The Monster Part IV

PART IV

~*~

Beside Deep Waters

“Can you repeat that?” Robyn sat with her white mocha latte hovering at her mouth, untouched.

Frankie blinked at her. “Which part?” They’d ditched school for some much-needed group therapy at One Shot, their fave coffee shop that overlooked Seneca Lake.

“Every part.”

Vivi giggled. “She just wants to hear more about the part where you almost kissed him.”

Robyn frowned. “Not only that part. But, yeah, mostly that part.”

Frankie sat back in her chair a looked across the lake. “Why? So you can verify the depths of my stupidity?”

“Stupidity?” Robyn gaped at her. “The only thing stupid is how hot he is. I’m not sure I could’ve restrained myself in that situation.”

“Right?” Frankie perked up. “He’s stunning, but when you talk to him, it’s like he has no idea. Like he’s never had a girl pay the least bit of attention to him.”

“You could be right,” Vivi said. “Lots of girls wouldn’t look past the scars.”

Frankie couldn’t help a triumphant smile, but she hid it behind her cup. “Good. I hope it stays that way.”

“What astounds me,” Vivi continued, “is how interested you are in him. I mean, you never fall. You’re always so practical. You’re like a forty-year-old trapped in an eighteen-year-old body.”

Robyn pointed at Vivi as though she’d just verified the existence of alien life on Earth. “No shit. She’s always like, ‘But what if I don’t know what to say?’ or ‘What if I don’t like the way he chews?’ or ‘What if he doesn’t like the way I chew?’” She thrummed her fingers on the table for a solid minute, staring at Frankie to emphasize her point, then added, “It’s bizarre.”

“It really is,” Vivi agreed. “You come up with every excuse known to man not to date a guy, and now this? And what about Gage?”

“Crap.” Dread crept up Frankie’s spine. “I still have to break up with him.” She took another sip before she realized the atmosphere had changed with her last remark.

“I’m sorry,” Robyn said, lowering her head. “I should never have—I thought he was such a great guy.”

Robyn and Vivi had both encouraged her to give Gage a chance. They were regretting it. In all honesty, Frankie would probably have broken up with him sooner if not for their encouragement, but in their defense, she hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about his recent behavioral changes.

“No, he was,” Vivi said. “He had the best personality of any jock I’ve ever met. I don’t know what happened.”

“Me neither. Do you think he’s on steroids?” Frankie asked. “He’s been under a lot of pressure to get that scholarship since his dad’s wreck.”

“Maybe,” Vivi said, “but that’s no excuse, Frank. No guy ever has a right to hurt you.”

“No, I know. And it’s over. I’m telling him today, but I don’t want to think about that now. I just want to find out more about Indigo.”

“And we’re back to the stalking thing.” Robyn laughed and Vivi joined her, but they really did deserve an explanation.

Did she dare tell them? Would they think she was as insane as she felt?

She knew she was wrong. She had to be. But she’d seen the video. Uncle Bobby had it on his computer. Of course, he didn’t know that she knew, but she’d been watching it over and over for years now.  

When she was in her early teens, she went through what one might call a rough patch. Basically, she felt sorry for herself. She’d been crying one night, the agony of missing her parents like a knife slicing her heart into pieces with a rope holding the bloody parts together. But it was pulled too tight for her heart to beat, and it struggled against the rope, trying to get oxygen to her other vital organs. Trying to keep her alive no matter how much she wanted to be with her parents.

On that night, she’d decided to do something about it.

She got up to do the unthinkable. She was going to try alcohol. Wasn’t that what people in the movies did when they were depressed? Drowned their sorrows?

Her uncle hid his stash in a locked cabinet in his office, and she knew where the key was. But when she went downstairs, her stomach clenching at the thought of swallowing the fiery liquid she’d only ever tasted once on a dare, she heard her aunt and uncle talking urgently in hushed tones.

Then she heard people talking and she realized they were watching a video on his computer.

She peeked through the crack between door and doorframe. Aunt Bobby was crying. Uncle Bobby had a hand wrapped over his mouth as though in disbelief, his eyes brimming with unspent tears.

“Where did you get this?” Aunt Bobby asked.

“Donald saw it. He found it on YouTube.”

“Why would someone post this?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Read the description.”

