Alex Frost Meets The Killer
By Mortimer Jackson
Copyright 2011
The Morning Dread
Smashwords Edition
www.themorningdread.weebly.com
Dedicated to Alex Frost, who started it all
My mother once told me that it is important never to judge a book by its cover. If you are holding this book in front of you (or reading it online as the case may be), then most likely you have already judged this book by its cover, and if you are now staring down the first page (which would be this, by the way), then you have already deemed it worthy of your attention. And while I am glad that you are reading this book, chances are you have already violated the ever-important rule of never judging a book by its cover. And for that my dear reader, I must say, for shame.
But fret not. For among you there are many who make blind assumptions. Not just of books, but of people too. You probably remember seeing your neighbors for the very first time, and thinking to yourself for no particular reason that they seemed like nice people. And when they decided to tie you up and loot your home, you probably came to realize that this judgment had failed you. Much in the same way as if man comes to your door telling you that he wants to be your friend, but later turns out to be a salesman, or a Russian spy. Or when you see a large grey fin sticking out from the water as you’re swimming on the beach, only to find that much to your disappointment, the fin doesn’t belong to a shark, but a man pulling a prank.
What you are about to read is a story about a very special young girl that everyone thought was just like them, but was in actuality, something else altogether. It is a story of friendship and that never-ending search for one’s own identity; finding out who we are beyond the covers that people judge us by. Hopefully by the end, you will have learned the values of seeing people for who they really are, come to cherish those who admire you in spite of your weaknesses, and tell your friends to buy a copy of this book.
Dear reader, it is with great pleasure that I present to you the tale of Alex Frost.
Chapter 1
And So The Story Begins
In the beginning (of this tale mind you, not the world, or the universe, or any such nebulous cosmic event) there lived a girl named Alexandra Frost, who was every bit as cold as her name would suggest. She was sixteen years old, and she lived in the large, wealthy town of Suburnia. Like all the girls of her neighborhood, she was smart, pretty, and most of all, wealthy. Elsinore Academy was her alma mater, and it was the alma mater of the financial elite. No family that made anything less than a few million dollars a year, or at the very least, no family that couldn’t afford caviar on a daily basis, was ever, ever considered for enrollment.
This being the situation, Alexandra and those that attended Elsinore Academy lived with parents and/or relatives that not only made at least a few handsome million dollars a year, but could also afford three square meals of caviar for an eternity. And as such, Alexandra was spoiled with things she could not possibly have needed or appreciated.
For instance, when she was six, her parents bought her a fountain pen made of gold, thinking that it would inspire her to become a writer. On her ninth birthday, she was given two different kinds of flutes, a saxophone, a tuba, and three varying brands of harmonicas. All from her parents in the hopes that on top of being a writer, she would become a talented musician as well. And when she was fifteen years old, one year before she was legally allowed to drive, her father bought her a brand new Mercedes-Benz because deep down inside, he really wanted it for himself.
This was a situation entirely familiar to all those that grew up in Suburnia. But despite how similar her background was with her fellow peers, or how similarly attractive she was to the other Elsinore girls, or even how uniform she looked in her school uniform, there was something very different about Alexandra Frost. Something that if anyone were to find out, would send chills down to every bone in their body, every vein in their muscle. If only people knew what lied inside the deepest realms of her heart, the shock of it all would most certainly leave them stunned.
But perhaps it was lucky for the boys and girls of Elsinore Academy, and the men and women of Suburnia, that they had no way of looking past her physical form and into her soul, because Alexandra simply hadn’t been born with one.
Growing up as a child, Alexandra Frost was a girl that lacked the ability to feel emotion. She didn’t cry when she fell off of swings, or when she got splinters on her fingers. She registered the pain just enough to know it was there, but not enough to understand the discomfort. She was distant, and held absolutely no interest with the other children her age. She couldn’t relate with people, didn’t understand what the point was of being around people. The other children always acted so strange and irrational, it was always a challenge to comprehend why they did what they did. She couldn’t quite grasp why children cried over toys and other such meaningless objects, or why their parents ever bought them such meaningless things in the first place. To her, nothing meant anything. She would never beg her parents for a Barbie doll, demand them to take her to whatever places she wanted to go, or insist to stay longer at the park when her parents said no. She was as obedient as she was without a soul. And though she thought this cooperation would satisfy both Mr. and Mrs. Frost, the truth turned out to be quite the opposite.
When the parents of Alexandra Frost took her to the zoo one day when she was six, they had worried over the fact that unlike the other girls her age, Alexandra never once flinched when she saw a snake or a dangerous spider. And unlike all Suburnia girls, she never cared one lick about what clothes she wore, and it had never once mattered to her what stuff she had in her own room.
As years went by, Alexandra’s lack of concern for conforming had set both her parents uneasy and on edge. In due time she came to sense the discomfort that hovered over them whenever they shared the same room. The truth was that neither of the Frost parents knew how to be around her. The other parents had children that when asked what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go, what they wanted to be, were all able to come up with interesting answers of their own (though some more creatively far-fetched than others). When the Frost parents asked their daughter what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go, and what she wanted to be, she always ended up telling them that she had no idea.
It was with this that the Frost parents decided to make the drastic decision to seek for their daughter the help of a psychiatrist.
Dr. Richard S. Murlot (known for both his talent with words, and his ability to plagiarize the works of other lesser-known doctors) had heeded the call of the Frost parents, and he more-than-willingly took her in to his prestigious medical facility, wherein patients were given daily servings of Earl Grey to go with their medication. It was there that the inexperienced psychiatrist sought to treat the young Alexandra Frost.
