He leads us to a thick tree in the middle of a cluster, next to a small clearing. The ends of the orange tape they’ve tied around the bark flutter in the breeze. I move closer, until I can see the marking. It’s faint, and imperfect, but I run my fingertip through the indentation and close my eyes, and my breath leaves me in a rush. “She did this,” I say. I imagine June taking a knife in one hand, holding it steady with the other, and jerking the blade through the trunk, inch by inch, until this was complete.
“It’s just an arch,” Casey says.
“Or a horseshoe?” Dominic says, coming closer. “Why a horseshoe?”
I shake my head, but my smile grows. “Not a horseshoe. A bell.”
I am not the danger. I am not the threat. I am the bell, tolling out its warning.
I am delivering a message.
Chapter 12
We’re all staring at the trunk, and then suddenly we’re staring at the dirt under our feet. Dominic throws his pack to the ground and pulls out a shovel that’s been folded up. But that leaves three extra people to continue staring without purpose. I am the first one on my knees. Something stirs inside me, and my fingers claw at the dirt at the base of the trunk. The earth comes up in tiny chunks, after a generation of weather and water and wind have compressed the dirt into solid ground. There are two pairs of hands beside me, digging into the dirt encircling the trunk now, and Cameron is the first to feel something other than dry earth.
“Rope,” he says. “There’s rope buried.”
He pulls at his end while Casey and I continue to unearth it, scooping the dirt off to the side. The rope is looped through a partially exposed root, and as we free it from the ground, it disappears into a path that takes us farther from the tree. It’s braided and fraying and off-color, but I know June’s hands were here, seventeen years earlier. We pull at the rope, all four of us, all completely focused on the task of unearthing it, and the ground cracks and disintegrates as the rope emerges. It stops suddenly, and I feel resistance just as I hear a clang of metal.
Dominic uses his shovel to move the dirt off the surrounding area, and a dark-green tarp emerges underneath, the rope disappearing below. I go to pull at the tarp, but Dominic points at me with the shovel. “Wait,” he says, and he continues to move the dirt off the top. I use my feet to brush aside the dirt that he has broken and softened, and Cameron and Casey do the same.
Eventually, all that remains is a pine-green tarp with remnants of dirt covering an area of the forest the size of my bathroom floor in the small clearing. My limbs are shaking.
Dominic nods at me and this time I carefully peel back a corner, heavy from the dirt that still remains. I lift it and shake it out, careful not to disturb the area below. I’m still removing the tarp when Casey sucks in a breath and Dominic lets out a laugh.
“Holy shit,” Cameron says.
I drop the tarp in a heap, forgotten.
In the middle of the forest floor, in the middle of nowhere, there’s a wooden door. The rope attaches to a metal hook in the center of the panel of wood. Dominic pulls on the rope, and the door gives, just a bit. Dominic’s hands tremble as he reaches his fingers under the splintered edge and pulls it back.
The hinges moan in protest, and the door scrapes against the wooden sides after decades of resettling. And then there is a dark cavern. I can’t see a ladder and I can’t tell how deep it goes, and apparently neither can anyone else. “Flashlight,” Dominic says.
Casey drops her pack and rifles through it, pulling out two palm-size flashlights. She keeps one for herself and hands the other to Dominic. Both of them lie on their stomachs, leaning over the mouth of the entrance, their beams pointed below. We’re all leaning over the opening, casting shadows, but I can make out a dirt floor not too far below and a wooden ladder lying across the ground.
Dominic crouches down, and for a second I think he’s going to jump in first, but then he eyes me—eyes us—over his shoulder and says, “Casey, care to do the honors?” It’s as if he’s constantly holding Casey hostage, as if he doesn’t quite trust any of us.
I don’t blame him. For that split second, I considered shutting the top over him, of making a run for it, but the pull of finding out what’s inside is too great. I wouldn’t run right now. He’s holding the information hostage. I’m completely in. He doesn’t need Casey.
She shines her light around before sitting on the edge and hanging for a second before dropping. “Whoa,” her voice echoes from below. Dominic motions for me to go next, and I do. I feel the temperature drop before I hit the ground. It’s colder here, under the earth. Mustier. And before I can see anything, I get the premonition that this is a coffin, and I am June, and this is what becomes of us both.
I don’t have a flashlight, but my eyes follow Casey’s light everywhere it lands. There are walls—beams of wood that have created a shelter inside the earth. There’s only the one large room, but it’s much bigger than I originally thought. It covers the space of the clearing above, though the walls join at weird angles, not squared off at all, like someone had to work around the root system of the trees. But the walls are only the beginning.
There are cots, the type I assume are used in medical triage, against the wall. Two of them. And there are boxes stacked in the corners. There are lanterns around the room, requiring a match and not a battery. And thermal blankets, thick sleeping bags, and a huge supply of canned food and water. It’s like a bomb shelter, except it’s not reinforced to withstand a blast. It’s for hiding.
