Amber Eyes

by Mariana Reuter

Then I saw Aaron Zimmerman and Laura behind him. He slapped her and she cried, “You, bastard!”

  Something told me I had one single chance—it was now or never. A burst of adrenaline invaded me. It didn’t matter if my leg was broken or whether I was physically unable to succeed. The unbearable pain or the terror I was experiencing, didn’t matter. An adrenaline-fuelled turbo engine jettisoned me toward Yago while I held both arms extended in front of me.

  Overtaken by terror, Yago opened his eyes wide and shook his head in denial. For one second, he stood rigid, breathing even faster, then something like a shockwave hit him before I even touched him. It shoved him backwards until he hit the window. Trapped against it, Yago’s eyes popped out of their sockets and he raised his arms protectively to his face. A primal scream escaped his lips, “No!”

  Yago and Aaron were occupying the same space, Aaron’s transparent figure superimposed on Yago’s solid body. Laura shoved me aside and I fell to the floor, but I got up fast on all fours and raised my head.

  Laura fixed her glassy amber eyes on me. “One killer in the family is more than enough, Alexandra.”

  She rammed both of them. Yago and Aaron broke the window at the same time, falling in unison. They smashed it with the sound of an explosion and disappeared in the night, swallowed by the darkness. Shards rained on me—I lowered my head and closed my eyes, folding my two arms over my head to protect it. A cry filled the air and then a loud thud one story below.

  Then nothing. Nothing but a continuous buzzing in my ears.

  July 5, 00:23 pm

  I screamed, and so did Laura. She’d just saved my life, but I couldn’t understand why. I only hoped Yago hadn’t been killed like Aaron Zimmerman had. Maybe, he deserved a broken leg or something of the sort, but not death. His twins needed their father.

  My leg’s killing pain returned like a bad memory. I bit my lip, then I broke into sobs as the incidental sting turned into a continuous flow of ache.

  Meanwhile, the buzzing in my ears grew louder and louder until I realized it came from outside the house. I raised my head. It was the hum of dozens of voices generated by a mob outside the mansion.

  It was then when the banging started. Hordes of people were pounding at the doors, demanding to be allowed inside to meet the managing director. After two or three minutes, one of the towering doors collapsed and a mad, disorderly crowd flooded the house. Many people, dozens, hundreds. Men and women out of control. They fell upon the house like a swarm of mad bees falling on a thief stealing their honey. In an instant, they smashed the beautiful mirrors and beat the fine furniture with baseball bats. They ransacked the place. Some men were even urinating on the carpets, laughing like crazy. One had a gun he fired into the air several times. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I didn’t. I had to check what those bastards were doing to my place.

  A huge blonde guy resembling Yago, but much younger, pointed at the stairway and cried, “He’s upstairs!” A group stampeded after him.

  Another shot was fired into the air. There was a snapping sound like the cable of an elevator breaking in a horror movie. Everybody in the hall looked up and screamed. The chandelier fell in a straight line down from the ceiling, while its electric cable tossed sparks in every direction.

  The mob climbing upstairs froze and contemplated the chandelier with terrified eyes and mouths wide open. The main hall had been so packed that the people simply couldn’t move from under it. It crashed on them and onto the floor with the sound of all the glassware in the world breaking at once. Screams and shrieks filled the air. The small crowd upstairs, now stampeded downstairs.

  The lights went off and silence followed.

  # # #

  In utter darkness, my shaky fingers kept hitting the wrong icon every time I touched Edward’s cell phone screen.

  “Please, God, please,” I prayed as I sobbed. “Lemme dial.”

  I was finally able to open the address book and hit Edward Torrent’s name. A matter-of-fact voice answered, “Torrent.”

  “Sir? Sheriff?” I could barely talk. I doubted he could hear me.

  “Edward?” the sheriff asked. In the background, I could hear music. “Talk louder, I can’t hear you.”

  “I’m… not Edward,” I said. “I’m… Justin, the new kid,” I paused. “I’m camping… with Edward and the guys…”

  “I know who you are. Are you okay, son? Is Edward with you?”

