Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [1]
The school was supposed to have existed somewhere near the Chelsea District of New York City, although its exact location was anyone’s guess.
The school was called Daylight.
Part One
NOW
Chapter One
1
She opened her eyes to darkness. Her breathing: slow, warm, but too shallow. Something was wrong. Blindfolded? Not sure. She pressed her eyes closed and then open again. Nothing but a claustrophobic night. Her breath came back at her—an enclosed space. A dizziness, and pins-and-needles feelings in her toes and fingers. Paralyzed?
Buried. Buried alive.
Throat dry. A thudding—her heartbeat? No light at all. Not even cracks through the box. Coffin? A large trunk? She was squeezed in, and her limbs felt numb.
Dear God. Dear God.
Slow, deep breath. Hammering in her head. Wetness along her neck.
You won’t get anywhere if you panic.
This crawlspace. This…casket.
Blurred images came to her: the white room, the feeling of being laid gently down on some bed, twine wrapped around his hands as he reached for her…
Your hands. Move. Reach.
Her hands were bound in front of her. Thick twine connected her wrists, and as she tugged as hard as she could—barely able to move—she remembered how he’d spoken gently to her. She had been drugged, after all. He had incapacitated her in some way she didn’t understand.
Blocked. No matter how hard she tried to roam with her mind, something blocked her.
Her lips, parched. She opened them, but only a ragged whisper of a sigh came out. Help me. Please, she wanted to say. No, there must be a way out. Must be. This may be a test. It may be another test. It may not be what it seems. It’s just a test. Surely. Please dear God.
Please, she tried to say. Someone.
Then, she heard the voice, barely a whisper. He must be pressing his face near the sealed lid of the box. “Don’t be afraid, Gina. Don’t be afraid. Just let it happen.”
His words had the opposite effect on her. She felt as if she had begun hyperventilating. She fought back tears.
And then she felt the heaviness of her breathing—it hurt her lungs. She tried to take in too much air, and there wasn’t enough.
Please, somebody, help me.
A sound above her. Just above her face.
On the other side of the box.
And then, she gasped, because the air was running out too fast.
2
Miles from the city, in the wilds of northern New Jersey, out along the lakes beneath the great and small houses rising up among dense woods, spring has only just awakened. The ice only just melted weeks before, the new grass exploding with bright green, with the lavender and yellow of crocus and wildflowers.
Someone’s hunting.
3
A man stood on an empty plateau in a brief, but undisturbed wilderness, overlooking a placid silver lake.
It was a day of winds, a good sign as far as he was concerned. He carried his burden through the tall grass that twisted as the breeze whiffled through it. His boots went into the mud deep, and he pressed slowly through the swampy land until he’d reached the slight rise of the bank.
He set the man down, relieved to be free of the heaviness.
The man looked up at him, drowsily.
He felt the push of wind at his back; he knelt down beside the man, reached into his breast pocket for the blade, and set about his grim task.
The man beneath him. Eyes open. Watching. He matched his victim, breath for breath.
The killer caught his breath as he brought the small blade down with the precision of a surgeon.
He closed his eyes and went inside the mind of his victim, just as surely as his knife went into the man’s sternum:
The sweetness of the air. Electrical impulses sparking. The smell of ozone—a whiff of ecstasy, and then, gone, thrown into the other.
Penetrating.
He broke through the barrier.
The blade went into his chest. He looked down at it; his vision went to pinpricks of darkness, and his victim could barely see the face of the one who had stabbed him.
He experienced what his victim felt.
Burning pain.