The Soulkeepers Read online

  Chapter 4

  The Girl Next Door

  Three weeks later, Paris, Illinois…

   

  Jacob busied himself stacking wood in the shape of a pyramid within the brick walls of the Laudners’ fireplace. The house smelled like dust and dried flowers. Building a fire was a welcome distraction but he also hoped the smell of burning oak would improve the stale air.

  “That looks mighty professional. Where’d you learn to build a fire like that?” Uncle John said from behind him.

  “My dad,” Jacob responded.

  “Wouldn’t have thought there’d be much opportunity, growing up in Hawaii and all.”

  Jacob glanced toward John as he brought a match toward the kindling and watched the flames lick up the logs. He didn’t respond.

  “You can hardly tell you were in an accident anymore. Your hair covers the scar. How’s the one on your chest?”

  “Healing,” Jacob said.

  “It’s a miracle you didn’t break anything.”

  Moving from his place beside the flames to one of the two sage green recliners that faced the fire in the Laudners’ living room, Jacob didn’t respond to John’s comment. While it was true from the outside he didn’t appear injured, on the inside he was damaged. He wasn’t sleeping well and sometimes the memory would come back as vivid as if it was happening all over again. The doctors said his symptoms could happen with a traumatic head injury, but knowing his condition was normal wasn’t much of a comfort.

  “I have some people cleaning out the apartment,” John said, sitting down in the other recliner. “The boxes should be here in a week or two.”

  “A week or two?”

  “Shipping from Hawaii to Illinois isn’t as easy as you might think,” John said.

  John was pale with gray hair in a brush cut that reminded Jacob of the airmen at Hickam Air Force Base back home. But he was sure he’d never flown a plane because he had thick black glasses that made his eyes look bigger than they actually were. The sleeves of his red plaid shirt were rolled past his elbows, the tails tucked neatly into his blue jeans, cinched tightly under a black leather belt. He always dressed like that, like a lumberjack.

  No one would have guessed Jacob was a blood relative based on appearances. Because his mom was Chinese he had the sort of skin that tanned fast in the sun. His hair was black and too long to make any adult comfortable but too short to be tied back, even if he’d wanted to. If there was any family resemblance at all, it was the eyes. Jacob had his father’s pale green eyes and so did his uncle. His eyes were what seemed familiar to Jacob the day they met and were his only clue that John might be telling the truth about being his father’s brother.

  “I just want you to know you are welcome here for as long as it takes to find her. If something has happened. If she’s … passed on, you can stay with us permanently. There’s no reason to worry about that. You’ll always have a home with us,” John said.

  All at once Jacob was filled with the desire to throw something; his stomach clenched with his fists. His jaw hardened as he ground his teeth. In his head, he knew he should’ve been thankful to have a place to stay, but everything about this situation seemed wrong. He hated John for suggesting his mother might not be found. More than anything, he wanted to be back on Oahu helping to find her. And, worst of all, he hated what his uncle was about to say. He could feel it coming, those words so often repeated to him after the death of his father, those words he wanted to torch from the air before they could reach his ears.

  “All we can do now is pray for your mom and trust that she’s in God’s hands.”

  Jacob thought he might explode. Pray was what people said when they didn’t know what to say, when they couldn’t offer anything else. Pray meant do nothing. His nails bit into the palms of his hands. He turned away from John and shoved the anger down deep, where it coiled like a snake in his gut. He closed the lid to it.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “Of course, what’s on your mind?”

  “You say you are my uncle, my father’s brother, but your name is Laudner. My last name is Lau. My father’s last name was Lau.”

  “There’s a very good explanation for that Jacob. See, um, your father … he changed his name. He shortened it, from Laudner to Lau.” John’s face twisted before each word as if his brain was choosing the right one from a stack of thousands.

  “Yes, you’ve said that before. But what I want to know is why,” Jacob pressed. It was the first of many unanswered questions he’d asked without success. Why had he never met the Laudners? Why had his father changed his name? And, most disturbing to him, why hadn’t the Laudners attended his father’s funeral five years ago? It was more than not knowing John. It was not knowing of an Uncle John or any of the Laudner family. His parents had never even mentioned having family on the mainland.

  John opened his mouth, then closed it again when a rotund woman with beady eyes and short brown curls entered the room from the kitchen. A sense of relief crossed his pale features as Aunt Carolyn interrupted.

