Chapter 2
The Girl Without A Soul
In scenes as horrendous and nerve-racking as this, it is usually customary for a person to scream, shout, or yell No! countless amounts of times. A shock of this magnitude would have even forced some to close their eyes and faint. But Alex did none of these things. Her parents for sixteen years were gone right in front of her, and like a stone or a thick block of ice, she didn’t know what to think of it, didn’t know what to do or feel. Not an ounce of emotion registered inside her objective mind. She was just stuck.
“Hello little girl,” Lord Henry Combermere spoke, his voice rough and deep.
This was the first time she’d ever seen the most feared man of Suburnia up close. Her first observation; that he hadn’t aged well. His skin, which had always been pale, now looked as though it’d been dipped in cream, and he was frailer in person than he was since his last picture. The monocle on his left eye was scratched, missing the gold chain that ran into his coat.
A multiplicity of thoughts and questions regarding the man flashed before her. Yet as much as she wanted her curiosity to be addressed, there was a much more immediate situation at hand.
“You killed my parents.”
“I did.” And with that, he pulled his knife high above his head and took one step forward. He was on the verge of a strike when the blade stopped mid-air, as though some magnetic forced held his arms in place.
“You’re not sad?” he asked, though it sounded more like a thought than an actual question.
Alex gazed over at her dead parents.
“I’ve never felt sad in my entire life.”
Both mother and father were lying on their backs, one beside the other. Their eyes wide open, giving her the impression that they could still see what was going on, or that perhaps they were faking death.
“Are they really dead?” she asked.
“Quite so,” Combermere replied. “Does that bother you?”
Alex searched her feelings, tried to find any shred of her that might have been humanly disgusted or terrified. She came up empty.
“No,” she breathed out.
Being without a soul had numbed her of emotional feeling, and as the many years progressed she came to understand that about herself more and more. But even for someone who lacked such an internal attribute, she found her lack of reaction to be more than a bit peculiar. After how much her parents had given her out of love, why was it that she could give nothing in return? Not even a tear, or show of honest disheartenment?
“Why doesn’t that bother you?”
Alex paused. Then, “I don’t know. I’ve always been like this.”
She crept closer to her dead parents, and closed their eyes. They were dressed in their expensive silk pajamas now stained with dark entry wounds emanating from beneath their clothes. Her father’s hair was cut short while her mother’s, bright and long, was strewn about in a chaotic mess. Her hair was bright gold, and shined with the afternoon light coming from Alex’s window. She arranged her mother’s hair, arranged it so that every strand went down her shoulders. Because her mother was always a fashion monger, she figured that even in death, she would have wanted to look as beautiful as she could.
After she was done redecorating her mother, Alex prepared herself for what was next to come.
“Are you going to-”
Her head slowly turned around. Then just like that, the tall, brooding figure of Lord Henry Combermere was gone.
Alex knelt beside her parents, kept them company whilst trying to bring herself to feel. From behind, she heard approaching footsteps smacking hastily against the floor downstairs. At first she thought that Lord Combermere was coming back. But she could sense two distinct sets of footprints stomping about the house.
Too distracted with her own thoughts to care, Alex laid her eyes on her parents, touched their skins. They were warm, but getting colder with every drop of blood that came out.
The footsteps came closer. In less than a minute, they stopped inside her room.
“Oh my God,” a man gasped behind her.
“What happened here?” someone else, just as petrified.
“Who are you?” the first man asked Alex.
She didn’t answer.
“Hey you,” now came the second. “What happened here?”
Still no answer.
They crept slowly towards her, concerned yet simultaneously afraid. One of the men turned Alex’s body to face him. It was a policeman. They were both policemen, dressed in blue uniforms.
“Who are you?” asked the policeman standing inches from her face.
But Alex still couldn’t speak. Too many questions were orbiting her mind all at once that she had lost all concern for the ones being asked by the men before her. Her mind was drifting away, steadily losing focus on reality.
“Hey,” the policeman shook her awake. “Who are you?”
Her mental lapse suddenly disappeared.
“Alexandra,” she said. “Alexandra Frost.”
“You’re their daughter?” the policeman inquired, more disheartened now than he was when he first saw the bodies.
