Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (2 page)

“I understand,” Seth's dad said, furiously scribbling information on a legal pad. “We'll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up the phone. Then he stared at Seth. His face was going pale, and he had a look like he'd been punched in the stomach.

“What's happening, Dad?” Seth asked.

“It's Carter.” His dad stood up.

“What did he do?”

“I have to talk to your mother.” Seth's dad walked past him, and Seth followed him to the stairs. “Wait,” his dad told him.

“You want me to wait right here in your office?” Seth asked.

“Just wait somewhere.”

Seth followed his father to the old, wide staircase, built of dark oak, but he stayed at the foot of it while his father ascended.

“Dad, what's going on with Carter?”

His father glanced back at Seth, briefly, but said nothing. Seth watched him disappear into the dark upstairs hall.

After a minute, Seth tiptoed up the stairs after him.

Seth made his way down the wide upstairs hall, past the door to the third floor, which Seth never opened. The third floor was scary, full of his great-grandfather's stuff, and Seth's grandfather had remodeled it into some kind of crazy maze. Carter said it was to confuse Great-Grandfather's ghost, in case it came back to haunt the family. Seth's parents would not confirm or deny the story, and usually changed the subject when Seth asked.

At the end of the hall, the door to the master bedroom stood ajar. Seth leaned an ear against the open crack, wanting to hear the news about his older brother.

He didn't need to eavesdrop, though, because the first thing he heard was his mother's scream.

“No!” Iris Mayfield Barrett's voice echoed through the house. “No, no, no!”

Seth nudged the door open another inch. He could see a mirror on his parents' wall. In the reflection, his mother sat at the foot of her bed in her bath robe, her hair disheveled, her face in her hands. She was shaking her head.

Seth's father stood over her, his arms crossed, looking down at the floor.

“We have to go,” he said.

“I can't,” she said.

“Then stay here with Seth,” he told her. “I'll go by myself.”

Seth's dad took a coat from the closet. He looked at Seth's mom, weeping on the bed, and his jaw worked as if he were trying to come up with something to say. Then he walked toward the door without saying anything.

“Don't go,” Seth's mom said.

“I have to go.”

“I need to see him.” She stood up and went to the closet. “Let me get ready.”

Seth's dad opened the door and looked at Seth. “I told you to wait.”

“What happened to Carter?” Seth asked.

His dad looked at him, then back into the room as if he expected Seth's mom to answer that one, but she was out of sight in the walk-in closet.

“Seth,” his dad finally said, “There's been an accident. A car accident.”

“Is Carter okay?”

Seth's dad sighed. He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Carter didn't survive, Seth. We have to....” His voice choked up, but he swallowed forcefully and held it back. “We have to identify the body.”

Seth stared at him, unable to process this. Carter had been here only yesterday, chasing Seth through the house and threatening him with noogies.

“But he can't be,” Seth said. “He can't be...dead, can he?”

“I'm sorry, Seth.” His father gripped his shoulder awkwardly for a second, and quickly let go. “I don't know what to say.”

“No, that's not right.” Seth backed away from his dad. He could feel the sting of tears in his eyes as he shook his head. “That can't be true!”

Seth ran down the hall and into Carter's room. He looked around at the baseball trophies, the posters of girls in bikinis, the electric guitar Carter had begged to get last Christmas, but never learned how to play. It didn't seem possible that he wasn't coming home. Carter had gone to the beach for a week, and then he'd be back. That was supposed to be the plan. He wasn't supposed to be gone forever.

Seth felt something cold and hard strike him right in the stomach. He collapsed at the corner of Carter's bed, crying and screaming and overwhelmed and confused.

It was twenty minutes before his parents came to collect him.

***

Seth's dad drove a Cadillac STS, black on the outside and the inside, with satellite GPS, a built-in telephone, and a radar detector mounted on the dashboard. Seth usually enjoyed riding in it, because he could imagine it was the Batmobile.

Tonight, he wasn't enjoying anything. He sat in the back seat and watched the interstate mile markers whip past. His parents sat in the front, not talking. He felt like he was very small in the back, and that a huge chasm of empty space separated him from his parents. Their silence, added to the fact that nobody had turned on the stereo, left him feeling completely alone. The ride was long and miserable. Rain spattered the car as they passed through south Georgia on the way to Florida.

Though his dad drove around ninety miles an hour, slowing only when the radar detector began to beep, it was hours before they reached the Opawassee County Sheriff's Department. The glowing blue numbers on the dashboard read 3:48 AM. Barely a dozen words had been spoken the entire way, and then only when Seth's dad announced he was stopping for gas, and asked if anybody was hungry. Nobody was.

The sheriff's department was a low cinderblock building, with a couple of annexes built onto the back. One of them had barred windows, and Seth guessed that was the county jail.

Seth followed his parents into the grungy police station, which had a dirty linoleum floor and harsh, flickering fluorescent lights that made everybody look like walking corpses. Seth's dad spoke in a low voice to the uniformed cop at the front desk, while Seth and his mother sat on one of the hard wooden benches in the waiting area. A few feet away from Seth sat an old man with long, tangled gray hair and a matted beard. His bloodshot eyes stared into empty space, and he stank like urine.

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.”