keep it secret.”

“You're just jealous 'cause you can't do it,” Seth said.

“No, Seth.” Carter turned Seth to face him. Carter had light brown hair and green eyes—he looked more like a Mayfield, from their mom's family, than a Barrett. “I'm serious now. People will treat you like a freakazoid if they find out you can do that. It's not normal to heal things with your touch.”

“Jesus could do it,” Seth said.

“And look what happened to him.”

Seth thought about it. “Oh...”

“Just keep a secret for now,” Carter said.

“Even from Mom and Dad?”

“Even from them.”

“For how long?” Seth whined.

“Until I tell you it's safe,” Carter said.

“When will that be?”

“I don't know. I'll tell you.”

“Seth! Carter!” their mom yelled. She wasn't in the back yard anymore. She'd circled the house and now stood on the driveway in her high heels and purple dress, her arms folded, eyes glowing with anger.

“We better go,” Carter whispered. “Don't tell anyone.”

“Jonathan Seth Barrett!” their mother shouted as they approached. “Look at your pants! What have you been doing?”

“I was just...” Seth pointed toward the treetops, but Carter shook his head. “Just playing.”

“In your
Easter
clothes?” their mom asked. “Get inside right now. You can't go to church looking like that.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Seth hurried toward the front door. Before he went inside, he looked at the high limb again, meaning to wave good-bye to the bird, but it had already disappeared.

Seth was in his room watching
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
when the house phone rang. He was expecting to hear from Wooly—Chris Woolerton—about Seth's plans to visit Charleston and stay with Wooly's family. Seth was looking forward to hanging out at the beach with Wooly and his friends. Wooly had been the most popular fifth-grader at Grayson Academy, known for his pranks, his encyclopedic memory for dirty jokes, and the
Playboy
magazines he had snuck into the dormitory.

In the fall, they would both be in sixth grade, the last grade before you moved on to Grayson's secondary school, Grayson Preparatory. Until then, they were the oldest kids, the rulers of Grayson Primary.

Seth hurried to answer the phone.

“This is Sheriff Frank Young,” the man's voice said on the phone. “Opawasee County, Florida. Can I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Jonathan Barrett?”

Seth's name was Jonathan Seth Barrett, and he considered making a joke of it and saying “I'm Jonathan Barrett.” But the police officer clearly wanted to talk to his father, and his tone was dead serious. Seth immediately thought of Carter, his fourteen-year-old brother who had gone on vacation to Florida with a friend's family.

Seth opened the door and yelled “Dad! Phone!” Nobody answered, so he sighed and hurried down the stairs.

He found his father in his office, surrounded by the heads of dead animals—not just deer like everyone had, but wolf and bear heads, too, animals killed by Seth's great-grandfather. The office intimidated Seth, as if the whole place exuded death and despair. The desk, liquor cabinet and other furniture were hand-hewn from dark, heavy wood sometime in the nineteenth century.

Seth's dad, Jonathan Seth Barrett III, sat at the gray IBM PC on the desk, surrounded by heaps of open file folders. He wasn't quite forty years old, but traces of gray had already appeared in his hair, along with deep worry lines on his face. The years of managing the family's diverse, worldwide investments had aged him prematurely. Like the office itself, his father was intimidating to Seth—he seemed to make the air around himself dark and heavy.

“Hey, Dad?” Seth asked, hesitantly. His dad didn't like being interrupted when he was working, and he was liable to bite Seth's head off.

“I'm busy, Seth,” he replied without looking up.

“But there's a phone call.”

Seth's dad glanced at the two phones on his desk—one was the regular house line, one of them was for business. A red light blinked on the display panel of the house phone, indicating a call on hold.

“Take a message,” he told Seth.

“But it's the police,” Seth said. “From Florida.”

“Florida? What's Carter gotten into this time?” He shook his head as he picked up the phone. “This is Jonathan Barrett,” he said. Then he listened, and his face drew into a deep frown. “I'm sorry, could you...repeat that?”

Seth wondered what his older brother had done. Carter had a pretty good nose for mischief. At Grayson, he'd once gotten in trouble for dying the pool in the aquatic center pink the night before a swim meet, which had gotten him probationary status and ultimately cost Seth's dad a bit of money. Carter said his main regret was not using enough red food dye—he and his friends had wanted the water blood-red. Another time, Carter had been in trouble for sneaking over to the Kingsroad School, a girls' prep school a couple miles from all-male Grayson Academy.