Dead Romantic (22 page)

‘What?' I said, still not quite understanding her.

‘Your friend Poppy?'

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘I'm worried about her. I don't know where she is, no one does.'

‘She's gone to some festival, hasn't she? That's what I keep hearing around the college.'

‘From who? Who do you keep hearing it from?' I demanded.

Zoe's face finally showed some kind of emotion. She looked startled. Her huge blue eyes had gone wider. ‘I don't know who they are, just people at college,' she said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? What have I done? You're acting as though this is anathema to you. I thought you wanted to be involved.'

‘No,' I blurted out.

‘No?' she said, eyebrows up.

‘No.' I got up out of bed and looked round for my hockey stick to hit her with if she made a lunge for me. I couldn't find it, then I realised it must be in the wardrobe so I shuffled my way over to it. ‘You're m-m-murdering people, Zoe, and I'm going to the police with the head to tell them what you've done.' I was trying so hard to keep my voice steady but it just came out in one long wobble. ‘I can't concentrate on college. I can't sleep. I can't . . . well, I can eat, but only just. It's definitely affected my appetite. You're a murderer and a psychopath and I don't want anything more to do with this. It's wrong. It's just all wrong.'

I didn't know what she would do or say. She didn't make a move for me though. She just sat on my blanket
box, feet crossed over at the ankles. ‘Finished?'

I nodded, not making eye contact with her, my hand on the wardrobe knob.

‘I haven't murdered anyone,' she said calmly, like a lawyer or something, though she seemed to be telling the truth. I really looked into her eyes. I thought about the photos of the little girl which I'd seen at her house. The little girl on the beach with her mother. ‘Everything I have for the project was already dead when I took it. Leftover from my father's work, whatever he had not used and the police didn't confiscate. The feet are from the hospital mortuary, as you well know. The head is from King's College, where my father stored it in a separate freezing chamber. I haven't killed anyone. You've just been listening to the town grapevine.'

‘No I haven't,' I said, probably too quickly.

‘You're being paranoid, Camille. I'm not a murderer.'

I twiddled the wonky wardrobe knob. ‘So where are my friends then?'

She shrugged. ‘How should I know?'

‘But you . . . you ran Damian over that night, didn't you? When he and Louis were walking back from the Chinese. Admit it, that was you, wasn't it? You wanted some part of him for the experiment.'

She frowned. ‘What night? When did he get run over?'

I sighed. ‘The night we stole Luke the Lifeguard from the funeral parlour. When we saw Louis at the hospital the next day, he was there with Damian. Damian had been run over.'

‘I didn't know that,' she said, serene, calm, collected.
She gave nothing away. ‘Why would I want any part of that idiot for this experiment?'

I didn't have an answer. ‘What about the hands then?' I blurted. ‘Where did you get them from? And the organs?'

‘Spares, as I've told you already.'

‘Yeah, but
whose
spares? Huh? They looked fresh when I saw them. You can't tell me they've been in some freezing chamber for months.'

‘Not exactly a freezing chamber but an ice house,' she said. ‘When my father got sacked, he set up a makeshift lab at our house, so he could continue his work. He harvested some materials from the University, anatomy specimens that were mostly due for incineration anyway. Some busy bodies poked their noses in and the police came and ransacked the house, taking most of the specimens away.'

‘Most of them?' I said.

‘Yes. I salvaged what I could and took it down to the bottom of the garden where there is an old ice house, buried beneath the overgrown grass. I created a small freezing chamber down there using a cryostat filled with liquid nitrogen and stored the organs and hands in parcels of frozen blood. They had thawed when you saw them. That is why they looked fresh. You can come and see it if you don't believe me . . . '

‘What about the brain?'

She sighed. ‘If you must know . . .'

‘Yes, yes I must.'

‘It's my father's brain,' she said.

‘Your dad's?' I cried.

‘You saw me digging on the night of the party when you got bathed in cow manure, if you remember? I was digging up my father. He was always going to be the brain for this experiment. I was just waiting for the right time to . . . retrieve him.'

A jigsaw piece finally floated into place.

‘That's what this has really been about,' she told me. ‘Reactivating my father's brain in a new body. So that he may live again. He wasn't a mad man, Camille. He was madly in love with his work, with improving methods of anabiosis and organ transplantation. And I won't let that brain die, it's too important. The other bits and pieces . . . are immaterial. I wouldn't go to the trouble of murdering people at the expense of my own freedom, when I could obtain free specimens from graves or medical schools, would I?'

‘I suppose not,' I said, eyeing her up and down. ‘But is the brain going to work if it's been in the ground for months?'

‘I visited his body in the funeral parlour. I believe it was Louis' father who allowed me some time with him. On my own. I injected his brain with the serum there and then, to preserve it until I could come back and claim it.'

‘Oh right,' I said.

‘I just want him back, Camille. I want my family back.'

‘I still don't understand,' I said.

‘No,' she said. ‘Why would you? You've got your family. Your perfect parents. Your grandparents who come and see you whenever they get the chance. Who pinch your cheeks and tell you you're beautiful . . .'

This was well weird. ‘How did you know about my grandma pinching my cheeks?'

‘I see things. Things other people take for granted. I watch families.'

‘But why?' I said.

Without another word, she shrugged herself out of her coat and it dropped to the floor. Then she wriggled out of her black jumper so that she was stood there in just her bra and trousers.

‘Oh no, no, what are you doing?' I cried as she unbuttoned her trousers and stood before me in just her shabby grey underwear.

