Alex Frost Meets The Killer

by Mortimer Jackson

  ***

  As Alex climbed into Aunt Melanie’s vehicle parked three blocks away from O’Mallery Park, she drove off, back to Pleasant Grove where Aunt Melanie would think she’d been asleep all this time.

  The fact of the matter was that Alex hadn’t slept before her hunt. What was worse, she hadn’t slept in nearly two days. Because of this, she drove down the back roads of Suburnia while battling for control over her sagging eyelids. With no coffee or stimulant to keep her awake, the effort was proving to be something of a struggle. It was harder yet since she had to stare monotonously at the road.

  Her vision hazed, and when she yawned, tears covered her eyes, obstructing her view of the road just long enough to barely realize she’d been driving on the wrong lane, and a car was coming straight towards her. As soon as she realized it, Alex made a rigid swerve that caused her left tires to squeal, and she was pushed further by the rain on the moist gravel. By mere centimeters she missed the approaching vehicle ahead. The other driver, though glad to have avoided a catastrophe, honked furiously at his vehicle’s horn before speeding away.

  By this point, Alex was losing her fight against unconsciousness. It was hopeless. She parked the Suzuki Vitara by a curb, knowing that if she went on, the only way her drive would have ended was in an accident. And now more than before, she couldn’t afford the extra attention. Not with a knife previously marked with blood in her possession, and the blood’s owner stabbed to death in a nearby park.

  The engine flickered off. Alex promised herself that for half an hour, she would squeeze in a brief power nap. Half an hour. Not a second longer.

  With that, she pulled back the driver’s seat, closed her eyes, and consciousness faded away.

  Sunlight irritated her eyelids. By the time they flew wide open, she discovered with much uncertainty that she was back in Wiscott Avenue, and that she was resting on Aunt Melanie’s sofa bed. It was four o’clock in the late afternoon, and she was wearing the same school uniform she wore last night. Aunt Melanie, who usually woke up hours after her, was now up on her feet eating a deli sandwich as she watched her television.

  “You’re up,” Aunt Melanie pointed out in a congratulatory manner.

  Alex rubbed her eyes. Once she was able to process where she was, she jolted.

  “Good dreams?” asked Aunt Melanie.

  “Dreams?” Alex scoffed. She looked around her one more time. She wasn’t supposed to be here, not yet. She was supposed to be inside a car, coming out of a quick nap. There was no possible way that she could have been where she thought she was now.

  That was, unless what had happened earlier in the day was nothing more than a dream.

  Impossible.

  The death of Tommy Hargrave had been too real to be just a dream, especially when she’d never dreamed a day in her life.

  Among the laundry list of disabilities that came with being born without a soul, the inability to dream was one of them. When she slept, the whole world became nothing more than a blank slate of emptiness. No subconscious metaphors, no visions. Dreaming of plunging a knife into Tommy Hargrave would have been a first. And if so, she didn’t appreciate the mental deception.

  Alex pulled the comforter away from her body, and she examined every inch of herself. Her clothes were completely dry. Her hands were clean of blood, and the knife that she thought she’d killed Tommy Hargrave with was stacked on the knife holder in the kitchen. Any proof she might have had to his death was locked inside her mind.

  But if all it was was a dream, then on the one hand, she was safe. It didn’t take one with a soul to be relieved not to have been caught sleeping in a stolen car. Either by Aunt Melanie, or worse, the police.

  Then again, if it was all a figment of her own imagination, then Amy had already spoken to the police hours ago, and at any moment, she would be confronted by Tommy Hargrave’s criminal prosecutor father. He would threaten her, make her and her parents leave Elsinore and Suburnia. And if Amy was as stubborn as Alex knew she was, she and they (her family) would surely face dire consequences of the legal and/or illegal variety.

  Alex put on her black shoes beside her aunt’s sofa bed. Immediately as she did, she noticed that they looked cleaner than they had since the last time she polished them. The toes shined as if brand new, and the laces were tied differently, now much tighter. Why? She asked herself, but thought nothing more of it. Her only conjecture was that Aunt Melanie had cleaned her shoes while she was asleep.

  “Thanks,” said Alex.