Her aunt read aloud. “We took this during Storm Sarah. This girl’s parents perished that night.” Her aunt stopped and glanced back at her uncle.

He nodded for her to continue.

A sob wracked her body before she read more. “We gave a copy to the police, but they never found the boy who saved this little girl’s life. We are putting this out there in honor of this unknown hero’s bravery.”

She stopped and let a series of sobs shake her shoulders. Tears fell on the desk like raindrops and Uncle Bobby handed her a handful of tissues.

She wiped and then continued. “The boy dove back into the river. It was the bravest thing we’ve ever seen. If you know him, if he survived, please tell him he is a hero. We have never forgotten how he risked his life to save others on this horrible night.”

Frankie hurried back up the stairs, waited for her aunt and uncle to go to bed, then waited another agonizing two hours, just to be sure. When she was sure they were asleep, she snuck into his office with a set of headphones and watched the video.

She doubted she took a single breath as it played, the rope around her heart pulling tighter with each passing second. It left her speechless.

When it was over, she sat there staring at the blank screen until dawn.

After that, she snuck into her uncle’s office every night for months to watch the boy save her. To watch her resurrection.

It took her years to realize she wasn’t watching her resurrection over and over. She was watching her parents’ demise. She was watching the churning black waters that had swallowed them whole refuse to give them up over and over.  

And while they lay dying at the bottom of the swollen river, she’d been dragged out. She could still feel the boy’s hand around her arm just before she lost consciousness and again after she’d coughed and convulsed her way back to awareness, trying to expel the dark liquid from her lungs.

She’d later convinced herself that she would’ve remembered those blue eyes whether she’d seen the video or not, but after seeing it, after memorizing every single frame, she couldn’t be sure. The video had been emblazoned into her mind’s eye. Then, one night not so long ago, she remembered everything. In a dream.

She’d been banging on the window as her parents yelled for help. Her father was trying to kick out the driver’s side glass, but his shoes only thudded against it until the water rose too high and he couldn’t get enough momentum to even try. So, he shoved against the door again, pulling on the handle until it broke.

Her mother sobbed and scrambled over the seat to her. Her father soon followed. She undid Frankie’s seatbelt and, as the water rose, she lifted Frankie’s face to a pocket of air, holding her steady, giving her the last remnants of the life-giving molecule available.

It was so dark, but Frankie felt her father’s arms wrap around them both. Then, just as the last pocket of air filled with water, she realized her parents were no longer holding her.

A terror grabbed her, so complete Frankie’s vision narrowed and filled with tiny pinpricks of darkness. Her lungs burned as she grabbed and clawed for them, catching hold only to somehow lose them again.

Then she felt a swoosh of water and turned to see a face beside her. To feel a hand around her arm.

He pulled her close. The boy. And she could see the color blue in the faint glow of moonlight that reached them. And it was the most beautiful blue she’d ever seen. She remembered thinking that as she slipped into unconsciousness. How beautiful that blue was. How surreal.

She saw it again upon awakening. Well, after she’d coughed up the entire contents of the river. She’d turned and looked up at his face.

But he was looking down, his brows cinched together, and she realized her right inner thigh was bleeding. She felt the warmth of her own blood against the icy wet chill of the night.

A hand covered it instantly. His hand. He was trying to stop the flow of blood, and she wondered how he could even see it. It was wet against wet. Black against black.

He took her hand into his and pressed it to the wound. Then she looked up, and her gaze collided with those same beautiful eyes. A light she would realize later emanated from a woman’s phone had cast them aglow for a split second.

Then she saw flashes of red and blue and turned to search the embankment for the rescue vehicles. When she looked back, he was gone.

She’d hoped for so very long—for years and years and years—that he’d gone back in and saved them as well. That her parents were alive somewhere. After all, their bodies had never been found. The SUV had been found, but not their bodies. A fact that only fueled her vivid imagination.

She’d been convinced for years they were being held against their will in a secret government facility, waiting for a chance to escape, wanting nothing more than to see her again. She’d never quite worked out why they were being held, but she figured most secret government facilities were evil, and that was enough for her.  

But they never came and none of her internet searches ever uncovered a secret government facility anywhere in the vicinity, so she slowly began to lose hope.

