The Soul Seekers

by Amy Saia

  I cried out, but Mom refused to meet my eyes. She nodded something to one of the men, moving to the side so they could pull me toward the front room.

  That’s when Grandmother Carrie walked into the house. A flash of horror washed over her face when she realized what was happening. “Emma, Emma!”

  I watched as she ran forward a few steps, lost her balance, and tripped. In slow motion, her body slammed into the kitchen table and then fell down to the floor in a thud.

  Mom ran to her side. “Just get Emma out of here and I’ll take care of this!”

  “Mother,” I pleaded. She shook her head and turned away.

  “This is illegal, you know?” I yelled while being shoved out the front door.

  The man next to me peered down with eyes hidden behind thick, horn-rimmed glasses. I shivered, partly from fear, but also because his hands were freezing cold. “Please, please just let me go so I can see if my grandmother’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Shay. Everything will be fine. Try to relax.”

  I let out a harsh breath. “I am not going to stop fighting. Got it? Remove your goddamn hands now before I kick one of you in the face!”

  He said nothing. I lifted my leg and tossed a shoe heel up toward his mouth. He ducked away, laughing.

  “Shall I?” he asked the others. They nodded. Before I knew it, a paralyzing sensation spread through my body—starting with my chest and moving down to my knees. Mercury eyes watched with delight as my whole body dropped to the sidewalk like a noodle.

  “Have a good sleep,” the voice growled.

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  I woke up alone on some sort of cot—a blanket-covered slab would be a better description. The room was dark, with only a bit of light coming from under a door to my left. The air was damp with a strong smell of condensation and a hint of sulfur. It was so damp that whatever I was wearing—it felt like a rough potato sack—had become soaked with cold moisture.

  Outside I could hear mumbling voices, though none I recognized. A dizzy, sick feeling swarmed inside my skull, forcing me to lie still. I knew I should attempt to get up and find a way to escape, though the fear of the unknown left me at a disadvantage.

  I recalled the five men and the frightening way their eyes had sucked into mine as I struggled against their hold. What would they do to me when they came back? Something told me they weren’t ones to make any deals. Something told me, I was the deal.

  “Please William,” I whispered through the darkness, “I need you. This isn’t a time to be proud or to follow the rules. If you get me out of here, I promise I won’t bother you anymore.”

  When footsteps shuffled outside the door, stopping to undo a bolted lock, I decided that if this were the moment, I would put up a fight—taking me wouldn’t be that easy. I braced myself, fighting off the swimming nausea, and focused my eyes on the light under the door, gearing myself for defense. The door opened, revealing two hooded figures—tall and dark with shadowy faces. They said nothing, but came to stand over my tense body. When I reached out to thrash at one of the men, he flashed his eyes into mine, and I felt my body instantly slump back down to the slab below.

  It started again. My lungs pulsed and swelled and began to push against my chest. At first it felt queer, almost delightful, until a rushing sound bled into my ears, louder than a freight train. Just before I gave in and started to scream with agony, it stopped, and my eardrums buzzed with silence.

  “What do you want from me?” I managed to choke out.

  I heard a voice say, “It was done to get to him.”

  Him? Who him? The only him that mattered to me was William. But that was impossible. I swallowed hard. “Won’t I do instead?”

  “It’s too late. You should have come to us in the first place, Miss Shay. Still, your memory loss made our job a lot easier.”

  They stood there, mumbling words to each other no human could possibly understand then became quiet for a moment as if in final council. Finally, the figures shuffled out the door and locked it behind them.

  The numbness slowly faded, like a dental patient three hours post-surgery. Time to make a new plan. If this was a cult and I was what they considered an out of control teenager or a lost soul, I would be easy to manipulate, easy to brainwash. The sooner I feigned acceptance, the sooner they’d let me go, and the sooner I’d find out what the hell was really going on.

  I thought of William again and felt a dread eating up my inner core. He’d been so urgent, wanting the coin, always begging for me to leave. Was he in some sort of trouble that he’d not wanted me to know about? But angels didn’t have those sort of problems, they were free and could go anywhere they wanted; they were protected by the magic of pure love. I sat up in a flash. Stupid me. He wasn’t an angel! I’d seen it myself: his anguish, his very humanlike responses, the way he had kissed me. So who, what, was he then?

  Hours went by. I lay there listening to silence then heard a squeaking sound start up in the very far right corner of the room. There came another squeak and an altercation started. Mice. Lots of them. In multiples they scuttled around, scratching and gnawing along the stone wall, making their way closer to the cot.

  Screaming, I jumped to my feet and batted wildly at the floor. The vermin scurried back to their hole; they weren’t used to someone in their room, and I’d scared them. Thank God. But what if I had been paralyzed when they came? Would they have nibbled at me as if I were a live buffet? The thought made me itch and wretch. With quivering muscles I cowered to my knees and wrapped my arms tight.

  An hour later a new problem presented itself. My bladder was painfully full. Half an hour inched by, and I had to go. With a spinning world, I crept over to a corner and did the task, hating it the whole time, but feeling relief anyway.