  For some moments, I couldn’t speak. The pain in my leg was killing me. “Edward’s with me.”

  My trembling voice must have told the sheriff something was wrong because, very slowly, he said, “I would like to speak to Edward then.” His next line was a command. “Hand him the cell phone.”

  I sobbed loudly, fearing Edward could well be dead.

  “I can’t hear you, kid. Speak louder. What did you say?”

  I tried to shout, but I could only whisper. “Edward’s injured. He can’t answer the phone.”

  “Listen to me very carefully, kid.” The sheriff’s tone was even and flat as if nothing had happened, but I heard him gulping. “I need you to answer some simple questions. Can you answer some questions?”

  I tried to control my sobs. “Yes. I can.”

  “First, where are you guys?”

  I blurted faster than I’d expected. “In Magnolia Hall.”

  “At the camp?”

  I was breathing hard and should have sounded to the sheriff like one of those pervs who harass people on the phone. “No, not at the camp.”

  “Where in the estate are you then?”

  I coughed. “In the mansion.”

  “In the mansion?” The sheriff seemed surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “And you said Edward’s injured?”

  “Yes… he is.”

  “How severe?”

  I couldn’t understand what he wanted to know, or didn’t want to understand it. I almost yelled, “What do you mean?”

  The answer came in the same matter-of-fact tone. “I mean, son, how bad is Edward injured? Is he losing blood, is he unconscious?”

  I broke into sobs again, loud and uncontrollable ones. “Really bad… Freakin’ bad! He might be dead.”

  # # #

  I crawled downstairs for what seemed ages to me until I reached Edward’s body. It didn’t matter if there was nothing I could do for him. I had to be with him. I owed him. He’d tried to save me and forgot about his own safety. He simply did it. So, I couldn’t leave him alone despite my own injuries. I had to be by his side comforting him as much as possible until help came.

  Even if he was dead—God forbid! —I had to stay by his body, watching him. We had become Boy Scout buddies. A Scout is loyal, friendly, brave, and a dozen more things. I had to be all that at once now that he needed me so much.

  When I finally reached the foot of the stairway, I knelt beside him in the dark. The air smelled strange—a blend of dust, blood, and sweat. Yes, the house’s dust flooded my nostrils, even though the most powerful odors were Edward’s blood and my sweat. He was covered in blood and I was damp with sweat, so much that the Lycra shirt stuck to my body like a second skin. What was completely out of place was the lavender aroma hanging in the air.

  When Edward had stumbled down the stairway, he’d fallen face down. Now, he laid face up, half resting on the first steps, gasping. Not heavily, but he gasped anyway. There was a large, dark spot on his trousers. Yago had shot his thigh and it was bleeding profusely. The rest of his Boy Scout uniform was half stained with blood, and his face and arms were bruised. When I caressed his cheek with the back of my fingers, he opened his eyes and stared at me.

  “Call my old man.” I’d barely heard him, he couldn’t talk.

  “I’ve already did. He’s on his way.”

  “I’m not gonna make it, Justin,” he paused and gasped for some air.

  I didn’t want to look, but I force myself to. It was only a wounded leg. It’d have been worse had he been shot in the chest. “Y
ou’ll make it, Edward. It’s not that bad.”

  “Where’s the guy?”

  “Dead, maybe. He fell out of the window.”

  “How come?”

  “I pushed him.” Well, not exactly, but if I told him a ghost had, he’d thought I’d gone nuts.

  Edward coughed, opening his eyes wide. “You… what?”

  “I pushed him.”

  Edward grimaced and pressed his leg with a hand. This feeling of being pathetically useless seized me. I needed to do something to help him, but I was clueless. I caressed his hair and he closed his eyes.

  “Your old man’s on his way,” I said. “Bear with me a li’l bit more.” I patted his cheeks. “Open your eyes, Edward.”

  He did and I sighed in relief. “There are ghosts here, Edward. Did you know? Jorge was right. I’ve just seen a bunch of them”.