  “It’s getting late,” Carolyn said. She stared at John as if she were beaming her thoughts directly into his head. Her eyes flicked toward Jacob but seemed to find nothing to hold her interest and ended up resting back on John.

  As always seemed to happen when Jacob brought up the topic of his parents, there was no time to talk. John became obsessed with how late it was, how he had to open the store in the morning, and how Jacob had better get his rest.

  Once the goodnights were said, Jacob climbed the wooden staircase and passed through a hallway lined with portraits of Laudners throughout history. Some were so old their black-and-white images had a yellow tint beneath the framed glass. There were pictures of men and women, and multiple generations huddled on the front lawn. There were photos of men in military uniforms and newspaper clippings with Laudner names highlighted. Dozens of images lined both walls of the second floor hallway. Besides John, Carolyn, and their daughter, Katrina, Jacob didn’t know the names or the faces. It was a hallway of strangers, even the few he recognized.

  One thing was for certain: there were no pictures of his parents. No pictures at all. That’s what bothered Jacob the most.

  Near the end of the hall, Jacob passed by his cousin Katrina’s open door and caught a glimpse of green eyes and curly brown hair. He began to say goodnight but was stopped mid-word when her foot shot out in a purposeful kick that slammed the door in his face. A road sign that read “Private Property” swung forward on its hook toward the tip of his nose.

  “Goodnight then,” he said to the door. He would have liked to be friends with Katrina. She was only two years older than him and the only person close to his age he knew in this town. But Katrina treated him like the plague, something to be avoided at all costs.

  Suddenly, Jacob couldn’t breathe. The walls billowed inward. The hall was too hot, too small. On his toes, he jogged down the stairs, lifting his coat from the hook near the door. His aunt and uncle’s voices floated out from the kitchen and he hoped their conversation was enough to cover the click of the door as he pulled it closed behind him. He was desperate for air and some time to think.

  Dodging left to avoid the kitchen window, he wrapped the wool coat around him and crept down the stairs into the dark driveway. Fluffy white flakes floated down from the night sky. Snow. He’d never seen it in person before coming here. He held out his hand as he walked toward the street, watching the cold, wet blobs melt in his palm: one second there, the next second gone.

  “Just like my life,” Jacob said to no one. The street was dark aside from the light of the moon. Enough snow had collected on the pavement to give it a luminescent sheen.

  Once he reached the street, he glanced back for any sign the Laudners had noticed his departure. All was quiet. The Laudners’ house was pale yellow with gray trim, a sort of long box with two windows that jutted out of the roofline on the second story like raised eyebrows. Katrina�
��s room was under the left, Jacob’s under the right. The house stood alone on the north side of the street.

  Directly across the street, the only neighboring home was a looming gothic Victorian. He knew it was called a gothic Victorian because the building seemed so out of place here, he’d asked what it was. He’d thought maybe it was a funeral home or a museum or something. It was gloomy and gray with a black wrought-iron fence out front. Dead ivy crawled up one side of the place and wrapped itself around a tower the shape of a witch’s hat. In the wetness and moonlight, the roof glowed like it was radioactive.

  As he walked between them, he thought the houses were taunting each other with their stark differences. But then maybe the reason the Laudners didn’t have more neighbors was no one would willingly join this architectural contest of wills. Of course Jacob wasn’t used to any of this: the space, the cold, and other more important things he didn’t like to think about.

  Past the end of the Victorian’s wrought-iron fence, Jacob gathered his coat around him. With nothing to break the wind out of the north, an icy gust blew right through him and toward the dead forest to the south. Ahead, shadows twisted, and the sounds of a winter night danced eerily around him. The shrill of an owl made him lurch back from the trees. Ice cracking off wind-bent branches had Jacob turning on his heels. But it was the scraping sound of wood on wood that sent a shiver through his bones. The whine of rusty hinges made the image of a coffin lid dart through his mind.

  He walked faster. The swish-swish of his feet in the snow echoed in the night. Or was someone following him. He stopped. The footsteps stopped. He glanced behind him, searching the night. A ripple moved across the street. It was as if someone folded the sky and then quickly flattened it out again on the horizon. Something filmy and dark darted from one shadow to the next and the memory of the accident gripped his throat. There’d been a ripple in the woods, just like this one.

