The Fallen Parler: Part One (A supernatural mystery thriller) (14 page)

‘He’s a 200-year-old murderer who looks like he’s just dropped out of college!’ exclaimed Charlotte, convinced that Junior and Sasha had gone berserk.

Neither Junior nor Sasha responded, their eyes were tightly glued to Sasha’s phone.

‘It’s working!’ cried Sasha, as a pixilated map of Shorebridge loaded onto the screen.

‘Felix is still in Shorebridge!’ gasped Junior, ‘but where?’

Sasha manipulated another virtual button, making the cybernetic atlas larger. A red marker appeared at a location labelled
‘The Rocky Shore.’

‘We’ve got him!’ Sasha cried, ‘Felix is at the Rocky Shore beach right now!’

‘That’s at the opposite end of Shorebridge.’

‘How long does it take to get there?’ asked Junior, flinging his coat over his shoulders.

‘A 35-minute walk …a 20-minute run.’

The trio glanced between themselves.

‘Run, it is,’ said Charlotte, stating their unspoken agreement out loud.

Sasha gazed back at her grandmother, who had long since resumed a vacant position at the window. The young woman wondered whether Ma Joelle would be able to remember the events of this morning tomorrow.
Probably not.
So, without looking back, Sasha paced after Charlotte and Junior, calling out, ‘don’t wait up for me, Ma.’

The loud clasp of the door caused Ma Joelle to jolt in her seat, she watched from the window as the three youngsters raced into the cold, empty streets.

‘Capturing Corneli’

Cold, blustery days are never the best days to visit the beach. Underneath a droning sky, a usually cerulean sea can appear grey. There will be no appreciable life, excluding the noisy squawks of squabbling seagulls. Violent waves will collide and merge in the distance, becoming gentle, rolling tides, which stroke the coasts and overhanging cliffs, throwing up pieces of dissipated junk. On cold blustery days, like today, one could span the entire Rocky Shore and not detect another living soul. There will be a sad serenity about the beach. Sad, because there is no one else to witness the beautiful rolling tide…and serene, for the very same reason. Today however, the lifelessness of the Rocky Shore would soon be disturbed by the arrival of one panting, windblown-haired teenager. Two others were not far behind.

‘Wait up!’ wheezed Sasha.

Sasha and Charlotte had fallen a considerable distance behind Junior in the race to the beach. Charlotte, who had complained of a biting stitch after the first few minutes of her sprint, was now curled over, with both hands on her knees, searching for breath. Junior bolted to the seafront, placed his hand over his eyebrows, and scanned the entire coastline.

‘The map says he’s here,’ said Junior, once the girls had caught up, ‘but he’s nowhere to be seen …w
hat if the tracker has an error?’

Junior gaped at Sasha’s phone screen anxiously, the red marker had not moved in 20 minutes.

‘He’s here alright!’ muttered Sasha, without an inkling of hesitance. Drawing up her sleeve, Sasha revealed the weaved Roterbee neckless, which was now projecting radiant shafts of blue light.

‘We’ll use the necklace to track him,’ said Charlotte, examining her father’s sapphire-bound trinket, ‘it glows brighter the closer we get to him.’

‘What if he already knows we’re here?’ said Junior, ‘since he’s invisible, he could escape and we wouldn’t even know.’

‘If he flees, we will definitely know,’ stated Charlotte, ‘the charm will stop glowing and Sasha’s map will show that he has moved.’

Junior nodded sceptically, even with Charlotte’s sapphire necklace and Sasha’s GPS tracker, trailing an invisible man across the entire Rocky Shore was not going to be an easy job.

‘We’ll go this way,’ said Sasha, starting towards the east exit of the beach, ‘watch out for anything that moves, or any strange noises.’

The trek along the coastline was extremely tedious, every few seconds a new tide washed the shore. Sasha agreed to watch over the coast, Junior took a straight path along the rocky beach and Charlotte searched for Felix near the cliffside. Almost a mile into their search, Junior called out, ‘it’s no use, Felix is not here!’

Sasha flicked the glowing Roterbee necklace, ‘he’s just hiding,’ she replied.

The sapphire necklace dimmed with the duration of their search. It puzzled Sasha that, whilst the tracker still indicated Felix’s presence on the beach, the necklace had stopped glowing. Unwilling to quit their search, the trio trekked to the point along the coast where cliffs disappeared and hard rock became sand. Sasha perched on top of the last hard rock, scanning the entire stretch of the coast.
No sign of Felix.
Suddenly, the Roterbee necklace sparkled, this time, burning a brilliant blue, hotter and more luminous than usual.