Not entirely. Never entirely. Their bodies were never found. Until that changed, her hope would always be there like a candle flickering in the darkest recesses of her mind.

But the boy. It had to be him, yet how? In the video he had been in his late teens. And he was still in his late teens. Yet it was him. She knew it to the very depths of her soul.

Still, one question remained. Well, no, a thousand questions remained, but the one that took root at that moment in time was, did he recognize her in return?

“Maybe we should slap her like they do in the movies when a woman devolves into a state of hysterics. It seems to work wonders. Especially if it’s a man doing the slapping.”

Vivi laughed at Robyn’s idea, taking the blatant misogynistic reference at face value. “She doesn’t seem hysterical, though. She seems to be in lurve.”

Robyn gasped. “Lurve? Do you think it’s gone that far? It’s only been, what? Fourteen hours? Fifteen tops?”

“I don’t think it matters. She’s a goner.”

“Then we should definitely slap her.”

Frankie swam her way back to the present and laughed softly. These were her best friends. They’d been through hell and back, each one of them having her own tragic story in one way or another.

She made up her mind, spared a quick glance around the popular coffee shop to make sure no one sat within earshot, then leaned closer to the Thingateers.

“Huddle up, girls,” she said, feeling the need for allies like nobody’s business. “This is going to blow the roof off your house.”

~*~

Surrounded by Horses Wrapped in Black

What the hell was he thinking? He almost kissed her. Francesca Victor. He’d never kissed a girl in his life. Especially one who made currents of electricity arc across his skin every time she looked at him. One who made his heart try to break out of his ribcage every time she parted her lips. Or brushed a lock of hair off her face. Or spoke.

And yet, if he didn’t know better, he would have thought she’d wanted him to kiss her.

He scoffed and shook his head. No girl had ever wanted him to kiss her. Even if she did, one look into his past, into what he was and who he was and what he’d done, and Francesca would run so far and so fast she’d leave dust trails in her wake.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. If she knew why he’d been there that stormy night so long ago, why he’d been in Geneva, New York, in the first place, she wouldn’t run. It wasn’t in her DNA. She was much too strong.

He sensed it the minute he dragged her out of her car. The defiant tilt of her chin. The cool reserve in her eyes. The almost imperceptible clenching of her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

She wouldn’t even think about running. She would think about one thing and one thing only: revenge.

He knew this because he’d thrived on it for years. For decades.

Revenge was like a drug, and she would become an addict. If she ever found out the true purpose of his visit to the Empire State, she’d become convinced he had something to do with her parents’ deaths.

Despite his original intentions, he didn’t. Not for lack of desire. Her father had been in his crosshairs, but sometimes fate had a way of intervening with his very well-laid plans.

Still, there was no way Francesca could know that. Even if she did remember him from that night, she couldn’t possibly know why he’d been there.

And the entire point of his musing was moot, because there was no way she could remember him. It had been dark. And she’d been unconscious the whole time. Well, most of the time. And when she hadn’t been, she was coughing so hard she almost slid back into the river. She couldn’t have gotten a good look at him. It was impossible. 

He ditched that theory, shoved the regret churning his stomach to the darkest recesses of his mind, and concentrated on his current predicament. In fact, he was so deep in thought he almost missed the very Wraith he’d been waiting for.

He’d been sitting in his car, the one he’d bought on his last trip to the states. When his plans for the ultimate revenge had failed, he’d bought two things on that trip. The mansion for Mrs. Reinhart and the car for himself. A 1967 Ford Mustang GT Fastback, the epitome of hot American muscle.

He’d left it with a craftsman to restore, but not exactly to original specs. The man had given it a little something extra in the electronics and engine departments.

The machine screamed like nothing Iggy had ever driven. And he’d driven a lot.

He’d been one of the first people on the planet to drive an automobile, in point of fact, a mechanical carriage made by Karl Benz. His wife and two sons had driven one through the village where Iggy lived.

Or, well, where he was kept hidden from the world.

Heedless of his scars and what she must think of him, he begged her to let him drive it and she’d agreed on one condition. He had to procure several liters of ligroin for the engine.

He did, and his obsession with motorized carriages was born.

Bertha Benz had been as crafty and inventive as her husband, and once people realized she wasn’t a witch, they slowly began to warm to the concept of a petroleum-driven machine that could carry them across the country.

