I laid down on the pine needle bed and looked up through the branches at the sky beyond them. I’d seen this same sky as I lay dying. It was lighter now, of course, being closer to dawn than night when I saw it last, yet there was no mistaking it. I measured out the lengths between the trees and thought hard about the way the scene had looked—Eddie at one end by the open door, me reclining on a pile of hay, staring at the stars through an open hatch in the roof. After some pacing, I stopped still. This was the exact spot. This is where it happened.
My chest tightened as it held onto my breath, aching when I tried to exhale. Tears formed in the corner of my eyes. Gabriel’s face appeared above mine.
“Do you remember?” he asked.
“I died here.”
“Do you remember,” he said again and his mouth did a strange thing when he spoke. It moved, but I couldn’t hear him. It was like a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie, like his voice was delayed. “You must remember him.”
Gabriel plunged his hand through my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I don’t think he was actually touching my lungs or anything since he wasn’t entirely here, but he might as well have. It hurt that badly. I wasn’t sure if that was because of him touching me or if I was in pain from the outpouring flood of memories that came back when we made contact.
“Don’t fight me, Jesse.” He lowered his mouth to mine, his soft lips real and burning. “You must remember, if only a little.”
His kiss had the desired effect, or at least, it made me let go of the pain enough to be confused by other, more heat-driven emotions.
The memories came with the force of a broken dam. We’re talking a sensory overload, tons of repressed memories flooding back all at once. It was indescribably painful, like my skull had finally decided to explode, pressure building from the inside out. I couldn’t breathe. Not only did I get the memories back, I got every emotion tied to every memory.
I remembered my mother, hair and eyes like mine, the same freckles. I remembered her cotton dresses and white lace gloves, in a tiny church that smelled of old books. I remembered my mother’s locket, the tilt of her wide-brimmed Sunday hat. All of her down to the perfume she wore.
I remembered how she fixed her hair for my father and how I’d sat underneath her vanity, watching her through the glass top holding her brushes, her combs. The way her face was lit in the vanity’s light as she would look down and smile.
I remembered my father’s death contained in a closed cedar box. In life, my father had smelled of cedar and oil. That night when we went home, my mother removed the cedar satchels from all our closets, the ones that kept the moths away from the clothes. For another week the house smelled of cedar, but not oil.
I remembered my mother crying every night. When she thought I was asleep, I’d creep down the hall and watch her through the small crack in the bedroom door. Sometimes she wore his clothes. Other times she crushed them to her face, smelling them with urgent, ragged breaths, and crying into the sleeves.
I remembered my mother remarrying in the same small church, in a smaller ceremony, to a tall man named Eddie much older than her with graying hair and narrow eyes and the way I felt colder when he entered a room.
I remembered my little brother being born when I was twelve. I remembered how my mother put him in my arms for the first time and called him Daniel.
I remembered Danny, three-years-old, climbing into my bed because he didn’t want to sleep alone anymore. He said he didn’t like the tree outside his window and the way it would scratch at his glass to be let in.
I remembered how Eddie made Daniel sleep in his own bed, whipping him when he didn’t.
How Daniel had cried, never having been whipped before. It was the first time I’d felt useless, without anything to offer. I might as well have been whipped too. In fact, I think I would have preferred it.
How he looked at me as I did my homework or when I tanned in the backyard, getting coconut-scented lotion all over my scattered books with sticky hands.
I remembered the first time he came into my bedroom at night.
I remember trying to tell my mother who called me Whore and Liar, words I’d never even heard her say.
I remembered her threatening to throw me out of the house.
I remembered a younger Ally, promising to run away with me. I had waited all night with a bag packed under my bed, my ear straining to hear beyond my window for her voice or a tapping against the glass.
But Ally hadn’t shown. I woke that morning to the sound of his voice in the kitchen, my bag still packed at my feet. I remembered the panic and the sinking desolation in realizing I was still trapped.
I remembered slipping out before midnight with my mother’s sleeping pills, his cigarette lighter and a whole bottle of Jack Daniels. I’d already drank down all the pills with the Jack when he found me. He demanded his usual price for his house, his food, his generosity. When he came at me that night, I hit him in the skull with that bottle and the lighter from my pocket did the rest. It’s amazing how flammable a barn can be this time of year, full of dry hay and splashed with alcohol.
The smell of burning flesh. The sounds of a man screaming as he burned to death, a guttural animalistic howl—or the way flames furled up in sharp spikes as they eat a man—or the rush of power I felt knowing he’d die—even if it took me with him.
But I had forgotten that I’d wanted to die. I’d forgotten how much my mother had hurt me.
I’d forgotten how close Ally and I were. I’d forgotten that my decision to abandon Danny was made long before I woke up to Brinkley’s offer and the knowledge that I could never go back to that life. It was made when I took those pills, never intending to come back.
There was one other memory.
And the way Gabriel slowed it down made me think this memory was important, as if this was what he was looking for.
