Coldhearted (9781311888433)

by Matthews, Melanie

  She turned over, facing him. “What are you reading?”

  “My latest manuscript,” he replied.

  “Are you done?”

  “Not quite. I’m just reviewing what I have so far.” He hesitated, and then asked, “Would you like to read it?”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Monster within Me.”

  “Sounds scary.”

  He smiled. “It’s actually a love story.”

  She smiled back. “That’s even scarier.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He shook his head and his smile faded. “Well, it’s horror, of course, because that’s what I write, but there’s a love story woven throughout. Even in the most gruesome tales, there’s love to be found. Mostly unrequited,” he added. “We’ve all experienced that powerful emotion that can make us fly when we have it and cause us to fall when we lose it.”

  “Were you in love with my mom?” she asked bluntly.

  He turned his face away from her, staring at the manuscript in front of him. “Yes,” he finally admitted. “She chose Loren over me. I’d spent many years hating my brother, hating that he had who I wanted. Your mother made us reconcile. We did, begrudgingly. I visited a few times, never caring to stay for long.”

  Now he faced her, finally able to do so. “On one particular visit, Corinne was pregnant with you, and Loren was away. She went into labor and I drove her to the hospital. My brother came as soon as he could, but I watched you being born. Of course your mother held you first and you were crying, until she passed you to me, and then…you quieted, and even held my finger in your little hand, as if you knew me. I remember Loren, bursting inside the delivery room. He’d rushed to get there and was smiling…until he saw me holding you. I still remember that look on his face.

  “It wasn’t anger. It was disappointment. He was disappointed that I’d held you before he got a chance to. Of course I handed you over to him immediately. He was staring down at you, tears in his eyes, and said, ‘Hello, my little angel. I’m your Daddy.’ And you opened your eyes for the very first time, staring up at him with brilliant blues, just like your mother. You then started to cry. Cora motioned for you to be returned to her. Loren did. You stopped crying when she held you close, whispering something in your ear.

  “To this day, I don’t know what she said, but you’d looked at her with absolute reverence, as if you understood what she’d said to be the Gospel truth. Loren came beside her and held out his finger to your hand. You held it, as you’d done mine, and I think that made him feel better, especially when you didn’t cry. Quietly, I slipped out of the room, leaving my brother to be with his wife and newborn daughter.

  “I saw you a couple of times after that, on holidays and such.” He smiled. “You knew me instantly every time. When you could walk, you would always rush toward me, saying, ‘Lan-Lan’ in that cute, little baby voice of yours.” He paused, and then continued, “The last time I visited, you called me ‘Landon.’ You were a miniature version of you mother. Still are, of course, in a lot of ways, except you’re a little bit taller than she was.” He reached over and tucked a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “I never came back after that. It was too hard for me. When I found out you’d be living me, I didn’t want you here. I didn’t want to be reminded of Cora. I got over that at the funeral when I saw you standing all alone in front of their gravestones. You weren’t crying. You just looked…lost, abandoned. You didn’t see me watching you, but I saw how helpless you looked. I knew I had to do right by your mother and my brother, and make sure you were taken care of.

  “Even after I’m gone, you don’t have to worry, Edie. I’ve left everything to you.” He cracked a smile. “Maybe then the upstairs will finally be finished. I’m a procrastinator in everything, except writing.” He shrugged. “It’s my refuge, I guess. I create these characters and worlds of my own imagination where I control everything.” He winked. “And I get paid for it!” He sighed after telling such a long story. “So…what do you think about everything I’ve just said? Do you hate me that I didn’t come and see you? That I was basically a coward, who couldn’t accept reality?”

  Edie slid closer and wrapped her arm around his chest, snuggling against him. “I don’t hate you. I love you, Uncle Lan-Lan.”

  He chuckled, and then kissed the top of her head. “I love you too, Edie.”

  “Will you read me your story?” she asked.

