Broken (35 page)

The relentless unrepentance in his father’s voice only angers Alex more. “What about the consequences, Dad? Did you think about those? Did this end justify your means?”

“There were bound to be complications from such an extensive procedure.”

“Complications?” Alex roars. He bangs his chest, above his heart. “You call having a dead guy’s memories and emotions a
complication
?”

“The formula was meant to preserve viability.” His dad steps away, arranges things on the desktop beside him. “I didn’t have enough subjects to test it on.”

My chest tightens. I didn’t think I could feel more horror, but this place reveals layer after layer.

“What did you do?” Alex repeats, voice as icy as his father’s and thick with threat.

“The details are unimportant, and will only hamper the healing process.”

“It’s not the physical I’m worried about!” Alex strides to the phone on the desk, and grabs it from the base. “There has to be someone to tell. Someone who wants to know what happened to their son.”

“Fine.” His father sniffs, smoothes back his hair, and then yanks open a file cabinet. He reaches in, chooses a file and tosses it on the desk between him and his son. He drops into the chair, and props his feet on the desk. “Since you’re so keen to know the miracle I worked to bring you back to life... It’s all in there. Charts, blood types, formulas.”

A look of doubt clouds Alex’s face. He pulls the fat manilla folder to him, breath dies in my throat while I watch his face. He pages through his father’s documents, scanning some, reading snippets of others. His expression shifts from denial to anger, depression to a sick acceptance.

“So, you had him drugged.” Alex shakes the folder at his father. “Had him pushed off the deck. Took what made him Daniel and shoved it in me. And you didn’t think there wouldn’t be any side affects?”

Shock and pure horror slam into my chest like a freight train.

My boyfriend, the person I loved most in the world, was murdered for his ‘donated to science’ organs. And then Alex’s father gutted him and used his parts to revive Alex? Oh my God. The guy I loved, murdered, in order to make the guy I’ve come to love live again.

“I bargained,” his father says. “And my son
lives
.
Perhaps the
taint of memories and emotions left in the flesh will fade. The studies are hypothetical at best,” he starts to ramble, the nauseating sound of his voice rolling in my head. “Theories suggest there is a soul, and it can reside in the flesh. I must admit, with the brain matter, and him not entirely dead when I took it, concerned me…”

The words ‘not entirely dead’ finally break me out of the paralysis of emotional shock. Murdered. Gutted. Repurposed. Revived. Tainted. It’s not just Daniel’s ghost in Alex, it’s parts of Daniel
in
Alex. A strangled sob breaks free of my chest.

The argument dies inside the house. My shattered heart jolts to terrified life. If he had Daniel murdered for his organs, what will he do to me?

Blind terror feeds my limbs, and I hurtle through the theme park of undead monsters, scramble over the fence and am on the road before I hear a garage door open. Black Oak Lane rises to the intersection with Bent Pine Drive. Chest heaving, I skid down the far side of Bent Pine, huddle in the dune grass and clap both hands over my mouth to keep from sobbing and giving away my location.

Tears bleed over my hands, my chest burns with heaving sobs. If I had something in my stomach, I would puke it.

That man had my boyfriend killed to farm his body and revive his son.

Then clarity strikes.

Daniel didn’t fall. He was pushed.

Everything I believed was a lie.

And so is my relationship with Alex.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The gates of the Franks’ estate open with a squeal of metal. Dirt rushes at me as I drop, long grasses whack me. Above, the Suburban growls out of the property. It stops at the intersection, the idling engine feet away and sounding irritated, ready to run me down.

Cowering in the shadow of the slope, I follow the instinct to hide. They had to see me. Doctor Franks has to know it was me, and what I overheard. Breaking my hand means nothing in comparison to him drugging Daniel and using his organs to rebuild his own son. What will he do to me? He’s already broken the laws of man and nature.

If he can make one death look like an accident…

The pieces of my shattered heart beat, as undead as the doe Doctor Franks ruined. I wish it would stop and give me some relief. It’s all too horrible to believe. Daniel murdered. His body parts put into Alex. Alex adopting Daniel’s ways because, in a way, isn’t he also Daniel, now?

My brain refuses to bend and wrap around it.

Somehow, that madman pulled off the impossible.

