Broken (34 page)

Establishing a window of opportunity for a possible breaking and entering is never a good answer to give an adult.

The texts are all from Alex. Temptation burns in me to read them. But I’d rather hear what he has to say face to face. I select to Delete All and click to confirm.

In my room, I riffle through my desk and find the receipt for the new locker door with Alex’s information. With the ghost of boyfriends, dead and living, hanging in my closet I change into my camouflage pants, tight thermal knit top and black fleece hoodie again, then I tie my hair into a ponytail, high and tight, the kind Alex would pull free if he could.

I plan on giving him a chance—to play with my hair and to listen to me apologize.

No matter what has happened, I can’t get past missing him.

I just hope he feels the same.

The garage is empty, Bree doesn’t have a car, and Jason’s Bronco is too loud for anything stealthy. Heaving a sigh, I set off for a hike toward the snooty neighborhoods by the lake, in the gated community where you need pass codes to drive on the road.

Clouds scud in, darkening the sky to match my mood. Shadows on the ground stretch and warp the farther I get from home. Near Lost Valley, the straight orderly streets turn and twist, rolling up and down small hills. Bent Pine Drive gives onto Black Oak Lane, and the gate that’s supposed to keep interlopers like me away. Well, ones that drive cars, anway. I’m on foot, and find trespassing here too easy. I trail the brick fence back into the woods a couple yards, and slip through the gap between the stone and the wire fencing.

Black Oak Drive leads downhill towards the swamp and the only home on the street. Estate is more fitting, a large stretch of property, completely enclosed by a high fieldstone wall. Showing above the barrier, far off near the skeletal trees spins an old windmill, the dull blades chopping the air.
Looks like a prison
, I think. It’s not a place to welcome things in, more a place to keep them out.

Big black wrought iron gates stand at the mouth of the drive. Backing the iron scrollwork are stained boards of teak, completely obscuring any view inside the property.

Everything about the Frank’s property screams GET OUT.

A chill crawls up my spine, sharp claws puckering my skin. Somewhere inside the fence, an animal cries. Maybe it’s the damp lake air, or the unsteady rhythm of my heart, but the animal cry doesn’t sound natural.
It’s just your nerves, Emma
,
I chide myself.

Do I really want to go in there?

When Alex needed to talk, he came to my house. I need to talk to him, apologize and make him understand how much I care. I pull my cell phone from my pocket, and open up the messaging program. I scroll through contacts to Alex’s name, select then send him a text, telling him I’m at the gates. Waiting only makes the creepy feeling worming through my guts worse. The breeze moans and the sky looks like it could open and pour at any minute.

I send him another text:

If you don’t come out, I’m coming in…

Chapter Twenty-Four

Anxious energy scrapes my nerves raw. I check my phone, make sure it’s getting a signal.

Three bars glow in the service indicator. Alex just isn’t answering.

The clouds darken to storm warnings above me, and wind wails in the tall White Pines close to the big lake. Sandy soil gives under my Converse soles when I sneak up to the gates. Testing them is as futile as trying to escape what Alex has done to my heart. Black. Imposing. Unmoving. Giving up on patience, I pace the fence to the left, then right until I find a gnarled oak tree with enough knots on its trunk for me to climb.

Halfway to the top of the fence, another spine-chilling wail freezes me in place. I catch a breath and clutch the trunk. Focusing on small, quiet movements, I shimmy further up. Finally, in the lower branches, I can see the estate beyond the barrier.

The property spreads toward the dunes of Lake Michigan in the distance. Green grass rolls within the fences, studded here and there with trees or shrubs. Small white-sided outbuildings huddle near the main house, probably storage sheds, though one looks like a garage, with the driveway feeding into it. Behind the big manor house, the property turns nightmarish; a small river cuts a swath through the estate with a wild, dark band of trees beyond its bank.

Alex’s house is ridiculously big, easily three of our old Victorians on Seventh Street. Windows and fieldstone walls make up most of the ground floor. Narrow white siding and arched windows cover the top floors, and hold up the many gables of the forest green roof. Very pretty, but in an Alex-on-first-day kind of way, designed to attract and shun attention at the same time.

