Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2)

by D. W. Moneypenny

  “Hey, you ready to get started?” Diana asked.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” she said, turning to Ping. “How should I go about doing this?”

  Ping sat lotus-style on the edge of the rug with his back to the large window and pointed to the opposite side. “Take a seat, and we’ll figure it out.”

  She stepped into the room and took a seat. Diana walked over to the mantel and picked up the green demontoid crystal, the one Mara had carried with her the night she had battled her mother’s counterpart on the Oregon City Bridge. Taking a seat on the floor between Mara and Ping at the edge of the rug facing the fireplace, Diana placed the round crystal equidistant between them, at the center of the intricately woven pattern of the rug. She glanced over her shoulder and said to Sam, “Honey, can you turn down the lights?”

  “That’s not really necessary,” Mara said. “This isn’t a horror flick we’re living here.”

  Diana nodded to her son to continue. “I’m not trying to set the mood for a séance. The muted lighting will help you focus on, well, on whatever it is you are about to do. The crystal is for good luck. You’ve had good results with it thus far, haven’t you?”

  Having dimmed the lights, Sam took his place with his back to the hearth. Mara turned to him and said, “This was your bright idea. How do you suggest we proceed?”

  “I don’t know. Just do it. You’re the progenitor,” he said.

  Mara turned, exasperated, to Ping. “This is ridiculous. We’re sitting here in the dark, trying to make a living person’s consciousness visible. It makes no sense whatsoever.”

  “You saw Buddy’s image on the recording, didn’t you?” Ping asked.

  “Yes, but we don’t know what that means. It could simply be some kind of reflection, a visual echo of him. Who’s to say that what we are seeing is his soul?”

  “Think, Mara. Do you think it is some kind of trick of light? We saw his image down here in the living room, and he’s not even in the room. He appears to be moving, gesturing and trying to communicate independently of his body. I think it is safe to say we are seeing more than a reflection of some sort.” He pointed to the crystal on the rug between them. “Focus on trying to see him. Use the crystal to shine a light on him.”

  Mara released a stuttering sigh of frustration, and rolled her shoulders and head, like a prize fighter getting into the ring. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot. For Buddy’s sake.”

  With a final twist of her neck, Mara looked down at the green crystal and sought out a glint or a sparkle on which to focus. A trapezoidal window of light caught her eye, and she allowed herself to be drawn in, to be engulfed by the emerald light. In her mind’s eye she became surrounded by sheets of green, panes of refracting glass that shimmered and spun around her, as if she’d fallen into a kaleidoscope.

  Rays of light spiked out of the unmoving crystal, gyrating wildly and illuminating the room so intensely that the others held up their hands to shield their eyes. Light and shadow careened around the room, turning every surface into a staccato, disorienting beacon, flashing in and out of sight, inducing a sense of motion where there was none. Instinctively leaning away from the buffeting luminescence, Ping called out loudly as if trying to be heard over a windstorm, “Mara, focus on Buddy. See him, in your mind.”

  The flashes grew erratic, spun back upon themselves. Light seemed to collide in bright bursts and to sink into pits of darkness. The crystal on the floor sputtered, then exploded in a single blinding burst. And then it winked out.

  Fuzzy green spots filled their eyes for a few seconds as they adjusted to the muted, mundane white light coming from the recessed fixtures in the ceiling above the fireplace.

  “What happened?” Sam asked.

  Mara shook herself and widened her eyes in an attempt to focus. “I couldn’t seem to make the leap.”

  “The leap? What do you mean?” Ping asked.

  “Whenever I do this stuff, this metaphysical stuff, consciously there’s always a moment when I have to make a leap from wanting to do something to knowing I can do it. This making Buddy visible out of thin air doesn’t feel like something I can do.”