  He’d think I’d gone crazy, but I didn’t mind. I needed to keep him awake and the ghosts were the only thing I could think of. Edward frowned. He was looking at me, but also over my shoulder. “Ghosts? Like her?” He raised his arm a bit and pointed at something behind me.

  Laura, my mother, stood in the nightgown she wore the night she pushed Aaron through the window. Now I knew where the lavender fragrance came from. Her gaze seemed lost, focusing on nothing and somehow wandering from Edward to me, to the empty house around us, to the void.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. Her ghostly form flickered. “I’m so sorry. You were almost killed and it would have been my fault.”

  Was Mom actually there? Had she come all the way from Florida? It should be a shock for her to be back in the place where everything happened, but I was thrilled she’d finally come for me. “Mom!”

  “Don’t call me… Never mind. I’m glad you’re okay.” We both extended our hands but I couldn’t touch her. Mine went through hers like she was a hologram… or a ghost.

  “Oh.” I sighed in disappointment. For one second, I’d thought she’d changed.

  “I’m really sorry, Alexandra. I did everything wrong and you didn’t deserve it. My bad. If I only could do anything for you…”

  “You can come and pick me up.” Talking to her ghost felt odd. I wasn’t sure if it make any sense, but there were so many things I wanted to tell her. I felt so very angry because she dumped me, but at the same time, I fell glad she was here, even if it was not exactly her.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not anymore. Hope you can ever forgive me.”

  Or course I could. I had thought I hated her, but I couldn’t. She was my mom. Who could hate their own mom?

  “Mom…” I begged. She crumbled into a fine, golden dust, like Tinkerbell’s fairy dust. “Mom, I love you!”

  A shockwave of lavender fragrance hit us like a strong gust of wind. In that moment, Edward fainted.

  July 5, 1:03 am

  Edward’s dad didn’t arrive alone but brought a small crowd with him: about 10 cops in three cars howling their sirens, an ambulance with three paramedics, and another ambulance that arrived later after they realized two of us were injured. Also, a group of firefighters in one of their engines, dunno exactly why—maybe they thought there might be people trapped inside the mansion. The firefighters brought with them two portable flood lights that cast their blinding beams on the mansion’s front so it actually looked like the movie scene of a disaster.

  In round figures, it was about 25 people. The first ambulance didn’t lose any time. They took Edward to the nearest hospital, immediately. I heard the paramedics telling sheriff Torrent that he had lost a lot of blood and that he was in a critical condition.

  I fainted or fell asleep after they took Edward away. First, I was lying at the foot of the stairway holding Edward’s hand. I closed my eyes for a second when the paramedics put him on a stretcher. Next, when I opened my eyes, I was on a gurney inside an ambulance parked on the tall grass in front of the mansion. A paramedic had put a splint on my leg and was injecting something in my calf.

  “Now you won’t feel any more pain,” the paramedic said, “but you may feel a little groggy or even sleepy. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be right back. The sheriff wants a word with you in private before we leave.”

  “Wait!” For one second, I feared Yago could still be around and panic seized me.

  The paramedic turned. “Yes?”

  “The man who shot us,” my voice trembled, “is he alive?”

  “If you’re talking about the guy who fell out the back window, he’s dead.” Relief filled me, but at the same time, I felt terribly sad.

  He jumped out of the ambulance through the open rear double doors and I started feeling groggy almost immediately, like I was floating some two or three inches above the gurney—a nice feeling actually, mainly because the pain in my leg was vanishing like sand flowing out of a closed fist. I also felt like I wanted to burst into laughter for no reason at all, feeling stupidly happy.

  Some minutes later—or had it only been a moment later?—I heard voices outside the ambulance. A male voice was saying, “Old Tommy Cromwell insists that he opened the gates for Laura Zimmerman earlier this evening.”

  “Poor Tommy is out of his mind,” another male voice answered, a deep one. “Laura Zimmerman has never, and will never come back here. He opened the gates to somebody else. Keep questioning him until he says something that makes sense. Now, what about the girl? She is in here, isn’t she?” He knocked on the ambulance. “Can I talk to her now?”

