by A. P. Fuchs
Coscom Entertainment
winnipeg
The fiction in this book is just that: fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead or undead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-926712-82-6
Discovery of Death is Copyright © 2011 by Adam P. Fuchs. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.
Published by Coscom Entertainment
www.coscomentertainment.com
Text set in Garamond; eBook edition
Cover Art by C.J. Hutchinson
For Buttons
What We Created
Always remember
Do not forget
The world we created
Together
I’m at its edge now
My feet on the line
Gazing off
Hoping to see you
Instead it’s just me
The line
And a chamber of nothing
Before me
Without you
I can’t see
Without you
I can’t breathe
You are my five senses
Six
If you count my heart
Seven, my soul
Always remember
Do not forget
The life we created
Together
Kissing Rose was like kissing blood: warm, smooth, sweet; a gentleness to her lips that made Zach cry out for more. When their lips met, his heart held hers and she his; her life flashed before his eyes and he knew her better than she knew herself.
As their lips playfully melded, separated, merged, he held her close, his embrace gentle and careful, yet firm enough so she knew he’d never let go. Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, he sensed that if it was possible, she’d pull him deep into herself and make their bodies one. Instead, Rose’s hands tugged behind his neck, her fingers stroking its nape, letting him know how much she loved him.
Tongues gliding across each other’s, Zach was ever cautious that Rose didn’t accidentally drag her tongue across his fangs and cut herself. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. They’d already been down the road of pain, loneliness and separation. For something to happen to set them on that path again, he couldn’t bear it.
Even now, standing here with her, holding her, kissing her, there was the underlying trepidation that something might go wrong.
Zach’s heart raced with phantom beats, his uneasiness at the prospect of losing her distracting him from their kiss.
Rose must have sensed it because she pulled slightly away and said, “What’s wrong?”
“I just . . . I love you so much,” he whispered. “I never thought—”
She placed the soft skin of her fingertips across his lips. “Shhh.” And drew her to him.
Their lips met and Zach’s world exploded in flashes of Rose growing up, a little girl with brown hair in pigtails wrapped in purple ribbon all the way to the gorgeous sixteen-year-old she was now.
The images—flying photographs wrapped in light—not just mere pictures but each a snapshot of Rose’s time on this earth oozing with meaning and life, their display not just impacting his mind’s eye but also his heart. Though each image flashed but for an instant, the sensations crashing through him drew on, the events depicted happening in real time. A nightmare when she was three; a pizza party for her and her girlfriends when she was six; the cake falling off its tray as her mother tried to bring it to her on her tenth birthday; her first pimple; her dad giving her the keys to the car when she got her license.
It was Rose’s life that kept Zach connected to the realm of the living. His life . . . he didn’t know it, at least not in the way he should. These past few weeks with Rose were all he knew by way of life.
It was a few months ago that he emerged from the dark, unsure of who he was and how he wound up in a crypt in Eagle Park Cemetery.
It was several months since he became a vampire.
1
Rebirth . . .
The dusty texture of nylon rubbed against his fingertips. At first it was difficult to see, but as his eyes adjusted, all was bathed in a gray hue as if moonlight was the source of light here in this dim place. Only a scant few inches away, bluish-gray waves of fabric were before his eyes. The musty scent of age and antique doilies greeted his nostrils with such potency he thought he was going to sneeze. But he didn’t. Instead, his senses absorbed the crisp smell and he was at ease with its strength.
A part of him was comfortable here in this plush chamber. He was pressed in from all sides by pillowy fabric and padding. It was a narrow place, probably no more than the length of his body.
I don’t really know. His inner voice seemed louder, clearer than it was supposed to be. Yet at the same time he felt at home here and a part of him wished to sleep, because something inside said it was not yet time to wake and emerge from this place.
Worms slithering in soil somewhere beyond caught the attention of his ears and he squirmed inside his plush cocoon, thinking these things were somewhere in here with him. He glanced side to side and didn’t see anything.
Leaves rustled on trees and he instinctively drew his hand to his face within the confines of this tight space when he heard a leaf break free of its branch and flutter through the air down toward his face. But nothing touched his skin.
Footsteps thumped from somewhere above, slightly muted, like someone walking on carpet. Wait, not someone. More than one. At least five. Yes, five people. Ten separate feet.
For a second he thought they were going to step on him, their feet bursting through the fabric in front of his face and squish him. But they didn’t.
“I can’t stay here,” he whispered. There was a need to properly address himself but he couldn’t remember what that address might be. A title? A name? A combination of both? All he knew was he lay here alone with vibrant activity above him.
