My Immortal

MY IMMORTAL

A novel by

Ginger Voight

©2011

For Daniel

“
And now there’s nothing left to say

And the same old saviors feel so far away

And I can’t believe the things I’ve done

And the same old saviors forgive, but the tears still come
.”

“S.O.S.” by Zero 1 featuring Hal Sparks

www.halsparks.com

CHAPTER ONE

A mist hung low across the tall trees of a darkened forest. A child whimpered.

“Tell me about the dream.”

The warm, baritone voice echoed from its far-away place in the very same room. It was kind, it was patient, but even more it was firm. It was a voice one
couldn’t lie to.

The only other person in the room, a bundle of nerves who lay prone on the cushioned chaise lounge, sucked in a breath. It was the one question she
didn’t want to answer. Her eyes stayed closed. Her brow knit together. Her hands shook as they mindlessly shredded a tissue in her lap, her consciousness suspended precariously between two realities.

“
It’s okay, Adele,” the voice assured. “Relax. Take your time.”

The woman nodded. A trembling hand lifted a stray strand of blacker than black hair from her ivory face, which drew attention to the bright white strip that streaked almost dead center across her scalp. She cleared her throat. The sound was so harsh and out of place in the silent room even the man sitting across from her jumped. He gulped, made sure the tape o
n the recorder spun, and waited.

“
I’m walking in the forest,” she began, trying to describe the photos in her mind that were so real she could almost smell the pine as it charged up her nostrils.

“
Like the other times?” his probed from that other, more distant plane.

She nodded.
“I feel the dead leaves slice into my bare feet. The gown I’m wearing is long and tears on the low branches, but I can’t stop. I follow the wind. No…” She self-corrected with a slight furrow of the brow. “It follows me. I feel it wrap itself around me. Like an embrace.”

She paused for a slight moment as she wrapped her arms around herself. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, though the room where she lay was cozy and warm. Her face was intent, troubled.
“I hear a little girl. She’s crying. She calls out for her dog.”

“
Buster!”

“… Buster… I think.”

“
Where is her dog, Adele?”

The woman named Adele glanced down in her dream state to find a mangled, bloody dog
carcass strung between her two pale hands.

“
He’s dead,” was her flat response. She unconsciously rubbed her hands together, as if to wipe away what lay upon them.

“
Did you kill him?”

The question went unanswered. The man
’s pen recorded the silence on a densely filled legal pad. “Where is the little girl now, Adele?”

A small silhouette huddled in the middle of a bald patch of Earth. The woman named Adele hovered from above while a cackling male voice reverberated over the rustling treetops.

Her voice cracked. “In a clearing. We’re circling her from the safety of the trees.”

“
There’s someone with you?”

“
There’s always someone with me.”

Whispers fell down through the tops of the trees lik
e raindrops. They mingled together in an indistinguishable roar with the wind. The child cried. A wolf howled. As the natural chorus that surrounded them grew to a horrifying crescendo, the woman named Adele dove toward the huddled, frightened girl with a loud, echoing shriek.

“
What happened to the little girl, Adele?”

“
We killed her.”

The man put his pen down on his notebook.
Her soft confession might have been shocking had he not heard the same story from several dreams before. “Is that all you remember, Adele?

A
child’s arm went limp and fell onto blood stained leaves. A tiny bracelet on her arm spelled out L-I-L-Y in pretty pink and white tiles.

Adele’s
violet eyes snapped open to the pastel blue walls of the room. She sat up, straightened her clothes and brushed tears from her very pale face, tears she had been unaware she’d even shed. That had been happening a lot lately. “Yes,” she murmured the lie easily. “Like I told you. It’s just like the others.”

He paused and knit hi
s hands together in his lap. He seemed to choose his words carefully. “Adele, I think it’s time we talk about your taking a leave of absence.”

It
wasn’t the first time he’d made such a suggestion. Nor was it the first time she rejected it out of hand. “I can’t do that.”

He leaned back in his chair. She stared him down, her features set.
“You mean you won’t.”

If only she had the luxury of choice, she thought. But she
didn’t expect him to understand, even though she paid him a hundred dollars an hour to do exactly that. “No. I mean I can’t.”

He sighed as he wi
thdrew his prescription pad. She instantly shook her head.

“
Not more pills.”

He
didn’t even look up. “When was the last time you had decent, uninterrupted sleep? “ She didn’t answer and he held up the little blue piece of paper. “It’s just a sedative to help you get your rest. I think we both know what can happen if –”

Wordlessly she snatched the prescription from his fingers before he could finish his sentence. Just as quickly
she spun on her heel and left.

Once outside Adele adjusted her jacket as she braced against the unseasonably strong winds blowing through Darlington, Massachusetts. Her boots clicked against the cobblestone streets as she wound her way through
the town of roughly 50,000 souls. It was a quaint town full of personality, one that made one want to walk wherever it was one needed to go.

Indeed walking was
Adele’s preferred mode of transportation. On the sidewalk among strangers she felt alone, invisible – part of the landscape. It made her feel oddly safe in the anonymity. Passersby looked through her as she looked everywhere else.

