Dark Soul Experiments

by Bre Hall

  “I was almost killed last night,” she said, crunching through the leaves that had been left unraked. She stopped in front of the headstone Alfie was at. He dragged a hunk of white pastel over black parchment, creating a new graveyard masterpiece for his collection.

  “What? How?” He stopped rubbing and looked up at her, his mouth slightly agape.

  “I was riding home from Peter’s and they found me on the way home. Would have smashed me like they did my bike if Peter hadn’t swooped in. Literally.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “The Auxilium who have been trying to kill me,” Ren said. “Since the beginning of time, practically.”

  “And he saved you?” Alfie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He did, Peter?” Alfie snorted. “Really?”

  “You could at least try and act pleased that Peter was looking out for me,” she said. “That at least someone was.”

  “I look out for you.” Alfie returned to his rubbing, pulling the pastel over the parchment in long, smooth strokes. He mumbled, “Not that you heed my advice.”

  Ren rolled her eyes. “Can you, for like, two minutes, not be fixated with having to be right and just listen to me? I trust Peter. I think he actually knows what he’s talking about. And I like him.”

  “Good for you.” Alfie’s next stroke was gruff. Bits of the pastel crumbled on contact with the headstone and scattered over the grass like pin-head sized hailstones in a spring storm.

  “I mean I like him.” Ren knelt down beside Alfie. Plucked a brittle maple leaf off the ground. “Like more than friends.”

  “I know what you meant and I think you only like him because you have Stockholm Syndrome,” Alfie said. “You know what that is right? When the prisoner falls in love with their captor?”

  “I know what it is,” she snipped, even though it was a lie. She didn’t. “Peter isn’t keeping me prisoner, and when we kiss—”

  “Please,” Alfie grumbled. He chucked the white pastel into the fishing tackle box that sat near his overturned bicycle and slammed the lid closed. “I don’t want to hear about you and him.”

  “Why?” Ren ripped the leaf in half, then again, and rose to her feet. “Are you jealous?”

  “What is there to be jealous of?” Alfie pulled the parchment from the headstone and rolled it up tightly. “You barely know the guy.”

  “I know him better than you do.”

  “How long has he been in your life?” Alfie shook a rubber band loose from the pocket of his khaki shorts and wound it around the roll of parchment. He waved the tube through the air as he spoke. “How long, Ren? Go on, give me a number of days. Count them. I bet you don’t even use every finger.”

  Ren swatted his stupid parchment out of her face. “It’s not about length of time. It’s about depth.”

  Alfie’s eyebrows pressed together so tightly they became one, blonde, coiled spring. “So, you think you have a deep connection with him because you kissed? Because he probably told you that you’re pretty? Held your hand? Paid attention to you for more than a second. That’s not depth, Ren. That’s bullshit floating on the surface. Are you really that shallow?”

  Her blood sizzled beneath her skin. She could feel the heat spreading to her cheeks, drifting up her neck. Her fists, hot with rage, began to curl. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Then why did you?” His eyes were cold. Less blue, more green, like they had been at Peter’s.

  “You’re my best friend. I thought you would be happy for me. I guess I was wrong. I guess I was too shallow to think you could just support me in all of this.”

  Ren swiveled on her heels and stomped over the graves toward the main gate on the other side of the cemetery. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell Alfie everything that had happened the night before. About Peter clamming up when she talked about what she saw in the void and how he suddenly had to travel out of town. As she kicked through the fallen leaves, blown in drifts along the iron fence, she felt like she was losing not only Peter, but Alfie as well.

  She walked down Wynn’s only hill, glaring at the brick and clapboard houses speckled along the road’s edge and the trees that grew out of crusted, yellow grass and up at the blue sky, sickeningly dotted with cute, rabbit tail clouds. It was all too quaint, too small town. Too familiar. If her bike wasn’t wrecked, she’d climb on and just keep pedaling. Make it to Wichita or across the Oklahoma border by nightfall if she was fast enough. She wanted then, more than ever, to put Wynn and everyone who knew her behind her. She wanted to step out of the bubble that builds around small towns, sucking the life from it like a leech, and move beyond it.

