Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [107]
“If Denny hadn’t walked in on us, it wouldn’t have turned ugly. He just didn’t understand.” He dropped his head in his hands. “Denny tried to save Henry, even though it meant the cancer would kill me.”
“So you decided to murder him, too?”
“Of course not,” he said, his tone chilling. “He was going for help, to turn me in. I was chasing him to stop him, to explain. We struggled, I pushed him and he fell. Hard.” His face showed all the horror he must have felt that night, something akin to regret swirled in his eyes. “There was so much blood. It was everywhere.” He held up his hands to me, as if expecting the blood to still be there.
A pang of sympathy pulsed through me as I looked at the broken person in front of me. He didn’t seem as scary to me, he seemed more like a wounded animal who needed help. I took a step toward him.
He rested his chin in his hands. “If you found that you had accidentally killed Cherie, what would you have done?” I couldn’t come up with an answer, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to live with myself. Thomas sensed a minor victory and pressed on. “I didn’t mean to do it. I was disgusted when I realized what I had done. Henry died because he wanted to, but Denny was an accident.”
I took another step toward him but paused as I asked, “So why didn’t you just stop then and turn yourself in? Why not make it right?”
“What would turning myself in have accomplished? It would have dishonored both Henry and Denny, making their deaths pointless.”
“You believe that?” I scoffed, drifting a few paces back, my sweaty palms clasped together.
Thomas frowned. “I was in Henry’s body. Would it have been fair to Henry’s family to ruin their son’s reputation by turning him in as a murderer? The other choice was going back to my own dying body, and there was no way I would do that. The only thing I could do was to stage the drowning and the fire to cover everything up. I thought that would be the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t. You needed a new body every two years.” A chill ran down my spine as I backtracked some more.
Thomas nodded. “The body begins to rot after that. The wrong soul is in the body and the body knows it. Henry’s decayed faster once his spirit had crossed over, so I knew it was best if I kept them from the light, and away from their bodies.” He lifted his head from his hands.
“But after that night, you’ve made the choice over and over to kill someone else. How do you justify that?”
“I don’t have to justify it. I do what I have to do to survive, just like you or anyone else. Besides, my best friend had already died because of me— what were the other deaths compared to his?” His voice sounded dead, past feeling. “You know, Yara, my life hasn’t been easy since Denny’s death. I’ve been a prisoner at this school for over sixty years; isn’t that penance enough?”
“No, because you keep killing people!”
He glared at me in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “It doesn’t matter. After tonight I’ll have enough strength to break open my cell. I just needed the right key, Yara, and that’s you. If you want the deaths to stop, the souls freed, and Brent’s life restored, now is your chance. Are you willing to join me?” He held out his hand and his fingers started to stretch longer as they reached toward me.
“No!” I took a step back.
His face was incredulous. “Even after you’ve heard my story? Even now that you understand what I’ve gone through? Even after you’ve heard what you’d be getting in exchange?” He huffed and shook his head as if I was the most incomprehensible person he had ever met. “Don’t you see I’m not the bad guy?” The corners of his mouth pinched together as he waited for my response that never came. “Fine. Do this the hard way. Nothing personal,” he added casually. “I actually like you, but that doesn’t change anything. You’re strong enough for my purpose now, so this is how it has to be.”
Gone was his repentant self; he had