As soon as I hung up, my cell phone rang. “Hey, Mom,” I said, trying to sound cheery. “I was just going to call you. I’m on my way to school right now.” I rested my head against the headrest. What could I tell her? “Yeah. Seth will get better. I’ll probably check on him later.” I checked my watch. “Okay, Mom. I love you, too.”
I pulled into a space at the south end of the building and got out of my car, catching my reflection in my window. Ugh! Nice look, you got there, I thought. I draped my hair over the side of my face where the bruise was beginning to turn a dull shade of purple. I’d figure out later how I was going to explain that one.
I ran across the lot and then over the soggy grass to the portable classrooms. I was relieved to see Alyx waiting for me, but not so happy when I saw Justin following her. Why was he here? I hadn’t planned on explaining things to him as well.
Alyx sauntered over and raised her brow. “What happened to your face?”
“It got bad, Alyx,” I said, trying to stop my voice from quivering. “Last night… I… I was trying to give myself to Seth. You know… I was hoping that would help Seth somehow.” My eyes welled up. “But it didn’t work. Seth just got mad and… the soul…”
Alyx looked over her shoulder at Justin and then back at me. She lowered her voice, “This morning my mom mentioned something that might be important and I need to look it up.”
“So let’s do it,” I urged.
Justin walked up behind Alyx, staring at my face. “What happened?” His features hardened as he ground out the words. “Where’s Seth?”
“I don’t know where he is,” I snapped back. “When I left his house this morning—”
“You spent the night with him?” Justin stepped back, like I had slapped him.
“Oh get off it, lover boy,” Alyx snapped at him. “She didn’t sleep with him.”
“No! I didn’t! Seth got really sick and he passed out. I had to stay.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you call 911? What happened?” Justin demanded. “And what happened to your face? Did Seth hit you?”
I glared at him. I so didn’t need this right now.
“We need to tell him,” Alyx said to me. “We’re going to need his help.”
“Tell me what?” Justin glanced at Alyx, then past her to the parking lot. “Oh, look who’s here.” He was glaring at a truck that pulled up at the curb. “Speak of the devil, huh?”
“You don’t know how close you are,” Alyx muttered.
“Seth,” I whispered.
“Yeah, dude!” Dirk yelled from the front of the school.
The three of us turned to see him lope across the lot and jump into Seth’s truck. Even with the window rolled up and the car driving away, we could hear Dirk laughing.
“Come on, let’s go.” Alyx said.
“Wait a minute!” Justin grabbed my arm, yanking me back. “What’s going on?”
“Later, Justin,” Alyx said. “Right now, we’re going to follow Seth and see what he’s up to.”
“Come on, Justin,” I said, pulling my arm free. “We’ll explain it in the car.”
He took one more look at my bruise, and then nodded.
We followed Alyx to her car, and the closer we got, Justin slowed down, his jaw dropping.
“You think you’re going to catch them in this?”
I had to admit I was a bit skeptical myself. The car was pretty beat up.
Alyx wasn’t offended. Instead she grinned and patted the hood.
“Of course we will. It’s a Subaru. North Idaho’s finest!” She unlocked the doors and we piled in. “Did I tell you my brother is a Porsche mechanic down in L.A.?” She smiled at Justin before slamming the door closed.
# # #
We followed Seth’s truck to City Beach and down toward The Witch’s Hat, the huge picnic pavilion at the far end of the beach. Alyx stopped her car just before getting to the boat ramp and parked far enough away that—we hoped—Seth and Dirk wouldn’t notice her car. As long as they didn’t look back, we were good.
Alyx pulled a pair of tiny binoculars from the glove box and adjusted them.
“They’re headed over to the statue.” She shook her head. “Whoever thought of putting a mini-Statue of Liberty here at the beach? Freakin’ bizarre.”
She handed me the binoculars. “Why do you suppose they’re here?” I asked her.