“Yes,” she muttered back weakly.
“Come. Follow me out.”
“I’m okay.”
The policeman didn’t listen. “Let’s get you out of here,” he urged on.
The policemen took Alex by each arm and escorted her out to the front steps of her home. One of them produced a blanket from seemingly nowhere, wrapped it around her while constantly chanting the words, “It’s going to be alright.” As if saying it enough times would make it true.
“The neighbors reported a disturbance,” said the first policeman. “It’s a good thing we showed up when we did.”
“Are you okay?” the second policemen looked into her eyes, placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Yes,” she replied, but with no hint of emotion.
“Do you know who did this?”
Alex knew perfectly well who did it. The real question was Why?
She was about to let the word Combermere slip from her tongue, but held it back at the very last second.
He should have known that she was going to tell the police when he left her. If he did not want to get caught, then why did he let her live? It didn’t make any sense to her. Not unless there was something else at play. Something else that she was unaware of.
“Alex,” the policeman spoke as if he knew her, calling her by her shortened name rather than the one she formally used. “Did you see who did it?”
Hiding her doubt beneath layers of artificial resoluteness, she responded with, “No.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No.”
“Was anything missing?”
“No.”
Then came the question that once again riddled her mind.
“Do you know why someone might have done this?”
The million dollar question. Or so they called it. Why did Lord Henry Combermere murder her parents? Did they know him? And more importantly, why did he allow her to live? Why allow her to live to tell the tale?
“No.”
Off in the distance, an entourage of paramedics, fire trucks, and police cars were heard before they arrived outside her parents’ home. The firemen stood and talked while four men from the paramedics van carried her parents away on metal slabs with wheels. Their tones were much paler now than they were before. Any semblance of life, long depleted. A long line of yellow police tape stretched around the house encouraged a mass of curious bystanders to stand directly behind and stare at the commotion in Alex’s house. Seated on the front steps of her home, Alex watched the fellow neighbors and residents of Suburnia pointing their fingers at her, whispering to their friends and family members what was going on inside their minds. Never since Alex was a young child had she ever experienced such distance between her and everyone else. The people beyond the police line, fellow nei
ghbors that she and her parents knew in all their years living in Suburnia, now strangers, with their dropped jaws, and their eyes pointed at the Frost residence with sadness and fear.
“Why don’t you come with us?” said one of the two policemen.
“I can’t stay at the house?”
“Heavens no,” he objected.
“This isn’t a place you want to be. Trust us,” said the second policeman.
“What’s going to happen?”
“We’ll see,” the first policeman said, although Alex couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew full well what was going to happen.
Riding with the officers to their police station was the last thing she wanted to do at a moment like this. However, she hid her reluctance and silently agreed. Like a convict, she sat in the back while the two officers were in front. They drove for all of fifteen minutes, the only sound coming from their police radio and the vehicle’s humming engine.
The policeman in the front passenger’s seat decided to break the silence by peering into the rearview mirror, telling Alex, “It’s a good thing that you’ve found it in yourself to keep calm.”
The temperature inside the car started to warm up due to the heat coming in from the vents. He loosened his necktie and unbuckled the first button on his shirt. He introduced himself as Officer David Lambert. And by the way he told her how well she was taking it, Alex was almost certain that he was beginning to suspect her of something. Foul play, maybe.
“It’s a good thing,” the officer continued. “Means you’re strong in here,” he formed a fist and thumped it against his chest.
“He’s right you know,” came the other officer, the one driving the car. “Lots of bad things happening to good people. Can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, but you have our support. We’ll get you through this as easily as we can.”
Seven minutes later, and they arrived at the hive of the Suburnia police. It was fortunate for Alex that the two officers swore to get her through their standard procedures as quickly and efficiently as they could. She was immediately taken in to a questioning room where she was sequestered by a detective with a golden badge hanging from his neck like jewelry. He wore a long collar shirt, but with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His bare arms revealed many thick strands of hair the same color as the one that grew on his head. His top button was undone, and he didn’t wear a necktie.
“Good evening,” he started.
Alex, remaining doe-eyed and distant, said nothing in return.
“I apologize for what happened. Rest assured you have my condolences for your loss.”
