The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (63 page)

“There is Mother,” Heather said and started walking while the black Mercedes approached us. I opened the door for her and she got in. As we drove away I took one last glimpse of the house on the corner. It was almost dark now and in the lights from the street I could have sworn I saw a little girl in the garden in front of the house. She was wearing a long white dress and was staring at me.

The Yacht Club where we were meeting Dr. Kirk was located below the lighthouse on Anastasia Island.  The clubhouse, on the shore of Salt Run, was only minutes away from the beauty of historical downtown St. Augustine that we passed through on our way.  I only got a small sense of it, since it had gotten almost dark outside, but Heather promised me that she would take me to see everything the area had to offer in the coming days.

“Don’t forget, Chris has to be in Jacksonville for registration on Thursday,” Mrs. Kirk said. “After that he will be very busy with school work. Med school is tough and requires all his attention. You’ll have to leave all your sightseeing to the weekends and holidays.”

From inside the club were beautiful views of the inlet and the Conch Island dunes. Even in the dark you could sense the views and the lights. As we arrived, two waiters jumped in front of us as had they expected us and they showed us to our table located at a huge window from where I imagined that the view during daytime had to be spectacular. We sat and started to look at the menus when someone approached the table and everybody got to their feet. It was Dr. Kirk, a strong-looking and handsome man who didn’t look the age of almost fifty that I had been told he was. He was slim and well built, like a man who works out a lot. On our way there Heather had told me that her father had just started training for double triathlons. I had heard of people doing a normal triathlon, the completion of three continuous and sequential endurance events, involving swimming, running and cycling in immediate succession over various distances. But double triathlons meant he ran, bicycled and swam twice as long. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed. I really was. And he was in an excellent shape. You could tell just by looking at him. He had a fierce face that was intimidating and made everybody seem insignificant next to him.

“Dr. Kirk,” his wife saluted him while he kissed her on the cheek. “This is Chris, the young man that will be staying with us.”

His steel eyes turned and looked at me. I felt like I shrunk a few inches. Then he reached out and shook my hand in a firm grip. “Nice to meet you, son.”

“Nice to meet you too, sir.”

“Let’s eat,” he said and everybody sat down.

As the dinner progressed I couldn’t help but notice how no one seemed to look at the doctor or seemed to even dare speak to him. All the waiters bowed and talked with hoarse almost whispering voices as if they didn’t have the courage to speak loudly when near him. Even his wife sat in silence as she ate elegantly and sipped her wine, closing her eyes. No one spoke but the doctor. He talked non-stop about everything and nothing. About the politicians in Florida that had made stupid decisions, about doctors that didn’t know what they were doing, about the Orly airport attack in Paris last month that had left eight dead and fifty-five injured, about hurricane Alicia that had hit the Texas coast. About how the world was going mad and nobody seemed to care. I soon realized this was the way they were together, that this was a normal family dinner. The doctor spoke and the rest of the family listened. No one ever said anything because they couldn’t get a word in and even if they did he wouldn’t hear it. They seemed almost afraid of interrupting him in the midst of his important messages. He had gotten so used to talking without ever being interrupted that sometimes he didn’t even make any sense. But no one stopped him or told him, because they no longer listened to his words. And it wasn’t just his family who did this. Dr. Kirk was such a respected man that no one ever dared to talk in his presence. They only listened and only spoke if spoken to.

“So what’s your sport, young man?” he all of a sudden said directing his question to me.

It came so unexpectedly I almost dropped my fork. “I like windsurfing,” I virtually whispered in the horrifying silence surrounding me. Sitting across from me at the table, Heather was smiling like she enjoyed seeing me all perplex and shy.

“What is he saying?” the doctor asked Mrs. Kirk, sounding irritated. “He does speak English, right?”

“He does,” she answered with grace.

The doctor hit his fist in the table and made me jump. Mrs. Kirk and Heather both remained calm and hardly reacted. They were so used to the doctor’s tantrums and outbursts that nothing surprised them any longer.