Justin leaned forward from the back seat. “Hey, when are you two going to explain what’s going on with Seth?”
Alyx glanced at me. “Now, I guess. But we have to keep an eye on Seth and Dirk. This could be important.”
I kept the binoculars up to my eyes while Alyx gave Justin a crash course about dark souls.
“If you haven’t noticed, your buddy hasn’t been acting like himself lately.”
“Well, yeah. Look who he’s been hanging out with.” Justin leaned forward and pointed toward Seth and Dirk.
“That’s not it. Something’s making him behave differently,” Alex said.
“What, like a disease?”
“Sort of,” Alyx said.
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.
She caught my look and took a big breath, letting it out through puffed cheeks.
“Seth has a soul attached to him. It’s very common,” she waved her finger, indicating the three of us, “for anyone. Most of the time they’re just drifters and they don’t do any harm. But the one he’s picked up won’t leave.” She twisted in her seat to face him. “This one is dark, like Darth Vader dark. Full of bad juju. We’re still trying to figure out why it’s here and how to get rid of it.”
Justin sat back and laughed. “You expect me to believe all this crap? Come on!”
“It’s true, Justin,” I said, watching Seth and Dirk standing next to the mini-statue. “I thought Alyx was crazy, too—sorry, Alyx!” she shot me a look. “But she’s totally right about this.”
“Yeah, right.” Justin sat back, mumbling to himself. “You guys are crazy.”
“I’m afraid not,” Alyx said quietly.
Justin went silent. Fifteen minutes crawled by while Alyx and I handed the binoculars back and forth to each other, taking turns watching Seth and Dirk. At first there was just a lot of talking between them, or so it looked, but then Seth kept pointing to things, the concrete underneath them, the rocks, the water, and the statue, all with hand movements that reminded me of a street magician. At one point Dirk stumbled backward, almost falling off the concrete pier, but Seth grabbed his shoulder to steady him After a couple of seconds, he lightly slapped Dirk’s cheek, like they did in those Mafia movies, getting Dirk to snap out of whatever stupor he had fallen into.
Then they stood toe-to-toe. Seth cupped his hands together in front of him and Dirk leaned in to look, passing his hand over Seth’s.
“What’s he doing, Alyx?” I handed the binoculars to her. “It looks like he’s holding something.”
I heard Justin shift in his seat.
“I can’t tell.” Then Alyx gasped. “Oh, man! He did it. He actually did it!”
“Did what?” Justin and I said at the same time.
“Let me see!” Justin reached his hand between us, trying to get the binoculars, but Alyx wouldn’t let him have them.
Seth had squatted down and put something on the ground at the base of the statue and then stood up.
“Do you see it?” Alyx said, shoving the binoculars in my hands. “He actually did it! He manifested a fireball!”
Justin leaned closer. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Alyx was right. Seth had created a small fireball and had placed it on the ground. As he stepped back, we could see an orange-red ring starting to snake around the base of the statue and circle around, winding its way up like a snake slithering up a tree.
Seth raised his arms up, as if encouraging the light to rise.
“Oh, my God!” Alyx whispered. “He’s going to light the torch!”
Th
e trail of fire twisted its way up the torch handle until it touched off a small blast of fire at the tip. Seth then brought his arms up again, drawing water up from the lake, splashing the torch, and putting the blaze out.
We were treated to the obnoxious hoots and whistles of Dirk, jumping around and fist pumping the air as Seth stood calmly, looking out over the lake.
Then my blood froze. Seth had looked over his shoulder in our direction and our eyes locked through the binoculars for a fraction of a second before he turned back to Dirk.
I gave the binoculars back to Alyx. That. Was. Not. Seth.
“What was that all about?” Justin asked, leaning forward and touching my shoulder.
“We’d better go,” I said, ignoring Justin’s question.
“He saw us, didn’t he?” Alyx said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Not good.” Alyx started up the car and made a u-turn to get us out of there.