  “You are overthinking it,” Ping said. “All you need to do in this leap of yours is clear the hurdle of doubt. You don’t have to have a perfect knowledge of your abilities for them to work. They exist whether you acknowledge them or not. We’ve demonstrated that many times. You didn’t know you could move within space until Sam threw that snowball at you that night in the warehouse. You didn’t know you could alter reality until you heard Buddy’s voice come from that old radio case that first time we worked together. The ability is there. You need to stop putting up barriers, and you will be able to access it.”

  “You want to give it another try, honey?” Diana asked.

  “I don’t think it would do any good. I think the idea of doing this is ludicrous, and that may be a hurdle I can’t get past right now.”

  Sam leaned over and tapped Ping on the knee. “Could you switch places with me? I’m getting hot sitting so close to the fireplace.”

  Ping nodded and stood up. Sam crawled over to Ping’s spot and sat across from his sister while Ping sat back down.

  “I think this is something you could do, if you were willing,” Sam said.

  “Is that another expert metaphysical opinion from the realm where they understand so much more than the dunces who live here?”

  “Mara, don’t get snotty. He’s only trying to encourage you,” Diana said.

  Mara raised a hand and decreased the antagonism in her voice. “Okay.” Turning to her brother, she asked, “Did your version of Mara ever do something like this, try to make some sort of apparition become visible?”

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think I can?”

  “You have the ability to do it if you want.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I just know it.”

  “You’re going to have to make a better argument than that if you want to convince me.” Mara grabbed the green crystal from the center of the rug and rolled it from one hand to the other.

  “I can show you,” Sam said.

  Mara snorted, continued rolling the gem back and forth. “Go ahead, smart boy.”

  “Look at me,” he said.

  Mara looked up and locked eyes with her brother.

  “Make Buddy visible,” he prompted.

  CHAPTER 40

  Mara’s eyes glazed over, and she slowly lifted up the green demontoid in her right hand. She gradually unwrapped her fingers, allowing the crystal to sit freely on her palm. With an upward flick of her eyes, it rose in the air. Floating, it stopped, suspended parallel to the bridge of her nose. It rotated, casting green translucent shadows that swept lazily across Mara’s eyes. A glint in her eye intensified, grew more radiant, sending a ray of white light into the hovering stone.

  And it glowed and pulsed, brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, gaining intensity with each cycle like something coming alive, then like a heartbeat being fueled by adrenaline. A visual thump-thump, thump-thump, as primal as life rushing through veins, but a bright light in the place of hot blood.

  Sam, Ping and Diana found themselves enthralled in the rhythm of the light, mesmerized by the slow spin and the hypnotic beat. They were jarred when it paused, on the downbeat, when the light was dimmest. Almost as if the floating demontoid had inhaled then stopped breathing for a second.

  Sam leaned sideways to see around the hovering crystal, to catch his sister’s attention. Mara’s gaze, still bathed in emerald light, slid from the crystal to Sam. Without changing expression, she said in a calm whisper, “Now.”

  An explosion of blinding green light burst from the crystal and filled their senses. Not only could they see it, they could feel it pass through them. The flash of brilliance had texture and smell, taste and temperature. It had substance, like a spring breeze with a pleasing touch of static that clung to the skin with a sl
ight tickle.

  A loud THUNK broke the moment.

  The crystal had fallen to the floor.

  “Whoa, sis! That was intense!” Sam said, holding up his arms before him. They luminesced, emitting a light green glow. He looked down at this body, and it too cast off an emerald sheen. “It’s like looking into a pair of the night-vision goggles. Look, Ping, you and Mom are all shiny too.”

  Mara rubbed her eyes and froze when she saw her brother. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know, I think maybe you made the light stick to us somehow.” Sam smiled. He bent over to examine his forearm closely. “It’s little glow-in-the-dark pixels embedded in our skin. Kind of like lime-green glitter. You peppered us with glitter.”

  “I think she might have irradiated some of our pixels somehow,” Ping said.

  “I hope this isn’t some form of radiation,” Diana said, holding up her own hand, wiggling her fingers. “It doesn’t feel like it, whatever radiation feels like.” She turned to Mara. “Are you feeling okay, sweetie? That is a mind-blowing ability you have there.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you saying I did this?” Mara stared at her glowing palms.

