Mystery: Suspense: The Lazarus Phenomenon: : A Private Investigator Mystery Crime Thriller: (horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, police, murder, ... (Marie Avalon Mystery Crime Series Book 1) (6 page)

Alex turned to Renee brows curled in confusion. 

“She’s had a hard time since her son was born, you know? He had a fraternal twin sister that was stillborn. I guess she went in there to meet up with the dad and talk it out. She was too ashamed and felt like it was her fault that one of the babies didn’t make it. She thinks that the dad needs to know the whole truth, or else its bad karma.” Renee rubbed the back of her neck, hoping her double-speech was convincing enough. 

Both of them had two much information to exchange here. Alex smiled and nodded, thinking out his own double-speak.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Yeah, I’ve seen my share of death and terrible things too. I was in the woods once and I witnessed a heinous crime. It really jarred my faith in Humanity.” He didn’t finish what he was saying. The broadcast was interrupted suddenly by a live video feed being shot in the back of a news truck. 

Nicky leaned close to the camera, smiling darkly in the lights of all the digital machinery. 

“Hello, adoring public of Durango. My name is Nicolas Avalon. Yes, I died 7 months ago in a vehicular homicide and also a few hours ago in the bottom of Lake Nighthorse. Yes, obviously, I am alive again. I am the victim not of murder but of a sadistic scientific research program that is being headed up in your very own community. 

Not to worry. I’m certain Chief Riggs will be able to secure the city and your civilian safety will be taken into total consideration when dealing with this threat. I interrupt your newscast to send a private message to one of the players in this Death Game.

Dr. Lucien Swift. I have been informed by a very reliable source-” Nicky leaned his head back to indicate where Prescott’s wife sat handcuffed to him in the opposite chair.

“Where your other victims are. Some of them are not in their best wits and would be more than happy to help me cause you limitless pain. I have acquired the means from my trusty snitch to liberate these oppressed dead people from your confinement. You and all of Durango will suffer the rising of the Witnesses if you fail to turn yourself in within the next 48 hours.”

The feed cut off. The camera went black for a moment and then switched back to a view of Chief Riggs standing with the evening news reporter Erin Pickler.

“Oh my God, it’s happening.” Alex covered his mouth in a shaking hand. Renee stared at him, dying to pick his brain.  

Marilyn stared in horror and almost knocked over the Tom Collin’s she had in front of her. This situation was only continually spiraling into a darker, more confused place. Here in Durango Humanity had failed. Now the whole City could see it and soon so would the rest of the United States. After the States then the World. 

“He’s got your charms.” His voice startled her and took her home to younger days all in the same breath. Marilyn spun around on her stool. There stood Army Prescott, older now, but still just as handsome as he’d been. He was wearing the jacket from his uniform. This made her heart twist. 

“Army…” She choked on his name as he sat down. 

“Rusty Nail for me thanks.” Army winked at the bartender and sat down, leaning over his hands to look into Marilyn’s face. 

“It’s been too long…” His voice was satin. She swallowed the sting of the years. He smiled as the drink was set in front of him, threw a handful of bills on the counter and turned back to her with tender eyes and drawing a long drink.

Drifting to them from somewhere behind the counter, the sad riffs of the Eagles “Desperado” began to play. Marilyn swallowed and watched as Army pulled a Hemingway from his shirt pocket and cut the cap with a lady’s nail file. She felt her throat get tight as she gaped at the bad boy in front of her remembering why he was so attractive to her in long gone days. He plucked a match out of his wallet and lit it against the brickwork of the counter, lighting the cigar’s foot as his eyes twinkled in the flame. 

“You called me pretty broken up. Yeah, I know this stuff with Nicky is seriously warped. Trust me, it wasn’t my idea. I was trying to save him.”  

Of course, she didn’t believe him. No man allows his child to be turned into Frankenstein’s monster because he was “trying to save him”. It was sick and against the laws of nature. She felt rage foaming like rabies in the pit of her stomach. 

“Don’t lie to me, you sultry SOB. I read you like tabloids and what I see is just as cheap. You did it because you profited from it somehow. You’ve always been interested in speed, Prescott. Fast women, fast cash, fast cars, and no consequences. Oh, you’re a beautiful sinner, there’s no question of that. How much did you sell our son for, huh? How many thousands?” She smiled as her eyebrow curled. His nose twitched. 