The detective planted himself on a folding chair and faced it towards her. A steel desk separated the two, its surface clean and shining silver, giving Alex a distorted reflection of her own face.
“There are some questions that I have to ask you about the incident. I know you don’t want to think about it again, but we need you to hang in there so you can give us as much information as you can.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“Not long,” which Alex took to be a lie of sorts. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me before we start?”
“Do you know who might have done this?”
“That’s what we’re here to figure out. If you can help us, we’ll do our best find whoever’s responsible here. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then. Tell me everything you know.”
Much as Alex had initially suspected, her statement went on to be a challenging and lengthy process, as it required her to restate everything she told to the first policemen she encountered, and explain in full detail anything she might have left out, as well as make sure that her story about not having seen anyone didn’t contradict itself. Long and hard work, but she pulled it off without so much as a hitch. After the detective was done with his questions, he briefly squat beside her, made sure that she was close enough for him to assure her that, “We will find whoever did this, and we will stop them.”
A woman dressed in a man’s suit entered the room.
“This is Mrs. Jones,” the detective introduced to Alex.
“Good to meet you,” said Mrs. Jones.
Alex didn’t reply. This led to a short, uncomfortable silence before Mrs. Jones, the man-dressed woman spoke again.
“We called your aunt to come pick you up,” was what she eventually said.
Alex scrunched her brows. “Why?”
Mrs. Jones disclosed to her that apparently, since she was two years away from being considered a legal adult, she was to be taken care of by her closest blood relative by rule of law.
“You can’t go back to the house without a guardian,” was how she put it. “And we have to look at your house so that we can find out as much as we can about what happened. So for now, it’s important that you stay with a guardian.”
Under the circumstances, that guardian meant her Aunt Melanie. Unfortunate, she felt, because Aunt Melanie lived at least an hour away from her school. Meaning that if she would still be attending Elsinore Academy, she couldn’t walk to campus and back like she’d always done before. It was also unfortunate that in the shrieking madness of what had happened, Alex hadn’t even the opportunity to begin her homework.
Mrs. Friedman was going to be most displeased. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure what her policy was about homework in the event of one’s parents dying before their eyes. She was inclined to believe (but not entirely confidently) that Mrs. Friedman would give her some leeway there.
“What do you mean you’re going to look at the house exactly? You mean like evidence?”
“That’s precisely it.”
“So what do I do until then?”
For this, the detective broke in. “Until then, all we want you to do is relax. Gain your bearing. Do what you need to do to bring your spirits up. If you have any questions, or if you have information that might help us, anything at all no matter how seemingly unimportant, I want you to let us know.”
“You’ll be in your aunt’s supervision,” came Mrs. Jones. “For now at least. She was the closest family we could find in such short notice.”
“What happens to my house after you’re done?”
“I’m not the person to talk to about that. But once we’re done looking at the house, we’ll be sure to let you know.”
Then, the woman dressed like a man escorted Alex from the questioning room towards the front desk, where young boys with skateboards (or juvenile delinquents, as they were often called in Suburnia) were being lectured by a man three times their size, age, and weight. The woman clad in male garbs instructed Alex to wait where she was, and that her aunt was on her way to pick her up.
The station was calm silent. When she tapped her foot on the floor, much of the ensuing noise came not from the action itself, but the echoes it left behind.
Being in Suburnia, she didn’t expect that the police station would have been much more crowded than that. Aside from what happened to her parents, the biggest crime that had ever taken place here over the last fifteen years was a home robbery. A group of thieves entered the unoccupied residence of a fellow Suburnian citizen and stole every single thing of value inside the house (which was quite literally everything that was inside the house). Once news of the incident broke, it had become the most conversational topic of the year in all of Suburnia. But the latest news of the Frost family was sure to last significantly longer than that.
Alex seated herself on a bench in the lobby that was just as wooden and stiff as a church pew. She twisted and turned to make her back more comfortable. But the effort was futile. Alex wouldn’t find comfort no matter what way she positioned herself. Her best hope was to find a spot and stick with it.
Before she knew it, Aunt Melanie, Alex’s aunt from her mother’s side, was already scampering along the halls of the temple-sized police station. She was tall, slim, in her mid-thirties
, with white skin and short, round lips. Her hair was auburn, curled, and she wore a simple blouse with rose petal patterns and a plain, long brown pant that went all the way down to her ankles.