However, one problem that arose over this was the fact that not any amount of stealing of ideas would attain the results necessary to cure Alexandra Frost. This, because not a single psychiatrist in the world had ever seen anything quite like Alexandra Frost. Much like everybody else, Dr. Murlot remained absolutely oblivious to the answer of what exactly was wrong with the girl. But with large sums of money coming in from her parents each week, the not-so-well-intentioned doctor did not cease to find the answer.
Alexandra Frost did not particularly think very highly of being in a psychiatric facility, with Dr. Murlot constantly poking and prodding at her with his endless tests and questions. While she had not the capacity to find it annoying or unnerving, she did see it as an unproductive obstacle to her personal life.
In time it became apparent to Alexandra that what her parents wanted in a daughter wasn’t her, but rather a normal, emotional child. Thus began the road to recovery, so to speak. Alexandra learned that to be free of her captivity in Dr. Murlot’s hospital, she would have to be cured of what made her unique, and become just like everybody else. She realized then that she would have to conform to the expectations of being an everyday A+ student, aspiring writer, and musician. Alexandra would have to become a normal, emotional child.
But since she wasn’t one, all she could do was pretend. And so for no other reason than to be back at home, Alexandra wore a mask. A mask in which she was a social, fun-loving girl, ambitious, with no mental disorders, and a knack for being nice.
Not long after her unexpected spurt of humanity, and Mr. and Mrs. Frost, unbeknownst that it was all just a lie, no longer carried the luggage of discomfort that once occupied their minds. They took her back home, and told her repeatedly that they were proud of who she’d become, and hoped she would never change.
It was hard work being the girl that her parents wanted her to be. And at the age of sixteen, the charade would have to go on for many years to come. A second year student at the Elsinore Academy, and our own Alexandra Frost had many more years of expectations to fulfill. But so far she’d been doing far above average, meeting all her parents’ wishes and dreams one day at a time. She knew that as long as she kept up the act, she would survive the demands and wishes of her parents, and more importantly, those of society.
Dear reader, our tale begins in the middle of the fall semester of Elsinore Academy, as Alexandra began her new life as a normal human being, who made friends, enemies, and found herself scolded by the campus staff.
“Tuck in your shirt,” Principal McLeary scolded. “You, stop running in the halls. For the love of God, take off that earring. This is a school, not a nightclub.”
Principal McLeary was the headmaster of Elsinore Academy. A man with a long nose and an undeniably portly figure. If Principal McLeary could have been said to have any lifetime interests, it would have to be solely for doing things in an orderly fashion. His extra extra large pants fit so well around his waist that he needn’t a belt to hold himself together. But he wore one anyway, because it was proper to wear belts when a pant had belt loops, and in secret, he also wanted people to think that his extra extra large pants were somehow loose. Of course, not one person ever conceived of the idea that his pants could be in the slightest bit loose. But out of sheer diplomacy, nobody ever spoke a word of it (at least not to his face).
From the early morning hours of eight to three in the afternoon, everyone in Elsinore Academy (students and teachers alike) scurried on their merry little way around campus, hoping that if they ever ran into Principal McLeary, they were properly dressed so as to avoid any confrontation. For Principal McLeary was a strict man, whose standards for distinguished behavior were so high that the rest of Suburnia had yet to find a single person capable of qualifying all of his expectations.
“Alexandra, take off that bracelet,” he demanded, staring at our pale, slender-skinned girl with long black hair that touched her shoulders.
The girl, in return, ceased to move. She froze like a deer caught in the gazing eyes of a car’s headlights, dumbfounded over why Principal McLeary called her out, and unsure of what bracelet he could possibly have been referring to.
“What bracelet?” she inquired, stuttering as she did.
Principal McLeary’s eyelids came apart in such a drastic motion that crease lines formed around his forehead. His eyes were fixed on her so attentively that if Alexandra believed in such a thing, she would have sworn that the man was on the verge of shooting lasers out of his pupils.
“The one you’re wearing,” he replied, as if explaining to a dumb animal.
Alexandra moved her head and searched both her arms for any sign of a bracelet. Surely enough, there it was, attached to her left wrist. The material was light, and formed from a colorful green and blue embroidery floss, which in the context of her dull white and grey school uniform, appeared brighter than it actually was.
Principal McLeary opened his palm and shoved it right in front of her.
“Hand it over.”
Before she complied, Alexandra took one last look at the elegantly formed knot on her wrist. Amy, her social contact and classmate, had given it to her just three weeks ago. It was called a friendship bracelet. Amy had one of her own on her left wrist exactly like it. She said that it was meant to signify a bond of kinship, or something to that effect. Alexandra never quite understood the sentiment, and even now, as she was about to hand it over, the idea of something so weightless and cheap having emotional value was beyond her ability to comprehend.
“Here you go,” she said indifferently as she held the object by her thumb and index finger and let it fall into Principal McLeary’s palm.
The item disappeared behind his extra extra large pant pocket.
“Now off to class with you. And don’t let me catch you wearing anything but your school uniform. Understand?”
She bowed her head and did as was told. After that, she went into Mrs. Friedman’s English class, a large room that always smelled of dust and chalk whenever anyone came in. This was no doubt due to the door’s location relative to the chalkboard, but more so, it was due to there being a chalkboard in the first place.
Mrs. Friedman was an old woman of old taste. She liked to read and teach old books, and she liked to surround herself with nothing but old things. From her atlas of the world (which, unless they were living in the year 1772, was horribly out of date), to her collection of musty old books in the farthest cupboard in the classroom, to her chalkboard, which the other teachers had long ago replaced with whiteboards. In those rooms, the entryways smelled of ink.
