Life Eternal (22 page)

“What?” I murmured, though only Anya could hear me. Dante was going blind? He hadn’t told me.

Dr. Newhaus motioned to the image of the Undead boy. “As you’ll remember, he had been in school for ten years at that point. But still, he had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him why it was bad to take someone’s soul. This is why the very young Undead are so dangerous. When a child dies and reanimates before he reaches the maturity level to fully understand right and wrong, he will never be capable of learning the difference. This boy was six years old when he died. He will always remain six mentally, regardless of how many years he remains on earth. These Undead children are wild, unteachable, amoral. They take what they want without shame or guilt. And as you witnessed, they’re agile.”

The conversation wandered from the boy to the Monitor girl who had just completed her first burial. “She’s just like us,” everyone kept saying. But I wasn’t interested in her.

Quietly, I raised my hand. Through everyone’s voices, Dr. Newhaus called on me.

“Yes, Renée?”

The class grew still.

“In the first interview, the Undead boy said that he took his brother’s soul because he wanted to know where his toy truck was,” I said slowly, parsing it out in my mind. “He said his brother wouldn’t tell him, so he had to
find it himself.
”

Clementine was about to interrupt me, but Dr. Newhaus held out his hand, letting me finish.

“What did he mean?” I asked.

Dr. Newhaus clasped his hands together. “All of us know that when an Undead takes a human’s soul, the Undead also gains a temporary spurt of life.”

Everyone nodded.

“However, there is a controversial theory that asserts that more gets exchanged in an Undead kiss than life. A handful of Monitor researchers believe that when the Undead absorbs a person’s soul, some of the memories of that person become lodged in the Undead. In other words, the Undead boy in the interview took his brother’s soul in order to
absorb
the information he needed.”

I gripped the armrest of my chair. Absorb memories? It sounded sickeningly familiar. Beside me, Anya whispered, “Are you okay? You look a little red.”

I took a breath, and then another, my chest feeling suddenly constricted. “I’m fine,” I said quickly; though, the more I thought about the memories and absorption, the stranger I felt. I began to sweat, and pressed my lips together. It felt as though a secret were about to burst out of me. My throat grew dry, as if stuffed with gauze. I swallowed.

“This phenomenon is called—”

“
Wanderlust,
” someone blurted out, finishing Dr. Newhaus’s sentence.

I looked around to see who had answered, when I realized that
I
was the one who had said it.

“Yes,” the doctor said, studying me with surprise. “Would you care to explain to the class what it is?”

A wave of nausea crept over me as I shook my head. I couldn’t explain because I didn’t know what the word even meant. It had come from nowhere.

“It’s originally a German word, which translates literally into a lust for travel. However, in the Monitoring world it refers to the soul’s desire to wander from body to body. Which is exactly what it does if given the opportunity. There are two kinds of Wanderlust. What you saw in the first interview with the boy and the truck was the most common kind, where trivial or isolated snippets of information are transferred.” He held up a finger. “Though it doesn’t always work properly, because the information that wanders is random. The Undead boy in the interview never actually found his truck. He took a chance, and now that piece of information is lost forever.”

“What’s—” I said, my voice cracking. “What’s the second kind of—of—”

“Wanderlust?” the doctor said.

I nodded miserably.

A glimmer of excitement passed over his face. “I’ll show you.”

He fast-forwarded the film and a hand appeared on the screen, holding up a sign:
SUBJECT 043
.

A girl sat in the same classroom as before. She was wearing an oversized sweater, and hugging her knees. After a moment she looked up at the camera. My classmates shifted in their seats as they studied her. She looked about my age, though her hair was dull and brittle like straw. Clouds obscured her irises, making her pupils appear gray; her eyes were out of focus, as if she were staring at nothing.

“How old are you?” Dr. Newhaus asked offscreen.

“Seventeen,” she said, biting her nails.

“And how long have you been dead?”

She moved her fingers, counting, and then started over again, as if she had lost track. “Nineteen years.”

“How do you feel?”