“Don’t talk down to me, Avalon. You didn’t exactly come here to pass out Bibles, did you? Fine, so I had my own kid iced for medical research. It’s not like I’d been to his soccer games or anything. How does it make it any better just because his sister died right after she was born, huh? You’re still selling her body for research. That’s really no better than medical prostitution if you want my opinion.” 

Marilyn clenched her teeth. She just had to pretend this was Texas Hold ‘Em. With one massive swallow, she plucked a shoe box from her coat. 

“So, I’m no saint either. I lied. I’ve cheated and I steal. I’ve done something far worse this time. It was so bad I couldn’t keep the other baby. So bad that I couldn’t tell you, even though I felt like telling you about your son would make you want to come back.” Marilyn tilted her head to the side. Of course, this was all a bluff. There had never been another baby. This was her play. The wicked plan she’d made in the midst of the forest fire. She’d used parts from the Camaro wreck and Renee’s critique to make it convincing too. 

“She was stillborn. They usually give you the baby to bury or whatever. Well, I pretended to bury her, but it was really one of those freakishly creepy life-like dolls in the coffin. This box contains her real body. I had her taxidermied. There was a man, a really good taxidermist who wanted to try it on a human. It worked horribly as human skin just isn’t made for stuffing…I kept her even like this at the foot of my bed. In this box all this time. It was the sick fetish of a confused, alcoholic woman! Apparently the Devil wouldn’t leave it alone. Now here she is. Preserved with some embalming techniques that have kept her spinal fluid, her hair, and everything. The thing is though the reason she was still born is the doctor’s believed there were some very peculiar anomalies with the development of her heart and adrenal glands. She had renal failure in utero and hyperkalemia as a result of this. Your guess is as good as mine, Cassanova. But you can take her. I don’t want a dead baby if I could have a living son! Take the baby and give Nicky back to me! Go back to your sick science kitchen and leave my boy alone!” 

Her performance should have won her an Oscar. He’d bought it. Hook, line and sinker. She could tell by the green that stretched up his cheek and splashed across his temples. 

Laughter coursed through him and he slapped his knee down, spilling the Rusty Nail all over the counter. Matty the bartender spun on her boot heel, irritated. She swatted a rag and began to clean it up.   

That moment he’d slapped his knee was all it had taken. Marilyn gingerly slipped the cuffs out of her pocket and clicked one end of them around his wrist. She clicked the other around hers while he was wheeze laughing to tears and couldn’t even hear it. 

“Oh, darling! You think I’d actually buy that bill of goods? Even if you’re telling the truth, which you’re totally not because you, darling, totally suck at the Poker face…Why would I accept a butchered dead baby over a living, strapping, healthy teenaged guinea pig boy?”

“Ah, well, see about that. I didn’t need you to buy it. I just needed to sell it. Which is exactly what I just did. Got your whole voice-over right hear. Pretty as a Nashville record.  Let me say it for the tape, though. The contents of this box are not human remains. This is the small fetus of a chimpanzee that was donated to the medical center for pathologist interns to practice on. It was found in the Camaro wreck 6 miles from Lake Nighthorse on the western half of the Lake and should be filed under evidence from the wreck if anything has survived the fire.”

Marilyn punched a button on her cell phone. Army could clearly see from the screen that his confession had just been recorded. Of course, leave it to a private investigator to pull some kind of stint such as this.

“Now, ahem, you remember that little favor you promised to do for 20 bucks?” Marilyn turned to Matty laughing and slapped a bill on the table. 

Matty swung herself up on top of the counter. She plucked a 45 cal from where it leaned against her side of the fence and loaded it with graceful fingers and a wink at Army. 

“That was just a joke, lady. Hang around Durango for a little while longer and you’ll see. This is the West, darlin’. We do these kinds of favors for free!” Matty affected her accent a little to tease Marilyn. She hopped down from the counter and trained the rifle’s barrel to the back of Army’s head.

“You might not have known this, mister, but I’m the bartender, bouncer and dishwasher all rolled into one. It’s time for you to beat it.” She whistled through her teeth with a hard laugh. 

They lead Army outside the both of them singing “Rawhide” just to annoy him. Renee sat in her Datsun listening to an old 3 Doors Down CD that Alex had left in the player. 

