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Authors: G. P. Ching

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The Soulkeepers

BOOK: The Soulkeepers
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THE SOULKEEPERS

 

G.P. Ching

 

 

 

Copyright © 2011 by G.P. Ching

 

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author or publisher.

 

Smashwords Edition: June 2011

 

For Aaron, Madi, and
Hannah

Chapter One

The Boy Who Died

 

Death lived up to Jacob's expectations.

The day he died was sunny, as it was most
days on the island of Oahu where he lived. Only a few miles away,
bikini clad tourists stretched out on the sand of Waikiki beach.
While they toasted themselves golden brown, Jacob lay on a steel
surgical table, broken and bleeding. He'd heard that when a person
died they saw a tunnel that ended in a bright light. If the person
moved toward the light, God or some already deceased loved one like
a great-grandmother would meet them on the other side. Jacob didn't
believe it. He'd accepted that everything would end in black
nothingness and for him it did. What he didn't expect was that the
end was just the beginning.

The light returned. His
eyes fluttered open against bright white and a face emerged from
the radiance, materializing from the void. A rumbling voice called
him by name. "Jacob. Jacob, can you hear me?" Behind the voice was
the
clink-clank
of metal hitting metal and a smell like a copper penny soaked
in Clorox.

"I think he's coming
'round," the voice said from behind a green surgical mask. Soulful
brown eyes came into focus. Spikes of pain stabbed through Jacob's
head and chest and he realized the man in scrubs was shaking him.
He wanted to tell the man to stop, but a plastic dome pressed over
his face. As he fought against the plastic, the tubes connected to
his arm
slapped against the metal pole
near the gurney.

"Relax, my man," the face said, pressing
Jacob's arms to his sides. "The mask has to stay on. It's oxygen
and you need it."

In his confused state, Jacob couldn't
understand who the green man was. All he knew was pressure and
pain, like he'd been torn apart and put back together.

"Jacob, take a deep breath. Come on kid
breathe."

Of its own volition, the air went in. The
air went out. The pain made the air rattle in his mouth.

"That's it. A few more like that, Jacob.
Slow and deep. Can you understand me?" the green man asked.

"Yes," Jacob tried to say but his voice was
nothing but a rough whisper, muffled by the oxygen mask.

"Are you in pain?"

He tried to say yes again but the word
dissolved in his throat. He nodded slightly too, in case the green
man hadn't heard.

"Okay, just relax. I'm going to give you
some morphine." The green man held up a syringe with some clear
liquid in it, and then locked it onto the tube in Jacob's arm. He
pressed the plunger and Jacob felt a cold ribbon twist into his
vein. The pain ebbed. The light dimmed. On the ceiling there were
tiles, foam squares in a steel grid that he guessed hid the wires
and pipes up there. He counted the squares as he floated away,
thinking of the wires and pipes under his own skin carrying the
green man's juice to all his fingers and toes.

When the darkness swallowed him again, all
the thinking his exhausted, numbed-out, maybe-damaged brain could
produce was a vague feeling that he'd forgotten something. The
missing thought was an irritation at the back of his skull. The
more he concentrated on it, the more the memory slipped from his
grasp, an oily shoelace through languid fingers.

Chapter Two

The Uncle Who
Wasn't

 

The sound of footsteps woke Jacob in his
hospital bed. He was annoyed that the nurses kept waking him up.
All he wanted to do was sleep, but as it turned out hospitals were
not a good place to rest.

Without opening his eyes, he said, "I'm not
hungry and I don’t need another pain pill."

A gruff voice answered him from the side of
the bed. "That's good because I don't have either of those
things."

Jacob's lids flipped open. A stranger sat in
the uncomfortable looking chair next to his hospital bed, the pads
of his fingers pressed together under his chin.

"Who are you?" Jacob asked.

"I'm your uncle John. John Laudner," the man
said. He leaned forward and extended a calloused palm.

Jacob did not take the man's hand. "You've
made a mistake. I don't have an uncle and my last name isn't
Laudner. It's Lau."

The man pursed his lips, his green eyes
shifting to the hospital floor. He sat back in his chair, opening
his mouth as if to say something and then closing it again. At last
he lowered his hands, linking them at his waist. "There's no easy
way to tell you this, Jacob. I am your uncle. I am the brother of
Charles Lau, formerly known as Charlie Laudner. Your father changed
his name before you were born."

Jacob licked his parched lips and reached
for the cup of water the nurse had left him. He sucked greedily on
the straw before speaking. "I've never even heard of you."

"It's a long story. You lived far away.
After your father died, well, it never seemed like the right time
to introduce myself."

"So why are you here now?"

"Jacob, do you remember anything about the
accident?"

Jacob closed his eyes. The truth was his
brain did have an explanation for what had happened, but it was
ludicrous. The memory was so far-fetched he could only believe his
imagination had stitched it together to fill in the gaps. "No. I
told the doctors, the last thing I remember was fighting with my
mom that morning in our apartment. I don't even remember getting
into the car with her."

"She's missing, Jacob."

"Missing?" he said, sitting up in bed
despite the pain. "But she must've been in the car with me. How
could they have rescued me and not her?"

"You were inside the car when they found it.
She wasn't. "

"But that doesn't make any sense."

"Your blood was on the inside of the car,
Jacob. Hers was on the outside."

She'd had a gun. She'd
been standing next to the door.
He shook
his head, ignoring the thought. It was a false memory, brought on
by emotional and physical trauma. What had the doctor called it?
Auditory and visual hallucinations: the brain's way of making sense
of the damage it incurred when his skull collided with the
windshield.