“Well speak up for yourself, boy. You won’t get far in life if you don’t learn to speak up when asked a question,” he said with a big fierce voice that made me crumble in my seat.

“Windsurfing,” I said with slightly more confidence. “I used to windsurf.”

A small smile spread on the doctor’s face. “Very well, then. I will make sure that you will have a brand new windsurfer waiting for you tomorrow at the dock.”

My eyes became big and wide. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“A man should do his sports,” the doctor continued. “It keeps him young, healthy and sane. Women will drive you crazy, so you’ll need something to keep you from losing it. Trust me on that.”

“I will. Thank you,” I said.

The doctor drank of his sparkling water and swallowed loudly before he put the glass back on the table. “And then we need to get you some wheels.”

I felt like I was in a movie and had to pinch myself in the arm to make sure I wasn’t asleep. Did he mean he was going to give me a car? I could hardly believe it. In Denmark you didn’t get your driver’s license until you were eighteen and since there were enormous taxes on cars, they were so expensive that young people couldn’t afford them until they were in their mid-twenties or beginning of their thirties. Most of the time people had to take loans in the bank to afford a car. Only extremely rich people gave their kids cars. “You … you’re giving me a car?” I stuttered.

Heather was still smiling while she ate. Whether it was me or my stuttering she found amusing, I never knew.

“Wasn’t that what I just said? Do you have problems hearing? Yes, son. You need some wheels. How else are you going to go to Jacksonville every day?”

I hadn’t thought about that yet. I guess I figured I was going to take a train or a bus or something, like most people did where I came from. I really didn’t know anything about how things worked in the States.

“Well, thank you very much, sir.”

“You’re welcome. I promised your dad I would take good care of you. I never had a son of my own, so here is my chance to see what it is like.”

I was surprised at this statement coming from him. Speechless, even. It was amazing to me to realize that behind his tough exterior he seemed to be much gentler than I had given him credit for. I was expecting to meet a great man and that was exactly what I had done.

C
HAPTER 4

A
FTER DINNER WE DROVE
back to the mansion to change cars and get my guitar. The little girl in front of the house on the corner was no longer there I concluded with great satisfaction. I went a step further and decided that she probably never had been there at all. It had just been an illusion caused by my jet lag. I was getting tired. No wonder, I thought to myself. It was almost morning in Denmark now and I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. But Heather was insisting on dragging me to meet her friends and I felt that there was no way I could escape it. She had that gift. It was impossible to say no to her.

Soon I found myself in her open red Jeep, which I later learned was only one of her many cars. The wind still felt incredibly warm on my face even that late in the evening and I started wondering if it ever got cold in these parts. I loved the feeling in my hair and face and couldn’t wait to get me some wheels of my own as Dr. Kirk had called it. I could only hope it would be some sort of convertible so I could ride it with the top down and get wind in my hair like this. It was extraordinary, and for a few seconds I felt really happy. This new life, this new world that had been generously opened up to me had turned out to be a gift. For the first time since my mother died, I felt like I was born under that lucky star again, like so many people had said to me when I was a child. It was like the universe was making up for all my years of sorrow and grief. I welcomed this gift. I felt I deserved it. For a moment I felt invincible, like nothing could ever hurt me again. Like the hard part in my life was over and it was time for me to enjoy myself again. I released a sigh of relief as we drove north towards The Twelve Mile Swamps. Little did I know that the hard part had only just begun. Little could I have known that this was where I was supposed to meet my destiny in shape of a savage beast.

The Twelve Mile Swamps was, as the name implies, a collection of swamps connected by a trail and planted pine forest. It was open for public hunting season where people could go in and shoot the white-tailed deer, foxes, and alligators or catch a snake. The entrance was closed at night, but that didn’t seem to stop Heather and her friends that had already arrived once we got there. Two guys and two girls sat in a big expensive-looking truck. They jumped out of their car when they saw us coming.

“I want you to meet Chris,” Heather said as she stepped out of the jeep that was now muddy and sandy from driving on the bumpy road there. I grabbed my guitar and followed her.

