Death of the Body (Crossing Death) (19 page)

I could practically feel his scowl as the nurse grinned, making fun.

“Get plenty of sleep, Edmund, and call me if you need anything. In the future, a better story might help. Getting caught in the rain in southern California? I’d try something a little more creative. Maybe include the cafeteria’s freezer.”

The nurse smirked, but made her way to the door, closing it softly behind her.

“You… owe… me… big… time,” Nicholas enunciated through a clenched jaw.

I couldn’t do anything but laugh in response. I was so happy. Teleportation! It had worked. Granted, it was more painful than I would have imagined. I didn’t realize my entire molecular structure would have to break down to make it work, and I didn’t know much about how I came out looking on the other side, but I had escaped. I was back in California, in my room, hundreds of miles from where I started. And I was alive.

“What’s so funny?”

“You don’t want to know,” I answered.

Nicholas grunted in response. “Your boss says if you ever decide you want to show up for work again, you can do it at minimum wage.”

“What? Why? What time is it? What
day
is it?”

“Thursday.”

“I was gone for
four
days?”

“Three and a half. You’ve been laying here like a popsicle for ten hours. You’re lucky I got the ice off you before the nurse came in. Xia thought you stood her up and Quon and I were worried sick when you didn’t answer your phone.”

“Ice? Xia?”

“Where have you been?”

“I don’t know. Ice?”

I could see Nicholas get that look on his face, the one where we were breaching a subject he didn’t want to discuss.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“You’re the one who started asking
me
questions. Ice?”

Nicholas balked, but I knew he was going to answer my question. My eyes were pleading with him.

“Look,” he snorted, “we were worried about you. You never showed up after our text conversation, and I tried and tried to get you to pick up your phone, but you never answered. Then a few days ago I get this call from the Nevada department of… of… transportation-something-or-another telling us your truck had been involved in some kind of accident with an oil tanker? But that they weren’t even sure if you were
in
the truck. Then this morning you appear out of thin air, blue as death, naked, frozen solid, ice literally covering your body, with five giant bleeding gashes on your chest.”

He paused, his eyes now pleading with mine.

“Does this have something to do with…” the words caught in his throat, “… the orphanage.”

Bingo. He had finally cracked. I nodded.

“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

And just like that, Humpty Dumpty was put back together again.

“Oh, here. You’d better call Quon. He got a little freaked out when the nurse told everyone to take off their clothes and get into bed with you,” Nicholas winked, “so he took Xia shopping. He’ll want to know you’re awake.”

“The nurse asked everyone to take off their clothes, huh?” I laughed, taking my phone from Nicholas’s hand. “She probably just wanted to see you naked.”

“She did leave her phone number.”

I gave Nicholas my rehearsed disappointed-in-him look.

“Don’t look at me. She left it for you!” he grinned back.

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I pressed the contacts button on my phone and scrolled down to Quon’s name. I was about to hit dial when an eerie feeling came over me. “Wait,” I said turning the phone over, scrutinizing its very existence. “Where did you get this?” The last time I saw the phone had been in the truck.

“I was wondering when you were going to ask. Some cop came over and said he was driving by after the accident. He stopped to help and found your phone by some miracle. Luckily, he was already on his way to California, so he dropped it off. He made it sound like he was pretty sure you weren’t in the truck, so that was somewhat comforting…”

“What did he look like?” I asked, very alarmed.

“Dude, chill. Just a regular cop.”

“But what did he look like? What color was his hair, his uniform,” I gulped, “his eyes?”

“Why are you freaking out? He came by, dropped off the phone, and left. It’s not like I went out for a night on the town with him. I don’t remember.”

I kept my eyes on him while I hit the dial button and waited, rather impatiently, for Quon’s voice to answer on the other end. “Hi Quon, I’m just fine. Hey, do you think you could come back to the room for a minute. We need to talk.”

Nicholas’s eyes grew large at the “we need to talk” line, and after I hung up he had little to say except, “No. No, no,
no
, no, no.”

He was suddenly out of bed, pulling on his favorite pair of button fly jeans. He looked up at me once more as he pulled a shirt on over his head. “No.”

I didn’t know what to say in response, but I also jumped out of bed. I didn’t realize how cold it was going to be until I was standing outside of the warm blankets. The fact that I was nude surely didn’t help. “Look,” I reached for a pair of pants myself, “we just need to talk. All of us.”

“I don’t
want
to know. I don’t want to be
dragged
back into this again. One cop was enough! I don’t want to have to deal with more investigations or answer any more questions when the people around you get murdered again. And I swear if I have to hear one more shrink tell me I have some warped
aversion
to religion, or some other
aversion
to this, or another
aversion
to that, I’m going to hurt somebody.”

“You went through therapy?”

“We
all
did, Edmund. Every last child survivor was required to submit to psychoanalysis. You freaked everyone out. I thought maybe people made up the things they said about you, but this thing, whatever it is, follows you around. Whatever you did in that class that made water come out of solid granite, whatever happened in that room with the nuns during your exorcism, it is still following you.”

“It isn’t following me, it
is
me. Part of me. I can explain everything, I can even
show
you, but I need you to stay. I need to talk this out with you. You need to know what happened in the orphanage.”

“No, I don’t. I buried that. It’s dead.”

“No it isn’t. I’m here. I’m your friend. And honestly, I need your help.”

