Frostbitten: The Complete Series (65 page)

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
ZELDA

The police station was packed, shoulder to shoulder with tired faces and angry voices—some of which were just escaping the cold, others demanding charges be pressed against the desperate trespassers, who were simply escaping the cold. There was no shortage of shouting in the station as the police dismissed all of the angry homeowners—prioritizing matters of actual importance, such as finding temporary homes for the late-Clarkson’s homeless foster children, and getting statements pertaining to the Clarkson double homicide. 

Vanessa claimed that she saw nothing but the bloody body in the foyer. She didn’t rat her brother out. Her testimony was more than that of the fourteen-year-old Zelda, who didn’t speak a single word—she hadn’t spoken a single word since Hanna left her. Her silence drove the Clarksons to the brink of madness, just as Hanna’s had done years before. Like Hanna, she
just didn’t have anything to say
.

Zelda’s biggest challenge was containing her emotions in the police station—containing her overwhelming joy and hiding her beaming grin.

Vanessa, Zelda, and the rest of the Clarkson’s kids were given warm cots to sleep on for the night.

They were all woken up the next morning by the sound of tow trucks, pulling all of the abandoned cars into the police impound lot. All of the same policemen were buried in all of the same paperwork—making the same phone calls to, quite possibly, the same foster families.

One particularly rusty vehicle caught Zelda attention as it was pulled into the impound lot. A familiar vehicle: An old rusted ’69 Ford Mustang. As the tow truck turned around and took off for the next car, Zelda slipped outside. She stared at the car for a minute while a repressed memory began to seep back into her mind—

From the window of her childhood home, Zelda watched as Kane got into the old muscle car and drove away, leaving her alone with the body of her dead mother. She spent an hour alone with her mom’s corpse before The police pulled in with news of her father.

Zelda had replayed the memory so many times that it became a nightmare—a piece of her mind’s fiction and not a piece of reality. Like every other nightmare, Zelda forgot about it. She repressed it.

The door of the old Mustang was unlocked. Zelda looked back at the busy, distracted police station. Hotwiring a car was a skill that became second nature living with the Clarksons, just like pickpocketing and petty theft. With no money for transit, one either had to steal some money, or steal a car.

Zelda fired up the Mustang’s engine. The tank was full. The police were oblivious that the car had even been in their possession. By noon, Zelda was half-way to the next town. No one noticed her leave. No one made an effort to track her down once she was gone.

Before entering the mountain pass, Zelda made a stop at her old family home. The house had been sold at a police auction to a young couple. The money was intended to be given to Zelda when she turned eighteen—a responsibility given to the Clarksons. Suffice to say, that money, along with the rest of her intended inheritance, had been squandered on expensive wine, Italian furniture and other brand name luxuries, which never graced Zelda’s life.

No one was home, so Zelda let herself in. None of the relics of her childhood existed in the house—none of her family’s furniture, none of their pictures which once hung on the wall. But it may as well have. All of the new family’s furniture was positioned the same, the young couple’s pictures hung in the same spots, and Zelda’s old bedroom was now the bedroom of another young toddler, just a few years older than she was when it all happened.

Zelda picked up a photo of the family’s child—a child whose smiling lips nearly touched the cusps of her ears. Zelda wrapped her fingers around the photo and prepared to scrunch it into a tiny ball. Instead, she placed the photo back down.

After stealing a few snacks and a couple of water bottles, Zelda returned to the Mustang. She popped the trunk to stash her haul. Then, she discovered Kane’s deadly arsenal his lifetime collection of vampire-related news and literature.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
NEVER THE SAME, NEVER CHANGED

The following few weeks were quiet ones as the sun returned to the Snowbrooke skies, staying a little bit longer and rising a little bit higher each day. The snowfall became light, the ploughed highways remained ploughed, and power remained on.

Philip didn’t speak a word after his arrest. He refused representation, got The Chair within the week. He became “The Vampire of Snowbrooke”. His face made the cover of every newspaper the country over.

The headline in Snowbrooke:
The Face of Evil
.

The cover contained nothing but the bolded headline, and the most unflattering photo of Philip’s old, weathered face. Companies called the paper and asked that their ads be withheld from the issue, so to not be associated with
The Face of Evil
. Philip would go on to be remembered as one of history’s most horrid serial killers. Last I heard, Hollywood was planning to make a movie about it, starring Matt Damon as the brave rookie cop, and Ben Afflek as The Vampire of Snowbrooke.

Philip’s arrest marked the end of the killings. Vanessa dropped the Riley from her name, and she left Snowbrooke, catching the first bus out after the highways were cleared. I like to think that Peter tagged along, but according to the cops, his body was found in the snow, along with twenty-eight other escaped inmates. The surviving inmates were caught and locked back up—at least according to the media and the police.

Unfortunately, I can only speculate as to the whereabouts of the rest of the players in this tiny portion of life’s play. As I said before, most of what I know I overheard in the quiet corners of late-night bars, the basement dwellings of intimate parties, and the private whispers in school hallways, long after classes were out.