  He launched himself down the Laudners’ driveway, kicking up snow as he went. Heart hammering, breath coming in huffs, Jacob could feel the bruise on his chest ache by the time he reached the door. It was locked.

  At first he panicked, lifting his fist to pound on the door. But then the warm light from the kitchen window caught his eye. Knocking would mean admitting he’d snuck out. From the safety of the porch, he looked back toward the street. Snow swirled over the pavement. Clearly the ripple was a trick of the moonlight. Of course it was. The memory wasn’t real. It was a product of his damaged brain.

  He took a deep breath and walked around the porch to the patch of yard beneath his window. A rose lattice ran the length of the wall. Good enough.

  The icy wood was barely tenable but he dug his toes between the slats and climbed, gripping with throbbing cold fingers. When he reached his window he flattened his palm against the glass and pushed up with everything he had. The window opened with a bark and Jacob slid between the lace curtains, walking his hands across the rose-colored shag carpeting until his legs could fit through. As quietly as possible, he closed the window behind him and flopped onto the floral wingback chair.

  Everything in his room was old lady pink. John’s Aunt Veronica had lived there before they put her into a retirement home. John said he’d fix it up for Jacob someday but, until then, he had a pink room.

  Jacob removed his jacket and moved toward the bed, ready to call it a night. That was when he heard the voices.

  “John, I think this was a mistake. The boy is weird. He’s not settling in. He’s not like us.” The voice was Carolyn’s. It was a hushed tone coming from the vent on the south wall. Jacob crouched in front of the steel grate and listened. The position of the vent must have been just right to conduct her whisper to him. By the placement of the pink room, he assumed it connected to the kitchen.

  “It’s too late now, Carolyn. He’s not a dog. I can’t return him to the store,” John said.

  “I know. I’m just worried. What if he gets … violent?”

  “Violent?”

  “You know darn well what I mean, John. His people…”

  “I do, Carolyn, but he’s also our people. You know as well as I do that this boy is the last chance for our family. Hell, he doesn’t even look…”

  “He doesn’t look German either.”

  “He is the last and only remaining Laudner heir. If we can’t make this work, the most we can hope for…” John paused and Jacob leaned in toward the grate. “Over one hundred and fifty years of Laudner history will be lost. I can’t let that happen. We can’t let that happen.”

  “But what if he turns out like them?” Carolyn whispered.

  “Jacob is young. We can raise him up right.”

  “It’s a nice thought, but copper will never be gold, no matter how much you shine it. There are other ways … Katrina?”

  “Katrina isn’t a male heir. You know the rules. Besides, Jacob is my brother’s son. Don’t tell me you haven’t looked into that boy’s eyes and seen Charlie’s staring back at you.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  “As sure as I am sitting here I am going to get to know that boy. I am not losing him the way I lost Charlie.”

  “John, he may look like Charlie but he’s not Charlie. You can chase ghosts all you want but that ship has sailed.”

  “He’s my nephew, Carolyn,” John’s voice strained to stay a whisper. “He’s here to stay.”

  After a long pause, he heard a chair slide back from the table. “Then I guess there’s nothing more to discuss,” Carolyn said.

  Jacob waited, ears trained on the vent. Silence. With a heavy sigh, he moved back toward the window, folding himself into the floral wingback. The conversation rolled through his head like a freight train.

  Carolyn didn’t want him here, that was for sure, but what was all that about being the last Laudner heir? What about Katrina? John had said something about a male heir. Jacob knew Paris was a small town, old fashioned even, but since when did women not inherit property? Certainly they didn’t expect him to stay in Paris permanently. And if that were the only reason John had brought him here, what would happen when he refused?

  The truth was, Jacob didn’t care what had happened between his father and John. These people weren’t family, not really. Whatever it took, he needed to get home to Oahu to find his mom. She was the only real family he had left. He didn’t have time to worry about ancient family history or being a Laudner heir. What he needed was a way home.

  He tried to watch the snow to clear his head but found he was more agitated than ever. The knot that coiled at the pit of his stomach seemed to grow larger as he dwelled on the conversation. It twisted within him. Almost midnight, he knew he should sleep.

  No sooner had Jacob resigned himself to bed than he was distracted by something that stirred behind the icy wrought-iron fence across the street. He was pretty sure no one lived in the gothic Victorian. The lights never came on and he never saw anyone go in or out. But there was something in the yard now and it was big.