Alexandra took her seat on a desk beside Amy. Class hadn’t yet begun, so the room was filled with boisterous conversations flying in the air. Mrs. Friedman didn’t mind this at all. She was at her desk on the left corner of the room reading another one of her old books. Age had rendered her hard of hearing, and so though the classroom was quite loud with the yells, shrills, and endless chatter of students, Mrs. Friedman heard absolutely nothing of it. Why, a plane could crash right behind her, and she wouldn’t have heard a thing.
The school bell rang alas, and though Mrs. Friedman didn’t hear it, she felt its distinct vibrations on her desk. One could say that though she lost her ability to hear, she had a heightened sense of feel.
“Okay children, quiet down,” though since she couldn’t quite hear the students anyway, she silently told herself that she should have said pay attention instead.
The air felt silent. This Mrs. Friedman knew, in part because she could sense it, and in part because every discernible lip before her had been squeezed shut.
“Now, who would like to remind the class what we were talking about yesterday?”
A boy raised his hand. “We were talking about Romeo and Juliet, and how love can become a force that throws people from their world, and ultimately, themselves.”
“No no no,” Mrs. Friedman shook her head disapprovingly. “We weren’t talking about that. For any of you that have been paying attention in class, we were talking about Romeo and Juliet, and how love can become a force that throws people from their world, and ultimately, themselves.”
“I said that.”
“You most certainly did not. Now pay attention. You’ll be tested on this next week.”
From the far end of the room, Alexandra felt a nudge on her elbow.
“Alex,” Amy whispered right beside her. “Where’s your bracelet?”
Though Alexandra’s legal name was indeed Alexandra Frost, her friends and classmates called her Alex, not only because it was shorter and thus easier to say, but it was also much more modern and in keeping with the times. And so because her friends call her Alex, I too, will from now on refer to Alexandra Frost simply as Alex, or Alex Frost, to avoid confusion.
Alex Frost leaned over to Amy and told her, “Principal McLeary took it.”
“Oh,” Amy threw her head back. “I hope it didn’t get you into trouble.”
“It didn’t.”
“I’ll get you a new one. That is, if you still want one.”
Alex raised her eyes.
“Of course I want one,” lied the girl without a soul.
For those of us who have ever had friends, we know that with each friendship comes a unique set of expectations. I once made friends with a group of young, bald-headed individuals who enjoyed dressing up like ghosts every Sunday, and expressing their love for the color white. Since my favorite color was not indeed white, but yellow, it was fair to say that I failed to meet their expectations, and thus our friendship ended.
In a public gathering as large as a school, one can easily find a slew of different friendships available. Each one of these unions carries with them uniquely different agendas and social expectations. Some expected a shared love of music, of art, or films. Some a love for cuisine, clothing, or an adoration of Monty Python.
What Alex found appealing in her newfound connection with Amy Lawson, was that unlike the others, Amy had expected nothing more from her friendship with Alex than simple kindness. A standard she could live up to without breaking a sweat.
“Did you guys finish the math homework?”
This came from one prickly-haired boy who sat in front of Amy’s desk, leering at the two as though he had something important to say.
“Why am I asking? Of course you did. Can I get your answers at lunch?”
“No,” said Alex.
“Leave us alone Ben,” said Amy as Ben rebounded to her general direction.
Ben Lindsey was a sixteen year old boy with the height of a twelve year old, and an even younger sense of maturity.
“Please,” he cupped his hands together. “I’ll be your bestest friend ever.”
“We’re your only friends,” Amy said.
“Which makes me a valuable friend to have.”
“Actually you’re kind of annoying,” Alex said.
“Why do we still talk to him?” wondered Amy out loud.
“I don’t know. Pity, I suppose?”
“Pity for us.”
The girls sniggered.
“Very funny. So are you going to show me your answers after lunch?”
“Sure,” Alex agreed.
“Thanks.”
“Mr. Lindsey,” Mrs. Friedman cut from her lecture. “What topic could possibly be so important that it warrants the interruption of my class?”
“Ah, nothing ma’am,” Ben replied.
“Mr. Lindsay, I assure you that I am not your mom. And just for that, I will see you in detention.”
Ben relented, turned to Alex and gave off a sarcastic “Great.”
* * *
After class was over, it was lunch period. Alex sat beside Amy, both of them silent as they ate from a tray of green beans, boiled lamb chops (the vegetarians had tofu salad), and a side of marmalade. And because this was Elsinore, and not (heaven forbid) some public school, the students were required to eat with forks and knives. Silverware forks and knives of course, not plastic (unlike one would expect to find in one of those nasty public schools).
“I hate peas,” said Amy as she stabbed the said-not-cared-for object on her plate with a fork, and leered at it as though it were a dead insect.
She wasn’t alone in this belief. To those with active taste buds, the Elsinore lunch meals were always bland and flavorless. Even the lamb chops were cooked in such a way that it was sapped of every iota of taste, and was as less fattening as a lamb chop could ever be.
Healthy eating was among one of the highest priorities in Elsinore Academy. The headmasters did their best to provide nothing but the best of healthy nutrition for the growing minds of their students. The price of all this, was that the school meals, much like the school’s uniforms, were flavorless. The salads came with absolutely no dressing, and the meats were boiled and never marinated. So to Amy and those like her, the school meals were absolutely nil in taste.
On the other hand, to Alex and those like her (which, as far as she knew, was no one), taste was an entirely foreign concept. Being born without a soul had rendered her taste buds utterly stale. She was unable to determine what foods she liked and didn’t like, and as a result, she had never as a child had any trouble eating her vegetables. To her, everything tasted like nothing.
“So the school dance is coming up,” Amy said. “Are you going?”
“No. You?”
“You know, I just might,” Amy responded, as enthusiastically as though the only reason she’d asked was to give her own response.
“Who with?”