The girl. The vortex of my curse. So innocent in her devotion. So blind in her pursuit. She will soon learn that love is not light. Love is dark. Yes. I can already taste the sweetness of overwhelming grief of a lover lost. My moment of release.
~ Maksim
Chapter 30
Seth didn’t come to school that day.
I was torn between wanting to see him and wanting to stay as far away from him as possible. I wished I’d known if he was okay, though.
Dirk was at school, unfortunately, and every time I saw him, he had a stupid smirk on his face. I wanted to hit him over his head with my history book. He looked so smug, like he had a dirty little secret. Somehow he had gotten himself involved with Seth and the dark soul and I had the feeling he was making the situation worse.
Justin was even more protective of me than usual. At lunch, in the halls, and in the one class that we had together, he shadowed me, looking over both his shoulder and mine. It was endearing, sort of, but I didn’t need protection. I needed information. While Alyx was doing her research, I needed to do mine.
“Hey! Where are you going?” After school, Alyx caught up with to me as I headed towards the parking lot.
“I’m going over to the library,” I told her. “I thought of something that I want to check out.”
She nodded. “Then I’ll meet you there. I need to look up something, too.”
At the library we found two empty computers next to each other. We dropped our packs on the floor and settled in.
When Alyx had told me that maybe the soul didn’t like me, I thought she was joking. I mean, I don’t have any flesh-and-blood enemies at all, let alone any dead enemies. I’d wondered if we were missing something obvious. That book that was on Alyx’s bookshelf, Magick Murders, got me thinking. If this was as common as Alyx said it was, then maybe there were archived records of evil attachments where people got hurt—and how they may have been stopped.
“Looks like you and I have been thinking the same thing,” Alyx whispered, leaning over to look at my screen.
“It’s a start, anyway,” I whispered back. I scrolled down, found nothing of value, then added “unsolved” before the word “murder.” A few possibilities, but not good enough. I added “lover” to the search. High-profile murders were listed halfway down the page. Okay, worth a try. One link had a list of cases dating back to the 1800s, unsolved, with the suspect never charged due to lack of evidence, but all of them involved the man killing his lover. Some of the men committed suicide afterwards, some disappeared, and others were institutionalized.
I started with the first on the list: Rose Harding, a servant girl found strangled to death in 1900 by an unknown assailant. She was six months pregnant at the time, supposedly by a local Baptist minister. He was tried, but found not guilty.
“Go to that one.” Alyx pointed to my screen.
That article was about a Dr. Samuel Miller, convicted in 1953 of murdering his pregnant wife, though he claimed that “someone else” did it. The trial ended with no conviction, but the doctor ended up in a psych ward because he “heard a voice telling him to do awful things.”
A woman named Cristi Harmon, in 1964, was found dead in a hotel bathroom. She’d been strangled to death. Her rock star boyfriend had been arrested and charged with her murder. He confessed, saying, “I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her.” He’d tried to commit suicide but recovered, only to die of an overdose a week later. A note found in his pocket read, I kept my side of the bargain, but I can’t live with it.
“They were all strangled,” I said. “Weird.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Alyx did her own search. “I can’t believe this. There are so many others!” She opened a link and began reading. “In 1836, a prostitute and one of her customers fell in love. Apparently, he was obsessed with her and ended up killing her.” She went silent as she read more of the story. “They said he went into a jealous rage and—oh, get this—he strangled her. The guy just vanished afterward.”
And there were others, many of them involving movie stars and their girlfriends or wives.
“Here’s another one!” Alyx didn’t keep her voice down this time. “Holy crap!”
“Copycat murders, maybe?” I whispered.
“Or maybe a serial killer,” Alyx suggested.
I looked at her. “‘Serial killer’ implies one person. These murders,” I pointed to the screen, “are spread out over two hundred years!”
“Exactly.” Alyx kept clicking on different pages, talking to herself. Finally she closed everything out and stood up. “I’ve gotta go.”