I was little and lying under a car with my father who told me what different parts of the car were. The harder I tried to see his face, the more it disappeared in the shadows of the car above us. But his laughter, like a good-natured rogue in one of those swash-buckling movies, his laughter I remember. And the way I blamed him for dying too soon. If he hadn’t gotten his stupid ass crushed, Eddie would have never married my mother, never entered her house, and never tortured me.
More memories existed, surely, because I felt the pressure of them trying to spill in, but Gabriel must have decided this was enough. It was like he reached in and shut off the valve, ending the flood drowning me.
I jerked straight up to my feet. My face was so wet with tears I couldn’t see. I paced the circle screaming like a caged animal. The crows flew up from the trees at the sound of it, their feathers raining down slow like black ash around me.
When a twig snapped, I whirled to find Brinkley at the opposite edge of the clearing, just about where Eddie died.
“Are you okay?” he asked me. He slowed down as he approached me, the way you would approach an animal you suddenly saw in the woods.
I screamed out everything I remembered.
“Is that why you chose me?” I demanded to know. I wiped my runny nose and tears on my sleeve. “You knew I was a cold-blooded killer. That I’m a heartless, coward who’ll do any kind of depraved work for enough money. Fucked up beyond all repair, right? Why not die for a living? I wanted to die anyway. That’s why you won’t let me out of my contract early because you know I deserve this. I deserve to die over and over and—”
“Stop,” Brinkley said. He was much closer to me.
“That’s all I am,” I yelled.
“That’s what happened but that’s not who you are,” he said. “I chose you for who you are.”
“A masochist? Someone willing to kill herself even when she didn’t know she’d survive!” I was wild and burning on the inside.
Brinkley grabbed me by the arm and yanked me into a hug. It was beyond awkward and stiff and he swore under his breath the whole time but he didn’t let go of me.
/>
“If Eddie was a rapist, was my father some terrible criminal too?” I pulled away, nearing the full height of my hysteria. “A homicidal maniac? Serial murderer, terrorist or something? God only knows what he did before the car crushed him. Did you watch me since childhood waiting for me to prove I was just as evil?”
“Jesse, stop,” Brinkley said. He held me out at arm’s length and shook me a little bit. “None of that is true. Your father was a good man before he died. He had a wonderful daughter who is a good person too. I didn’t know you existed until I got the call from one terrified mortician claiming that he thought he had one of those people on his table.”
I wiped tears out of my eyes and swallowed some snot. “Rachel said you chose me because of who my father is.
“Your father died when you were eight years old.”
“Then why did Rachel say that? What did she mean?”
“Your father died when you were eight years old,” Brinkley said again, letting go of me. “But that doesn’t mean he stayed dead.”
Chapter 16
The house was filling up fast and it wasn’t that large to begin with. Mrs. Danica Phelps was stretched long in a dark box with velvet lining in the corner of the living room. Having seen plenty of coffins on display at Kirk’s funeral home, I could tell this particular coffin wasn’t top of the line, but it was well-made and chosen with love, which is to say, it wasn’t cheap either. Danica must’ve had good insurance, had saved some money or come into money since I’d left home.
I felt claustrophobic in the squat one-story house, rubbing shoulders with people I didn’t recognize as I squeezed through the front door, kitchen and hallway leading into the living room—dizzy with what Brinkley had told me.
My father was a Necronite.
It wasn’t out of the question, given that NRD had genetic markers. Because of when my father died, he would have been one of those swept up by the military in the tail end of the “protective custody” campaign. Brinkley claimed Eric Sullivan broke out of his military internment camp years before rights activists demanded their release and had been under the radar ever since. His current whereabouts and identity were unknown, and though I accepted this as truth, I also believed that Brinkley had theories he wasn’t sharing.
“Go straight home after this,” Brinkley said and disappeared out the back door. He’d made sure the house was secure before leaving me alone in it, but I didn’t like Brinkley leaving at all. He couldn’t tell me much about my father or even about the guys that had chased me at Rachel’s asylum. At this rate, I was going to die an idiot.
I stood by the coffin and looked down into the face of the woman lying in it. The smell was overwhelming, artificially-fragrant with hints of musk and beneath that, chemicals. I searched her face, her waxy skin, closed eyes and thin lips. Since she was only 22 when she had me, putting her in her 40s now, her hair was still chestnut brown like mine and her skin relatively smooth. I found myself wondering what Kirk would think of her body: did the mortician do a good job? Were her hair and clothes done right? What did he think of this coffin? An at-home viewing? And so on.
I also wondered why my mother never considered death-replacing. Was she worried about the price? There were financing programs. Or she could have called me. But maybe that’s the reason she never considered it. Or she did—and just never saw this coming.
She didn’t look real. At least, I didn’t look at her and think this is my mother. I saw a wax statue stretched out in a box. I touched the top of her hand, the one folded over the other on her stomach, and shuddered at how cold it was. I searched my new index of memories for anything labeled Mom. The thing I noticed was my memory of two separate mothers—no, not anything creepy like a body snatcher mom or something. But there was definitely a stark difference between how my mother was before my father died and after. The before mom was happy, beautiful and young. After, she seemed to age too quickly, worry too much, and become annoyed at every little thing.