  “Now? Are you sure? You might have nightmares,” he cautioned.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  Edie knew whatever he’d written on those pages was nothing close to the nightmare that was her real life. But just for precaution, she recited the Lord’s Prayer inside her head, hoping God was listening, and perhaps he’d send an angel her way, to look over her.

  “Okay, here goes.” Edie’s uncle cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, then rested one hand on her back, as his other hand held the manuscript, and began:

  “The reflection in the mirror isn’t mine. It can’t be mine because this hideous, inhuman face is a monster, and monsters aren’t real. Monsters don’t love, and I love a woman, who’s superior to all other women on this earth. She’s an angel in disguise. If what’s staring back at me through the looking glass is true, then an angel such as she, would want nothing to do with a demon, as I’ve horribly become...”

  Edie didn’t know if it was the macabre story, her uncle’s hypnotic voice and caring touch, the coffee and cigarettes, God, a Guardian Angel, or just being in a bed not her own, but she fell into a relaxing sleep, feeling not adrift, but truly anchored for the first time since she’d arrived in Grimsby.

  Chapter 26

  It’d been one of the saddest weeks of Edie’s life, being near Mason but not being with him.

  But she’d managed to stay strong and not run into his arms, risking his life, so he could hold her again, kiss her again. They had English together and she hadn’t remembered one thing that Mrs. Featherstone had taught the whole week.

  Though, when Edie had talked to Mrs. Featherstone after class one day, to see how she’d been doing, they’d somehow gotten on the subject of family, and Edie had found out that Mrs. Featherstone was distantly related to the Lockharts. It’d been then when Edie had realized how Tristan had known about Mrs. Featherstone’s self-esteem issues: he’d gone inside her mind. Of course Edie had kept her mouth shut and told Mrs. Featherstone none of that. There were some truths that weren’t worth telling.

  Other than that, Edie hadn’t been able to concentrate of anything else Mrs. Featherstone had said, particularly during class; Mason had been sitting behind her. She’d felt his despair; it’d been a dark and stormy cloud above her head. He’d said nothing to her the whole week. Of course everyone had picked up on that, and before Edie had known it, the whole school had been aware that she and Mason had broken up. But no one had known who’d initiated the break and why—no one except Diana, Madelyn, Jules, even Quinn, and of course, Russell. Edie had confided in them and them only.

  Quinn, for the most part, was doing well. As for his injury, he’d warded off any girl who’d wanted to comfort him, only allowing Edie and Jules near him.

  “They don’t understand what I’ve gone through,” he’d said one day. “What we’ve all gone through and I don’t want their fake pity.”

  After some time, the wound on his forehead had healed, forming a scar that made him look even more handsome than before, somehow.

  Candie—who Edie suspected wrote “I love Quinn” all over her diary at night—hadn’t been too pleased about Quinn’s preference of nurses. Candie had gone on the war path against Edie and Jules, and had tried to enlist Rochelle and Ravenna, but they’d been smart for once and stayed away. Tristan, ever protective of Edie in a controlling, twisted way, had made the fake skeleton in biology class come alive, chasing Candie down the hallway, as payback for when she’d stuck out her foot and tripped Edie in front of everyone. Everyone had laughed
and laughed, until they’d screamed right along with Candie at the skeleton, who’d been shouting curses (profane and hexes) at everyone. Of course Candie had gone to the principal, claiming Edie had somehow “mechanized” or “computer engineered” the skeleton to attack her.

  One, Edie didn’t know that Candie knew such big words, and two, if Edie had actually done that, well, she’d be a shoo-in at MIT after graduation.

  If Edie graduated—if she did what Arianna wanted her to do—what she hadn’t told anyone else—then she’d never graduate because she’d be dead. And even as a ghost, she wouldn’t be able to attend her own graduation. She’d be stuck in Lockhart Manor, playing warden to Tristan, the Mad Ghost of Grimsby.

  Why me? What’d I do to deserve such a fate?

  Well, even though Edie had been scared straight concerning Tristan’s threat against Mason, she was not well on the path toward enacting her own suicide. She still had hope, despite the lack of positive results.