‘It’s glowing!’ cried Sasha, ‘that means he must be near!’

‘Look, footprints!’ yelled Junior, spotting a fresh human footpath in the sand. There was no one around, and the tracks mysteriously ended where the wet sand met the rocks. Instinctively, the trio followed what remained of the suspicious tracks. The footprints went haywire, leading to a lattice of towering chalk stones.

‘We’ve lost him!’ sighed Sasha, when the confusing foot track finally dissolved. Suddenly, another running chain of footprints emerged, one after the other, in the sand. The sound of feet splattering against the wet sand, and the breathy wheeze of exasperation confirmed Felix’s presence. The Roterbee necklace burned in Sasha’s hand.

‘He’s running away!’ yelled Junior, bolting after the rapidly materializing footprints. ‘Stop Felix, stop now!’

When Junior could just about smell the invisible man, he lunged for the air in front of him, hitting something hard. Junior summersaulted in the air, catapulting the invisible Felix with him. The two boys fell to the ground with a deafening ‘THUD!’ To untrained eyes, it may’ve seemed that Junior was manically wrestling a ball of air, and losing. But after a while, Felix, whose spindly invisible arms were locked inside Junior’s unyielding grip, was forced to materialize from thin air.

‘Get off of me!’ the blonde boy cried, pressing Junior’s face away from his own.

‘Do not move an inch,’ muttered Charlotte.

She had already foreseen that Felix, being the conniving creature he was, would have bolted for it at any given opportunity. Knowing this, Charlotte had positioned herself behind him, brandishing a dangerous can of pepper spray (which she was sure that even parlers were not immune to). Charlotte wasted no time. As soon as Felix Corneli turned on his heels, the young woman detonated her weapon, sending fiery fluid into Felix’s brilliant blue eyes.

‘AHHHHHHHHHH!’ howled Felix, plummeting to his knees once more.

He crawled to the seafront pathetically and the trio slow-walked behind him. Sasha, who could not perceive the whole spectacle, fixed the hot necklace around her wrist again. She was suddenly enlightened. Junior and Charlotte surrounded the whimpering blonde man, who was rinsing his entire face in the icy seawater. His eyes were red; it was as if they had been set alight. Sasha was able to deduce, from the mysterious bottle in Charlotte’s grip, that Felix’s red eyes were probably Charlotte’s doing. Dipping his head underneath the seawater, Felix Corneli probably felt a little foolish now. He had underestimated Junior’s speed and brute strength, Charlotte’s strategic positioning and Sasha’s notable tracking skills. How embarrassing. In his 200-and-something-years, he had never before been cornered and brutally attacked by a group of teenagers.

‘That’s enough!’ scowled Charlotte, dragging Felix’s hard-gelled spikes from the water.

His eyes were so red that even Charlotte wondered whether she’d been too generous with the pepper spray. Regardless, if the action had struck any sort of fear into Felix, her mission was complete. The bouncy persona he had performed in the chamber was no more.

‘What do you want from me?’ spat Felix, irately.

‘Answers!’ snapped Sasha, ‘we know that you’re with Cato.’

His usually bright eyes appeared small in their swollen red sockets. Somehow, today, Felix did not look anything like the book’s illustration.

‘Well if that’s what you KNOW,’ Felix mocked, ‘I don’t want to hear what you
think.
’

‘You’re a killer…that’s what I think!’ cried Charlotte, ‘and you’ve been working with Cato, working as a spy.’

Glowering at the blonde man in disgust, Junior muttered, ‘why else would you be snooping around Williamson’s chamber at night and disappear as soon as Willow and Brown revealed the vault, and who’s to say that you didn’t kill Williamson yourself.’

Felix shrugged to his feet, levelling himself with his interrogators, ‘you’ve read the book, haven’t you?’ he cackled, ‘that darned book.’

‘The Secrets of a Fallen Parler?’

‘Uh huh,’ huffed Felix, ‘till this day, I do not know the author. He paints me in an awful light. It’s simply not fair!’

‘But is it true?’ shot Sasha.

‘Half and half,’ Felix cackled, ‘that’s why I don’t read much at all these days – books never seem to tell the villain’s side of the story.’

‘But you are Felix Corneli?’ muttered Junior, ‘a protégé of Cato’s, responsible for hundreds of murders, one day wishes to exterminate all meres from the earth… the list goes on.’

Rolling his eyes dramatically, Felix cried, ‘it’s all true…but for heaven’s sakes, I was only 50 years old and going through a rebellious stage.’

