Dark Creations Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci

  Chapter 7

  The unexpected return of Kevin, Chris and John sent shock waves throughout the school. Their names were on everyone’s lips. Melissa struggled to regroup after her initial shock at seeing them and felt as though she were in a nightmarish trance for the remainder of her day. She existed in a daze, listening to her classmates go on and on about the astonishing reappearance of their beloved classmates. She alternated between numbness and the persistent urge to vomit at every mention of their names. Adding to her uneasy feeling was the fact that her name was invariably mentioned each time theirs was. After all, everyone knew that she was the person who had claimed that they were dead, not merely missing. Their return brought with it the return of weighted stares. Fellow students stared in her direction again, regarding her with suspicious eyes; judgmental eyes. She felt as though the day could not end soon enough.

  When finally it did, Melissa rode home with Daniella and Alexandra who also discussed the homecoming of the popular trio.

  “Holy shit! Melissa, what the fuck is going on!” Alexandra said, echoing the sentiment of everyone in the car.

  “This is insane. It’s just, crazy! All of it is crazy!” Daniella exclaimed.

  “Melissa, I thought that you said that they were dead, that you saw their bodies, you said that freak that broke into my house killed them. I don’t understand what the fuck is going on,” Alexandra said struggling to stay calm.

  A stunned silence befell Daniella’s typically lively carpool.

  Within seconds, it ended, however. Alexandra turned in her seat to face Melissa who sat in the back seat.

  “Well!” Alexandra began, her statement sounding like an accusation.

  “Well what, are you asking me if I was making it up?” Melissa countered as her anger began to rise.

  “Dead people don’t just become, I don’t know, undead and go back to their normal lives,” Alexandra persisted.

  “Don’t attack me!” Melissa fired back. “I know what I saw. I didn’t stop and take their pulses while I was running for my life, if that’s what you want to know!”

  “Then what made you so sure they were dead?” Alexandra asked coolly.

  “Uh, the fact that Kevin’s head was crushed for one thing,” Melissa answered sharply.

  “This doesn’t make any sense at all,” Alexandra added.

  “What do you think is going on?” Daniella asked.

  “It has to have something to do with Terzini, I told you the crazy things that he was working on,” Melissa said.

  Melissa had shared with her friends the nature of Dr. Franklin Terzini’s work; that he was a genius geneticist who experimented with human cloning. Alexandra had seen Eugene and it became necessary for her to offer an explanation. She did not, however, include in her explanation one small detail: that Gabriel could be counted among Terzini’s experimental creations.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you think this Terzini brought them back to life?” Alexandra replied

  “I don’t know what I’m trying to say Alex, I don’t have an explanation. I just know what I saw, and they were dead. Why are you acting like this?” Melissa asked.

  “Look Melissa, I’m sorry all right. I don’t want to sound like I’m attacking you. I’m just totally freaked out and I want to know what is going on.”

  “You don’t think that I do too? I’m the one who is going to be considered a nut, or even worse, a liar.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to just lay low until we figure out what’s going on. Maybe they staged it to look like they were dead that night or something,” Alex said

  “So you’re saying they created an elaborate hoax, and took off for five months just to make me look bad? That seems a little far-fetched,” Melissa said

  “Oh, and this Terzini guy bringing them back from the dead seems more logical to you?” Alexandra mocked as they pulled in to Melissa’s driveway.

  Melissa promptly climbed out of Daniella’s car and thanked her for the ride home.

  “Oh and I’m not going to lay low,” Melissa stated. “I’m still going to Greg’s party tonight. There is no way I’m going to let them intimidate me, not this time.”

  “Good, you shouldn’t,” Daniella said.

  “Yeah fuck them; of course you should still go.”

  “Don’t get me wrong I hope that they’re not there tonight. But they’re not going to get me to lock myself in the house and hide.”

  “Okay then we will pick you up at eight,” Daniella said excitedly.

  “All right I’ll see you guys at eight,” Melissa said as she shut the car door and walked toward her house.