“Parched. Dull. Empty.”

“And how did you feel after you killed your last doctor?” He said it gently, but the question seemed to agitate her. She squirmed in her chair, looking from the camera to Dr. Newhaus, to the floor.

“I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to talk to him. We were good friends. He was the only one who understood me. I just couldn’t stop….”

“Why did you put gauze in his mouth?” Dr. Newhaus said softly.

“It was right there,” she said. “It was in his office. I didn’t bring it myself.”

“I know,” he said. “But why did you put it in his mouth?”

The girl wrung her hands together. “Because I didn’t want to kill him; I just wanted to be close to him. I heard a rumor that gauze stops the soul from being completely transferred if you do it right. But I didn’t.”

“Who told you that?” Dr. Newhaus said, his voice noticeably firmer.

“People say that the Brothers use it to take information from people.”

There was a long pause.

“Were you trying to take information from your doctor?”

“No,” she said flatly.

Dr. Newhaus waited, and eventually the girl corrected herself. “I just wanted to know if he felt the same way about me as I did about him. That’s all.”

“What happened next?”

“I kissed him and he—he collapsed, and I realized what I’d done. But then I felt…full.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I felt like I had absorbed him. I could remember things in his past. When he embarrassed himself in primary school, or when he had his first kiss. The first time he fell in love. The anger he felt when his father died.”

“Could you remember other things? For example, what he had for dinner the previous night?”

The girl shook her head, looking like she wanted to cry, but couldn’t.

Dr. Newhaus turned off the switch, and the screen went dark.

“The transferring of more detailed memories,” he said as he turned on the overhead lights. “After taking her doctor’s soul, she absorbed experiences associated with high emotion—embarrassment, fear, love, happiness….This is a rarer form of Wanderlust; one that tends to occur in teenage Undead, rather than young children.”

“And the gauze?” Anya said from beside me. She was thinking of the Nine Sisters, though all I could think about was my parents and Miss LaBarge.

“I believe,” he said slowly, “and mind you, none of this has been scientifically proven yet, that the act of inserting gauze in the mouth of a victim before taking a soul may be a method that the Undead use to take information or memories from their victims without killing them immediately. Or, in other words, when done correctly, inserting gauze in the mouth prevents the entire soul from being taken in one kiss.”

My breath grew shallow as I turned Dr. Newhaus’s words around in my head. Gauze? Was that why the Sisters died with gauze in their mouths, why my parents and Miss LaBarge died the same way—because the Undead had tried to get information from them?

Dr. Newhaus continued lecturing about how the Undead cope with death, but I was no longer paying attention. How had I known the word Wanderlust? How had I known any of the answers I’d been blurting out in my classes all semester? I was still lost in my thoughts when the bell rang.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Noah gazing at me as Clementine whispered something to him. Throwing my books in my bag, I gave him a quick glance, and left.

I ran across the courtyard, back to my room, and I slammed the door.

All semester I had been wondering where the information in my head was coming from. Where the visions were coming from. Could it be from Wanderlust?

Pacing across the rug, I thought back to what Dr. Newhaus had said in class: when the Undead takes a human’s soul, there were two kinds of possible transfers —information and extended memories. It seemed I had a little of both.

Hadn’t I exchanged souls with Dante last spring?

When we kissed, hadn’t I relived his memories of when we first met in science class, of when we first kissed in the Latin classroom, of when we were called into Headmistress Von Laark’s office for the last time?

Hadn’t I also relived events that I’d never actually experienced before? His sister getting pneumonia. Flying in an airplane with his family. Crashing into the water. Dante drowning.

Like a burst of cold air, the truth wrapped itself around me. I leaned against my bedpost in shock. When we exchanged souls last spring, I had absorbed some of Dante’s memories. I had been reliving Dante’s past and unknowingly absorbing information he had once learned. That was how I knew what Wanderlust was, how I knew about the Île des Soeurs, how I knew that canaries were used in coal mines. Because Dante knew all of those things.

