The Road From Death

by Tobias Wade

  The Road From Death

  School of Rebirth and Reincarnation

  Tobias Wade

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: July 2019

  The Road From Death

  Book 1 of

  School of Rebirth and Reincarnation

  Illustrations by Qari Olandesca

  https://www.instagram.com/dot2375/

  Copyright © 2019

  Tobias Wade

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Qari Olandesca Illustrations

  Mrs. Robinson’s Adventure

  Mrs. Robinson wasn’t in her room where she usually sat by the window. She wasn’t on the sofa lording over the TV, nor in the kitchen supervising the cooking, nor anywhere else in her two-bedroom house. In fact, Mrs. Robinson has been missing for three days, and speculation has already begun on whether she would ever return.

  “She could be dead,” Samantha considered. The young girl spoke casually as if she was wondering whether it would rain tomorrow. “Dead in a ditch, I figure. Went and got smacked by a car on her way home, with little pieces of her raining down all over the neighborhood.”

  “Surely we would have seen the pieces?” Claire replied with undisguised horror. Claire was considerably smaller of the two girls, though they were both twelve years old, and she seemed even tinier now with thin arms tightly clutching her loose t-shirt against her body.

  “Not necessarily,” Samantha replied solemnly. “It could have happened at night. If I were the driver who hit her, I would have jumped out and gathered up all the pieces to hide the evidence of my crime.”

  “No!” Claire whined, shrinking farther into herself to form a sad little huddle which practically melted into her bed.

  “Or maybe he didn’t have to gather her up at all, see,” Samantha continued, leaning forward to drive the words home. “Maybe birds picked up the little pieces, so that by morning there wasn’t a single piece of Mrs. Robinson at all.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Claire squealed.

  Samantha shrugged, settling back into her seat, her long black skirt swishing over the blue carpet beneath her chair. She began to pick at her lavender fingernails, peeking at Claire from the corner of her eye as she continued.

  “Well, I’m not pretending to know for certain. I’m just trying to cheer you up by giving you the good scenario. It could be much, much worse after-all.”

  Claire bolted upright from where she lay on her bed. Her wide green eyes quivered with apprehension, her skin so flushed that all her freckles seemed to dissolve.

  “What could possibly be worse than being smashed into smithereens and eaten by birds?”

  Samantha spent several exquisitely long seconds continuing to pick at her nail before looking up at Claire.

  “Are we going to stay indoors all day?” Samantha inquired suddenly. “Aren’t we going to play any games?”

  “What else could have happened to Mrs. Robinson?” Claire shouted. “Tell me or I’m going to tell your mother that you’ve been horrible to me!”

  A sly grin flirted with the corner of Samantha’s mouth. She narrowed her eyes and leaned close to Claire so that the girls’ faces were only inches apart.

  “Well at least if she was hit by a car on her way home, then she would have still been trying to come home. There’s always the chance that she doesn’t much care for you and would rather not come home at all.”

  Claire jerked away from Samantha as though struck by an invisible slap, flinging herself face first against her pillow. Samantha had never heard a sound as pitiful as the sobbing howl which blasted from Claire’s direction, the pillow only muffling it enough to provide a haunting echo to the cries. Samantha plugged her fingers into her ears and waited for Claire’s outpouring to stop—she must draw breath eventually—but even when Claire paused to inhale, the sound only transformed into two cement trucks making love.

  The door flew open and in fluttered Claire’s mother, Mrs. Thistle. She was a short, stout woman who appeared to possess a very soft hug, and she immediately demonstrated this upon her daughter. Unfortunately, the gesture only seemed to squeeze the remaining air from Claire, whose howl of anguish reached a truly piercing crescendo.

  “Easy easy, there you go, I’ve got you,” Mrs. Thistle said, rocking Claire gently back and forth.

  “Mrs. Robinson doesn’t love me anymore!” Claire cried, heaving for breath.

  “Oh, darling, don’t say such a thing. Of course she does!”

  Samantha silently shrugged behind Mrs. Thistle’s back, making a gesture with her hands that looked convincingly like an explosion, complete with the wiggly fingers which surely represented the pieces flying every which way.

  “She’s been smashed to bits then!” Claire continued to howl.

  Mrs. Thistle glared over her shoulder at Samantha, who was now avoiding her gaze by engrossing herself once more in her lavender nails.

  “Anyway, I think my mom is going to pick me up soon…” Samantha started to say. But she never got any further, because she made the mistake of looking up and catching a full dose of Mrs. Thistle’s thundering glower.

  “Well you can’t blame me for being honest—” Samantha began again, having forgotten that she was still a twelve-year old girl, and that children could in fact be blamed for just about anything.

  Ten minutes later, Samantha and Claire were both standing outside in the warm August sun. Samantha was holding a stack of “Missing” posters with Mrs. Robinson’s picture on it, although from the foul expression on Samantha’s face one might guess she was actually holding a heaping pile of someone else’s soggy underwear.