  “Sam prompted you to use your ability,” Ping said.

  She turned on Sam. “You did what?”

  “I was only trying to show you that you could do it. Don’t be mad,” he said.

  “You did your mind thing on me, and now we all look like human glow sticks, and you don’t want me to be mad?”

  “You wanted to help Buddy, and I wanted to help you,” he said and turned to his mother for support.

  “Don’t yell at him. It looks like it’s fading,” Diana said.

  “She’s right. Look, I believe it will be gone in a few minutes,” Ping added.

  Mara turned back to her brother, ready to continue yelling, but his bug-eyed expression as he stared past her shoulder interrupted her thought.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, pivoting to look behind her back.

  “It really worked. Look, you can really see him,”

  A part of her thought he was joking until her eyes locked onto the transparent, shimmering green image of her friend Buddy. “On my—Bud? Can you hear me?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  Buddy’s eyes widened with shock. “Mara, can you see me? Can you hear me?”

  Mara quickly stood up. “Yes, Buddy. I can. Come here and let me look at you.”

  He ran up to her, leaned in to hug her and stumbled through her body. He regained his footing, turned around to face her and broke out in tears. “Oh, Mara, I’m so scared! What is happening to me? I thought I died. It’s like I died, but there was no one to meet me, like they say in the Bible. I looked everywhere for Jesus and for my dad. I am so scared. Am I dead? How do I get to heaven? Mara, what is happening to me?”

  “Calm down, Bud. We’re going to figure out what is going on, but we need you to calm down.”

  “I am so happy that you can see me.” He smeared tears across his greenish glowing face with the back of his hand.

  “It makes me happy too. Can you sit down?”

  He nodded haltingly, walked over to the end of the couch and took a seat.

  Sam leaned over to Ping and whispered, “How come he passes through Mara but not the couch?”

  Ping shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because it’s inanimate? We’re sort of in new territory here. I don’t think the stereotypical rules and myths apply. I mean, he’s not really a ghost, he’s the disembodied consciousness of that sick young man upstairs.”

  “Boy, I’m glad this worked,” Sam said.

  “Why do you say that?” Ping asked.

  “Did you see Mara’s face when she realized I prompted her? At least now she’s distracted.”

  Diana raised a finger to her lips, then leaned over to Ping. “I’m unclear on what we’re going to do now that we can see him. Buddy’s so scared and confused, how is he going to help?”

  “I’m not sure. We’ll have to talk to him and see what we can surmise from his experience. If nothing else, it gives us an opportunity to console him and that will put Mara in a better state of mind to help us figure out what to do next.”

  “This is all so complicated and scary. It’s a lot for someone so young to have to deal with,” Diana said, looking across the room at her daughter.

  “It is,” Ping said, nodding solemnly. “But she is up to it. I believe that.”

  * * *

  Mara knew from years of experience and growing up with Buddy that the best way to get him to calm down was to allow him to talk it through, even if it took half an hour of seemingly endless nonsensical stream-of-consciousness thoughts. He also did better one-on-one, so she had asked everyone else to go hang out in the kitchen. After nearly an hour, Buddy seemed to be slowing down a bit, leaving room for Mara to interject a few words of consolation here and there. Finally he took a breather and appeared calm enough to answer a few questions.

  “Buddy, do you remember when this happened to you, when you found yourself floating outside of your body?” Mara asked.

  “Night before last, Sunday night. I went to sleep early because I felt tired, and I never really ever woke up.” A look of excitement crossed his face as if something had occurred to him. “Maybe I’m still dreaming. It feels like a nightmare. I bet that’s what it is. But if it is, it’s been a really long one.”

  Mara leaned forward, wanting to interrupt him before he got off on a tangent. “You said you were still dreaming. Do you remember having a dream Sunday night after you went to bed?”