"How is that possible?"

"They think, maybe, you were driving."

"I don't have a driver's license."

John stood up and approached the bed. He
unsnapped the arm of the hospital gown Jacob was wearing, pulling
it down slightly. Then, he tipped up the hideaway mirror on the
overbed table. The bruise that arced across Jacob's chest looked
like the top half of a large circle…or a steering wheel. He traced
the edge with his finger, a rainbow of purple hued skin. A chill
ran up his spine.

"Did I hit her?"

John returned the thin fabric to its place.
"The police don't think so, Jacob. Her blood was on the passenger
side door, not the hood of the car. You were found in a heavily
wooded area of Manoa Falls. It's only a few miles from your
apartment. They think, after the accident, your mom got out of the
car to get help."

You'd followed her there. You'd had a fight
and you wanted to apologize.

"I don't remember," Jacob said, but a more
truthful answer would have been that the memory he had couldn't be
real. It was nonsense.

"It's normal that you don't. The doc says
people often block out extreme circumstances. It's your brain's way
of protecting you from reliving the trauma."

"And then what? Where did she go?"

John's face contorted. His voice strained
with emotion when he answered. "There have been abductions in the
area. Nine women went missing in the last year, six were found
dead. Murdered. There were signs of a struggle where they found
you."

Jacob's blood froze in his veins. "Are you
saying, my mom might have been abducted, or worse, killed?"

"They don't know for sure. I'm sorry,
Jacob."

A tear escaped down his cheek and he wiped
it away with his bare hand. It had been a long time since he'd
allowed himself to cry and he wasn't about to start now. He'd
survived by following two very important rules: don't feel anything
and don't expect anything from anyone. To distract himself, he
concentrated on the specifics of what happened. Why in the world
would he have driven his mother's car?

The creature was coming
for you. Your mom tried to fight it.
He
ignored the rogue thought. "What did I hit anyway?"

John repositioned himself in his chair and
folded his arms across his chest. "Nobody knows, Jacob. The front
of the car is damaged like you hit a tree or something but they
found the Toyota in the middle of the road. There wasn't anything
in front of the car. They were hoping you could remember because no
one has any idea what could've happened. They thought maybe the
damage occurred earlier and then you drove to the scene…but the car
isn't operational and your wounds were fresh when they found you.
"

"What happens now? Are they going to search
for her?"

"Yes. There's already a group combing
through Manoa Falls."

"I want to help." Only the irritating tug of
Jacob's IV kept him from bounding out of bed.

"There's nothing you can do, Jacob. The
doctor says you'll be in here for another week and then…"

"And then what?"

"The social worker says you need to come
home with me."

"With you? I don't even know you."

"I am your nearest kin."

"Where do you even live?"

"Paris."

"Paris…France?"

"No, a different Paris. Paris, Illinois. You
have an Aunt Carolyn and a cousin, Katrina. They're waiting for us
at home."

Home. The word annoyed Jacob. When he heard
the word home, he thought of his apartment and the house he'd lived
in before his dad died. He thought of how the smell of his favorite
adobo chicken would fill the kitchen when his mom made it. He saw
the faces of his mother and his father, bound to one another in
some almost magical way. Home meant a sanctuary, as common and
taken for granted as the sun rising in the morning. Wherever John
was taking Jacob, it sure as hell wasn't home.

A wave of exhaustion overcame him. He took a
deep breath and let it out slowly. "Do I have a choice about this?"
he croaked.

There was a long stretch of silence. "No,"
the man said. The word was a guillotine.

It's for the best. You're not safe here.

Jacob closed his eyes. If he squeezed them
shut tight enough, maybe his supposed uncle and the rest of the
world would go away. A numb calm crept over him as he gave himself
over to the future, unable to fight what would be, unable to care
anymore. It crossed his mind that another person might pray in a
situation like this, but Jacob didn't. Who would he pray to? If
there was one thing his fifteen years of life had taught him, it
was that there was nothing above him but sky. To believe in God
would mean believing that He had allowed the tragedy that was
Jacob's life in the first place. He didn't want to know a God who
made a war then killed off people's fathers in it. No, Jacob was
sure he was alone in this. Alone with an uncle he'd never even
met.

Chapter Three

The Memory

 

Jacob lands in a crouch, knee deep in ferns
and bromeliads, shoulder to shoulder with bamboo. Wet leaves brush
against his arms and legs as he turns in a circle. There is no path
here but he's familiar with the trees. He is sure he’s been here
before.

Dark clouds roll in overhead, faster than in
real life, and the forest grows dim under their ominous bellies.
Panic swells in his chest. Jacob launches himself into the forest.
He darts through the trees, casting frantic looks over his
shoulder.

Up ahead, the forest opens and Jacob watches
a car climb a gravel roadway. It is his mother’s. The faded blue
Toyota Celica is unmistakable. From the driver's seat, she emerges
but she is not the woman Jacob remembers arguing with that morning.
He has never seen this Lillian Lau, a strong soldier of a woman in
a long sleeved black t-shirt and military pants. The hilt of a
knife glints from a sheath on her leg. Her jet-black hair is swept
up into a ponytail and her almond eyes are deadly serious. She is
staring in the opposite direction, frowning at a particularly dark
stretch of forest. She reaches across her body and draws a gun from
a holster under her arm.

BOOK: The Soulkeepers
5.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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