H
er eyes could focus on the unique cityscape, where the modern architecture seemed to fight for its place among the older, more characteristic buildings that felt removed from another, more magical time. The colonial roots of her part of the country made themselves known in unexpected ways. Depending on the hour or the day or the way the shadows fell, it could be hard to tell exactly in which era modern citizens of Darlington walked. In her heart of hearts Adele always felt partial to the old world ghosts that lurked in all the darkened shadows.

That was the charm of her city
. Its Gothic heart would not be denied, making the entire burg a bit of an unintentional time machine. Some of those buildings stood in the same spot for hundreds of years, where they were erected by early settlers in the area who had come seeking a new frontier. The town library was housed in the first log cabin built in the town, and their finest hotel was an honest-to-goodness castle from the 1800s. No doubt it was constructed by someone who couldn’t quite let go of the Old World or its rich, regal history. Nor, apparently, could the citizens of Darlington, who went to great pains to preserve it over the centuries.

As a child it had been impossible for Adele not to get caught up in the fairy
tale Victorian age that still lingered in her hometown, where kings and queens were but a trip across the Atlantic back to the mother land. It was a romantic nostalgia that shouldn’t even belong to someone born in the 20
th
Century, but somehow she had wanted to claim it anyway.

Unfortunately reality
had a way of cracking through the façade no matter how she tried to hold onto the innocence. Simply put, Adele Lumas couldn’t afford to believe in fairy tales anymore. Cynicism took the place of romanticism one night many years ago. As time marched relentlessly forward, her beloved Darlington served more as a familiar, comfortable backdrop to what she considered her true purpose.

She made her living by cracking news stories no one else dared to touch.
She was fearless and tenacious; the harder the case, the more zealous she became. Reality was both her crutch and her curse in this quest, as truth could often be a strange and unwelcome bedfellow. Thanks to the “truth,” Adele had learned the hard way that true evil lived within the hearts of humans. There, and there only, were the real monsters.

Her job was to expose them all, one by one, and thus rob them of their power to hurt anyone
else. That was Adele’s mission, something she hadn’t quite been able to convey to Dr. Ashcroft. Otherwise he would never suggest the impossible – that she simply walk away from her job.

She found her identity in her work. Endless, tiring, grueling hours hot on the prowl of the newest threat to her community
were the reasons she forced herself out of bed each morning. She wouldn’t rest until she got the bad guy, unveiled for the whole world to see. Yet beneath that tough as nails exterior beat the heart of a woman more vulnerable and more sensitive than most. Her soul shared the same stark contrast as her strange hair. She could be a powerhouse one minute, and paralyzed with fear the next.

She
didn’t sleep well, she didn’t eat properly. All she did was bounce from one story to the next with tireless determination, even though there were times when she looked like she might buckle under the strain.

But Adele was a woman of many contradictions.
She had the heart of a crusader, who could take up the mantel of any victim with compassion unmatched. Yet as an individual she was extremely hard to get close to, and she made sure the world knew that by putting a wall of extra flesh between her and the world she wanted to save, but could never fully trust.

She had been plagued her whole life with various emotional ailments that she never wanted to discuss
even with the very few people she allowed close to her. She had Dr. Ashcroft, and a medicine cabinet full of pills, for that. But nothing helped. Not really. Not for long. As Adele stuffed the newest prescription into her pocket, she already knew this new batch of pills weren’t going to make anything any easier.

In fact
, with the ring of her cell phone she suspected the day was about to get a whole lot worse. It was Brian, her cameraman at the studio. “What happened?” Two words, tersely chirped.

“
There was another one,” Brian replied, but something told him she already knew. “Piccoli ambush scheduled in ten minutes.”

She nodded and stuffed the phone back into her purse
. She paused only for a second to peer into the dark recesses of the woods just outside Darlington. Without being told, she knew that the victim had been found there and that it was a little girl named Lily. Adele had left that little detail out of her little chat with her good doctor. Just like she’d neglected to mention she knew each of the other three victims by name even before they were found.

She
didn’t know why she felt the need to keep it to herself, but she couldn’t have uttered the words even if she wanted to. What they suggested was too horrifying to explore, even with her doctor of more than ten years.

More unnoticed tears dried on her face as she raced to City Hall.

CHAPTER TWO

A crowd of clamoring reporters huddled against the wind at the
bottom of the steps of police headquarters. Brian Grey zoomed in on Adele as she pressed into the crowd that rushed the police Commissioner, Roman Piccoli. The questions fired off like machine guns.

“
Commissioner, do you have more details on the body that was found this morning?” yelled out Denise Carter, a young hotshot reporter from another station.

“
Is this the work of the same serial killer?” inserted Adele, and her deceptively pretty rival sent her a steely glare.

“
Does this have anything to do with the mutilated animal carcasses found in the woods?” someone else asked.

The lean, forty-year old wrapped his jacket around him tightly
, both against the unseasonably strong wind and the piercing questions from a throng of reporters he had wanted to avoid. Roman puffed out “No comment,” repeatedly while charging up the stairs. Finally Adele managed to shout, “Is there more than one assailant?”

Roman stopped on a dime and swung around to glare at her. After a moment he gritted a final,
“No comment,” through clenched teeth and disappeared into the building. One by one, reporters dropped their microphones and issued the kill signal to their feeds.