  She kicked a crack, raised in the sidewalk from a tree’s root snaking too close to the concrete surface, with her boot, clenched her jaw, and growled. A little boy, no more than eight years old, stared at her from a yard nearby, a flattened basketball curled under his wimpy arm. She narrowed her eyes on him and kept walking, reaching the bottom of the hill in mere seconds. She turned at the next intersection, her pace so quick that the sound of her legs, wrapped tightly in her tights, was deafening.

  The hum of wind through bike spokes rose above the noise. Rattle of a chain. Bump of a tire falling over the uneven brick streets.

  Her lips crunched together and she peeked over her right shoulder just in time to catch a wisp of bleach blonde hair as Alfie slung himself around the corner. Even from a distance his eyes were softer. Face relaxed. Still, she put him in her blind spot. He slowed. Pedaled alongside her.

  Alfie sucked down a much-needed breath. “I’m sorry, Ren.”

  She pretended to be enamored by an inflatable, Halloween-inspired spider that filled the entire yard of a blue house a few yards ahead. It was a black widow. Red hourglass shape on its back. She’d seen several up close as a girl playing in her father’s barn. Creepy critters. Not as bad as snakes, but close.

  “Did you hear me?” Alfie asked. She kept her gaze on the spider. “I’m sorry I called you shallow and I’m sorry you think I don’t support you. I’m your best friend, Ren. I know you better than anyone. I can just be overprotective sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” She hadn’t wanted to speak to Alfie. Had wanted to freeze him out, but the word had just slipped out. Broke through the barrier of ice.

  “Okay, a lot of the time,” Alfie said. “The point is, I’m a jerk, and I shouldn’t have said those things. I just don’t think Peter is telling you the whole truth. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Ren stopped and turned toward Alfie. He planted his feet on the ground to keep the bike from moving anywhere.

  “I’m a big girl,” she said. “I can handle myself.”

  “I know,” Alfie said. “I’m sorry if I doubted you. It was never about you. It was always about Peter.”

  “I know.”

  “I just don’t like that guy,” Alfie said.

  “I know.”

  “He irks me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alfie said. “Please, say something other than I know.”

  Ren laughed. The ice inside her melted completely. She could never stay mad at Alfie for long. “It’s okay. Well, not okay. You were acting like a total ass. But I forgive you, nevertheless.”

  Alfie nodded to the pegs bolted to the back of his bike. “Hop on and I’ll take you home.”

  “Such a gentleman,” Ren said and climbed onto the pegs. She held onto Alfie’s shoulders as they started up the street. She closed her eyes and focused on the cool breeze wafting over her cheeks, cooling her down as she felt the steadiness of Alfie just beneath her palms.

  GRAMS WAS ROCKING IN A paint-chipped chair on the front porch when Alfie and Ren rolled up the drive. The old bat was twirling something in the air, grey smoke dancing over her head. Ren hopped off of Alfie’s bike before he ditched it in the grass and they both climbed the steps. Grams was humming. Maybe it was chanting. Singing, even. Ren couldn’t tell which.

&n
bsp; “What’s with you?” Ren tried to get Grams to look at her, but the old woman’s gaze was lost somewhere between the porch rail and the half-cut sorghum field as she waved her smoking bundle and mumbled.

  “Is that sage?” Alfie asked.

  More mumbling.

  “Grams.” Ren snapped her fingers in front of her grandmother’s face. “Hey, Grams.”

  Grams’ glazed-over look vanished. She focused on Ren’s hand. Swatted it away. She twisted up her wrinkly face. “The hell are you doing? Snapping fingers near my nose like that. Nobody teach you manners, girl?”

  “Sorry,” Ren grumbled. “I was just wondering what you were doing with the sage?”

  “Your daddy’s in a bad mood. Real bad,” Grams said. “Banging in and out of the house all day. Cursing like your grandfather. This whole place needs cleansing. Outside and in.”

  “Good luck with that.” Ren’s tone was flat, removed, but inside of her, two fingers pinched at her heart.