“I don’t know if you know him. But Tommy Hargrave invited me to go.”
“I do know Tommy Hargrave.”
“Oh.”
“You’re not actually thinking of going with him are you?”
“Why not?”
Alex sighed, recanted all the stories that went with the Hargrave name.
Incidentally, out of a pure act of happenstance, as if he’d been waiting for his name to be spoken, Tommy Hargrave, star athlete of Elsinore Academy, topic of their conversation, came from seemingly nowhere, and he approached Amy and her elusive friend without a soul.
“Well aren’t these the two prettiest ladies in all of Elsinore?”
“Maybe,” replied Amy.
“Can I expect you at tonight’s party?” Tommy to Amy.
Amy blushed a bright red smile. “We’ll see.”
“What party?" Alex cut in.
“A friend of mine,” Tommy said. “His parents are gone for the month, and he’s left all alone in their humble abode overlooking the Friar Peak Hills. And since we both think it unfair to be in such a nice place all alone, we feel it only right to share it with our good friends and classmates for the night.”
“Sounds like fun,” Amy said. “I’ll definitely think about it.”
Tommy smiled in approval.
“How about you Alex?”
Alex, who hadn’t quite expected him to speak to her, abruptly forced down her food, causing a bit of stiffness to venture down her throat.
“I can’t,” she said, sounding as though she truly wished she could.
“You can’t?” came a befuddled Amy.
“Well, I hope you change your mind,” came the urging voice of Tommy Hargrave. “It would be great to see you there.”
“We’ll see,” Amy said once more, losing count of how many times she’d given that same, ambiguous response.
“Alright,” said Tommy, kindly and understandingly. “Well, I’ll see you after school yeah?”
Amy brightened. “Yes you will.”
“Alright. Well ladies, if you’ll excuse me.” And with that, Tommy took his leave.
“Alex,” Amy jumped once Tommy was nowhere to be seen.
“What?”
“Why don’t you want to come?”
“I don’t really want to.”
“Why not?”
For Alex Frost, this was a difficult question to answer. For unlike her fellow schoolmates, Alex was a girl without a soul. And as a consequence, she wasn’t very much interested in people or ordinary things. And because Alex didn’t much fancy people or ordinary things, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that she wouldn’t much enjoy purely social events as the one Tommy had suggested just then. Alex gone to a few such parties before. Certainly more than Amy. But unlike everyone else that went to such events, Alex never found anything enjoyable about them. She simply could not bring herself to enjoy constant hours of loud music and dancing, nor was she able to appreciate the flirtatious eyes of boys, and she most certainly didn’t think too highly of the drinks that were served on such occasions.
But all of this was due to the fact that Alex simply wasn’t born with a soul. If she had, perhaps chances were high that she would have held an entirely different opinion about it and everything else in her life. But the truth was what it was. And so as Amy asked her friend why she didn’t want to come to Tommy Hargrave’s party tonight, she struggled to think of how to adequately say I don’t have a soul.
“I have to run errands and complete chores,” she lied, thinking that for both their sakes, it was a much simpler explanation.
“You don’t need to study. You get just as much homework as I do.”
“Except I do extra credit assignments.”
Alex had a point, though one that had only just come up as she thought about it. Amy was disappointed nonetheless.
“I want you to be there.”
“I wish I could. But my parents wouldn’t allow me anyway.”
“Fine,” Amy said, resigned. “But if you change your mind, don’t hesitate to call me.”
“I won’t,” replied Alex, and by I won’t, she meant she wouldn’t change her mind.
* * *
Walking along Durson Avenue after school, Alex kicked off a few dead leaves that blew onto the sidewalk. Accompanying her along the way was Amy Lawson, a girl that called herself Alex’s friend.
“Can I ask you something?” asked Amy.
“Sure.”
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“No," she responded. “Why? Do you?”
Amy let the question hang in the air. Then, “I don’t know.”
“You’re not thinking of Tommy Hargrave are you?”
“Why?" shot Amy. “What do you have against him?”
“He’s not your type.”
“Oh? And what is my type?”
Alex Frost, distant observer of humankind, knew that for every human being in the world there was at least type or two. And in comparing Amy Lawson with the shamelessness of Tommy Hargrave, she knew she could safely conclude, “Not him.”
“He’s nice,” said Amy.
“He’s not.”
Amy said nothing. She made no comment of Alex’s words, and showed no surprises. Why this was, Alex couldn’t tell for sure. But if she knew one thing about human beings, it was how to read their subtlest of facial expressions. And through the muscle gestures formed around Amy’s face, from the base of her forehead to her cheeks, all the way down to her chin, it was only far too clear that the emotion coursing inside her was that of discontentment.
The girls parted ways at Carlson Road. Amy crossed the street to their left while Alex turned a corner upon reaching Pilmot, continuing down a straight, narrow path.
Around her was a neighborhood of rich, white houses with rose gardens on each front lawn. The driveways were so large that they formed a curved trail to their three story homes. The cars that were frequently parked on such driveways were all just as equally affluent, and typically of the German, Swedish, or Italian variety. Some even had a few Japanese cars. And while quite a few of the residents took to such activities as driving themselves wherever they wanted to go, it was not uncommon for a Suburnian to have a chauffeur. Such are among the luxuries of being rich.
Alex observed the clean streets and the beautiful gardens of each neighborhood’s front yard, and if she had a soul, she would have admired Suburnia’s eye-feasting glamour. But since she didn’t, she thought nothing of it.
As she continued along the sidewalk, a still shadow imposed over her. It blocked the afternoon sunlight from her skin, and for a while it dimmed her path.
