Pale Immortal (18 page)

Then he started thinking logically. "She'll find me. She always finds me." Maybe they should go back. "When she does, I'll be in so much trouble."

"She won't find you, dude," Travis said. "We have the perfect place for you to hide. Nobody will find you there."

The bottle of vodka was in his hand again. In the dark, he didn't question it's stickiness. "Cool." But Graham wasn't feeling overly confident. After all, this was the same guy who'd sent him to the perv.

Rachel headed to the basement morgue with food and supplies. Halfway down the steps her cell phone rang and she paused to answer it.

Her dad.

Upon hearing his voice, her inclination was to blurt out what she'd done and tell him about Evan. She'd never kept anything from Seymour, and now she wanted his advice, his help. She felt physically sick. Her loyalty should be to her dad, not Evan.

"Graham's been turned over to Lydia Yates," Seymour said. "There was nothing we could do about it."

It took Rachel a moment to shift from her own guilt to what her dad was saying. "How did he take it?"

"Fairly well, all things considered. Maybe his relationship with his mother isn't as bad as he's made it out to be. They left town this afternoon." Seymour let out a heavy sigh. "I suppose you've seen the news?"

The news about Evan. It was everywhere. Tele- vision. Papers. Probably hitting the national press soon.

Tell him. You have to tell him what you've done.
"I've seen a little of it," she said.

"People go nuts when this kind of thing happens."

"Dad, I—"

"I don't think we have enough manpower to protect Evan Stroud if he shows his face in this town. People want him dead."

She'd almost told him.
I'm sorry, Dad.

They said good-bye and disconnected.

A minute later she found Evan under the desk in her office, knees drawn up to his chest.

"I brought you a sandwich and some of your tea."

His face was ashen, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy.

The few cases of porphyria she'd heard of had to do with skin sensitivity, which caused blisters, even cancer, if the skin was exposed to sunlight too often. Evan's case seemed to involve a full-body reaction on the cellular level, something that maybe even changed the composition of his blood.

He closed his eyes and tipped back his head. "Just hafta wait," he whispered. "Ride it out."

She spread a blanket over him. One tiny sliver of sunlight had done this. His present state underscored her reason for hiding him, but it did nothing to alleviate her guilt.

With long, shaking fingers, he grasped an edge of the fabric and pulled it to his chin. "Thanks," he whispered. "W-where's Graham? D-did you pick him up from school?"

"I have some bad news."

Two dark pits stared out at her from a white face as he waited for her to continue.

"Graham's back in his mother's custody. They left town not long ago."

Evan squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry. Dad did all he could." Rachel pushed the plate and tea close and left him alone. She had to go away. She had to think about what she was doing. She had her own demons to deal with.

The musty scent of the tea drifted to Evan.

He forced himself to crawl out from under the desk. Head throbbing, he grabbed the cup and took a swallow.

He ate the sandwich, finished the tea, and fell into a deep slumber.

He didn't know how long he slept. A moment. A day. A year.

A hundred years ...

He awoke to a thundering heart and the sound of blood rushing through his veins. He shoved himself to his feet. In the darkness he staggered to the autopsy suite, went straight to the coolers, and opened the center drawer.

Richard Manchester.

Evan stared at the mummified remains, his nerves humming.

An odd sensation of homesickness washed over him. Reverently he fingered the edge of the mono- grammed scarf and imagined wearing it, standing in the center of Old Tuonela.

He pulled the scarf from the mummy's neck, lifted the cloth to his face, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

Craig and Brandon waited in the car while Graham followed Travis through the dark woods, his feet snagging on tangled vines.

"Keep the flashlight pointed at our feet," Graham complained after getting tripped for the second time. He hadn't eaten since noon, and the vodka he'd downed in the car made his head buzz and his fingers tingle. "Where're we going?"

"You'll see." The flashlight cast a pale circle of light with a dead spot in the middle.

They kept walking. For a little while Graham forgot they had any destination until Travis stopped and Graham bumped into him.