I started to ask what she was thinking, but she spoke before I had a chance.
“I’ll call you later,” she said, looking distracted. She slung the strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder and walked away.
I stared back at my screen. What was she thinking? Murders by strangulation over a period of 200 years. Most of the suspects claimed to have heard voices or that “someone else did it.” Suspects who ended up committing suicide, disappearing, or institutionalized. Serial killer, Alyx had said. But how could one person commit all of these murders? Nobody lives that long.
Then I remembered what Alyx told me. A soul lives forever. Like a ghost. A spirit that hangs around and doesn’t cross over to “the other side.” I straightened up. I’d bet that’s what Alyx was thinking. Was it possible a soul had taken over these men and had them kill their lovers? Who the hell was this thing? And why was he doing it? And how long had he been doing it? It could go back centuries, and have gone unrecorded.
I closed down the screen and logged off. Gathering up my backpack, I made my way to the section of the library where I had gone the other day with Seth. I walked quickly down the aisle where the books on ancient civilizations were shelved. Maybe something would trigger an idea. There wasn’t much, but I opened a few books and thumbed through the pages, just in case I’d missed something. I went through six books on ancient cultures, two on old civilizations, and three on prominent historical city leaders and rulers. I didn’t find anything related to murders. Pulling each book off the shelf again, I went through the pages, slower this time. When I reached the thinnest book of the group, I remembered. This was the book Seth had taken from me that day. Since when did Seth have an interest in ancient civilization? He isn’t even taking history this year.
I opened the book and flipped through the pages, one by one. A dog-ear at the top of page 51 stopped me.
Hotep, the Egyptian symbol of peace, depicting both a snake and the sun. Very similar to the Asian yin yang, the Hotep unites contrary forces: The snake, representing the underworld, and the sun, representing the light of the gods, come together and balance one another. There is written a story of a chamber deep within the labyrinths of Egypt that encases a sacred altar. A stone slab, measuring two meters on all sides, has embedded within it a circle, surrounding which are what appear to be wave-like divots. By day, the slab rests empty and cold, devoid of life, dark and foreboding. By night, movement stirs the stagnant air and bri
ngs with it vitality to please the gods. A serpent soundlessly glides along a well-worn path and ascends the wall of the slab to the outer edge of the circle and winds to and fro, the sides of its body folding upon itself in a precise, methodical motion, mastered over centuries. The final motion of this ritual brings the serpent’s jeweled head to rest in the center before it stills its body for the night. Many ancient drawings capture the magnificence of this creature and the complex, yet simple interconnectedness it has with the world. Its movements are purposeful, yet seemingly random, but when the serpent completes its winding path to slumber and it aligns its scaly pattern with the wave-like divots on the stone slab, the markings along its back casts the appearance of the sun. See illustration page 52.
As I turned the page, my breath caught. There it was, staring back at me. A little smaller, with faded outlines. The caption beneath it referenced the page before it. There was no explanation as to what the origins were, only that it was thought to be from some past Egyptian civilization, but there was no mistaking it.
It was Seth’s tattoo.
# # #
“Check this out,” Alyx jabbed her finger at a page in the book she’d shoved into my hands. “Read this. It all makes sense now.”
Alyx had called me twenty minutes after I had gotten home and insisted on coming over, saying what she had to show me couldn’t wait, which was great timing, because what I had to show her couldn’t wait either.
One page of the book she held out to me was a story titled Legend of the Order, and the opposite page held a solitary symbol.
“That’s Seth’s tattoo!” The excitement of finally getting somewhere was almost too much for me.
Alyx grabbed the book back from me before I could read the story. “Your boyfriend hit the jackpot. This particular soul is saddled with a curse. A really nasty one.”
“A curse?” My jaw dropped, along with my excitement.
Alyx nodded. “The soul who hijacked your boyfriend has been called a lot of names through the centuries, but his original name was Maksim.”
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