Pale Immortal Read Online Free Page A

you wait until he wakes up on his own? The kid's exhausted."
    There was a long pause. Then, "Certainly, Mr. Stroud."
    She seemed too agreeable.
    Evan worried that Graham might try some other method of killing himself, so he kept looking in on him, hovering nervously in the bedroom doorway. Making sure he was breathing.
    He looks nothing like me.
    Does he?
    No, he looked like Lydia. That's who he looked like.
    Evan thought about what it must have been like having Lydia for a mother. What a head fuck.
    He stared at Graham again, searching for but seeing no family resemblance.
    He wasn't his kid. He couldn't be his kid, Evan told himself.

Chapter 5
     
    Using a pair of medical scissors, Rachel Burton snipped open the evidence seal she'd attached to the body bag while in the town square.
    Tuonela's previous autopsy suite had been located in the hospital basement. When a family-owned mortuary closed, the town council purchased the current property in hopes of tempting a medical examiner to become a permanent part of the community. At the time Rachel was offered the position, the only requirement she'd insisted upon was a decent air-exchange system. But decent didn't translate to quiet.
    She pulled down the clear visor.
    Another part of the package had been a place to live. The mortuary was a sprawling Victorian with scalloped gingerbread siding, turrets, and copper fascia that had turned green. Rachel had the third floor. She liked being up high. She liked being able to look out over the town, especially at night when the lights were on. Another plus was having the entire building to herself except for occasional help and the bodies that came to visit.
    She began the visual description, dictating into a microphone. "Rope burns on the ankles. Cuts on the wrists and jugular."
    The young girl had already been identified by her hysterical parents as sixteen-year-old Chelsea Gerber.
    So sad. So incredibly sad ..
    After the visual, verbal description, and observations came the external exam.
    When Rachel was in medical school, she'd quickly realized that her reaction to dead bodies was different from those of her fellow students. Some classmates were repulsed. Many commented on how it seemed that once death came to visit, it left behind an empty vessel. Like an old shoe someone had once worn.
    It wasn't that way for Rachel ...
    She found some straight dark hairs, complete with hair follicles, stuck to the body. Gerber was blond. She collected tissue scrapings and took photographs, numbering and labeling as she went.
    The nails and cuticles were lined with blood. Rachel dropped cuttings into a small collection bag. She put the clippers on the metal tray near her elbow and held the young girl's hand.
    Hands always got to her. Children's hands. A young man's hands. An old man's hands. Didn't matter. Hands were personal.
    This hand held hers with unnerving urgency.
    Even in death, Chelsea seemed to be clinging to life.
    A half hour into the internal exam, Rachel had confirmation of what she'd suspected in the square. Every artery, every vein was lying as flat and white as a tapeworm. Chelsea had been strung up by her ankles and drained of blood like some slaughtered lamb.
    Rachel let out a heavy sigh and sat down on a stool, trying to make sense of her discovery.
    It was a chillingly familiar MO. An old case had involved exsanguination and a craving for blood. A very old case. A hundred years ago, in the ghost town that was now called Old Tuonela, a killer known as the Pale Immortal had walked the streets. When darkness fell, children were rushed inside. Doors and windows were locked up tight. Some claimed that the Pale Immortal had bathed in blood, and that blood had flooded the streets until the ground became saturated.
    Even after the Pale Immortal's reign of terror ended, people were afraid. His death had come too late. A miasma of fear had grown over everybody. Many claimed the ground was cursed, and so a mass exodus had taken place.