They stood in front of an old stone building that looked like it had once been some kind of church. The images Graham received were more like snapshots as Travis swept the flashlight beam up and down. In those snapshots, Graham managed to determine that the structure had a heavy wooden door that was pointed at the top and set deep in stones.

The building was smothered in vines.

In Arizona there wasn't a lot of green, viney stuff. Here everything seemed alive. It
was
alive. A mass of oozing, growing, breathing vegetation coming out of the ground, shooting up buildings—even reaching into the sky. It was like some weird, messed-up fairy tale.

"Do those vines have thorns?" he heard himself ask.

"What?" Travis sounded confused.

Graham waved his hand. "Never mind." He hadn't meant to speak the words out loud anyway.

Maybe he could live here. Nobody would ever find him in his secret home in the woods. Maybe the vines would grow and grow and finally cover everything up. Hide him. Protect him.

What about winter? It gets cold here in the winter.

That was months away. Spring had barely started. He could figure something out by the time winter came. He could build fires. He could drag dead branches up to burn. He started to get excited thinking about it. Living off the grid. Was that what it was called?

The door was ajar. Travis shoved it open several more inches, the bottom dragging on the stone threshold. He squeezed himself inside, and Graham followed.

"What's that smell?" Graham put a hand to his nose and breathed through his mouth.

"Coon shit," Travis said. "Raccoons hang out in empty buildings like this. They can really tear things up with those little hands of theirs. You ever seen how they hold stuff? Pretty cool."

"Gimme that light."

Travis passed the light and Graham panned the weak amber beam around the room. It
was
a church. Or had been at one time. A few pews were still left, and an altar with some half-melted candles. The walls had been sprayed with graffiti. Above their heads the roof had collapsed in places. Below the gaping holes, rotten beams littered the floor.

Something scuttled behind them. Graham swung around, aiming the flashlight toward the sound in time to see a bushy brown tail vanish through a crack in the wall.

"Coon," Travis said.

Graham paused the light in the corner, focusing on a gross, stained mattress. He felt sick to his stomach. Felt an old, abstract dread he'd experienced many times in his life.

"Nobody will ever find you here," Travis told him.

"What is this place?" Graham asked. "What's an empty church doing in the middle of nowhere?"

"Old Tuonela. It's a ghost town. A real ghost town. It's supposed to be haunted with the people that were killed. Anyway, nobody comes here." He swung around. "You believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know. I've never seen one."

"How about the Pale Immortal?"

"You mean, do I think he was a real vampire?"

"Yeah."

Graham let out a snort. "Right." But he didn't feel as confident as he sounded. Standing in this weird place, he could almost believe vampires really existed.

"What about your old man?"

"What about him?"

"People say he's a vampire."

"He has a disease that keeps him from going out in the sun."

"How do you know for sure? Maybe he's really a vampire. Maybe he just tells people he has a disease."

Graham thought about how Evan had scared him a few times.

"Did you ever see him drink blood?" Travis asked.

"N-no."

"What about mirrors? And crosses? Does he have any in the house?"

"There's a mirror in the bathroom. And as far as crosses go... I mean, who has crosses in their house?"

"My parents do."

"I'll bet everybody in Tuonela does. And garlic too." Graham gave himself a mental shake. "This is stupid." Again, he sounded more certain than he felt.

"Whatever." Travis shrugged. "I gotta go."

Graham suddenly felt bad. He appreciated how the bunch had come to his rescue. He didn't want Travis to think he didn't appreciate it. "Hey, thanks, man."

"That's cool. One of us will try to make it back tomorrow after school." Travis put out his hand for the flashlight.

"Wait." Graham walked to the altar. Using the flashlight, he looked around for matches, but all he could find were empty books. "You got a lighter?"

Travis patted his coat. "Musta left it in the car."

"Let me keep the flashlight then."

"No way. I gotta have it to find my way back."

Graham reluctantly returned it.