Far in the distance, high up in the hill, there stood a lonely black tower much different than all the houses of Suburnia. It was tall and stood like a giant, gazing down on all life that lay below it. If there was any word to describe the peculiar building, the word darkness being its defining attribute. The building was old, certainly unlike any in Suburnia.
Alex had often passed the tower as she walked back home from school. And she noticed that even when it was a sunny day outside (much like today), the tower remained as black as night, and when it was night outside, the tower was practically invisible.
But whether day or night, a murder of crows flew above the tip of the tower at all times. They cawed boisterously, as if a warning to anyone who might think to visit or trespass into the ground’s estate.
Its proprietor was a man that went by the name of Lord Henry Combermere. The citizens of Suburnia did their best never to speak of the man, or for that matter, the tower he lived in.
Everyone in town knew Lord Henry Combermere’s name to heart, but neither the children of the town nor its grown-ups ever dared to mention it without a stuttering tongue. Most of the citizens hadn’t seen the man in person (nor did they ever wish to), but they all heard the stories. Stories that frightened the daylights out of everybody, though some more than others. And those stories, often scary, never happy, all had a name to remember them by; Lord Henry Combermere.
As far as Alex knew, she was the only person that could utter the words Lord Henry Combermere without flinching. She did so once as a young child, in front of a few other children in order to prove that words alone were nothing to fear. Instead, half the town avoided her for a month because they became far too scared of her. To stop them from being afraid of her, she eventually had to pretend that the name did scare her too.
But silently, Alex had always been curious to meet the man. She’d seen an old portrait of him in a magazine once, when he was listed as one of Great Britain’s brightest and highest paid lawyers. In the portrait, his head was bald, and his features both milky pale and skinny. He wore a crisp tuxedo with a bow tie, as well as a frameless monocle on his left eye with a gold chain that went into his coat. His skin was a cross between middle-aged and old, indicating that he was either somewhere in his late forties or his early fifties.
But that was seven years ago, before he lived in complete isolation. Rumor spread that he had suffered a mental breakdown, and had been a recluse ever since. Now Lord Henry Combermere was on a very different magazine, his name now on a list entitled The Creepiest Men And Women of Great Britain. The magazine didn’t have a recent photograph of the man since no one had actually seen him since his isolation, so the article plainly said that he was simply too creepy to warrant one.
All this reputation of being a creepy man somehow intrigued Alex. While others were too afraid to discover the truth behind the man, too scared to confirm or deny some of the stories that had gone around town like a plague, Alex, a girl without a soul, hadn’t the capacity for fear, so was only left with an avid interest for the facts behind the myths.
Home can mean different things to different people. To a religious man, home can be found in serving the likes of a supernatural deity. To a scholar, who finds his purpose in learning new things, home can be in a library, where tomes of information are stored. And to a mailman, home might be somewhere out in the woods, far away from the never-ending flow of letters and vicious backyard dogs.
To Alex Frost, home was something far less spiritual, and far more tangible. To her, home was a grand, three story Victorian-style house with cherry red bricks, and a steel black fence running along the outline. Much like all the other houses around it, the massive front lawn sprung with colorful flower beds and rose gardens, none of which was actually maintained by anyone in the Frost household, but by garden workers with dry hands and very little money. For you see, in Suburnia, only very few residents took the time to take care of their own gardens. Those that did were typically of the home maker variety, but even most of them didn’t want to stress themselves with the manual labor of maintaining a yard (or washing dishes, or cooking, or doing the laundry, or cleaning the house). Mrs. Dana Frost, much like her husband Mr. Jonathan Frost, was a doctor, though they both worked for different hospitals. And because Mrs. Frost had a day job, she certainly couldn’t have spent much time tending to flowers in her yard now could she? And most certainly, not a yard as big as the one that surrounded the Frost residence.
Today however, as a break from their regular routine, both Mr. and Mrs. Frost were at home sick from some bad Indian food they had just last night. Mr. Frost’s BMW and Mrs. Frost’s Toyota were parked on either ends of the driveway, one of them silver, the other one ocean blue respectively. Parked in between them was Alex’s Mercedes-Benz, a car that she had now come of age to drive, but hadn’t because she didn’t yet have a driver’s license, and because her father liked to borrow it as often as he could.
Alex inserted her gold key into the knob of her front door. Once inside, she unsheathed her backpack and let the dead weight of textbooks, notebooks and three ring binders collapse on the marble floor. The foyer was freshly waxed, with both the floors and the hardwood stairs glimmering with the indoor luminescence that came from the ceiling. More than several paintings hung on each wall, and by the entryway was a fresh bouquet of pink tulips growing from a porcelain vase. Five steps in, there was an ornate stone medallion on the ground with a circular border and a compass rose on the center.
Despite the fact that her parents were supposed to be at home, Alex wasn’t sure that they were. The house was eerily quiet. At first she mused that they were probably both fast asleep. But she checked their bedroom, and they were nowhere to be seen.
“Mom?” she called out. “Dad?”
Nothing. Just sheer emptiness and silence. She checked the kitchen, the living room, and even went so far as downstairs in their basement. But they weren’t there at all. As she scoured the entire home, she tried calling them on their cell phones. Both of them rang, but there was no answer. Eventually, Alex gave up, deciding that sooner or later they would turn up. And they did, only not where she expected.
As she entered her room, Alex saw a tiny streak of wet red a few centimeters from her doorway. A thin line of liquid crimson that grew thicker and redder the further along her eyes went until finally she focused on the center of the room, and the wet line turned into a massive puddle pouring out from her parents’ slit throats. They were harmless, they were emotionless, they were lifeless. They were dead.