  Aunt Melanie took in her thanks with much appreciation, but she also tilted her head

  “Thanks for what?”

  “You shined my shoes,” came Alex.

  “No I didn’t. Weren’t they always like that?”

  Alex looked to her leather-clad feet once again, this time dubiously.

  “No,” she gave an ominous whisper. The recent polish, which was so clean she could see her face in its reflection, was now coming off as more than a bit unsettling. In fact, the last she saw of them was in her dream, and they were both soaked in mud and water from the moment she killed Tommy Hargrave. It was mind-boggling how her shoes were not only shinier than they’d been in her supposed dream, but also more preserved than they’d ever been during months of continuous wear.

  She searched the confines of her head for answers. Little did she know however, that the answers were not in her head, but on the television that had Aunt Melanie’s eyes glued.

  “A recent tragedy at upstate Haverbrook, Suburnia,” spoke a tiny woman with a red set of hair on the television screen. “A boy has been found recently murdered at the O’Mallery Park. Police have identified him as Tommy Hargrave, a student at the Elsinore Academy. The assailant of this crime is as of yet unknown. The authorities say they have no leads.”

  The screen soon turned to the local police chief, a young woman with beady eyes and tanned skin. Her hands were clutched on a podium, speaking to a large crowd of reporters all trying to stab her with microphones, some even trying to blind her with the flashes of their cameras.

  “I assure the parents of Tommy Hargrave, and the people of Suburnia, that we will find whoever is responsible for this, and we will bring them to the justice that they deserve. Let it be known that it will be the top priority of the Suburnian police to find the culprit, and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again to anybody else. Until that time, it is important for parents to keep their children safe, and to know where they are at all times. Thank you. I will not be taking any questions.”

  The young police chief stepped off the podium, and the air around it flooded with incessant questions.

  So there it was. Tommy Hargrave was dead, and she was the very culprit that the police chief had been referring to. That was all the proof she needed. The things she saw and did were far more than a dream, the experience, more than a trick of the mind. But that would mean that what she’d felt was real. The emotions that teemed inside really were her own.

  Of the many questions that lingered, none stood out more than the question of what occurred afterwards. If what had happened was real, then what else did she do? How did she get from Aunt Melanie’s Suzuki Vitara parked a few blocks away from O’Mallery Park, to Aunt Melanie’s apartment? And how could she explain the current condition of her shoes?

  Upon scratching her shoulders, she noticed something curious hidden inside the left breast pocket of her collar shirt. She reached inside the pocket and fished it out.

  It was a note folded twice. Written in black ink on the center were a few letters marked in an elaborate cursive handwriting. Alex held the paper close to her face. The challenge wasn’t in reading it, but in making sense of what she saw with her own two eyes.

  Come see me now

  -Lord Henry Combermere

  “What’s that?” asked Aunt Melanie, glancing over at the sheet of paper.

  “Nothing,” Alex shoved it back down her pocket. “Just my homewo
rk list.”

  “Ah,” Aunt Melanie nodded her head in approval. “Do you get a lot of homework from Elsinore?”

  “About two hours’ worth each day. Sometimes more.”

  “That’s a lot,” Aunt Melanie was sure to inform her, and she believed it too. “Most kids in this neighborhood don’t get much more than forty five minutes.”

  “Strange.”

  Aunt Melanie bursted into laughter.

  “Suburnia,” she justified. “Now that’s strange.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Aune Melanie gave her niece a fascinated glance.

  “The rest of the world is not like Suburnia. The schools aren’t near as fancy. For every mansion, there’s a plethora of cities just like this. Some people, in this very country no less, can hardly afford to live in a single room apartment. Every time I volunteer at the shelter, there are starving kids looking to get by on just two meals a day. And yet when I was growing up in Suburnia, all people ever talked about was who had more money to spend.”

  “Well, that much hasn’t changed,” shared Alex.

  “Of course not. Oh,” and this steered the conversation into an entirely different topic. “Mr. Litter called. We have to go to Suburnia to see him. So if you’re wide awake, maybe we can drive over there now.”

  “Sure thing. I have to meet someone back home anyway.”

  “Who?”

  “A school friend,” she lied.

  “Great. I’ll drive you after we’re done with Mr. Litter.”