Graham had a hard time keeping himself from leaving with him.

Once Travis was gone, Graham stood in the dark listening to his own heartbeat. Gradually the structure began to awaken. He heard small sounds that might have been the tiny claws of mice scrambling across beams. And then louder sounds of an animal as it thumped over a wooden floor to escape the building.

Nice.

How was it that he seemed to be so good at going from a bad situation to one that was even worse? Like he was equipped with some kind of chaos magnet.

What'd you expect? A damn hotel with clean sheets and a hot shower?

In his head he visualized the stained mattress in the corner. Clean sheets would be nice. Clean sheets would be really nice.

He was tired. And hungry. So hungry his stomach hurt. The kind of stomachache where, if you did finally eat something, you'd probably get sick.

Ghost town.

They had a lot of ghost towns in Arizona, but they were dried-up old shanties, not some wet, moldy building in the middle of the woods. Not someplace where animals ran across the rafters above your head and shit all over the place.

It will seem better in the morning.

His mind shifted.

Where was his mother? She would be pissed, that's for sure. She would be so incredibly pissed. And she was capable of doing some evil stuff when she was in a full-blown rage.

Travis walked really fast back to the car. He would have run, but it was hard to see even with the flashlight.

No way would he have wanted to stay back there by himself. Every kid in Tuonela had grown up hearing stories about the old place. Travis didn't like being alone in the dark anywhere, but being alone in fucking OT was enough to give a guy a heart attack. And after the deal with the weird lights ... What the hell was that all about?

Don't think about the lights. Don't look back. Just keep moving.

Graham was gutsy. He'd give him that.

By the time Travis reached the car, the hair on his scalp tingled and he was breathing hard. Brandon and Craig were sitting in the front seat, staring straight ahead, smoking like a couple of professionals.

"What'd ya do with the body?" Travis asked. "Did you drain it?"

"Nah." Craig rolled down the driver's window and flicked out his cigarette butt. "We don't want some old bat like that."

"Seems like a waste to me," Travis said. "I mean, we're always looking for blood."

"Not from some old whore."

"If you drank that," Brandon said, "it would probably make you old and stupid."

Travis wanted to tell Brandon he was already stupid, but he kept his mouth shut. Brandon was a sheep. He always did whatever Craig told him to do. He dressed like Craig, talked like Craig. It was pathetic.

Craig threw the car into gear. Instead of leaving, he drove deeper into OT before pulling to a stop. "Body dump."

They piled out of the car and hefted the body from the trunk, then let it fall with a heavy thud. The three of them dragged the deadweight across the ground until they came to an open well lined with stones. They rolled and shoved until the dead woman vanished into the dark hole, rocks and pebbles skittering after her.

Lydia had the vague idea she should be in pain, but she didn't feel anything. Oh, she'd been aware of being dragged from the trunk of a car. Aware of being dumped down a deep hole in the ground. Rocks had followed, hitting her on the head, knocking her out.

When she came to she felt no pain, and for a moment she thought maybe she was dead, or maybe she'd died and gone to hell. But then sounds came to her. Male voices, talking and laughing.

The voices drifted off, and she began to struggle, working her fingers between the rocks.

Stupid boys. Stupid friends of Graham's. They thought they'd bludgeoned her to death.

If you're not going to do a job right, don't do it at all.
That's what her mother used to say. First of all, the idiots hadn't killed her. Then they'd been too damn lazy to throw more than a few pebbles on top of her.

She would get out. She would get out and find them.

She struggled with a stone, finally managing to dislodge and shove it aside. That led to another one. She dug, scraping the dirt with her nails as she tried to free each new stone.

She would track down those assholes and kill them.

Kill not only them but Graham too.

She'd heard him. When she was in the trunk of the car, she'd heard him talking just inches away. Maybe he was her flesh and blood, but it would have been best if she'd had an abortion. She'd wanted to, but her mother had talked her out of it. Said they could maybe make some money out of the deal.