“I’m sorry, Edmund. I’ll help in any way I can. I’ll be your friend. I’ll help you in school. I’ll help you get laid. I’ll hold your head when you are drunk and vomiting. I’ll even get naked in bed with you when you show up as an ice ball, but I cannot, will not, help you with
this
.”

Nicholas gave me an emotional “good luck” look and started rubbing his hands together nervously. It almost looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he pressed his lips into a hard line and turned toward the door.

“Wait.” I almost whispered. “This isn’t all about me.”

He froze with his back to me. “Then who is it about, Edmund?”

“You.”

“And how does
this
have
anything
to do with me?”

“It concerns you, because it’s your life that’s in danger too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ruth,” I paused as his muscles tensed in response. “And some of the other orphans, the orphans that got away…” I couldn’t continue.

“What about them?” His teeth were clenched again.

“I think they were killed because of what happened. I think they are being targeted because something is going after everyone who survived.”

“Targeted by what?”

“That’s what we need to talk about.”

Nicholas shut the door, and turned to look at me. “I don’t believe in the supernatural,” he lied. I found it particularly idiotic in light of the circumstances—ice ball and such.

“You’re going to have to,” I responded.

He walked to the bed and sat down, his shoulders slumping forward. “I don’t want to.”

“I know.”

Nicholas tensed as my phone buzzed to life.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hi, Edmund? It’s Father Paul. Do you have a second?”

“Not a good time, Father.”

I heard Nicholas grunt when he realized I was speaking to a priest. Today was not a good day for him.

“I checked on those names, the survivors…” he trailed off, baiting me.

“And?” I was impatient.

“Well, this is a little strange. Do you remember a nun by the name of Mary Chantale?”

How could I forget. My voice cracked as I responded. “Of course.”

“It seems that all the orphans that survived the massacre and died recently had something in common: they were all in the same music class, Sister Chantale
’s music class. Anyone not attached to her seems to be doing just fine.”

“How many are dead?”

“I can’t really tell you that.”

“How many are still alive?”

“Look, Edmund, I’m only telling you this because I want you to do something for me.”

“Father?”

“Only three children that had a music class with Sister Chantale are still alive. You, Nicholas, and Simon.”

“Well, Nicholas is here with me, but Simon?”

“Well, that is the weird one…”

My heart almost stopped. “Father, I know of only one Simon at the orphanage, and he…” I didn’t finish my sentence.

I could feel Nicholas look up at me when I said the name, and could tell he was angry. First, the supernatural, then a Catholic priest, and now the name of our childhood friend who died mysteriously at, as only I knew, the hand of a demon. I was a little shocked he hadn’t stormed out of the room yet.

“Well, his last listed address is the same as the ex-Sister Mary Elizabeth.”

“Sister Mary Elizabeth? Ex?” I had to swallow hard just to get the name out.

“I’m going to give you the address, Edmund; but I’m also going to call ahead and let her know you are coming,” Father Paul added quickly. “Do you have a pen?”

I grabbed one off my desk, and then nodded even though Father Paul couldn’t see me.

“She lives in Los Angeles still, so it shouldn’t be too far a drive.”

I jotted down the address on the cover of my American history book. Father Paul said a quick goodbye, but then followed it with a low mutter about how I should ensure I treated Mary Elizabeth with some dignity. I assured him I would, and hung up the phone just as Quon walked through the front door with Xia in tow.

Quon’s dark eyes were filled with concern, but they softened when they saw I was out of bed.

“The color came back,” he said in his Japanese accent. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

I had never actually seen Xia before, but I recognized her voice as the high-pitched voice I had heard when I first arrived in the room half-conscious and almost frozen. “I’m glad to see you’re… clothed,” she said.

As angry as he was, Nicholas couldn’t help but snicker.

“She’s just angry because you missed your date,” Quon winked at me. “She was very much looking forward to going out with you.”

“Well, we skipped the date, but you did get to see me naked,” I jested.

“That’s the perfect date in my mind,” Nicholas guffawed.

Xia didn’t seem fazed at all by our exchange. She just glared at me from behind two beautiful, chocolate-brown eyes. I could go on and on about her amazingly shiny black hair that fell in carefully constructed ringlets around her soft skin, or how her long legs and netted stockings made her look almost as tall as her cousin Quon, or how she dressed just provocatively enough in a short skirt and baby doll tee to pique a man’s imagination without giving too much away, but it was her aura that really screamed beauty. She was literally on fire with radiant orange colors radiating from her. It was a wonder that no one else in the room could see it.

An aura like that meant that she was aware of it and worked on it, like a body builder works on his muscles. I had no doubt that Xia had her own sort of connection to the supernatural. Though not quite flawless, her aura undoubtedly spoke of hours of concentration and communion with doorways she probably didn’t even know existed. Nicholas was right when he said I would be interested. What did he call her? Earthy? But it was much more than that.

I’m sure she noticed the way I was staring at her, but her reaction was more reserved that it would have been had she caught someone staring at her body.

“Blue,” she finally said.

“Huh?”

“You are blue; electric almost; very bright. When I first saw you, I thought it was because of the ice. I was wrong. The blue, as strong as your aura was then, is even bluer now.” Xia shivered, the hair on her arm standing on end. “Glacial,” she whispered.