“Chris this is Regina, Jim, Danielle and Mike.”

“Hi Chris,” the girls said with flirting smiles while the guys just nodded with a “How’re you doing?” All of them had that upper-class slightly snobbish appearance that also surrounded Heather. The boys wore polo shirts and plaid shorts making them look like they had just left a British boarding school, while the girls had put on small dresses like Heather. Regina was the only one of them wearing stonewashed jeans like me.

“Chris is the one I told you about. The guy from Denmark who is going to live with us for the next year while he is in med school in Jacksonville.”

“Like that German girl Elke that was here a couple of years ago?”  Mike asked.

“She was really something,” Jim said, signaling big breasts with his hands in front of his chest.

“Wasn’t she the one who got arrested for sunbathing topless in your parent’s yard?” Danielle asked while we started walking towards the entrance of the trail.

It was pitch-dark ahead into the forest of pine-trees and Jim lit a big flashlight that illuminated the trail and trees ahead of us. A barrier indicated the area was closed, but Heather and her friends just climbed under it and kept going. I felt a pinch in my stomach as I followed them. Something inside of me was telling me this was a bad idea, but I didn’t listen. I had come to Florida for adventure and now I was getting it.

“Yeah, my parents did not see that coming,” Heather said while the others laughed. “Apparently, that’s normal in Europe.”

“I hear they are all topless at the beach over there,” Jim said with a goofy grin.

“Is that right, Chris?” Regina asked. “Are the girls really topless at the beach?”

I nodded. They all looked at me like they wanted me to elaborate. Heather put her arm on my shoulder.

“You’ll have to excuse Chris. He doesn’t talk much,” Heather said. “He is an artist. He plays the guitar.”

I felt a look from Jim walking next to her and immediately sensed that he disliked me. I guessed he was into Heather and I was in his way. He was clenching the flashlight in his hand like he was trying to crush it. He was almost as tall as me, his face was aristocratic with high cheek-bones and short dark brown hair that looked like Clark Kent’s in the Superman movies.

“He looks like a wild person with that hair,” Jim said. “Is that a European thing too or is he just a faggot?”

“Jim!” Heather said. “He understands everything.”

“I thought you said he didn’t speak English.”

“I said he doesn’t talk much. He understands everything. He is just a quiet type. A sensitive artist. Something you wouldn’t know about.”

“Still a faggot in my book,” Jim continued. “He might even have the plague. Have you asked him about that? The Gay Plague? Has he been tested for that?”

“Stop it, Jim.” Heather snorted and that made Jim stop talking immediately.

I was happy she got him to shut up. I felt like a child when my parents would discuss me even though I was still there. It made me quite uncomfortable. I didn’t mind the gay part. I had heard that so often it was getting old. Mostly from elder people, though, but prejudice doesn’t have an age.

“So you are an artist trying to become a doctor?” Mike said. “That’s a first.”

I shrugged. “It’s in the family. My dad is a doctor, as well. He wants me to follow in his footsteps. I play the guitar for fun. Like a hobby.”

“It talks!” Jim said with a laugh. “And even in entire sentences.”

I ignored his remark while it got a lot darker the deeper we went into the forest. As a city boy I wasn’t that familiar with the sounds of nature so the longer we walked the more uncomfortable I felt. The forest was alive around us. Every step we took I heard the crackling flight of other living things that fled from us. It felt as if there were eyes in every tree and bush we passed and I knew that on each side of the trail there was nothing but swamps where all kinds of animals lived and hunted at night. The loud sound of tree frogs reminded me constantly of the swamp’s presence.

We stopped close to the river that went through the entire area. Danielle had brought a blanket and put it on the ground for us to sit on. Her backpack also contained a couple of wine coolers for the girls while Jim had brought beers for the guys. He threw me one and I grabbed it. Drinking it made my muscles relax and my unease go away but also left me massively dizzy. The combination of jet lag and alcohol wasn’t sustainable, I soon realized.