‘Come here,' she said, holding out her milky white arm.

I shook my head so violently my ponytail whacked me in the face. Zoe walked towards me instead and I backed up against the wardrobe and snapped my eyes shut, waiting for certain death or forced lesbian sex. But when I opened my eyes she was just standing there, eyes boring into me, her arm held out before her. She was just showing me her arm. There was a deep red scar on her elbow crease.

‘There's something I haven't told you about me, because you didn't need to know. You probably should know now,' she said.

I looked at the scar. ‘You're an emo?' I cried.

‘No, I'm a partial,' she said. ‘I'm a partial reanimate.'

 

 

 

 

^‘
M
y mother and I were in a car accident when I was six. She walked away from it. But my right arm and leg were both trapped. When my mother saw me, after the operation to remove them, she couldn't live with what she had caused. She'd been drinking, which was why we crashed. She couldn't bring herself to look at me, much less be around me. So she left. And I never saw her again. My father vowed to find me new limbs. And he did. Against all the odds, he stitched me together again, made me almost as good as new. I was the first experiment, Camille. His first human experiment.'

‘You were?'

‘Yes. I never knew where the new arm or leg came from. But as far as I'm concerned, they've always belonged to
me. There are some things I can't quite achieve. I can't throw a ball to any great distance and I can't run very fast but I don't feel any different. I just am.'

‘Wow,' I said, hushed and staring at her arm scar and the one she was showing me near the top of her pale white leg. They both encircled the limbs, right the way around, but were no thicker than a red pencil line.

‘When my father died a few months ago, I had no one left,' she explained. ‘I'd always been home schooled so I didn't know how to integrate with people my age. It was just me. I enrolled at the college to try and ingratiate myself with “normal” society. But I discovered that because of who my father was, what other people
thought
he was, normal society didn't want me. So I vowed to do the next best thing: bring him back. Bring back the only person in the world who saw me as just Zoe. Not a freak. Then I met a girl in a graveyard who looked at me like I was extra-ordinary. Someone who didn't just think, “There's that mad professor's daughter.” Who didn't scurry by. And who helped me dig. And I thought she could help me with my experiment.'

‘And that was me?'

‘And that was you,' she said.

‘Why didn't you tell me your dad had . . . died?'

‘Because in my mind, he isn't dead. At least, he
won't
be for much longer. Not if I have my way. And he didn't cut off his own head off or get eaten by one of his “Frankenstein creations” if that's what you've been told. He had a heart attack, shortly after he was sectioned. A massive heart attack. He had worked himself very hard and
I think it broke his heart when he had to give it up so suddenly. He loved his work. Lived for it.'

‘So how did all the rumours start?' I asked her.

She shrugged. ‘How do any rumours start? Half-truth plus fear plus paranoia plus hyperbole. He grew to be a little . . . eccentric, my father. Obsessive. Fixated. A little overwrought. But a freak? No. Insane?' She shook her head. ‘Not a chance.'

‘I got called a freak in primary school,' I said, trying to pop the large bubble of silence that we were suddenly inside. ‘It doesn't matter now though, does it? It doesn't matter when you've got a friend.' She moved her mouth like she was going to smile, but it wasn't quite a smile. It was like she was afraid to make her face do one. ‘So . . .' I said, trying to get up to speed. ‘What about your experiment? What about Sexy Dead Boy?'

‘What about him?'

‘Is he still going to be my boyfriend?'

‘Yes. If you still want him,' she said, buttoning up her black pedal pushers. ‘He's almost ready now. He has all his organs and his blood. I just need to attach the head and give him the brain.'

I made a face. ‘But won't it be weird? Me having a boyfriend with your dad's brain?'

‘That will be immaterial to you though, won't it?' she said. ‘He will still look like one of your poster boys.' She nodded at the tatty magazine pictures on my wardrobe door. ‘He'll have the outward appearance of your perfect man, but the brain of a once very sweet and loving, kind and intelligent . . . gentleman. That is all.'

A gentleman, I thought. A gentleman would open doors for me. Kiss my hand. Offer me his coat when I'm cold. It could still happen. My dream. But she was talking about a STOLEN gentleman. With a MAD brain. And limbs taken from DEAD BOYS. ‘I still don't know about this anymore, Zoe,' I said.

She moved closer to me. I had flashes in my brain of moments from my serial killer documentaries. The last thing the victims saw before their necks were tied or their throats were cut or their noses were full of chlorophyll.

‘I just need you to do one last thing for me. Give me back the head so I can attach it and the brain today. Then help me move him to the college on Friday night so I can reanimate him there.'

‘You're going to reanimate him at college?' I cried.

‘I have to. I have to get him out of the house. At some point they're going to send a locksmith to change all the locks and barricade the gates ready for repossession. I have to leave.'

‘It'll be much riskier at college, surely, with all the students and teachers are stuff, won't it?'

‘No, because it's empty at weekends, isn't it? There isn't a soul about then. You don't have to stay and watch if you don't want to. All I ask is that you give me back the head and help me move it to the college on Friday night. Then, if you wanted to, perhaps you could come and see him when he's finished. If you still feel the same way and want nothing to do with him after that, fine. I'm on my own. Again.'

I looked at her. ‘You
promise
me you haven't killed anyone.'

‘Camille, you seem to take a shine to every other male face you see. It really wouldn't have been worth the effort.'

I still wasn't sure. I still didn't quite trust her. But if all I had to do was see him when he was finished, maybe I could just do that. ‘You promise me I don't have to go along with it if I still don't want to?'