I didn’t hear Cameron or Dominic land down here, but Cameron actually has a hand instinctively on my arm. Maybe he doesn’t know it’s me. Maybe in the semidark he thinks I’m Casey. Except very gradually, and very slowly, he moves his fingers down my arm until his fingers find mine. He gives my hand a quick squeeze before letting go. I think it’s meant to reassure me, which only has the opposite effect. Dominic whirls on me with the flashlight, and I pull my hand away even farther, using it instead to shield my eyes. “Do you know what this is?” he asks.
Oh, I can guess.
And so can he.
“This is June’s hideaway,” he says.
Does he not see the two cots? The two sleeping bags? The two sets of everything?
“Liam and June’s hideaway,” I correct.
I look at the boxes, and it’s as if I can feel June’s whisper coming from across the room. What do you want to show me? I wonder.
There’s nothing personal belonging to June in the entire room, at first glance. No heart-shaped engravings of June loves Liam or Liam loves June. Guess there was no time for that kind of romanticized love. June was my age when she went to college—a year ahead of her peers. My age when she met Liam White. My age when she broke into the database. They met in college and broke into the database six months later. I imagine they were nearly always on the run after that, and Liam was dead within the year.
There’s also nothing at first glance, boxes included, that gives away the fact that this was left by June. It’s like she wanted to be extra sure that, if this place was found, it wouldn’t be connected to anyone.
There are no trinkets or pictures—nothing to live on that wasn’t completely generic. Maybe the boxes are full of her things. I hope so. I imagine her discarding everything that was once hers, that she cared for, that reminded her of someone or something, until all that remained was this. And here she sat for over a year, with nothing but boxes and food. Until she became nothing more than this.
At least my room had a window.
At least my island had electricity and running water, books and computers, TV and people.
Dominic heads straight for the boxes. He’s practically ravenous, a hunger I’ve never seen in him. Casey fidgets, looking over his shoulder. It’s meant for me, the information inside, and I feel the anger rising. These boxes are mine.
He takes the top box off the stack and peels back the tape, which has been binding the top closed, and I feel him peeling back
my skin.
He unfolds the top, and I feel him staring through me, my soul exposed.
And just when I think of doing something impulsive and reckless, Cameron leans over and says, “You doing okay?” like he knows I am not.
I can’t really see him down here, and it almost feels safe to lean into his body for absolutely no reason I can give, other than the fact that I want to.
I feel like a magic trick—that I am both out here and inside the box, and I want to ground myself here. To grab something on this side. I want him to hold me here.
I’m reaching for him, and the flashlight swings at me, exposing me. Cameron looks at my hand, halfway between us, but Dominic is too amped up to notice or say anything. “Come see,” he says.
And just like that, I feel June whispering to me, pulling me away. I step back from Cameron. It was a stupid impulse anyway.
The first box is filled with reams of paper, the black ink gone gray, the edges curled and stiff. I try to make sense of what’s written there, but they’re numbers, just lists of numbers, printed out in rows from a computer. Many digits long, grouped together across the page—some in groups of two or three, some more, some on lines all by themselves. I know what the groupings mean, just like I knew what this place was for. The numbers are records in the database, and they’re grouped with their matches. These numbers show groups of lives that have had the same soul. Just a handful of generations—that’s all the data we have. Dominic flips through the entire stack with the beam of his flashlight. “I don’t see any names,” he says.
Just numbers. The numbers aren’t coded to anyone. But some have asterisks beside them. This data alone doesn’t tell us anything we can use, for which I’m both grateful and disappointed. He drops the box and moves to the next one. Another box of paper, another list of numbers without names.
It’s possible for souls to disappear from the database for a generation if parents choose not to get their children screened, though that’s rare. Or if they die while out of the country. Or they can appear out of nowhere if someone born in another country comes here. This database is a national system only, not yet tied to other nations. Some countries refuse to screen at all, claiming it’s not a real science. It’s illegal in some nations. Pointless in others. But here, we’re obsessed with the idea of it. Of what it means.
Is that number all we will ever be? Do our actions in one life influence the next, as some people believe? Are we drawn back together? Is there a reason some souls feel grounded, with roots, and others wander restlessly, searching, yearning, as I am now? Or is it all random—another life, another chance, another try—with no consequence? We’re not even close to a complete understanding. We’ve just touched the surface. The information is dangerous enough as it is. Nobody has been given access since June broke in. It’s too dangerous in the wrong hands.
I stare at those numbers grouped across the page, of the asterisks that sprinkle the paper, and I wonder what it all means. I’m still flipping through them, meaningless as they appear, when everyone else moves to the next boxes.
Boxes three, four, and five hold electronics. Computer parts, hard drives, circuit boards. “What do you think?” Casey asks.
“I think they’re wiped,” Dom says, “Or too old to use. But put them in your pack. We’ll check them out when we get back to the cabin.”
We rifle through the next box, Dominic and Casey pulling out papers and holding up their flashlights while I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. I’m trying to see June here, to see her boxing this up, to see her intention. The rest of the room has been getting darker. Cameron is sitting on a cot, and he’s yawning. Seriously. This last box, I can tell right away, is different—full of blank postcards with numbers scrawled across them, in lists. It’s not June’s handwriting. I’ve seen it enough times to know that, and I feel that stomach flip of hope.