He placed both palms against the fabric, his fingertips once more discovering its smooth under-texture in a powdery coating, and behind that, wads of cotton, and behind that still—oak.
He pushed. At first, it seemed that the hard oak on the other side of the padded fabric would not move, but a moment later, its heavy weight gave way and pushing it aside was as easy as throwing off a blanket. The wood moved up and over to the side like a lid, its hinges stopping it before it completely fell off to the left side. Musty air washed over him and a dark ceiling made up of rock and dirt hung overhead. A second lid—black, scratched and old—still covered his legs. He sat up, reached forward and lifted that one as well.
He sat there and recognized what he had been inside: a coffin. He looked around. Other coffins lined the floor along with his in a square, each inset in the walls made of black rock, some coated in mud, others not. One coffin sat in the middle of the room.
His insides split in two: one half wanted to run screaming and get away from this place; the other sensed its warmth, an atmosphere of home. It was wrong. It was right.
Fatigue rushed over him and he laid back down and closed his eyes. Immediately, discomfort set in and he sat up and hopped out of the coffin.
The others all around him were still closed. Were there people inside there, too?
Are they dead? I’m not. Sleeping? Seems right. “Wait. No. Not right. Maybe. Sleeping.” It was difficult to think straight.
The footsteps above returned and he wanted to see if perhaps whomever they belonged to could help him. Using the footsteps as a guide, he listened as they traveled over the rocky ceiling and followed their sound out of the cave and into a shallow-staired t
unnel. The stairs led up and the footsteps slowly transformed from coming from above him to coming from parallel to him, when he finally reached the top of the stairwell to a stone door.
Unable to see a handle, he placed his palms on the jagged stone, trying to find something to use as one. There was none. Leaning into it, he focused his weight on his palms, pressed, and tried sliding the door. It moved to the side and revealed a small room no bigger than a closet, the walls on either side composed of marble-encased coffins, inset in shallow marble shelves.
Not bothering to read the writing above the graves, he headed straight for the main door. This one was iron and had a handle. He pressed down on it. After a loud clunk, the door unlatched and opened.
Fading sunlight streamed in and his hands immediately burst in flames.
“Ahhhh,” he yelled and buried his hands beneath his armpits, extinguishing them. Part of the light touched his toes, but didn’t seem to bother them through his running shoes.
He checked his hands. Deep red blotches dotted his skin, some as large as coins, others mere pinpricks. Hands shaking, the pain from the burns began to dissipate and the blotches on his skin began to shrink then altogether disappear.
“Whoa . . .” he said despite instinctively knowing there was nothing special about what he saw.
Carefully, he reached for the handle and again the fading sunlight licked his skin and sent a stream of fire across it. With a yelp, he shook his hand off, getting rid of the flame.
He looked himself over. He wore a jean jacket, white T-shirt and blue jeans. He slid his hand in the cuff of his jacket, covering it, then used the covered hand to reach forward and close the door. When it closed, he sat on the floor, not wanting to go back downstairs, but also unable to go outside.
Sun. It was more an image in his mind than a word—yellow, spherical, fiery—and the image brought a foreboding sense of danger. Why the notion was coming to him now and not before, he didn’t know, but it also provided an epiphany: the sun was dangerous.
Moon. Another image, the white, bright and perfect sphere of space rock in the sky. Safety. Protection. Freedom.
He would wait until the moon came.
“It comes at night,” he said, assuring himself there was a time set aside for him to go outside and get help.
Sitting there, legs drawn up to his chest, focusing was difficult. His head was full, but he had a hard time deciphering what that fullness was. It was like waking up with brain fog and time was needed to start seeing clearly.
Somewhere in that jumble was the answer to why he was here. He obviously knew what certain things were: coffins, sun, moon, shoes, jacket. But there was more there that he couldn’t quite tap into just yet. A name was one of them. He knew what a name was, but didn’t know what his name was. At the same time, he knew the significance of a name and the history and identity it brought. Without one . . . he was free and unfettered by having nothing attached to himself, but he was also lost and without an anchor to help give him purpose.
A name was more than just a word. A name was the connecting point of all facets of life: soul, past, present, future. Actions, words, feelings. Thoughts, abilities, desires.
He needed a name.
He needed it to be dark.
2
Ever since Zach Mohansen went missing, Rose Jordan didn’t give too much thought to her appearance anymore. She remembered what it was like a few months ago—back when Zach was still around—how she’d be sure to take a shower every morning before school, curl her long brown hair into loose ringlets, and apply just enough makeup to highlight her lips and bright hazel eyes. Every outfit was selected with care, usually something white, as Zach once said that every time he saw her wearing white she reminded him of an angel.