After what seems like an eternity, the SUV turns the way I came and rolls down Bent Pine Drive. I lay in the dirt, chest aching, air whistling down my tight throat.

The clouds thicken above, darkening and seeming to sink toward me. Cars pass by until I lose count. All this time and no noise from the estate. I crawl back up the slope, and peer down Black Oak Drive. The gates remain closed, backed with black boards and locked to hide the horrors inside.

My heart hurts too badly to think clearly. I act on instinct, shambling through the neighborhood. Flashes of the sins Doctor Franks committed disturb my mind. Daniel. The deer. Alex. A horrid sadness cuts through me, tearing open a new gulf of misery. The loss of a love more intense than what I shared with Daniel carves me out.

How can Alex really love me, if he has so much of Daniel in him? Where does one guy stop and the other start?

And how can I love Alex knowing he’s alive because Daniel isn’t?

Of course his heart doesn’t beat for him. It isn’t his at all. It’s stolen.

Seventh Street looms like a balm on my soul. Home. Renfield. My parents. Then I see a big black vehicle creeping down my street, an evil gargoyle face behind the wheel and leering at my house. Branches tear at my hair when I dive into the bushes two houses down, and pray my camouflage will conceal me.

Alex’s father drives slowly down our street, face turned toward our house. He turns the corner, and then drives down the alley dividing our block. He stares at our house, our garage, then guns the engine, throwing stones from the tires when he roars away.

That monster of monsters knows where I live. What does he want here? My Mom for the lawsuit she never started? Me for owning the heart he put into his son? Or me for knowing he did it?

I wriggle free of the bushes and dash across the last two yards to home. The dove gray walls seem so flimsy with Alex’s father staring holes through them. I open the door, tuck inside and slam it shut behind me. Renfield pokes his head out from the kitchen where Mom keeps his food bowl. He watches me like I’ve lost my mind when I run through the house and lock the back door, too. Then, I check the shadow box frame Dad made that hangs in the living room. The handgun is still there.

The cat follows me up the stairs, his mouth open as he smells the dirt and funk of the Franks’ property on me.

I strip down, shove my clothes into the hamper and then climb into the shower. No amount of hot water or scrubbing will wash away what I’ve seen, what I know.

Sometime after the hot water runs cold, Mom and Dad return home. The frigid water has left my skin feeling raw. Doctor Franks’ sins have dirtied my soul and I don’t know how to remove them. Shivering, I towel off and then pick clothes that never belonged to either guy.

Nerves on overdrive, I flinch when the garage door rattles. I mentally count steps to the gun from the bottom of the stairs while I creep to the first floor. If an intruder breaks in, I’ll still be able to reach the gun before they can grab me. The door opens, and I brace to run.

Mom enters first, her frumpy purse bumping the door knob when she comes in. Dad pushes in behind her, arms loaded with pizza boxes. Grateful for a bit of normalcy, I grab paper plates and napkins from the kitchen. But normalcy is a pipe dream. We sit down in our regular places, but nothing feels right anymore. How do I act, knowing what I know? Will my parents figure out something is really wrong?

I bite and chew mechanically, swallow, and try to respond to appropriate comments about the conference.

A knock echoes through the house, and I cringe.

“My goodness, Emma,” Mom says, “Are you all right?”

“If it’s Alex, please tell him I’m not here.”

“Emma Jane…”

“Please. I don’t want to talk to him.”

Dad balls up his napkin, pushes back his chair. The knock comes again, louder this time. I shift in my seat, ready to run for the stairs if it’s Alex, the gun if it’s his father. Dad opens the door, and a whiff of leather and lightning whisk through to my nose and spear through to my heart.

Alex.

“Good evening, Mr. Gentry.” His voice is edgy, nervous. “May I talk to Emma?”

“I’m sorry, Alex. Emma said she doesn’t want to see you.”

His leather jacket rustles, I hear his sneakers shift on the porch floors. “Please, sir. Just a few minutes?”

“Whatever this is…” The hinges creak, my dad pushing the door closed. “You’ll have to wait till she’s ready.”

I feel rather than see him lean around my dad. Raw emotion twists his voice, “Emma, please…”

How can I look at him? Who will I see? Alex, or Daniel? I shake my head and turn away.