  Melissa unlocked her front door and walked in. The familiar smell of home did little to ease her anxiety. Questions began to form in her mind. Would Kevin, Chris and John be at Greg’s party so soon after their mysterious return? If they came, would they approach her? Would there be a scene as there almost always was since their initial meeting?

  As Melissa agonized over the answers to her questions, she busied herself with household chores. She began washing pots in the sink and loading the dishwasher with plates and glasses. When she had finished that task, she moved on the hamper and separated white, light and darkly colored clothes before running a load of towels.

  When the rumble of the garage door interrupted her dinner preparations, Melissa realized she had lost track of time, and was thankful for it. Within seconds, she heard the door to the garage open and the predictable sounds of her father shuffling into the hallway.

  “Hey Miss!” he called out.

  “Hey Dad!” she replied.

  She waited for the sound of work boots hitting the hallway floor before she inquired about his day.

  “How was work?”

  “It sucked like every other day. How was yours?”

  “It sucked too, and oh yeah, Kevin Anderson, Chris Mace and John DeNardi showed up at school today.”

  Melissa watched as her father’s stainless-steel coffee thermos nearly slipped from his hands and tumbled to the floor. His eyes grew wide and his mouth fell agape.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s exactly how I felt, still feel,” she commented on his astonished expression.

  “What, I mean how?” her father stammered. “Holy shit, Missy, I thought they were dead. You told me they were dead, that that psycho killed them.”

  “And I told everyone else too, because I saw their mangled bodies. I heard their screams.”

  As Melissa spoke, her father stared at her with confusion apparent in his every feature but intently, concernedly. The sound of the doorbell interrupted their conversation. It rang once. Then almost immediately it rang a second time exemplifying the impatience of whoever waited on the other side of the door.

  “Who the hell is ringing the bell now?” her father asked. “Geez! And the jerk is impatient too. Okay, keep your shirt on! I’m coming.”

  Melissa shrugged, equally as confused as her father.

  She watched as he answered the door only to find a police officer standing before him.

  “Well, if it isn’t Chucky Miller,” her father stated as his frustration with the dual doorbell rings quickly segued into downright unfriendliness. He did not bother to mask his dislike of the officer standing opposite him.

  “That’s Officer Charles Miller,” the police officer replied puffing out his chest and emphasizing his rank. “And I’m here to see your daughter.”

  Melissa watched as he father stiffened then asked, “For what reason?”

  “I’m interested to see if there is anything about the statement she gave five months ago that she’d like to change seeing as how there are now three corpses going to school with her,” Officer Miller replied haughtily.

  “Now hold on a second,” her father said heatedly. “She already gave her statement quite some time ago. I’m pretty sure her story will be the same.”

  “I believe I asked to see your daughter,
not you, Chris.”

  “That’s Mr. Martin to you, son,” her father replied derisively.

  Melissa’s heart pounded against her ribcage. She knew that it was not possible that Kevin, Chris and John could have survived. She knew something else was going on, but she would never be able to tell the police what she thought without sounding like a crazy person. She would not betray Gabriel even if she could get them to believe her. Their reappearance, the whole scenario was a total mess. And now, it seemed her credibility was being called into question.

  Without thinking, Melissa stepped out from the kitchen and blurted, “I told you what I saw and what happened.”

  She did not temper her tone when she spoke to Officer Miller. She did not restrain her frustration at his implication. Under any other circumstances she would have spoken more respectfully, would have regarded a police officer with higher esteem. But Melissa had heard the name Chucky Miller spoken on more occasions than she cared to admit. She knew of his less-than-esteem-worthy past.

  Charles “Chucky” Miller had been the neighborhood troublemaker when she was a child. Years later, her father had hired Chucky to work for him in the produce department at the A&P, as a favor to his parents, a lovely couple whose only conceivable fault was their inability to see their son for what he really was. But Chucky had not lasted long and had been fired after just a few months. Chucky had never forgiven her father for firing him, and neither did his parents. Her father had been shocked to see him at the Harbingers Falls annual fall festival two years earlier donning a police officer’s uniform. He had always assumed he would have extensive involvement with the police, just on the opposite end of the spectrum.