I do know that the charges against Vish Mumbar were dropped after Riley’s arrest—I was surprised to read about it on page thirty-two of
The Face of Evil
edition of the local newspaper. It only got a tiny paragraph, which is more than most uplifting news gets these days, unfortunately.

As Fate would have it, Tarun’s arrest did come with a silver lining: A warrant was put out for the arrest of the Walkers in India for
forging legal documents
. They were dragged back to Snowbrooke, and given the option of a five-million dollar bail, or ten years in prison. The money-loving family was reluctant to take the bail option—but they didn’t want to go to prison.

They paid the bail, and then they were flat broke. Vish Mumbar was kind enough to offer them a trade, though. The Walkers moved into their old apartment building, which was in even worse shape following the police raids.

Vish was on a plane back to India before the start of the New Year. Tarun didn’t tag along, nor did he stay in Snowbrooke.

I asked everyone I could about Tarun, to find out where he went after his father went back to India—but no one knew. I managed to get into contact with Vish, but Vish—the cheeky old man—told me he didn’t know where Tarun was. I could hear his goofy smirk through the telephone. He did give me a little roundabout peace of mind: “Wherever he went, I am sure he is very happy. By the way, have you heard about the ground-breaking work being done at the National Space Center?”

I found the article Vish was referring to in a science journal: “Undergrad Physicist Couple Develop Fuel-Free Propulsion System Using Microwaves. Works in a Vacuum”. I would be lying if I said that I understood the contents of the paper, but that is more or less irrelevant. The physicists were one Peter Gold-Mumbar and his wife, Brittany Gold-Mumbar. The article’s only photo was of a brass chamber with wires running in and out of it—there was no photo of the young couple.

But it didn’t take an astrophysicist to put two and two together.

Tourists streamed into town, fascinated with the stories behind the Wilkinson house, stories which were published in the popular tell-all book,
A Most Curious Town
written by police officer turned writer, Constable Hendricks. In his book, Hendricks claims that he was pressured into early retirement after he questioned the arrest and quick sentencing of Philip Riley. His debut book was a bestseller—a cult favourite among conspiracy theorists.

As the weeks passed, Snowbrooke saw its share of aspiring mystery writers and one very famous paranormal sceptic working on a “
Top Ten Most Haunted
” book. Inspired by Hendricks’s book, the investigator was determined to prove the whole tale a sham. He was the first to spend a night in the house, after the city converted it into a tourist attraction. The night was uneventful, but something else caught the investigator’s interest—something that ended up making the first spot in his anticipated book—

It was around three in the morning, when the famed paranormal writer noticed a glimmer from the attic window of the supposedly haunted home. Across town, he could see a strange glow emanating from the top of the town’s clock tower. The famous sceptic spent the next four days observing the mysterious glow and investigating the tower. On the fourth day, when he saw the ethereal light, he entered the tower and climbed the steps. The details of what happened after were left out of the book, and the former sceptic refused to recount them in any interview. His famous words would go on to immortalize Snowbrooke—

“There are many things of which I am sure. Angels exist. Of this, I am sure. Demons exist. Of this, I am also sure. Sure too am I that one of each exists at the top of that tower.”

It was at the end of January that a new English upgrading class began. I enrolled, and found myself sitting in that same corner desk, watching as a new group of students showed up for their first day. A part of me expected to see Hanna and Connor show up for the class, but they did not. The class was comprised of strangers. Some of the students I vaguely recognized from high school; students who I passed in the hallways hundreds of times without considering that their lives may one day become intertwined with my own. They would—but that is a story for another day.

One of the students in the class was a pretty, younger girl named Cassie—Cassie Fenner. I asked her what had happened to Connor on the night of the big blizzard. She didn’t know.

“I remember waking up when the power went out. I could hear something downstairs—like a loud
bang
. I thought our generator blew up,” Vanessa said. “I got up to get my mom, but the moment I was out of bed, the power was back on. This ball of light shot out of our house. I looked out the window, and I swear that I saw Connor running out of the house, without a coat! Just in shorts and a T-shirt. I’m sure it was a dream, though—I mean, an hour earlier, the guy couldn’t even sit up, never mind run like that. It all seemed so real—But I’m sure it was just a dream. I don’t know what actually happened to Connor.”

No one had seen Connor or Hanna since that night. I have my own theories as to what happened—where they went.

I heard Nightfall is a really great place for a couple of young vampires.

As for me—there’s nothing terribly exciting to mention. I’m still just a fly, moving from wall to wall, watching the world spin around and around. I can’t complain. The view is great from here. I’m able to just sit back and watch the world around me. Day by day, I get to watch an epic tale unfolding right before my eyes. Like the elaborate underground of a thriving metropolis—Endless tunnels and corridors—abandoned subway lines and sewer systems—all passageways to lives you would never know existed. Life itself is an incredible story, so meticulously structured that every single word—every single syllable is as important as the entirety of the fiction itself.

THE END