His current petroleum-driven machine had been sitting in storage ever since the restorationist finished, waiting for Iggy to come back to the states. The fact that it was a souped-up, ghostly black classic that drew the gazes of everyone he passed didn’t exactly fit with his philosophy of keeping a low profile. Bizarrely, he didn’t care.

Still, his thoughts had been elsewhere when the wraith walked by. Not in gang regalia, or anything. Just dressed as an ordinary Joe, as the Americans would say. Or perhaps “an ordinary Jane” would be more accurate.

Nevaeh Gutierrez, the girl from class who’d invited him to a party, walked back to her car after a hair appointment. It was late afternoon, and Iggy had missed the rest of his classes. Principal Keller would just have to understand.

Iggy couldn’t see staying there much longer, anyway. Once he found the man he’d come for, once he killed him, they would have no choice but to leave.

Unfortunately, his decade-long search had led him nowhere fast. After exhausting all other leads, his only link to the man who’d abducted him, the man who’d been searching for immortality, was dead. The link’s daughter, however, was alive and well and going to high school in Geneva, New York.

She was so much more beautiful than in her pictures. It had taken him a few seconds to recognize her the night before. He hadn’t intended on ever seeing her. There was no need. He’d discovered her father’s science notebooks, his personal ones, were in storage. But fate seemed to have other plans. With the help of one unlucky Wraith.

Iggy wondered if Francesca knew what kind of man her father really was. What he’d done in his spare time as a hematologist when he wasn’t working for the CDC.

Then again, could he be the one to tell her? Could he break her heart? Especially when knowing the truth would benefit neither of them.

She didn’t need to know. Surely, he could get the information from her without her finding out the truth. About her father or about Iggy himself.

In the meantime, he decided to see to this supposed gang while he was here. The fact that guilt assaulted him with every breath he took did nothing to help his mental state. He’d lied to Mrs. Reinhart about why they’d come back to Geneva. He could only hope she would forgive him. And her husband, because Mr. Reinhart was more than aware of why they’d come back.

But Mrs. Reinhart really liked that mansion. So much so, he’d considered having it disassembled and reassembled wherever they ended up. She deserved nice things. Like mansions. And fancy coffee machines. And crock pots. That woman loved crock pots.

Iggy forced his mind back to the present. After the almost-kiss with Francesca, he’d seen Nevaeh speed out of the parking lot and followed her.

She’d made several suspicious stops. A hardware store. A gardening center. A plumbing supply outlet. Either she was building a house or she was making a bomb.

Probably making a bomb.

After she’d filled her trunk with various paraphernalia, she’d gone to a hair appointment. One always wanted to look good while building weapons of mass destruction.

What she was either too ignorant or too arrogant to realize was that she was being set up. They all were. Whoever was really behind the Wraiths had an agenda, a specific set of goals that he was sure would lead to one climactic demonstration of that toxic elixir known as revenge.

The attacks were too organized. Too surgical. While the targets seemed random on the surface, a rabid gang choosing its victims through a combination of chance and opportunity, upon closer inspection, Iggy found a connection between the attacks and either the victims themselves or a member of their family. And it was a strange one.

Every victim thus far, every single casualty, had one thing in common: They were either on or related to someone who was on a teen court that met one crisp fall Saturday twenty-seven years earlier.

Mr. Reinhart had actually set Iggy on the right trail after realizing that every victim was born within a four-year period. If they weren’t, they had an immediate family member, a spouse, sibling, or parent who was.

With that bit of info in his arsenal, Iggy began his investigation by combing through the victims’ social media. He’d discovered they’d all attended the same school. But, then again, everyone in Geneva did. So, he dug through stacks of yearbooks and news articles, scouring athletic rosters, special interest group alumni, and even documented cliques.

Finally, when he was at the end of his search, he happened upon an article about a group of kids who had been involved in what they called Teen Court, an actual court where teens prosecute, defend, and judge their peers.

While Teen Court met on a Saturday once a month, only one day had participants who ended up being victims or relatives of the victims of the Wraiths.

That day, the participants were from all walks of life. All ethnicities. All religions. All socioeconomic statuses. They were all in high school, but probably had little contact outside of that courtroom.