A man standing in her room watched the dead adults, stunted to see her just as she was to see him. He was an old-looking man with pale skin, a bald head, and dry, unchapped lips. He held a strange knife in his hand. Drops of blood escaped its razor-sharp tip, forming a ripple in an already large puddle on the floor. Alex dared a closer look at the man’s face, recognized the frameless monocle on his left eye.
It was him; Lord Henry Combermere.
Chapter 2
The Girl Without A Soul
In scenes as horrendous and nerve-racking as this, it is usually customary for a person to scream, shout, or yell No! countless amounts of times. A shock of this magnitude would have even forced some to close their eyes and faint. But Alex did none of these things. Her parents for sixteen years were gone right in front of her, and like a stone or a thick block of ice, she didn’t know what to think of it, didn’t know what to do or feel. Not an ounce of emotion registered inside her objective mind. She was just stuck.
“Hello little girl,” Lord Henry Combermere spoke, his voice rough and deep.
This was the first time she’d ever seen the most feared man of Suburnia up close. Her first observation; that he hadn’t aged well. His skin, which had always been pale, now looked as though it’d been dipped in cream, and he was frailer in person than he was since his last picture. The monocle on his left eye was scratched, missing the gold chain that ran into his coat.
A multiplicity of thoughts and questions regarding the man flashed before her. Yet as much as she wanted her curiosity to be addressed, there was a much more immediate situation at hand.
“You killed my parents.”
“I did.” And with that, he pulled his knife high above his head and took one step forward. He was on the verge of a strike when the blade stopped mid-air, as though some magnetic forced held his arms in place.
“You’re not sad?” he asked, though it sounded more like a thought than an actual question.
Alex gazed over at her dead parents.
“I’ve never felt sad in my entire life.”
Both mother and father were lying on their backs, one beside the other. Their eyes wide open, giving her the impression that they could still see what was going on, or that perhaps they were faking death.
“Are they really dead?” she asked.
“Quite so,” Combermere replied. “Does that bother you?”
Alex searched her feelings, tried to find any shred of her that might have been humanly disgusted or terrified. She came up empty.
“No,” she breathed out.
Being without a soul had numbed her of emotional feeling, and as the many years progressed she came to understand that about herself more and more. But even for someone who lacked such an internal attribute, she found her lack of reaction to be more than a bit peculiar. After how much her parents had given her out of love, why was it that she could give nothing in return? Not even a tear, or show of honest disheartenment?
“Why doesn’t that bother you?”
Alex paused. Then, “I don’t know. I’ve always been like this.”
She crept closer to her dead parents, and closed their eyes. They were dressed in their expensive silk pajamas now stained with dark entry wounds emanating from beneath their clothes. Her father’s hair was cut short while her mother’s, bright and long, was strewn about in a chaotic mess. Her hair was bright gold, and shined with the afternoon light coming from Alex’s window. She arranged her mother’s hair, arranged it so that every strand went down her shoulders. Because her mother was always a fashion monger, she figured that even in death, she would have wanted to look as beautiful as she could.
After she was done redecorating her mother, Alex prepared herself for what was next to come.
“Are you going to-”
Her head slowly turned around. Then just like that, the tall, brooding figure of Lord Henry Combermere was gone.
Alex knelt beside her parents, kept them company whilst trying to bring herself to feel. From behind, she heard approaching footsteps smacking hastily against the floor downstairs. At first she thought that Lord Combermere was coming back. But she could sense two distinct sets of footprints stomping about the house.
Too distracted with her own thoughts to care, Alex laid her eyes on her parents, touched their skins. They were warm, but getting colder with every drop of blood that came out.
The footsteps came closer. In less than a minute, they stopped inside her room.
“Oh my God,” a man gasped behind her.
“What happened here?” someone else, just as petrified.
“Who are you?” the first man asked Alex.
She didn’t answer.
“Hey you,” now came the second. “What happened here?”
Still no answer.
They crept slowly towards her, concerned yet simultaneously afraid. One of the men turned Alex’s body to face him. It was a policeman. They were both policemen, dressed in blue uniforms.
“Who are you?” asked the policeman standing inches from her face.
But Alex still couldn’t speak. Too many questions were orbiting her mind all at once that she had lost all concern for the ones being asked by the men before her. Her mind was drifting away, steadily losing focus on reality.
“Hey,” the policeman shook her awake. “Who are you?”
Her mental lapse suddenly disappeared.
“Alexandra,” she said. “Alexandra Frost.”
“You’re their daughter?” the policeman inquired, more disheartened now than he was when he first saw the bodies.
“Yes,” she muttered back weakly.
“Come. Follow me out.”
“I’m okay.”
The policeman didn’t listen. “Let’s get you out of here,” he urged on.
The policemen took Alex by each arm and escorted her out to the front steps of her home. One of them produced a blanket from seemingly nowhere, wrapped it around her while constantly chanting the words, “It’s going to be alright.” As if saying it enough times would make it true.
“The neighbors reported a disturbance,” said the first policeman. “It’s a good thing we showed up when we did.”
“Are you okay?” the second policemen looked into her eyes, placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Yes,” she replied, but with no hint of emotion.
“Do you know who did this?”
Alex knew perfectly well who did it. The real question was Why?
She was about to let the word Combermere slip from her tongue, but held it back at the very last second.
He should have known that she was going to tell the police when he left her. If he did not want to get caught, then why did he let her live? It didn’t make any sense to her. Not unless there was something else at play. Something else that she was unaware of.
“Alex,” the policeman spoke as if he knew her, calling her by her shortened name rather than the one she formally used. “Did you see who did it?”
Hiding her doubt beneath layers of artificial resoluteness, she responded with, “No.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No.”
“Was anything missing?”
“No.”
Then came the question that once again riddled her mind.
“Do you know why someone might have done this?”