  Edie had called Jules’s friends and talked to Rory, who’d told her that the GPS had scoured and scoured, read books old and new, surfed cyberspace, and even contacted other investigators, but hadn’t found a way to help her. Rory had promised that they wouldn’t give up. He’d then invited Edie to some college party on campus, but she’d turned him down, afraid that Tristan would take advantage of dozens of presumably drunk and susceptible students.

  No, she couldn’t have a normal life, not with Tristan around. He was always with her, whispering in her ear, sending chills up her spine, appearing in mirrors, walking around half-transparent/half-corporeal. The stunt with the walking-talking skeleton had transformed more of him into a solid mass. It was only a matter of time before he became fully corporeal, with the ability to kill, by simply touching someone: the touch of death.

  Edie knew that she had to stop him, but she was afraid to die. She’d been waiting for someone or something to come along and rescue her from death, but by Saturday night, it seemed her calls for help had been denied.

  Well, if she were going to die, then she may as well party like there was no tomorrow.

  All throughout the week, she’d been rejecting Diana and Madelyn’s insistence to go to the Halloween dance, but by Saturday, they’d peer pressured her enough to even wear a costume: a red clown nose. She had gotten it from her uncle, who’d worn it while writing The Bloody Circus; “a horror story with heart,” it said on the cover and showed a bloody, dripping heart being clutched inside a clown’s glove, as if it were a prize. If Edie didn’t know her uncle, she’d swear that he was deranged.

  ****

  “Cute,” Quinn greeted, and then gave Edie a warm hug, after she’d arrived.

  It was evening and they were standing near the school’s gym. Or party central.

  “What, the nose?” she asked, confused.

  Quinn smiled. “Yeah, the nose,” he confirmed.

  Something in his voice told Edie that there were other parts of her body that he found “cute.”

  They continued to stand in the cold, waiting for Jules, Diana, and Madelyn to arrive. Edie was dying—pun intended—to see their costumes. Quinn, oddly, wasn’t in costume.

  “You didn’t feel like pretending to be someone else?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, I got something.” He lifted up his hand to reveal a werewolf’s mask that he’d been holding away from her view. He shrugged. “It’s not great, I know...”

  “No, it’s cool,” she said. “Better than my clown nose.”

  Quinn took his free hand, reached up, and gently pinched her covered nose. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said softly. “You know…considering…”

  She nodded, knowing that he was talking about her split from Mason. But he didn’t know about her soon-to-be death, if another way wasn’t found to subdue Tristan.

  “Well, Diana and Madelyn wanted me to go, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.” She gave him a look. “So tell me, Quinn McDermott, why are you hanging around me, if I’m single?” She smiled. “I’m no longer hot material, right?”

  He smiled back and shook his head. “Oh, you’ll always be hot material, Edie, but uh…well, I think I’ve changed.” He seemed nervous. “Yeah, I, uh, wouldn’t mind actually having a relationship with a girl, you know? A single girl,” he clarified.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Oh, well, any particular girl?”

  Instead of answering, he secured the werewolf mask over his head.

  “Is it Jules?” she asked.

  He shook his masked head.

  “Is it…Candie?” she teased.

  He growled, telling her “hell no!”

  Instead of being afraid, she giggled. “Quinn, I like you.”

  He lifted up his mask, letting it rest atop his head, and stared into her eyes. “Really?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

  “Yes,” she said, “but…I’ll always love Mason.”

  Quinn pulled down his mask, covering his face. He was refusing to talk to her, but he stayed by her side, even when a few giggling witches came walking past, enticing him with their short skirts and long legs. The witches gave Edie the stink eye—one of them being Candie (who kept a healthy distance from Edie)—as if Edie had stolen yet another hot bachelor from Grimsby High. The witches sauntered into the gym and left the door open to allow pulsating pop music to blast out.

  Edie retreated, trying to save her eardrums from rupturing, when she backed up into someone. “Oh, sorry,” she apologized, and then turned around to see a ghost.

  “Boooooo!” it sang, waving its fingers at her in a hypnotic way.