And only three cases were heard that day. Teen Court could only try minor offenses and misdemeanors, like traffic tickets or a delinquent act, and all three were minor traffic offenses.

Naturally, Iggy figured the next logical step was that one of the defendants from that day was seeking revenge for the conviction, but nothing really happened. The teen jurors could only convict or acquit and then recommend a sentence to the judge. The judge decided the penance, and it was always a small fine or a few hours of community service.

Although all three defendants were found guilty, their sentences had been very light. Nothing that would justify setting a gang of violent thugs loose on an unsuspecting city.

Even if it had been all about revenge, out of the three defendants, only one still lived in Geneva. The only woman had moved away decades ago. Another had died in a car accident while in college. And the third one was now the city mayor. Mr. Keller’s oldest brother, to be exact.

Interestingly enough, the principal had been his brother’s attorney during the trial. It could have caused bad blood between them, but Iggy doubted it.

So, after nearly a week of research, Iggy was back to square one. That was, until a pretty girl flirted with him and invited him to a party on his first ever day of school. 

He’d observed the Wraiths breaking and entering a pool and spa supply store, of all places, where they stole a fifty-five-gallon barrel of pool sanitizer. The female wraith, with her face half-covered by the skull mask and her hair up in a baseball cap, had been wearing the same skull ring.

She seemed to be something of an authority figure, telling the group of men what to take, what to break, and what to leave behind.

It was clever, her plan. Taking random items to disguise the fact that the gang was stealing supplies to make a bomb. A little too clever, perhaps. She was working off a list.

Frankie was more than clever enough to pull something like that off on her own, but Nevaeh lacked both the skill and the smarts to figure out how to make an IED.  

His plan had been to follow them back to their headquarters, but they’d split up and the group he’d decided to trail, the most volatile of those present, didn’t go back. They’d clearly been ordered to attack another of the kingpin’s pawns, to cross another innocent off his list.

That night, Iggy put them all in the hospital before they even came close to attacking the man. And that man had been none other than the mayor himself, John Keller, Principal Keller’s oldest brother. He’d drawn the short stick, but he would probably never know it.

Iggy had another chance to follow them back to their lair two nights later, but he couldn’t let them hurt that sweet lady. Pollyanna Keller was made of spitfire and spunk, and she hadn’t even been at Teen Court that day. She was another peripheral, a wife set to pay for the sins of her husband. Whatever they may be.

But now he had another chance. He could only pray the third time really was a charm as he followed Neveah at a distance. She pulled into a parking lot behind a group of businesses. A massive, block-long warehouse sat in back. She parked her lime green Beetle and strolled inside.

He parked along the street and slid between two buildings until she disappeared. Then he sprinted to the warehouse. Pressed his body against the metal sheeting. Looked for another way in. But there wasn’t a single window in the colossal building, or another door that he could see. Besides breaking all kinds of code violation, those facts made him even more wary.

Left with no other choice, he made his way back to the steel door Nevaeh had used. It hadn’t quite closed shut and Iggy could hear voices, all masculine, followed by a feminine giggle and half-hearted threat to take a switchblade to someone’s throat.

Everyone laughed and Iggy took the opportunity to slip inside. He opened the door as quickly and quietly as possible, slid inside, then closed the door behind him, making sure it clicked shut that time.

The sunlight streaming in through the door he’d just entered would warn anyone paying attention that they had a visitor, but the voices didn’t change rhythm or pitch. So, either they weren’t paying attention, or the overhead lights were bright enough to camouflage his entrance.

The building seemed almost a mile long and was stocked with old auto repair equipment, a few tires thrown into a pile at the far end of the building, and a couple of old cars that had sat rusting for decades by the look of them. Yet he didn’t see a garage door, or any kind of opening, that would indicate this was once a mechanic’s shop.

The walls were solid cinderblock beneath a metal frame, and the only entrance or exit seemed to be the one he’d just come through. And he smelled water. Thick and clean. Yet not a single drop lay on the ground around him.

He slipped to the side of what looked like an interior office. The voices coming from inside continued in a steady, casual tone. They hadn’t heard him enter. Or so he thought.

As he took a quick glance inside the windowed room, a voice sounded from behind him.

“You’ve been causing us some problems.”