The million dollar question. Or so they called it. Why did Lord Henry Combermere murder her parents? Did they know him? And more importantly, why did he allow her to live? Why allow her to live to tell the tale?
“No.”
Off in the distance, an entourage of paramedics, fire trucks, and police cars were heard before they arrived outside her parents’ home. The firemen stood and talked while four men from the paramedics van carried her parents away on metal slabs with wheels. Their tones were much paler now than they were before. Any semblance of life, long depleted. A long line of yellow police tape stretched around the house encouraged a mass of curious bystanders to stand directly behind and stare at the commotion in Alex’s house. Seated on the front steps of her home, Alex watched the fellow neighbors and residents of Suburnia pointing their fingers at her, whispering to their friends and family members what was going on inside their minds. Never since Alex was a young child had she ever experienced such distance between her and everyone else. The people beyond the police line, fellow neighbors that she and her parents knew in all their years living in Suburnia, now strangers, with their dropped jaws, and their eyes pointed at the Frost residence with sadness and fear.
“Why don’t you come with us?” said one of the two policemen.
“I can’t stay at the house?”
“Heavens no,” he objected.
“This isn’t a place you want to be. Trust us,” said the second policeman.
“What’s going to happen?”
“We’ll see,” the first policeman said, although Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew full well what was going to happen.
Riding with the officers to their police station was the last thing she wanted to do at a moment like this. However, she hid her reluctance and silently agreed. Like a convict, she sat in the back while the two officers were in front. They drove for all of fifteen minutes, the only sound coming from their police radio and the vehicle’s humming engine.
The policeman in the front passenger’s seat decided to break the silence by peering into the rearview mirror, telling Alex, “It’s a good thing that you’ve found it in yourself to keep calm.”
The temperature inside the car started to warm up due to the heat coming in from the vents. He loosened his necktie and unbuckled the first button on his shirt. He introduced himself as Officer David Lambert. And by the way he told her how well she was taking it, Alex was almost certain that he was beginning to suspect her of something. Foul play, maybe.
“It’s a good thing,” the officer continued. “Means you’re strong in here,” he formed a fist and thumped it against his chest.
“He’s right you know,” came the other officer, the one driving the car. “Lots of bad things happening to good people. Can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, but you have our support. We’ll get you through this as easily as we can.”
Seven minutes later, and they arrived at the hive of the Suburnia police. It was fortunate for Alex that the two officers swore to get her through their standard procedures as quickly and efficiently as they could. She was immediately taken in to a questioning room where she was sequestered by a detective with a golden badge hanging from his neck like jewelry. He wore a long collar shirt, but with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His bare arms revealed many thick strands of hair the same color as the one that grew on his head. His top button was undone, and he didn’t wear a necktie.
“Good evening,” he started.
Alex, remaining doe-eyed and distant, said nothing in return.
“I apologize for what happened. Rest assured you have my condolences for your loss.”
The detective planted himself on a folding chair and faced it towards her. A steel desk separated the two, its surface clean and shining silver, giving Alex a distorted reflection of her own face.
“There are some questions that I have to ask you about the incident. I know you don’t want to think about it again, but we need you to hang in there so you can give us as much information as you can.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“Not long,” which Alex took to be a lie of sorts. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me before we start?”
“Do you know who might have done this?”
“That’s what we’re here to figure out. If you can help us, we’ll do our best find whoever’s responsible here. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then. Tell me everything you know.”
Much as Alex had initially suspected, her statement went on to be a challenging and lengthy process, as it required her to restate everything she told to the first policemen she encountered, and explain in full detail anything she might have left out, as well as make sure that her story about not having seen anyone didn’t contradict itself. Long and hard work, but she pulled it off without so much as a hitch. After the detective was done with his questions, he briefly squat beside her, made sure that she was close enough for him to assure her that, “We will find whoever did this, and we will stop them.”
A woman dressed in a man’s suit entered the room.
“This is Mrs. Jones,” the detective introduced to Alex.
“Good to meet you,” said Mrs. Jones.
Alex didn’t reply. This led to a short, uncomfortable silence before Mrs. Jones, the man-dressed woman spoke again.
“We called your aunt to come pick you up,” was what she eventually said.
Alex scrunched her brows. “Why?”
Mrs. Jones disclosed to her that apparently, since she was two years away from being considered a legal adult, she was to be taken care of by her closest blood relative by rule of law.
“You can’t go back to the house without a guardian,” was how she put it. “And we have to look at your house so that we can find out as much as we can about what happened. So for now, it’s important that you stay with a guardian.”
Under the circumstances, that guardian meant her Aunt Melanie. Unfortunate, she felt, because Aunt Melanie lived at least an hour away from her school. Meaning that if she would still be attending Elsinore Academy, she couldn’t walk to campus and back like she’d always done before. It was also unfortunate that in the shrieking madness of what had happened, Alex hadn’t even the opportunity to begin her homework.
Mrs. Friedman was going to be most displeased. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure what her policy was about homework in the event of one’s parents dying before their eyes. She was inclined to believe (but not entirely confidently) that Mrs. Friedman would give her some leeway there.
“What do you mean you’re going to look at the house exactly? You mean like evidence?”
“That’s precisely it.”
“So what do I do until then?”
For this, the detective broke in. “Until then, all we want you to do is relax. Gain your bearing. Do what you need to do to bring your spirits up. If you have any questions, or if you have information that might help us, anything at all no matter how seemingly unimportant, I want you to let us know.”
“You’ll be in your aunt’s supervision,” came Mrs. Jones. “For now at least. She was the closest family we could find in such short notice.”
“What happens to my house after you’re done?”
“I’m not the person to talk to about that. But once we’re done looking at the house, we’ll be sure to let you know.”