There was so much excitement in those days. She’d barely have the desire to eat breakfast, her heart beating with such eagerness to see him that it chased her appetite away. She remembered her friend, Stephanie, once telling her that it’s usually the first three or four months of a relationship that was—as she put it—“hot and heavy,” the thrill of being with someone you really liked always new, something you never quite got used to.
It was like that with Zach. That boy seemed to appear out of thin air. Not literally, of course, as he’d gone to school with her since as far back as she could remember, but she never gave him much thought. He didn’t have many friends, and those he did have weren’t what she’d call popular or even cool. They seemed to be the kind of guys that were friends simply because there wasn’t anyone else to be friends with. Whatever works, she supposed, but she knew it was that kind of shallowness that had kept her from him for so long.
Zach was special, a kind of hidden astonishment. Growing up, he was tall and gangly, with too much brown hair in a mess of waves atop his head, and acne that made one cringe at first glance. It was the summer before tenth grade that everything changed. Zach went home at the end of the school year like everyone else. He didn’t even attend the junior high prom. Rose thought she overheard somewhere he’d been sick, though she suspected he never really felt like he would fit in and so avoided the party altogether.
But it was that summer that changed everything.
Zach came to school on the first day after the break, and Rose, who had been searching the halls for her first class, stopped in her tracks when she saw him. He hadn’t looked her way. He didn’t have to. Something about him gripped her. At the time, she didn’t know who he was. He stood there in the hallway, a small white slip of paper in one hand, a stack of books in the other, his eyes glued to the piece of paper. It was like fireworks went off in her chest and she was immediately captivated by this guy with the cute brown locks that sat in a loose tussle on his head, a clear complexion, and a slender but muscular build beneath his black T-shirt and blue jeans. It was only upon further inspection did she realize who he was. Immediately, her cheeks flushed and she forced herself to look away and continue searching for her class. When she passed him in the hallway, she couldn’t help but look up and steal another glance. Zach looked her way, gave her a soft smile, and continued on.
Rose had stopped in her tracks again, unable to fully wrap her head around why she was drawn to him.
He wasn’t the boy she once knew anymore.
♦ ♦ ♦
Rose came down the stairs for breakfast, her heart aching. Getting over Zach’s vanishing act was something she was still trying to deal with.
Her father sat at the table, scanning the newspaper, his dark eyes even more prominent these days thanks to his graying hair that seemed to take on another hint of silver every morning.
“Morning, pumpkin,” he said, and flipped the page.
“Hi,” she said softly and sat down across from him, wondering when he would stop calling her that silly pet name. Not only was it uncool, but she found it demeaning. A constant reminder of how he refused to see the woman she was growing up to be.
If the Jordan household was known for anything, it was routine. Her bowl and spoon were already set before her on the table, the box of cereal to her right, the milk to her left.
She glanced to the empty seat near the window. Zach had sat there the few times he had come for dinner. She could still see him sitting there now, a ghost of good times past.
Her father bent down the top half of the newspaper and gazed past it. “Better hurry. Don’t want to be late.”
“Yeah,” she said and stood up.
“Not going to eat?”
“Not very hungry this morning.”
“Got to have something. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and all that.”
She nodded. “Where’s Mom?”
“Had an early showing. I’m catching up with her shortly after some paperwork.”
“You guys are going to be busy today, right?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question. Her parents owned their own real estate business and were busy every day. Weekends were optional the same way relaxing evenings were.
“Got to meet some people around five. Depends how it goes. Hope to be home just after six.”
Rose went to the fridge and pulled out the lunch she had made the night before. As she went past her father to the door beyond, she noticed a cut along his jawline.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Hm?” He bent the paper down again.
“You got—” She ran her index finger along the side of her jaw.
“Oh, that,” he said and put a hand over it. “It’s nothing. Cut myself something fierce shaving.”
“You might want to put a band-aid on it. Looks pretty deep.”
He pulled his hand away and checked his palm. “It’s not bleeding; I should be all right.” He set the paper down with his other hand. “Sure you don’t want anything? You need to eat, Rose.”
“I know.”
Her dad’s eyes slightly glazed over. He already knew why she wasn’t hungry. They’d already talked about it. All he told her was, “You got to hang in there. Things will be fine in the end. Boys come and go.”
The words never gave her comfort, and the last comment infuriated her, but she knew he meant well.
“See you later,” she said.
“Have a good day.”
“You, too.”
Rose headed out the door and walked slowly to the bus stop.
3
Red flower petals floated past his vision and despite the darkness of the crypt, they were as vivid as bolts of lightning across a black sky. There was meaning in flowers, he knew, though the knowledge of such was more an impression than actual fact.