  The door opened to again reveal the row of silent figures standing in a tunnel with dark, shroud-covered bodies. “You’re free to leave.”

  My eyes squinted in response, and in shame I pulled the robe around myself tight. I was free? Why? This wasn’t what I had expected, and I didn’t trust their words.

  “We don’t need you now.”

  Standing up and almost falling back down on weak legs, I moved across the room. At the doorway I lowered my head and fled past them without allowing myself to breathe the same putrid air that came out of their lungs.

  I heard the door close behind me and was led through a maze of endless tunnels of dark stone. It was ice cold, but worse than that were the hands which kept clutching and prodding at me. The walk was excruciating with many inclines, pitted with sharp ridges and loose stone. Mounted lights flickered against wet limestone, barely illuminating the path before me, working to keep my guards’ faces in shadow. We reached an opening, and I was shoved out into denim-blue night air, the sound of a river cutting through somewhere in the distance.

  In disbelief I turned, still unsure of my luck, and turned quickly away when I met his hollow eyes. I backed away and began to hyperventilate. It hit me how alone I was and how lost. There was nowhere to go. I almost missed my little rodent- infested cave room. For a second, I almost begged the men to take me back and just get whatever they wanted over with, but they had already slithered away back into the cave entrance.

  The valley echoed below, carrying the sound of my bare, unsteady feet across miles of limestone bluffs. Seeing a slight hill to the right, I reached up and pulled myself to a higher plateau, then walking a bit, repeated the same thing with another low level of rock, over and over. After what seemed like an hour, I heard the sound of cars passing by somewhere above. Climbing another bluff, I found myself at a wide landing with a county sign stating I was on a scenic overlook of the Ohio Valley. Just a short way beyond that, the black asphalt of a paved road, still hot from dusk, met my bare feet.

  The sound of a revving motor met my ears,
followed by lights coming from around a curve in the road. It stopped directly in front of me—a shiny new Camaro—headlights beaming at my disheveled, robe-covered body.

  Out hopped Jesse, looking quite distressed, but alive nonetheless. When he came over to stand by my side, I brushed past, suddenly angry at his presence.

  “What did they do to you?” He stepped forward to block my steps. “Was it that bad?”

  I clenched my teeth. “Yes. It was that bad. I didn’t see you there. What happened to rescuing me?”

  “How could I? They took you too fast; there was no time to help. Come on. Get in so we can talk.”

  I gave him a long speculative look. “I don’t think so.”

  “Where are you gonna go? Not home. Your mom will just call them, don’t you know that? She’s been brainwashed by these people. I’m your only hope.”

  I smacked his hand away when he reached for my arm.

  “Hold on.” I let out a long breath before speaking again. “Where will you take me?”

  “Not far. I have an apartment in Brentwood that no one knows about. We can go there and talk—get this whole thing figured out.”

  In silence I followed him back to the Camaro. He held the door open for me, and I got in with a scowl. He had to understand that I still did not trust him, that I only followed due to my lack of options.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, revving the engine to a start.

  “Yes, but eating is the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “I can get you something.”

  I ignored him and took a look around the car, noticing again how new it looked. Everything was so clean. It even had that funny new car smell people always raved about. Hadn’t Jesse said, during all his rambles with me at the hospital, that he worked a crummy job at a local record store and needed to earn more cash for New York? How could a boy with a lousy job afford something like this?

  “Jesse,” I said, “how did you get the money for this car?”

  He looked surprised, then guilty. “What do you mean? I worked. At the record store, I told you.”

  “People don’t get money for cars like this by working retail. Tell me the truth.”

  “That is the truth, okay?” He looked at the road for a moment, then back at me, contritely. “I may have had a little loan from someone. Who cares? I needed a car.”

  My brain was busy trying to put things together, and I placed him back on my list of suspects. “Jesse, who lent you the money?”

  His fingers drummed on the steering wheel, body hunched forward as he drove. “I’m going to be honest. It wasn’t a bank or a friend. My whole life has been a string of crazy people and unnatural things. I was just a boy when it all started, Emma. We didn’t know anyone when we got here, things weren’t looking so good. He joined and they gave us a little money for an apartment, for food. Sometimes they would ask me to help out with little stuff and I would do it, because I needed the cash or whatever, but I could never commit. I’ve left many times. It’s impossible trying to live on my own. I don’t think you could understand how hard.”

  “Okay, go back. Who is this ‘he’?”

  Jesse sighed. “My step-dad, Emma. He’s part of the cult. Just like your mom.”

  He didn’t have to tell me who they were. “What would they ask you to do?”

  “Help sign up teenagers for their groups. Mostly troubled teens. If I heard that someone had a death in the family or a bad relationship with their parents, I’d go and pretend to be friends for a while. My step-dad,” he began, stopping for a second to clear his throat, “he likes it. Somewhere along the line, the things they did made sense, and he became a true Seeker. I’ve tried to persuade him to leave with me, to start a new life away from them—the life we were supposed to live before it all happened—but he hungers for the eclipse.”