This isn’t her stuff. This is Liam’s. Liam was in charge. Liam printed these lists and wrote these numbers. It was him and him alone, and June was being used like I’ve always wanted to believe.
And then, underneath, there is a notebook. Dominic opens it, and I see June’s handwriting. I know it’s hers in the same way I knew the carving in the tree was a bell—from a lifetime of studying her. Somewhere, I’ve seen her handwriting before, and it’s filed away in my mind under All Things June. And that brief moment of hope—that she had nothing to do with this—bursts, replaced with something sharp and sour.
It’s her handwriting, but it’s still just numbers. No, it’s math. It’s equations. It’s numbers and not words, and they mean nothing to me. Her lines slant across the pages, one after the other, with parts circled in various stages of the equation. Dominic flips the pages back and forth, the flashlight held between us, the numbers meaning nothing.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Dominic asks. “Because it’s sure as hell not computer code.”
“No,” I say. Other than the fact that every number she’s circled is a decimal, such as 0.4 or 0.2. Eventually, there’s a 0.32 circled several times. But it’s all meaningless. I’m not good at this. I haven’t let myself be good at this. This was something June was gifted in, and in my childish rebellion to reject everything and anything associated to her, I have rejected this gift as well.
“Look closer,” Dominic says, shoving the notebook into my lap, like the answer, the meaning, will suddenly appear in my mind—when a piece of paper flutters out of the back pages.
The writing is words. The first words we’ve seen in this place full of numbers.
It’s written, carefully, methodically, in her handwriting, in black marker. The paper is creased, as if it’s been balled up and then flattened out again—now it’s wrinkled through the words, like the writing is trying to shift itself into focus, from past to present.
224081 - Ivory Street - Edmond
“It’s an address,” Dominic says.
It belongs to me.
“The shadow-database location?” Casey asks, ripping it from his hands.
It’s meant for me, and no one else. June left me the coordinates to this place—she left me the bell carved into the tree. She left it for me, and nobody else.
I take the paper from Casey, staring at the numbers, feeling June’s breath on my cheek as she recites the information to me, committing it to memory before I destroy it.
But Dominic seems to sense something has shifted in me, because he takes it back, ripping it in the process—and all that remains in my hand is a torn corner with -mond. Half a town.
I can’t see the details of his face in the darkness, but I watch as his shadow folds the paper and stores it in his wallet.
“Do you see anything else here?” Dominic asks.
Casey’s trying to talk around the flashlight in her mouth as she moves papers aside in the box, but eventually she spits it out. “Damn it!” she says. “We need more light. Did you pack matches?”
“No,” Dominic says. “We’ll bring the boxes up to the surface.” There’s too much to carry back to the cabin. And there’s not enough light down here. I feel suddenly claustrophobic, like I can’t breathe, like possibly we’re running out of air and I’m the only one who’s noticing.
I move the ladder myself, lean it up against the entrance, and start moving. Cameron watches me from the cot, but he says nothing.
“Where are you going?” Dominic’s hand is on my ankle, like a handcuff shackling me to my past, to the person I’m scared I am.
“Up,” I say.
Dominic curses as he looks up. “It’s dark,” he says.
But it’s darker down here. Up there, I see the moon through the tree branches and the stars beyond. I feel the crisp night air—air to breathe. “Okay,” he says, “listen. No need to set up tents. We’ll stay down here for the night. There’s plenty of gear. As soon as it’s light, we’ll bring this all to the surface.”
I don’t move off the ladder. “Come on now,” Dominic says, and his hands rest light
ly on my waist, much gentler than I expected. It’s unfamiliar. Unwelcome. I flash back to Genevieve, holding me in her arms while I cried for my mother. It was the last time someone held me like that. I was ten, and I was a child, and children can be held like that. But she’s dead. Dead, because of me. Because she felt too much when she held me.
I’m so sorry, Genevieve.
The thought makes something crack inside me. Some anger fighting its way through. The only people who have ever cared for me have been punished. My mother, my father, Genevieve. I have ruined lives, much like June has, just by existing. I push his hands aside before stepping off the ladder. I want to see what else is in those boxes. I want to peel back the tops, like I’m cracking open my own ribs for a look inside. It’s self-indulgent, and possibly self-destructive, but I need the truth. God, both June and I did. And look where it’s getting us both.
“Can I have a flashlight?” I ask, and Dominic pauses, as if he thinks I might use it to club him over the head. “Please,” I add, though it kills me.
He nods and hands it to me, his hand connecting with mine, and I make myself hold my ground, not flinching, not pulling away. And then I shine the light against the dirt walls, while everyone else prepares the food we brought in our bags, even though there’s plenty stashed here from Liam and June. But that food belongs to the dead. As does everything else in this place.
I’m looking for words traced into the dirt, her handprint, as she leaned against a wall. I’m looking for what she did for a year and a half down here. And I’m looking for the reason she left. She had been safe here. Safe and hidden, and it wasn’t until she left that people caught her trail again. She died while running, trying to get back into the woods before she was caught. Run down in a street, with nothing on her. With no one near her.
My God, June. Why did you leave the woods?
Soulprint Page 12