  “Can’t you just buy a new cat?” Samantha whined. “Or adopt one from the shelter. It would think you’re a hero for saving it.”

  Claire’s glare was cold enough to make Samantha shiver despite the sun.

  “Dogs are nice,” Samantha mumbled, not meeting Claire’s eyes.

  There wasn’t any fight left in her though. Samantha meekly followed her companion as they began their journey along Bentley Street where they both lived. Every time they reached a light or telephone pole, slap goes the picture of a very fat black cat stuffed into a very small glass bowl. Squeee goes the electric tape. Crinkle crinkle as it’s fastened on. Then they’re off again, no words exchanged as there was no need. Samantha was beginning to feel repressed and stodgy from holding so many sarcastic comments in for so long, and she was about to quip on how excellent dogs are at finding their way home when Claire spoke first.

  “I found Mrs. Robinson three years ago before mom and I moved here. She was in a plastic grocery bag along with four other kittens who were all black like her, brothers and sisters probably. Someone had left them in the trash by the grocery store, right on top of a greasy old pizza box. The bag was tied at the top, and there wasn’t even a way for them to breathe. I don’t know how long they were in there, but none of them were moving when I found them, not even Mrs. Robinson.”

  Samantha didn’t know what she was supposed to say about that, so she respected the wisdom of silence.

  “We
named her Mrs. Robinson after the song. There’s a line that goes ‘God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson’, so I just thought that if there was anyone who needed to be blessed, it had to be her. And I guess God really did, because pretty soon she started moving again even though none of the others did. We gave her some milk, then Mom rushed off to the store to get some real cat food and medical supplies because it looked like Mrs. Robinson hadn’t eaten in a really long while. And the whole-time mom was gone, I kept thinking that if Mrs. Robinson stops moving again that it would be my fault, because I was the only one in the world she had left to depend on. And every time she swallowed a mouthful of milk, or turned her head a little to look at me, well that was just a miracle that might be taken back any second. And now it has. Three years later, and I still wasn’t ready.”

  Samantha silently thanked her mother for giving her sunglasses to wear outside, because at that moment she was very glad Claire couldn’t see her eyes.

  “Nobody looks at posters,” Samantha replied. “We should knock on doors instead. We can do the whole block in less than an hour, and then we’ll know for sure if anyone saw her.”

  The girls left their posters and their tape at the end of Claire’s driveway and began to knock on every door instead. There was no answer from the tall gray house with the carved lion head railings. There was an old woman named Warlinksi who lived in the next house with its forest of potted plants, but she hadn’t seen Mrs. Robinson, and said she wouldn’t tell them even if she did. Warlinski didn’t understand why people don’t just “mince cats up like any other critter”. Claire thanked her anyway, for she was raised to thank people for giving you their time, even if they didn’t spend it the way you had hoped.

  Samantha was making a real effort to be supportive now, but she still wanted to skip the next house. All the kids in town knew that a murderer lived there, even if the adults didn’t want to admit it. The house even looked like the type of place a murderer would stay: perpetually dead trees rising like tombstones in the arid and withered garden, a deck that was rotten and fallen through in places, and a large collection of strange ornaments, wind chimes, and bead necklaces with funny stones which dangled from nails haphazardly hammered into the peeling plank walls.

  “Mrs. Robinson wouldn’t have come here,” Samantha declared. “She had—has—better sense than that.”

  “Then we won’t have to stay long,” Claire replied as she picked her way between the brown and stringy bushes. She hopped over the first rotten step to alight on the solid one above.

  “It’s just that my mom’s going to be picking me up soon, and —”

  “Not until dinner time. My mom called and said you were going to help me because you’re a kind and gentle person. That is true, isn’t it, Sam?”

  “That’s not fair.” Samantha grimaced. “Your mother knows full well that I’d rather be a witch and put curses on people. I said as much in my Christmas card last year, and I know she saw it because she kept asking my mom whether I would like to join you all at church after that.”

  Claire wasn’t paying attention. She was facing the house, calling, “Hello, anyone home?” She rapped on the door with her fist which caused it to rattle loosely in its frame. Samantha found sudden interest in peering through a hole in one of the dead trees, which was hollow and turned out to be filled with colorful stones and broken glass.

  The muffled sound of a chair sliding against a padded floor came from inside the house. Claire looked over her shoulder and gestured emphatically for Samantha to join her on the old porch. Samantha pretended not to notice.

  Standing alone in front of the dilapidated house, the idea that a murderer might really live inside didn’t sound hard to believe after-all. And what would a murderer do if they opened the door to find two young girls, defenseless and alone? Claire’s mother thought they were still putting up posters on the public street. No one knew where they were, and if they were to not come home again…

  The door began to open, and all the worst parts of Claire’s imagination came out at once. In her haste to flee, she forgot about the decaying step until her foot landed hard on the splintering wood. A shrill little scream preceded a thumping crash as she tumbled to sprawl on the dirt beyond. Claire scrambled to her feet and was about to launch herself away once more, but the moment she balanced her weight onto the offended ankle she felt it buckle in protest. A sharp, stinging pain devoured her senses.

