My Immortal

by Ginger Voight

  MY IMMORTAL

  A novel by

  Ginger Voight

  ©2011

  For Daniel

  “And now there’s nothing left to say

  And the same old saviors feel so far away

  And I can’t believe the things I’ve done

  And the same old saviors forgive, but the tears still come.”

  “S.O.S.” by Zero 1 featuring Hal Sparks

  www.halsparks.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  A mist hung low across the tall trees of a darkened forest. A child whimpered.

  “Tell me about the dream.”

  The warm, baritone voice echoed from its far-away place in the very same room. It was kind, it was patient, but even more it was firm. It was a voice one couldn’t lie to.

  The only other person in the room, a bundle of nerves who lay prone on the cushioned chaise lounge, sucked in a breath. It was the one question she didn’t want to answer. Her eyes stayed closed. Her brow knit together. Her hands shook as they mindlessly shredded a tissue in her lap, her consciousness suspended precariously between two realities.

  “It’s okay, Adele,” the voice assured. “Relax. Take your time.”

  The woman nodded. A trembling hand lifted a stray strand of blacker than black hair from her ivory face, which drew attention to the bright white strip that streaked almost dead center across her scalp. She cleared her throat. The sound was so harsh and out of place in the silent room even the man sitting across from her jumped. He gulped, made sure the tape on the recorder spun, and waited.

  “I’m walking in the forest,” she began, trying to describe the photos in her mind that were so real she could almost smell the pine as it charged up her nostrils.

  “Like the other times?” his probed from that other, more distant plane.

  She nodded. “I feel the dead leaves slice into my bare feet. The gown I’m wearing is long and tears on the low branches, but I can’t stop. I follow the wind. No…” She self-corrected with a slight furrow of the brow. “It follows me. I feel it wrap itself around me. Like an embrace.”

  She paused for a slight moment as she wrapped her arms around herself. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, though the room where she lay was cozy and warm. Her face was intent, troubled. “I hear a little girl. She’s crying. She calls out for her dog.”

  “Buster!”

  “… Buster… I think.”

  “Where is her dog, Adele?”

  The woman named Adele glanced down in her dream state to find a mangled, bloody dog carcass strung between her two pale hands.

  “He’s dead,” was her flat response. She unconsciously rubbed her hands together, as if to wipe away what lay upon them.

  “Did you kill him?”

  The question went unanswered. The man’s pen recorded the silence on a densely filled legal pad. “Where is the little girl now, Adele?”

  A small silhouette huddled in the middle of a bald patch of Earth. The woman named Adele hovered from above while a cackling male voice reverberated over the rustling treetops.

  Her voice cracked. “In a clearing. We’re circling her from the safety of the trees.”

  “There’s someone with you?”

  “There’s always someone with me.”

  Whispers fell down through the tops of the trees like raindrops. They mingled together in an indistinguishable roar with the wind. The child cried. A wolf howled. As the natural chorus that surrounded them grew to a horrifying crescendo, the woman named Adele dove toward the huddled, frightened girl with a loud, echoing shriek.

  “What happened to the little girl, Adele?”

  “We killed her.”

  The man put his pen down on his notebook. Her soft confession might have been shocking had he not heard the same story from several dreams before. “Is that all you remember, Adele?

  A child’s arm went limp and fell onto blood stained leaves. A tiny bracelet on her arm spelled out L-I-L-Y in pretty pink and white tiles.

  Adele’s violet eyes snapped open to the pastel blue walls of the room. She sat up, straightened her clothes and brushed tears from her very pale face, tears she had been unaware she’d even shed. That had been happening a lot lately. “Yes,” she murmured the lie easily. “Like I told you. It’s just like the others.”

  He paused and knit his hands together in his lap. He seemed to choose his words carefully. “Adele, I think it’s time we talk about your taking a leave of absence.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d made such a suggestion. Nor was it the first time she rejected it out of hand. “I can’t do that.”

  He leaned back in his chair. She stared him down, her features set. “You mean you won’t.”

  If only she had the luxury of choice, she thought. But she didn’t expect him to understand, even though she paid him a hundred dollars an hour to do exactly that. “No. I mean I can’t.”

  He sighed as he withdrew his prescription pad. She instantly shook her head.

  “Not more pills.”

  He didn’t even look up. “When was the last time you had decent, uninterrupted sleep? “ She didn’t answer and he held up the little blue piece of paper. “It’s just a sedative to help you get your rest. I think we both know what can happen if –”

  Wordlessly she snatched the prescription from his fingers before he could finish his sentence. Just as quickly she spun on her heel and left.

  Once outside Adele adjusted her jacket as she braced against the unseasonably strong winds blowing through Darlington, Massachusetts. Her boots clicked against the cobblestone streets as she wound her way through the town of roughly 50,000 souls. It was a quaint town full of personality, one that made one want to walk wherever it was one needed to go.

  Indeed walking was Adele’s preferred mode of transportation. On the sidewalk among strangers she felt alone, invisible – part of the landscape. It made her feel oddly safe in the anonymity. Passersby looked through her as she looked everywhere else.