  “Hey, Jules,” Edie said. She playfully tapped Jules’s thick glasses that were peeking out through a pair of cut eyeholes.

  Jules’s arms fell and her shoulders slumped. “I was trying to scare you.”

  “She sees real ghosts,” Quinn said, from behind the mask, his voice muffled. “Why would”—he gestured at Jules’s low budget costume of a white bed sheet—“this scare her?”

  Jules growled at him. “What about you, wolf boy? Only your head transforms on a full moon? And didn’t you wear that last year?”

  Quinn lifted his mask, letting it rest atop his head. “I’m a believer in recycling,” he deadpanned.

  Jules sighed and turned back toward Edie. “Like the nose,” she approved.

  “My uncle wore it while writing The Bloody Circus,” Edie informed.

  “Cool,” Jules said.

  They separated to allow some zombies to slowly walk toward the gym and behind them were Diana and Madelyn.

  “Hey, guys!” Diana yelled, waving as she approached. She was wearing a white lab coat, stained in fake blood, with a stethoscope around her neck.

  Quinn advanced toward her, wearing his werewolf mask. “Dr. Christensen, can you help me? I woke up this morning and discovered all these…changes…to my body. What’s happening?” he demanded dramatically, shaking his fists in the air.

  Diana played along. “Young man, you’re going through puberty. It’s all right to be scared, but there’s nothing to fear. Except of course for the sudden urge to act like a complete idiot around girls,” she added with a smile.

  Quinn playfully growled, and then lunged, going for Diana’s neck with his fake teeth. Diana squealed and ran, with Quinn chasing her, until they finally made their way back toward the rest of the group. Madelyn took a protective stance in front of Diana, and Edie latched onto Quinn, her arms around his waist. Surprise, surprise, he wasn’t struggling to break free.

  Madelyn was wearing an old-fashioned dress and bonnet straight out of a Jane Austen novel, but she wasn’t demure-looking with that badass grin on her face.

  “Back off, wolfie,” she playfully warned Quinn.

  Quinn held out his hands in frustration. “How can I? Edie’s got me in a death grip.”

  Edie let go of him, and then playfully pushed him further away. “I did not. I couldn’t restrain anyone.” She flexed her non-existent muscles. “Like wet spaghetti
, I am.”

  “You’re stronger than you know.”

  She knew that deep, manly voice, but turned anyway to find Russell, standing before the closed gym doors. He glanced at everyone before locking eyes with Edie.

  He smiled, sweetly and seductively. “Where’s the rest?” he asked, gesturing at the only bit of costume that she was wearing: the red clown nose.

  Edie shrugged. “I didn’t feel like dressing up. Not really in the mood.”

  Diana came up behind Edie and put her arm around Edie’s shoulders. “I’m a doctor, Edie, so I know what I’m talking about when I say: It’s a party! Have fun!”

  The rest cheered and hooted, rushing toward the gym. Edie had no choice but to move forward as well, considering Diana was practically pushing her.

  Quinn stopped right in front of the door and turned toward Russell, looking him up and down. “No costume, Mr. B?”

  Russell shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

  “Wanna wear my mask?” Quinn took it off, handing it to him. “Damn thing’s like wearing a straightjacket for your face.”

  Russell smiled and waved the hairy mask away. “No, thanks.”

  Quinn turned toward Edie. “What about you?”

  She furrowed her brow and pointed to her nose. “I’m already in costume.”

  “Yeah, but you could be a mash-up. Like a werewolf-clown. Now that’s scary.”

  She nodded, agreeing. “Okay.” She took off her nose, secured the mask, and then placed the nose over the werewolf one. She could barely see out of it. “How do I look?” she asked in a muffled voice.

  “Scary,” Jules said.

  “Scary,” Diana and Madelyn agreed in unison.

  “Sexy,” Quinn said, grinning, and then he turned toward Russell. “Hey, what do you think of Edie, Mr. B?”

  Russell hesitated, and then said, “Scary,” to her relief.

  “She doesn’t need a mask for that,” a whiny voice said.