  “Don’t you prefer to follow Edward’s ambulance, Sheriff?”

  “No, we need to investigate what the hell happened here. Duty comes first, self goes second. Is the girl conscious?”

  My paramedic’s voice said, “Yes but don’t take long, please. The girl was in shock so I sedated her a bit, and I want the folks at the hospital to check her as soon as possible.”

  “Is she injured?” The sheriff’s matter-of-fact tone again.

  “Broken right fibula, most likely. I’ve splinted the leg and—”

  “Anything else?”

  “No other injuries, Sheriff.” My paramedic sounded pissed. “But as I said, the girl’s shocked and scared. Limit your questioning, please. You’ll have all the time in the world afterwards. She still needs to be taken to the hospital for a full check-up.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it short,” the sheriff said. “We’ve got a dead man, Edward’s injured and this girl’s our only conscious witness. I need to learn what happened here.”

  The sheriff’s figure appeared at the ambulance’s rear open door and he jumped inside.

  “Hello, girl, I’m—” The sheriff froze for several seconds, staring at me. His face turned white and then even whiter until it was white like a sheet of paper. “Laura?”

  He stood speechless for some more seconds. “Of course not, that’s impossible.” Nailed on the spot, he took a hand to his chest and grimaced, like his heart was aching. “Alexandra? Are you Alexandra Zimmerman?”

  So this guy was my father. This tall, muscular and even good looking man—it was easy to guess why Edward looked so hot. Being in front of him felt weird. He was a perfect stranger and the little I knew about him was not exactly nice—I mean all that stuff about being Laura’s lover and covering her after the murder. I had longed so much for my father and now that he was in front of me I was clueless and didn’t know what to say or what to do. The only thing that came to my mind was waiving, and so I did. “Hi dad.”

  The sheriff backed off like he was scared of me and hit his head against the ambulance’s ceiling. “Ouch!”

  He tried to put a hand to his head but hit with his arm a shelf on the ambulance’s wall instead, knocking down everything on it. He tried to prevent the rain of medicines and equipment falling from the shelf and ended up backing off even more. Suddenly, he tumbled back out of the ambulance through the open rear door and disappeared.

  I sat up on the gurney to see what was happening outside. A cop approached ru
nning. “Sir, are you okay?”

  The sheriff hastily got to his feet. “I’m okay, thanks. I tripped.”

  Both of them stood silent for some moments while the sheriff dusted his clothes. He had been so freakin’ funny falling out of the ambulance that I guffawed and then took a hand to my mouth covering it.

  “Any news?” the sheriff asked. He could have asked whether it was going to rain. I bet he only wanted to drive the other cop’s attention away from his ‘tripping’.

  “Yes, sir,” the other cop informed him. “We’ve just finish tracing the dead guy’s ID. Full name Iago C. Morrison. Iago with a Y and the C stands for Cawdor.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a report from the Somerset folks that he might have been involved in a child abuse situation. No charges yet, only a suspicion. The local guys are still investigating. He’s also linked to a missing-child report, a one Alexandra Zimmerman, female, 14 years old, missing since 4 days ago, suspected to have run away from home and traveled here, but nobody sent us a heads-up. Sanders is trying to contact the Somerset folks to get more info.”

  The sheriff didn’t answered but sat on the ambulance’s rear bumper and massaged his head.

  “Are you okay, sir?” the other cop asked.

  The sheriff remained silent.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m okay.” Exasperation lingered in his voice.

  “So, sir?”

  “So what?” the sheriff blurted.

  “The info about this Morrison guy.”

  The sheriff wiped his face with an open palm. “Sorry, Fox. I was not paying attention.”

  Fox repeated his report, remaining silent after he was done. Then he asked, “Sir? Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay!” The sheriff stood up and paced the ground by the ambulance. His voice trembled. “It’s…I’m just worried about Edward.”

  He was lying. I could tell even in my inebriated state.

  “Of course, sir. It’s understandable. If you wish, sheriff, I can radio the ambulance and check whether they have arrived at the hospital.”