“Wassup! Bagged that rattler did ya? Alright! Let’s take him downtown. Besides, Alex tipped me off anyway. There’s something you got to see!” Renee’s eyes were blazing as she turned over the key. Marilyn forced Army into the back and chained him to another chain that was woven up through a hole in the trunk and was wrapped around 6 concrete blocks that were inside the trunk. 

“Yeah, we thought about you trying to slip your chains. We took steps where it won’t happen. Now, stick a sock in it.” Marilyn shoved a knot made of Alex’s discarded socks into Army’s teeth. Renee cranked the radio and they shot off into the gathering dark.   

Alex stood in the woods, dancing to shift the cold in his feet. He’d used his GPS and Mathlete computation skills to figure out his exact coordinates. Marilyn, Renee, and his captive dad should be here any minute, the police in their wake. 

It had been a simple realization of the Wandering Hot Potato. Despite their masks and military coats, he had a maturing boy’s eyes. He could spot the female figure from a mile away. Thus, Alex Prescott had concluded that the entire nursing staff of Durango general hospital were accomplices to Dr. Lucien Swift’s crime. Playing on his conclusions, he had sent a blanket text to everyone on Lucien’s contact list (which he had stolen by hacking into his email). 

All he could do now was watch and wait. Wait to be caught between the scalpels of crazed physicians and the teeth and inhumanly strong hands of the angry risen dead.

From where he stood, Alex smelled fire. He could see the tongues off it licking up from the center of a stump that Nicky was standing on.

Nick stood with his arms spread in the Crucifix position. His eyes were gleaming in the glow of the embers that burned around his ankles. From where he stood, Alex could feel the rage that echoed into the deepest circle of his brother’s tormented soul. To have been called back from his blood-drenched grave only to become the most sought after lab-rat of the Century was beyond demeaning. Knowing now that he was not the only one was empowering. He stood to incite rage in those dredged from the dust. 

Alex held his breath. This had been the terrible thing he had seen and had tipped Renee off to at the bar. The forests surrounding Lake Nighthorse had become a garden of harvested corpses. Dracula could have done no better. They hung from trees, some only partially reversed from their natural decomposing and still by definition dead. Then some of them hung healed of decomposing and were reviving slowly from the extract. Then there were those who hung from the trees gasping for reanimated breath. They were writhing incessantly mid-air, trying to free themselves of the nylon ropes that suspended them from branches in “X” shapes.

These that were awake had their eyes wide open and their heads fully turned to Nick where he stood in the midst of the smoke. 

He picked up a piece of cardboard he’d leaned against the trunk and had written on with a permanent marker. The Hanging People twisted around to read his sign: 

This is the Forest of Toys for the God-players. Abandon hope all that enter here.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Nick’s voice echoed off the trees and drowned out the whimpering of a once-teenaged girl that had just revived. 

“Can everyone hear me? Are you awake yet? Feel like you’ve been asleep for centuries? For some of you, this is actually true.” 

A man that was hanging in the rotten clothes of a historical cowboy choked audibly, astounded by Nick’s implication. 

“Listen to me all of you. My name is Nicolas Avalon. Over half a year ago I was killed in a traffic accident. I was murdered by people my own father had solicited for the sake of medical research! Then by some divinely successful stroke of that same research I revived. Again I was drowned in the Lake, not 10 miles from here. Again, I was revived. 

I have come forward to campaign for you, ladies and gentlemen, citizens of the Grave. I don’t know how long this scientific phenomenon will sustain us. Could it be that it is temporary and we will return to the casket linens shortly? I have no idea. Or shall we live our lives again to full ripe age? I don’t have an answer for this either. Is this a blessing or a curse? It’s beyond me.” 

He swallowed, knowing what he was saying was a difficult sermon to hear. But he needed to say it. For the sake of his own free moral agency, he needed to preach his conviction to these people.

“What I do know for absolutely certain, ladies and gentlemen, is that a great wrong has been done to us all. We are just warm-blooded dolls with respiration in the games of these God-players. What we are isn’t natural. Didn’t we have the right to rest in peace? Is it morally right or actually ethical to disturb our Eternal rest and submit us to these excruciating examinations? My good citizens of the Grave, the answer is no! This thing that has been done to us is intolerable!”