‘Rebellious stage!’ exclaimed Charlotte, ‘a rebellious stage is sneaking out to rock concerts and getting grounded, not slaughtering innocent people!’

‘Oh, spare me your higher-than-thou morality complex!’ spat Felix, ‘I was a young parler and Cato took me under his wing. He taught me everything I know! He was a great man for the most part!’

‘So you’re still working with him, huh?’ muttered Junior, shooting Felix another hate-filled glower.

‘In all honesty, I don’t even know if Cato’s alive… I heard he died over 50 years ago.’

‘How?’

‘He was captured and killed by other parlers, of course,’ huffed Felix, ‘it was presumed that Cato’d gone on a bauchering spree to acquire the powers of other parlers. But knowing Cato, he would not endeavour such a suicide mission without a definitive goal. We’d fallen out of contact by this time… it was the late forties, and I was voyaging the Caribbean islands with some buccaneers stationed in Jamaica…now that was awfully fun.’

‘Get to the point,’ muttered Sasha, on edge.

‘Anyway, I received word that all parlers were to go into hiding because there was a baucherer loose. So, like most parlers did, I faked my death, changed my identity and headed back for England. Only, when I arrived – I found out that it was Cato who everyone was running from...my old friend Cato!’

‘That explains the deaths and disappearances in 1947!’ exclaimed Junior, ‘parlers were going into hiding, forced to fake their own deaths. That’s why Arthur Mannox and his wife forged their deaths at the Willow Lodge.’

‘Correct,’ grinned Felix, ‘it was a chaotic time, there was a large sector of parlers dead set on capturing Cato and killing him for his crimes.’

‘What made them think that it was Cato committing bauchery. After all, it could’ve been any power-hungry parler.’

‘Well,’ smirked Felix, ‘Cato’s signature was that he scorched his victims from the inside. It’s quite a spectacular skill. He would leave them dead behind the eyes, so they would look like they’d frozen to death…the meres would never be able to detect it. The victim would seem like they’d died of natural causes.’

Shuddering as his memory of Allan Roterbee’s corpse replayed, Junior muttered, ‘is there any possibility that parlers could be faking their deaths this time around?’

‘If you’re asking in regards to the death of your father, I’m afraid you may not like the answer I give. Arthur Mannox was really murdered, as was Headmaster Williamson. That’s why I travelled back here in the first place…to see if it was really true, to see if Cato was truly at large again.’

‘Did you know about the vault beneath the headmaster’s office, before?’ asked Charlotte, studying Felix Corneli dubiously.

‘I had never seen or heard of the existence of a vault before yesterday night.’

‘Lies!’ snarled Sasha, ‘then why did you disappear after they uncovered the vault? Why were you running when you saw us looking for you? You’re working for Cato, just admit it!’

‘I am not!’ cried Felix, ‘I fled from the chamber because… because I didn’t realize who you really were.’

‘What – do – you – mean?’ mouthed Junior.

‘Well, the doctor seemed to imply that you are the twins of the prophecy, the elected ones… the pair that will break the dark curse.’

‘So you believe all that mumbo jumbo?’

‘Of course!’ spewed Felix, ‘finding out that you were the elected ones as well as the kin of Arthur Mannox was too much to learn in one night!’

Sasha crossed her arms apathetically, ‘that still doesn’t explain why you fled!’ she snapped.

‘I was overwhelmed!’ howled Felix, ‘bear in mind that I have a grisly reputation as one of the most dangerous parlers of all time. What if word got out that I was frolicking with the elected twins and their mere friend. That would not do well for my reputation at all… I’ve spent hundreds of years building this terrifying alter ego, I wasn’t going to give it all up. Finding out that you were Arthur’s children …now that was an unanticipated revelation.’

‘You know our father?’ shot Charlotte, ‘Allan Roterbee?’

‘I
knew
Arthur Mannox,’ corrected Felix, ‘at least before he was Allan Roterbee. I was assigned his mentor during his transition, I taught him how to control his power. Our paths crossed a few times after that, but I can’t say our relationship ended on the best of terms…we were acquaintances, at best.’

Felix shot his favourite, freakish grin. Somewhere in the last ten minutes, the young man had become as handsome as he was annoying. The redness around his eyes had started to dampen, and soon, he had the same angel-like guise with which the trio had first encountered him.

‘Look, the real reason I ran is because I was scared,’ sighed Felix. ‘I was scared because, if Cato is alive, and he wants what’s in that vault, he’ll be looking for you.’