And with just a momentary glimpse at her aunt, Alexandra knew that if her mom could see what her sister was wearing now, she would have been rolling in her grave (or the morgue, since technically she didn’t have a grave yet).
“There you are,” she cried with a frightened look on her face when she found Alex. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Alex replied, and for the first few seconds she wondered what had gotten into her.
Oh, right, she thought. My parents.
“I was worried sick about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh dear,” she forced Alex into her tight embrace, tears falling down her eyes like waterfalls.
Is this how normal people deal with death? She asked herself.
Aunt Melanie released her. “Is there anything you need?”
After thinking about it, Alex realized that she was a bit thirsty.
“I could afford to have some water.”
“Of course sweetheart,” she said rather insistently, and retrieved a fresh bottle of water that happened to coincidentally be inside her brown Coach purse.
Alex drank down for two long sips before handing the bottle back half-full to Aunt Melanie.
“No sweetie, you keep it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“I talked to the police. You’re going to come live with me for a few days. Is that okay?”
“I’d prefer my home.”
“Oh I know you do Alexandra,” she empathized, though Alex didn’t think it necessary. “But we can’t go back there yet.”
“I know. They told me.”
“That’s right. The police are going to be there for as long as it takes for them to do their jobs. Trust me. It’s for the best.”
Without putting up a fight, Alex complied.
Aunt Melanie took Alex to her home in Pleasant Grove, a locale far away from Suburnia. Far away in fact, from any place she knew. It was a struggling city with graffiti markings running along shoddily buildings bearing streets littered with trash, and houses that hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in well over decades. For some odd reason, most the cars parked by its street curbs had tires missing from their bare metal rims. Some cars had bricks thrown on their windshields. Others had tire irons, lead pipes, and on some occasions, homeless people. All this she witnessed during her first five minutes in Pleasant Grove. She soon came to realize that those were just the nicer areas.
“We’re almost there,” Aunt Melanie said, clearing her throat while she focused on her driving.
The last time Alex had seen Aunt Melanie was five Christmases ago when she came to visit her and the family in Suburnia. As Alex recalled, she came dressed that day in the most unorthodox fashion. A short pink t-shirt with a peace logo on the center, olive green track pants, and a pair of sandals. She and her mother got into a long fight over proper attire, then moved onto bickering about other, more personal things. And since then, they hadn’t seen or heard from each other at all.
Alex knew little to nothing of her aunt because her mother never spoke of her. And at times when she curiously asked about her, her mother would quickly change the topic before it even had the chance to begin. It was self-evident in the way she mentioned her that Alex’s mother didn’t think very highly of her sister. So why was it then that Aunt Melanie felt so bad about what happened to her?
During the one hour drive, Aunt Melanie kept her eyes on the road and fought back sniffles from her nose. Alex on the other hand sat on the front passenger seat, counting the amount of homeless people that were in Pleasant Grove. So far she made twenty four. Or was it twenty six? It was hard to concentrate with Aunt Melanie sobbing behind the wheels.
Aunt Melanie said nothing to her since the start of the drive, and Alex debated secretly to herself whether or not she should have initiated a conversation. Some random topic to bring her spirits up. Perhaps mention the sunny weather in Peru, or the price of cheese in France. Maybe even some trivial facts. Like that the most common name in the world is Mohammed, or that Neanderthals had bigger brains than current humans. But in judging Aunt Melanie’s mental state, she wasn’t sure that she would care, or that she would even have it in her to carry a conversation.
Soon they arrived on the grounds of her apartment complex on Wiscott Avenue. She parked her car in the garage of what was probably the cleanest apartment complex in all of Pleasant Grove. And even then, the building seemed worn and dry on the outside. Judging from what she saw, it wasn’t likely that the place was going to look any better on the inside. And indeed, it wasn’t. The building inside was only slightly less unkempt and unmaintained as the rest of the city itself.
“We’re here,” Aunt Melanie said. The second half hour of the drive had cleared her mood a little, but her speech still came out no more significant than a tired whisper.