I don’t know how long I stood there going over everything in my head. If I had absorbed Dante’s memories, did that mean that my visions belonged to him, too?

Dr. Newhaus had said that Wanderlust was about absorbing
memories,
but my visions weren’t Dante’s memories. I was seeing them long after our kiss, and it seemed like they were happening now, not in the past. Then again, we were soul mates; everything worked differently with us.

“My sis—”
I’d said to the nurse in my vision of the hospital, just before I’d corrected myself to say brother. Dante had had a sister. And the cemetery. Dante had been there right after my vision; he’d known exactly where the Monitor section on the map was, and he’d noticed the headstone just before I tripped over it.

I thought back to the night before my birthday, when I had my first vision. Had Dante chased Miss LaBarge through the waters of Lake Erie?
“You?”
she’d said. Could she have been talking about Dante? In the vision, I’d had long hair. Dante did, too. Was it possible that he’d taken her shovel and then killed her?

Unable to control myself, I began to tremble. No. Maybe I was seeing him in my visions, but he couldn’t have killed anyone. I had to believe that he would never hurt anyone. He’d told me himself that he wouldn’t, that he wouldn’t hurt me….Except he had. I was hurt now. And Miss LaBarge was dead. What explanation could he possibly have?

Outside, the day faded to night, and tiny snowflakes floated in through the open window on a cool, swirling breeze. Standing up, I lowered the pane and went to splash my face with water. But when I turned the knob of the bathroom door, it was locked again.

“Go away,” Clementine yelled from inside, though this time her voice was different. There were no girls in the background whispering or giggling.

She blew her nose. Quietly, I pressed my ear to the door, only to hear the soft sound of her crying.

“I can hear you,” she yelled suddenly. “Go away.”

Stunned, I fell back. And without thinking, I slipped on my coat and scarf, getting ready to leave. I didn’t care where.

When I opened the door from my bedroom to the hall, Noah was right in front of me, his arm raised as if he were about to knock.

“Noah,” I said, jumping. “What are you doing here?”

He looked red and flustered, his brow gathered into a tiny wrinkle. When he saw me, his face softened. “I just wanted to see you.”

I scratched my head, confused. Behind me I could hear Clementine turn the faucet on in the bathroom.

“You seem upset. Are you leaving?” he asked, betraying a hint of panic as he surveyed my coat and scarf.

“I—I’m fine,” I said, unable to think coherently enough to form a proper response. “I’m just going for a walk.”

“Can I come?”

I glanced at Clementine’s door. The last thing I needed was for Clementine to find out that Noah was here, talking to me. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

We walked in silence, both lost in our own thoughts as the traffic lights changed soundlessly in front of us. As we waited on the curb for a car to pass, Noah turned to me. “I broke up with Clementine for good.”

His words took a moment to sink in. “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Thanks.”

He didn’t offer anything more, and I didn’t ask.

The city was different at night. Without any destination we meandered down the streets, past sex shops and head shops, tattoo parlors and peep shows. The windows of the storefronts were smudged and cracked and glowing neon.

As we passed under the awning of an all-night café, I stopped. Through the glass I spotted someone wearing a tan suit coat that looked incredibly familiar.

“That’s Dr. Newhaus,” I said.

Our psychology professor was sitting alone at a table, staring down at a plate of food, deep in thought.

It was a smoky French bistro, the kind that served cheap wine. A television was on, tuned to a hockey game. There were barely any people inside, save for two older men smoking cigars, and a group of college boys heckling a waitress.

“I wonder why he’s out so late alone,” I murmured, watching him pick at his food.

“Do you know about him?” Noah asked from over my shoulder.

“Know what?”

“He was one of the best Monitors in his class. My father told me he was fearless; always the first to volunteer, and later the first one on the trail of an Undead. They used to be friends a long time ago.

“Eventually he got married and had a son. Apparently I was friends with the kid when we were both younger, though I can’t remember any of it.”

“You don’t see him anymore?”

Noah shook his head. “He died when he was ten. Fell out of a tree in their front yard.”