  Now, as he stood before them accusatorily, the situation felt wrong to Melissa.

  “Well Melissa, let me tell you what I think happened,” Officer Miller began but not before allowing his eyes to travel up and down her body and linger on her breasts. She felt her skin crawl as he continued, “I think you and this Gabriel guy hired someone to beat the shit out of Kevin and his friends. You know, a little revenge for what he allegedly did to you, but the thug got carried away and almost killed them. Then when the guy showed up at your house to collect, Gabriel shot him and took off.”

  Melissa froze as Officer Charles Miller spoke irately, jabbing a finger animatedly all the while. Judging from his words and demeanor, he had already decided on what had happened; convinced himself that it was a fact rather than an opinion. And he wasn’t finished.

  “I wonder, did he kill the ambulance driver, too? Where is he Miss Martin? Surely, you must know.”

  Melissa did not have time to answer. Her father interjected.

  “All right Chucky, that’s enough! It’s time for you to go! You were a punk when you worked for me and now you’re a punk with a badge. How that happened, I’ll never understand!”

  She watched as, much to Officer Miller’s chagrin, her father abruptly shut the front door.

  “I think that went well. How about you?” her father asked employing his usual sarcastic sense of humor.

  Melissa did not respond verbally. Instead, she rolled her eyes.

  “Come on, Missy, everything is going to be okay.”

  “No dad, it won’t. I mean, after everything that happened to me and Gabriel because of Kevin and those guys and now Gabriel is gone and they’re back,” Melissa rambled, her mind thinking faster than her mouth could speak.

  “Maybe Gabriel has some idea about what’s going on. Call him and ask him.”

  “Dad, you know I can’t call him. He doesn’t even have a phone wherever it is he’s staying,” Melissa said, frustration lacing her every word.

  “All right, calm down. When he calls you or texts you or whatever it is that you teenagers are doing with your cell phones, ask him. There must be some sort of explanation for all this.”

  Melissa wasn’t so sure about his last statement, but she was certain she wouldn’t be hearing from Gabriel anytime soon.

  “That’s not going to happen,” she muttered.

  “What’s not going to happen?” her father asked.

  “Jeez Dad, you have hearing like a bat!”

  “Well?”

  “Nothing, Dad.”

  “Don’t ‘nothing Dad’ me. Spill it.”

  “There’s nothing to spill. That’s the problem,” she erupted. “Gabriel hasn’t called me in I don’t know how long. I have no idea where he is, or who he’s with. It’s like he’s gone for good, like everything he said to me was a lie–all the love stuff!”

  “He said he loved you?” her father prickled.

  “Yeah, whatever Dad, a boy loves me–or so I thought–but that’s not the point!”

  “Yeah, it kind of is the point. Speaking of which, did you two, you know, umm when two people love each other, they want to share their love and express their love,” he fumbled.

  “Gross Dad! Are you trying to have a conversation with me about the birds and bees now, seriously?”

  “No. I mean, yes, well, kind of. I think you know what I’m trying to ask.”

  “We didn’t okay.”

  Melissa could see her father’s face relax along with the rest of his body, which had become visibly tense and intensified incrementally as he tried clumsily to ask if she and Gabriel had slept together.

  “So you’re just sad because you miss him and think he’s not coming back not because you gave him something he can’t give back.”

  Melissa stared at her father briefly before she rolled her eyes at him and retreated to her room.

  He called up to her as she reached the top of the staircase.

  “Love you, too Missy!”

  She shut her door and immediately went to her bed. She stretched out on it and tried to wrap her mind around all that had transpired during her day so far. It had been surreal, nightmarish. Seeing Kevin, John and Chris at the end of the hallway, feeling her knees threaten to collapse beneath her had been more frightening than any nightmare she had ever had. They were dead. She was certain of it. She wished Gabriel would call her at that exact moment, willed the phone to ring, but it did not.

  She rose from her bed and shuffled to her closet to set about picking out an outfit to wear to the party she had regrettably agreed to attend.