  After her mom left, before Grams came to live with them and well before Meredith did, it was just her and her papa, her name for him until she turned nine. She was his little shadow. Followed him into the pasture to feed the cattle. Sat on his lap as he plowed the fields. Where he went, she went. She felt everything he felt. Happiness, sorrow, grief. When he laughed, she laughed. When he cried, so did she. In recent years, when she was feeling like her tough skin was molting, she’d fall back into her old ways. She wondered if she’d wake later that night, curled up outside of her dad and Meredith’s bedroom door, her old spot, from when she was a girl.

  She stepped into house, the place loud from kitchen drawers banging, clattering. Her dad was in the kitchen, sifting through the junk drawer. He was mumble-cursing under his breath. The kind of proclamations you let out after stubbing a toe.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?” she asked.

  “Compass on the combine broke.”

  “Drive it manually,” she said.

  He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. Wrong answer. “See, that would be a great idea if I had some help.”

  “What happened to Joe?” Creepy, sneaking Joe. He probably wasn’t much of a help, but at least he was a body her dad could use.

  “Didn’t show up today,” he said. “I can’t drive the tractor with the trailer attached and the combine at the same time. If I don’t have the harvest into the elevator by the middle of next week, I’ll miss the first train and the first check and—”

  He started to curse again. Dug sharply through the junk. A pencil flung over the edge. His square fingers caught in a roll of tape. He shook his hand free, let out an ack, and slammed the drawer.

  Ren was right beside him in the next second. “Let me help.”

  “We’ve already discussed this. You’re not missing school.” He stomped across the hardwood floors in his work boots. Each step released a sprinkling of rich, brown earth, wet from the rainstorm. If Meredith had been there, she would be pleading in a high-pitched voice to take off your shoes, your shoes, Hank, please.

  Ren followed her dad into the mud room. He started rifling through a closet of coats. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but was pretty sure he wouldn’t find it pressed between his winter hunting overalls.

  “I’m not looking to get out of school this time,” she said. “Just let me drive the tractor until Joe comes back.”

  “He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I hope so.”

  “What about tonight?” she asked. “I can help you until dark.”

  “I’ll sit in the tractor with her,” Alfie called from the kitchen. Keeping his distance. “Make sure she stays in line.”

  “Hey,” Ren snapped.

  Her dad sighed. He closed the closet door tightly. “I can wait another day. Joe’s probably just sick. He’ll be back.”

  “Are you sure?” Ren asked. “You sounded desperate a minute ago.”

  “It’s late anyway,” he said, flinging open the back door. The cool of the encroaching evening swept in like fury. “Order us some dinner, will you? Meredith’s at the college running a study group for some students. I’m feeling like Chinese.”

  “Dad, just—”

  “It’s fine, Ren. It’s all fine.” Her dad pulled the door closed behind him. Everything on the walls shook. The porcelain rattling the most.

  She turned back to the kitchen and pulled the cordless phone off the wall. She knew the Chinese restaurant’s number by heart. There were only two in town. Only one worth going to.

  “Order some of those good egg rolls,” Alfie said.

  “And Kung-Pao chicken,” Ren said. It was her dad’s favorite. Hers too. She turned on the phone and began to dial.

  chapter

  21

  MONDAY CAME AND WENT, THE only significance being the purchase of an art deco gravy boat Ren found in a pile of cheap, metal cutlery. She had to haggle with Richard for close to twenty minutes—it’s antique, kid, it’s worth a lot. Not sitting in your shop forever. Fine, fifteen bucks. Thank you—before he finally caved.

  Then came Tuesday and an afternoon sitting on the front porch, hoping for Peter to appear suddenly at the end of the driveway, but as the sun went down and Meredith drew her inside to help with dinner, Ren gave up waiting on him.

  By Wednesday afternoon she wasn’t just wondering what had happened to the wing-backed boy with gorgeous curls, she was itching to get her hands on the tooth and find out what happened to Lizzie. Discover for herself if another supernatural ability would be unearthed or if her power of levitation would simply strengthen because of her fuller soul.