Bark scratches off some of the pink coating from my cast as I inch across the top of the fence on a large branch. Do I really want to do this? How can I walk away now? My gut hurts with the amount of wrong on this side of the fence, and Alex is in it somewhere. Denying my instincts to run back the way I came, I drop to the ground and slink into the shadows of the pine a few yards from the fence.

A pale yellow glow seeps through the downstairs windows, on the side of the house closest to me. A tall shadow passes between the lights and the glass before moving deeper into the room.

Alex
, I think.

My heart pounds, a sweet wanting kind of ache, even though my stomach tightens and threatens to roll with nerves. I edge along the fence toward the driveway. Maybe to look a little less like a creeper who climbs fences, I’m not sure, but I feel better with gravel beneath my shoes than damp grass.

The driveway meanders between trees, and on the first bend I hear movement off to the side. I pause, casting my gaze in all directions. A little late to think about it now, but what if they have guard dogs? My gut clenches, and a sweaty chill rides my spine. I don’t have an exit strategy…what am I going to do if I need to leave in a hurry? The rustles sound too haphazard, and I don’t see any guard dog charging in to rip me to shreds.

Pushing against the sense of wrong fouling the air, I walk on. Then, the source of the rustling noise wanders into view.

My jaw falls. Daylight outside, a possible storm brewing, and a young deer shambling along the grassy patch beside the gravel? Whitetail bed down during the day, and rarely get this close to humans. A doe, by the lack of antlers, with an injured front leg by the way she’s limping.

Dread flushes in a sickly sour wash through me. Deer catch diseases and this animal isn’t acting normal. No flight instinct, no fear of humans. I can’t stay here, waiting for her to disappear. Walking softly to not startle her, I draw even with her wandering gait.

Then my stomach rolls into a knot and punches up into my throat.

The doe’s ears flick, turning in my direction.
Wrong!
my instincts scream,
wrong!
A thick, mineral tang scent wafts in front of her. At this angle, the wrong I felt blares in silent accusation from her chest. Her rib cage is a ruin of stitched flesh and open wounds. A scum of milky film covers her eyes and a hole cuts through her ear, like someone shot at her and missed.

“Oh my God,” I gasp.

Denial shrieks in me. Recognition clamps me in a fist of misery. She was dead! That doe died in my arms less than a month ago. Alex and I had tried to rescue her from death in the culvert at Meinert State Park, only to have her fade from life on the way to his car. He said he was going to take care of her…

How can she be here, wandering the Franks’ estate?

Those filmy eyes find mine, and a shot of horror rips through me. Everything in me recoils, sneakers kicking up stones as I backpeddle on the gravel drive. She lets out a pitiful bleat. Her wreck of a front leg has been pieced back together with metal rods and screws. The hardware flashes back the weak daylight while she staggers toward me crying like a baby for its mother.

I want to run. I want to scream. Shock locks my jaws, and a tree trunk cuts off my escape.

Trapped, and choking on my heart, I hold out a hand between me and the undead thing shambling to me. Click-clack-click rises from her hooves on the crushed stone. The bleats weaken with each cry, and a yellow fluid leaks from the open wounds on her chest. Her nose touches my hand. Cold, slimy, trembling when she tries to cry and nothing comes out.

I don’t realize I’m crying until moisture slides over the corner of my mouth.

“Shhh,” I tell her.

Do the dead hear? She must. She can limp and wail. Shudders rack her body, and her legs give out. The doe crumples to the ground, muzzle at my feet, eyes open and watching me through the white haze.

Gravel crunches beneath my feet when I back away, hand still held out.
Please stay down,
I think.
Please.

Walking backward, keeping my eye on the doe I hurry my paces, and round the bend. Once she’s out of my line of sight, my stomach loosens, sinks and sends a gush of bile up my throat. I can’t stop it, my jaw muscles burn, and I drop to my knees and throw up everything but my memories at the side of the drive.

How in the hell do the dead walk?

It’s not natural. Death is the barrier we can’t cross.