“Time to go, son,” my dad says, and then closes the door.

Mom doesn’t let the silence last very long. “You want to tell me what that’s all about?”

No, I don’t want to. My mom is one of the last people who would begin to understand what happened with Alex and Daniel. She’d close her ears and just refuse. “Can I just say Alex isn’t the guy I thought he was, and leave it at that?”

“For now.” She pushes at the hair clip slipping from her hair. When she focuses on me, her expression is one big frown. “But when you’ve had a chance to think about it, I expect to hear more.”

“Okay.”

I clear my dishes and climb the narrow stairs. The cat is curled on my pillow, weak moonlight spilling through my curtains and softening his white into something ethereal. Tonight I do not want to see the moon, or know who’s looking at it. I yank the curtains closed, change into pajamas and slide into bed behind Renfield. He gazes at me, yellow eyes glowing in the thin blade of moonlight cutting between the curtains.

“I know why you like Alex,” I tell him.

He blinks, rises and stretches, then pads to my chest and curls into a ball by my heart.

“Exactly.”

My sleep is broken with flashes of Alex and Daniel, and the undead creatures on the Franks’ property sutured into one grotesque monster. Alex’s dad’s proud voice calls it his greatest creation. The vision runs in a jagged loop, like a chainsaw in my mind, cutting the entire night.

That morning, I drag myself down the stairs, mumble a good morning to Mom, who’s cleaning up from her morning tradition of making amazing breakfasts. She pours me a large cup of coffee and I pick up one of her breakfast burritos. With the burrito balanced on my cast, and coffee in my left hand, I take breakfast back to my room, and fire up my laptop. I may be grounded, but this is more important. She can ground me forever, and throw the computer away if I can find the information I’m looking for.

The screen throws artificial blue light into my dimly lit room. My desktop wallpaper seems a mockery of truth I know now. The cemetery scene speaks of the peace after death, of having a place to mourn. Doctor Franks has ruined all that.

I pull up a webpage, go to a search engine and then type in Alex’s father’s name. Hit after hit fill my results screen and I follow each one. A few similar articles in medical journals discuss his studies on electrical impulses and the varied affects on living and dead tissue. More recent articles talk about his attempts at regenerating dead tissues with a combination of chemical formulas and electricity.

That explains the undead animals on their property. And what he did to Daniel and Alex. They were the end results of his lifetime of research. But something as exquisite as Alex’s regeneration must’ve taken more practice. I know about Daniel. Where did the others come from?

Daniel’s death was the last in a line of suspicious accidents over the summer…

I do another search for ‘Alex Franks’ cross referenced with ‘injury,’ and find his old school’s article about his injury in early May. After opening another tab, I research the local news sites, and find a list of boys missing or dead in the rash of mysterious incidents. Shortly after Alex’s accident, the first boy went missing in the White Lake area. His body was never found. Another boy had a motorcycle accident. One boy drowned. Two fell. The last one was Daniel.

Alex’s dad did it. He did it all.

But he wasn’t there the night Daniel fell. We were at a fraternity house party. The place teemed with people, all of them teens. Doctor Franks orchestrated it, used a puppet to do his dirty work.

Feet on the stairs alert me to someone approaching. I stab the power button and rush the dark laptop back to my desk. I’m not sure I could stomach much more, anyway. A knock on the door precedes it opening, and Mom walks in.

“I’m not sure what’s going on, Em. But I’m getting really worried about you.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I heave a sigh. She’d think I was crazy, or she’d believe me, snatch up the phone, call the authorities and report Dr. Franks. If he’s arrested, what happens to Alex? What will they do to him? Poke, prod, take samples…

“Then don’t say anything. Just listen.” She comes in, and sits on the end of my bed across from Renfield. “There’s help available anytime you want it. Your dad’s work has a counseling service. And you know you can talk to Dad and me anytime. I just don’t want things to get worse. You’re lying, skipping school, sneaking out, getting into fights.”

“It won’t get worse, Mom. I promise.” Anything to make her go away.

“Please, don’t let it. And talk to that boy. I don’t know what’s going on between you two—you act like you’ve been dating for years, not weeks. And he is genuinely hurt.”

You
, I think,
have no idea.

“I’ll talk to him at school, okay?”