  The thing moved, a massive black ball that rolled behind the fence spindles. The shadows made it impossible to see clearly from his window, even under the full moon. Sweat broke out on his palms and he swallowed hard. Jacob knew he was perfectly safe but the hair on the back of his neck stood up anyway. The dark mass seemed to divide, expand, and then fold in on itself just beyond view. Just as weird was how quickly it broke from this camouflage and crossed through the wrought-iron gate into the center of the street.

  Surrounded by moonlight, he could see it was not an animal at all but a person in a long, hooded cloak. The shifting he’d seen had been the cloak becoming round and full in the gusty night. Hands emerged from the bell-shaped sleeves, thin and white, and pulled the black hood down to reveal the face of a young woman. Platinum hair cascaded from the hood and blew in the wintry wind, long and wispy behind her. The moon lit up the pale strands, eerily translucent against the dark cloak. Her skin was flawless and fair, as if she’d been carved from ice.


  Jacob stopped breathing. She had to be a ghost the way she glowed and floated down the road toward him. For all the reasons he hated Paris, he had not expected the worst would be the town was haunted.

  The ghost took a step forward and the bottom of her cloak split open. She was barefoot. Of course, a spirit would not feel the cold, which completely convinced Jacob she was supernatural. His arms broke out in gooseflesh. He wanted to look away, really he did. He wanted to scream or hide under the covers, but he didn’t, because more than anything he wanted to watch. She was beautiful, bloodcurdling but beautiful. With an almost hypnotic grace, she moved to a patch of snow under his window. And then, to Jacob’s horror, she leaned her head back and looked directly at him.

  Within the whiteness of her skin and hair, eyes of palest blue pierced the night. The irises were barely darker than the whites, a color like thin ice over ocean. There could be no mistake; she was staring at him, or more accurately into him. Her gaze penetrated his skin, ricocheted off his internal organs, and caused his stomach to flip-flop. His heart paced behind the cage of his ribs.

  She extended her arms, palms toward the night sky. Around her, the snow began to swirl, subtly at first but then with a purposeful force, as if she were producing her own gravity, defying the Earth and the natural order of things. The result was that she looked exactly like a figure in a snow globe, the ones you see at Christmas. Only, the darkness of her presence seemed oddly inappropriate for its charming effect.

  And then she flew, lifting from the earth in a cyclone of wind and snow, until she hovered directly outside his window. Her black cloak billowed, the full moon a perfect circle behind her head. The corner of her mouth lifted, tugged upward by some well-kept secret. To look directly into her face was like sticking his finger into an electrical outlet. His skin tingled and tongue swelled.

  She mouthed words through the snow at him. Jacob couldn’t hear what she said but his mouth began to move, echoing hers. It was his own hushed voice he heard bouncing off the window, even though he was sure the words came from her.

  Jacob, there is much to learn. Don’t worry. I will teach you. I will help you.

  It was useless to resist. If she’d said to leap out the window into her arms, he would have complied. But as he watched her, the realization that he still wasn’t breathing came like a smoke alarm in the night, necessary but unwanted. Empty of oxygen, his lungs burned for air but he couldn’t remember how to use them. His nervous system was simply paralyzed by either fear or beauty—Jacob didn’t know which. The sensation of being sucked under thick water overcame him, a sinking feeling where the light from the window dimmed at the corners, became a constricting circle that narrowed to a pinpoint of light before extinguishing itself.

  Suffocating. Drowning in her terrible beauty. His eyes rolled back in his head and he felt himself fall.

  Her voice rang out, a dagger through the blackness, “I am coming for you.” It sliced through whatever bound his chest and the air rushed in, a mighty gust of wind.

  In the next moment, everything was pink. He was on the floor in front of the chair, in a rectangle of light from the window. The prickle of shag carpet on his cheek caused him to sit up and rub the stiffness from his neck. He was near the vent where he remembered listening to Carolyn and John’s conversation. Had he fallen asleep on the floor?

  Out the window, the blanket of snow that carpeted the ground as far as the eye could see gave no evidence, not a single footprint, divulging a nighttime visitor. The woman, he decided, must have been a dream, or more likely a hallucination, a creation of his damaged brain.

  He shook his head. It was Monday and he was expected to attend Paris High School. He could already hear the clatter of Katrina getting ready in the bathroom across the hall. Jacob wished he could wake up from this nightmare, the one he was living, but this was no delusion. The really scary stuff started today.