My empty stomach squeezes again, but nothing comes up. The trees watch in disinterest as I sit back on my heels and swipe a sleeve over my forehead. Every panted breath draws in the smell of my vomit and the ever-present stink of something other. Across the field, near one of the small outer buildings sits a rack of garbage cans, rattling in the sticks underneath is another creature. What other horrors can this estate hold?

Rising on legs feeling rubbery, I try to ignore my impulse to stare, to investigate the accident and make sure it isn’t me.

The drive arches toward the building, and when I draw closer I see a rake and a shovel leaned against the siding. Beneath the trash cans, whatever is in the sticks, scrabbles to the surface of the refuse. An ordinary raccoon. Another nocturnal animal out in the daylight on a populated estate? Disbelief seems absurd after what I’ve seen. Then it swings its mangled head toward me and I know the Franks’ Estate has only begun to reveal its sins.

Half of the raccoon’s head is compressed burger meat and shattered bone. The jaw hangs broken, sharp yellow teeth dangling. Something like a hiss issues from what’s left of its mouth.

A yelp of shock bursts from my lips, and I give in to my instinct to run.

Up a grassy incline, and that impulse puts me in close proximity to the manor house. Stink hits me in waves, sourcing like a flood from a dog lying at the foot of the porch steps. The coat is a chaos of mange rot and matted fur, both eyes are open, one of them opaque and fixed, the other burst into a slop of tissue and jelly in its socket. Hand over my mouth to keep in the screams, I try to sneak past the sightless dog.

Its muzzle lifts, the cracked nose twitching, before the head swings toward me. I’m close enough to hear the air rattling in her throat and lungs, and read the name tag: Pam.

“Stay,” I whisper. “Stay, Pam.”

Rotted zombie dog Pam doesn’t stay. Her body rises in a trembling motion, then the joints in her legs give way and she drops to the grass again.

This isn’t real
, I tell myself.
This can’t be real.

I was willing to believe maybe Alex was haunted by Daniel’s ghost. But this?
This?

The undead wander the Franks’ estate like it’s a game preserve in Hell. My mind runs in the same screaming loops: How is this possible? Why here? Who did this to them?

Then shouting snaps me back into a self-preservation mode and I flatten to the fieldstone wall.

“What did you
do
, Dad?”

Alex? Shouting at his father? Oh God, the last man on earth I ever wanted to see again.

“I did what was necessary to bring you back.” Such a calm, unaffected voice.

B
r
ing him back from what?
What are they arguing about?

My ridiculous urge to delve deeper into the black hidden behind the gates wins. I drop to the level of the rotted dog, jaws locked against my gagging, and crawl along the wall toward the windows emitting light. Movement at the windows stops me short of the yellow puddle on the grass. I arch my neck till I can see Alex. The sight of him jumpstarts my heart. He’s dressed different in his house—no hiding in hoods and sleeves. His snug, short-sleeved shirt shows muscles I’d run my fingers over, and displays the white scars marking his skin. A wild light snaps in his eyes. His skin is vibrant, like he’s just home from vacation.

“Necessary?” Alex flings his arms wide. He locks gazes with his father. “There are punishments for what you’ve done.”

“No one can touch me.” The arrogance on his father’s face sets my jaw on edge. Whatever’s going on, he fully believes he was in the right. “After all I’ve given you, you should be thanking me, not whining.”

“Thanking you for making me a monster?” Alex shouts. “You should’ve let me die!”

“Let you die?” His father’s voice is ice to Alex’s righteous fire. He crosses his arms. “I will never let you die. You are
my son
!”

“What about Daniel?” Alex stands nose to nose with his father. “He was someone’s son. He had friends. He had a girlfriend.”

“Inconsequential,” his father scoffs, stepping behind the desk. “He had the proper blood type. He was the ideal match for a tissue donor.”

“That’s all he was to you? Pieces and parts? He was a person! A thinking, feeling person!”

“Rubbish,” his dad says. “Unsubstantiated metaphysical hokum. He was vessels, tissues, and brain matter that I needed to bring you back. Nothing more.”