Iggy whirled around and came face-to-face with a colossal mammoth wearing the standard Wraith uniform. His long, shaggy hair underneath a skull cap made him look like a member of a motorcycle gang. One of the more menacing members of a motorcycle gang.

The man was flanked by several more Wraiths, though none quite as large as the one addressing him. Small favors.

“I try to be more tolerant of freaks,” he continued, “but your interference is costing us money. And time.”

Did he just call him a freak? People still used that word?

“You’ve left us no choice.”

He’d been called worse, but still.

“Now we have to tie you up, torture you for information, then decapitate you and throw your body into Lake Ontario.”

It stung. Not a lot, but considering every person present was wearing a ridiculous bandana with a skull screen printed onto it, he felt the word freak could have been distributed evenly to all those present.

Even the girl wore one, but she’d pulled it down off her face. “Hi, Iggy,” she said, wiggling her fingers at him, her smile full of sunshine and psycho.

He let his eyes drift shut. No way was he just set up. He was better than that. To be led into a trap by a teenaged girl whose name was heaven spelled backwards?

The indignity burned.

He heard a shuffling behind him and turned. In the span of about ten seconds, he found himself surrounded by wraiths of every size and shape. About twenty in all. Well, twenty-two, to be exact, if he included Nevaeh.

He damned sure didn’t expect that. They’d come out of the ground. Or so it seemed. He realized there was a tunnel, big enough to drive a car through, sloping down into the concrete floor. The strategically placed rust buckets had blocked the underground entrance from his initial inspection. 

“You’re being set up,” he said, his voice full of a confidence he was beginning to question.

“We really aren’t.”

“You really are. Whatever evil genius is behind your escapades has a very specific agenda. What do you think will happen once he attains his goal? Do you really think he’ll let you live?”

The man’s eyes crinkled with a smile hidden behind his mask. “First off, we don’t give a rat’s ass what his agenda is.”

His agenda. The person behind the attacks was definitely male. Confirmation one down. Three to go. Then he could narrow his search. 

As nonchalantly as possible, he took a slow step backwards toward the office and, more importantly, the electrical pipes running up its exterior.

“We’re being paid. That’s our agenda. One and only.”

The man had enough money to hire thugs to do his dirty work. A lot of thugs. Hence, money. Confirmation two down.

He took another step.

“Second, none of us has ever seen his face, so why would he need to kill us?”

Naïve, but okay. The man was controlling everything from behind a velvet curtain. Confirmation three down.

Another step.

“Just because some old codger has been holding a grudge for decades doesn’t mean we can’t profit from his pain.”

Holy shit. It was like the guy was reading his mind. The ring leader was elderly, or at least old enough to be called an old codger from Hercules, and he was holding a grudge. Bonus confirmation points. Now all he had to do was figure out who was calling the shots and what his endgame was.

Another of the Wraiths spoke up. A second in command, perhaps, and the one Nevaeh clearly belonged to since she had her fingers wrapped around his belt loops.

That was going to hurt in a minute.

“I’d like to see him come after us,” the guy said.

Rather a stupid thing to say in Iggy’s opinion. The old codger was probably the one behind the cameras that littered the entire building. They were hidden quite effectively, but Iggy had felt them the moment he entered the area. He could hear not only the electric buzz of the cameras over the fluorescents along the ceiling, but he could hear the lenses zoom in and out. They were being watched and he doubted the Wraiths had a clue.

So, he’d just tipped his hand to the megalomaniac. But that was okay. He’d find the man either way. He had a great start.

He turned and looked directly into one of the cameras. The lens was hidden in a bolt along the metal frame of the building. The camera itself sat behind the metal joint, hidden from view.

“I just have one question,” Iggy said.

The Wraiths followed his gaze, looked back at him, then looked up again. It was enough in sync to appear like a coordinated effort. Iggy would have chuckled, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“Were you a defendant that day twenty-seven years ago? Or something else?”

The Wraiths waited, looking up, as though expecting an answer. 

“A juror perhaps? Or maybe even part of the prosecution.”

He gave that exactly two seconds to sink in before he raced to the office wall, wrapped his hand around the electrical pipe, and unleashed an arc of electricity.

Sparks flew out of the fluorescents overhead and bulbs burst, showering the area with slivers of glass. With no windows to help light the area, the entire room went dark.

That was when he heard the first gunshot.