Vial Things (Resurrectionist #1) - Leah Clifford Page 0,14
of stale animal crackers and a Coke later, I refocus. I click link after link. I devour obituaries, cross check accidents and violent ends. Nothing. My fingers pause on the keys.
I type in my own last name. I’m not sure why I do it. I know what will come up.
I type in the word ‘found’, the word ‘dead’.
Home Invasion Takes Tragic Toll
My parents stare at me from the screen, smiling faces from a photograph most likely now tucked away in my aunt’s basement. I never asked Sarah what she did with the contents of the rest of my house. I meant to, but at first it’d been too sad and then weeks led to months and months to years. Maybe she’s waiting for me to ask for them. She hadn’t mentioned anything when I’d moved into the apartment. All the furniture came from a series of thrift shop runs.
It’s been three years and two months. Memories blend into each other as I stare at the grainy picture. Bent knees and dirty hands as my mother worked in the garden and the way her fingers had curled into her palm that night. The blur of my father’s shirt as he danced me around the living room and the pool of blood leeching into my sneakers when I found him. Hollowed out pumpkins and hollowed out chest cavities. My mother’s laugh.
I hadn’t been there to hear her screams. While she and my father had been dying, I’d been in a dark theatre, eating popcorn with Talia.
Sarah had given me the barest of details once she and the leaders of the other clusters had pieced together what had happened. My mother had done what she’d always been taught to do. Used the blood to take what we could from people too desperate to turn us down. They could have come up with a payment plan, or talked it through—Christ, we bring people back from the dead, we’re obviously not killers—but when the time had come to pay off whatever debt they’d owed her, they’d panicked. They’d gutted my father first, then my mother, and left them on the living room floor for me to find.
Because it wasn’t a hunter, Sarah had neutralized the threat and the rest of the resurrectionists in the area had breathed a sigh of relief and gone on with their lives.
I stare down at the paper. I’m not in the photo. There’s no mention of me in the article, no mention of any surviving relatives or family. I wonder who Sarah had to pay off to keep those details quiet. Favors, no doubt, had been promised.
A tap on my shoulder rips me out of the memory. I jerk hard, frantically closing the article while pawing at my damp cheeks with the other hand.
“I’m sorry,” the librarian says from behind me. “We try to limit patrons to an hour. You’ve been on for two.” There’s a teenager standing behind her, arms crossed and hip popped, glaring at me.
“Oh, my fault totally,” I say, stumbling up. “I lost track.”
The librarian gives me a polite nod.
I grab my messenger bag and head for the door, take the stairs down to the sidewalk and then stop, uncertain. Sarah had told me not to stay in the apartment by myself.
While the sun’s shining, the city’s spookiness fades until there’s nothing left but baking cobblestones and shops full of tchotchkes not remotely appealing enough to hold my attention. Standing on the sidewalk, I desperately try to think of somewhere else to go.
Ploy
I don’t bother trying to con spare change from tourists. I’ve got too much on my mind to do anything but walk the streets. Without my pack, I wind through the people, lost in thought. Brandon occupies a chunk of my brain. Allie more. She’d seemed almost relieved to have me ask to stay with her this morning. It unnerves me.
Ahead, I spot one of the kids from the camp as he raises a hand in my direction. It’s too late to pretend I didn’t see him. Giving in, I cross the street and head over. Jutting my chin at him as a hello, he nods back, his fingers tapping out a complicated rhythm on the edge of the bongo drum clenched in his lap. He doesn’t miss a beat when he glances up at me.
“Brand?” he says and I know he can tell by my face I’ve already heard. His frown deepens. “Sucks, man.”