  Claire was on the ground again, staring at her scraped hands which had broken her fall. There were footsteps behind her now, and Claire was absolutely certain that the murderer stood only a foot away. Could she outrun him? Not likely. Fight? As if more capable victims hadn't tried before. His shadow was already looming over her, and Claire’s lightning succession of thoughts only led to the inescapable conclusion of her impending demise. The sole reasonable course of action was to begin screaming again.

  “Cut that out, won’t you?” came the kindly old voice behind her.

  Claire snapped her mouth shut for a moment before breathlessly demanding, “What did you say?”

  “He means that if you don’t stop screaming, he’s going to cut your tongue out,” Samantha volunteered cheerfully, still standing nonchalantly beside her dead tree.

  Claire’s eyes widened. She began to draw a great lungful of air to —

  “That’s not what I meant!” the voice behind Claire implored. “I just want you to stop screaming, if you please. You’ll wake the little one, and Mandy just got him to sleep.”

  Claire didn’t suppose a murderer would have cared about waking a baby, and he definitely wouldn’t say please. If anything, he sounded like he was the one who was afraid.

  Claire wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before shuffling around on her hands and knees.

  “Of course a murderer would ask that,” Samantha added, sagely stroking her chin. “He wouldn’t want anyone to hear and save you.”

  Claire could now see that the murderer in question was a pale-skinned elderly man with a long droopy nose like a sock half-filled with sand. He was tall and thin, very much like a spider which had learned to stand on its hind legs and dress itself in rather baggy and faded clothing, and his wide deep-set eyes were as grey and calm as the sea before a storm. Claire felt immensely relieved, realizing that a strong tempered toddler would likely be sufficient to push this frail old thing around.

  “I’m not a murderer!” the old man retorted, a faint flush rising on his cheeks. “That’s Barnes’ fault, my daughter’s no-good boyfriend.”

  “Your daughter married a murderer?” Samantha asked, suddenly eager. “How many people has he killed? If it’s at least three, then it counts as being a serial killer, but only if they weren’t all done at the same time, otherwise he’s a mass murderer instead.”

  The old man shook his head, “He hasn’t killed anybody either. But he started telling stories about me and now everybody thinks...” his voice trailed off into indistinct muttering which might have been an attempt to disguise the type of language twelve-year old girls aren’t supposed to hear, even if they secretly say those very same words in their head at every opportunity.

  “You must be Noah then,” Samantha declared. “I heard that people keep catching you with dead animals. They say that you kill them for fun. That’s even worse than killing people you know, because animals never cheat on their taxes or lie to their mothers.”

  “I don’t ‘kill’ them, I put them to sleep,” Noah replied indignantly, “and only if they’re very sick and in pain. I do work at a veterinary clinic, after-all.”

  “I heard you like to watch them die,” Samantha pressed.

  “What’s the crime in that?”

  Claire and Samantha exchanged an unsettled glance.

  “You do like to watch things die?” Samantha asked incredulously, her usual playful tone drenched in accusation.

  Noah looked down at the peeling rubber sole of his sneakers. “It’s not cruel or anything. I just… like wat
ching what happens next.” His eyes darted back to the girls suspiciously. “What are you doing here? Do your parents know where you are?”

  “Did you kill Claire’s cat?” Samantha demanded. Then, on a lighter note, she added, “Oh, this is Claire, and I’m Samantha, or Sam, but never Sammy.”

  “Hi,” Claire mumbled, flourishing a half-hearted wave.

  “Hello, Claire. Hello, never-Sammy,” Noah replied, lighting up with good humor as Sam rolled her eyes. “Is the cat black with a white tuft on its chest like a general wearing a medal?”

  “You’ve seen Mrs. Robinson?! Is she in the animal hospital?” Claire exploded, bouncing onto her feet. She had forgotten about her injured ankle in the excitement, so this action caused her to stagger dangerously. Samantha was there to catch her though, supporting her as they both turned on Noah ferociously.

  “She’s right there, isn’t she?” Noah said, pointing behind Claire. The girls spun on the spot while still holding hands, almost knocking both of them to the ground in the process. They stared at the empty patch of dirt for a moment before rounding once more on the old man.

  “Right where?” Claire asked.

  “He’s teasing you; there’s nothing,” Samantha said. “Don’t you know it’s not nice to play tricks on innocent little girls? Especially when they know how to trick you back.”

  “I’m not talking about her body,” Noah said, sighing as though the words were weighing him down. He sat heavily on the creaking wooden steps and his remaining air all flooded out in a puff. “I’m talking about her spirit. She’s chasing that butterfly, although she’s never going to catch it because the butterfly is alive and well...”

  The girls looked again, and sure enough they saw a butterfly dancing on the wind. Claire cast an uneasy glance at her friend, and she wasn’t thrilled to see Samantha smiling. She always smiled when she wasn’t supposed to, and that made Claire cross.