  “Yeah, it was really scary too.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “There was a man, a dark man with black, black eyes. He snuck up behind me, and wrapped his arms and legs around me, and squeezed me.” Buddy pantomimed pulling at a choke hold around his neck. “He made me not breathe, so I was coughing. And he squeezed my middle and held me down on the ground. It was like on WrestleMania when they put holds on each other.” Buddy’s hands fluttered, and his voice trembled. “Then I got woozy, like I was going to pass out, and the dark man picked me up and threw me into the black hole. I fell and fell, like we were on top of a skyscraper. I squeezed my eyes closed. Then I stopped falling, and I opened them, and I was on the floor beside my bed, but I was still in my bed, looking really, really sick.”

  “Did you see any black smoke or mist when you woke up?”

  “No. Just me in the bed.”

  “And you stayed in your apartment until Sam and I showed up?”

  “I was afraid to leave. I tried to talk to Hilde next door but she could not see me, and so I thought maybe I was dead.”

  “That must have been horrible, being like that all alone.”

  Buddy nodded. “I cried a lot, but I knew you would come. You always do.”

  “I wish I had come sooner.” Mara looked down, feeling terrible about what he had been through.

  “I saw you do magic,” Buddy said, smiling.

  “What?” Mara’s heart skipped a beat.

  “At my house, you made me disappear into the car. And again you did it here. I saw it.” He pointed up the stairs toward where his body lay. “And you made me green so people can see me again.” He held up his hand, wiggling his slightly fluorescent, transparent fingers. “Magic.”

  “If we get through this, you need to keep that to yourself.”

  “Am I gonna die?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Mara said. She stood up, walked over to the couch where he sat and crouched down next to him. Without thinking about it, she reached up to touch his shoulder, to reassure him, but her fingers simply passed through him. “Hey, Bud. Would it be okay if you visit out here with my mom and brother? I have some stuff to talk over with Mr. Ping in the kitchen.”

  “Sure. Your mom is cool. I’m not sure about your brother though.”

  “Why’s that? What’s wrong with Sam?”

  “Nothing. I don’t ever remember you having
a brother, then one day you do. I must be really dumb not to remember that.”

  “You’re not the dumb one, Bud. It’s something I forgot to explain to you.”

  CHAPTER 41

  The copper teakettle on the stove’s back burner trembled and whistled, prompting Mara to get up from the table where she sat across from Ping. Two empty cups were before them with strings from their tea bags hanging over their rims. Flipping the knob on the stove to Off with a loud click, Mara lifted the kettle and poured the steaming water into the waiting cups. After replacing the kettle on the burner, she took her seat and slowly dunked her tea bag in the water.

  “Did Buddy mention where he might have been exposed to the shedding?” Ping asked.

  She lifted a shoulder. “He said something about going to the convenience store across the road earlier in the day. Why?”

  “Buddy was home alone when you found him, right?” Mara nodded and Ping continued. “There must have been the passage of some length of time between when he was infected with this mist of Prado’s and the time in which he was disembodied. On the bank video, it looked fairly instantaneous. The mist entered the security guard’s body and shortly thereafter, we saw his apparition appear. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Buddy.”

  “There was a video on television where it showed the mist, but it didn’t show an apparition. I assumed they had edited it out for some reason. Why? Is that important?”

  “It might indicate a change in tactics, as if there’s a mind at work here. If everyone who was exposed fell down on the spot, eventually the opportunity to spread would be greatly reduced or even eliminated as the authorities identified cases and quarantined them.”

  “That creepy voice did say he would soon be all of us, like it was a personal goal or something.” Mara shivered and sipped her tea. “Prado’s definitely doing this intentionally. It may not have started out that way, but he seems fully committed to continuing.”

  “Yes, but the question is, to what end?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is he trying to accomplish? Is he clinging to life in the only way he knows how? Maybe this is a normal process where he comes from, a means of preserving a legacy or propagating the species, and it has gone horribly wrong in this realm. Who knows?”