  Her eyes could focus on the unique cityscape, where the modern architecture seemed to fight for its place among the older, more characteristic buildings that felt removed from another, more magical time. The colonial roots of her part of the country made themselves known in unexpected ways. Depending on the hour or the day or the way the shadows fell, it could be hard to tell exactly in which era modern citizens of Darlington walked. In her heart of hearts Adele always felt partial to the old world ghosts that lurked in all the darkened shadows.

  That was the charm of her city. Its Gothic heart would not be denied, making the entire burg a bit of an unintentional time machine. Some of those buildings stood in the same spot for hundreds of years, where they were erected by early settlers in the area who had come seeking a new frontier. The town library was housed in the first log cabin built in the town, and their finest hotel was an honest-to-goodness castle from the 1800s. No doubt it was constructed by someone who couldn’t quite let go of the Old World or its rich, regal history. Nor, apparently, could the citizens of Darlington, who went to great pains to preserve it over the centuries.

  As a child it had been impossible for Adele not to get caught up in the fairy tale Victorian age that still lingered in her hometown, where kings and queens were but a trip across the Atlantic back to the mother land. It was a romantic nostalgia that shouldn’t even belong to someone born in the 20 Century, but somehow she had wanted to claim it anyway.

  Unfortunately reality had a way of cracking through the façade no matter how she tried to hold onto the innocence. Simply put, Adele Lumas couldn’t afford to believe in fairy tales anymore. Cynicism took the place of romanticism one night many years ago. As time marched relentlessly forward, her beloved Darlington served more as a familiar, comfortable backdrop to
what she considered her true purpose.

  She made her living by cracking news stories no one else dared to touch. She was fearless and tenacious; the harder the case, the more zealous she became. Reality was both her crutch and her curse in this quest, as truth could often be a strange and unwelcome bedfellow. Thanks to the “truth,” Adele had learned the hard way that true evil lived within the hearts of humans. There, and there only, were the real monsters.

  Her job was to expose them all, one by one, and thus rob them of their power to hurt anyone else. That was Adele’s mission, something she hadn’t quite been able to convey to Dr. Ashcroft. Otherwise he would never suggest the impossible – that she simply walk away from her job.

  She found her identity in her work. Endless, tiring, grueling hours hot on the prowl of the newest threat to her community were the reasons she forced herself out of bed each morning. She wouldn’t rest until she got the bad guy, unveiled for the whole world to see. Yet beneath that tough as nails exterior beat the heart of a woman more vulnerable and more sensitive than most. Her soul shared the same stark contrast as her strange hair. She could be a powerhouse one minute, and paralyzed with fear the next.

  She didn’t sleep well, she didn’t eat properly. All she did was bounce from one story to the next with tireless determination, even though there were times when she looked like she might buckle under the strain.

  But Adele was a woman of many contradictions. She had the heart of a crusader, who could take up the mantel of any victim with compassion unmatched. Yet as an individual she was extremely hard to get close to, and she made sure the world knew that by putting a wall of extra flesh between her and the world she wanted to save, but could never fully trust.

  She had been plagued her whole life with various emotional ailments that she never wanted to discuss even with the very few people she allowed close to her. She had Dr. Ashcroft, and a medicine cabinet full of pills, for that. But nothing helped. Not really. Not for long. As Adele stuffed the newest prescription into her pocket, she already knew this new batch of pills weren’t going to make anything any easier.

  In fact, with the ring of her cell phone she suspected the day was about to get a whole lot worse. It was Brian, her cameraman at the studio. “What happened?” Two words, tersely chirped.

  “There was another one,” Brian replied, but something told him she already knew. “Piccoli ambush scheduled in ten minutes.”

  She nodded and stuffed the phone back into her purse. She paused only for a second to peer into the dark recesses of the woods just outside Darlington. Without being told, she knew that the victim had been found there and that it was a little girl named Lily. Adele had left that little detail out of her little chat with her good doctor. Just like she’d neglected to mention she knew each of the other three victims by name even before they were found.

  She didn’t know why she felt the need to keep it to herself, but she couldn’t have uttered the words even if she wanted to. What they suggested was too horrifying to explore, even with her doctor of more than ten years.

  More unnoticed tears dried on her face as she raced to City Hall.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A crowd of clamoring reporters huddled against the wind at the bottom of the steps of police headquarters. Brian Grey zoomed in on Adele as she pressed into the crowd that rushed the police Commissioner, Roman Piccoli. The questions fired off like machine guns.

  “Commissioner, do you have more details on the body that was found this morning?” yelled out Denise Carter, a young hotshot reporter from another station.

  “Is this the work of the same serial killer?” inserted Adele, and her deceptively pretty rival sent her a steely glare.

  “Does this have anything to do with the mutilated animal carcasses found in the woods?” someone else asked.

  The lean, forty-year old wrapped his jacket around him tightly, both against the unseasonably strong wind and the piercing questions from a throng of reporters he had wanted to avoid. Roman puffed out “No comment,” repeatedly while charging up the stairs. Finally Adele managed to shout, “Is there more than one assailant?”

