Will gasped awake. He was alone in the morgue.
"Zacari? Javier?" He had a splitting headache and his joints stiffened as a raw cold bit into him. "Lela?"
He brought a shaking hand to the back of his head, and when he pulled away, his fingers were slick with blood.
"No," he protested.
He rose, as dizzy as he'd been the night he died. He leaned against the back wall and tried to regain his balance. "No," he said again. His vision bleared as he made his way to the morgue door and shook the handle fiercely.
What would happen if he died a second time? Only a few days ago he'd have welcomed it, but now, with Zacari's life on the line, it was a horrifying notion. He stepped back, kicked the door once, twice, threw his entire weight into it, but it was useless. He was too alive.
But I'm dead, he thought. It was an unwavering truth, like the bleakness of Gloria's death, and although Baker could mirage and twist it, ultimately he couldn't change it.
Will closed his eyes. "I'm a journalist, I'm a journalist, I'm a journalist," he whispered.
He thought of his parents and their last Hannukah together. He thought of Winston and their bike rides around the neighborhood. And he thought of Charlie and his chicken noodle soup. Will's soul fevored and pooled into the tips of his fingers, just long enough for him to take hold of the door handle and fling it open.
"Yes!"
He pitched out of the morgue and into The Operating Room. The door leading into the night was cracked open, and Will went threw it with determination.
YOU ARE READING
The Crescent
ParanormalIn 1939, young journalist Will Drachman is murdered during a visit to Dr. Norman Baker's alleged Cancer Curing Hospital. To move on, Will needs his body properly buried. But there's one problem - he has no idea where it is. Fast forward seventy-eigh...