  When the school bell rang to end the day, she was the first one out of the classroom. She threw her books in her locker and tracked down Alfie, who was trying to squeeze his massive backpack, stuffed full of paperback books no doubt, out of his own locker.

  “I know you don’t approve, but I need you to take me to the Johnson Place on your bike.” She’d found her cruiser on the way home from Richard’s Monday evening. It had been knocked into a farmer’s cornfield. Mangled, unrepairable. Just like she’d expected.

  “You’re right.” Alfie grunted and gave the pack one last tug. It popped free and a faded copy of Frankenstein hopped out of an unzipped pocket. “I don’t approve.”

  “Peter won’t be there.” She picked up Alfie’s book before he could. Folded it into her chest. “He’s still gone, remember?”

  “Or so he says.” Alfie closed his locker and turned to Ren, who standing just inches from him. She stuck out her bottom lip and blinked up at Alfie with big eyes. He shook his head. “No pouting. You know I can’t stand you pouting.”

  “Please?” She tried her best to look even more pathetic. “I need to find out what happens to Lizzie.”

  “I can guess.” Alfie extended a wide palm. “Can I have my book back?”

  “I want to see what happens.” She smashed the book against her ribs. “I want to feel her death for myself. Come on, Alfie.”

  “Are you holding my book hostage?”

  “Maybe.”

  Alfie turned into a crowd of their peers funneling toward the front doors of the high school. Ren kept tight on his heels. Alfie pushed through the closest door and stepped outside. “Fine. I’ll take you.”

  “Seriously?” She lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t even have to threaten to burn your book?”

  “You’d never do that,” Alfie said as he unchained his bike from the rack out front.

  Ren took her place on the pegs and he began to pedal. “Sure I would. I’m reckless.”

  “Okay.” Alfie snorted.

  She punched him in the shoulder, then slipped the book back into his bag. Zipped it closed. “Only when I want to be, of course.”

  Alfie weaved between the mommy cars, all lined up to collect their kids, mostly freshman and sophomores who couldn’t drive yet or didn’t have the grit to walk or ride a bike. Despite traffic being thick, for Wynn that is, Alfie had t
hem bouncing down the haphazardly laid brick pavers of Main Street in no time.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Alfie asked as they whizzed by the little market.

  “What do you mean?”

  At the next crossroads, he turned off of Main and onto the side street that would eventually wind its way past the river and to the abandoned Johnson Place. Alfie sighed. “Breaking and entering isn’t exactly legal, you know.”

  “No dip Sherlock,” she said. “But I don’t think anyone is keeping a close eye on that house anyway. Besides, that tooth technically belongs to me.”

  “I’d love to watch you explain reincarnation to the Wynn Police,” Alfie said.

  “There won’t be any police.” She flicked Alfie on the nape of the neck with a long fingernail. His hand flew up to rub the growing red splotch she had created.

  “Ouch, he said. “What was that for?”

  “Scaredy cat.”

  “Am not.”

  The land was flattening even more with harvest churning forward. Corn, cotton, sorghum—all of them were disappearing. She thought of her father. Joe never showed up to the farm again. She offered several more times to help him, but he had refused. Mucked out to the barn with his flip phone and called one of his old farmhands. Said he’d pay him time and a half. The guy had showed up within the hour.

  Alfie’s bike bumbled over the bridge and they soon turned into the Johnson’s driveway, left the bike in a leafless bush, and climbed the porch steps. Ren was reaching for the doorknob when Alfie yanked her wrist away.

  “What?” she hissed.

  “Shh.” He held a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

  She shut up for a second and turned an ear out. Through the thin walls, she could hear murmurs inside. A cluster of voices babbling. Surely it wasn’t Peter. At least, she hoped not. Who would he talk to anyway? As far as she was aware, she was the only person in town he knew.

  Alfie motioned for her to follow him. They jumped down into the overgrown yard, tiptoed across the grass, and pressed themselves against the clapboard siding of the old house, just below the living room window. From there, the voices were clearer. Drifting out through a gap between the glass and the window sill.