  Roman stopped on a dime and swung around to glare at her. After a moment he gritted a final, “No comment,” through clenched teeth and disappeared into the building. One by one, reporters dropped their microphones and issued the kill signal to their feeds.

  Adele stared after Roman, both thoughtful and quiet. Brian instantly recognized the look on her face. He flipped the camera off and followed her as she turned from City Hall and headed toward the van.

  He almost heard the gears turn in her head as he packed away his equipment. She was formulating a plan and woe to the person who stood in her way. For the past five years Brian understood one thing about Adele. When she was on the case there was nothing that would stop her, especially Roman Piccoli.

  The Commissioner and the reporter had a tenuous relationship based on a simple understanding. They would enjoy a give and take, as long as they exhausted every other option beforehand. He didn’t want to help her sensationalize the news and she didn’t want to do his dirty work solving any crimes. Yet more often than not they did exactly that, usually in unison. It was a dance, really. A tango. Sometimes Roman would lead and sometimes Adele would. But in the last few months, and since the recent rash of child murders, Roman wouldn’t even come out on the dance floor. The stakes had been decidedly raised.

  Brian knew that wouldn’t stop Adele. He just hoped he had enough money to bail her out again.

  “What’s next, Nancy Drew?”

  She smirked at her friend. He knew her too well. “Let’s just say I have a plan.”

  “Shall I be at the jail tonight or tomorrow morning?”

  “Tomorrow morning is good for me. I could use the rest.”

  Brian chuckled as he ambled up to a red light. Across the street at the Grand Royale Hotel protestors picketed loudly around the old, historic castle, drawing the attention of both Brian and Adele. The crowd chanted “Monster,” while carrying signs with drawings of dead animals.

  He shook his head with wonder. “All this over a few dead wolves.”

  “You’re missing the bigger picture, Brian. Those carcasses were mutilated. They were a statement. A warning.”

  “Don’t you have enough trophies on your wall?”

  Adele stuck her tongue out at him before glancing back at the hotel. Another monster in her town. Her work was never done.

  Lieutenant Jim Nelson followed Roman into his office. With the Commissioner’s bad mood he certainly didn’t want to have to tell him what he had to tell him. Unfortunately, he had no choice.

  “Well?” Roman bit out as he plopped into his chair.

  Jim just sighed as he tossed a folder onto Roman’s desk. “The results are back. They’re clean.”

  Roman blew up. “What do you mean they’re clean? How the hell can they be clean?”

  Jim shrugged. If he knew that, they’d have a suspect, or at least a clue.

  Roman hopped up and began to pace. “Four kids. Four murders. No clues. No forensic evidence. How is that possible? They had bite marks, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We don’t know that,” Jim offered. Sure that’s what it looked like but heaven forbid what it suggested.

  Roman grabbed a folder from his desk and spilled out photos, gruesome photos of murdered children. “We don’t?”

  Jim sighed.

  “Tell me how we’re supposed to catch a killer when we have no evidence. Tell me how we’re supposed to stop this from happening again, Jim.” Roman looked as helpless as Jim had ever seen him.

  “We have some evidence,” Jim reminded him. “We know the killer does not act alone.”

  Roman nodded as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

  “And isn’t it funny that Adele Lumas knew to ask that question when that was the one piece of evidence we had yet to release to the press?”

  Roman glared at the man who had issued the provocativ
e question. He said nothing as he scooped up the folder and stalked from the room.

  Just after eleven o’clock that night, Adele slipped into the front door of the city morgue. She looked both ways before making sure her unusual hair was tucked up under a cap, and then slid the key into the pocket of the large, curve-concealing coveralls. Adele had learned early on in her career that it always paid to know a good locksmith with questionable ethics.

  For Adele, the ends always justified the means.

  She ducked her head as she passed other janitors on the lower floor, before quickly making her way up the stairs to the main offices of the coroner.

  After pushing the door shut behind her, she pulled a tiny flashlight from one pocket and her camera phone from the other. Of all the cabinets that lined the opposite wall, Adele headed straight toward the one that was locked.

  She pulled a pick from her cap and fiddled with the lock until a resounding click echoed through the eerily quiet room. The drawer slid open and Adele stuck the small flashlight in her mouth as her gloved fingers fumbled through the files. There was a tremor in her hands as she stopped on the file that read, “Maldonado, Lily.”

  She flipped the file open and began to take photos of the contents, not even stopping to read. She had no time to waste, and being in a place permeated in death was doing a serious number on her nerves. She could check the pages out on her computer later. At that moment she just wanted to get her sneaky task over and done with.

  Page after page swished from one side to the other. Then from out of nowhere a photo slipped from the stack and floated gracefully to the floor. Adele stooped immediately to retrieve it and then sucked in a breath as she turned the photo over. The flashlight slipped from between her lips and clattered to the floor. Out in the hall something thudded and thumped, which prompted Adele to throw the photo into the file and shove it back inside the cabinet.

  She snatched the flashlight from the floor as she scooted from the room. Another janitor passed by, tipping his head toward her. She returned the nod and kept her face turned slightly away. That was when she noticed the door to the examination room.