Her place was on the seventh floor, last before the roof. As soon as they went inside, the temperature was absolutely roasting. Even though the night air was cool and with wind, her home (apartment number 78) was not, and not.
“Jeez,” Aunt Melanie swore, stormed over to the oven in her kitchen right by the entryway. Fumes of smoke were steadily sifting out, filling the atmosphere of apartment number 78 in what smelled wildly reminiscent of burning charcoal. Of course, it wasn’t charcoal that had been burning in her oven (though it did look like it), but roast beef, as she brought it out from the heat wearing a pair of oven mitts. The beef was charred. It was impossible to tell where the cooked parts began and where the burned parts ended. Aunt Melanie dropped the meat in the sink and doused it with cold water. She stood by the sink, looming over her creation with utter disappointment.
“Nothing ever goes right,” she thought aloud.
“Are you okay Aunt Melanie?”
“I’m alright,” she nodded. “Are you hungry? I think we’re still early enough to call for pizza.”
Alex was, in fact, hungry. She hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch period earlier in the day, and all she had from that point on were liquids, mostly water. So she agreed to the idea, and when Aunt Melanie asked her what kind of pizza she wanted, she simply shrugged her shoulders.
It was eleven in the evening. Luckily for Alex and her Aunt Melanie, there was a 24 hour pizza delivery service just a few blocks away, and Aunt Melanie had one of its flyers among the pile of junk mail she received. Together they ate what was possibly the unhealthiest pizza ever known to man. A layer of cheese at the core of the crust, topped with three different types of cheeses, sausages, chicken strips, and pepperoni.
Alex felt the oil soak her fingers as soon as she touched a slice. She couldn’t taste the food no matter how many bites of it she took, but all the oil going inside made her feel a bit uneasy. She wasn’t used to consuming so many calories at any one given time. And on top of that, Alex didn’t much care for the idea of getting fat. Not only was it jeopardizing for anyone’s health, but it was also met with much intolerance among gym teachers and peers.
But Alex was not in any mood for such considerations. They simply ate in utter silence, and afterwards, Alex took the opportunity to familiarize herself with her immediate surroundings.
Aunt Melanie’s apartment was about as neat and organized as one could expect given the setting. The windows, though clean and with the fresh scent of Lysol, had strips of transparent tape blocking the cracked aspects of its features. The walls themselves were rotten brown, with no picture frames or decorative pieces hanging about. Just rot and mildew. There was a small television in the living room that scarcely occupied a quarter of the table it sat on.
“Are you okay?” Aunt Melanie asked Alex once more. Alex thought that with the way things were going, with Aunt Melanie so full of emotion, and Alex so devoid of any, she felt it should have been her aski
ng that very question.
“I can’t believe they’re gone,” Alex said.
Aunt Melanie hugged her once again, only this time she cried incessantly for an entire hour. One entire hour under her aunt’s arms. She was soft and cuddly at first. But by the time the hour passed, her joints turned sore and stiff.
Once the grief was all said and done with, Aunt Melanie revealed a bed from inside her living room sofa. There, Alex slept alone while Aunt Melanie went outside to, “Catch some air.” Her words.
“I have to be in school tomorrow,” Alex informed her right before she left.
“No you don’t,” she came back, and without any further explanation, the door closed behind her.
While trying to catch some much needed sleep, Alex’s mind went to her parents. It was strange knowing that she would never get to see them again. She’d gotten so used to their company, it was hard to believe that by the time she woke up next morning, her father would no longer be there, watching television as he so often did before leaving for work. And her mother would no longer be there to make scrambled eggs and toast. She would never again get the chance to kiss her daughter on the forehead before leaving for school.
In the bat of an eye, Alex’s life had taken a completely different turn. And after all the years that her parents took care of her, showered her with a vast array of emotions, she thought it inadequate that she wasn’t able to show them any of her own. At least, not any that hadn’t been faked. And even now as she realized that they were gone forever, she had no way of feeling in the least bit sad about it. She was just a girl without a soul.
Alex’s shirt pocket began to vibrate. She padded her chest. It was her cell phone. It was on silent, so it didn’t ring. Instead it pulsed.
The call came from Amy.
“Hello?” Alex spoke.
“Alex, help me! Ale-” The line disconnected.