I was bothered by other reasons too. I’d seen a lot of death. Hell, I’d been a lot of dead. Yet this was really weird for me—the idea that life did actually end for some people—for someone I knew. That she wouldn’t just wake up.
“Strange, is it not?” a man asked as if reading my thoughts.
The sudden deep voice in my ear made me jump. “W-what?” I stammered. I was suddenly very self-conscious of how long I’d been standing at the coffin, staring into it.
“It’s strange seeing death after you spend so much time overcoming it,” he said.
He slid into the conversation with the ease of a man who held appearances. He was handsome, maybe ten years older than me. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five. His clothes were clean and pressed, his hair pushed back out of his eyes. This man was so clean that I was embarrassed that my unkempt appearance was such a sharp contrast to his togetherness. I felt like the sloppiest of slobs, even if it was because I’d been wearing the same clothes for two days and only just escaped a mental hospital.
“Forgive me, but you are Jesse Sullivan, correct? Danica’s daughter?”
“Yes,” I managed to say.
“And are you not a death replacement agent?” he asked.
I acknowledged his question with a nod. I also glanced around the room self-consciously wondering if anyone else here knew who I was. There were no pictures of me in the house—I’d checked—and I didn’t recognize any of these people. I had kept an eye out for Danny but hadn’t seen him yet, or any children for that matter. Maybe funerals weren’t something you brought children to. Maybe Danny was locked in another room being fed cookies or something.
“Oh don’t worry. I don’t think anyone knows about you. I’m the oldest friend here.” The stranger offered his hand. “I’m Mr. Reeves. I knew your parents.”
I shook his hand. “Eddie wasn’t my father.”
“I didn’t mean, Mr. Phelps,” Mr. Reeves said with a smile. “I know your father, Eric Sullivan. And that you’re beautiful like your mother,” he said.
I found this compliment hard to digest, but I still managed a thank you.
“Except in some of your facial features, which are more like Eric’s.”
“How did you know my parents?” I asked.
“You couldn’t know Danica and not know Eric. They were inseparable, once upon a time.” His voice trailed away almost wistfully. “Pity that I can’t remember a thing about him. I do love to reminisce. But it’s been over fifteen years.”
I really didn’t want to talk to him if he had nothing useful to say, but I was sort of pinned between the wall and my mother’s coffin.
“I can see I’ve made you uncomfortable.” He smiled slowly. “I’m sorry to stare, but the last time I saw you, you were still a little girl. You’re all grown up now and it’s a bit overwhelming for me. Time flies, as they say.”
“Sorry, but I don’t remember you.”
“I don’t suspect so,” he said. His eyes seemed to burn, making me writhe uncomfortably. “Like I said, you were very young.”
He leaned forward again, exuding charm. I caught a whiff of his cologne as he whispered into my ear as if sharing a dirty secret. “May I ask you a personal question?”
“Depends.”
“Were you a Jack-in-the-box?”
Jack-in-the-box is what we call NRD positives who were buried and wake up in their coffins. Recently, they’d reinstated the practice of bell-ringing, where strings run from the coffins to a bell on the surface. It’s an old custom where a person rings the bell if they were buried alive and the caretaker digs them out.
I searched the room again, praying for Danny to pop up anytime or soon I would just have to get rude. Kyra had lingered near the car in order to give me some privacy, but now I wished I’d made her come in. She’d know how to get me out of this conversation. Would anyone in this room come to my aid if I screamed?
Mr. Reeves intentionally overlooked my discomfort.
“I’ve even heard Necro
nites can move things with their minds, alter reality around them, fold space and time, and even teleport. Anything you can think of—a Necronite can do it,” he said.
I thought I might have heard that one thing in a movie. “Like jump from one place to another?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Some can even resurrect corpses from their graves and control them like an army. They can freeze time with their willpower alone.”
I blinked at him in utter disbelief. I burst out laughing, more out of nervousness than anything else. More than a few heads turned my way. Good to know I could draw attention if needed.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I warned Reeves.
“Just some of it?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Jesse!” a small voice cried out and as I turned, two thin arms wrapped themselves around me. The top of a head bumped my chin and the smell of boy and home cooked food overwhelmed me. Once I peeled my captor off of me, the very first thing I noticed were big hazel eyes, exactly like my own.
“Daniel,” I said and squeezed him hard against me so that his toes came up off the floor. My God, he was so small when I saw him last and now he was as tall as me.
Daniel. Daniel.
I turned to say something to Mr. Reeves but he was gone. Thank God. Still, I gave the room a once over. In his absence, I felt better. The room cooled and it was easier to breathe. I also felt more steady and the nauseous, dizzy, and sick feelings slowly left my cramped body. I squeezed Danny in relief.
“You came,” he said in the same desperate tone he’d used when he first called me. He refused to let me go. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Of course, I came.” My breath scattered a few chestnut curls of the top of his head. He’d grown up to have the same unruly waves and freckles as me. “How are you? Are you okay?”
He pulled away from me finally but still held my hand. I felt strange about it, but I didn’t pull away from him. I was willing to give this kid anything he needed right now.
Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) Page 15