Then, the woman dressed like a man escorted Alex from the questioning room towards the front desk, where young boys with skateboards (or juvenile delinquents, as they were often called in Suburnia) were being lectured by a man three times their size, age, and weight. The woman clad in male garbs instructed Alex to wait where she was, and that her aunt was on her way to pick her up.
The station was calm silent. When she tapped her foot on the floor, much of the ensuing noise came not from the action itself, but the echoes it left behind.
Being in Suburnia, she didn’t expect that the police station would have been much more crowded than that. Aside from what happened to her parents, the biggest crime that had ever taken place here over the last fifteen years was a home robbery. A group of thieves entered the unoccupied residence of a fellow Suburnian citizen and stole every single thing of value inside the house (which was quite literally everything that was inside the house). Once news of the incident broke, it had become the most conversational topic of the year in all of Suburnia. But the latest news of the Frost family was sure to last significantly longer than that.
Alex seated herself on a bench in the lobby that was just as wooden and stiff as a church pew. She twisted and turned to make her back more comfortable. But the effort was futile. Alex wouldn’t find comfort no matter what way she positioned herself. Her best hope was to find a spot and stick with it.
Before she knew it, Aunt Melanie, Alex’s aunt from her mother’s side, was already scampering along the halls of the temple-sized police station. She was tall, slim, in her mid-thirties, with white skin and short, round lips. Her hair was auburn, curled, and she wore a simple blouse with rose petal patterns and a plain, long brown pant that went all the way down to her ankles.
And with just a momentary glimpse at her aunt, Alexandra knew that if her mom could see what her sister was wearing now, she would have been rolling in her grave (or the morgue, since technically she didn’t have a grave yet).
“There you are,” she cried with a frightened look on her face when she found Alex. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Alex replied, and for the first few seconds she wondered what had gotten into her.
Oh, right, she thought. My parents.
“I was worried sick about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh dear,” she forced Alex into her tight embrace, tears falling down her eyes like waterfalls.
Is this how normal people deal with death? She asked herself.
Aunt Melanie released her. “Is there anything you need?”
After thinking about it, Alex realized that she was a bit thirsty.
“I could afford to have some water.”
“Of course sweetheart,” she said rather insistently, and retrieved a fresh bottle of water that happened to coincidentally be inside her brown Coach purse.
Alex drank down for two long sips before handing the bottle back half-full to Aunt Melanie.
“No sweetie, you keep it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“I talked to the police. You’re going to come live with me for a few days. Is that okay?”
“I’d prefer my home.”
“Oh I know you do Alexandra,” she empathized, though Alex didn’t think it necessary. “But we can’t go back there yet.”
“I know. They told me.”
“That’s right. The police are going to be there for as long as it takes for them to do their jobs. Trust me. It’s for the best.”
Without putting up a fight, Alex complied.
Aunt Melanie took Alex to her home in Pleasant Grove, a locale far away from Suburnia. Far away in fact, from any place she knew. It was a struggling city with graffiti markings running along shoddily buildings bearing streets littered with trash, and houses that hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in well over decades. For some odd reason, most the cars parked by its street curbs had tires missing from their bare metal rims. Some cars had bricks thrown on their windshields. Others had tire irons, lead pipes, and on some occasions, homeless people. All this she witnessed during her first five minutes in Pleasant Grove. She soon came to realize that those were just the nicer areas.
“We’re almost there,” Aunt Melanie said, clearing her throat while she focused on her driving.
The last time Alex had seen Aunt Melanie was five Christmases ago when she came to visit her and the family in Suburnia. As Alex recalled, she came dressed that day in the most unorthodox fashion. A short pink t-shirt with a peace logo on the center, olive green track pants, and a pair of sandals. She and her mother got into a long fight over proper attire, then moved onto bickering about other, more personal things. And since then, they hadn’t seen or heard from each other at all.
Alex knew little to nothing of her aunt because her mother never spoke of her. And at times when she curiously asked about her, her mother would quickly change the topic before it even had the chance to begin. It was self-evident in the way she mentioned her that Alex’s mother didn’t think very highly of her sister. So why was it then that Aunt Melanie felt so bad about what happened to her?
During the one hour drive, Aunt Melanie kept her eyes on the road and fought back sniffles from her nose. Alex on the other hand sat on the front passenger seat, counting the amount of homeless people that were in Pleasant Grove. So far she made twenty four. Or was it twenty six? It was hard to concentrate with Aunt Melanie sobbing behind the wheels.
Aunt Melanie said nothing to her since the start of the drive, and Alex debated secretly to herself whether or not she should have initiated a conversation. Some random topic to bring her spirits up. Perhaps mention the sunny weather in Peru, or the price of cheese in France. Maybe even some trivial facts. Like that the most common name in the world is Mohammed, or that Neanderthals had bigger brains than current humans. But in judging Aunt Melanie’s mental state, she wasn’t sure that she would care, or that she would even have it in her to carry a conversation.
Soon they arrived on the grounds of her apartment complex on Wiscott Avenue. She parked her car in the garage of what was probably the cleanest apartment complex in all of Pleasant Grove. And even then, the building seemed worn and dry on the outside. Judging from what she saw, it wasn’t likely that the place was going to look any better on the inside. And indeed, it wasn’t. The building inside was only slightly less unkempt and unmaintained as the rest of the city itself.
“We’re here,” Aunt Melanie said. The second half hour of the drive had cleared her mood a little, but her speech still came out no more significant than a tired whisper.
Her place was on the seventh floor, last before the roof. As soon as they went inside, the temperature was absolutely roasting. Even though the night air was cool and with wind, her home (apartment number 78) was not, and not.
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