  I was lost again. Cults and Seekers and an eclipse?

  “And they want you, but it isn’t time yet. I convinced them I would keep you in town and that I’d bring you back in when they ask me to.”

  “Will you?”

  He looked at me, fire burning in his eyes. “Hell, no!”

  19: Smoke

  Jesse reached into the dark room to flip on a light switch. A small, one-room apartment flickered to life. “Nice, eh?” he asked, a big smile on his face.

  I saw a worn-out couch that looked like it was straight off someone’s front curb. Dark blue shag carpet stretched across the floor, stopping at a poster-filled wall. There were multitudes of musicians and rock bands plastered all over the fake paneling.

  “Yeah. It’s okay. Does your step-dad live with you?”

  “Nah. We haven’t spoken for a few months. This is kind of my own secret place, you know? He’s living with some people from the church.”

  A sandy-haired mutt came running out from under the couch. Jesse swooped it up in his arms and plastered it with kisses.

  “This is Mimi. Isn’t she cute?”

  I reached out to pet her and received a friendly lick on my knuckles.

  “I better take her out for a run. Just make yourself comfortable and I’ll be back in a minute, okay?” Grabbing a small leash, he headed for the door and called out behind him, “There’s some stuff to make sandwiches in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  When he came back, unleashing Mimi at the doorway, I’d already made a salami and Swiss sandwich and taken a couple of good-sized bites. As the food settled in my stomach, some of the stress of the day began to resolve, making me feel like I could take on more of this new world. I took a sip of the juice Jesse had wordlessly poured for me after coming in.

  Jesse began to massage my back. With a careful touch he brushed my hair to the side. His voice was somber. “Do you think you’ll ever be able to trust me again? My lies are done, I promise.”

  I turned to face him, pushing his hands away. “Jesse, there’s something you should know. I’m in love with someone else. Even if you had never lied, if none of this had ever happened, I still would love this other person.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I already know.” His eyes became angry, looking past me to the front wall.

  “He told me to leave with you, but I wouldn’t do it.” I was desperate to find out what was happening to William. “Please help me, Jesse. Tell me everything you know.”

  “I know that he’s not the one taking care of you and keeping you safe. I am.”

  “You know what’s going on, don’t you? Jesse, what did you do with that box? You know, the one you threw in with my stuff?” His eyes shifted to the left, and I knew he was about to lie. “The truth, please.”

  “I gave it to them. Or, I mean, I gave them what was inside.”

  “A coin?”

  “Yeah. You want to know why I did it? Because they gave me so much dough that we can get the hell out of here, for good. Enough to get us to New York by tomorrow.” He avoided my angry look. “That box was a real son-of-a-bitch to open. Took me all night.”

  “What did they say when you gave it to them?”

  “Not much. They were real happy to see it. Said they had everything they needed now, and my job was done.”

  “So you knew?” I tried to keep my voice even. “When you took that box, you knew?”

  He nodded. “It was easy money for us! This will keep us going for at least three months in the big city. This way you won’t have to work while I get some gigs lined up and the record deal put in place.”

  I wanted to strangle him. Stupid boy and his flimsy dreams. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” I whispered, moving away from him to press my forehead against his poster wall, eyes closed. “What else did they say? Tell me everything.”

  “Emma, there’s nothing, just that lover boy turned himself in. The eclipse is coming, and it�
��s all set.”

  A flash of something shot into my brain. The inside of a car—a van perhaps. It was stifling hot, but someone’s arms held me close. Cold arms that sent waves of happiness through me. A voice whispered in my ear: The eclipse is coming. “What?” I stammered suddenly. “What are you telling me?”

  “Today is,” Jesse looked over at a wall calendar attached on the refrigerator door with a guitar magnet, “the eighteenth of August. Saturday. The lunar eclipse is on Tuesday, the twenty-first. There will be a big ceremony that night. A new Seeker will be born.”

  I fell to my knees as the memories came: seeing William for the first time in the library, the day he touched my hair, the day we first spoke, the gentle way he touched me at the Summerfest, his words outside the van before he disappeared into sundown.

  I’ve waited so long. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for it to happen, for someone to set me free from this oblivion.

  No.

  To have skin that could be touched. To be heard, to seen.

  Stop. I don’t believe any of your lies.

  It’s true, Emma. I’ve been like this for many years, longer than you’ve been alive. I’m angry with myself because I was selfish and dreamed that it would be you who found me. Why the hell did it have to be you?

  The sobs ripped through me. Jesse dropped down to my side, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  Each memory came like a wave, stronger and stronger until the moment Pontiac and Camaro met in screeches of explosive metal. I looked at Jesse with tear-stained eyes. “I remember everything,” I whispered. “I know what I need to do now.”

  “Yes,” he said in grim acknowledgement, burying his face down into my shoulder. “I was afraid of that.”

  That night Jesse and I laid out our plans for what was to happen in the next few days. He said he knew every nook and cranny of the caves and could sneak us in without too much trouble, but because of the cult’s extra-sensory powers we’d have to take care to protect ourselves.